King Grus sat down on a stool in one of the several small dining rooms in the palace. Servants ate here; royalty didn’t. Grus watched with some amusement as Lanius perched on another stool a few feet away. Perched was the right word—with his long limbs and awkward gait, Lanius put Grus in mind of a crane or a stork or some other large bird.
“This seems quiet enough,” Lanius remarked. A stout door—oak barred with iron—muffled the noise from the hallway outside, and would keep people from eavesdropping on what the two kings said.
“It will do.” Grus watched the younger man fidget. He wondered if Lanius had any idea he was doing it. Probably not, Grus judged.
“What is it, then?” Lanius sounded hostile and more than a little nervous. Grus knew his son-in-law didn’t love him. He wouldn’t have loved a man who’d taken the power rightfully his, either. As for the nerves… Grus thought he understood those, too.
“Tell me what you know about the Chernagors,” he said.
Lanius started. He thought I was going to ask him something else. Grus clicked his tongue between his teeth. He expected they would get around to that, too. Lanius said, “You’ll know a lot already. Hard to be King of Avornis”—he made a sour face at that—“and not know a good deal about the Chernagors.”
“I’m not interested in all the trading they do out on the Northern Sea,” Grus said. “They’ll do that come what may. I’m interested in the rivalries between their city-states.”
“All right.” Lanius thought for a moment. “Some of them, you know, go back a long way, back even before the days when their pirate ancestors took the northern coastline away from us.”
“That’s fine,” Grus said agreeably. “If knowing why they hated each other before helps me know how they hate each other now, I’ll listen. If it doesn’t”—he shrugged—“it can wait for some other time.”
Grus was a relentlessly practical man. One of his complaints about Lanius was that his son-in-law was anything but. Of course, had Lanius been more like him, he would also have been more likely to try to overthrow him—and much more likely to succeed.
“What’s this all about?” Lanius asked now, a practical enough question. “The Chernagors haven’t troubled us much lately—certainly no sea raids on our coast like the ones in my great-grandfather’s day, and not more than the usual nuisance raids across the land frontier. Thervingia’s been a lot bigger problem.”
“Not since Prince Berto became King Berto,” Grus said. Avornis’ western neighbor was quiet under a king who would rather build cathedrals than fight. Grus approved of a pious sovereign for a neighbor. Berto’s father, King Dagipert, had almost made Thervingia the master of Avornis and himself Lanius’ father-in-law instead of Grus. He’d also come unpleasantly close to killing Grus on the battlefield. The news that Dagipert had finally died was some of the best Grus had ever gotten.
“You know what I mean.” Lanius let his impatience show. He had scant patience for comments he found foolish.
“All right.” Grus spread his hands, trying to placate the younger king. “I’m concerned because the Banished One may be trying to get a foothold in some of the Chernagor city-states. With Berto on the throne in Thervingia, he won’t have any luck there, and he could use a lever against us besides the Menteshe.”
“I wonder if the Banished One and Dagipert connived together,”
Lanius said. Grus only shrugged once more. He’d wondered the same thing. Avornans had never proved it. Dagipert had always denied it. Doubt lingered even so.
“Any which way, our spies have seen Menteshe—which is to say, they’ve surely seen the Banished One’s—agents in several Chernagor towns,” Grus said.
“Milvago.” Lanius’ lips shaped the name without a sound.
“Don’t say it.” Grus shook his head in warning. “Don’t even come as close as you did. That’s nobody’s business but ours—and I wouldn’t be sorry if we didn’t know, either.”
“Yes.” Despite the warm spring weather, Lanius shivered. Grus didn’t blame him a bit. Everyone knew King Olor and Queen Quelea and the rest of the gods had joined together to cast the Banished One out of the heavens and down to earth more than a thousand years before.
Everyone knew that, yes. What no one knew, these days, was that the Banished One—Milvago, as he’d been known when he still dwelt in the heavens—hadn’t been any minor deity. Lanius had found that truth in the ecclesiastical archives, far below the great cathedral in the capital.
No, Milvago hadn’t been any ordinary god, a god of weather or anger or earthquakes or other such well-defined function. From what the ancient archives said, Milvago had fathered Olor and Quelea and the rest. Until they cast him forth, he’d been Lord of All.
He remained, or seemed to remain, immortal, though he wasn’t all-powerful anymore—wasn’t, in fact, a god at all anymore. He wanted dominion on earth, not only for its own sake but also, somehow, as a stepping-stone back to the heavens. Avornis had always resisted him. Grus wondered how long his kingdom could go on resisting a power greater than it held.
“Do you know what I think?” Lanius said.
Grus shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Your Majesty.” He stayed polite to Lanius. The other king seldom used his royal title. Lanius resented reigning rather than ruling. Grus didn’t worry about that, as long as the resentment stayed no more than resentment. Polite still, Grus added, “Tell me, please.”
“I think the Banished One is stirring up trouble among the Chernagors to keep us too busy even to try to go after the Scepter of Mercy down in the south,” Lanius said.
That hadn’t occurred to Grus. He realized it should have. The Banished One saw the world as a whole. He had to try to do the same himself. “You may very well be right,” he said slowly. “But even if you are, what can we do about it?”
“I don’t know,” Lanius admitted. “I was hoping you might think of something.”
“Thanks—I think,” Grus said.
“If we get in trouble in the north, what can we do but try to calm it down before it gets worse?” Lanius asked. “Nothing I can see. We can’t very well pretend it isn’t there, can we?”
“I don’t see how. I wish I did.” Grus’ laugh was sour as green apples. “Well, Your Majesty, the Scepter of Mercy has been out of our hands for a long time now. I don’t suppose a little longer will make that much difference.”
Lanius’ answering nod was unhappy. Four hundred years ago, the then-King of Avornis had brought the great talisman down from the capital to the south to help resist the inroads of the Menteshe. But the hard-riding nomads had fallen on the Scepter’s escort, galloped off with it to Yozgat, and held it there ever since. After several disastrously unsuccessful efforts to retake it, the Avornans hadn’t tried for a couple of centuries. And yet…
Lanius said, “As long as we go without it, the Banished One has the advantage. All we can do is respond to his moves. Playing the game that way, we lose sooner or later. With it, maybe we can call the tune.”
“I know.” Now Grus sounded unhappy, too. Sending Avornan soldiers south of the Stura River was asking either to lose them or to see them made into thralls—half-mindless men bound to the Menteshe and to the Banished One. And Yozgat, these days the chief town of the Menteshe Prince Ulash, lay a long way south of the Stura. “If only our magic could stand up against what the Banished One can aim at us.”
“Wish for the moon while you’re at it.” But King Lanius caught himself. “No. Wish for the Scepter of Mercy.”
“If I need to have it already before I can hope to get it—” Grus stopped. Even if he went around that twenty-two times, he’d still get caught.