Dan Chernenko - The Scepter_s Return

Sighing, Grus said, "Well, see what you can learn. I'll do the same, and so will Pterocles. And we'll find out what happens. That's liable to teach us more than we can learn any other way."

Lanius looked unhappy, almost unhappy enough to tempt Grus into a smile. The other king wasn't much for learning by experience. He wanted to find answers written down somewhere. That handbook on kingship he'd written for Prince Crex… Grus had glanced at it. It held a lot of information – and a lot of good advice, too. But so what? So much of the advice was only good if you had the experience to understand it… in which case you probably didn't need it.

A scratching noise came from somewhere deep within the archives. Grus started in alarm. Maybe that was a mouse or a rat – if this place wasn't a paradise for mice, he'd never seen one that was. But maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the Banished One somehow spying on him and Lanius across all these miles. Grus didn't know if that was possible. Better, though, with the Banished One, to take no chances.

Then, to his amazement, Lanius started to laugh. Grus realized the other king recognized the noise, whatever it was. "I think you'd better tell me what's going on," Grus said carefully.

"I'll do more than that," Lanius replied. "I'll show you." He amazed Grus again by lying down on his back on one of the less dusty stretches of floor. Then he started thumping on his chest as though he were beating a drum. Grus wondered if he'd lost his mind.

But he hadn't. A moncat came strolling up and climbed onto his chest. Lanius had a scrap of meat handy, and gave it to the animal. Grus gaped. He said, "Now I've seen everything."

"Oh, this is nothing special. Pouncer gets in here every once in a while, and into other places where I need meat to lure him out." Lanius sounded elaborately casual. "So I usually carry a few scraps with me. I have to remember to get fresh ones pretty often. Otherwise, he doesn't want them."

"I see," Grus said. "I meant to ask you about some of the things you've been spending money on. I've heard about an animal trainer, an architect, and quite a few workmen. What haven't I heard about?"

"Why I'm doing it," Lanius answered, stroking Pouncer behind the ears. The moncat purred loudly.

"All right. Why?"

Lanius went on petting and scratching the moncat as he talked. The longer Grus listened, the more astonished he got. At last, the other king finished by asking, "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" Grus echoed. Lanius had told him a little of this the winter before, but only a little. Now that he'd heard it all, he thought he'd really heard it all. He said, "I think it's crazy, that's what. What could anybody who heard something like this think?"

"Now I'll tell you something you don't know," Lanius said. "Not long after we started this, the Banished One sent Collurio a dream."

Grus had to take that seriously. The Banished One sent dreams only to those who worried him. Some of the enemies who'd struck him heavy blows never saw him in their sleep. Hirundo was one of those, and had no idea how lucky he was. Grus whistled softly, trying to take this in. "He sent dreams… to an animal trainer?"

"By Olor's beard, Your Majesty, he did." Lanius might have been taking an oath. His use of the royal title impressed Grus much more than his calling on the current king of the gods.

Grus said, "He didn't send one to the builder, though?"

"Not yet, at any rate," the other king said. "The builder knows less of what's going on than the trainer does. He would also be easier to replace than the trainer. That all makes him less essential and less dangerous."

"You've thought this through, haven't you?" Grus laughed at himself. Of course Lanius had thought it through; that was what Lanius did best. Grus aimed a forefinger at the other king as though it were an arrow. "You can't tell me the builder is less expensive than the trainer, by the gods. Oh, you can, but I won't believe you."

"I won't even try. You'd know I was lying. Here, wait – I'll stop lying." He got up off the floor, still holding Pouncer. Grus made a horrible face. Lanius continued, "Even if he is more expensive, we need him. Will you tell me I'm wrong about that?"

"I'll tell you that you could be wrong," Grus said. Lanius considered that in his usual grave fashion, then slowly nodded. But Grus felt he had to add, "You could be right, too. We'll find out. I hope we'll find out. In the meantime… In the meantime, you'd better go on."

The harvest was good. Rain didn't fall at the wrong time. Wheat and barley poured into the city of Avornis by riverboat and, from nearby farms, by wagon. The granaries filled – if not to overflowing, then very full indeed. Watching the golden flood mount, Lanius grew confident the capital could ride out even the worst of winters. Reports that came in from the rest of Avornis said no one was likely to starve this year.

As more and more grain arrived, Lanius began to doubt the Banished One would use weather as a weapon against Avornis. The king didn't doubt the exiled god would use something. What Grus had said made altogether too much sense for Lanius to doubt it. At some point, the Banished One would have to strike back against Avornis. Not striking back would be confessing weakness. Whatever else he was, he was not weak. His chosen weapons, the Menteshe, were for the moment of less use to him than he would have wanted. But he surely had others – had them or could devise them.

Lanius knew what he would do if he were in those southern mountains, all alone and furious. He summoned Pterocles. The wizard bowed low before him. "How may I serve you, Your Majesty?"

"I fear you may be serving all of Avornis before long, not just me," the king answered. "What do you know of plagues begun and spread by sorcery?"

The comers of Pterocles' mouth turned down. The lines that ran up from the comers of his mouth to beside his nose got deeper. Sorrow and worry filled his eyes. "I was afraid you would ask me that."

"How can you be so sure of -?" Lanius broke off and pointed an accusing forefinger at the wizard. "You've been studying."

"Ever since I got back to the capital," Pterocles agreed. "I only wish there were more to study. This sort of thing is a lot like weatherworking – it's too big for a mortal wizard to bring off, which means not many people have had much to say about it."

"What do they say? The ones who speak at all, I mean," Lanius said.

"That only a wizard without a heart would even think of trying one of those spells," Pterocles said. "The trouble is, that fits the Banished One too well. They also say that the sicknesses behave like natural ones once they're loose. If a wizard or a doctor can come up with a way to cure them or to keep them from killing, that will work as well as it would against an ordinary illness."

"If," Lanius said heavily. Pterocles nodded. The two of them shared an unhappy look. The trouble with the optimistic-sounding news the wizard had given was simple – plenty of natural illnesses had no known cure. Many people went to physicians only as a last resort, when they were desperately ill and nothing the doctor did to them was likely to make things worse.

"Maybe he'll do something else," Pterocles said. "Maybe it will be the weather. Maybe he can find some way to make the Menteshe stop fighting among themselves. Maybe… maybe almost anything, Your Majesty."

He sounded like a man whistling past a still-smoking pyre. Lanius understood sounding that way, for it was also the way he felt. "And maybe he'll send a plague, too," the king said. "It would be about the best thing he could do, wouldn't it?"

"Not as far as we're concerned, by the gods!" Pterocles exclaimed. Then he got what Lanius was driving at. "Yes, I think from his way of looking at things a plague might be the best he could do. I see one thing that might help us, though."