The Scepter's Return Read online

  “Let out the gangplank,” the skipper said, and grunting sailors scrambled to obey. The captain bowed to the king. “Go ahead, Your Majesty.”

  “Thanks,” Grus said, and he did. The gangplank echoed under his boots. It shook a little from the motion of the river on the boat. The thudding continued when Grus stepped off the gangplank, but the motion ceased. He walked toward the open gate in the wall alongside the river. He wanted to be on true Avornan soil at last.

  There. Now his boots thumped on hard-packed, sandy dirt. I’ve done it, he thought. I’ve brought the Scepter of Mercy home.

  Soldiers trotted toward him. For an anxious moment, he wondered if he ought to have a sword in his hand, not the Scepter. If the Banished One had somehow suborned those men … Enormous grins on their faces, they crowded around him, shouting congratulations.

  From behind him, Pterocles said, “Everyone rejoices to see the Scepter of Mercy return to its homeland.”

  “So it seems.” Grus would have guessed the Scepter legendary at best to most people, or more likely all but forgotten. He seemed to be wrong. Memory of the talisman and its power survived in more places than the palace in the city of Avornis.

  Shadow swallowed him as he went through the gate. Then he was in the sunshine again, and inside the walls of Cumanus. That was another milestone. He saw more ahead—bringing the Scepter of Mercy into the capital, and then bringing it into the palace. Avornis had waited four hundred years to see that day.

  “Your Majesty!” That wasn’t a shout of congratulations. It was a woman’s voice, high and shrill and urgent. She struggled to force her way past soldiers and plump officials, and wasn’t having much luck.

  “What is it?” Grus called to her. He gestured with his free hand to let her pass. No one seemed to notice. Then he gestured with the Scepter, and people scrambled to get out of the woman’s way. He didn’t know how it did what it did, but he couldn’t doubt that it did it.

  She fell to her knees before him. When he helped her up, mud stained her shabby wool skirt. She said, “Help me, Your Majesty! My little daughter has a terrible fever. She’ll die if she doesn’t get better soon. Can you … Can you use the Scepter to save her?”

  “I don’t know,” Grus answered. The only thing he’d used the Scepter of Mercy for was putting the Banished One in his place and making him stay there. This … This struck him as more merciful. “Take me to her,” he told the woman. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Quelea’s blessing upon you,” the woman said. “Come with me, then, and hurry. I only hope she’ll last until we get back there.”

  Grus did go with her, soldiers and Pterocles and Hirundo and abandoned officials crowding along behind them. The woman led him through a maze of alleys to what was nearer a hovel than a proper house. That didn’t surprise him; neither her clothes nor the way she talked suggested any great wealth. She threw open the door and pointed ahead.

  Inside, the place was cleaner than Grus would have expected. The little girl lay on what was plainly the only bed. She writhed and muttered as fever dreams roiled her. The mother was right—she wouldn’t last long, not like that.

  “Please,” the woman said.

  Not certain what he was going to do or how he was going to do it, Grus pointed the Scepter’s blue jewel—no, it was not a sapphire; it was ever so much brighter and more sparkling than the finest sapphire anyone had ever seen—at the sick girl. “Queen Quelea, please make her well,” he said—and nothing happened.

  When he confronted the Banished One, he’d felt power thrum through him. He didn’t feel that now. He didn’t feel anything special at all. Very plainly, neither did the dying little girl.

  When he confronted the Banished One, he hadn’t called on the gods in the heavens at all. He’d used the Scepter of Mercy to focus and strengthen his own will, his own determination. He tried that now, willing the sickness to leave the girl. Something thrummed along his arm. The hair on it stood, again as it might have with thunder and lightning in the air.

  The little girl sat up in bed. By the way her mother gasped, that was a separate miracle all by itself. “Mama,” the girl said. “I’m thirsty, Mama.” She pointed at Grus. “Who’s this old man in the funny clothes?”

  With another gasp, the woman said, “She doesn’t mean anything bad by it, Your Majesty. She’s only six.”

  “It’s all right.” Grus stroked his beard. “This will never be dark again. And I am wearing funny-looking clothes.”

  “I’m thirsty,” the girl repeated. “And I’m hungry, too. Can I have some bread and oil and some figs?”

  “I’ll get them for you, dear, and some watered wine with them.” Her mother dashed away and returned with the food and drink. When she saw how the girl ate and drank, she burst into tears. “I don’t have much, Your Majesty. Whatever you want of me, though—anything at all—it’s yours.” She dropped to her knees in front of him once more.

  He raised her up. “If I take anything for helping a little girl, I don’t deserve to wear these funny clothes, do I?” he said gently. I don’t deserve to carry the Scepter of Mercy was what went through his mind at the same time.

  “Queen Quelea bless you! King Olor bless you!” she choked out between sniffles.

  “It’s all right. I’m glad I was able to do something, that’s all.”

  When Grus tried to call on Quelea, the queen of the gods gave him nothing. She might as well not have been there up in the heavens. So Grus thought, but only for a moment. Yes, he’d succeeded by exercising his own will, not through her. But how had the Scepter of Mercy come to the material world, if not through the gods in the heavens? It wasn’t the product of some human wizard of bygone days, and no one had ever been mad or arrogant enough to claim it was.

  “More!” the little girl said, as imperiously as though she and not Estrilda or Sosia were Queen of Avornis.

  As the woman turned toward the kitchen again, Grus said, “I don’t think you need me here anymore. Take good care of her, and I hope she stays well from now on.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” the woman said. “I’m sure she will. How can she help it, once the Scepter has blessed her?”

  “To be honest, I have no idea. There are a lot of things I don’t know about the Scepter of Mercy—a lot more than I do know, as a matter of fact,” Grus told her.

  She looked at him as though she couldn’t believe her ears. “How modest you are, Your Majesty!” she exclaimed, and then, “Who ever thought a king could be modest?”

  That made him proud. His pride made the Scepter of Mercy perceptibly heavier. It didn’t want him thinking what a wonderful fellow he was, at least not for reasons that had anything to do with it. He’d never been particularly modest, no matter what this grateful woman thought. He never had been, no, but now maybe he would have to be.

  “Is everything all right, Your Majesty?” a guardsman called from outside the sad, shabby little house.

  What would make everything all right here? About five times as much money as the woman had now. Grus couldn’t just come out and say yes without making that woman liable to mock him—and without making himself deserve it. “Everything is—well enough,” he said.

  “Everything is wonderful!” the woman said. “Wonderful!” She kissed Grus on the cheek. Then she went over and kissed her little girl, who seemed as well and happy and bouncy as though she’d never been sick a day in her life.

  Out in the street, the guardsmen and Pterocles were laughing. Grus hoped the little girl’s mother never figured out why. The king’s men knew his reputation, and at least wondered if the woman had given her all to pay him back. She’d offered it, all right, and he’d turned her down. Maybe I’m growing up at last, he thought. Some things you do because they need doing, not because of that.

  Pterocles and the soldiers grinned at Grus when he came out. “Did you make the little girl feel better, Your Majesty?” a guardsman asked. “Did you make her mother feel better, too?” More laughter. />
  Grus also grinned. “The Scepter of Mercy cured the girl,” he answered. “Seeing her better made the mother happy. And,” he added hastily, “that’s the only thing that made her mother happy.”

  The guards leered. They went right on teasing him as he walked back toward the riverside. Pterocles asked, “The Scepter of Mercy cured the little girl?”

  “Yes, once I figured out what to do,” Grus replied.

  “I would have thought calling on Queen Quelea would do the trick,” the wizard said.

  “I thought the same thing, but that turned out to be wrong,” Grus said. “The gods in the heavens really don’t do much, or seem to want to do much, in the material world. When I used my own will instead of calling on Quelea, the girl got better.”

  “Interesting. Worth remembering,” Pterocles said. “Of course, if it weren’t for the gods in the heavens, the Scepter of Mercy wouldn’t be here in the material world for us to use.”

  “That also occurred to me,” Grus said. “I’m not going to try to get above my station. If I do, the Scepter probably won’t let me use it at all.” He eyed the talisman, as though wondering if it would agree with him.

  Pterocles bowed to him. “Your Majesty, I don’t think anyone will quarrel with you over how you’ve used the Scepter and how you will use it. I don’t see how the Scepter itself could judge that you’ve done anything wrong, either.”

  “I hope not,” was all Grus said. He didn’t think the Scepter of Mercy would find he’d done anything wrong. About the rest of what the wizard had said … He wasn’t so sure of that. Lanius would probably have ideas of his own about the Scepter and what to do with it. Lanius always had ideas; that was what he was best at. Here, the other king might well be entitled to see how those ideas went, too. If not for Lanius, the Scepter would still be inside Yozgat and the Avornans still besieging the place with no guarantee of success.

  Grus wondered whether bringing home the Scepter of Mercy would impress Ortalis. He sighed. If the Scepter didn’t impress his legitimate son, nothing ever would. Of course, on the evidence, it was entirely possible that nothing would.

  Lanius climbed aboard one of the royal steeds—a sturdy gelding, not a stallion—to ride out of the city of Avornis and greet King Grus and the Scepter of Mercy. A few stalls down in the royal stables, Prince Ortalis was mounting a much livelier steed.

  The great cathedral had its own stables. Its horses, no doubt, were greatly improved since Arch-Hallow Anser donned the red robes. Lanius couldn’t help thinking someone holier should have worn those robes, so as to give the Scepter a proper blessing. But the Scepter seemed to have done just fine for itself regardless of who put on the arch-hallow’s regalia.

  Not far away, Prince Crex whooped with excitement. He would ride his own pony out to greet his grandfather, and couldn’t have been prouder if he’d gone campaigning against the Menteshe himself.

  Better still—as far as Crex was concerned, anyhow—Princess Pitta, being younger than he was and a girl besides, would ride out with Queen Sosia in a litter. That Crex had done that himself more than once did nothing to convince him it wasn’t a babyish way to go.

  “I think you’re ready, Your Majesty,” Lanius’ groom said after checking the horse’s trappings one last time.

  “Let’s go, then,” Lanius said. He and Crex and Ortalis all emerged from their stalls at about the same time. Crex waved to his father. Lanius waved back. He also nodded to Ortalis. However little he loved his brother-in-law—which was putting it mildly—he did try to be civil.

  Ortalis nodded back. “So the Scepter of Mercy really is coming here, is it?” he said.

  “Unless your father’s been telling a lot of lies in his letters, it is,” Lanius answered. “After more than four hundred years, it’s finally coming home.”

  He thought the number would impress Ortalis. It certainly impressed him. But his brother-in-law only shrugged. “If we’ve done all right without it for all this time, I don’t see why everybody’s making such a fuss about getting it back now.”

  “We finally have a real weapon against the Banished One,” Lanius said. “Why do you think the Menteshe stole it in the first place?”

  “The Menteshe are way off … wherever they are,” Ortalis said vaguely. Lanius was shocked and astonished to realize he didn’t know, or care, whether the nomads lived to the south, the north, the west, or even the east, where Avornis had no neighbors save the sea. Ortalis went on, “Wherever they are, they aren’t about to bother us here.”

  Against such invincible ignorance—and, worse, indifference—where could Lanius begin? Nowhere. Nowhere that he saw, anyway. He decided not to try, saying only, “Well, everyone else is pleased about it. You’ll want to go along, won’t you?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Ortalis said irritably. “I’m not going to let my old man say I was off hiding somewhere when he came back. He’d score points off me for years if I did that.” His chuckle was less than pleasant. “Unless I score ’em first, anyway.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lanius asked.

  “Never you mind,” his brother-in-law answered. “We’re going to ride out and celebrate the day, right? Yahoo! Huzzah!”

  Lanius didn’t think he’d ever heard less sincere celebration. But, again, it was much too late to repair the long-ruined bonds between father and son. He just said, “Come on, then,” and rode out of the royal stables.

  “I think Uncle Ortalis would rather be doing something else,” Crex said.

  “I think you’re right, son,” Lanius agreed. “Sometimes, though, even grown-ups have to do what they have to do, not what they want to do.” Crex looked as though he wanted nothing to do with such an unpleasant notion.

  Mounted guards riding in front of the royal party bellowed, “Clear the road!” The people of the capital obeyed slowly when they obeyed at all. Lanius didn’t think he would have wanted anybody bellowing at him, either. He doubted the cavalrymen’s officers would be interested in hearing anything like that.

  Eventually, and despite more bad-tempered shouting, he and Crex and Ortalis took their places outside the city of Avornis. Arch-Hallow Anser joined them a few minutes later, followed by the women of the royal family.

  Off in the distance waited a pair of horsemen. When the royal family was assembled, one of the men rode toward Lanius and his kin. The other sent his horse trotting back around a stand of apple trees and out of sight.

  “Your Majesty!” called the rider who approached the king. “Your Majesty, King Grus and the rest will be along directly.”

  “Good,” Lanius said.

  The brief stretch while he waited was enlivened when Tinamus the builder hurried out to join them. “So sorry, Your Majesty,” Tinamus mumbled, and stammered out a tale of woe about oversleeping, getting sidetracked on his way to the gate, and a dozen other small catastrophes.

  “Never mind.” Lanius waved aside all the apologies. “You’re here now, and that’s all that really matters.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a detachment from the army that had besieged Yozgat came into view. After the standard-bearers rode Grus and his companions. Hirundo was easy to spot. So was Pterocles, because he bounced along on a mule instead of a horse (no great horseman himself, Lanius had more than a little sympathy for the wizard). When the party came a little nearer, Lanius recognized Otus and Fulca, who rode behind the other king.

  And there were Collurio and his son. Between them rolled a wagon that carried a cage. Lanius smiled. There was Pouncer, up near the front of things. The only trouble was, the moncat probably didn’t want the honor.

  A flash of blue light drew Lanius’ gaze back to Grus. The other king carried the Scepter of Mercy in his left hand. Awe trickled through Lanius. I had a hand in bringing that back here. I really did.

  “Is that the Scepter?” Sosia asked.

  “That’s the Scepter,” Lanius answered.

  “And that silly moncat stole it out
of Yozgat?” his wife persisted.

  “Pouncer did it, yes,” Lanius said. “I don’t suppose the Banished One thought the moncat was silly, though.”

  Sosia thought about that before nodding. “I suppose not,” she said. “And having him do that was your idea?” Proudly, Lanius nodded. Sosia looked from the Scepter to the wagon carrying the moncat to Lanius again. “Nobody else would have come up with it—I’m sure of that.”

  Was she praising him, or was that something less? Lanius wasn’t sure and didn’t feel like asking. Nor did he have to. Grus broke out of the lead group and rode up to him. The Scepter of Mercy looked more magnificent the closer it got. “Your Majesty,” Grus called.

  “Congratulations, Your Majesty,” Lanius answered. That was as much praise for Grus as it was for the Scepter. The other king had to know as much.

  Then Grus did something Lanius didn’t expect. He held out the Scepter of Mercy, saying, “Here. You take it for a bit. You did as much to bring it back to Avornis as I did.”

  “Me?” Lanius’ voice rose to a startled squeak. No, he hadn’t thought the other king would let him set a hand on it.

  Understanding him perfectly, Grus gave him a wry smile. “One of the things you find out, once you’ve got the Scepter, is that you have to live up to having it. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No, not altogether,” Lanius admitted, “But I think I’m about to find out.” He accepted the talisman from Grus.

  It was lighter than it looked. He’d thought it would be from what he’d read about it, but holding it still came as a surprise. It didn’t make him feel suddenly stronger or smarter than he had been a moment before. But it did make him feel larger, as though he and his kingdom were mysteriously merged. He could also sense the Banished One, off in the distance—not that it seemed so far from here to the Argolid Mountains, not with the Scepter in his hand. He didn’t try to say anything to the exiled god; from all he knew, Grus had done everything that needed doing there. Slowly, he said, “Thank you. I begin to understand.”