Bastion

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was also going to be a good thing for him to be done early. Like him, Dean Caelen was an early riser, and Mags was going to have to find out what classes he was in and how he was going to catch up with them.

  He wasn’t looking forward to that part. The Dean couldn’t have anything but bad news for him.

  Because he was fortnights behind everyone else, thanks to being dragged across two countries drugged and semiconscious. There was going to be a hellish amount of catching up, and there wasn’t going to be a choice.

  He finished his meal, helped himself to some biscuits and bacon and made little tasty sandwiches of them, wrapped them all in a napkin, and took them with him as an incentive to the Dean to be easy with him.

  As he had expected, the Dean was already in his office, which was on the third floor of the Collegium, right next to the library. As he had not expected, the office was . . . clean. There were no stacks of books, no piles of papers. The desk was a little untidy, but there was room to work on it, and there were several places for visitors to sit. He stood in the doorway and stared, open-mouthed, until the Dean looked up and saw him there.

  Dean Caelen, a plain brown-haired, brown-eyed, mild-mannered man, smiled self-consciously. “I was told by Princess Lydia that I was getting an assistant and I was not going to be allowed to say no,” he said wryly. “I resented it at first, but now I don’t know what I would do without the lad. Come in, Mags, I’ve been expecting you.”

  Mags put his wrapped biscuits on a bare spot on the desk and waited.

  The Dean didn’t reach for them, as he normally would have. “I know this is going to sound very odd to you, but . . . I don’t have classes for you yet.”

  “What?” Mags said, startled. “Why not?”

  “The general feeling is that we want you to stay out of classes for now, while we assess you, assess what you have discovered, and decide what to do with you.”

  Before Mags could react to that startling statement, the Dean was continuing. “Nikolas and some of the other senior Heralds basically want you to themselves for a while, several days at least. They are adept at extracting information people didn’t even know they had, and you are, at the moment, a veritable treasure trove of information, not only about the people that took you but also the Karsites. In short, a very valuable source of intelligence. So I wouldn’t be able to put you into classes anyway, not right away.”

  What could he say but “Yes, sir, of course”? Although he normally would not have minded having a day or two when he wasn’t frantically trying to catch up with everyone else, at this point he was so far behind that his first real reaction was resentment. It seemed horribly unfair—here he was, behind everyone in classes, through no fault of his own, and being forced to lag even farther.

  “Mags, I know what you must be thinking,” the Dean said placatingly. “But think a little further. Younglings come in all the time as newly Chosen, and at every possible level of education, and yet we manage to fit them in. You won’t be in the same classes you’d been taking with the same group of Trainees, it is true, but what of it? You might end up in classes with others of your friends. Remember, not all of you are progressing like—like Blues. We don’t have set class-years that begin and end everything together. And meanwhile, you are getting something like a holiday, one that, if you ask me, is overdue. You have been burning both ends of your candle for far too long.”

  “But what’m I supposed to do with m’self when I ain’t bein’ questioned?” he asked, plaintively, his hands clasped between his knees.

  “What do you want to do?” the Dean replied.

  It had been so long since anyone asked him that question that for a moment his mind was blank. “I—dunno—” he managed.

  “Something will come to you, I am sure,” the Dean said dryly. “You might consider reading for the pure pleasure of it, for instance. I can think of few things I enjoy more than sitting next to a fire reading a book. In the meantime, you might ask your friends if any of them need any help. If you are going to insist on being useful, I am certain someone will be grateful, even at this unholy hour of the morning.”

  That was a dismissal if Mags had ever heard one, so he said goodbye to the Dean and wandered out into the crisp autumn morning. It occurred to him then that he did know someone who could use some help—Bear. After that successful work on Amily’s leg, Bear was only technically a Trainee and only at his own insistence. But this was fall, and fall meant that Bear had a great many medicinal herbs to transplant and bring into the greenhouse for the winter—not to mention a great many herbs to harvest and preserve.

  So he wandered over to Healers’ Collegium to see if he could lend a hand.

  Bear greeted him with relief, a sort of breakfast sandwich in one hand and a small sickle in the other. Lena was gone already, probably to her first morning class, having brought Bear back something to eat. “I’ll say you can help me,” was the grateful response. “There aren’t many I know I could trust to do what I tell them, and they’re all either busy with patients or classes. Take this—” he thrust the sickle at Mags, handle first. “—and come with me.”

  Mags followed him out to the herb garden. “You already know wormwood, eyebright, and comfrey on sight,” Bear said, and Mags nodded. “I want you to carefully cut each plant off just a little above the ground and harvest it. Make sure to keep your cut clean, and don’t crush or bruise the stems. Keep them separate, obviously.”

  “I can do that,” Mags said confidently. “Bring the baskets back when I’m done?”

  “Yes, I’ll show you how to hang them for drying and where.” Bear hurried off, and Mags knelt in the soft earth between the rows of plants and began his harvest.

  Maybe someone else would have found the work backbreaking, but Mags had spent most of his life laboring on his knees in a gemstone mine, and this was infinitely superior to even the best of moments in the mine. He was in the sun, the air was clean and cool, and the work was delicate enough to be interesting. He got into a slow rhythm and was a little disappointed when he realized he had run out of plants to cut.

  He brought the three baskets to Bear, who showed him how to bind them with thread at the cut ends, three plants together at a time, and hang them upside down in the drying room. He had only just finished that task when Dallen nudged him in his mind.

  :Nikolas and his lot want to see you now.:

  Well, at least now he was in a better frame of mind for it. :Tell ’em I’m on my way,: he replied, and told Bear.

  “Bah. Well, when they turn you loose, if you are still of a mind to help me, come on back,” Bear said good-naturedly. “This time of year there’s no such thing as too much help.”

  Following Dallen’s directions, Mags found himself at last in a small, comfortable room in the Palace, facing four people: three Heralds including Nikolas, one of whom had set up as a sort of secretary, and someone who looked like a scholar.

  “Relax, Mags, take a seat over there on that couch, and make yourself comfortable,” Nikolas ordered, as he looked around and waited for them to tell him what they wanted him to do. “The more relaxed you are, the easier this will be on everyone.” Mags did as he was told, as Nikolas indicated one of the Heralds with a wave of his hand. “Herald Cende usually assists the Chief Magistrate of Haven when witnesses need to be questioned. Her particular Mindspeech—”

  “Oh! I know Herald Cende by reputation!” Mags exclaimed, and smiled a little. This was going to be easier than he had thought. He’d expected he was going to have to pummel his memory until he got a headache from it. “You kind of—nudge things out of being forgotten.”

  Cende, a vivacious brunette who looked to be in her late twenties, laughed. “That’s as good a description as any. No one quite knows what to call my Gift. This is going to get quite tedious, I expect; we’ll be asking you to go over the same part of a story several times, and I’m sorry for that, but it’s the only way I can get you to keep remembering things.”


  Mags nodded. “That makes sense. If you’re just kinda nudging things, it’s gonna take a few times through every story before we fish out all the bits.”

  “For a while, this is going to make the memories very vivid, and you might even dream about them,” Cende warned, tucking her hair behind her ears as Mags made himself more comfortable on the couch. “They’ll fade, though, I promise.”

  :I’ll make sure they do,: Dallen put in, which was exactly what Mags hoped to hear. He didn’t want to have those recollections right up in the front of his mind any longer than he had to.

  “For right now, we are going to concentrate on all of your encounters with the Karsites,” said Nikolas. “Not just the ones when you were captive, but also the ones with the young priest who became your friend. We feel we can learn a great deal about their priestly magic from that—things he would probably be reluctant to tell us directly himself.”

  Mags nodded, as that made perfect sense. Strategically, they needed to get every detail about the Karsites that they could right now. So he settled down, with a pitcher of water at his side, to a session of perfect tedium.

  And that was exactly what it was. He would tell the same story over and over, remembering a new phrase or a new detail, for the first several times. That was Cende’s Gift at work, of course. Only when he simply could not bring out anything new did they move on to another bit of narrative.

  They didn’t even break for luncheon; food was brought to them, though Mags was not minded to complain when it was clear this was stuff straight from the King’s table. The ripe grapes were particularly welcome after all that talking.

  They finally let him go a candlemark or so before supper, and only because it was clear that they intended to discuss what they had gleaned from him. That was fine with him. He returned to Bear and harvested another herb, and he and Bear and Lena went off to supper together.

  Amily was waiting for them, saving them seats. After all that talking, he was much more in the mood to listen to the others than to say anything himself. He had been afraid that going through all those unpleasant memories would put him out of sorts, but in fact, as he listened to the others chatter about nothing, he realized he had nothing to fear. He’d done well, especially for someone with absolutely no resources but the clothing on his back and a single blanket, and by concentrating on that, and allowing himself to feel a bit of pride in what he had accomplished, things didn’t seem quite so horrible after all.

  The next several days passed in the same way, although the topic of the questioning changed to his captors rather than the Karsites.

  Then, after four days, there was someone new with the trio of Heralds, taking the place of the scholar. This was a fellow in the robes of some religious order or other, though nothing that Mags recognized.

  “This is Father Seneson,” Nikolas said, after Mags had taken a seat. “He’s an expert on languages. We’re going to try to get a sense of where your captors came from.”

  Mags brightened at that. He’d been getting a bit tired of being the one giving all the information without getting anything in return. If this Father Seneson could come up with some answers, that would be a welcome change!

  “First, Mags, do you still remember your kidnappers’ tongue?” the newcomer asked.

  “I’ve been dreamin’ in it,” he replied truthfully. “It ain’t likely to leave me any time soon.”

  The priest nodded. “Excellent, the answer I hoped to hear. All right, then. I’m going to give you a word, and I would like you to tell me the same thing in their language.”

  Mags almost snorted. That was child’s play, really. Or so he had thought . . .

  “There ain’t a word for that,” he said, when Sorensen asked him for what seemed extremely odd to him, the word for games.

  “Are you saying they don’t have a word they use for that concept, or that they don’t have a word in their own language?” Seneson asked, looking up from his notes.

  “Don’t have one in their own tongue,” Mags replied. “They don’t do games.” They didn’t, of course. Everything was serious with those people, and as far as he could tell, nothing was ever done for sheer pleasure.

  “Tell me the word they use, then,” the priest replied, and noted down what Mags said, asking him to pronounce it carefully several times to make sure he got it right.

  And that was when things got . . . interesting. Mags had thought that these people had an entire language, and for some things they actually did. But there were entire concepts missing, mostly having to do with, well, living. They didn’t have words for too many kinds of food, for instance. Or anything that someone might do in his leisure time. They had to borrow words for these things from some other language, and it didn’t take long before Sorensen put down his pen with an expression of satisfaction.

  “I’m done with you, Mags, at least for now, although if you ever want to help me compile a full dictionary I would be very pleased to monopolize your time for as long as Herald’s Collegium will let me,” he said, and turned to the others. “Heralds, I have your answer. As I suspected, when you described this culture to me, they are not nearly so far away from us as we had thought. And rather than being a culture, they are more of a—sect, of sorts. A very secretive clanlike group that lives almost unknown within a greater Kingdom. And that Kingdom is Thurbrigard. I suspect they are hidden in the mountains, and not one person in five hundred thousand knows they exist.”

  “Well, that explains why Karse got involved,” Nikolas said thoughtfully. “And why they had some tokens from the Shin’a’in with them, if they went straight west at first, looking for the boy, then doubled back and went north.”

  “Even so,” the priest agreed. “And being in the midst of Thurbrigard, they have their own language only for those things that are important to them. For anything that is foreign to the clan culture, they must use the words of the people around them.”

  “Having their own language would allow them to speak in front of others without giving themselves away,” Nikolas observed. “Well! Now we are much farther ahead than we had been. Possibly there are some in Menmellith or Rethwellan who have diplomatic or trade ties there—”

  Mags had no idea what on earth good that would do him, but at least now he had a location for “his” people.

  “All right, Mags, consider yourself released,” said Herald Nikolas, with that look in his eyes that told Mags that he really wanted the Trainee to be elsewhere so he could discuss things with the others. Mags was adept at taking Nikolas’s hints, and made himself scarce.

  Besides, he wanted to go to the library, the Heraldic Archives, and the Guard Archives. Whatever there was to learn about Thurbrigard—he was going to find it.

  4

  Mags leaned up against the fence and watched the Reds and the Greens skirmishing against each other in Kirball practice. He’d had to get outside for a while; the dust in the Archives was beginning to make him sneeze, and his eyes were getting tired from perusing all the closely written pages of ancient reports. The sun was warm on his back and the air so clean out here that it made him wonder why he was bothering to spend so much time inside when this weather was so fleeting.

  Well, he knew why. The Archivists wouldn’t let him take the boxes of reports outside to read.

  So far he hadn’t found terribly much. Mostly, anything useful had been buried in the interviews that the Guard did with traders and entertainers before they were allowed to pass the Border. Thurbrigard was so very far away that no one had taken much thought to gathering intelligence on it. There were a very few mentions of it, and only then as places that traders said they carried goods from. Carved semiprecious gems for the most part: high value, small size. That made it worth carting them all that distance.

  He could see why no one considered Thurbrigard any sort of a threat worth investigating. First, it didn’t seem to be a very prosperous Kingdom, so it was logical to assume it didn’t mount much in the way of armed forces. In the case
of the gemstones, they were semi-precious. It was really the intricate carving that made them valuable, not the intrinsic value of the stones. If that was their best export, they weren’t a wealthy land. Second, before Thurbrigard could be a threat to Valdemar, its army (if it even had one) would have to wade across two or three other countries, one of which was the ever armed and ever hostile Karse. There would be plenty of warning long before it got as far as Menmellith if the rulers decided to get up to no good.

  For that matter, the sudden abandonment of our Border by Karse would be a good clue that there was something up, he thought, watching as Gennie and Jeffers passed the ball back and forth between them.

  And third—why would they ever bother to come this far north? What could Valdemar offer that was worth trying to invade it across three other countries? Nothing that they couldn’t get by going to war much closer.

  No one could ever have anticipated that some remote assassin clan would decide to come calling.

  He felt someone coming up behind him and recognized her by the “sense” of her as Amily long before she actually reached the fence. “You could ask for your place back,” she said, putting her arms up on the top rung and leaning her chin on it as he was doing. “On the team I mean.”

  “They already offered it,” he replied, ruthlessly pushing down a feeling of melancholy. “But it don’t feel right, takin’ it from Wolf. He’s good.”

  “Not as good as you!” Amily protested—truthfully, actually. Wolf and his Companion weren’t as fast or as agile as Mags and Dallen. Wolf couldn’t Mindspeak to every other Companion and human on the team, either.

  Still, they could learn to be as fast and agile, and Wolf’s Gift of Farsight could prove just as useful as Mags’ Mindspeech.

  “But he ain’t gonna get better ’less he’s pushed to it, an’ if I take my place back, he ain’t gonna get pushed.” Mags suppressed a sigh. He didn’t say aloud what he was thinking—that after having all those memories shoved forcefully into his head, he just couldn’t look at Kirball the same way anymore. He’d been indoctrinated into the mindset of people who literally did not have a word for game. Sure, in the back of his mind he had always known that Kirball was training for warfare—and he and his fellow players had even used those moves to help rescue Amily and capture—briefly—two of the assassin clan. But he hadn’t felt it, not deep inside. But now, he did. Now whenever someone made a move, his mind overlaid it with how that would play out in combat. He could still play, and play well . . . but the game would never be free of that for him, ever again.