The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  “And I yours, Your Majesty. I hope the gods in the heavens looked over you on your way here and gave you a safe and pleasant journey.” Though not an especially holy man, Anser could sound like one when he had to.

  “Yes, thank you,” Berto said. “I so look forward to seeing the great cathedral once more—and then, perhaps, if all of you would be so kind, the Scepter of Mercy itself?”

  “Without a doubt, Your Majesty,” Lanius said. Grus nodded. Anser’s expression was full of I-told-you-so.

  Along with his followers, the two Kings of Avornis, the arch-hallow, and the men who had ridden with Grus, King Berto rode over the drawbridge and entered the capital. Local citizens came out to cheer him. The older ones no doubt had fearful memories of less friendly Therving visits to the neighborhood of their city, but Dagipert had been dead for a good many years now. Palace officials made sure the crowd was friendly, sometimes with small bribes. That had been Grus’ idea; Lanius, who wouldn’t have thought of it himself, admired it all the more because he wouldn’t have.

  King Berto pointed toward the great cathedral’s spire, a landmark that stood out more than the palace’s disorderly sprawl. “It’s as splendid as I remember, leaping to the heavens,” Berto said. “Will the arch-hallow lead a service for me?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty. I would be honored,” Anser said smoothly. And when they got inside the cathedral, he did a perfectly capable job of saying the required prayers and chanting the hymns that went with them. How deeply he felt what he was doing—indeed, whether he felt it at all—was a different question, but, with luck, not one that occurred to the King of Thervingia.

  The more obvious question had occurred to Berto. “He looks like you,” he murmured to Grus during a lull in the services.

  Lanius wondered how the other king would handle that. “D’you think so?” Grus answered, his voice bland. But then he relented. “He is my son, Your Majesty, but on the wrong side of the blanket, if you know what I mean.”

  “Ah. Yes. Of course.” Berto did his best to look worldly-wise. “You seem to have found a good place for him here, for I can tell how much he loves the gods.”

  That meant Anser made a better actor than Lanius had suspected. If Berto had spoken of the chase … There, the arch-hallow’s enthusiasm was altogether unfeigned. Well, Anser had earned some good hunting with his performance here today.

  Berto bowed and knelt and prayed and chanted with unfeigned enthusiasm of his own. Lanius tried his best to match, or at least to appear to match, the King of Thervingia’s piety. He noticed Grus doing the same thing. His eye slid to the Thervings who’d accompanied their king to the city of Avornis. They also did not seem to be merely going through the motions. Maybe they were as sincere as Berto, or maybe, like courtiers everywhere, they simply had the sense to follow him in whatever direction he went.

  “Coming here does my soul good,” Berto said when the service ended. “This wonderful building reminds me how important the gods are to us all. You Avornans are so lucky, to be able to worship here whenever you please.” He paused. Lanius and Grus both nodded politely. Neither said anything. Berto went on, “Would it be … could it be possible for me to see the Scepter of Mercy now?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” Lanius and Grus said together. Lanius added, “The palace is only a short walk away.”

  Queen Estrilda waited at the entrance. So did Queen Sosia, with Crex and Pitta. And so did Prince Ortalis and Princess Limosa, with Capella and baby Marinus. King Berto was unfailingly polite to the rest of the Avornan royal family. It was plain, though, that they interested him not in the least. And why should they have? Next to the Scepter of Mercy, they were only … people.

  Lanius hoped the servants had gotten all the trophies won in battle against the Thervings out of sight. He didn’t want to remind Berto how often their kingdoms had clashed in days gone by.

  Guardsmen drew themselves up to stiff attention as the three kings came up to the Scepter of Mercy. “How beautiful it is!” Berto whispered. “That jewel … Yes, you are lucky, all of you. You tempt me to go to war to carry it back to Thervingia.” He laughed. “That is a joke, my friends. No one who does not serve the Banished One could want to take the Scepter away from its proper home.”

  If it was a joke, Lanius found it far from funny. He thought of a way to test it. He lifted the Scepter of Mercy and handed it to Grus, hoping the other King of Avornis was thinking along with him. And Grus was. Most ceremoniously, he passed the Scepter to Berto.

  The King of Thervingia gasped at the honor the Avornans had done him. And it was an honor. But it was also a test. If he wanted to steal the Scepter, wouldn’t it sense as much and not let him hold it? So Lanius reasoned, anyhow.

  But King Berto had no trouble holding the Scepter. An exalted look spread over his face. “In my hands,” he murmured. “In my hands …” He bowed deeply to Lanius and to Grus, then returned the Scepter of Mercy to Lanius. “I prove myself worthy of it by giving it back.”

  At that, Lanius and Grus both bowed to him. “We realized the same thing, Your Majesty,” Lanius said respectfully. “If the Scepter has a secret, that is it.” And it was a secret the Banished One would never, ever understand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ortalis was convinced that if he’d been any more bored, he would have been dead. His father and Lanius and the visiting barbarian were making such a fuss over the Scepter of Mercy, he more than half wished it would have stayed down in Yozgat. Had his father—had anyone—ever made such a fuss over him? He didn’t think so.

  Lanius, of course, was crazy for old things, and now he had his hands on something as old as the hills. It all made Ortalis want to yawn. So the Scepter was here. Kings could pick it up and do things with it. When I’m king, I’ll pick it up and do things with it, Ortalis thought. Until then, who cares?

  “Do you like to go hunting?” Ortalis asked Berto at a feast the evening after the King of Thervingia came to the palace.

  Berto paused to gnaw the meat off a roasted duck drumstick before answering, “Not very much, I’m afraid, Your Highness. I find prayer and contemplation more pleasant ways to pass the time.”

  “Oh,” said Ortalis, who found prayer and contemplation even duller than all the unending chatter about the Scepter, if such a thing was possible. He thought for a moment, then tried again, asking, “What do you like in a woman?”

  “Well, piety, to begin with,” Berto said, and Ortalis gave up. Even if the Therving had no … special tastes, he could have come up with something more interesting than that. But he made his answer seem the most natural thing in the world.

  Once more, Ortalis fought to stifle a yawn. He reached for another chunk of duck himself. The dead bird had to be more interesting than the Therving.

  “What of you, Your Highness?” Berto asked. “How did you aid your father and your sister’s husband in recovering the Scepter of Mercy?”

  “In … recovering it?” Ortalis could hardly believe his ears. He couldn’t have cared less about getting the Scepter back. As far as he was concerned, the Banished One was welcome to it. But King Berto would have dropped the leg bone if he’d said that. The only thing he did say was, “Well, any way I could, of course.”

  That did the job, and with room to spare. The King of Thervingia beamed at him and raised his winecup in salute. “Spoken like the true son of a great father!” He gulped down the sweet red wine.

  So did Ortalis, who needed little excuse, or sometimes none at all, for some serious guzzling. A serving girl poured his cup full again after he drained it. He smiled at her. She quickly found something to do somewhere else. He laughed; he’d drunk enough to make even that funny. He wanted to tell Berto that of course he was Grus’ true son, that Grus’ bastard son was a nice enough fellow but of no real consequence. He wanted to, but he didn’t. To Grus, he was of no real consequence himself. He knew that—knew it and hated it.

  “I’ll show him,” he muttered. “I’ll show e
verybody, I will.”

  “What’s that, Your Highness?” King Berto asked. Why wasn’t he too drunk to pay attention to someone else’s private mutterings?

  “Have you ever listened to a voice? A Voice, I mean?” Ortalis said in return. “A Voice that told you—that showed you—the way things were supposed to be?”

  Berto frowned, which made his bushy eyebrows almost meet above his long, straight nose. “Are you talking about your conscience? I know I try to listen to mine. I am only a man. I do things I wish I hadn’t later on. But I do try.”

  They both used Avornan, but they didn’t speak the same language. Ortalis was no more talking about his conscience than he’d thought of looking for piety in a woman. He almost told Berto so to his face, just to see the barbarian splutter. But something—maybe even the Voice—warned him that wouldn’t be a good idea.

  He endured the rest of the banquet, then staggered off to bed. After blearily kissing Limosa half on the mouth, half on the cheek, he fell deep into sodden slumber. And then, as he’d hoped he would, he dreamed.

  The dream felt and seemed more real than reality. These dreams always did. He looked out on the world the way it should have been. The biggest difference was that it was a world that recognized Ortalis as its rightful lord and master. The Voice said, “They mock you behind your back.”

  When the Voice said something, there was no room for doubt. “Oh, they do, do they?” Ortalis growled. “Well, I’ll show them. I’ll show them all. You just see if I don’t.”

  “Time grows short,” the Voice warned. “Chances grow few. You would do well to seize the ones you have.”

  “I will. Oh, I will,” Ortalis said. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll take care of everything—just wait and see.”

  “Are your friends your true friends?” the Voice asked. “Are your enemies lulled and drowsy?”

  Ortalis thought of Serinus and Gygis, and of the other young officers he’d cultivated since Marinus was born. “My friends are my true friends,” he answered. “They know where their hopes lie.”

  “Good,” the Voice said smoothly. “And your enemies? Are they lulled?”

  At that, Ortalis laughed a raucous and bitter laugh, there in the middle of his dream. “Why should they need lulling? They don’t think they do, not from the likes of me.”

  For a dreadful moment, he wondered if the Voice would laugh, too—laugh at him, not with him. But it didn’t. Instead, it said, “Well, then, the time is coming, and coming soon, don’t you think?”

  “What time?” Ortalis asked, and the dream showed him. It was better than he’d imagined, better than he could have imagined before the Voice started speaking to him in the night. The time was coming soon? He could hardly wait.

  Grus and Pterocles and Otus stood staring at the Scepter of Mercy. Grus could understand why King Berto had traveled so far to see the great talisman. If it had come to Thervingia, he thought he might have traveled there to see it himself. But it was here in the city of Avornis, and he could look on it, he could use it, whenever he liked. Somehow, that pleased him less than he’d thought it would. Maybe being able to leave it, as Berto had done, was better than keeping it.

  Otus didn’t think so. A smile on his face, the former thrall said, “It freed my folk.” He shook his head and bowed to Grus and Pterocles. “Well, no. You two freed my folk. But the Scepter made sure they will stay free.”

  “So it did,” Grus said. And the Scepter had let him impose his will on the Banished One. With it in his hand, he’d been, for a little while, as great as—greater than—the exiled god. He had been … but now, again, he wasn’t. He snapped his fingers.

  “What is it, Your Majesty?” Pterocles asked.

  “Where do I go from here?” Grus had a question of his own.

  The wizard frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Where do I go from here?” Grus repeated. At last he did understand at least some of what was troubling him. “Where?” he said yet again. “What’s left for me to do, after I’ve done this?” He pointed to the Scepter.

  “Why, live happily ever after.” That wasn’t Pterocles but Otus. He went on, “By the gods in the heavens, if anyone’s ever earned the right, you’re the man.”

  Slowly, Grus shook his head. “This isn’t a fairy tale, I’m afraid. I wish it were. I’ve spent a lot of years matched against the Thervings and the Chernagors and the Menteshe and our own nobles. I’ve fought and I’ve schemed and I’ve plotted. Lanius worked out how to get the Scepter back from Yozgat, and I went and did it. I did it, and I used the Scepter the way you said, Otus—and now what can I possibly do for the rest of my days that will matter even a tenth as much?”

  “Oh,” Pterocles said softly. “Now I see.”

  Otus still looked puzzled. He had what he wanted—his soul to call his own and his woman to call his own, too—and he was content. What Grus had was the certain knowledge that he’d already done the greatest deeds of his life. He was proud of them, yes, but they made everything that might come after feel like an anticlimax.

  And how many years of anticlimax did he have to look forward to? No way for him to be sure, of course. Perhaps the gods in the heavens were sure of such things. If so, keeping it to themselves was one of the few kindnesses they showed mortal men.

  Grus turned away from the Scepter of Mercy. Getting what you’d always wanted your whole life long was wonderful. Having it in front of you and knowing you would never want anything as much again as long as you lived—and also knowing that nothing you did want would be of any great consequence next to what you already had—was daunting.

  For a moment, he imagined he heard laughter far off in the distance. Then he realized he wasn’t imagining it; it was a servant somewhere halfway across the palace. A sigh of relief escaped him. He’d feared it was the Banished One, getting the last laugh after all.

  He looked south, as he’d hardly done since coming back to the city of Avornis. Suppose the exiled god had gotten what he always wanted. Suppose he’d been able to master the Scepter of Mercy and regain rule in the heavens. Would he have lived happily ever after? Or would even limitless domination have palled after a while? Grus didn’t know, of course. By the nature of things, he couldn’t know how things would have gone for the Banished One. But he knew how he would guess.

  It also occurred to him that the Banished One didn’t know how lucky he was, not to have gotten his heart’s desire. He could go on scheming and plotting and trying to come up with ways to get the Scepter of Mercy out of the hands of the Kings of Avornis. That wouldn’t be so easy now, not since Grus had enjoined him against using any of the surrounding peoples against the kingdom. But the exiled god could keep on trying. Since he hadn’t gotten his heart’s desire, his existence still held purpose.

  Grus wished he could be sure the same held true for his own.

  Lanius also found himself wondering what to do now that the Scepter of Mercy had returned to Avornis. He was better than Grus at finding ways to occupy his time. He wrote a long, detailed account of King Berto’s visit to the capital. He feared Crex wouldn’t read the account; his son hadn’t shown much interest in How to Be a King. But even if Crex never did glance at it, it would stay in the archives. Some other king might find it useful one day—or, if not that, it might help keep the future king awake on a long, warm summer afternoon. That was immortality, of a sort.

  Immortality of another sort made Sosia’s belly bulge. Lanius hoped for a second son. Things would feel … safer if Crex had a brother. And who could say? Maybe the new child would have the scholarly temperament Crex lacked.

  Sosia didn’t worry about any of that. “I want this baby to come out,” she said. “I’m tried of looking like I swallowed a pumpkin. I’m even tireder of squatting over a chamber pot gods only know how many times a day.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lanius said. “I can’t do anything about that.”

  She sent him a glance half affectionate, half annoyed. �
�You did have something to do with this business, you know.”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted.

  “I just wish Queen Quelea had found a better way to go about it,” his wife said. She eyed him again. “Can the Scepter of Mercy do anything about that? It would be a mercy if it could.”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t think so,” Lanius answered, flabbergasted. “There’s nothing in the archives about using it for anything like that, anyhow.”

  Sosia sighed. “I might have known. Of course, men wouldn’t think to use it against the pangs of childbirth. They’re men.” She brightened, but only for a moment. Then gloom returned. “Their wives would have thought of it, though. I’m sure of that. So I suppose you’re right. Too bad.”

  Remembering the cries he’d heard from women in labor, Lanius found himself nodding. “I’ll use it when your time comes,” he promised. “I’m sure of one thing—it can’t hurt you.”

  “Thank you,” Sosia said. “You do care about me, when—”

  “Of course I do,” Lanius interrupted.

  But Sosia hadn’t finished, and she intended to. “When you’re not thinking about old parchments in the archives, or about your moncats—”

  He tried interrupting again. “If it weren’t for Pouncer and things I found in the archives, we wouldn’t have the Scepter of Mercy. I don’t think we would, anyway.” Grus might have been able to break into Yozgat, but even the other king didn’t think it would have been easy.

  Sosia waved Pouncer—and the Scepter—aside, too. “Or about your serving girls.” That was where she’d been heading all along.

  The funny thing was that, even if she didn’t—and wouldn’t—understand as much, she was right to lump the maidservants with the documents and the animals. They were a hobby. He enjoyed them, but after Cristata he’d never conceived a passion for any of them. But that wasn’t what Sosia wanted to hear. Lanius knew exactly what she wanted to hear, and he said it. “I’m sorry, dear.”