The Chernagor Pirates Read Free

the Stura River was asking either to lose them or to see them made into thralls—half-mindless men bound to the Menteshe and to the Banished One. And Yozgat, these days the chief town of the Menteshe Prince Ulash, lay a long way south of the Stura. “If only our magic could stand up against what the Banished One can aim at us.”
    â€œWish for the moon while you’re at it.” But King Lanius caught himself. “No. Wish for the Scepter of Mercy.”
    â€œIf I need to have it already before I can hope to get it—” Grus stopped. Even if he went around that twenty-two times, he’d still get caught.
    â€œWe have to try. Sooner or later, we have to try,” Lanius said. But Lanius was no soldier. How much of the bitter consequences of failure did he grasp?
    On the other hand, not trying to take back the Scepter of Mercy would also be a failure, a failure most bitter. Grus understood that, too. He’d never wished more to disagree than when he made his head go up and down and said, “You’re right.”
    Lanius dreamed. He knew he dreamed. But dreams in which the Banished One appeared were not of the ordinary sort. That supremely cold, supremely beautiful face seemed more real than most of the things he saw while wide awake. The Banished One said, “And so you know my name. You know who I was, who I am, who I shall be again.”
    His voice was as beautiful—and as cold—as his features. Lanius heard in these dreams with the same spectral clarity as he saw. Milvago. The name, and the knowledge of what it meant, echoed and reechoed in his mind.
    He didn’t speak the name—however one spoke in dreams—but the Banished One sensed it. “Yes, I am Milvago, shaper of this miserable world,” he declared. “How dare you presume to stand against me?”
    â€œYou want to conquer my kingdom,” Lanius replied. He could answer honestly; the Banished One, he’d seen, might commandeer his dreams, but couldn’t harm him in them. “You want to make my people into thralls. If I can keep you from doing that, I will.”
    â€œNo mere mortal may hinder me,” the Banished One said.
    â€œNot so.” Lanius shook his head, or it felt as though he shook his head, there in this dream that was all too real. “You were cast down from the heavens long ago. If no man could hinder you, you would have ruled the world long since.”
    â€œRule it I shall.” The Banished One tossed his head in more than mortal scorn. “What is time? Time means nothing to me, not when I created time. Think you I am trapped in it, to gutter out one day like a lamp running dry? You had best think again, you mayfly, you brief pimple on the buttock of the world.”
    Lanius knew he would die. He didn’t know the Banished One wouldn’t, but Milvago had shown no sign of aging in all the long years since coming down from the heavens. He couldn’t assume the Banished One was lying. Still, that didn’t matter. The king’s tutors had trained him well. However intimidating the Banished One was, Lanius saw he was trying to distract him here. Whether he would die wasn’t the essence of the argument. Whether he remained omnipotent—if, indeed, he’d ever been omnipotent—was.
    â€œIf you were all you say you are, you would have ruled the world since you came into it,” Lanius said. “That you don’t proves you can be beaten. I will do everything I know how to do to stop you.”
    â€œEverything you know how to do.” The Banished One’s laughter flayed like whips of ice. “What do you know? What can you know, who live but for a season and then go back to the nothingness from which you sprang?”
    â€œI know it is better to live free than as one of your thralls,” Lanius answered. “Did the gods who sprang from you decide the same thing?”
    Normally, the Banished One’s