The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  He knows me, too, Lanius thought with a certain wry amusement. “It’s the archives, I’m afraid, unless you’re up on what was going on south of the Stura four hundred years ago.”

  “That’s when we lost the Scepter of Mercy, isn’t it?” Anser said.

  Lanius nodded. He wouldn’t have expected the arch-hallow to know even so much. “It is,” he said, and hoped he didn’t sound too surprised. “I’m trying to find out if there were any plagues around that time.”

  “Oh,” Anser said, and nodded. Word of the outbreak among the thralls hadn’t spread widely, but it had gotten to him.

  The ecclesiastical archives resided in a series of descending subbasements under the great cathedral. Most of the time, the papers and parchments dwelt in darkness. When someone went down to search among them, he took a lamp with him and lit torches that waited for fire.

  Torchlight was even less satisfactory to read by than the dusty sunlight that illuminated the royal archives. Lanius wondered how anyone ever found anything here, though he’d done it himself. To be fair, these archives were better organized than the ones in the palace, which, as far as the king could see, weren’t organized at all. The king suspected that was the late Ixoreus’ doing. The royal archives hadn’t had such a conscientious keeper for centuries, if ever.

  Here were records of prayers for the salvation of the kingdom, prayers for the safe return of the Scepter of Mercy, prayers for … Lanius bent closer and began to read more attentively. He started scribbling notes.

  “Something, Your Majesty?” a guard asked. The soldiers had insisted on accompanying him down into the quiet dark, though he wasn’t likely to be assailed by anything more ferocious than a termite here.

  “Something, yes,” Lanius answered abstractedly. He scribbled faster. If he bent too low over the manuscript, his shadow kept him from reading it. If he didn’t, he had a hard time making sense of the faded, old-fashioned script.

  In the end, he got what he wanted, or hoped he did. When he stood up and stretched, the guard said, “Up now?” He sounded eager, and explained why. “Feels … peculiar down here with all the dark pressing on you.”

  “Really?” Lanius shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. I didn’t even notice, in fact.”

  “Lucky you,” the guard said with a shudder.

  “Maybe so,” the king replied. “Yes, maybe so.”

  As the pestilence spread in Cumanus, Grus wondered more and more whether coming to the town by the Stura had been a good idea. He shook his head. That wasn’t true—or rather, that wasn’t half of what he wondered these days. He wondered exactly how big an idiot he’d been.

  Fleeing back to the city of Avornis wouldn’t help him, either. By now, the disease was established to the north of him. He wasn’t sure it had gotten back to the capital, but he knew it was loose in some of the towns through which he would have to go. And so he stayed in Cumanus, and so he worried.

  He stayed healthy. So did Pterocles. If the wizard escaped the disease, it was either good luck or a strong constitution, for he immersed himself in learning all he could about it. That meant studying people who came down with it, trying to cure them, touching them, poking them, prodding them—doing everything he could to catch it except petitioning the Banished One.

  Pterocles worked closely with the handful of wizards and witches in Cumanus. A couple of them caught the disease. A witch promptly died. Her body went on an enormous pyre with those of others who’d perished of the pestilence. The yellow-robed high hallow asked Grus to thrust a torch into the pyre. Since the high-ranking priest was there to pray for those who had died, the king didn’t see how he could refuse.

  The wood of the pyre had been well soaked in oil. When Grus lit it, the blast of heat and flame made him retreat in a hurry. A great column of black smoke rose into the gray sky.

  “May their souls find repose,” the yellow-robed prelate said solemnly.

  “May it be so,” Grus agreed. Setting the pyre alight made him remember the time some years back when he’d brought a torch up to the pile of wood on which his father lay. Some men would have mentioned that to the priest for the sake of his sympathy. Grus kept it to himself. To his way of thinking, it was no one’s business but his own.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” said a gray-haired woman in somber black—she had a husband or a child or perhaps a brother or sister burning on the pyre. “Thank you for showing you care.”

  That touched him. He asked, “Are you well?” He had to raise his voice to make himself heard through the roar and crackle of the flames.

  “I think so,” she answered, and then shrugged. “And if I’m not, they’ll burn me, too, and I’ll have company in the world to come.” She bobbed her head to him and limped away.

  Pterocles hadn’t come to the ceremony. He was working with still-living victims of the plague, trying to come up with magic that would counter the torment from which they suffered. The next luck he found would be the first.

  “I’ve tried all the usual spells,” he told Grus that evening, his voice clotted with frustration. “I’ve tried all the variants I can come up with. None of them does any good that I can see. The physicians are trying everything they know, too. They aren’t having much luck, either. If you catch this, you get better or else you die. That’s about the size of it.”

  A lot of people were dying. Grus tried not to think of the stink of the pyre. He had as much luck as anyone usually does when trying not to think of something. He said, “Did you try any spells that made people worse instead of better?”

  “Plenty of them,” Pterocles answered. “You can be sure I only tried those once.”

  “Do they have anything in common?” Grus asked. “If they do, and if you take whatever that is out of them, is what’s left worth anything?”

  The wizard frowned. “That’s an interesting way of looking at things. I don’t know. I suppose I could find out.” He paused. Enthusiasm built slowly in him. After what he’d been through, anything except exhaustion built slowly in him. “I suppose I should find out,” he said after another little while. “Thank you, Your Majesty. That’s something, anyway.”

  “I have no idea whether it is or not,” Grus said. “I throw it out for whatever you think it’s worth. I’m no sorcerer, and I don’t pretend to be one—a good thing, too, or some poor fools would be in trouble for depending on my magic.”

  “You may not be a wizard, but you can think straight,” Pterocles said. “And don’t think you’ll get away with telling me that isn’t so.”

  “I wasn’t sure thinking straight mattered for wizards,” Grus said. “The way it looks to ordinary people, the crookeder you go at things, the better.”

  “Oh, no, Your Majesty. There are rules,” Pterocles said firmly. Then he paused again, paused and sighed. “There are rules for ordinary sorcerers, anyway, for wizards and witches. Whether the Banished One has any rules … Well, people have been asking themselves that for a lot of years.”

  “You so relieve my mind,” Grus said, and wished that were truth instead of irony.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lanius had a large map of the Kingdom of Avornis brought to his bedchamber. He pinned it to the wall despite Sosia’s squawks. In most years, the map inhabited the treasury minister’s office, and was used to show which cities and provinces had paid their taxes and which had revenues still outstanding.

  This year’s revenues had all come in. Lanius used the map for a different and grimmer purpose—to chart the plague’s advance through Avornis. It spread along the routes he would have expected. It came up from the Stura toward the city of Avornis along the roads couriers and merchants most often used. When it took sidetracks, it traveled more slowly. Large stretches of the kingdom well away from the main routes stayed happily unaffected. They probably didn’t even know a new pestilence was on the loose. Anyone who brought the word might bring the sickness, too.

  The disease was going to get to the capital. Lanius could see that.
He said nothing to Sosia about it. Odds were she could figure it out for herself. If she couldn’t, he didn’t want to worry her.

  One day, she said, “Ortalis and Limosa have taken their children out to the countryside. Do you think we should do the same?”

  She could see, then. And so could her brother—or, perhaps more likely, his wife. Lanius only shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can know right now. Maybe this will follow them. Maybe it will get there ahead of them. We have no way of knowing.”

  Sosia sent him a sour look. “You aren’t much help.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, though he was more annoyed than sorry. “I have no good answers for you, or even for myself.”

  “You’re talking about the heir to the throne,” Sosia said. “If anything happens to Crex, it passes through Ortalis to Marinus.”

  That appealed to Lanius no more than it did to Sosia. He wanted to point out that they were trying to have another child, but realized she wouldn’t heed that. They might not succeed. If they did, it might be a girl. If it was a boy, it might not live long. So many things could go wrong.

  What he did say was, “If you send the children away and they get sick, you’ll blame whoever told you to send them. The same if they stay. My own view is that it won’t matter much one way or the other, so do whichever you please. I swear by Olor’s raised right hand that I won’t blame you no matter what happens.” He raised his own hand, as though taking an oath.

  “You’re no help at all!” Sosia said angrily. “These are your children we’re talking about, you know.”

  “I do know that. I’m not likely to forget it,” Lanius said with a touch of anger of his own. “I also know I can’t foretell the future. If you want to know which would be better, or whether either one will make any difference, you’d do better asking a wizard than me.”

  To his surprise, Sosia smiled and nodded and kissed him. “That’s a good idea,” she said. But then her face fell. “I wish Pterocles weren’t down in the south. I wouldn’t like to trust a spell like that to anyone else. It would be like putting Crex and Pitta in some stranger’s hands.”

  She exaggerated, but not by too much. Lanius said, “Write to him, then. Tell him what you want. He’ll find a way to work the magic and let you know what it tells him—if it tells him anything.”

  “I don’t like to wait.…” Sosia said.

  Lanius laughed. That made her angry in a new way. Quickly, he said, “Now you’re being silly. How can waiting matter when there’s no disease here? Write your letter. Send it.”

  He mollified her again. He wished he could have calmed his own worries as easily. Yes, Sosia could write to Pterocles. And Pterocles would cast his spell and write back. And who was chiefly responsible for spreading the pestilence? Couriers coming up from the south. Maybe the one who carried the wizard’s answer would also carry the plague. Could the sorcery take that into account?

  “What is it now?” Sosia asked. She pointed a finger at him. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing, either. I know better. I saw something on your face.”

  He shrugged and tried to minimize it. “The disease is down in the south. I hope Pterocles and your father are well.” That wasn’t exactly what he’d worried about, but it came close enough to be plausible.

  “Queen Quelea watch over both of them!” Sosia exclaimed. She didn’t ask him any more questions, for which he was duly grateful.

  These days, couriers came south to Cumanus only reluctantly. King Grus had trouble blaming them. He offered extra pay to the men who did ride into danger. Some remained reluctant. Grus forced no one to this duty, and punished no one who refused it. The couriers who would not undertake it could still serve Avornis in other ways, ways less dangerous to them.

  One of the riders who did brave the journey brought Grus a letter from Lanius. The older king wondered what the younger had to say. Only one way to find out—he broke the seal on the letter. Sometimes chatty court gossip filled Lanius’ letters. Sometimes it was the doings of the animal trainer the other king had hired. And sometimes Lanius would go on about things he’d fished out of the archives. Those letters could be interesting or anything but.

  This was one of those letters. Grus saw as much at a glance. He went through it, thankful that Lanius wrote in a large, round hand. The other king was considerate enough to remember that he needed to read things from farther away than he had when he was younger.

  By the time Grus got through the first half of the parchment, his face bore a thoughtful frown. He sent a servant to bring Pterocles to his room in the city governor’s palace. When the wizard got there, his face wore a frown, too—an unhappy one. “You interrupted a spell, Your Majesty,” he said irritably.

  “I’m sorry,” Grus said, “but I’m not very sorry, if you know what I mean. Here. Tell me what you make of this.” He held out the letter he’d just gotten from Lanius.

  Pterocles took it with poor grace. He was about Lanius’ age himself—maybe even younger—and had no trouble reading it at the normal distance. He hadn’t gone far before the frown disappeared from his face. A little later, one of his eyebrows rose. He raced through the rest of the letter. “I suppose, up in the heavens, Olor’s beard collects all kinds of crumbs and scraps,” he said.

  Grus gave him a quizzical look. “I’m sure you’re going somewhere with that, but I can’t for the life of me imagine where.”

  “I am, Your Majesty,” Pterocles assured him. “The god can’t even comb out what gets stuck in there, because things that touch him turn holy themselves. And so nothing ever gets thrown away or discarded. If it’s in his beard, it’s in there for good.”

  “Queen Quelea has even more mercy than I thought,” Grus said.

  Pterocles ignored that sally. “Our archives are just like Olor’s beard,” he said. “If something gets in there, it’s in there for good. And every once in a while we can fish something out, dust it off, and maybe—just maybe—use it again.”

  “This does sound like the same illness to you, then?” Grus said. “It did to me. Maybe the Banished One got lazy.”

  Pterocles stared, blinked, and started to laugh. “I can just imagine him going through his keep down there in the mountains. ‘Mm,’ he’d say. ‘I had pretty good luck with this plague a few hundred years ago. They won’t remember it, those miserable mayfly mortals. Why don’t I haul it out again and see how they like it?’”

  Grus laughed, too, in tones somewhere between admiration and horror. Pterocles had caught the Banished One’s way of thinking almost blasphemously well. The exiled god often mocked men for their short lives when he came to them in dreams. He might well believe a disease not seen for centuries was forgotten. And so it would have been, but for Lanius.

  “I didn’t read the whole letter,” the king said. “What did they do about the pestilence, all those years ago? What could they do about it? Anything? Or do we know what’s biting us without being able to bite back?”

  “He’s passed on the spell the wizards were using then,” Pterocles answered. “Whoever thought of it had nerve. It uses the law of similarity in a way I wouldn’t try unless I was desperate.” His laugh was grim. “Of course, if I watched people dying all around me, I expect I’d get desperate pretty fast.”

  “Can you use it? Can other wizards use it? Will it work again?” Grus asked.

  “I can use it. So can others. It’s not hard to cast—I can see that at a glance,” Pterocles said. “It’s not hard to cast like that, anyway. You don’t have to be a senior sorcerer to be able to get the incantation right. But it’s going to be wearing on the wizards who use it. And you don’t want to make a mistake about which direction the spell runs in. You’d be very unhappy if you did, and so would your patients.” He explained what he meant, and showed Grus the end of the letter to give him more detail.

  The king read that part. He had no sorcerous talent to speak of, and no sorcerous knowledge, either, except the bits and pieces he’d picked up from t
alking with Pterocles and other wizards and witches over the years. He wasn’t sure he would understand, but he had no trouble at all. The problem was nothing if not obvious.

  “Well,” he said, “you don’t want to do that, do you?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Pterocles said, “no.”

  If the plague came to the city of Avornis, Lanius realized he was one of the people likeliest to catch it. Couriers seemed intimately involved in spreading it, and couriers from infected parts of the kingdom kept bringing word of its progress up to the capital. And to whom were they bringing that word? Why, to him. He was the king, the man who most needed to know what was going on elsewhere in Avornis.

  That meant other people in the palace were also among the likeliest to come down sick. And it meant—or might mean—he’d been wrong about what he told Sosia. Maybe getting Crex and Pitta away from the city for a while was a good idea after all. He waited for Pterocles’ letter. When it came back from the south, it said, Getting them away from the capital will not hurt, and may do some good. Lanius wished the wizard would have said something stronger than that, but it was plenty to persuade him—and Sosia, too.

  He wondered if he’d made a mistake waiting for Pterocles’ response. If the children had gotten out of the city sooner … Three days after Crex and Pitta left the palace, Sosia came up to him with a worried look on her face. “Mother’s not feeling well,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” Lanius hoped dread didn’t clog his throat too much. People had any number of ways of falling sick. Queen Estrilda wasn’t a young woman. If she didn’t feel well, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. So he told himself, grasping at straws like a harness maker or a farmer. In some ways, all men were very much alike.

  “She has a fever,” Sosia answered. “She says the light hurts her eyes, and she has some … some bumps on her face.”

  “Bumps,” Lanius echoed tonelessly. His wife nodded. He knew—and Sosia obviously did, too—the pestilence showed itself with fever and with blisters. Not quite apropos of nothing, he said, “I wish Pterocles weren’t down in the south.”