Foundation

by Mercedes Lackey

The King’s Own reached out and shook Mags’ hand. “Good to meet you, Trainee,” he said. Mags looked up at him.

  If you didn’t know he was the King’s Own Herald, you would never have guessed. He had that same ability to fade into the background that his daughter had, only in his case, this was clearly a skill honed to perfection. His face was no particular shape, his hair no particular color, and his eyes were a kind of washed-out neutral. He wore his Whites with no particular air. If you had to pick him out of a crowd, you couldn’t.

  “I hadn’t yet gotten around to telling him what you wanted out of him, Father,” Amily said with a smile. “Other than that Soren thinks he can be our eyes inside the new Heralds’ Collegium.”

  Nikolas held his daughter carefully and regarded Mags out of those unreadable eyes. “Amily has put it quite succinctly. Soren thought you might be amenable to acting as a set of eyes for us, if we told you what to look for,” he said, in a soft voice that was neither high nor low. “Doing what I presume you just did for Lydia and Jak, since I am sure they quizzed you about those mercenaries. His plan was to not ask you for anything you would feel uncomfortable about. Merely observing and reporting.”

  The Herald paused, and Mags felt that more was coming. “Aye, go on.”

  Nikolas inclined his head. “But I have just been speaking with Herald Caelen, and he has a high opinion of you, Trainee. The Companion that Chose you is one of the brightest, and your Gift is strong, mature, and under remarkable control. We think you can do more than that. We think you can be an impartial set of eyes on the Heralds themselves as well as the Trainees. In fact, we think you can report to us about all the Trainees, as well as the Bards, and the Healers.”

  Mags felt as if someone had just doused him with a bucket of ice water. “M-me?” he stammered.

  Nikolas nodded. “We are in odd times. Our ranks have inflated. Change is on us, and not everyone likes that change. And we do not know what the sudden increase in our numbers means. Historically, when many, many new Trainees are Chosen, they are going to be needed in a few years’ time. Which is ... not necessarily good. Need implies interesting times ahead.”

  Numbly, Mags nodded.

  “Like me, people underestimate you. Because of your background, they are pleasantly surprised when you aren’t a village idiot, and then think no more about you unless you impress them further. I would like to train you on ways to remain virtually invisible. If you are willing to help us, that is, and serve Valdemar and your King in this most peculiar fashion.” Nikolas favored him with a lopsided grin. “And you can say no.”

  He could say no? Well that was about as wrong as it got. He knew what all this meant ... he understood why Dallen had been sharing memories with him so much that it sometimes seemed that Dallen’s memories were his, and vice versa. Dallen was catching him up on the years of growing up like a normal person did, so that he wouldn’t act like an uncivilized feral cat. In fact—

  No, he would ask Dallen about that later. Right now, here he was, an unknown quantity in the Collegia. He lived apart from the rest of the Trainees. He had excelled only in weapons work and riding, and any sufficiently agile dunce could do that. He had no family ties, he had no ties of friendship. He was a stranger to everyone here, and he was not accustomed to the sorts of things that Valdemarans took for granted.

  And the consequence of this was that Mags knew very well what Herald Nikolas was asking him. He was so much an outsider that he was the perfect observer. And yet, he was so much an insider that no one would ever suspect that he was watching everything.

  Yes, he understood what was being asked of him.

  And he understood why it would be impossible for him, for anyone Chosen, to refuse.

  “I’m in,” he heard himself saying.

  And Lydia dazzled him with her smile.

  13

  SUDDENLY the two weeks of Midwinter holiday had gotten a lot more interesting. In the morning, Mags still kept up with his riding and weapon practices, and with reading things that Herald Caelen suggested to him. Then Mags went every afternoon to Master Soren’s house, staying until early evening. No one who saw him would have thought he was anything other than what he seemed to be, an awkward youth, severely disadvantaged but very bright, that Soren’s niece and her friends had taken under their wing. In a way, that was a part he was playing. And in a way, that was very much the truth. Dallen’s shared memories made up for a lot of what he had missed by being raised as a virtual slave, but not everything. Both of them were being very careful that those memories stayed separate. It gave Mags a context for things, but those were still things that he himself had not gone through.

  Lydia and her friends spent very little time on intrigue; they were very much enjoying the holiday, and they were doing their best to make sure he enjoyed it, too. Now that they had his consent to help them and Lydia’s uncle, that seemed to be all they really needed from him for the moment. If he happened to be at the salle at the same time as the mercenaries, he would observe them as closely as he dared. Then he would come to the open house and tell them what he found out—which usually took not very much time. Other than that, since virtually everyone was gone from the three Collegia, he didn’t have much to report. Which left him feeling free to enjoy the holiday as well with his new friends. Enjoying a holiday—having a holiday at all!—was a very new thing for Mags, and an unmitigated pleasure compared with all of the other new things. Although he would never want to go back to his old life, that old life was so much simpler than this one.

  Well, for these few days, this new life was a bit less complex. And the things he was doing were less mentally taxing. For the first time in his life he found himself playing games.

  At first, he just couldn’t quite grasp the concept of games. Doing something just for the sake of doing it? What was the point? There didn’t seem to be much sense in blindfolding someone, spinning him around to disorient him, and waiting for him to catch someone and determine who it was. It made no sense, until it was done to him, that is.

  And first there was the breathless, fluttering, near-fear moment when he was blinded and spun. Disorientation without actual threat—he knew they weren’t going to hurt him, and suddenly the disorientation was ... well, he didn’t have a name for it. It made him feel excited, a thrill of anticipation of something good happening, and the dizziness called up the urge to do very silly things to make them laugh. Then there was standing there, in the dark, waiting to get his equilibrium back, while around him he heard breathing and giggles, and the scuff of feet on the floor. That was exciting, too—something was going to happen, and no matter what it was, the outcome was going to make no difference, so he was free to succeed or not. Free! It was like a sudden drink of strong thousand times more acute, his heart raced, but in a good way. For some strange reason, this was all terribly exciting in wonderful ways. Every other sense just came alive to the point that he almost didn’t need his eyes. And this was not his Mindspeaking ability; he was keeping that heavily shielded, as Dallen had taught him, because using it would be cheating. No ... no, this was like working in the mine, in the near-dark, when you felt your way to your place in the seam, or felt your way out, when you listened as hard as you could to see if you could overhear something useful. And when you had to rely on everything except your eyes. Except this was all good. He could win the game and they would all laugh, or he could lose it and they would all laugh, and what he did simply didn’t matter, because no matter what happened, everyone would laugh. This was completely, totally good. He stood very, very still, listening. Waiting.

  Then suddenly, he feinted in one direction, and as he heard the circle of youngsters scuttle to evade him, he whirled, and grabbed in the direction he had wanted to reach in the first place.

  He caught an arm, and the owner stood stock still. It was female and covered in velvet, which didn’t help, since all the girls were wearing velvet. She was about Lydia’s height, but so was Saski. Before he had arrived, they had a
ll been outside around a bonfire after having a mock fight with snowballs, so they all smelled faintly of woodsmoke. But he knew her by her breathing, and by the suppressed nervousness of her giggle.

  “Saski,” he identified at once, and with a crow of laughter, the girl whipped the blindfold off his head.

  “You cheated!” she accused playfully, her gray eyes dancing as she tossed her head. “You used some Herald thing! How could you possibly tell between me and Lydia?”

  He shook his head and smiled slowly. She did not really mean that he had done something wrong. This was what was called “teasing,” and it was completely unbarbed and without venom. “I didn’ cheat,” he replied without a trace of anger. “I heerd ye giggle. Lydia’s more on a chuckle.”

  “He has you fair and square, Saski,” Tomas observed. “No point in arguing.”

  She made a face at them both, then waited for Tomas to tie the blindfold on her. Mags took his place in the ring and felt something odd happening to his face. Muscles he rarely used stretched, and he realized that he was not just smiling, he was grinning.

  Now he had smiled a hundred thousand times more often since he had come to the Collegium than he ever had until that moment. And that felt good. But then, as he tried to evade Saski’s outstretched hands and still remain inside the ring chalked on the stone floor, he realized something else.

  His heart thudded with excitement, he was smiling and he felt a strange sensation in his chest, as if something was trying to get out. Then it did get out, an odd gurgle of a noise, rusty with disuse, that he would never have recognized as a laugh in anyone else.

  But it was a laugh.

  He was enjoying this. He was having fun.

  He had never had fun before. He still hardly understood what it was, he only knew that he was certain he was having it. Dallen’s memories told him as much, but his experience made it real.

  Nor was that the end of it. When the others tired of the blind-man game, they settled down for something a little quieter. They all moved to Soren Mender’s library, a wonderful warm room lined with books interspersed with curios. The floor was completely covered in carpets, and besides three desks and matching chairs, there were padded benches and large cushions for sitting on beside the fire. The ceiling was much lower here, and painted all over with pictures.

  That made it eminently suitable for their game. “I Spy,” it was called, where one of them chose what it was he was looking at—without looking at it directly—and gave the first letter of what it was. And the rest of them would have to try and guess what it was. Now since the object could be very small indeed (like the tiny bead that had somehow rolled onto the hearth to get lodged between two of the stones) or just as large as anyone pleased (like the pictures in the ceiling!) in a room as full of so many things as the library, it was possible to go for quite some time without a correct guess. And the game kept getting put aside when someone would spot something they didn’t recognize and ask Lydia about it. She always knew what it was—she had lived here most of her life—and there was generally a story about it.

  And that game was fun. He was not the best at it, but he was not the worst by any means, it stretched his observational ability and his deductive reasoning, and it was fun. Lydia’s stories were fun, too.

  Master Soren did not serve regular meals at this “open house,” preferring instead to have tables spread with food that was constantly renewed over the course of the afternoon and evening, rather like what was being done up at the Collegia right now. Except, of course, that the food on these tables was a cut or more above that which was being put out for the workmen and those few Trainees, Heralds, Bards, and Healers that were still here instead of going home or had not made other arrangements. Mags hardly ate anything at the Collegia now, knowing what was waiting for him when he got to Master Soren’s place.

  There were roast fowl, for instance, brought there so fresh from the roasting oven that their skins were crackling and still sweating golden droplets of fat—roasts of beef and pork—entire hams. These would have been perfectly delicious had they stood there long enough to grow cold, but there were so many people in and out that they never got a chance to drop below “warm.”

  There were plenty of breads of many kinds—the usual wheat loaves that Mags was used to, barley bread that was utterly unlike what had been served at the mine, pungent rye bread, golden egg bread, hard-crusted rolls covered in seeds, sweet bread almost as tasty as pastry.

  And then there was the cheese. Mags was used to seeing two or three kinds of cheese at a time up at the Collegia (if one could say that someone who had been starved most of his life could ever “get used” to such a thing)—Master Soren served a dozen or more. And, oh, those cheeses! Mild white ones. Sharp yellow ones. Smoked cheese. Pungent cheese with veins of blue running through it. Cheese that crumbled at a touch that was meant to be sprinkled over things. Hard cheese grated and also meant to be sprinkled on things. Soft cheese meant to be spread on bread ...

  Mags loved cheese. This was heaven.

  Then there were several kinds of sausage. Sliced thin hard sausage, meant to be eaten cold. Tiny sausages kept warm over candles. Sausage stuffed in pastry. Sausage on skewers with vegetables, and ground sausage stuffed into other good things.

  And there were dozens of other tidbits, whole trays that got rotated out as they emptied or grew cold. Vegetables rendered into crunchy little snacks. Tiny meat pies, equally tiny egg pies. Hard boiled eggs and eggs in crust.

  Then there were the sweets, an entire table of pastry alone. Cookies, tiny pies and tarts. Tiny cakes, some iced, some stuffed with candied fruits, some so rich they didn’t need anything. Candied nuts, fondant balls flavored with spices, little jellies, and syrups poured over clean snow.

  The drinks were just as plentiful, although none were terribly strong. Dallen had told him that very strong drink was a hallmark of some of these Midwinter parties, as was the associated intoxication. Mags was just as happy about that; when the Pieters men got drunk, things always turned out ... ugly. Master Soren’s table was meant for tasting, not gulping. There was beer and ale, mulled wine and cider, hot tea of many sorts.

  What the guests didn’t eat, Mags came to discover after the third day, was gathered up thriftily and delivered at the back to priests of a charitable order who in turn delivered it to the poor. Even the bones and scraps were gathered up and sent off to make soup. Master Soren had strong feelings about waste, and equally strong feelings about the obligations of those who had means to those who did not.

  Small wonder he had covertly allied himself with the King’s Own.

  In any event, Mags was not going hungry by any stretch of the imagination, although he was missing two of the three meals served at the Collegia. In fact, Lydia had discovered a few of his favorite things and made sure that when he left to go back up the hill, he had a little basket made up with them “just in case you get hungry studying tonight.” Which was a great kindness, since he did study nearly every night, and did get hungry doing so. It seemed as if studying was as much work as the physical practice he was doing.

  Even then, when he was done studying, his day still wasn’t over. When he was ready to close his books, he would let Dallen know that he was finished for the evening. And not long after that, Herald Nikolas would slip into the stable and take up yet another sort of lesson with him.

  These were lessons in how to be unobtrusive, and in how to observe. Interestingly enough, the lessons in “how to be unobtrusive” were not always about being quiet. He was learning how to gauge the mood of people around him, what Nikolas called “reading the room,” and when being somewhat boisterous would be more useful, how to counterfeit looking careless, devil-may-care, and utterly oblivious to what was going on around him.

  He was hardly the master of any of this, of course. These were like the beginning lessons in weapons work, except this was nothing he had a special aptitude for. So it was going slowly. On the other hand ... Herald Nikol
as appeared to feel that he was progressing well.

  “I hope ye ain’t disappointed in me, sir,” Mags sighed one night, after repeated attempts to look as if he was more interested in examining a broom (standing in for a young lady) than his “target” had repeatedly failed.

  “Not even close,” Herald Nikolas replied, with a ghost of a smile. “You are no worse and no better at this than I was when I started. It is very easy to get one noticed; it is a lot harder to remain unnoticed. And you don’t have to be perfect at this for a good long time. Right now, most people overlook you because you are a mere Trainee, a callow youth, because your accent and way of speaking give you away as poor and rural, and because you are inoffensive looking.” He smiled slightly. “I hope you take no offense at this, but in short, you are no threat at all—in fact, you are beneath the notice of most people.”

  Mags nodded. He pretty much had counted on all of that to keep him out of trouble since he had gotten here. “Sir, what about m’ Gift? You ’spect that I use that, too?”

  That ... troubled him. It seemed like a terrible invasion. And yet, it might be the only way to learn if someone was wearing a mask over his true thoughts.

  “Sit down, Mags. I expected you would ask me this sooner or later.” Mags sat down on one side of the table he used to study and eat on; the Herald sat down opposite him. Nikolas drummed his fingers on the table a moment, then scratched his upper lip with his index finger. “That is an interesting ethical question. The answer is ‘sometimes.’ Using Mindspeech in that way is intrusive, and you are essentially forcing other people to allow you to see what they do not want you to see. Or, if you wished to use that Gift for misdirection, you would be forcing them to see what you want them to see. From there it is a short step to forcing other things on them. On the other hand ... if you should happen to be in a room full of potential enemies, and you know that they are dangerous to you—and I mean physically dangerous—you would be foolish not to use your Gift.”