Sovereign by Simon Brown Read Free Book Online

the troops, the experience and the sappers we will need to besiege Grenda Lear's great cities.'
    'Like Daavis,' one chief said, grinning like an excited child.
    'Like Daavis,' Lynan agreed. 'And Spira and Pila and one day even Kendra itself.'
     
    'He has ambition, your prince,' Lasthear said.
    'You can't get much more ambitious than wanting the throne of Grenda Lear,' Jenrosa agreed. She was sitting next to a circle she had traced in the dark brown dirt of Hume. Good soil , she told herself. It reminded her of the soil in the village where she was born. In a pang of self-pity she wished she had never left the village, but almost immediately cursed herself for a fool. She had Bated her childhood, her mother nothing but a drunken sot, her father long dead or run away, her prospects no better than ending up as some farmer's wife.
    In some ways she thought that fate would have been preferable to the one handed her. She was exiled from Kendra, the city she truly regarded as her home, and had lost Kumul, the only man she had ever truly loved. On top of all that she was afraid the Chett magikers had started regarding her as a Truespeaker, a great magiker that only appeared once every two or three generations. All she had ever wanted was a quiet life where she could use what she had once considered to be her modest magikal abilities for an equally modest profit. She had wanted a quiet and comfortable life, unconcerned with and untroubled by the greater world.
    And then there was Lynan. She had tied herself to his fortunes first through necessity and later through genuine affection. For a brief period there had been four of them—Lynan, Jenrosa, Kumul and Ager—and although their lives had been dangerous, their simple aim to stay alive had created a strong bond between them. But now one of their number was slain, Ager had a whole clan to fill up his time, and Lynan…
    Jenrosa shivered.
    Lynan had become something more and perhaps something less than human, and that had been her fault. She had saved his life by giving him the blood of the vampire Silona, and in doing so had changed the fate of the whole continent. She wondered if she should feel proud for all that she, an apprentice and insignificant magiker from the Theurgia of Stars, had achieved, but instead could only feel a kind of numbing dread that combined with her grief over Kumul to make her feel lethargic and witless.
    'I did not mean that,' Lasthear said after a while. She was sitting on the opposite side of the circle in the dirt.
    Jenrosa glanced up at her. 'You are talking about this invasion of Haxus?'
    Lasthear nodded. 'If he gains both Haxus and his sister's throne, Lynan will be the first to control the whole of the continent of Theare.'
    'Is that important?'
    Lasthear did not answer but started calling to the earth. Jenrosa joined her automatically. Their voices joined and seemed to weave a path through the air around them. A dust devil whirled between them for a moment and then was gone. Jenrosa blinked dirt from her eyes and looked down at the circle. The suggestion of words appeared, dissolved, reformed again.
    'A ruler,' Jenrosa said aloud.
    'A tyrant,' Lasthear added.
    'A woman.'
    'She owns the Keys of Power.'
    'A dead city.'
    'The price.'
    The dust devil reappeared and destroyed the circle. The two women leaned back in sudden exhaustion, their eyes closed. When Jenrosa opened her eyes again, she saw Lasthear looking at her with great earnestness.
    'You think the answer was there, don't you?' It was more of an accusation than a question.
    'You are the Truespeaker,' Lasthear said. 'You tell me.'
    'I don't believe we see the future.'
    'Neither do I. Magik no more determines our fate than spying a distant land from the top of a mountain means you will one day visit that land. Magik gives us glimpses of history, past, present and future.' Lasthear reached out and took Jenrosa's hand. 'Only the Truespeaker can interpret those glimpses of history, draw real