That night, the Banished One visited him in a dream. The exiled god’s perfectly handsome, perfectly chilly visage stared at—stared through— Lanius with what seemed to be even more contempt than usual. “So,” the Banished One said, “you seek to trifle with me again.”
Lanius kept quiet. If the Banished One had only just now learned Otus was truly cured, the king did not intend to tell him anything more.
Silence helped less than it would against a human opponent, for the Banished One’s words cut like whips even in a dream. “You will fail,” he said. “You will fail, and you will die.”
“All men die,” Lanius said with such courage as he could muster.
“All men die, yes, and all beasts, too,” the Banished One snarled. “Some, though, sooner than others.”
At that, Lanius woke up, his heart pounding. He didn’t forget the dream; he never forgot a dream where the Banished One came calling. He did not forget, but he did not understand, either.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Somewhere in the world, there was probably something that seemed more progress-free than a long siege. Grus supposed snail races might fill the bill. Other than a field of mollusks languidly gliding along eyestalk to eyestalk, nothing even came close. So the king felt outside of Nishevatz, anyhow.
Day followed day. Vasilko’s men on the walls hurled insults at the Avornans who surrounded the city. When the Avornans came too close to the wall, the Chernagors would shoot at them. Every once in a while, somebody got hurt. Despite the occasional casualties, though, it hardly seemed like war.
When Grus grumbled about that, Hirundo laughed at him. “It could be a lot worse,” the general said. “They could be sallying every day, trying to break out. They could have ships trying to bring in more supplies. We could have a pestilence start. They could have hit us from east and west at the same time, and the army that did hit us from the east could have shown more in the way of staying power. Are those the sorts of things you’d rather see, Your Majesty?”
Laughing, Grus shook his head. “Now that you mention it, no. All at once, I’m happy enough to be bored.”
“Good for you,” Hirundo said. “They’re not bored inside Nishevatz—I promise you that. They’ve got plenty to think about. How to break our ring around the place tops their list, if I’m any judge.”
Whatever Vasilko and his henchmen were thinking, they gave no sign of it. Spring waned. Summer came on. Here in the north, summer days were noticeably longer than at the city of Avornis—a good deal longer than they were down by the Stura, where Grus had spent so much time before becoming king. The weather grew mild, sometimes even fairly warm. For the Chernagor country, it doubtless counted as a savage heat wave.
Couriers from the capital brought news of the civil war among the Menteshe. Grus avidly read those. The more the nomads squabbled, the happier he was. King Lanius wrote that he’d taught a moncat to do tricks. That amused Grus, anyhow, and livened up what would have been a dull day. Besides, if Lanius stayed busy with his moncats, he probably wasn’t planning anything too nefarious.
One day, a letter came up to Nishevatz that hadn’t started or gone through the city of Avornis. That in itself was interesting enough to make Grus open it right away. When he’d read it, he smiled to himself and then put it aside.
One of the advantages of being King of Avornis was that nobody presumed to ask him what he was smiling about. He didn’t go around bragging, either, even if part of him felt like it. But if he advertised having a new bastard boy, word would get to Estrilda sooner than if he kept quiet. He wanted to put off that evil day as long as possible—forever, if he could.
Alauda had named the baby Nivalis. It wasn’t a name Grus would have chosen, but he’d been up here in the north, and hadn’t had any say in it. “Nivalis.” He tasted the sound of it. It wasn’t so bad, not after he thought about it. From what the letter said, both the baby and Alauda were doing well. That mattered more than the name. New mothers and infants died too easily.
Pterocles answered the king’s smiles with smiles of his own. Did the wizard use his sorcerous powers to divine why Grus was so pleased with himself? Or did he just remember that Alauda had been pregnant and would be having her baby about now? Grus didn’t ask him. How much difference did it make, one way or the other?
Hirundo kept his usually smiling face serious. He had to remember Alauda, too. But he, unlike Pterocles, had affairs of his own wherever he found willing women. He understood discretion. Whatever questions or congratulations he might have had, he kept them to himself.
Grateful for that, Grus asked, “How hungry do you think they’re getting in there?”
“They’re not at the end of their tether,” Hirundo replied at once. “If they were, they’d be slipping down over the wall just to get fed. But they can’t be in the best of shape, either.”
That marched well with what Grus thought himself. He’d hoped Hirundo would tell him something more optimistic. But Hirundo, however discreet, would not say something was so when he thought otherwise. That would get men who might otherwise live killed, and he was too good a soldier to do any such thing.
“Fair enough,” Grus said, eyeing the battlements of Nishevatz. Chernagors on the walls looked out at the army hemming them in. The king pointed their way. “They aren’t going anywhere. We’ve made sure of that.”
The pyre that rose on the burning grounds was relatively modest. The white-bearded priest lying atop it wore only a green robe; he had never advanced to the yellow of the upper clergy. And yet, not only had the Arch-Hallow of Avornis come to say farewell to him, so had King Lanius.
After the usual prayers, the priest in charge of the service touched a torch to the oil-soaked wood. It caught at once and burned strongly, swallowing Ixoreus’ mortal remains. “May his spirit rise with the smoke to the heavens,” the priest intoned.
“May it be so,” the mourners murmured. The small crowd began to break up. Most of the people there were priests who’d served with Ixoreus in the great cathedral. By all appearances, he’d had few real friends.
That saddened Lanius, but did not surprise him. Arch-Hallow Anser came up to him and clasped his hand, saying, “It was good of you to come.”
“A lot of knowledge died with him.” Lanius wondered if Anser had any idea how much. The king doubted it. Anser knew more—and cared more—about the hunt than about matters ecclesiastical. To his credit, he’d never pretended otherwise. Lanius went on, “You will never find another archivist who comes close to matching him.”
To his surprise, Anser smiled, shook his head, and replied, “Oh, I don’t know about that, Your Majesty.”
Lanius had some notion of the abilities of Ixoreus’ assistants, and a low opinion of them. “Who?” he demanded.
“Why, you, of course,” the arch-hallow said.
“Me?” The king blinked. “You do me too much credit, I think. I know the royal archives tolerably well, but Ixoreus was always my guide to the ones under the cathedral.” And now one person fewer knows the name Milvago. That may be just as well.
“You could do the job,” Anser said. “If you had no other, I mean.”
Not so long before, Lanius had wondered how he might have earned his bread if he weren’t king. Now he bowed. “If I had no other, maybe I could.” Anser meant well. Anser never meant less than well. But the job Lanius had, that of King of Avornis, was less, much less, than it might have been, which was the fault of one man and one man only—Anser’s father, King Grus. Lanius brooded on that less than he had in years gone by, but he knew it was true. Still, he made himself smile and said, “As I told you before, you flatter me.”