The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  Grus nodded. “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”

  “A couple of things occur to me,” the witch said. “One is that thralls do use words—after a fashion. That has to mean they’re able to think after a fashion, too.”

  “Maybe,” Grus said, but he didn’t believe it. “And?”

  “The Banished One may be telling them what to do, either directly or through the Menteshe.”

  King Grus contemplated that. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “I don’t like it a bit. How can you tell whether it’s so?”

  “I can ask some of the thralls who’ve crossed the Stura at night whether the Menteshe told them to cross then,” Alca said.

  “And if they say no, or if you can’t tell? How can you find out whether the Banished One gave them a direct order?”

  The witch sighed. “I could ask them that, too, I suppose. I don’t want to try to use magic to find out. I’ve been lucky enough to live through that sort of magic twice. The thrall the second time wasn’t so lucky, though. And next time it might be me.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Grus said. “I won’t ask you to try anything that might hurt you. I would like to know, though.” He paused in thought. “Can you use a truth spell to see if what you’re getting out of them is worth having?”

  “I can try,” Alca answered. “That shouldn’t make me run directly up against the Banished One’s wizardry, which is what I want not to do.”

  Accompanied by Grus’ guards, the witch and the king went back to the amphitheater the next morning. Guardsmen brought another thrall out of the excavated pit. The woman stared at Alca with mild, incurious eyes. She brushed at her filthy, scraggly hair—an absentminded gesture.

  Absentminded is right, Grus thought. If so much of her mind weren’t absent, we wouldn’t be doing this now. Alca asked, as she had before, “Why did you cross the Stura? Why did you come into Avornis?”

  The thrall stared at her. A frown spread over the woman’s dirty, sun-wrinkled face. “Had to,” she said at last, her voice rusty from disuse.

  “I see.” Alca nodded briskly, as though speaking to someone in full possession of her wits. “And why did you have to?”

  Another frown from the thrall. She might have been thinking over her answer. She might have been, but she probably wasn’t. “Told me,” she said at last Her Avornan was an old-fashioned dialect, with a hissing accent surely taken from the Menteshe who ruled on the southern bank of the river.

  “Ah.” Alca turned to King Grus. “Now, with a little luck, we begin to learn something. I have the spell ready to go.”

  “Good,” Grus said.

  “I hope it’s for the good,” Alca said. “Remember what happened to that other thrall.” She began to make passes in the air in front of her as she asked the woman thrall, “Who told you you had to come here?”

  “He did,” the woman replied at once.

  Alca muttered something under her breath that was more fitting of a longshoreman than a witch. “Let’s try again,” she said, and repeated the series of passes. “Who was he?” she asked when they were done.

  “Him who told me,” the thrall said.

  The witch muttered some more, louder this time. The thrall ignored that. She looked down at her hands, which were worn and scarred from a lifetime’s carelessness and toil. Alca gathered herself. To Grus, she said, “So far, the woman is telling the truth. The only trouble is, it’s not a useful truth.”

  “Is she talking that way on purpose?” Grus asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alca told him. “I hope not. If she—or rather, if the wizardry inside her—is having sport with me …” She muttered yet again. “I can’t think of a worse insult.”

  “What can you do about it?” the king asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know whether I can do anything,” Alca answered. “That’s part of what makes it such an insult.” She turned back to the thrall. “Did a mortal man tell you to come here?” The woman shook her head. Alca brightened. “Did one who isn’t mortal tell you to come here?”

  The woman shook her head again.

  “Has to be one or the other,” Grus said.

  “With the Banished One, who knows?” Alca replied. She turned back to the female thrall, took a deep breath, and asked, “Did the Banished One tell you to leave your home and come into Avornis?”

  Alca visibly braced herself, waiting for the woman’s answer. Grus could hardly blame her, remembering the magic back at the royal palace and remembering the thrall falling over dead here at the amphitheater in Cumanus. The woman grinned—not an expression of mirth, but one that made her look uncommonly like a skull with glittering eyes. “I know,” she whispered, and nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  “Then tell me,” the witch commanded. But the woman only kept staring, that—mocking?—grin showing snaggled teeth, several of them broken. Alca’s lips thinned in anger at being defied. “In the names of the gods—in the holy names of King Olor and Queen Quelea—tell me!”

  The thrall woman’s grin vanished, to be replaced by a snarl of hate. “Those names mean nothing to me here. Nothing! Less than nothing!” The voice with which she spoke was not her own, but a resonant baritone. For a moment, it put Grus in mind of the late Arch-Hallow Bucco’s golden tones. Then, involuntarily, the king shook his head. Bucco would have killed to claim the sounds coming from this woman’s mouth. She—or that which spoke through her—went on, “They cast me down from my rightful place. They sent me hither. That place, they say, is theirs. This place, then, is mine. They trifle with me here at their peril. And one day, I shall see them again in their own habitation, which is mine as well. Then shall they learn even there that they trifled with me at their peril.”

  After that outburst, the thrall went limp in the guards’ arms. Her eyes sagged shut. She still breathed, though, and when Grus felt for a pulse he found one. “Are you answered?” he asked Alca. His voice wobbled. He knew more than a little pride that he’d managed to speak at all.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, and her voice shook, too. “That the Banished One spoke through her there—who could doubt it? But did he himself set upon her the impulse to flee north? Did he himself, or some part of his essence, dwell within her all this while? Did he know we were questioning her? I don’t know. How can I tell?”

  “What of your truth spell?” Grus asked.

  “What of it?” Alca returned. “She—or the Banished One through her—spoke the truth, I think. But he never answered the question I asked.”

  “Mph.” Grus grunted, thinking back. “Yes, you’re right. But the woman—or the Banished One—spoke the truth?”

  “As far as I could tell. And that spell is a good one,” Alca said.

  “Does that mean the gods truly mean nothing to the Banished One?” Grus asked. If it did mean that, if the Banished One was supreme in this world as the gods were in the heavens … If that was so, what point to any of his struggles? None he could see, none at all.

  But the witch shook her head. “He said their names meant nothing to him. That, I think, is true. But he is ever one to twist truth and turn it, so that we see it in mirrors within mirrors within mirrors. Take care with him and his words, Your Majesty. Always take care. That their names mean nothing to him does not mean their essence means nothing.”

  Grus shivered. “I hope you’re right. If you’re wrong … If you’re wrong, we can never hope to beat him, can we?”

  Alca shrugged. “What difference does it make? If the Banished One ever swallows Avornis, all of us will be made into thralls. You can look at things however you please. Me, I’d rather be dead. Dead, I know I’m out of his grasp.”

  “Something to that.” Grus looked down into the amphitheater. The thralls in there were indifferent to his presence. They were mostly indifferent to one another, too, though a couple of them sat side by side, picking lice and fleas from each other’s shaggy hair and ragged clothes. The sight didn’t reassure Grus. Lanius’ moncats might
have done the same.

  “I wish we could free them,” Alca said. “Free all of them, I mean, not just the few here where we have at least a chance of eventually lifting the spells that cloud their minds.” She looked south, toward the Stura and beyond. In a whisper, she went on, “So many of them under the Banished One’s hand. And yet their ancestors were Avornans, just as ours were. It isn’t right that they should be made into beasts.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Grus agreed. “Winning a war against the Menteshe—and against the Banished One—won’t be easy, though. Crossing the Stura to win wars against them would be even harder than beating them back from our own land.”

  He thought about Lanius again. Lanius knew more Avornan history than Grus cared to contemplate. He knew how many efforts to push the border south of the Stura once more had come to grief. He would undoubtedly be able to give plenty of good reasons why one more would come to grief, too.

  One of those good reasons also seemed only too obvious to Grus. “How can we possibly hope to beat the Banished One?” he asked. “Every time Avornis has tried to cross the Stura since the Menteshe took the Scepter of Mercy from us, we’ve had disasters.” He’d known that much before Lanius gave him the gruesome details, though he hadn’t known how gruesome they were.

  “Mostly, he works through men,” Alca insisted. “We can beat the Menteshe taken by themselves, can’t we? If we can’t do that, all else fails.”

  “True.” Grus made a sour face. “Some of the princes who rule the Menteshe aren’t anything much. Prince Ulash, though, who holds the lands right across the river from where we are now … He’s a cunning old fox, Ulash is. He’d be no bargain even if the Banished One didn’t back him.”

  “Why worry about him, then? Why not go after some of the others—some of the easier ones?”

  “For one thing, if we get tied up in a war somewhere else along the river, what’s he likely to do? Jump on us with both feet, that’s what. And, for another”—King Grus lowered his voice, not that that was likely to do him much good—“Ulash’s capital is Yozgat.”

  “Oh,” Alca said in a small voice. Yozgat—where the Scepter of Mercy was held. She bobbed her head to Grus. “Those are good points. Plainly, I would never make a general.”

  “Well, I would never make a wizard, and that’s even plainer.” Grus stared down into the amphitheater again. It was alarmingly like watching animals in a cage. It didn’t feel like watching people at all. Realizing that hurt.

  Alca didn’t disagree with him. She went back to the problem he’d been worrying at, too, and asked, “If we got into a fight with any one of the Menteshe princes, won’t all of them rush to his aid?”

  “I don’t think so,” Grus answered. “It hasn’t worked that way up till now, anyhow. The Menteshe have a lot more—freedom of will, I guess you’d call it—than thralls do. They wouldn’t be much use to the Banished One if they acted like … that.” He pointed into the amphitheater. “He needs them able to think and to fight. And they do fight—among themselves, too, sometimes. They won’t come to each other’s aid unless that looks like a good idea to them.”

  “I see.” Alca frowned as she worked through what that was likely to mean. “Then … even if the Banished One disappeared tomorrow—”

  “Gods grant that he would!” Grus exclaimed, and then, “Excuse me for interrupting.”

  “It’s all right, Your Majesty.” The witch went back to her own train of thought. “Even if the Banished One disappeared tomorrow, the Menteshe would still be just as dangerous to us as ever.”

  “Not quite,” Grus answered. “They wouldn’t have his magic, his might, backing them. But they would still be dangerous, the same way the Thervings are dangerous. They’re on our border, they’re tough fighters, and they wouldn’t mind taking our land away from us.”

  “I see,” Alca said again. Now she looked down at the thralls. After a minute or so, biting her lip, she turned away from the amphitheater. “That is a monstrous sorcery, robbing them of so much of what it means to be human.”

  “Yes.” Grus went on, “I wonder if the Banished One feels the same way about Olor and Quelea and the rest of the gods. When they cast him out of the heavens, didn’t they rob him of most of what it means to be divine?”

  Alca started to answer, then checked herself. “I never thought of that,” she said slowly. “I wonder if anyone has ever thought of it. You should talk it over with a high-ranking cleric, not with me. If we understand the Banished One, perhaps we’ll have a better chance of doing something about him. How clever you are, Your Majesty! That would never have occurred to me.”

  Grus didn’t feel particularly clever, and he had his doubts about whether understanding the Banished One would do much to hold him back. The problem with trying to oppose him was his divine, or nearly divine, strength. How much would understanding him let the Avornans, or anyone else, undercut that? Not much—not as far as Grus could see.

  But he could see other possibilities if Alca happened to be impressed with him. “Will you have supper with me tonight?” he asked, as casually as he could.

  The smile Alca gave back wasn’t one of eager assent. It was a woman’s amused smile. “Remember what happened the last time you asked me that, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t think that will happen again.”

  “How do you mean that?” she asked. “Do you mean you won’t try feeling me up, or do you mean you think I’ll enjoy it more this time?”

  He muttered under his breath. He thought he’d phrased that so slyly. He didn’t seem as clever as he thought he was, let alone as she thought he was. “I mean whatever you want me to mean,” he said at last.

  “Do you?” Alca said. Grus gave back a nod that challenged her to call him a liar. For a moment, he thought she would. But then she smiled again, the same mostly wry smile she’d used before. “All right, Your Majesty. How could I possibly doubt you?” The words said she couldn’t. Her tone said something else altogether.

  Well, Grus thought with an inward sigh, no seduction tonight. He still looked forward to the supper. Alca was good company, regardless of whether she cared to let him take her to bed.

  Here in Cumanus, the supper would be better than with an army on campaign. The cook had the leisure to do things right, and could buy the best in the marketplace instead of depending on whatever foraging soldiers brought in. The leg of mutton he made was a masterpiece of its kind.

  “So much wine?” Alca asked as Grus poured his cup full again.

  “If I get drunk, I won’t have to think about thralls for a while,” he answered. “The less I have to think about thralls, the happier I’ll be.”

  The witch nodded. “Well, I can certainly understand that,” she said, and filled her own mug from the jar on the table. After drinking, she asked, “What will you do about them, Your Majesty?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.” Admitting he didn’t have all the answers was something of a relief. Grus could do that with Alca, for she already knew it. He could even ask, “What would you do if you were in my place?”

  “I would never want to be queen,” Alca said. “How can you go through life never trusting anyone?”

  “I don’t,” Grus answered. “But I’m careful about the people I do trust. That’s one of the reasons I wanted you with me when I came down here to the south.”

  “One of the reasons.” Alca’s eyebrows rose. “What were some of the other ones?”

  She didn’t mind mocking him, whether he was king or not. He smiled his blandest smile. “Funny you should ask. I’m afraid I don’t remember.” He wondered if she was trying to tease him into making advances so she could slap them down. He hoped not—he’d thought better of her than that—but it struck him as anything but impossible.

  “No, eh?” Alca wagged a finger at him. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you please,” Grus said. “You will anyhow.”

  “And what would you
have me believe?” Alca asked.

  “That I’m doing what I promised earlier today,” Grus answered.

  “You think so, do you?” The witch filled her wine cup yet again.

  What was that supposed to mean? Grus almost asked the question aloud, but checked himself. He said, “I do thank you for all the help you’ve given me.”

  “You’re welcome, Your Majesty,” Alca said gravely. “You’re very welcome.” She raised the cup. “Your good health.”

  “And yours,” Grus said. He would have a headache in the morning, but morning seemed a long way away.

  “Thank you.” Alca drank. So did Grus. She eyed him. “Have you decided why so many thralls are coming over the river and into Avornis?”

  “My best guess is, the Banished One wants to make trouble and to see what we can do about it,” he replied. “We have to take anything seriously if it’s got anything to do with the Banished One.”

  “Yes!” The witch’s agreement startled him with its vehemence.

  He said, “If only we could strike at him as easily as he strikes at us.”

  “Yes.” Alca sipped again. “I wish …”

  “What?” Grus asked.

  “Nothing: Never mind. I didn’t say anything.”

  “You started to.” Grus got to his feet and walked—carefully—toward her.

  “If you can’t see for yourself, you’ve got no business knowing.”

  “Can’t see what for myself?”

  “Whatever it is you’re not seeing, of course.”

  “You’re no help. All I see is you.”

  “Well, then,” Alca said, as though that explained everything.

  Grus reached for her like a drowning man reaching for a floating plank. Her arms tightened around him. When their lips met, she kissed him as he was kissing her.

  “I didn’t think—” Now he was the one who had trouble going on.

  “It’s all right,” Alca answered. “You said you wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want. You aren’t.”

  “Gods be praised!” Grus said. He kissed her again. He held her tight, tight enough that she couldn’t possibly doubt kissing her wasn’t the only thing he had in mind. She didn’t pull away. His hands began to wander. Alca purred, down deep in her throat.