Intrigues v(cc-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  He repressed the thought that perhaps the reason why he was so sensitive to these minds and no one else was, was because there might be a kinship connection with himself. That wasn’t important right now. And as Dallen had stressed to him, just because your parents had been bad, it didn’t follow that you would be.

  What was important was figuring out where this man was, and what it was he was going to do.

  It was very like trying to ride the back of a wild and dangerous, ravening beast—a beast that had no idea Mags was there. All he could do was hold on for the ride and hope the beast didn’t notice.

  After several moments, he still couldn’t tell which of the foreigners this man was... he only knew which one he wasn’t, because this mind was nothing like the mind of the man he had seen down in Haven and followed to the travelers’ inn. And there had been no kinship connection there, either.

  He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated with all his might, but could not even get a sense of direction from that mind. All he could say for sure was that it was down in Haven somewhere. He got flashes of what looked like a great many people eating and drinking together; another inn, but it could have been one of dozens. Even if Mags had been able to recognize it, there was no guarantee that the man would stay there for any length of time. In fact, given that they had been discovered now, it was very unlikely that they would take any two meals in the same place.

  There were layers to the man’s anger. There was a fundamental rage that drove him all the time, waking and sleeping. And there was a hatred for Valdemar atop that—but not the sort that he would expect to find in, say, a Karsite, who hated and feared everything that Valdemar represented.

  No, this was a more generalized hatred. He didn’t want to be here, he hated this place, it wasn’t home, the people were soft and simple fools, their Heralds were unnatural and perverted creatures with a sick and twisted bond to their horses, and he wanted to be gone as soon as possible.

  But he couldn’t leave. He had a task to perform here.

  Frustratingly, Mags could not get a sense of what that task was. Only that there was a very important task to be accomplished and he had not been able to do it.

  And atop that, another level of anger and acute frustration that there was something he needed, desperately needed, in order to finish that task. And it wasn’t something that he could just buy or make or have made. It was something personal and very specific. He had thought he had it, but he didn’t. He must have left it, because it was missing, and now he could get nothing done. Try as he might, Mags could not get a sense of where the man thought he had left this thing, much less what it was.

  Right now, getting that thing back, whatever it was—that was his primary goal. He thought now he knew where it was. He was working on several plans simultaneously to get it. It was all those plans, being thought through together, that made it impossible to see what the object was and where it was.

  :... oh... now I understand.: Dallen’s mind-voice was a whisper, as if he, too, was afraid to disturb that mind.

  :Understand what?: Mags demanded.

  :Later—:

  The mind buzzed with these plans, to the point where Mags couldn’t follow any of the threads of thought at all. Plans branched off plans, and the mind worked at all of them, simultaneously, until Mags felt dizzy—

  Then, suddenly—the mind was gone.

  :What happened?: he said, alarmed. :Did I—did he—:

  :I don’t—think so,: Dallen replied with difficulty. :I don’t think he knew you were there. I think... I think there is just something that links you randomly. It holds you together for a bit, then he spins away and the connection breaks.: Mags sensed a lot of pain, physical pain in Dallen.

  :What’re ye doin’, ye gurt fool?: he demanded, alarmed, :Ye ain’t tryin’ ter walk are ye?:

  :No... no. I just let my pain drugs wear off, so I can think and talk to you. It’s worth it. A little pain is not an issue with something this important in the offing.: There was a sense of a weak laugh. :I will muddle through.:

  Mags wanted to throw his arms around Dallen’s neck and beat him with a stick at one and the same time. He was so glad that Dallen had been able to follow all this, so glad that Dallen would be able to tell all the other Companions immediately. And he wanted to beat the big moron for hurting himself to do so and shrugging it all off.

  :I promise I will drink them very soon now. I think there is something up here at the Collegium that has been preventing you from making that connection quite so often,: Dallen continued. :There are a lot of shields here, and every Gifted tends to naturally create a differently sized shield as well. Some don’t even have a specific person that they are tied to, and are probably the result of many Heralds and Healers being in the same place for a long time. Most of those shields don’t extend much past the surface of one’s own mind, but some can extend to cover the Collegia and Palace as well. Those big ones aren’t strong, and they are entirely subconscious, but having several of them in place could have interfered with you making conscious contact with that mind before.:

  :Could thet be where m’nightmares’re from?:

  :Oh yes. In sleep you are more likely to get seepages. And it was just our bad luck that we were on the Kirball field, outside those shields, when whatever it is happened that allows you to link briefly with that madman.: He got a sense of Dallen wincing as his poor legs complained to him.

  :Gods.: He breathed heavily, as if he had been running. :An’ if I go back—no chance up there thet I’ll hook him again. Then no way, I cain’t go back up there. Not if I’m gonna have any hope of findin’ him.:

  :Not when we have no idea how you link to him, not when it seems to be triggered by something on his part, and not when we don’t know when that is going to happen,: Dallen agreed unhappily. :Oh Mags—I am sorry.:

  :Eh, ’sallright.: He actually felt a little light-headed, giddy, with the revelations of the past candlemark or so. Lena had clearly forgiven him, Amily had not abandoned him nor given up on him. The Heralds now knew—or would soon, when Dallen reported to them—that he was not “the foreigner” although he was somehow involved. That image of him with blood on his hands was troubling, but there were so many interpretations of that even as a real vision and not something symbolic that it wasn’t even remotely likely that one of them was “Mags kills the King.”

  Though what evoked fear right now was the thought that it was a vision of “Mags interrupts the person that kills the King . . .”

  Aye, but Foresight ain’t absolute. Ye kin change things. People do’t all th’ time.

  And as Dallen had confirmed, those nightmares he had been plagued with had an explanation too. The sleeping mind was a lot more susceptible to mental links, and he could be linking to that madman every time he slept. Which was a scary thought, but not nearly as scary as the idea that he had been creating those horrible dreams himself.

  :I cain’t come back,: he said slowly. :Not if them shields ain’t somethin’ that kin be taken down.:

  :I don’t think most of them can be,: Dallen said reluctantly. :There are some that are as old as the Palace itself.:

  :Then I gotta stay here, in th’ city. I gotta wait fer th’ next time I get linked up. I gotta either find this feller, or figger out which one he is, or figger out what he’s gonna do.: The logic was inescapable.

  :Or all three. I agree,: Dallen said mournfully.

  :Hellfires.: He sighed. :All right. Let’s make us a plan an’ fast, so’s ye kin tell Rolan an’ the rest an’ they kin do what they’re gonna do, an’ ye kin get drugged up.: He smiled to himself. :Ye gurt fool.:

  Chapter16

  THE first order of business was to find a place to wait until dawn, or thereabouts, when someone in authority could wake up and decide what to do about Mags. And up here would not do. There were too many private guards and not nearly enough places to hide.

  So Mags made his way as swiftly as he could in the opposite direction to where
he really wanted to go, because right now the idea of being safe in his room again was so desirable it that it was all he could do to hold to his plan. He went further down into Haven, to find a place where he could get a little sleep while he waited for dawn.

  While he trotted down the alleys—because anyone who was skulking and moving from shadow to shadow would attract suspicion, and anyone who was moving without any attempt at stealth would be assumed to be here on some business—he went at the problem logically. He needed somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed, and somewhere flat so he could sleep. He needed sleep, or he’d be even more vulnerable than he already was. It had to be somewhere he wouldn’t be seen, and out of the way of traffic. At the Collegium, at the mine, that had been easy—wriggle into cover under some bushes. But this was a city, and there was nothing like that to speak of—what little there was grew in parks and private gardens. The weather was good though; he just needed some place out of the way, and flat enough that he could get some sleep.

  Then a glance at one of the great houses he passed to see how high the moon was gave him the answer. Out of the way, and flat? What could be better than a roof?

  Most roofs were not actually flat, of course, but he knew there were places where cornices joined and roofs butted together that would give him something he could wedge himself into and not worry about falling off.

  So as he got down into the part of the city where the everyday folk lived, he started looking for an inn—because an inn had people coming and going at all hours, and a little activity around it would go unnoticed if he was careful.

  It was not more than a candlemark later that he was wedging himself into exactly the sort of nook he had envisaged, and even better, it actually was flat, a flat space behind a set of four chimney pots. And as an added incentive, the chimney pots were keeping it warm, for the air was still cold at night, especially up here where there was wind whipping around the rooftops.

  Now that he was up here, secure—it all hit him at once.

  Mostly what hit him was a relief so profound it felt as if all his muscles went limp at once.

  He had already cried far, far too much, so he didn’t begin sobbing now. Instead, he found himself smiling for the first time in—well—since the second lot of visions began. Weeks, anyway.

  It didn’t matter that he had a daunting task before him. For right now, this moment, all that mattered was that he was a Trainee again. He would apologize to Bear and Lena and somehow make it up to them. Dallen was going to heal, and if Bear was right and he couldn’t ride circuits, well Mags could serve in Haven. What mattered was it really had been an accident, though they had both taken the foolish chances that contributed to the accident. What mattered was that though there was a nasty part of him, it wasn’t a monster. Rolan was right.

  He yawned hugely and curled into the warm chimney pot a little more, his muscles feeling as if they were made of butter.

  And the next thing he knew, it was morning.

  He watched the sun coming up over the rooftops, and waited for Dallen to rouse.

  :Mmrph.:

  :Mornin’.:

  :I am glad you did not say ‘good.’: He got a sense of the ache in Dallen’s legs, and winced.

  :Talk to anybody yet?: he asked, not expecting an answer.

  :Actually yes. Rolan, and Nikolas via Rolan. It will take some time to convince people outside of the Heralds up here that you are not a great villain. Nikolas wants to know if you think you can survive without direct contact from up here for a while. I think he has some concerns that our foreigners might not be working alone.:

  :Ye mean if it gets out thet I kin see this feller’s mind, I could be in trouble?:

  :Exactly. Nikolas wants to keep this information confined to the Companions, himself, and the King for now. He can’t get away to help you, and we certainly can’t send the King down with a packet of money and clothing.:

  Mags chuckled at that image.

  :And a Companion trotting up with saddlebags for you would be just as conspicuous. So can you manage on your own?:

  Mags considered that. :Dunno why not. Don’ think I should try getting’ ’nother job, though.:

  :I agree. Your ‘job’ is hunting down our quarry. You need to be mobile.:

  :So I need somethin’ that’ll let me lounge ’round streets an’ do nothing an’ not look suspicious.: He considered that for a moment. :Blind beggar. People’ll gimme money. I kin sleep rough, an’ I kin scrounge fer more food. I ain’t picky ’bout what I eat.:

  Dallen was silent. :I had thought about beggar. Blind didn’t occur to me.:

  :I kin drop a liddle shield an’ use other peoples’ eyes t’ watch crowd—an’ the bandage’ll cover m’face, so if the furriners see me, might not recognize me.: He thought some more. :I kin snitch some wax an’ seal m’eyes shut w’ it, case summun snatches m’bandage off.:

  The thought was the parent to the deed. He was already making his way quietly off the roof and into the stable attached to the inn as he spoke.

  And on his way out of the inn-yard, he got his first stroke of good fortune. A fellow in a hurry to leave discarded half a meat pie in the dust as he mounted his horse. Mags snatched it up, dusted off the worst of the dirt, and devoured it. There was breakfast, and he had certainly eaten worse.

  He needed wax, a rag, and a staff. The last would be easiest to get. He managed to steal a rag from a rag-and-bone-man’s cart as the man made a collection. That left the wax.

  Wax was valuable. He considered using mud instead, but he was afraid of getting something into his eyes that would infect them. What to do . . .

  :Turn right,: Dallen said suddenly into his mind.

  Mags didn’t argue. He went down the first right-hand street he came to, and discovered himself in the chandler’s street—but in the alley, not the street itself. And although wax was valuable, and candle ends would always be collected to be melted down and made into new candles, he soon realized that tiny bits of it were not so valuable that here anyone bothered to pick them up out of the alley. He prowled the expanse with his nose practically pressed to the hard-packed dirt, picking up a drop there, a drip here, and pressing them together in his hands. With patient gleaning, by the time he got to the end of the alley he had a nice ball of wax about the size of his fist, and it was a pleasingly unpleasant color as well, close enough to flesh-color to blend, and mottled with threads of red, blue and ocher. If he made a flat sheet of it and pressed pieces over his eyes, it would look at first glance as if he had had a horrible accident and his eyes were covered with scar-tissue. It wouldn’t pass a close muster, but most people wouldn’t look a second time.

  And the staff was easy; he just went through the alleys of the better homes again, and found a place where the gardeners were doing tree trimming, dashed in and nicked a piece when the gardeners were too busy to see him. As an added bonus, in the garden-midden he found what had been an ornamental bowl for flowers, which now had a chipped rim and a big crack in it. That would do for his begging-bowl.

  By midmorning, he was established. He settled himself just out of the way of foot traffic, his eyes sealed with wax and bandaged, his staff across his lap, and the bowl, which looked nicely forlorn and battered, in front of him.

  He dropped some of his shields, ever so cautiously, and let the thoughts, and particularly the images, of the people passing by seep into his mind. Uppermost for the most part were concerns about where they were going, so he got lots of glimpses of the street and the people in it.

  Until the madman somehow connected with him again, this was Mags’ best hope of finding him; looking for the foreigners through the eyes of other people.

  Now and again he heard the metallic sound of a small coin falling into his bowl. When he did, he murmured a quiet thank you, groped convincingly for the token, and stuffed it in his pocket.

  Dallen was a comforting presence in the back of his mind again, even if the Companion was mostly drugged and comatose. There were a hu
ndred questions he wanted to ask, and unfortunately, right now, he couldn’t.

  Foremost was the suspicion that at least part of the reason why Nikolas wasn’t giving him help was that the King’s Own was testing him again.

  If that was so, well, he was actually all right with that. He still felt as if he needed to be punished—or at least to atone in some way—

  Maybe someone else would have resented this, but he was trying to be honest with himself, and if he had been in Nikolas’ shoes, he’d have done the same. After all, Mags had run away from the Collegium; Nikolas had to be sure that he could count on Mags to do what he was asked to do.

  So Mags had to prove himself, show he was still able to perform as he had been taught, and do so without any outside support.

  While he watched the passing crowd through the eyes of the crowd itself, he pondered where it might be likeliest to find the foreigners now. Would they have tried to hide themselves in the slums?

  Don’t think so. One of the things that Nikolas had taught him was that each block in the poorer sections of Haven was like a village. Everyone knew everyone, and they all knew each others’ business. For a lot of foreigners to suddenly intrude—well, they would stand out. It would be obvious that they weren’t poor, no matter how they tried to disguise themselves. And—hmm.

  Another question to ask Dallen: just how widespread were the stories about foreigners’ plotting the King’s death? If such tales were current all over Haven, there were plenty of people who would report their presence to the Guard, no matter how they themselves felt about the Guard, or whether or not they were lawbreakers. Because there was bound to be a reward tied to their capture, and there is nothing like a reward to make the former lawbreaker turn law-abiding citizen.

  So he could probably dismiss the slums.

  On the other hand, they had stolen horses now. They didn’t have to be in Haven at all. They could be anywhere within half a day of the city, though it was likeliest that they were closer than that.