The Scepter's Return Read online

  If they kept on like that, they would have no principality left to rule even after one of them finally won their civil war. Neither prince seemed to care. Beating a brother was more important to both of them than turning back an invader. Grus would have scorned them more if he hadn’t known a good many Avornans who thought the same way.

  In the Argolid Mountains south of Yozgat, where he’d dwelled since being cast down from the heavens, the Banished One had to be beside himself with fury. What dreams was he sending to Ulash’s unloving children? Having been on the receiving end of more of those dreams than he cared to remember, Grus almost pitied Korkut and Sanjar. No one, not even a Menteshe prince, deserved that kind of attention.

  The king looked south again. Haze and clouds hid the mountains for now. If the exiled god couldn’t use the Menteshe as he’d been accustomed to doing in days gone by, how could he strike at Avornis?

  Weather was one obvious weapon. The Banished One had afflicted Avornis with at least one dreadful winter in the recent past. He’d tried to make the capital starve—tried and failed. Probably because he’d failed, he’d hesitated to use that ploy since. But it still remained not only possible but dangerous, deadly dangerous. No ordinary wizard could do much with the weather, either for good or for ill; it was beyond a mere man’s strength. Such restrictions meant little to the Banished One, who was neither ordinary wizard nor mere mortal.

  Lanius had done a good job of laying in extra stocks of grain before that harsh winter came down. Grus thought it would be wise to do the same thing again. Suppose the Banished One didn’t choose to repeat himself. What else might he do?

  Feeling his own imagination failing, Grus looked around for Pterocles. When he didn’t see the sorcerer close by, he sent horsemen out to hunt him down. Before long, Pterocles rode up on his mule. “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?” he asked.

  “Come aside with me a little ways.” The king rode off until no one could hear what he and the wizard had to say to each other. Pterocles followed. The royal guards stationed themselves to ensure that no one approached the two of them. Grus said, “If you were the Banished One, what would you do to Avornis now?”

  “Why ask me?” Pterocles said, his indignation at least partly genuine.

  “Because whatever he does, it will probably be through magic,” Grus replied. “Who here knows more about magic than you? The answer had better be nobody, or I’m putting my trust in the wrong man.”

  The wizard’s shrug was altogether fatalistic. “I can’t tell you anything about that, Your Majesty. All I can tell you is, the Banished One has noticed some of what I’ve done, and he’s decided he doesn’t like me.” He spread his hands, palms up. “That’s really about all. Believe me, he knows more about me than I do about him.”

  Grus looked south again. Reluctantly, he found himself nodding. He had also felt the futility of trying to outguess a being far older, far wiser, and far stronger than himself. “All right.” He explained his own reasoning, such as it was, and went on, “So I was trying to figure out what he might do if he didn’t decide to give us another hard winter, or maybe what he might do on top of another hard winter.”

  “Ah. I see. Well, that makes more sense than asking what I would do if I were the Banished One.” Pterocles’ voice was tart. “Put that way …” He didn’t look south. He looked up to the heavens, his eyes far away. Was he asking the gods for guidance, or was he just making his own calculations, as a man will? Grus couldn’t tell and didn’t want to ask. At last, the wizard came out of his reverie. “Hunger. Disease. Fire. Fear,” he said. “Those are the weapons he has, it seems to me. Which one will he use? How will he use it? Will he use more than one?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. Before too long, I expect we’ll find out.”

  Grus expected the same thing. Hunger? Hunger went hand in hand with bad weather. Anyone to whom the Banished One had appeared in a dream learned more than he ever wanted to know about fear. Disease? Fire? Now the king was the one who nodded. Yes, those were surely possible. “What can you do against him? What can any of our wizards do against him?”

  “What can I—what can we—do?” For a man who was cheerful most of the time, Pterocles smiled a peculiarly bleak smile now. “Why, the best I can, of course, Your Majesty.”

  “I see.” Grus almost asked the wizard how good he thought that best would be. But part of him feared Pterocles didn’t know. Another part feared Pterocles did know, and would tell him. With a heavy sigh, he said, “Well, we’ll do what we can to hold on here, and then we’ll go home, and then … then we’ll see what happens next.”

  “That’s right, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said with another of those bleak smiles. “Then we’ll see what happens next.”

  Ortalis didn’t say anything to Lanius about the king’s latest quarrel with Sosia. Lanius hadn’t really thought he would, but was glad to be proved right. Ortalis never had gotten along very well with his sister; he made no bones about that. Then again, Ortalis never had gotten along very well with anybody.

  A moment after that thought crossed the king’s mind, he shook his head. Ortalis and Anser managed to stay on good terms, not least because sunny Anser stayed on good terms with everyone. And Ortalis seemed genuinely devoted to Limosa—and she to him.

  He eyed Limosa’s swelling belly with the same anxious pride most new fathers showed. He had more reasons for pride than most prospective fathers did, too. “I hope it’s a boy,” he told Lanius one day when they met in a corridor. “I want a son of my own.”

  “I know,” Lanius said, as politely as he could. Ortalis had never figured out much about politics. If he had a son, it would complicate the succession. It would endanger the place Lanius’ son Crex held now. The smartest thing he could have done was keep his mouth shut about what he wanted when he was talking to Lanius. Ortalis seldom did the smartest thing.

  Ortalis probably wasn’t thinking about the succession right this minute, for he asked, “Do you have your boy crawling around in the archives with you? I know that’s your favorite sport. I can’t see why, but I know it is.”

  “Crex … hasn’t shown much interest in it yet,” Lanius answered. That his son hadn’t was a grief to him. He kept telling himself that there was time, that Crex might yet see how important and how fascinating state papers could be. He kept telling himself, yes, but he had a harder and harder time making himself believe it.

  Ortalis laughed. Why shouldn’t he? It wasn’t his worry. Lanius came close to hating him in that moment. Then Ortalis said, “Maybe he’d rather get out to the woods and see what he could do with a bow in his hands.”

  “He’s still a little young for that, I think,” Lanius said, and went on his way before his brother-in-law could find some other way to make him feel bad. Ortalis had jabbed at exactly what Lanius feared most—that Crex might sooner have a good time than gain the knowledge he needed to make a proper ruler. Lanius wondered what he could do about that. He wasn’t sure he could do anything—another grief, one that wouldn’t go away.

  A royal guardsman tramping stolidly up the corridor sketched a salute as the king walked by. His mailshirt jingled. He smelled of leather and stale sweat. Lanius stopped and looked after him, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  If I order the guards to seize Ortalis and take him to the Maze—and Limosa with him—will they obey? The king plucked at his beard. These days, he was the effective ruler of Avornis, or at least of the city of Avornis, when Grus went out on campaign. Most of what he did, though, was as close to what Grus would have done as he could come. That was how Grus had let him accrue bits of power little by little—Lanius had made sure that what he was given wouldn’t be threatening.

  Grus would not send his legitimate son to the Maze, not for complicating the succession. After all, Ortalis’ son would be as much Grus’ grandson as Crex was. If Lanius banished Ortalis, would Grus let it stand? Lanius sighed. He didn’t think so. And he didn’t think he had a prayer of
resisting or defeating Grus, especially not when his father-in-law would be coming back from the first successful Avornan campaign south of the Stura in centuries.

  “Too bad,” Lanius murmured. “Too bad, too bad, too bad.”

  He wondered what Sosia thought. If she believed he could get away with it … He shook his head. He couldn’t trust her judgment in this. She was biased, too. But—another interesting problem—which way was she biased? Against Ortalis, for threatening Crex’s succession? Or against Lanius himself, for his choice of amusements? He still thought the former, but the latter was a long way from impossible, and he knew it. He would have to decide for himself.

  And he did. He decided he couldn’t take the chance of getting rid of Ortalis like that. Chances were, he wouldn’t get away with it. He would have to hope Limosa had another girl. Plenty of people did, he thought optimistically.

  As King Grus rode north toward the Stura, he had one of the few experiences that made him really and truly glad he’d taken his share—or, as Lanius no doubt would have seen it, more than his share—of the Avornan crown. Again and again, freed thralls came running up to him. “King Olor bless you!” they would shout. “Queen Quelea bless you! All the gods bless you!”

  Guardsmen kept the thralls from coming too close. You never could tell, not till too late. One of them was liable not to be a freed thrall at all, but a thrall still guided and controlled by the Banished One. An assassin was as easy to hide among others who looked and acted just like him (or, perhaps even more dangerous, just like her) as a poisoned needle in a haystack.

  Grus understood that. He didn’t argue with it. It left him sad even so. Doing his best to smile, he said to Hirundo, “I was never so popular up in Avornis proper.”

  “Well, maybe not,” the general allowed. “But you never did so much for the proper Avornans as you have for these people.”

  Slowly, Grus nodded. He thought he’d made a pretty good King of Avornis. He didn’t think even Lanius could argue with that, though the other King of Avornis might—would—look down his nose while grudgingly admitting Grus hadn’t been so very bad. Grus had done his best to keep the peasants out of the rapacious nobles’ grasp. He’d won enough civil wars against the nobles to persuade them that rebellion was a bad idea. He’d held the Thervings at bay. He’d beaten back the Chernagor pirates. And he’d fought the Menteshe to something that was, at the moment, better than a draw.

  But even though he’d done all that, he hadn’t given the proper Avornans their souls again. He couldn’t have. They already had them. The thralls, now … The thralls and their ancestors had gone on for centuries with something missing from their spirits—most of what separated men from beasts. Thanks to Grus (and to Pterocles; he didn’t aim to steal the wizard’s credit), they had that part of themselves back again. They had it, and they knew they had it, and they were grateful.

  “Don’t let it worry you,” Hirundo told him. “Give them some time to get used to it and they’ll be as selfish as anybody else.”

  Grus made a horrible face. “I’ll remember you in my nightmares,” he said. He was laughing, but quickly sobered. His nightmares featured not Hirundo but the Banished One. And if Hirundo was right—well, so what? One of his goals in coming over the Stura was to turn the thralls into normal human beings. And one thing normal human beings did was sometimes act like ungrateful wretches. He couldn’t complain if that happened here.

  One evening not long before he’d go back over the river, Otus approached him as he sat eating supper outside his pavilion. Guards hung by the first freed thrall, but unobtrusively. They didn’t really believe Otus remained under the spell of the Banished One, but they were still guards.

  But Grus also didn’t think the Banished One was looking out through Otus’ eyes right this minute. He recognized the expression on the thrall’s face—that of a man who wanted something. Unlike the thralls south of the Stura, Otus had been free for a while, and he seemed very much a normal man.

  “Hello,” Grus said. “What can I do for you today?”

  Otus bowed. He’d learned court ceremonial—no doubt the first thrall who ever had. “Your Majesty, they have freed the village with my woman in it.”

  “Have they?” Grus said. “That’s good news.” It was very good news, since he hadn’t expected his men to go so far west. The Menteshe had proved weaker than he’d thought.

  “I—think so, yes.” Otus sounded distinctly nervous.

  He’s not worrying about the Menteshe, Grus realized. “You had a woman in that village, didn’t you?” the king said, and then the light dawned. “And you also have a woman back in the city of Avornis, eh?” He started to laugh, not that Otus was likely to find it funny. He understood those difficulties only too well. So did Lanius, come to that. And now the ex-thrall?

  Otus nodded. Yes, he looked distinctly nervous, too. “What am I going to do, Your Majesty? What can I do?”

  “You can choose one of them, or you can choose the other one, or you can hope they won’t gang up on you if you try to keep them both,” Grus answered. “These are the choices a free man has to make.”

  “Sometimes this business is not so easy,” Otus observed.

  “No, sometimes it isn’t,” Grus said. “Have you seen your woman here now that she’s had the spell lifted?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Go do that first. You can’t decide anything—not so it makes sense—till you know where you stand with her. Maybe she isn’t the person you thought she’d be. Maybe whatever you saw in her when you were both thralls, it won’t be there anymore. If it’s not, that will tell you what you need to do. And if it is, well, bring her along up into the north if you want to. The choice is yours.”

  “You are a wise man, Your Majesty,” Otus said humbly.

  Grus laughed out loud. “Ask my wife about me and women and you’ll get a different story, I promise. If I were wise in such things, I would have gotten into a lot less trouble than I have.”

  “But you give good advice.”

  “Giving good advice is easy.” Grus laughed again, at himself. “What’s hard is taking good advice, by Olor’s beard.” Otus didn’t look as though he believed the king. If that didn’t prove how inexperienced he was, Grus couldn’t imagine what would.

  The freed thrall rode off the next morning. Grus sent a squad of horsemen with him; he didn’t want Otus gallivanting over the countryside by himself. Being the first freed thrall might still make him special. Grus didn’t want Menteshe raiders grabbing him and taking him away so the Banished One could find out exactly how he’d been freed.

  After Otus rode away, Grus forgot about him for a little while. Part of the Avornan army would stay behind in the south to protect the land they’d won this campaigning season. Getting the rest back across the Stura was a large, complicated job. Coping with it, and especially coping with the absence of some barges that should have been there, kept the king busy for several days.

  Once the army had crossed, Grus let everyone rest in Anna for a while before pressing on up to the capital. He and Hirundo were making sure everything was going smoothly when Otus walked up to them. With him was a dark, quiet-looking woman. Otus’ face lit up whenever he looked at her. He said, “Your Majesty, this is Fulca. My woman.” Pride filled his voice.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Fulca,” Grus said gravely. “I’m glad you’re free.”

  “Glad to be free.” Like any newly liberated thrall, she spoke hesitantly. She hadn’t needed many words when she lay under that dark magic. She pointed to Otus. “He knows you? Knows king? Really? Truly?”

  “Really. Truly,” Grus assured her.

  “I told you so,” Otus said. By that alone, he and Fulca might have been married for a long time.

  She sniffed in response. “Tell all sorts of things. Tell is easy. Tell true? No, tell true not so easy. Even free, not so easy.”

  Grus was no prophet, no soothsayer. But he would have bet anything he owned that Otus�
�� serving girl in the palace was going to end up disappointed. Fulca had a spark Otus plainly responded to. And that was the way she was now, with the veils of thralldom newly lifted. How she’d be once she really learned to speak, really learned to think … How would she be? She’d be formidable, that was how. Grus beamed at Otus. “You did the right thing, deciding to go over there.”

  Otus beamed back. Grus had let Fulca think coming for her was Otus’ idea. A white lie wouldn’t hurt here, the king judged. Otus still needed some practice at being a man. As who does not? Grus thought. As who does not, by the gods?

  Lanius had often ridden out of the city of Avornis to greet Grus and a returning army. More often then not, he’d been annoyed and resentful at having to help aggrandize the other king. Today, though, he rode out and waited for the army without the least bit of resentment. Considering who—considering what—Grus’ principal foe had been, how could he do anything else?

  “I want to see the soldiers, Father,” Crex said from a pony beside Lanius.

  “Soldiers!” Pitta added. Lanius wasn’t at all sure she cared about them, but she wasn’t going to let her brother get away with anything.

  “They’ll be here soon,” Lanius promised. “Be patient, both of you.”

  They looked at him as though the word did not belong to the Avornan language. As far as they were concerned, it didn’t.

  Anser was also there to greet the returning army. Even dressed in the arch-hallow’s red robe, he looked as though he would rather be hunting. Sosia and Estrilda had made the journey as well. Grus’ daughter and wife talked quietly with each other. Lanius suspected he was lucky he could not hear what they were saying.