He took another step back, and I could see that he was starting to fade.
“Don’t—” I grabbed for him, but my fingers passed through his reflection instead. “Don’t go.”
“I must.”
“Just one more question. Please.”
“Anything.”
“Did it…” I faltered. “Did it hurt? When you…you know.”
“Not even for a second.” He shook his head. “But it’s time for you to wake up. Wake up, Your Majesty. Wake up.”
“But—”
“Wake up.”
And the next thing I knew he was gone, the palace was gone, and the world was nothing but darkness and someone shaking me.
“Allie! Come on, Allie. Wake up.” Mercedes shook me again, and I groaned. “Wake up or I swear by the trees I will slap you.”
“Don’t,” I moaned. “I’m awake. I’m awake.”
“Your Majesty,” a rough-sounding voice said as I struggled to open my eyes.
I cracked an eyelid open and found myself staring at John of Leavenwald’s haggard, soot-covered face. He had a streak of mud down the side of his left cheek, and I couldn’t help wondering how it had gotten there. The way the sunlight filled the room now, I must have been asleep for hours.
“They’re all dead. Everyone who stayed behind to defend the Crystal Palace.” I peeled back my blankets and stood up. “They’re dead and the mermaids are missing.”
“I know.” He didn’t look at me, his eyes fixed at a point over my right shoulder. “Lord General Sullivan told us when you returned last night, while you were in the meeting with the Dragos Council.”
“The Fate Maker and my aunt, the Empress Bavasama, they killed everyone they could, and now that I have the tear and know how to use it I’m going to make them pay,” I said. “I will make them suffer for every life they took.”
I tightened my hand into a fist and felt a sharp jab in my palm. I ran my thumb along the edge of whatever had poked me and instantly knew what it was that Timbago had given me in the dream. I didn’t know how he’d managed to make it materialize in real life after giving it to me in a dream, but somehow he’d saved the last shard of the Mirror of Nerissette. There was so much I still had left to learn. And I could only do that if I stayed on the throne. I slipped the shard into the pocket of my pants and stared at John of Leavenwald.
“Your Majesty.” He fixed his gray eyes on mine. “If I get the chance I’ll kill him before he ever gets close to you, but if you feel you must get revenge yourself all I ask is that you let me hold your cloak.”
“I don’t wear a cloak.”
“It was a figure of speech, my queen.” He smiled at me. “Now if you’re awake, and we’re done planning your revenge…”
“What?”
“The last of your army has arrived. I offered to come wake you so that we could convene a Council of War.”
Chapter Twenty
“What do we know?” I asked as I followed John to a grassy knoll just above the edge of the lake where a hastily set up white awning held tables inside. I glanced around—all of them were scattered with papers and maps.
“The dragon scouts searched Nerissette last night, and we’ve found the Fate Maker’s army,” Ardere said. “They are near Tahib.”
“What’s that?” I asked, my face growing pink. I didn’t even know my whole kingdom yet, and I’d almost lost it twice.
“Tahib is an oasis where the Firas hold their annual gatherings each year. It empties out during the wet season when the Firas are traveling.”
“And that’s where his army is? Why would they go there?”
“We don’t know,” John said from beside me as he pointed to the map. “It makes no sense. In the time it took for his army to make it to Tahib, they could have reached the Cliffs of Fesir and brought the war to us.”
“They could be resting there, regaining their strength,” Rhys suggested.
“Or waiting there for more troops,” Tevian said, staring at the map, his fingers tracing along the place where the White Mountains curled along our borders. “There, the White Mountains are no more than foothills. It would be easy for Bavasama to send more troops across the border at Tahib.”
“More troops?”
“It is possible, Your Majesty,” John said as Winston put his hand on my back and we leaned over the map.
“So what do you recommend we do? You’re all warriors—if it were you, why would you lead your army into the middle of nowhere?”
“More soldiers,” John of Leavenwald said, the other men nodding in agreement. “They’re waiting for more troops. Fresh troops from Bathune to help them fight against us.
“Right, okay.” I took a deep breath. “They’re adding soldiers to their army. That’s bad. We need to figure out some way to stop them before that happens.”
“So we go out to meet them,” Eamon said. He and his woodsmen guards stood outside our awning, armed to the teeth and staring at us. “We send our troops out and finish their army before the reinforcements arrive. We quit running like weak children and stand and fight.”
Exactly what I was thinking. We needed to go out and meet him. He kept chasing us down, and we were always on the defense, waiting for the Fate Maker and his army to strike and hoping that we could survive it. Now, though, we would attack.
“That’s a bad idea,” Rhys said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Tahib is on a hill.” Rhys pointed at the map. “And the Firas use it for their gatherings because it was once a fortress. One of your fortresses, from a time when our world was less peaceful, a fortress that was made to withstand attacks by dragons.”
“We can lay siege!” Eamon declared. “We’ll starve them out. We can win this war once and for all.”
“If they’re on a hill, inside a fort, they’ll have the advantage,” Winston said. “We could starve them out but that will take time, and while we’re waiting for them to run out of food, they’re on a hill looking down on us, and we’ve got nothing to hide behind.”
“And then we’re sitting ducks,” I said.
“Exactly.” John nodded. “They’ll pick us off one by one.”
“Then let us die like warriors instead of being picked off,” Eamon argued. “We have done nothing but retreat like cowards since these children took control of our world. Instead of looking to them for direction let us, the true people of Nerissette, fight for it. Let us live and die as the warriors we’re meant to be.”
“And die is what you’ll do,” Rhys snapped. “All of you.”
“It’s better to die than—”
“He’s right.” John cut in. “If we attack, we’ll die.”
“But—” Eamon started
“And as I am still head of the woodsmen,” John continued, “I say that we find a plan of attack that doesn’t leave all of us to be slaughtered like animals.”
“This is weakness. Cowardice.” Eamon sneered as he flipped over the table that our maps were sitting on and then stormed out of the tent, his men following behind him.
“John.” I reached for him but he shook my hand off his arm.
“He’s young,” he said as he watched his son go. “One day he’ll learn that when the choice is between survival and glory, only the stupid man chooses glory.”
“So what do you recommend? If we’re not going to take the fight to my aunt and the Fate Maker, what do you, as the generals in charge of my army, think we should do? The cliff plan?” I asked, desperately trying to find a way to change the subject back to the impending battle and off the fracture in the ranks of the woodsmen.
“The cliff plan,” Winston agreed. “It’ll be just like that movie 300.”