The Scepter's Return Read online

  The crystal kept swinging back and forth. Vasa’s eyes kept following it. She might have forgotten everything but its sparkling self. As softly as he’d spoken before, Pterocles asked, “Do you want to find your own will, Vasa? Do you want to be filled with your own self?”

  “I want to find my own will. I want to be filled with my own self.” By the way Vasa sounded, she couldn’t have cared less.

  “I can lift the shadow from your spirit and give you light. Do you want me to lift the shadow from your spirit and give you light?”

  “I want you to lift the shadow from my spirit and give me light.” No matter what Vasa said, she still seemed dead inside.

  “I will do what I can for you, then,” Pterocles said.

  “Do what you can for me, then,” Vasa said. Back when Pterocles freed Otus, the wizard hadn’t expected him to respond there. Now Otus leaned forward intently, eyes staring, fists clenched. What was he thinking? Grus would have given a good deal to know, but he didn’t presume to do anything to interrupt Pterocles’ wizardry.

  Still in a low voice, Pterocles began to chant. The Avornan dialect he used was very old, even older than the one priests used in temple services. Grus could make out a word here and there, but no more. The wizard went on swinging his crystal in its unending arc. Rainbows flashed from it. Before long, there were more of them than could have sprung from the sun alone. “Ah,” Artamus said softly.

  Pterocles made a pass and said, “Let them be assembled,” in Avornan close enough to ordinary for Grus to follow. Those rainbows began to spin around Vasa’s head—faster and faster, closer and closer. Even the thrall’s dull eyes lit at the spectacle. “Let them come together!” Pterocles said, and Grus could follow that, too.

  Again, the rainbows obeyed the wizard’s will. Instead of swirling around Vasa’s head, they began swirling through it. Some of them still seemed to shine even inside her head. Grus wondered if that might be his imagination, but it was what he thought he saw. He’d seen—or thought he’d seen—the same with Otus, too.

  Vasa said, “Oh!” The simple exclamation of surprise was the first thing Grus had heard from her that had any feeling in it. Her eyes opened so wide, the king could see white all around her irises. The rainbows faded, but Grus fancied he could still see some of their light shining out from her face.

  She bowed low to Pterocles. “Oh,” she said again, and, “Thank. Thank. Thank.” She didn’t have many words, but she knew what she wanted to say. When he raised her up, her face had tears on it.

  So did Otus’ as he came up from his place under the tree. “She is free,” he whispered. “Like me, she is free. Gods be praised for this.”

  Pterocles nodded to him, and to Grus, and to Artamus. To the other wizard, he said, “You see.”

  “Yes, I see, or I hope I do,” Artamus answered. “Thank you for letting me watch you. That was a brilliant piece of sorcery.” He also bowed to Pterocles.

  “I’ve done it before. I knew I could do it now,” Pterocles said, and gestured toward the other thrall. “Let’s see you match it. Then we’ll know how brilliant it is.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Artamus said. He turned to the thrall, who’d stood there all through Pterocles’ spell, as indifferent to the marvel as he was to everything else in his miserable life. Artamus asked, “What is your name, fellow?”

  “Lybius,” the scarred thrall replied.

  Artamus had his own bit of crystal on a silver chain. He began to swing it back and forth, as Pterocles had before him. Lybius’ eyes followed the sparkling crystal. Artamus waited for a bit, then began, “You are an empty one, Lybius.…”

  The spell proceeded as it had for Pterocles. Artamus wasn’t as smooth as Grus’ chief wizard, but he seemed capable enough. He summoned the rainbows into being and brought them into a glowing, spinning circle around Lybius’ head and then into and inside it.

  And, as Vasa had—and as Otus had before her—Lybius awoke from thralldom into true humanity. He wept. He squeezed Artamus’ hand and babbled what little praise he knew how to give. And Grus slowly nodded to himself. He did have a weapon someone besides Pterocles could wield.

  Lanius was studying a tax register to make sure all the nobles in the coastal provinces had paid everything they were supposed to. Officials here in the capital had a way of forgetting about those distant lands, and the people who lived in them knew it and took advantage of it whenever they could. But they were Avornans, too, and the kingdom needed their silver no less than anyone else’s. Lanius might not have wanted to raise taxes, but he did want to collect everything properly owed.

  Prince Ortalis stuck his head into the little room where the king worked. “Do you know where Sosia is?” he asked.

  “Not right this minute. I’ve been here for a couple of hours,” Lanius answered.

  “What are you working on?” Ortalis asked. When Lanius explained, his brother-in-law made a horrible face. “Why on earth are you wasting your time with that sort of nonsense?”

  “I don’t think it’s nonsense,” Lanius said. “We need to see that the laws are carried out, and we need to punish people who break them.”

  “That’s work for a secretary, or at most for a minister,” Ortalis said. “A king tells people what to do.”

  “If I don’t already know what they’re doing, how can what I tell them make any sense?” Lanius asked reasonably. “And secretaries do do most of this. But if I don’t do some, how can I know whether they’re doing what they’re supposed to? If a king lets officials do whatever they want, pretty soon they’re the ones telling people what to do, and he isn’t.”

  “You’re welcome to it.” Ortalis went off down the hall shaking his head.

  Grus had tried to get his legitimate son to show some interest in governing Avornis. Lanius knew that. He also knew Grus hadn’t had much luck. Ortalis didn’t, and wouldn’t, care. In a way, that made Lanius happy. Ortalis would have been a more dangerous rival if he’d worried about—or even taken any notice of—the way government actually worked.

  Ortalis would also have been a more dangerous rival without the streak of cruelty that ran through so much of what he did. Hunting helped keep it down, which was one reason Lanius would go hunting with him despite caring nothing for the chase. Worse things happened when Ortalis didn’t hunt than when he did.

  Or was that true? His wife, Princess Limosa, had stripes on her back, and Ortalis had put them there although he hunted. Lanius shook his head. Limosa was a perfect match for Ortalis in a way Lanius hadn’t thought possible. She liked getting stripes as much as he liked giving them. The mere idea made Lanius queasy.

  Had Petrosus known that about his daughter when he dangled her in front of Ortalis? Lanius had no idea, and he wasn’t about to write to the Maze to find out. Which was worse? That Petrosus had known about her, and used her … peculiarity to attract Ortalis? Or that he hadn’t, but was willing to have Ortalis hurt her as long as it gained him advantage in the court?

  “Disgusting either way,” Lanius muttered. He knew what Petrosus’ … peculiarity was—power.

  But Petrosus hadn’t had the chance to indulge his peculiarity. Grus had made sure of that. As soon as Grus found out who Ortalis’ new wife was, into the Maze that treasury minister went. On the whole, Lanius approved of that. Grus had power and liked wielding it, but he’d never been as heartless in his pursuit of it as Petrosus was. A good thing, too, Lanius thought. I’d be dead if he were.

  If only Grus had been as stern with Ortalis as he had with Petrosus. But for a long time he’d had a blind spot about his legitimate son. By the time he couldn’t ignore what Ortalis was, it was much too late to change him. Lanius wondered whether Ortalis could have changed if Grus had tried harder earlier. The question was easier to ask than to answer.

  Lanius went back to the tax register. As far as he could tell, nobody by the coast was trying to cheat the kingdom. That was how things were supposed to work. Ortalis probably would have asked him why
he’d gone to all this trouble just to find out everything was normal. If I hadn’t checked, I wouldn’t have known. Lanius imagined himself explaining that to Ortalis. He also imagined Ortalis laughing in his face.

  “Too bad,” Lanius said out loud. A servant walking down the corridor gave him a curious look. He’d gotten plenty of those. He looked out at the servant. The man kept walking.

  Hurting things is Ortalis’ peculiarity. Knowing things is mine. A white butterfly flitted about in a flower bed outside the window. As soon as Lanius saw it, he recognized it as a cabbage butterfly. Knowing that would never do him any good, but he did know it, and he was glad he did. As for some of the other things he knew … Well, you never could tell.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A scout galloped back toward the Avornan army. His horse’s flying hooves kicked up dust at every stride. Like the rest of the Avornan scouts, he rode a small, tireless mount of the sort the Menteshe bred. But he wore a surcoat over chainmail, not the boiled leather soaked in melted wax the nomads favored. And he shouted, “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” in unaccented Avornan.

  “Here I am,” Grus called, as though the royal standards weren’t enough to let the scout find him.

  “They’re coming, Your Majesty!” the man said, and pointed southward.

  “Now it begins,” Hirundo said quietly.

  Grus shook his head. “It began when we set out from the city of Avornis—or long before that, depending on how you look at things.” He gave his attention back to the scout. “How many of them are there, and how soon will they hit us?”

  “Enough to cause trouble,” the scout answered—not a precise answer, but one that told the king what he needed to know. The man went on, “You should see their plume of dust in a little while.” He patted the side of his horse’s neck. The beast was lathered and blowing hard. “I almost killed Blaze here getting to you quick as I could.”

  “I’m glad you did, and I won’t forget it,” Grus said. “You’ve given us the time we need to shake out our battle line. Hirundo, if you’ll do the honors …”

  “Be glad to, Your Majesty,” the general replied. He shouted commands to the trumpeters. They raised their horns to their mouths and blared out martial music. Not quite as smoothly as Grus would have liked, the army began to move from column into line of battle.

  “Put a good screen of horse archers in front of the heavy cavalry,” Grus said. “We don’t want the Menteshe to find out we’ve got the lancers along till they can’t get away from them.”

  Hirundo sent him an amused look. “I thought you asked me to do the honors.” In spite of the teasing—which embarrassed Grus—he followed the king’s orders.

  “You’ll want me here with you, Your Majesty?” Pterocles asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Grus nodded. “We’re not on our home ground anymore. This is country where the Banished One has had his own way for a long time. I don’t know whether the Menteshe wizards can do anything special here. If they try, though, you’re our best hope to stop them.”

  “You may put too much confidence in me,” Pterocles said. “I know these wizards can do one thing—if we lose, if they capture us, they can make us into thralls.”

  “Yes,” Grus said tightly. “If we lose, they won’t capture me.” He’d made up his mind about that.

  Pterocles said, “What I can do, I will do. You have my word.”

  “Good.” Grus made sure his sword was loose in its sheath. The gray in his beard reminded him he wasn’t a young man anymore. He’d never been especially eager to trade sword strokes with his foes. He could do it when he had to, and he’d always done it well enough, but it wasn’t his notion of sport, the way it was for more than a few men. The older he got, the less enthusiastic a warrior he made, too.

  After a while, more horns cried out, this time in warning. Men up ahead of Grus pointed toward the south. Peering through the dust his own soldiers had kicked up, he spied the unmistakable plume that meant another army was on the way.

  Soon the Menteshe became visible through their cloud of dust. They were marvelous horsemen. They started riding as soon as they could stay in the saddle, and stayed in the saddle most of their lives. He wished his own cavalry could match them. That the Avornans couldn’t was part of what made the nomads so dangerous.

  The Menteshe started shooting as soon as they came into range, or even a little before. Avornan scouts sent arrows back. Men on both sides pitched from the saddle; horses fell to the ground. The scouts galloped back toward the main body of soldiers. Whooping, the Menteshe pursued them.

  That was exactly what Grus and Hirundo wanted them to do. The king began to wonder just how much he wanted it when an arrow hissed past his ear. If the nomads could cause chaos in his army …

  They thought they could. Like any soldiers worth their hire, the Menteshe were arrogant. Some of them, surely, had fought Avornans north of the Stura. They must have known their foes weren’t cowards. But they must also have taken them for fools or madmen—how many years had it been since Avornans came to fight on this side of the river? Why wouldn’t they break up and flee when peppered with arrows?

  We’ll show them why, Grus thought. He waved to Hirundo, who waved to the trumpeters. One of them fell silent in mid-call, choking on his own blood when an arrow pierced his throat. But the rest roared out the command the army had been waiting for. The archers screening the heavy horse drew aside to left and right. Grus and Hirundo both raised their right hands. They both dropped them at the same time. When they did, the horns cried out a new command. The lancers lowered their spears and charged.

  Sunlight struck sparks from spearheads as they swung down to horizontal. Hunks of hard earth flew up from under horses’ hooves when the chargers thundered ahead. They needed perhaps fifty yards to build up full momentum. They had all the space they needed, and a little more besides.

  More than a little more would have been too much. If the Menteshe had had room to turn and flee, they would have done it. They saw nothing shameful in flight, and were past masters at shooting back over their shoulders as they fled. Here, though, they were storming forward themselves.

  Grus heard their howls of dismay even above the drumroll of hoofbeats from his heavy horse. That was sweet music in his ears. Beside him, Hirundo’s grin was like that of a fox spying an unguarded chicken coop. “By Olor’s beard, let’s see how they like that,” the general said.

  The Menteshe liked it not at all. They were at their best darting and stinging like wasps. In close combat against bigger men in stouter armor on heavier horses, they were like wasps smashed against a stone. Lances pierced them and lifted them out of the saddle. The Avornans’ big warhorses overbore their plains ponies and sent them crashing to earth. Their slashing sabers would not bite on shields or chainmail. Some of their arrows struck home, but more glanced from helms and other ironwork. Down they went in windrows, the heart suddenly ripped from their battle line.

  Those who could did flee then, as fast as their horses would carry them. And they did shoot back over their shoulders, and dropped several Avornans who pressed after them too hard. But Grus soon reined in the pursuit. He’d done what he wanted to do in the first encounter—he’d shown the Menteshe that fighting on their own side of the Stura didn’t guarantee victory.

  “Very neat,” he said to Hirundo.

  “Could have been worse,” the general agreed. “That charge took them by surprise. Doing it once was easy. Twice won’t be.”

  “Yes, that occurred to me, too,” Grus said. “But we’ve got a victory to start with, and that was what we needed. We’ll worry about everything else later.”

  Out on the battlefield, Avornan soldiers plundered the dead—and made sure those they plundered really were dead. Healers and wizards were doing what they could for wounded Avornans. Seeing the wizards at work made Grus look to Pterocles. The sorcerer said, “You must have caught the nomads napping with that charge, Your Majesty. They didn’t have the chance to try any fancy s
pells against us.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Grus said. By Pterocles’ smile, neither was he. The king snapped his fingers and turned back to Hirundo. “Send out some men to tell our soldiers not to kill every single Menteshe they come across. We’ll want to ask questions, and a man with a new mouth doesn’t talk so well.” He drew a finger across his throat to show what he meant.

  “I’ll see to it, Your Majesty,” Hirundo promised.

  “Good,” Grus said. “If we can take one of their wizards alive, that will be better yet.”

  Hirundo looked dubious. “Will it? I think I’d rather find a scorpion in my boot.”

  “You can step on a scorpion,” Grus said. “Our wizards can handle the Menteshe. Or if they can’t, we had no business crossing the Stura in the first place.”

  Hirundo nodded. If he hadn’t, Grus would have been more dangerous to him than either a scorpion or a Menteshe wizard. The king looked south. No Avornan army had come anywhere near Yozgat for four hundred years. No Avornan king had touched the Scepter of Mercy for that long or a little longer. What would taking it in his hands be like? He had no idea. Maybe Lanius did. Slowly, Grus shook his head. He didn’t believe it, no matter how learned Lanius was. The other king would have read about what wielding the Scepter of Mercy was like, but Grus had the feeling that the difference between reading about it and doing it was as vast as the difference between reading about making love and doing that.

  For some things, words were enough. Others required real experience. Grus craved real experience here.

  Pouncer stared from Lanius to Collurio. They’d taken the moncat to an unfamiliar room. It didn’t care. It yawned, exposing formidable fangs. Lanius started to laugh. “Nice to know we impress the miserable creature, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes,” the animal trainer said. “Dogs are easier, no doubt about it. Dogs are eager to please. Cats please themselves. I see this is no ordinary cat, but it’s not so very different, eh?”