Ortalis slumped against the side of a boat. He would have said there were few worse postures in which to fall asleep — and he would have been right. But when exhaustion pressed, posture mattered less than he would have imagined possible. And so, despite the awkward position, despite the musty smells of the Maze all around him — and some of those smells worse than merely musty, too — sleep he did.
No sooner had he fallen asleep than he also fell into a dream. It was, he saw at once, one of those dreams, the dreams that seemed brighter, realer, truer than mere mundane reality. This dream, unlike the ones that had gone before, did not paint a whole world. No, all he saw was a face.
But what a face! — inhumanly calm, inhumanly cold, inhumanly beautiful. And the voice that came from the face was the Voice that had urged him on to the kingship… for a little while. "You failed me," the Voice said.
Instead of warming Ortalis, praising him, pushing him to do great things, the Voice made him feel even smaller, even worse, than he had before. "It's not my fault," he whined. "I did the best I could."
The Voice laughed, a sound like a lash of ice. "Yes, and that was our great mistake."
"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" Ortalis demanded.
"The best you could do — the best you could do — was not very good," the Voice said, still laughing that wounding laugh. "It was not good enough to satisfy the stinking Scepter, was it?"
"No." Ortalis didn't want to admit it, but what choice did he have? Failing had been bad enough. Failing with Lanius there to watch him do it was ten times worse. His miserable slug of a brother-in-law
… Yet the Scepter of Mercy that refused him accepted Lanius without a qualm. Savagely, Ortalis said, "I should have killed that scrawny bastard while I had the chance!"
"Oh, now you see wisdom!" The Voice's sarcasm flayed worse than its laughter. "I suggested this, you will recall, but you did not care to hear me then. Oh, no. You were too good to hear me then. Too good, yes, but not good enough. I told you you would not be. Your best was not good enough, and never will be. Otherwise, I would not have been interested in you. But if you had done your worst, your very worst, you likely would still be King of Avornis today."
"I see it," Ortalis said miserably. "I see everything."
"I told your father his successor would not be able to lift the Scepter," the Voice said. "I told him, but he called me liar. Well, he has gotten what he deserves, and now you are getting what you deserve. I daresay he will have something sharp to tell you when you follow him into that selfsame monastery."
"What?" Ortalis yelped. Lanius hadn't said anything about that when he sent Ortalis into the Maze — a monastery, yes, but not that one. Ortalis hadn't imagined Lanius could come up with such an ingenious and nasty revenge. "I'd do almost anything not to see my father again."
"A little late to worry about it now, don't you think?" the Voice said. "You can also tell your father-in-law why you failed to recall him. I am sure he will be interested in hearing about that — and about the stripes on his daughter's back."
"Shut up, curse you!" Ortalis cried furiously. No, he didn't want to see Petrosus, either.
The Voice laughed. How the Voice laughed! "Your curses are worthless. You break wind with your mouth, little man — nothing more. But I have been well and truly cursed by those who knew exactly what they were doing, and who, catching me unawares and trusting — a mistake I shall never make again — had just the power to send me forth and to maroon me, accursed, in this material world. For believe me, otherwise I would not waste my time on such worms as you."
He laughed again, laughed and screamed at the same time. Ortalis woke there at the side of the boat, a cry of horror on his lips. "Shut up, curse you," said one of the rowers — the same thing Ortalis himself had told the Voice.
"But the dream — " Ortalis broke off in confusion. The dream was gone now. Here was reality, and was it much better? He discovered he was nodding to himself. Even going to face his father, even going to face Petrosus, was better than facing the being that owned the Voice. Anything was better than that.
A boot stirred him. "Shut up, I told you. Think you're still king? Not if you can't pick up the Scepter, you're not. Serves you right, by the gods in the heavens!" Was that better than facing the Voice? As a matter of fact, it was.
Grus' biggest surprise at the monastery was how little he minded being there. He was busy with either work or prayer most of the day, but the work wasn't of the sort that would have kept him from thinking. Peeling turnips or washing dishes or chopping firewood didn't take much in the way of brains.
Part of him said he should have been figuring out how to escape, how to get back to the city of Avornis, how to put the crown back on his own head. The rest asked a question he'd never asked before he recovered the Scepter of Mercy: Why?
Before, it would have been a question that got a serious answer. Something always wanted doing, and he'd always been, or seemed to be, the only man who could do it. The nobles of Avornis needed quelling? Who could keep them in line but a strong king? Nobody.
Dagipert of Thervingia wanted to make Lanius his son-in-law and turn Avornis into a Thervingian puppet kingdom? Again, who could guess what mischief might have sprung from that without a strong king to resist? Nobody.
Who could beat back the Chernagor pirates? Who could drive the Menteshe out of Avornis' southern provinces? Was Lanius up to the job? Not likely! Lanius had his virtues, but military prowess wasn't one of them. He was perhaps the least military King of Avornis of all time. (He would have known whether that was true better than Grus did himself.) If Grus hadn't tended to such things, who would have? Once more, nobody.
And there was the Scepter. Lanius was the one who'd thought of using a moncat to get into Yozgat and bring it out. That never would have occurred to Grus, not in a thousand years. But Yozgat lay a long way south of the Stura. Who besides Grus could have taken an Avornan army down to the Menteshe stronghold, besieged it, and given Pouncer the chance to sneak in? Nobody, yet again.
But now the nobles were cowed, the Thervings quiet, the Chernagors intimidated, the Menteshe divided amongst themselves, even the Banished One beaten for the time being, and the Scepter of Mercy back in the city of Avornis where it belonged.
All that being so, what did he have left to do?
He'd had the same thought before, after wielding the Scepter of Mercy against the Banished One. Then, it hadn't seemed so important. He would go back to the capital — he had gone back to the capital — and pick up the reins again. Whatever came along, he would deal with it. And if it turned out to be less exciting than beating back King Dagipert and less dramatic than recovering the Scepter.. well, so what?
Grus had wondered whether Lanius would try to gather more power into his own hands. He'd never imagined Ortalis would. Royal power wasn't the sort that had ever interested Ortalis very much. But now that he had it…
Now that he had it, he was welcome to it, as far as Grus was concerned. If he had great things in him, he could let them out. Grus had trouble imagining that, but life was full of surprises. The brown robe he wore proved that. And if Lanius didn't care to see his brother-in-law ruling the kingdom in his stead, he could do something about it or not, just as he pleased.
It's not my worry, not anymore. That bothered Grus hardly at all. He'd spent a lot of years being worried, and he'd had a lot of important things to worry about. Was he going to get all hot and bothered over whether his son or his son-in-law ended up telling the rest of the Avornans what to do? After fending off King Dagipert, after bringing back the Scepter of Mercy, what difference did something like that make?
Abbot Pipilo came into the kitchen where Grus was washing supper dishes. "You're fitting in here better than I thought you would, Brother," the abbot remarked.