The Bastard King (46 page)

"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.

King Lanius saw the Banished One in his dreams, too, as he hadn't since he was a little boy. Confronted by that coldly handsome, coldly perfect visage, his first urge was to run and hide. Had he been able to, he would have, but the Banished One ruled the kingdom of his night.

"Think you to trifle with me?" he heard, the chambers of his skull suddenly a prison. "You had better think again. Son of a dozen kings, are you? Have you any idea how little that matters, how small a stretch of time that covers, what a weak and puny land Avornis truly is?"

Contempt radiated from him like light and heat from a fire. In his dream, Lanius answered, "Say what you will, but this is mine."