On Aedon went. He fought his way through a particularly intricate part of the spell. As soon as he did, his confidence seemed to rise. After that, he read more quickly. He almost stumbled once, but caught himself at a warning squeeze from Lanius. With a grateful glance toward the king, he saved the fluff and hurried toward the end.
Lanius watched his mother-in-law. He didn't know what to expect, even if the magic worked. Would she suddenly be better? Or would it be as though a fever broke, so that, while still ill, she was no longer in danger? He hoped for the one while expecting the other.
What Aedon and he got was something more or less in the middle. He could see the blisters shrink back into themselves on Estrilda's face. They had almost disappeared when the wizard finished the spell. Estrilda let out a long, long sigh as Aedon let go of her hand and Lanius'. "Better," she whispered. "Much better. I thought I was on fire, and now I'm not."
She wasn't her former self yet, either. She was plainly still weak from the pestilence. How long would that last? Lanius had no way of knowing. All he did know was that she was on the right track again. That counted for more than anything else. He nodded — he almost bowed — to Aedon. "Thank you. That was well done. Your fee will match your skill and your courage."
Aedon did bow to him, deeply, from the waist. "Speak to me not of my courage, Your Majesty, which is as nothing when measured against your own. And as for skill… You caught me when I was about to go badly astray. Everyone says you are a learned man, but I did not look for you to correct me in my own field, and to be right." He bowed once more.
What exactly did he mean by that? Had he looked for Lanius to try jogging his elbow, and to be wrong when he did? That was how it sounded. Lanius thought about anger, but set it aside. What point to it? Any expert would feel the same about amateurs.
Then Lanius stopped worrying about such small, such trivial, things. The spell he'd found — the spell Avornan wizards had found all those centuries before — worked. If it worked in the city of Avornis, it would work down by the Stura, too. And it would work on the far side of the river. The folk who had been thralls would suffer no more — no more than they already had, anyhow. And the war against the Menteshe and the Banished One would go on.
Smoke from a funeral pyre darkened the sky above Cumanus. The stench of burning wood and oil and dead flesh never left the city; it stayed in Grus' nostrils day and night. And yet things were getting better, here and in the land south of the Stura where the Banished One first unleashed the pestilence.
Grus didn't see Pterocles very much lately. The wizard was busy from before dawn until after nightfall every day. He ran himself ragged curing plague victims himself and teaching others how to do it. Grus had no idea when he slept, or if he did. The king knew the wizard ate erratically. Grus had servants send him food wherever he was. If not for that, Pterocles might not have eaten at all.
When Pterocles fell asleep in the middle of explaining to half a dozen wizards from towns along the Stura how the spell worked, Grus had him carried back to the city governor's palace and put to bed with guards in front of his door not to keep other people out but to keep him in until he'd had at least one good rest. The wizard complained, loudly and angrily. Then he slept from one midafternoon to the next.
He woke insisting he hadn't closed his eyes at all, and at first refused to believe he'd slept the sun around. Then, when he woke a little more and his wits began to work, he realized he wouldn't be so hungry or have such a desperate need to piss if he hadn't lost a day. He ate enough for two, almost filled a chamber pot, and declared himself ready to charge back into the routine that had caused his collapse.
"No," Grus told him. "Wait. Spend a little time relaxing, if you please."
"But I can't!" Pterocles said. "People are dying. If I don't cure, if I don't train other wizards — "
"Wait," Grus repeated. "If you kill yourself, you can't help anybody. And you were right on the edge of doing that. Go ahead and tell me I'm wrong. Make me believe it." He folded his arms across his chest and stared a challenge at Pterocles.
The younger man took a deep breath. Then he laughed, let it out again, and spread his hands. "I wish I could, Your Majesty, but I fear I can't."
"All right, then," Grus said. "You've done more than any three men could be expected to. And you've got more than three men doing your work now, because of everybody you've taught. We're getting the upper hand on this cursed thing."
"We should be doing more." But that was Pterocles' last protest, and a fading one at that. The wizard shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, which hadn't been combed, let alone washed, in some time. "We owe this one to King Lanius."
"Well, so we do," Grus said. "Fine — we owe it to him. I like to think he owes us one or two, too."
"It's a good spell. It's a very good spell," Pterocles said. "And it's a novel approach to the problem. I never would have thought of it myself."
"Really?" Grus hoped he kept his tone neutral. He did his best. But he didn't like to think there were many sorcerous matters that wouldn't have occurred to his best wizard.
Pterocles understood what he meant, even if he didn't say it. With a wry smile, the sorcerer answered, "Afraid so, Your Majesty. Magic is a big field. Nobody can know all the blades of grass — and the flowers, and the weeds — in it." That smile vanished like snow in springtime. "Nobody who's a mere man, I should say. About anyone else, I reserve judgment."
"No doubt you're smart to do it, too." Grus started to look south toward the Argolid Mountains — toward the Banished One's lair. He started to, but then deliberately checked the motion. "Now if only he would reserve judgment on us."
"I'm afraid that's too much to hope for," Pterocles said.
"So am I," Grus answered. "And if you'd left off everything but the first two words, that would have been just as true, wouldn't it?"
"Oh, yes," the wizard said, and then, as though that didn't put his meaning across strongly enough, he repeated it with a different emphasis. "Oh, yes. Anyone who isn't afraid of the Banished One doesn't know anything about him."
"Right." Grus let it lie there. Had he been the Banished One — a truly terrifying thought — he would have done things differently. The freed thralls could only be an annoyance to him, never a real danger. Danger lay in the Avornan army and in the farmers north of the Stura who kept it fed. Grus would have struck there. But freeing the thralls might have pricked the Banished One's vanity. And so he had struck at and avenged himself upon that which annoyed him, and concerned himself much less with everything else. The folk who really threatened his longtime dominion over the lands south of the Stura did not suffer in proportion to their menace.
Pterocles poured some wine into his cup from a silver pitcher. "So here's to King Lanius. He was our memory this time. Without him, the pestilence probably would have gone through the whole kingdom, and gods only know how many would have died."
Grus filled his winecup, too. "To Lanius," he agreed. Both men raised their cups and drank the toast. Grus had the feeling Pterocles might have put his finger on the Banished One's plan. The exiled god, with his contempt for mankind, wouldn't have expected the Avornans to be able to stop the disease. That showed his arrogance, but perhaps less in the way of bad planning than Grus had thought.
Drinking to Lanius as a real salute, not to the other king's place as a member of the longtime ruling dynasty, bothered Grus less than it would have a few years earlier. The two kings had come up with a working arrangement that probably didn't altogether satisfy either one — Grus knew it didn't altogether satisfy him — but that both men could live with. Lanius wasn't afraid anymore that Grus would murder him if he got out of line. And Grus didn't worry that he would find himself outlawed and the gates of the capital closed against him when he came back from a campaign. He still wished he could campaign and stay in the city of Avornis at the same time. Maybe the gods could be in two places at once, but mere men couldn't.