The Bastard King (69 page)

"I can't tell you much," Lanius said. "I don't know much. Most of what was written has been dust and ashes for hundreds of years, and the priests have made sure all the ceremonies are different nowadays. They tried to get rid of all the records, too, but they couldn't quite manage it. They're only human, after all. Even the peasants have forgotten him, and peasants can have longer memories than anybody."

"Who is he? Or should I say, who was he?" Grus asked.

"You're the one who knows history, so I expect you can tell me. Some long-ago heretic? Sounds like it, by the way you talk."

"You might say so." Lanius knew his voice sounded strange. "Yes, you just might say so."

"All right. Fair enough," Grus said. "But please don't get angry at me, Your Majesty, when I ask you why I need to know any of this."

"I won't get angry," Lanius said. "It's a reasonable question. And the answer is, we still hear about him today. The only difference is, we call him the Banished One."

That got Grus' full and complete attention. Lanius had been sure it would. The older man leaned toward him, intent as a hunter on his prey. "Milvago was . .. what? The name he had before he was cast down from the heavens?"

"Yes." Lanius nodded. "The name he had when he was a god. I found it on an ancient parchment in the ecclesiastical archives under the cathedral."

"The name he had when he was a god," Grus echoed. "Do you have any idea how strange that sounds?"

"Believe me, Your Majesty, it sounds at least as strange to me as it does to you," Lanius replied. "I haven't said anything about this to anyone, not till now."

Twice in the space of a few minutes, he'd used Grus' royal title. It had been months, maybe years, since the last two times he'd used it. And Grus noticed. Lanius could see as much. But the other King of Avornis didn't mention it. Instead, he asked the right question. Lanius had noticed his gift for that. "Well," Grus said, "if this Milvago was a god once upon a time, what was he the god
of?
Bad weather, maybe? Or just bad temper generally?"

Those were good, quick, reasonable guesses. Lanius wished with all his heart one of them was right. But he answered with the truth - what he was convinced was the truth - he'd found far under the cathedral. He gave that truth in one word - "Everything."

"What do you mean?" Grus asked. "What was he the god of?"

"Everything," Lanius repeated miserably. "As best I can tell, he was the chief god in the heavens, the god from whom Olor and Quelea and the rest sprang long, long ago."

"You're joking."

"By the gods" - Lanius laughed, though it was anything but funny - "I am not."

"What did they do?" Grus demanded. "Turn on him and cast him down, the way nasty sons will turn on a rich father when they're too impatient to wait for him to die?"

Now he was the one who sounded as though he was joking. But Lanius nodded, saying, "Yes, I believe that's exactly what they did, though Milvago may have been the nasty one. The way he's behaved here on earth would make you think so, anyhow."

Grus' eyes were wide and staring. "And we have to stand against a god like that?"

"We don't
have
to do anything," Lanius answered. "If you don't believe we still have free will, what's the point to anything?"

But the details of philosophical discussion had never interested Grus. He waved Lanius' words away. "How are we supposed to fight against the god who made the ground we're walking on?
How,
by the - " He broke off. Lanius understood that. Why swear by the gods when you were talking of the one who'd sired them?

But, in literal terms, Grus' question had an answer, or Lanius hoped it did. "How? The same way we've been fighting him ever since he was cast down from the heavens. Even if he was all-powerful once upon a time, he isn't anymore. If he were, he couldn't very well have been cast down from the heavens in the first place, could he? And as for creating the world, who knows whether Milvago did that or not? What happened to
his
father, if he had one?"

He waited to see how Grus would take that. He'd always respected his father-in-law's resourcefulness; without it, Grus never would have won his share of the crown. For the moment, it seemed to have abandoned the older man. Lanius didn't suppose he could blame Grus. He himself had had a while to work through, to work past, his shattering discovery. The other king was trying to take it in all at once.

"Don't tell anybody else," Grus said suddenly.

"What?" Lanius asked, taken aback.

"Whatever you do, don't tell anybody else," Grus repeated. "Do you want Avornans worshiping the Banished One, the way the Menteshe do? Some of them would."

He was bound to be right. Lanius hadn't thought of that. Maybe Grus' resourcefulness hadn't deserted him after all. Lanius said, "I haven't even told Sosia or Anser."

"Good," Grus said. "Don't. By Olor's - " He broke off again, shaking his head like a man bedeviled by gnats. "I half wish you hadn't told me. Maybe more than half."

"How do you think
I
felt when I found out?" Lanius exclaimed. "There I was, down in the deepest level of the archives, all alone with a secret no one but the Banished One has known for ... for a very long time." His sense of chronology, usually so sharp, deserted him.

Grus set a hand on his shoulder. He seldom cared to have anyone but Sosia or his children touch him, but the warmth and solid weight of Grus' hand felt oddly reassuring. Grus said, "We just have to go on, that's all. We've always known he was stronger than we are. If he's ... even stronger than we thought, what difference does that make, really?"

We just have to go on.
That was easy to say, harder to do. "If we had the Scepter of Mercy . .." Lanius said.

"Yes. If," Grus said.

"The Banished One - Milvago - wants to make sure that we don't have it, that we can't use it." Lanius looked south, in the direction of Yozgat. "So we really have to get it back, don't we?" Grus nodded.

As Kings Grus and Lanius struggle to hold their joint kingdom together against the ever-present threat of the Banished One, another danger rises over the coastline....

V1.0 - 7 Aug 04 - Proofread and formatted from the paperback.