Sovereign (11 page)

'Of course you're coming for my sake.' She smiled at him, and he could feel himself becoming aroused. Her voice was like a summer breeze, and her skin looked as soft as a carpet of moss. 'You want to be with me again. I can hear your dreams. You dream about me all the time.'

'No,' Lynan said between his teeth, but even as he said the word he knew he was lying. 'No!' he repeated, more fiercely, but it sounded no more convincing.

She stepped towards him, her outline blurring with the leaves and branches that surrounded her. Her beautiful face flickered in the shadows. She stopped a few paces from him. 'You can lie to your friends, Lynan, but you cannot lie to me. We are the same, you and I, and I can read you as easily as I read the twisting tree and the burrowing badger.'

He tried turning his gaze away from her, but it was useless. Wherever he looked, she was there. 'I want nothing to do with you! Leave me alone!'

'All life desires me,' she said sweetly.

'All life despises you,' he spat back.

'There is less difference between the two emotions than you imagine.'

'You sound like a priest,' he said scornfully.

'And there is less difference between me and a priest than you imagine.' Suddenly she was right before him, and she stroked his cheek with one scratchy finger. 'We both want your soul.'

'You want it for yourself.'

'And now we are back to desire.' She retreated a step and frowned in thought. 'I remember what it was like. Centuries ago, before your kind came to Theare. I remember what it was to make love, to desire the body of another and not his soul. In a way I am more innocent now than I was then: my desire is less base, more pure. I desire the best in you, not the worst.'

'You will take
everything
from me, my soul and my life.'

'They are the only things about Lynan Rosetheme worth having.' She laughed, and the sound of it was like leaves falling. 'Oh, I cannot forget your gifts. The Keys of Power will look fine against my breasts.'

'You shall never have them.' But even as he said the words the two Keys around his neck melted away and appeared around her own, the two talismans resting between her pale green breasts with nipples the colour of old wood.

'What is it you desire the most, Lynan Rosetheme?' she asked, coming close to him again. Her breath brushed against his face like a cold wind. 'What do you want, my conquering prince?'

Lynan felt his sex stiffening. His desire for her was overwhelming. Without volition his hands stretched out to cup her breasts.

'What is it you want?' Silona asked again, smiling sweetly. She took one of his hands and placed it between her thighs. 'Above all else, is it Silona you desire?'

Deep within him stirred a terrible anger, something that belonged to Silona as much as it belonged to him. He pushed her away with a furious shout. She flew back in a flurry of whirling leaves and disappeared.

Lynan breathed in deeply with relief, but the breath froze when he heard Silona's laugh. At first he thought it came from in front of him, but then the grove itself seemed to take it up and the laughter surrounded him. Every tree and hedge became a reflection of her shape, every branch an arm, every gust of wind a breath from her fetid lungs. Terror swelled in him and he screamed.

Korigan woke with a start and knew instantly what had taken away her sleep.
She
was here, and Korigan could feel her presence as if the vampire was standing over her. She leaped out of her bed and rushed to Lynan's tent. The Red Hands on duty stepped aside for her and she entered. There was not enough light to see by, and she could hear no sound. It occurred to her that Lynan might be outside, and the thought almost panicked her. How would she find him? How could she protect him from Silona? At that moment she heard, as if from a great distance, a woman's voice saying Lynan's name. The sound of it was like ice in her brain, and her skin seemed to crawl in revulsion. Then she heard, close by, Lynan's voice answer.

'You shall never have them.'

The words were desperate. Following the direction of his voice she could see his dim outline on a cot.

Again from far away she heard Silona. 'What is it you desire the most, Lynan Rosetheme?' Korigan saw he was naked, and as she watched he became aroused. She surprised herself by being ashamed for his sake, and even as she went to him to wake him he pushed away with his arms at some invisible presence. Silona laughed, and the sound came from all around the tent. Korigan froze, more afraid than she had ever been before, and she struggled against it vainly until Lynan screamed. Suddenly she was afraid for herself no more, and she rushed to him.

'Lynan! Wake up!' She took him in her arms. He sat up, struggled against her, tried to push her way. The Red Hands came into the tent, confused and alarmed. They carried torches. 'Go!' she ordered them. 'Leave one of the torches, but go! He'll be alright!' They left without hesitation. They knew about Lynan's nightmares—seen by them as a great sickness that only someone great could suffer—and knew as well that Korigan often helped him.

She turned back to Lynan, trying to force him down. 'It's alright, I'm here! You're safe!'

His whole body shuddered. In the flickering light she saw his skin was shiny with sweat. His eyes opened and stared, terrified, at Korigan.

'It's me,' she said as soothingly as possible, fighting to keep her voice calm.

'Silona!' he whimpered and scuttled backwards out of her arms.

'No, it is me, Korigan—'

'Silona!' he said again, louder, and the fear in his voice tore at Korigan's heart. She grasped his hands and used all her strength to pull him back so she could wrap her arms around him and force his head against her breasts. 'Listen! Do you hear my heart? Silona has no heart. I am no vampire.' Still he struggled against her. 'Lynan, listen to me! I am Korigan! I am
your
queen!' She said the words so quickly they came out before she could stop them, and in shock almost let go of the prince.

'It's true,' she said, but to herself more than to Lynan. Determination filled her and she grasped Lynan's head in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. He stopped struggling against her. She opened her eyes and saw the terror in his eyes drain away to be replaced by recognition.

He pulled away from her, gently. 'Korigan?' He looked around him, dazed. 'It was her—'

She dropped her hands and did not know what to do with them. 'I know,' she said falteringly. 'I heard her, and I saw you fight her off.'

'What…?' The question died on his lips, and he would not meet her gaze.

Korigan did not know what to say either. Since her father's death had left her queen at age thirteen she had had to make choices to secure her throne and advance her people's interests, and every time she had seen clearly the consequences of her action; but this time she was confronted by a choice that might be the most important in her life and yet she could not see which path would best serve either her throne or her people. All she knew, and this with utter certainty, was what
she
wanted, and realising that she also realised she had left herself no choice.

'It is too late for regret,' she said quietly, again more to herself than to Lynan.

'Korigan?'

She closed her eyes, leaned forward and kissed him a second time, but without holding him to her.
Too quick
! she told herself, knowing now he would reject her a second time. But then his lips parted slightly and he kissed her back. His arms moved around her, embracing and capturing her at the same time. For the first time in her life Korigan had no thought for her throne or her people. For the first time in her life she thought about nothing except how she wanted something for herself, and how glorious it felt.

It was not yet dawn when Jenrosa woke. She left her tent and made for the small creek she had seen the day before. It was no more than two paces wide and a hand's-breadth deep, but it would do. She knelt in front of the creek and scooped a hole out of the dirt nearby, then used her cupped hands to fill the hole with water. She waited for dawn and for the water to settle, then gently broke the surface with the tip of one finger and watched as the ripples spread out, each catching the sun's light and turning into golden rings. She sighed deeply and said: 'The past is the same but the present has no boundary.'

The moment she uttered the last word the rings of gold turned to rings of blood, and then all the water in the hole turned red as if from some dreadful infection. Jenrosa gasped and quickly stood up. She felt nauseous and bent over to vomit, but could only dry retch. She stood up again and wiped spittle from her mouth, tears flowing from her eyes.

What is wrong with me? What have I become?

She could not believe—
would
not believe—that she was seeing the future. Of course there would be blood, she told herself, they were in the middle of a war. She did not have to be a magiker to predict that.

Then what was happening? Why was everything she did tainted with blood? She woke up every morning tasting it on the back of her throat. She had dreams of rivers of blood cascading down the streets of Kendra, so much blood it could fill an ocean.

Deep in her mind she already half knew the answer, but refused to drag it up to full awareness. It had to do with Lynan and Silona, but she did not want to stare the truth in the face. Not yet. Not until she was sure.

All my fault
, she thought.
Everything is my fault
.

She started sobbing, at first from self-pity, but then in real sorrow as the memory of Kumul welled up inside her and so overwhelmed her she fell to all fours in the dirt. Her tears flowed now, falling off her cheeks into the hole of bloody water, and as they did the water cleared, becoming like crystal. When Jenrosa saw this she rested back on her heels and forced herself to control her grief. She told herself that Kumul would have been ashamed of her, and that finally brought her up.

She touched the water again with the tip of her finger. 'The past is the same but the present has no boundary,' she said. And this time the ripples carried neither gold nor blood. She watched intently, trying to gather meaning from the images that flashed in the expanding rings, one after the other, and realised they were telling her the same story. Thousands of Chetts lay dead in a long green valley somewhere in the Oceans of Grass. 'The same story,' she said aloud. 'So this must be the past.' The last image showed a pennant with a flying bird on it. At first she thought it was the kestrel of the Rosethemes, but then realised it was like no bird she had ever seen before.

We have a new enemy
, she told herself.
And they are already among us
.

CHAPTER 9

Powl was late for a meeting with some of the Church's parish priests and took a short cut through the library. His path was intercepted by a novitiate with a vexing theological question that took so long to posit that Powl leaned one hand against a book rest to listen to it. When the novitiate finished, the prelate, who had neither the time nor the inclination to answer, put off the youth with a polite promise to talk to him at some later date. The novitiate bowed and scurried off. Powl sighed in a mixture of frustration at the delay and vague memories of his own time as a novitiate, and lifted his hand from the rest. That's when he saw the book. For a second he did not recognise it, and then he saw the handwriting.

'I pray for guidance,' he read, 'and for the souls of all my people; I pray for peace and a future for all my children; I pray for answers and I pray for more questions. I am one man, alone and yet not lonely. I am one man who knows too many secrets. I pray for salvation.'

His last words
, Powl thought. The reminder of his predecessor made his guilt rise in him like black bile, but he suppressed it with the force of his will. Still, the memory of Primate Northam would not disappear from his mind so easily, and Powl found it possible to remember how much he had loved him once. Northam had been his teacher and father, his example and his spiritual guide. Lastly, Northam had been his betrayer and his victim.
It is so strange one of God's creatures can be all of these things
.

He read the passage again and realised he did not entirely understand the prayer.
I have no right to understand
, he told himself, but a part of him knew he should still be able to understand prayer, the most basic element—the very heart—of all faith. He tried reading the passage again but came no closer to its mystery. He noticed, too, that the rest of the page and its opposite were completely blank.

This was the Book of Days, he realised with surprise, and the pages were blank after Northam's last entry because it had been his duty as Northam's successor to write new entries. How could he have forgotten? How could he have so grievously neglected his duty? He looked up and saw the shelf that held all the black-bound Books of Days. Without knowing, he had broken the tradition, a tradition maintained since the earliest time of the Church of the Righteous God, and for a fleeting moment he felt despair. How could he have so seriously neglected his responsibility as primate? How could God have let him do this? How could his fellow priests have let him do this?

'Father?'

Powl looked around. It was Father Rown, his secretary and successor as Queen Areava's confessor. Rown was regarding him with a mixture of concern and curiosity.

'Yes?'

'The parish priests are waiting.'

'Of course.'

'Father, are you well? Would you like me to handle the meeting?'

Powl shook his head to clear it. Rown misinterpreted the gesture.

'Then shall I tell them you are coming?'

'Yes.'

'Are you sure you are alright?'

Powl straightened. He frowned at Rown. 'Thank you, I am fine.' Rown turned to go but Powl called him back. 'After this meeting, I would like to discuss something with you. Something important.'

Rown nodded. 'Of course, Father. In your office?'