once again, and wanted to be as ready as he could in case the exiled god did. This year, though, he also eyed the news from the south with unusual attention.
It was every bit as bad as Grus had warned him it would be. Half the dismal harvest reports from the regions the Menteshe had ravaged asked for grain and fodder to be sent to towns whose governors insisted their populace would go hungry and animals would starve if they didn’t get that kind of help.
Grus examined the reports from the south, too. He’d seen what was going on down there with his own eyes, and was grim about it. “We’ll have hunger,” he said bluntly. “I’ll thank Queen Quelea for her kindness if we don’t have famine. And if the nomads keep coming up over the Stura year after year, I don’t know what we’ll do. They hurt us badly.”
“Didn’t we hurt them, too?” Lanius asked.
“I hope so,” Grus said. “I hope so, but how can I be sure? They’re so cursed hard to get a grip on.”
“We drove them back over the Stura,” Lanius said.
“No.” Grus shook his head, as relentlessly precise as Lanius was himself most of the time. “We drove them back to the valley of the Stura. They went over by themselves. If Ulash hadn’t chosen that moment to drop dead, we would have had another big fight on our hands.”
“I do wonder what’s happening on the far side of the river,” Lanius said. “Sanjar or Korkut? Korkut or Sanjar? How will the Menteshe choose? How long will it take ehem?”
“How much trouble will we be in once they do?” Grus was also relentlessly practical.
Since Lanius preferred not to dwell on trouble, he asked, “How did Pterocles fare against the nomads’ wizards?”
“Fair,” Grus said, and then shook his head, correcting himself. “No—better than fair. If he hadn’t woken up during that one night attack the Menteshe tried to bring off, it would have done us much more harm. Oh!” He shook his head again. “He also says he’s full of new ideas about how to cure thralls.”
“Does he?” Lanius wished he could have sounded more excited. As he’d seen in the archives, Avornan wizards had been full of new ideas about how to cure thralls ever since the Menteshe sorcerers started creating them. The only trouble was, very few of the new ideas did any good. “And what are they?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you,” Grus answered. “I never even asked, not in any detail. I don’t care how he does what he does, though I wouldn’t mind watching him try. All I care about is whether he can do it.”
Lanius did say, “You wouldn’t mind watching him? You really think he has a chance to bring this off?”
“I think he thinks he had a chance to bring it off,” Grus said, and Lanius smiled at the convolution. His father-in-law went on, “And I think he’s earned the chance to try. How are we worse off if he fails?”
He’d intended that for a rhetorical question, but Lanius had no trouble finding a literal answer for it. “How are we worse off? Suppose the Banished One kills him and the thralls try murdering us again. That would be worse, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe a little,” Grus allowed. Lanius yelped indignantly. Grus said, “We’ll be as careful as we can. You made your point there, believe me.”
“When will the wizard try?” Lanius asked.
“When he’s ready,” Grus answered with a shrug. “He has to have all his spells ready before he begins. If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t even try. You’re right about that—this could be one of those things where trying and failing is worse than not trying at all. Or do you look at it differently?”
“No, I think you’ve got it straight,” Lanius said at once. “Throwing rocks at the Banished One isn’t enough. We have to make sure we hit him. We have to make sure we hurt him.”
He listened to himself. He sounded bold enough. Did he sound like a fool? He wouldn’t have been surprised. Could he and Grus and Pterocles really hurt Milvago’s plans?
It was more than a week later that Grus hauled Lanius off to the chamber where the thralls were kept. “Where were you?” Grus asked irritably while they were on the way. “I looked for you for quite a while, and it was only luck we ran into each other in the hall here.”
Lanius had been sporting with Zenaida. He didn’t feel like admitting that to Grus. He just shrugged and answered, “Well, you’ve found me. Pterocles is ready?”
“He says he is,” Grus told him. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”
“So we will,” Lanius said. “One way or the other…”
Half a dozen armed guards brought a thrall from the room where the not-quite-men were kept to the chamber next door. The guards looked scornful, plainly wondering why Grus had ordered out so many of them to deal with one unarmed fellow who hadn’t much more in the way of brains than a goat. The thrall glanced around with the usual dull lack of curiosity of his kind.
No matter how dull the thrall seemed, Lanius eyed him suspiciously. The Banished One could be peering out through those almost unblinking eyes. Pterocles was giving the thrall that same sharp scrutiny. The haggard expression the wizard wore said he knew the risk he was taking. Lanius nodded to him. He wouldn’t have wanted Pterocles to try to free the man from thralldom without bearing in mind the danger of failure.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Grus asked.
“I’m sure. We’re here to find out whether I’m right, which is not the same thing,” Pterocles answered. “I think I am, Your Majesty. I aim to—” He broke off. “No, I won’t say what I aim to do, not while this fellow’s ears may pass it on to the Banished One. I’ll just go ahead and try the sorcery.”
At first, whatever he was doing didn’t seem much like magic at all. He stepped over to a window and took a small crystal on a silver chain from a pouch on his belt. Idly, he began to swing the crystal back and forth. It sparkled in the sunlight streaming in through the window. The glitter and flash drew Lanius’ eyes to the crystal. He needed an effort of will to pull them away.
Looking at the thrall helped keep Lanius from looking at the crystal. The thrall didn’t look at the king. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, following the swinging, flashing chunk of clear rock.
“You are an empty one,” Pterocles said quietly. “Your will is not your own. You have always been empty, your will never your own.”
“I am an empty one,” the thrall repeated. His voice sounded empty—eerily inhuman, all emotion and feeling washed from it. “My will is not my own. I have always been empty, my will never my own.”
“Queen Quelea’s mercy,” Grus whispered to Lanius. “Just listen to what the wizard’s done.”
“What do you mean?” Lanius whispered back.
“I’ve heard plenty of thralls down in the south,” Grus answered. “They can talk, a little, but they don’t talk as well as that, not usually they don’t. Pterocles has managed something special to get even that much out of this fellow.”
“I don’t know,” Lanius said dubiously. “I think the thrall was just echoing the wizard.”
Pterocles waved impatiently at the two kings. Lanius nodded and fell silent. Grus looked as though he wanted to say something more, but he too subsided when Pterocles waved again. The sorcerer kept on swinging his shining bit of crystal. The thrall’s eyes kept following it. It might have been the only thing in all the world with meaning for the filthy, scruffily bearded man.
Softly, Pterocles asked, “Do you want to find your own will? Do you want to be filled with your own self?”
“I want to find my own will,” the thrall droned. “I want to be filled with my own self.” Did he understand what he was saying? Or was he only parroting Pterocles’ words? Lanius still thought he was, but the king had to admit to himself that he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“I can lift the shadow from your spirit and give you light.” Pterocles sounded confident. How many Avornan wizards over the years, though, had sounded confident trying to cure thralls? Many. How many had had reason to sound confident? Few. No—none. None yet, anyhow. Pterocles went on, “Do you
“I want you to lift the shadow from my spirit and give me light.” By what was in his voice, the thrall still wanted nothing, regardless of the words he mouthed. Or was that so? Buried under the indifference, was there a terrible longing struggling to burst free? For an instant, Lanius heard it, or thought he did. Though he doubted
