Sovereign

Jenrosa looked up in surprise. 'They say nothing on this.'

'Has the earth been asked?' he insisted.

'The earth had no words.'

'Have the eagle and karak been asked?'

'The eagle and karak had nothing to show us.'

Lynan glanced quickly at the woman sitting directly behind Jenrosa. Lasthear, Jenrosa's teacher, nodded in agreement. Ager saw the exchange and was offended on Jenrosa's behalf, then guiltily realised Lynan knew Jenrosa would still be greatly affected by Kumul's death and may not understand everything her magik showed her.

'We need a base on this side of the Ufero Mountains from which to operate,' Lynan said.

'If we capture Daavis, we will have such a base,' Gudon suggested light-heartedly, and many laughed.

'Our army is made up of cavalry,' Lynan said. 'We have not the troops nor the wherewithal to assault a city.'

'Are you suggesting we build a base in Hume?' Ager asked, resisting the temptation to add that the Chetts did not have the wherewithal for that either.

'We need something more secure, more permanent, than that,' Lynan answered.

'What exactly are you suggesting then?' Ager prompted.

Lynan smiled at him. 'You said we had two choices. We move south, or we move west. There is a third choice.'

Ager looked blankly at Lynan for a second, then opened his mouth in surprise. The answer was so obvious he felt a fool for not realising it. He could tell by the expression on Korigan's face that she had seen the truth at the same time.

'Haxus,' Ager said.

'Yes. We have defeated its army. We have captured its king. Haxus is open to us… if we move quickly enough.'

'We need only march in and take it!' Eynon declared. 'A whole Kingdom will fall to us from one battle!'

Lynan shook his head. 'A whole Kingdom does not fall because it loses its king,' he said severely. 'Grenda Lear lost my mother Usharna and my brother Berayma in one season and survived easily enough. But our chances in Haxus are greater than our chances in south Hume. Another army could be marching north from Kendra right now to join the army already in the province. Grenda Lear has vast resources to draw on.'

'But in comparison, Haxus does not,' Ager finished.

'But Haxus does have 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 meaning from them.'

'I don't believe we see the future,' Jenrosa repeated, taking her hand from Lasthear's. 'And I don't believe I am the Truespeaker. I am not a Chett.'

'We are all Chetts,' Lasthear said without irony.

It took Lynan's army five days to reach the border of Haxus. Scouts ranging far and wide quickly found the fort Salokan had established as a staging post for his invasion of Grenda Lear, and also where he kept his reinforcements, mainly heavy infantry with a few squadrons of light cavalry for picket and scouting duties. Chett outriders reported that the fort commander was overconfident and lazy; the gates were open and unlocked, and the few pickets were relieved like clockwork, making it easy to plan an assault around their movements.

Because it was a fort, Lynan's army had to take it quickly or be forced into a siege, something the Chetts were temperamentally unsuited for and Lynan could ill afford to waste time on. Nor could Lynan risk moving deeper into Haxus with such a large enemy force behind him, and he was unwilling to detach a whole banner to cover his rear. The fort had to be taken by a sudden assault, and Lynan planned for the attack to start well before first light. If things went well, his riders would occupy the fort by sunrise; if things went badly, his army had a whole day to retreat to a safe distance. He gave command of the main attack to his Red Hands under Gudon; they had been trained to fight on foot using the short sword, and once inside the fort horses would be more hindrance than help. They would be followed up by Ager with his Ocean Clan, warriors who were proving to be among the toughest and most fanatical of the Chetts; Ager also commanded the remnants of the lancers, the banner savaged so fiercely by the knights of Kendra's Twenty Houses. Korigan and Eynon would lead the rest of the banners, eliminating any forces outside of the fort and maintaining constant archery fire against the fort's walls.