The Bastard King

CHAPTER TWENTY

As King Lanius had the summer before, he greeted King Grus when Grus’ army returned from the west. This time, the army didn’t return in gaudy triumph. It had fought hard, and was badly battered. But the Thervings had gone back to their own kingdom. The previous summer, Grus’ soldiers had seemed astonished and delighted to have driven off the enemy. This year, Lanius thought, it was more as though they had the Thervings’ measure. Maybe that counted for more than a parade through the streets of the city of Avornis.

Lanius wanted to ask Grus what he thought of that, but Grus forestalled him, saying, “Where are Sosia and little Crex?”

“Back at the palace,” Lanius answered.

Grus looked unhappy, but then nodded. “Yes, I suppose they would be. Don’t want to put a new mother and a little baby through too much. How are they?”

“As well as anyone could hope,” Lanius said. Grus smiled, which made him look like anything but a stern soldier. Lanius went on, “I like this business of being a father better than I thought I would. I think Crex looks like me.”

“I don’t suppose that’s anything against the rules,” Grus said. “Better he should look like you than me, anyhow. I’ll never be what anybody calls handsome, though Sosia’s lucky enough to favor her mother’s side of the family.”

He was right about that. Lanius had already seen how Anser looked more like Grus than either Sosia or Ortalis did. Thinking of Anser and Ortalis, Lanius said, “Your sons are both out hunting again today.”

“Are they?” Grus said. “That’s good, I think. I hope. Come on. Let’s go to the palace.”

When they got there, Grus kissed Queen Estrilda. Then he kissed Queen Sosia. And then, at last, he all but slobbered over his grandson. Crex stared up at him with the bemused look he wore a lot of the time. That look had bothered Lanius till he thought about it. It didn’t anymore. He’d decided the world had to be a very confusing place for a baby. Everything, everyone, was new. Crex had to figure out what he liked, who his parents were—everything about the world around him, the world in which he suddenly found himself. He didn’t even have any words to help him make sense of things. No wonder he looked confused.

To Lanius, Grus had always seemed a hardheaded, hardhearted man. Not here. Not now. The word that came to Lanius’ mind was sappy. Grus looked up from Crex at last, a broad, foolish smile on his face. “He’s wonderful,” he said. “And you’re right—I think he does look like you.”

Estrilda asked him, “How does it feel, being a grandfather?”

“First thing I said was, ‘I’m too young,’ ” Grus answered. “But, now that I see what I’ve got here, I take it back. I like the whole business just fine. How about you, dear?”

“Me? Oh, I hate it. I can’t stand it at all,” his wife said. They both laughed.

“Congratulations on driving the Thervings back again,” King Lanius said.

“Oh. The Thervings.” Holding Crex, Grus might never have heard of Thervingia. He had to pause and think about Dagipert and the neighboring kingdom. The process was not only visible, it was funny to watch. When it ended, he looked more like the Grus who Lanius usually saw. “Thanks,” he said. “Yes, we’ve bought a respite till the next campaigning season, anyhow. And Dagipert’s an old man. One of these days, he’ll finally drop dead.”

“Prince Berto is a different sort,” Lanius said. “I met him when he came here once. I was still a boy then. All he cared about were cathedrals.”

“I hope he’s still like that,” Grus said. “Cathedrals are a very good thing for a King of Thervingia to care about. If he spends his time caring about cathedrals, maybe he won’t have the chance to care about invading Avornis.”

“That would be good,” Lanius said. “We could use a few years of peace.”

“So we could.” When Grus looked down at Crex in his arms, his face softened into a smile once more. “And he could do with growing up in a city that doesn’t stand siege every so often. Couldn’t you, little one?”

Crex responded to that by screwing up his face and grunting. Estrilda laughed. “I know what he’s done!” she said with a laugh.

Grus laughed, too. He sniffed. “Oh, yes—so do I. But one nice thing about being grandparents—and about being king and queen—is that we don’t have to clean up the mess ourselves.” He handed the baby to a serving woman. She went off to give Crex fresh linen.

“That is nice,” Estrilda said. “That’s very nice indeed.”

Lanius took servants for granted. How could it be otherwise? He’d had them at his beck and call ever since he’d learned to talk—and before that, too, as the woman changing Crex attested. Now he eyed Estrilda in some surprise. Had she herself—and maybe Grus, too—changed Sosia and Ortalis? By the way she spoke, perhaps she had. She hadn’t been royal all her life. She hadn’t, but her grandson would be.

Grus’ father, for whom the baby was named, had been a man off a farm in the provinces who’d done modestly well for himself as a guardsman. His father had been a peasant of no distinction whatever. And yet Grus ruled Avornis, Sosia was wed to the scion of the ancient dynasty, and little Crex shared that dynasty’s blood. Not for the first time, Lanius thought about how different the world was likely to look to a peasant’s grandson from the way it looked to him.

Having thought about it, he eyed Grus with a good deal more respect. He himself took the kingship for granted. Why not, when he was the dozenth of his line to hold it? But to Grus, gaining the crown had to feel like climbing a mountain covered with nails and thorns and nettles. And yet he hadn’t murdered his way to the throne. He hadn’t slain Lanius, and he hadn’t even slain Lanius’ mother, who’d done her best to kill him.

“Thank you,” Lanius said suddenly, out of the blue.

Grus looked back at him as though knowing exactly what he was thinking. And maybe the older man did, for he nodded, set a hand on Lanius’ shoulder, and said, “You’re welcome.” Lanius nodded back. He still wasn’t sure he would ever like his overbearing father-in-law, but the beginning of understanding brought with it the beginning of respect.

The peasant bowed low before King Grus. He looked nervous. In fact, he looked scared to death, as any peasant coming before the King of Avornis was liable to look. “It’s all right, Dacelo,” Grus reassured him. “By King Olor’s beard, I promise nothing will happen to you, regardless of whether I decide to do anything to your baron. But I want to hear from your own lips what Fuscus is up to.”

“All right,” Dacelo said, his tone suggesting it was anything but. “He’s buying up our plots of land on the cheap, turning us from freeholders into his tenants. Some men let him, and sell out. Some hold their land as long as they can. And some, like me, figure it’s no good either way there and try to make our living somewhere else.”

“That’s why you came to the city of Avornis?” Grus asked.

“Sure is, sir,” Dacelo answered. A secretary taking notes of the conversation coughed. Dacelo turned red. “Uh, Your Majesty,” he amended.

“It’s all right.” Here, Grus was more interested in finding out what was going on than in standing on ceremony. “You know Baron Fuscus was breaking the law I put out after Corvus and Corax rebelled against me?”

Dacelo nodded. “Yes, sir—Your Majesty.” He caught himself this time.

“Did anyone in his barony point this out to him?” Grus asked.

“One fellow did,” Dacelo replied, and then, after a pregnant pause, “He’s dead now.”

“Is that so?” the king said, and the peasant nodded again. Grus scowled. “I don’t like seeing my laws flouted. Do you suppose Baron Fuscus breaks them because he thinks I don’t mean them, or just because he thinks they’re wrong?”

“Sir, I think he breaks ’em because he thinks he can get away with it,” Dacelo said.

“I think you’re dead right, Dacelo,” Grus said. “And I think I’m going to have to show Baron Fuscus he’s dead wrong.”

Despite his bold words, he didn’t want to start another civil war on the heels of the last one. He reflected on the old saw about different ways to kill flies, and sent Fuscus an elaborately formal invitation to the royal palace “so that I might gain the benefit of your wisdom.”

“Why on earth are you telling him that?” King Lanius demanded. “You don’t care what he thinks. You only want to land on him with both feet.”

Grus smiled. In a way, seeing his fellow king so naive was reassuring. He wondered whether explaining would be wise. In the end, he decided to, and said, “If I tell him I want to land on him with both feet, Your Majesty, he won’t come. If I say nice things to him, maybe he will—and then I’ll land on him.”

Once Lanius understood, he nodded. He might be naive, but he was anything but stupid. “I see,” he said. “And if he says he won’t come after an invitation like that, he’s put himself in the wrong and declared that he’s a rebel.”

“Just so.” Grus nodded, too.

And Baron Fuscus not only came to the city of Avornis, he brought his whole family with him. They rented a large house near the royal palace, as though Fuscus had not the smallest doubt that Grus would want his advice for a long time to come. He had a few bodyguards with him, but only a few, and he left them behind when Grus summoned him to the palace.

“At your service, Your Majesty,” Fuscus said after making his bows. He was in his early forties—not far from Grus’ age— with a handsome, fleshy face and an unconscious arrogance about him. “You tell me what needs doing, and I’ll tell you how to do it.” By the way he made it sound, Grus had no hope of doing anything without him.

Hiding annoyance, Grus said, “Well, one problem I have is getting the nobles in the provinces to pay their taxes and to leave their farmers alone.”

“Yes, they’re a wicked lot, aren’t they?” Fuscus said.

“Some of them are,” Grus agreed. “You know, I’ve made laws against that sort of thing.”

“Laws are no good,” Fuscus told him. “Who pays attention to laws? The weak and the fearful, nobody else. A strong man ignores useless laws and does what he needs—or else what he pleases.”

“You enlighten me,” Grus said, and Baron Fuscus preened. The king went on, “Is that why you’ve ignored my laws, Your Excellency?”

Fuscus opened his mouth to answer before realizing just what the question was. He looked around. All of a sudden, he seemed to realize he had no guards of his own, and that Grus’ men—all of them ex-marines, and thoroughly loyal to their sovereign—surrounded him. His mouth slowly closed.

“You don’t say anything,” Grus remarked.

“I—I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Your Majesty.” Fuscus no longer sounded so self-assured. He sounded like someone who was lying, and not doing such a good job of it.

“What about the man who reminded you of my laws, the man who’s no longer among the living?” Grus asked.

Fuscus went pale. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, a little more conviction—or perhaps desperation—in his voice this time.

“I’d like to believe that,” Grus said. Fuscus looked relieved. Then Grus continued, “I’d like to, but I can’t.” He unfolded the parchment on which the secretary had written down Dacelo’s charges and read them out in detail, finishing, “What do you have to say about that, Your Excellency?”

“That it’s all a pack of lies, Your Majesty,” Fuscus declared.

“Then you haven’t bought up lands from the farmers around your estates? Then no one who tried not to sell to you suddenly lost his life in strange circumstances?”

“Of course not,” the baron said.

“Then if I checked here in the city of Avornis, I wouldn’t find any peasants you’d bought out for next to nothing, peasants who sold you their land and came here because they knew something nasty would happen to them if they didn’t?” Grus persisted. “I wouldn’t find anybody else who knew about this fellow who was murdered by ruffians?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Baron Fuscus said.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Grus pulled out more parchments. “But just because you say it doesn’t make it so. Here is the testimony of three farmers from your barony, men you bought out in the past six months. They say you did do what you say you didn’t. I’ve had wizards check what they say, too. The wizards say they’re telling the truth. Shall I have wizards check you, too?”

He wondered whether Fuscus would have the gall to play it out to the bitter end. But the baron glared and shook his head. “No, you’ve got me, gods curse you,” he snarled. “Who would have thought anybody could expect a nobleman to take an idiot law like that seriously? It’s not a proper law—more like a bad joke.”

“Stealing farmers from the kingdom is a bad joke, Your Excellency. They aren’t yours—they’re Avornis‘,” Grus said. “And Avornis is going to keep them. You, on the other hand, are going to the Maze, and so is your family. Generous of you to bring everybody along with you when you came to the city.”

Fuscus invited him to do something he wasn’t physically able to manage. The deposed baron added, “And see if the next nobleman you invite to the capital is dumb enough to come.”

He had a point there, no doubt about it. But King Grus only shrugged. “With you as an example, maybe the rest of the nobles will think I don’t issue laws for the sake of making bad jokes.” He nodded to his guards. “Take him away.”

Off Fuscus went, into captivity. Grus nodded to himself. He might be the son of a guardsman, the grandson of a small farmer. But he was King of Avornis now, regardless of whether the nobles with their old bloodlines and fancy pedigrees liked it or not. And if they thought they could pretend his laws didn’t apply to them, he was going to teach them just how wrong they were.

The city of Avornis went through a hard winter, almost as hard as the winter where the Banished One had tried to bring the capital to its knees. The weather was bad enough to make King Lanius suspicious, bad enough to make him mention his suspicions to his father-in-law.

Grus looked thoughtful. “I was down in the south then myself,” he said, “so I don’t know the details of that. But maybe we ought to find out about this business, eh? I wonder what a wizard or witch would have to say.”

“So do I.” Lanius nodded. “I think it would be worth knowing.”

“Yes, me, too.” Grus also nodded. “And I have someone in mind who might be able to tell us.”

“Alca the witch?” Lanius asked. When Grus nodded again, he had a startled expression on his face. Smiling to himself, Lanius went on, “She’s the one who shut down the spring that kept Corvus’ castle drinking, isn’t she?”

“How did you know that?” his father-in-law demanded. “You were already on your way back here to the capital by then.”

“I know. I found out later,” Lanius answered, more than a little smugly. “I like to find out about as much as I can.”

“What else did you find out about what Alca and I did there?” King Grus asked.

He sounded ominous. Lanius wondered why. When he tried to make sense of Grus’ expression this time, he couldn’t. “What else should I have found out?” he inquired.

“Oh, nothing.” Grus sounded much too casual to be convincing. But, since Lanius couldn’t figure out what he was missing, he saw nothing to do but let it go.

Alca didn’t look happy when Lanius and Grus summoned her. “You want me to try to learn whether the Banished One is behind this winter weather?” she said. “I wish you’d give me something else to do. I think I’ve said this before”—she eyed Grus in a way Lanius couldn’t quite fathom—“but mortals who measure themselves against the Banished One’s magic often end up wishing they hadn’t.”

Lanius said, “If he dares to use his magic and we don’t dare use ours, how can we hope to stand against him?”

The witch let out a long sigh. “Your Majesty, that is the question that has led many mortals to use magic when they felt they had to. It is also the question that has led many of them to be sorry they did.”

“Will you try, or won’t you?” Grus asked. “I won’t order it of you, but I wish you would—for Avornis’ sake.” Lanius would have ordered her. He wondered why Grus, usually so hard, declined to do so.

Alca sighed again, a sound more wintry than the freezing wind that moaned around the palace. “For Avornis’ sake,” she repeated in a gray voice. “Yes, that is a key to undo a witch’s locks, isn’t it?” Grus stirred, but didn’t answer. At last, with another sigh, Alca nodded. “I will see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Grus said soberly.

“Yes, thank you,” Lanius said. “You may not know how important this is.”

The witch looked at him—looked through him. “Your Majesty, you may not know how dangerous this is.” She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t even sound angry. Lanius’ cheeks and ears heated, even so. He hadn’t been dismissed like that since he was a very little boy. Turning to Grus, Alca asked, “May I be as indirect as I possibly can, Your Majesty? The less of myself I show, the better my chances of living to work some other wizardry one day.”

“As you think best, of course,” Grus answered. “I don’t want your blood on my hands—you know that.”

“Do I?” Alca said, still in those gray tones. But then she nodded once more. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. If you wanted it, you’ve had plenty of excuses to take it.”

Lanius looked from one of them to the other. They knew what they were talking about, and he didn’t. They knew, and spoke obliquely so he wouldn’t. He asked Alca, “How soon will you be able to cast your spell?”

“A few days,” she said. “I have a lot of studying to do before I try it. And even after I cast it, how much good will knowing do you? If the Banished One if making the weather worse, how do you propose to stop him? I know of no spells to let a mortal wizard change the weather.”

“Knowing is always better than not knowing,” Lanius said.

Alca raised an eyebrow. “Always, Your Majesty?”

“Yes, of course.” Lanius believed it with every fiber of his being. He was, of course, still very young.

Grus said, “I think King Lanius is right here. We may not be able to stop the Banished One, but taking his measure, finding out how much he hates us at the moment, is worth doing.”

“Maybe.” The witch didn’t sound convinced. But she dropped them both curtsies—first to Grus, then to Lanius, who resented taking second place to his father-in-law. “You are the kings. I will give you what you think you want.” Lanius didn’t like the sound of mat. Before he could make up his mind to say so, Alca walked out of the chamber, her back very stiff. But she paused in the doorway. “Will either of you want to watch the spell as I cast it?”

“I will.” Lanius’ magpie curiosity made him speak up at once.

“It may be dangerous. Anything that has to do with the Banished One is dangerous,” she said. He shrugged. He wouldn’t back away while she and Grus listened.

“I’ll come, too,” Grus said. “Lanius isn’t the only one who wants to know what’s going on.”

“The more fools both of you,” Alca said, and went her way before either one of them could answer her.

More than a week went by before she let the two kings know she was ready. That was longer than she’d said the spell would take to prepare. Lanius almost sent her a message, asking her about the delay. In the end, he didn’t. As she’d said, even if they learned the Banished One lay behind the hard winter, what could they do to him? Nothing. That being so, where was the rush?

When Lanius walked into the cramped little room where she’d try her magic, he was surprised to see a large bowl full of snow sitting on top of a battered, stained, and scarred wooden table. But then he exclaimed, “Oh! The law of contagion!”

“What’s that?” Grus asked, and sneezed. As he wiped his nose, he said, “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with this cold I’ve caught.” He sneezed again.

“No, Your Majesty,” Alca told him, and turned to Lanius, to whom she said, “Yes, Your Majesty, the law of contagion. If our blizzards spring from the Banished One, they were once in contact with him, so to speak. That’s what I intend to try to find out. Of course, what the Banished One intends may be something very different. We’ll see.”

She held a chunk of rock crystal in a sunbeam that fell on the table but not on the bowl of snow. Lanius exclaimed in amazement, for a rainbow suddenly appeared on the wall nearby. “Pretty,” Grus remarked. If he too was amazed, he hid it very well.

“How did you do that?” Lanius asked.

“It is a property of the crystal,” Alca answered, which told him nothing. She twisted the crystal this way and that, till the rainbow fell across the bowl of snow.

Steam immediately began to rise from the snow, though the room was not nearly warm enough to make any such thing happen. Alca started chanting. The words were in an ancient dialect of Avornan, one even more archaic than that which clerics used in their prayers and hymns. Lanius understood bits and pieces of it, but no more.

“What’s she saying?” Grus whispered to him; to the older king, the archaic Avornan made no sense at all.

And as soon as Lanius shifted his attention to try to explain, he found it stopped making any sense at all for him, too. “I don’t know, not exactly,” he whispered back, and let it go at that. “We’ll find out when we see what the spell does.” Grus nodded; that seemed to satisfy him well enough.

Despite what Lanius had told Grus, he did have some general idea of what Alca’s spell was doing—she was trying to detect any sorcerous link between this snow on the one hand and the Banished One on the other, and trying to do it in such a sneaky, roundabout way that the exile from the heavens wouldn’t notice. Whether that would work—whether, in fact, there was any link to detect… That was what the witch was trying to find out.

The first chant ended. Alca shrugged. “Nothing obvious,” she reported, sounding not a little relieved that she hadn’t found anything. “There’s one other spell I might try, though, if you like.” She looked from Lanius to Grus.

Grus looked at Lanius, as though to say, This was your idea in the first place. You figure out what you want her to do. Lanius said, “We’ve come this far. If we can find out, we ought to try all the arrows in our quiver.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty,” Alca said. “Give me a moment.” She closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, steadying herself, Concentrating, before she resumed. Then, as though to be sure, she carried the bowl of snow from the chamber. Looking out the window, Lanius saw her dump what was left in it, move away a few feet, and scoop up a fresh bowlful.

When she came back, she set down the bowl and picked up the chunk of rock crystal. Again, a rainbow sprang into being on the wall. The witch began to chant once more. This spell was also in old-fashioned Avornan—if anything, more so than the first. It had a stronger, harsher rhythm; Lanius could imagine soldiers marching into battle to a chant like this.

As she had before, Alca swung the crystal this way and that, till the rainbow it engendered fell across the bowl of new snow. As it had before, the snow began to steam. There all resemblance to the previous conjuration ended. Lanius stared in mingled fascination and horror at this new rainbow. Little by little, it grew redder and redder and redder, as though the color of blood were drinking up all the other hues, the oranges and yellows and greens and blues and violets. And as it got redder, it somehow got brighter, though the sunbeam from which it had to be formed remained unchanged.

More and more steam rose from the snow. Peering down into the bowl, Lanius saw it too looked as though it were made from blood—blood now boiling, bubbling—rather than frozen water. “Enough!” he said suddenly. “We have all the answer we need!”

All at once, the question wasn’t whether they would learn what they wanted to know but whether they could escape the chamber. With a whooshing roar, all the snow—the blood?—in the bowl turned to steam. Coughing, choking, his lungs half scalded, Lanius staggered out of the room.

Grus was only a couple of steps behind him, and dragged Alca along to make sure she got out, too. She had the presence of mind to slam the door behind them. For a moment, Lanius felt, or thought he felt, a power inside the room trying to pull the door open again and come after them. Then that perception faded. He breathed a sigh of relief, at last convinced they had won free.

Expressionless, Alca said, “Now you see, Your Majesties, why wizards fight shy of measuring themselves against the Banished One.”

“Er—yes.” That was Grus. Normally the most unflappable of men, he sounded shaken to the core. “Are we really so small when set against him?”

“As a matter of fact,” Alca answered, “yes.”

“Then why does he fear us?” Grus asked. “Why does he torment us? Why does he send this dreadful winter weather against us? What can we do to him that makes him even bother noticing us?”

“We hold back the Menteshe,” Lanius said. “We have our own wills. We don’t care to be his thralls. We fight back against him, and against his puppets. If we had the Scepter of Mercy, we might do even more.”

“Do you really believe that?” Grus still sounded dazed.

“I believe the Banished One believes it,” Lanius replied. “If he didn’t, why would he have stolen the Scepter in the first place? Why would he keep it closed away in Yozgat? He doesn’t want us to have it.”

“You speak the truth there, Your Majesty.” Alca seemed more like herself than she had a little while before.

Grus frowned. He started to say something. Alca raised a finger to her lips, telling him to stay quiet instead. Grus nodded. Lanius started to ask Grus what he would have said. The witch shook her head at him. He frowned. But then, after a moment’s thought, he also nodded. They’d just drawn the Banished One’s notice to them. If his presence somehow lingered, did they want him hearing them talking about the Scepter of Mercy? Lanius was willing to admit they didn’t.

Alca asked, “Do we have enough grain to get through this winter?”

“Of course we do,” Lanius declared. “The harvest was good, and we made a point of stockpiling while we could.” That wasn’t strictly true, but he didn’t care. If the Banished One was listening, Lanius wanted him to hear whatever would disconcert him most.

Grus came over and set a hand on his shoulder. The older king grinned and nodded. He understood what Lanius was doing—understood and approved. Somehow, and much to Lanius’ surprise, that made him feel very good.

After a couple of weeks, the grip of winter on the city of Avornis eased. Maybe the Banished One decided that keeping up his magic was more trouble than it was worth. Grus couldn’t have proved that, but he strongly suspected it. When the blizzards stopped coming one after the other, he hoped the Banished One had stopped paying attention to the capital.

With that hope in mind, he sought out Lanius and asked, “Do you think it’s safe to talk about the Scepter of Mercy now?”

“Why are you asking me?” Lanius replied. “Your witch would have a better idea of that than I do.”

“Alca’s not my witch.” Grus hoped he managed to keep the stab of regret from his voice. “And you’re the one who knows about the Scepter.”

Lanius only shrugged. “Maybe. I wonder if any Avornan these days can know about the Scepter of Mercy. It’s been gone so very long now. Everything we think we know about it is in the old books. But the people who wrote them really did know about the Scepter, because they’d seen it or sometimes even held it. I don’t understand some of the things they say. How can I? I haven’t done the things they did.”

“Good point,” Grus said. “What did you think when you realized reading something in a book wasn’t the same as actually doing it?”

His son-in-law gave him an odd look. “I didn’t much like the idea, to tell you the truth.”

That, Grus believed. Lanius was convinced books made the sun go round the earth. At least he had realized they weren’t a perfect reflection of and substitute for reality. That was something, anyhow. For somebody as naturally bookish as Lanius, it was probably quite a bit.

“What do you want to know?” the young king asked him.

“Suppose I was holding the Scepter of Mercy right this minute.” Grus held out his arm, his hand closed as though gripping a shaft. “What could I do with it? What would the Banished One be afraid I could do with it?”

“Remember how Alca said merely human wizards are all very small and weak when they’re measured against the Banished One?” Lanius asked.

“Oh, yes.” Grus nodded and shivered at the same time. “I’m not likely to forget—not after that snow turned to blood and boiled.”

“No. Neither am I. Neither is Alca, I expect,” Lanius said. “Well, if you were holding the Scepter of Mercy, you wouldn’t be small anymore. That much is pretty plain.”

“So I’d be able to face him on something like even terms, would I?” Grus said, and Lanius nodded. Grus went on, “Suppose I was holding the Scepter, then, like I said. How could I use it to smash the Banished One, to give him what he deserves?”

“That’s where things get tricky, or maybe just where I don’t understand,” Lanius answered. “The Scepter of Mercy isn’t a weapon, or isn’t exactly a weapon. It is what it says it is—the Scepter of Mercy. The way you’d use it is tied up in that—tied up tight.”

“Tied up how?” Grus demanded. “This is the important stuff, you know, or would be if we had the Scepter.”

“Yes. If.” Lanius’ tone made it plain how large an if that was. “It’s also what’s hardest to understand in the old writings. Some of the Kings of Avornis who used the Scepter of Mercy wrote down what they did and felt while they held it, but how can I know what that means when I haven’t held it myself?”

“I don’t suppose you can,” Grus admitted with a sigh. “But I’ll tell you something, Your Majesty—I wish you could.”

King Lanius sighed, too. “You aren’t the only one. But I don’t suppose it’s very likely, not when the Scepter’s been gone so long.”

“I’m sure that’s what the Banished One wants us to think,” Grus said. “How long has it been since anybody seriously tried to take the Scepter of Mercy away from him?”

“Two hundred and”—Lanius paused to count on his fingers—“twenty-seven years. The expedition didn’t get even halfway to Yozgat. Only a few men came back. The rest either died or were made into thralls.”

“Oh.” Grus winced. Down in the south, he’d seen more thralls than he cared to remember. To his way of thinking, a clean death was preferable. Still… “Maybe, if the time ever seems ripe, we ought to think about trying again.”

“Maybe.” But Lanius didn’t sound as though he believed it.

Despite Lanius’ frowns and shrugs, the idea wouldn’t leave Grus’ mind. Ortalis greeted it with a shrug, too. He said, “I never have been able to understand what good the Scepter of Mercy was in the first place.”

King Grus sighed once more. That sounded altogether too much like his only legitimate son. But even Estrilda had a hard time following him here. She said, “It would be nice, yes, but how can you hope to do it? You might want to leave well enough alone, don’t you think? Would you like to cross the Stura and end up a thrall?”

“No, of course not,” Grus answered. “What I’d like would be to cross the Stura and win.”

“Well, yes,” his wife said. “But how can you?”

And to that reasonable question he had no answer, none at all. He drank more wine than he might have with supper that night, and went to bed earlier than usual. He soon fell into a deep, deep sleep—and then wished he hadn’t, for out of the mists and confusions of the dream world came an image neither misty nor confused nor, for that matter, a proper part of the dream world at all.

The king hadn’t seen the Banished One in his sleep for many years, but the superhuman beauty of the exile from the heavens hadn’t changed a bit in all that time. When the Banished One spoke, his words reverberated inside Grus’ mind. “You think to trifle with me, do you? To rob me? To take what is mine by right and mine by might? Little man, you are a fool. You cannot harm me and my purposes, any more than a buzzing gnat could hamper you and yours. And if a gnat does somehow annoy you, what do you do? You crush it. Think on that. Think on it well. If you annoy me, gnat of a man, you will wish you were only crushed.”

Quite suddenly, he was gone. Grus woke with a groan. Sweat drenched him. His heart pounded. He hadn’t known such terror since… since the last time the Banished One came to him in his dreams.

Only in dreams could the Banished One reach him here. If he ever went south over the Stura, that might well not be so. Better to die than to fall into his hands, Grus thought. Or maybe better just to stay here safely in the city of Avornis.

But would the Banished One have delivered such dire threats if he weren’t worried about what Grus and Avornis might do? How can I know? Grus wondered. Is he trying to lure me south with false hopes? He got no more sleep the rest of the night.