“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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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.”
“No.” Contempt turned to something harsher—absolute rejection. “No, and no, and no. Stupid little man, ugly little man, the world is mine. It is not much, not when I have had better stolen from me, but it is mine. And I will use it as my stepping-stone to return to what truly belongs to me. Rest assured, I shall step on you, too. Rest assured, the more you make your maggot wriggles against me now, the more I shall enjoy it. Rest assured, your slimy, stinking, puling brat will not enjoy even what you do. Rest—”
He might have gone on, but Lanius, who could rest no more, woke then with a gasp of horror. He sprang out of bed, waking Sosia, too, and rushed to the nursery to make sure Crex was all right. The baby slept, peaceful as could be, snoring a little around a thumb stuck in his mouth. Feeling a little foolish, or perhaps more than a little, Lanius went back to his own bedchamber.
“What was that all about?” Sosia already sounded half asleep again.
“A bad dream,” Lanius replied. Sosia grunted, nodded, and started to snore herself. Lanius lay awake for a long, long time afterward. Calling the Banished One’s visit a dream didn’t begin to do justice to what had happened. His memory was as precise, as real, as though they’d spoken face-to-face. The visit held none of a dream’s usual blurriness and ambiguity. It was real. He would have staked his life on that.
Maybe he slept again that night. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t. Either way, he was yawning and fuzzy-headed the next morning. When he saw King Grus, he found his fellow sovereign in much the same straits. “Bad dreams?” he asked.
Grus nodded. “You might say so. Yes, you just might say so. You?”
“The same,” Lanius agreed. “It might be better not to name any names.”
“Yes.” Grus nodded again. “It might. Do you believe your dreams?”
“Do I believe I had them? Of course I do,” Lanius said. “Do I believe what I heard in them? He has reason to lie.”
“I tell myself the same thing,” Grus said. “I keep telling myself the same thing, over and over, doing my best to convince myself of it. I’m glad you’re doing the same thing. He would be easy to believe.”
“He would be easier to believe if he didn’t hit so hard,” Lanius observed. “But we’re only mortals, after all. Why should he waste his time finding out the best ways to get us to do what he wants?”
“Not what he wants,” Grus broke in. “What he requires. There’s a difference.”
“Well, yes,” Lanius said. “Of course, you have your ways of getting me to do what you require, and—”
His father-in-law’s face froze. Lanius had had that same thought many times. He hadn’t spelled it out in Grus’ hearing before. Part of him was glad to see he had at least struck a nerve. A good deal more of him was frightened. Every so often, he managed to get Grus angrier than he really wanted to. This looked like one of those times.
“You don’t even know what a spoiled brat you are and how soft you’ve had it,” Grus said quietly. “I ought to beat the stuffing out of you for that—it might give you a hint. But I won’t dirty my hands with you. If you want to see the difference between the Banished One’s methods and mine, cross over the Stura and try thralldom. That will tell you what you need to know, though I doubt you’d care for the lesson.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Lanius said. “I went too far.”
“Yes, you did, didn’t you?” Grus still steamed. “Even if I’d married you to the headsman’s daughter instead of my own, you’d have gotten off easier from me than you would from the Banished One.” He turned his back and walked away.
Lanius’ ears burned. The worst of it was, he knew Grus was right. He’d said something cruel and stupid, and Grus had pinned his ears back. But knowing he’d gotten what he deserved didn’t make getting it any more pleasant.
He muttered something he’d heard an angry guardsman say. The trouble was, his own words had held some truth, too. He couldn’t do as he pleased, and the reason he couldn’t was that Grus wouldn’t let him. That didn’t mean Grus thought the world was his by right. It just meant Grus didn’t like to take chances.
No doubt that made a difference in how the gods would judge Grus when he came before them at the end of his days on earth. He did—Lanius grudgingly supposed—have hope of a happy afterlife. Where it seemed to make little difference, though, was in its effect on Lanius. Grus can say whatever he wants. I may not be a thrall, but I’m not free, either. And if he thinks I like that, he’s wrong.