Harry Turtledove: The Scepter's return

Impulsively, he stuck out his hand again. Collurio shook it. Lanius said, "I think we're going to get along just fine."

Some of the Nine Rivers were bridged. Ferries and barges took the Avornan army across the rest. River galleys, long and lean and deadly, patrolled upstream and down- at each crossing. With their oars moving in smooth unison, they reminded Grus of so many centipedes striding across the water. They also made him long for the days when captaining one of them was as far as his ambitions ran.

When he said as much to Hirundo, his general laughed at him. "You're only saying that because you've got a sore backside."

"I don't have a sore backside," Grus answered. "I've done enough riding by now that I'm hardened to it. But those were simpler days. I didn't have so many things to worry about. I was down on the Stura most of the time, but I hardly ever thought about the Banished One. The Menteshe? Yes — of course. Their lord? No."

"He didn't think about you in those days, either. If you find yourself in the Banished One's thoughts, you've come up in the world," Hirundo said.

Grus laughed. He supposed it was funny if you looked at it the right way. Still… "I could do without the honor, thanks."

"Could you?" Hirundo was usually the one quick to laugh. As he and the king sat their horses just beyond the riverbank watching the army come off the barges, the general seemed altogether serious. "If the Banished One didn't have you in his mind, would he worry about anyone in Avornis?"

Lanius, Grus thought. And Pterocles. Like him, they'd received dreams in which the Banished One appeared and spoke. Grus could have done without that honor, too. Never in battle had he known the fear that curdled his innards when he came face-to-face with the Banished One's calm, cold, inhuman beauty, even in a dream. He knew too well he was opposing someone — something — ever so much stronger than he was.

He didn't think Hirundo had ever had one of those horrifying dreams. For whatever reason, the Banished One didn't reckon Hirundo dangerous enough to confront that way. The officer wouldn't have spoken so lightly of the foe if he'd met him like that. No one who'd directly faced the Banished One's power spoke lightly of him.

Swearing sergeants shepherded soldiers back into their places. The army started south again. Peasants working in the fields took one look at the long column coming down the road and fled. Grus had seen that many times before. It always saddened him. The farmers and herdsmen didn't think the Avornan soldiers were invaders. They were afraid of being robbed and plundered just the same.

Here, though, the soldiers didn't have to forage off the countryside to keep themselves fed. At Grus' order, supply dumps awaited the army all the way down to the valley of the Stura. Wheat and barley would give them bread; cattle and sheep, meat; and there was ale and wine to drink. The soldiers had plenty. But the peasants didn't know that, and weren't inclined to take chances.

Low ranges of hills running roughly east and west separated the valleys of the Nine Rivers from one another. The roads that ran straight across the valleys wound and twisted as they went through the hills. They followed the passes that had been there since the gods made the world. Grus' mouth twisted when that thought crossed his mind. The god said to have made the world was Milvago, whose children had cast him out of the heavens and who was now the Banished One.

Had he turned to evil before Olor and Quelea and the rest expelled him? Or had being ousted and sent down to this lesser sphere infuriated and corrupted him, so that he became evil only after coming to earth? Grus had no idea. Only the Banished One and the gods in the heavens knew, and Grus would have bet they told different stories. In the end, how much difference did it make? The Banished One dwelt on earth now and was evil now, and that was all a mere mortal needed to know.

Riding at the head of the column, Grus escaped all the dust the horsemen and soldiers kicked up moving along a dirt road. When he looked back over his shoulder, the cloud the army kicked up obscured most of it.

Then Grus looked ahead, down into the valley of the Stura. The scars from the fire and sword the Menteshe had inflicted on it were still plain to see. Those scars would have been worse yet if the nomads hadn't started fighting among themselves instead of going on with their war against Avornis.

They were bad enough as things were. And they told King Grus everything worth knowing about the Banished One's disposition.

"I have warned you against your plots and schemes." The voice that resounded inside King Lanius' head reminded him of the tolling of a great bronze bell. The face he saw was supremely handsome, even beautiful, yet somehow all the more frightful because of that. The Banished One stared at him out of eyes as fathomless as the depths between the stars. "I have warned you, and you have chosen not to heed. You will pay for your foolishness."

It was a dream. Lanius knew that. He'd had them before. But the dreams the Banished One sent weren't only dreams, as people said after they woke up from bad ones. The terror they brought felt no less real than it would have in the waking world, and the memory of it lingered — indeed, grew worse — as the waking world returned. Ordinary bad dreams were nothing like that, for which the king praised the gods in the heavens.

"I would pay worse," Lanius answered, "if I did not do all I could for what I know to be right."

As always, the Banished One's laughter flayed like knives. "You think so, do you? You are wrong, worm of a man-thing. And when the heavens are mine once more, everyone will pay! Everyone!" He laughed again, and seemed to reach for the king.

Lanius woke up then, with a horrible start that left him sitting up in bed, his heart pounding like a drum. He breathed a long, slow sigh of relief. The one resemblance the dreams the Banished One sent held to the usual kind was that nothing harmful could really happen in them — or nothing had yet. When the exiled god's hand stretched out toward the king, though..

Sosia stirred sleepily. "Are you all right?" she asked, yawning.

"Yes. I'm all right now." Saying it made it feel more true to Lanius. "A bad dream, that's all." He eased himself down flat again.

"Go back to sleep. I'm going to," Sosia said. Within a few minutes, she was breathing softly and heavily once more. Lanius took much longer to drop off. He didn't find sleep so welcoming, not with the Banished One lurking there. He'd never talked with his wife about the dreams the Banished One sent. The only people to whom he'd mentioned them were Grus and Pterocles. They were the only ones he thought likely to understand, for the Banished One sent them dreams, too.

Lanius did finally fall back to sleep. A sunbeam sneaking between the window curtains woke him. When he opened his eyes — normally, sleepily, not with the terrified stare he always had after confronting the Banished One — he found Sosia was already up and about. He got out of bed, used the chamber pot, and pulled off his nightshirt and replaced it with the royal robes. Servants would have swarmed in to dress him if he'd wanted them to. He'd never been able to see much point in that; he was the one who could best tell how his clothes hung on his bony frame.

Halfway through his breakfast porridge, he snapped his fingers in excitement. Collurio was coming to the palace this morning. Lanius wondered what the animal trainer would make of Pouncer — and what the moncat would make of Collurio. The king ate faster. He wanted to finish before Collurio got there.

He did, by a few minutes, which was perfect. But when Collurio came into the palace, he startled Lanius. The animal trainer was far from the confident showman he'd been while presenting his beasts to Lanius and his family the night before. He was pale and subdued, and gulped at the wine a servant brought him. Concerned, Lanius said, "Is something wrong?"