Sovereign by Simon Brown

again,' she said urgently to Lasthear. The two of them knelt down and scratched a circle, but before they could begin the calling a rivulet of blood from the fort met the circle and started to fill it. Lasthear cried out and tried to erase it, but Jenrosa grabbed her hand. 'Let it finish,' she ordered. In horror she watched as the circle became a swollen red disk. She called to the earth and the dust devil came and spat specks of blood against their faces. Words formed in the pool and Jenrosa recited: 'A red monarch.'
    She waited for Lasthear to speak the words she saw, but the woman's mouth was clamped shut. To Jenrosa it looked as though invisible fingers grasped her jaw.
    'A red woman,' Jenrosa continued uncertainly.
    And still Lasthear would not—or could not—speak.
    'A red city.'
    'And then the dust devil returned, spitting more blood, and ended the spell. Lasthear cried out in pain and shock. Jenrosa tottered to her feet, her breathing ragged, and started to cry. She shouted in anger and furiously wiped the blood and tears from her face.
     
    Lynan was in the grove where even sunlight seemed liquid and green. There was no sound of bird or insect, but all the trees and ferns seemed fit to burst with life. He was lying on his back. He could smell the grass, sweet and young, and beneath it the earth, dark and moist. Above him a wind rustled the canopy. He looked down the length of his body, admired his hard white skin. He noticed he had three of the Keys of Power. He moved aside the Key of Union and the Key of the Sword, and there lay the Key of the Sceptre, the Monarch's Key. He sat up, surprised. When did he get this? Who gave it to him?
    He held it up to study it in better light and dropped it with a start. It was covered in blood. He tugged its chain over his head and threw it away with all his strength. It sailed through the air, slowed and then stopped, suspended.
    'This is mine,' said a too-familiar voice.
    Lynan searched among the trees for her.
    'I gave it to you to keep for me,' she said.
    'I will not win the throne for your sake,' he said.
    Silona laughed, and the sound came from every direction, from the very forest itself. 'You do everything for my sake,' she said.

CHAPTER 5
     
    Queen Charion paused in her striding to look out over her capital from the walls that surrounded it. Daavis had been turned into a city in which the houses, cannibalised for their stone and wood, looked like hollow skulls. Everywhere she looked her people scurried like ants, repairing city walls, restocking depots with food and armaments, tending livestock, pushing carts and pulling wagons and, if too young or too old to help, keeping out of the way. Parks and gardens had been turned into fields and pens. Cattle had been slaughtered and their meat dried and salted; sheep and goats were kept alive for their fleece and milk and an emergency meat supply. New cisterns had been dug and plastered and whitewashed then filled with water from the Barda River. Metal bowls, cups, eating utensils and jewellery had been collected and melted down and were being converted into spear and arrow heads and swords and daggers. New tunnels were being dug parallel to the walls so enemy mining could be countered swiftly. Long lines of elderly matrons were tearing clothing into strips, bleaching them in vats of urine, drying them and folding them for bandages.
    Charion breathed deeply. She commanded all this activity and all the countless minutiae that went with it.
    She could not remember the last time she had managed to sleep for more than two hours at a time, and she knew it was starting to show. She was even more crabby and acid-tongued than usual; food tasted like sawdust, and wine like brackish water. She had worn the same dress now for God knew how long, having donated most of her clothes to her city's cause, not to mention most of the cooking pots and utensils from her palace's kitchens. She had even ordered most of the good quality palace