He blocked out the fight. He didn’t want to know any more, didn’t want to hear any more. And somewhere deep inside him a little voice whispered that this might not be so bad... he would miss her company if he used this as an excuse to break off the never-official betrothal... but would he miss the burden?
But in turning away from one quarrel, he was drawn to another.
Lena was sitting in a little wilted heap in the herb garden, talking, while Bear tried to get cuttings. From the look of things, she had started talking when she sat down, and had not paused since.
“Will you stop whining!” Bear snapped. “For Cernos’ sake, Lena! You’re not a little girl anymore! If you don’t like what your precious father is doing, tell him, tell Lita, tell both of them to their faces! Tell that little rat Farris how he’s being used! If you don’t like how you’re being treated, say something. Get up on your hind legs and have it out with them, for once in your life!
Lena stared at him, tears starting up in her eyes.
“And stop crying!” Bear spat. “That was cute when you were a little girl and passable when you first got here, but hiding in your room and sulking and weeping until you’re sick are just... .juvenile! Grow up!”
The tears dried up as if a desert wind had sprung up. Lena glared at Bear with her fists clenched at her sides. “Grow up? Say what I feel? Have a confrontation? GROW UP AND FACE MY FATHER JUST LIKE YOU DID?”
Bear froze, lenses slipping down on his nose, mouth half open.
“Just like you? Just like you stood up to your father? Because you make such a shining example to follow!”
Mags winced frantically away from that fight as well. What was wrong with them all? Why were they ripping into each other?
The stone stirred at his unhappiness. It sensed his question.
It had an answer.
Stagnation equals death.
Well, that “answer” had come right out of nowhere and made just about as much sense. What was that supposed to mean, anyway?
They are not dying.
Mags felt a stab of irritation. Of course they weren’t dying. That was pretty obvious. What exactly was the stone trying to get at?
Change is painful. Birth is painful. Creatures in pain lash out without knowing why, and often without caring what they strike.
What are you, anyway? he thought at it, resentfully. The storage room for every cliche and worn-out motto that was ever spoken in this Kingdom?
Yes.
Uh... what?
Among many other things.
Right. Now it was having a philosophical dialogue with him. He was talking philosophy with a rock. Had this just gotten very, very strange?
It already was. You just hadn’t noticed.
How could he have not—
You are looking outward so steadfastly you are not looking inward anymore.
Now you sound like some sort of mystic.
Yes. You are all out of balance.
How would you know?
I am balance.
Well that made him pause.
How can I... how can we . . .
I am past and present. I am not future. There is no knowledge stored in me of what you will do. Only what you can do and what you have done in the past, all of you.
So... you’re a library?
Among other things. Many other things.
At this point he wasn’t quite sure if he was hallucinating, dreaming, or the stone actually was communicating with him. He wasn’t using his mind-voice, that much he was certain of, because it would have hurt if he had been. This was deeper than that, at a level where he thought very clearly, but very slowly—where he was articulate, but it wasn’t exactly in words.
Why are you talking to me?
You are a Herald. You are part of the Web. I am the heart of the Web.
The Web... he thought he remembered that concept, that all Heralds and all Companions were connected in a vast network like a spiderweb—and like a spiderweb, something touching the Web was felt by everything in it.
Can you help me?
You must ask the right questions.
Well, wasn’t that always the case... He sighed in his sleep, if it was sleep. That was the problem: What was the right question?
Who am I?
That was it. That was the one question that was never answered. The one that lurked under the surface of everything he did, just as Amily’s knowledge of her father’s feelings lurked, and Bear and Lena’s fear of confronting what they most desired approval from.
That was what lurked inside Mags. Everyone else he knew, everyone, had a plan, a map, for what they were doing, and every map had the same sort of starting point. This is who you are. This is what you came from. This is where you are going. People might refuse to follow the path on the map, but they still had the map itself, and it gave them the foundation for their entire life—whether that life was spent in rebelling or in conforming. No matter what, they always had an anchor to keep them from drifting away entirely.
He had nothing. He was only what other people thought they saw. Cole Pieters had thought he saw a piece of human trash, valuable only as long as it dragged rock out of his mine. The priests that had visited had seen the offspring of bandits—likely bad blood himself. Here at the Collegium—he was the star Kirball player—he was the pig-ignorant little slave boy who nevertheless fought tooth and nail to learn—he was Amily’s human crutch—he was Bear’s rescuer—
But none of these were him. Or, were all of them?
Who am I? he asked again.
Who do you want to be?
What?
Who do you want to be?
I don’t understand . . .
What you want is an anchor. But an anchor can be at the end of the line as well as the beginning. Who do you want to be? Make that your anchor.
Oh... .Oh!
Yes. Sleep now.
He slept.
Someone was shaking his shoulder. He batted at whoever it was and tried to bury his head deeper into his pillow.
“Mags,” said a voice. One he knew, but couldn’t put a name on. “Mags, wake up.”
He really didn’t want to wake up. Not when he was finally comfortable for the first time in days. Weeks. He hadn’t realized how poorly he’d been sleeping until now. Classes could go hang for one day. He was finally going to catch up—so there.
The voice got sterner. “Mags, you can’t stay here. Wake up, that’s an order.”
Oh, well. If it was an order... but dammit, it wasn’t fair. Why shouldn’t he be able to sleep late just once? The only other time he got to sleep late was when he was in the infirmary.
He dragged himself up out of sleep and levered himself up off the bench with the help of the table. Herald Caelen stopped shaking his shoulder and offered a hand to help him up. He took it, knuckling the eye that had been squashed into the pillow with the other hand.
“Sorry, sir,” he said contritely. “M’room’s like a damn furnace. An’ I don’ thin’ I got a decent night’s sleep this whole fortnight.”
“Yes, well, there’s a lot of that going around,” Caelen replied, pushing him forward a little, past the threshold and closing the door firmly behind them both. He motioned to Mags to keep going along the corridor. “Even those who were not in on the plans for Amily were aware that there was something going on. It made for a lot of uneasy sleep, and the heat is not helping.”
“Mebbe you oughter give people a turn down ’ere, then,” Mags said with a chuckle. “I was sleepin’ a treat.” He gave his hair a hasty comb with his fingers to settle it.
Caelen gave him an odd, sideways look. “Most people would say the opposite.”
Really? That seemed uncharacteristic of Heralds or Trainees. “Uh—why? Sir? Them benches’re purty soft. Good as a bed.”
Instead of answering, Caelen responded with a question. “Did you have any dreams? Sense that you weren’t alone? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”
Ma
gs made a face. “Jest a good solid night. Since most’a my dreams is nightmares, I s’pose not havin’ bad ones is out’a th’ ordinary.” A very vague memory seemed to come near to the surface of his mind, like an ornamental fish in a pool of green water—but it retreated again before he got the shape of it, and he shrugged it off. “Nay, sir. I jest slept, slept real good.”
“Interesting. Well, I’m tempted to tell you to continue to sleep down there until the weather breaks,” Caelen said dryly. “You’re the first cheerful person I’ve spoken to today. Everyone is quarrelling with everyone else. It’s the same down in Haven, and there would probably be fighting all over town, except that no one can muster the energy to fight.” He rubbed the back of his own neck. “I never thought I’d miss winter.”
By this time they had reached the stairs going up. “Reckon iffen ye ain’t gonna lemme sleep down ’ere, I’m a-gonna sleep out i’ Companion’s Field,” he said, following the Dean up the stairs. “Druther get et by bugs than bake.”
“You may regret saying that,” Caelen replied absently. “There are some nasty surprises out there, and being covered in no-see-um bites is no joke. I left your new class schedule in your room. And while I hesitate to make personal recommendations—if I were you, I would avoid my friends for a while.”
Mags winced. He might have no memories of what he’d dreamed of—if anything—before he’d slept, but he had very vivid memories of Amily spinning fanciful tales of near-hysteria, and Bear and Lena breaking into a quarrel before they’d left. “They was achin’ fer a fight when they left m’room,” he said carefully.
“Well... let’s just say they all got one.” Caelen shook his head. “Nikolas is down in Haven, and he was said to have left so quickly that even Rolan was taken by surprise. Lena and Bear had what was described to me as an ‘epic’ and very public battle, parted ways, then Bear promptly stalked down to the Guard barracks and for reasons unknown to me had a shouting match with a Guard Healer by the name of Cuburn. Lena spent the entire afternoon mewed up with Master Bard Dean Lita, at the conclusion of which Bard Marchand was sent for, and there was more shouting, and Marchand was forbidden any further contact with one of the other Bardic Trainees.”
Mags whistled. “An’ I slept through alla thet?”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Caelen replied. “This way you weren’t asked to take a side. That is why I advise you to avoid them if you can.”
When they emerged, Mags blinked in surprise. The sun was going down.
“I slep’ all day?” he exclaimed.
“Which is why I came to find you.” Caelen slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “When you didn’t appear at class and you were not in your room, people were worried. The only reason no one went into a panic was because Dallen was not in the least bit disturbed. Dallen told my Companion where you were and that you were sleeping off Gift overuse.”
“Aye. Tha’s what Dallen tol’ me. Said t’sleep ’er off.” It was so amazing not to have a headache!
“Try to get something to eat, I order you to get plenty to drink, and it won’t hurt you to sleep more,” Caelen told him. “Now, I need to go break up another contentious argument in the library. Remember my advice about your friends. Even Amily, at this juncture.”
Caelen stalked wearily off without even saying goodbye, Mags stood in the doorway, feeling the heat pummel him, and felt his refreshed spirits wilt and sink.
Bear and Lena at each other’s throats in public? Amily driving her father off?
Here he’d thought they’d at least solved their big problem for the short term—but solving it only seemed to have made everything else worse.
He groaned. Any appetite he’d had was gone.
::Dallen?::
::Ah, you sound better.::
::Aye. Sleepin’ he’ped. Reckon mebbe I better do some more on it. Cause from what Caelen says, jest by sayin’ “heyla” I c’ld start a war.::
Dallen snorted. ::Not just you. Come on along to the field. I’ll show you a cool place for a lie-down. One with nothing in it to bite you.::
::Don’ haveta ask me twice.:: The mere thought of more sleep was intoxicating. ::Jest gimme time fer a wash-up an’ clean stuff. I could sleep fer ’nother day.::
Chapter 17
The next few days were spent in catching up with classwork and some very careful watching of what he said so that he didn’t launch anyone else into a fight. And tempers were very short. No one seemed to be getting enough sleep, everyone was dozing off in class, and the grotto was full of people all the time. So was the bathing room, as people tried to cool off with baths. The river was full of splashing bodies. Any place there was a marble or stone floor, you could expect to find someone lying on it. Permission had been given to everyone in the three Collegia to wear as little clothing as their modesty and the sensibilities of others would allow.
But it wasn’t just the heat. Perhaps it was that so many people up here were Gifted, and irritation tended to spread. But after the blowup in his rooms, and after learning about the subsequent fights that Lena and Bear, and Amily and her father, had had, Mags was determined not to contribute to the situation. No matter what happened, no matter what the provocation, he refused to discuss anything other than classwork, the weather, and Kirball. He managed to sidestep every single potential quarrel that started brewing in his vicinity that way; some, though not all, he was able to completely avert.
As for his friends—well, things were not exactly “friendly,” although he hadn’t quarreled with any of them. He’d just snapped at them, he’d been a bit impolite, but he hadn’t actually said anything that bad. But the other fights . . .
He had a confused “memory” of actually being there at the time of the other altercations—he hadn’t been, of course, but finally he decided that someone who had been in earshot must have told him about it when he was feeling heat-sick and the memories had leaked over. Certainly a lot of people knew the quarrels had taken place, and certainly none of the parties had been making any attempt to keep their voices down.
Lena and Bear avoided him, out of embarrassment, maybe. Or maybe they had been advised by their respective Deans not to go to him or Amily until things calmed down.
Amily—he couldn’t explain her silence. She made no attempt to contact him for several days, not even after he had a batch of mint drink that the Cook was experimenting with sent round to her. One the one hand, he felt deeply hurt, but on the other, if he was going to follow Caelen’s advice—which he was—he shouldn’t be trying to talk with her anyway.
It was hard, though. They’d always been able to count on each other for sympathy and at least a ready listener. He wasn’t really having conversations with the rest of his friends so much as he was being a referee, which wasn’t any fun and just drained him.
He felt—well, not miserable. No matter what, if things didn’t sort themselves out by the time Ice and Stone were finally dealt with, Mags was determined to get it sorted out. But aside from the enervating and irritating effect of the heat, and the constant need to pick his way carefully among potential fights, and missing his friends and really missing Amily, his spirits were decidedly low. Melancholy, that was it. He went to sleep in that relatively cool spot out in the Field at night with a headache; he’d wake up without one and with the hope that things would be better. He’d endure the heat and the quarreling all day, Lena and Bear and Amily wouldn’t even turn up at the same meals as he did, and the drain of the heat and the headache would build all day long. He’d go to a fretful sleep feeling just a little sick from it.
Nevertheless, he was absolutely determined not to end up moping and hiding with Dallen in Companion’s Field.
Besides... he wouldn’t be that alone out there. Trainees and their Companions were camped out all over the wretched place. He kind of resented whoever it was that had staked out the chapel in the middle; it had stone floors. Though it was said to be haunted by Tylendel’s ghost, at this point he was thinking a ghost
just might be better company than some of the living.
He had already found out the same day what Lena had been doing, closeted with Dean Lita; there had been plenty of people listening avidly when Marchand was called in, and there were enough who disliked Machand that the story spread, in a great deal of detail, rather quickly. As Mags had rather cynically expected, Marchand claimed that he had been doing his proteges a favor, and they had asked him—indeed, he claimed they had begged him—to use their melodies in his songs. From all reports he went on at great length about how he had taken simplistic little “apprentice tunes, not worthy of a moment’s notice,” and improved them out of all recognition.
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