The Mountain Ch. 10

"Wait." The pain was a distant throb. The reality of communicating with the outside world quieted everything else.

"I have my orders." He spoke quietly, his eyes on Warder. He had moved closer to the radios, examining them as if he still hoped to silence them.

"Tell me what they're saying."

"You need a healer," said Rader. "Alpha's orders."

"You said something bad would happen if we made contact with the mainland," said Lucy, grasping his hand harder. "Tell me what's being said."

"I have my orders," said Rader. He looked at Warder again, but the Alpha seemed unreachable, listening only to the Sylphen words echoing in the cool, cluttered space.

"Please. I helped cause this. I need to know."

Lucy could feel the tension in Rader as he held her. He looked at Warder's back and shook his head. "I can't. He's..." His voice cut off. Sheera had managed to silence all of the radios but one. The small, red plastic radio was directly in front of Warder. She was too cautious to try to reach it. She hurried over to Lucy.

"Luce. Are you okay?"

"Do you understand it?" Lucy asked, looking her friend in the face. "Do you know their language?"

Are you really one of them?

Tears in her eyes, Sheera nodded. "A little. What my Dad taught me."

"Please," Lucy begged. Asking for Sheera to reveal herself to her as something inhuman. Asking her to prove she was still a friend. "Translate. Word for word."

Sheera moved closer to Lucy. Rader did not speak, but neither did he keep her away. "New station, report," she said softly. "New station, identify yourself by order of ..." she trailed off. "I don't know the last word."

"It is a standard transmission," said Rader. "Territories identify themselves by the Alpha's call sign."

"What Alpha rules the territory speaking to this island?" whispered Sheera.

Rader was silent.

"Tell me!" Lucy's voice rose and Warder flinched. He was gripping the edge of Ioanni's workbench with his powerful hands. Gripping it so hard that the wood was beginning to protest, splintering and cracking under the pressure. The radio slid as the surface underneath it buckled. But still, the same sequence of Sylphen language came through.

"Orin," Warder said. The word rumbled from his throat like thunder on the wind. Like he could do to the word itself--and the person he described--what he was doing to the workbench. Tear it apart slowly and completely with the force of his anger. "He calls himself 'King Orin,'" said Warder. "He very much likes your human idea of kings."

"Who is he?" Lucy asked.

In response, Warder lifted his hands from the bench and brought them down on the nearest radio. Everything was brittle this close to the sea, weathered and weak. The contraption shattered to pieces. In the silence, Warder turned, and Lucy found herself afraid in a way that she hadn't been since that day he had towered over her on the surface of the mountain.

"My father."