“I had the cooks save you some porridge,” the man said, watching him shoving his feet into his boots. “I hope your Companion has explained to you that you are expected to be very cleanly—”
Mags ducked his head. “Yessir,” he said, and left it at that.
“Well, we’ll leave your bath until after you’ve eaten. Best time for you is in the morning for now, that way you won’t conflict with the Guardsmen. Ready?” The man stood up. “I’m Healer Betwick, by the way. I serve the Guard here.”
Whatever a Healer was ... presumably they healed people ... though how they did that was an utter mystery to Mags. Then again, practically everything going on now wasan utter mystery to Mags. “Yessir, Healer Betwick,” Mags replied, as Dallen and the memories poured into him showed him what a Healer was.
And yes, they did heal people, in a bewildering variety of ways. This particular shade of green was accepted as their color, and if you saw someone wearing it, you knew he was a Healer. Just as, if you saw someone in White, you knew he was a Herald, in Scarlet and he was a Bard. Whatever a Bard was—
Before another flood of memories could start, triggered by that word and half-query, Mags followed the man out of the room into a hallway he only vaguely recalled, and from there, not to the big room with all the tables—
—Guards’ mess, memory prompted.
But to a spacious and fragrant kitchen full of very busy people. Or, actually, there were only four of them, but they were so extremely busy it seemed as if there were at least eight of them, and Healer Betwick evidently deemed it prudent to stay out of their way.
He motioned to Mags to go and sit on a stool at a little table off to the side and well away from all the activity, then went over to the hearth and fetched a bowl waiting there, keeping warm.
When he brought it back to Mags, the boy saw it was full of porridge with little dark things scattered over the top of it. “What’s those?” he asked, a bit apprehensively.
“Currants. Dried ones. They’re sweet, you’ll like them, and they are good for you.”
Reassured that they weren’t rabbit droppings or something else that didn’t belong in food, Mags dug in. The Healer was right, he did like the currants, he liked them a very great deal. Half the time the porridge he’d been fed by Master Cole hadn’t even been made with salt; this had been sweetened with honey as well as the berries.
While he ate, the Healer talked in an undertone to the cook, who was a large, balding man with enormous biceps. In fact, so far, Mags hadn’t seen any women here at all. Which was interesting, because Master Cole had very firm ideas about what was “man’s work” and what was not, which meant there would have to be an awful lot of men doing “women’s work” here if there were no women about.
:Cole Pieters is wrong about most things.: Dallen sounded amused. :And the few he is right about, he is right entirely by accident:
Mags nearly choked on his porridge, which caused one of the kitchen staff to make a detour, fetch a mug and pour it full of something, and plunk it down next to Mags, all without missing a beat in his other task. Mags looked at it. It wasn’t water ... it was hot.
:Herb tea. You will like it. Be careful not to burn your mouth.:
The novel sensation of drinking something hot—and flavored—was startling, and a pleasure he had never expected. For that matter, being able to drink water that was fresh and clean, not out of the sluice and full of silt, or stale from sitting in a mildewed bucket all day, or metallic-tasting mine water, had been an unanticipated pleasure. The only time he had ever been able to drink clean water was when he had escaped for a bit to hunt wild food and got a drink from the stream where he went to hunt cress.
The food was doing more than just fill his stomach, it was filling his senses. His nose was so full of the aroma of the tea, all sweet and green, that he felt as if he was floating in it. The porridge had left the flavor of honey and currants in his mouth. And this all seemed to be waking up his thoughts, too. He found himself with a newly-aroused smoldering anger at Cole Pieters. How hard would it have been to give the kiddies clean water to drink? How hard would it have been to give them hot water to drink in the winter? It didn’t even need any flavoring in it, and the fires were going for the cooking already. That simple device would have cost nothing, yet would have made such a difference ....
:Cole Pieters is a vile, cruel man,: Dallen said, his thoughts gone cold and hard. :And no one was aware just how vile and cruel he is until now. He will be dealt with.:
Dallen gave him nothing more, shutting off the thought, leaving Mags wondering just what “dealt with” meant.
Mags was carefully scraping the last little bit of the porridge out of the bowl and sucking the last of the sweetness off the spoon when Herald Jakyr came ambling into the kitchen. He was immediately greeted not only by the Healer, but by the cook as well, and his presence evoked smiles from the rest of the staff. He seemed to be a great favorite—the helper in charge of the bread pressed a roll hot from the oven on him, the one in charge of soup begged him to taste it, and the cook himself carved a bit off a haunch of bacon and fried it then and there, to add to the roll. Mags was ignored, which was exactly the way he liked it. He sat and sipped his tea while the adults discussed him as if he was not there.
“The boy’s not fit to travel, Jakyr,” the Healer said firmly, as Jakyr munched on his snack and the kitchen staff went back to work. “Maybe if it was summer—but he’s malnourished and overworked, and travel with winter coming on, even Companion-back ... I wouldn’t advise it. You’ll be courting sickness with him, and what if you’re caught in weather? What if he got sick and you were stuck in some Waystation somewhere?”
I’m keeping the Herald from going somewhere—The thought suffused him with guilt and apprehension, both of which were blown away like mist in the wind by Jakyr’s next words before Dallen could say anything other than start that wordless reassurance again.
“I’ve a bit to do here yet, and I’m not averse to a rest. There’s nothing that urgent waiting for me at Haven that we can’t afford to let the lad rest and at least start to get some meat on him.” Jakyr even seemed a bit relieved. “I’ve friends enough here to make a pleasure out of necessity.”
“And if something urgent should come up?” the Healer persisted, his brows furrowed.
“Then I’ll go back alone, and one of the Guard can give the boy an escort to Haven.” Jakyr smiled as the Healer nodded with satisfaction. “And if, because of that, they go at a horse’s pace and not a Companion’s, well, that will do no harm.”
“I want that boy eatin’ meat afore you take him out of here,” the cook tossed over his shoulder, with a scowl. “Gods’ a-mercy, if the rest of them mine kids look’s bad as him, I’m tempted, sore tempted, to ride over there meself and thrash the bastard till he bleeds.”
“It’s being dealt with, Scully, never fear,” was all that Herald Jakyr said, the same words that Dallen had used. But Mags had no chance to think much about that, since the Healer whisked him away for that threatened bath.
Only this time he didn’t have anyone scrubbing at him with floor brushes; in fact, he was left quite alone, and to be honest, he would have been at a bit of a loss if Dallen hadn’t told him what to do and how to do it. Soap, that was new. Hot water enough to drown in. More outgrown clothing was waiting for him, dropped off by some young fellow of the Guard, when he got himself well dried off. It, like the last batch, was a bit oversized but soft and warm, and without tears or holes of any sort.
Then he was at a complete loss. Never in all of his life, had he ever had a moment when he was not doing something, except when he was asleep. It was a strange feeling, unsettling, and once again he felt as if the world had suddenly turned upside down. And although he still found himself wrapped in that calm lassitude, he wasn’t sleepy as such. He finished cleaning up the room where the baths were so that it was in the same pristine state it had been before, and then stood there in the damp heat, wonde
ring what to do with himself. His hands twitched a little. His body knew what it expected to be doing—it expected him to be down in the mine. What was he supposed to do with himself?
:Would you like to read a real book?:
Of all the things that Dallen could have said, that was one that took him utterly by surprise. His mute assent led Dallen to direct him down a hall and up two flights of stairs to a small room that was comfortably warm and lit with two of those large glazed windows. There were heavily cushioned benches beneath both of them, and the walls were lined with cases crammed with something he had never seen before, but which the memories he had gotten poured into his mind told him were those mysterious objects—books. Row upon row of them, thick ones, thin ones, bound in all manner and colors of cloth and leather. The room had a smell like nothing he had ever known; leather, but also an odd, faint, sharpish smell, and a hint of dust. The scent Dallen identified for him as peculiar to books. He stared at them avidly. There must be so many things in those books, and he wanted to read them all.
But which one to start with? There was no way of telling what was inside any of them.
:Let me look through your eyes,: Dallen suggested, and when Mags gave him a puzzled assent, he got a most peculiar sensation, as his own eyes flickered over the backs of the books without his own volition.
:That one,: Dallen suggested, and his eyes rested on the tack of one in dull blue leather. Carefully, Mags pulled it out and carried it over to one of the benches.
He was almost afraid to touch the pages with his rough hands, they seemed so fragile to him. When he opened the hook, he wasn’t sure what he was going to see. But his speculations were not what met his eyes; what he saw was long ; rings of words in sentences, written small, like rows and rows of ants on the page. It took him a breathless moment to realize that these were words he knew, that he recognized, that he had written. Most of them, anyway.
:I will help you with the others,: Dallen promised . :Now don’t be afraid of the pages. They will withstand being turned, they are are tougher than they look. Go ahead.:
He took a seat on one of the benches, with the weak, but warm sunlight pouring over his back and licked his lips, then plunged in.
Slowly, sentence by sentence, sometimes word by word, Mags began to read his first book.
It was harder work than he thought, but it was also engrossing, once he realized that this book was telling a story. Of course, he didn’t understand a lot of it, because it talked about things that were so foreign to his life, but Dallen helped by giving him mental images of what was going on. It was ... magical. That was the only possible word for it. Here he was, puzzling out a story that someone else had told, someone who probably lived a very long way away from here, and every person that picked up this book would get to learn the same story.
He got so involved in it that when a bell sounded through the building, he jumped. He didn’t yelp. Yelping got you hit. But he was genuinely startled, and he sat there for a moment with his heart racing, wondering if he had somehow done something wrong and triggered an alarm.
:.That is the bell for noon meal,: Dallen informed him merrily, taking no notice of his panic. And his stomach rumbled. He was so used to being hungry that it hadn’t registered with him. But his stomach had gotten two good, big meals so far, and it wanted another.
He could find his way around a mine, so it was not hard now to remember his way back to the mess hall. But even if he had not known how to get there, the stream of Guards all going in one direction would have given him the clue. This time the room was full of men, and he wondered what it was he should do and where he should go.
But one of the young men spotted him, no doubt because in his ordinary, if over-large clothing, he stood out among the blue uniforms like a rock on a snowdrift. The fellow steered him over to a table, and consulted with someone who was bringing platters of food around.
And that man returned with another big bowl of soup and a half a loaf of bread. “Healer’s orders, Trainee,” the man said, putting both in front of him. “Soup fer you, he sez, till ye be used ta eaten regular. Mebbe some cheese an’ fruit. An’ no beer for ye. I’ll bring the tea, foreby.”
Mags hardly cared. This time the soup had chunks of chicken meat in it as well as the thick rafts of vegetables, and round white things he couldn’t identify, but which tasted glorious. There was more wonderful cheese, and another apple. More herb tea, this time sweetened with honey that somehow blended with the flavors of the herbs and made them stand out more. Part of him still wanted to be wary, afraid that someone would decide to take all this away from him, but Dallen kept up a steady flow of certainty, and eventually he just gave himself over to the food.
He ate until he couldn’t eat any more, and he intended to go back to his book again. But somehow he found himself in that room full of beds again, and thought he would lie down for just a little bit.
And that decision was the last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him.
It seemed only a moment later that he woke to Dallen’s prodding and the sound of a bell again. Outside the windows, the sun was setting. Inside, the sounds from down the hall made him realize that the Guardsmen were heading in the direction of the mess hall. And once again, his stomach growled, telling him in no uncertain terms that it was empty, it had gotten used to being full, and it wanted to be that way again, now.
He spent the next several days in the same way: getting fed, sleeping a very great deal, slowly becoming more and more facile at reading books, absorbing what was in the books that Dallen selected for him.
If he didn’t speak much, it was because he spent most of his time watching everything. From time to time, with a vaguely worried look on his face, Herald Jakyr would seek him out in the book room or at meals and ask him some pointed question or other. Mags’ answers must have satisfied him, for the Herald would get a relieved look on his face and go off about his business.
That business took him away from the Guard Post more often than not. Mags didn’t mind; while he was gone, the Guardsmen generally let him poke around as much as he cared to as long as he was not underfoot.
By watching, he learned how to groom a horse—and by extension, Dallen. He learned how to saddle and bridle one, too, and what to feed it. He learned all manner of useful things, in fact, although the one thing he didn’t learn, because he never could bring himself to pick up a weapon, was how to use a weapon. He watched the Guardsmen at their practice, and every time he even thought about picking up a knife or a bow, he wanted to crawl away and hide. It made his skin crawl and his stomach tie up in knots in a way that nothing Dallen could do would soothe. He kept thinking about the time when he was still in the kitchen and someone had raised a mining hammer as a weapon to Master Cole.
Master Cole had gathered everyone outside to watch.
“I be judge and jury here,” the Master had said harshly. “Ye dared t’ raise yer filthy hand t’ me, dared t’ try an’ strike me dead, and me boys as witness to it.”
He had glanced around at all of his sons, who had nodded and mumbled “ayes.”
“Then I gives ye the sentence ye’d hev served me, if ye could.” And he had then taken the massive, stone-headed mallet at his side, and brutally beaten the poor wretch to death, and beyond, into a pulp, while every other person on the property was forced to watch.
Then the mine kiddies had been ordered to take up what was left and leave it in a played-out seam. The supports were pulled out, the seam collapsed. Everyone understood that this meant if and when someone came looking for the boy, there had been a terrible “accident.”
Mags had not been one of the mine kiddies then, so he had been able to scuttle back to the kitchen, where he shivered through his work. Even the kitchen drudges, usually starving, had little appetite for their scraps that day.
Which, of course, was exactly what the Master intended. The lesson was clear. Take up a weapon and die.
So it was small wonder Mags had d
ifficulty even contemplating setting a hand to a hilt.
Fortunately, no one seemed to think he needed to.
Slowly, he began poking his nose into other places around the Guard Post. He found the office of the fellow who did all the reckoning for this post, and watched in fascination as he made marks that looked like letters, but weren’t. The man seemed amused and, after a while, motioned him over.
“I take it no one ever taught ye your numbers as well as your letters, boy?” he said. He was the oldest person that Mags had ever seen; his hair was snow white, and his face as full of wrinkles as the bark of a tree. His eyes could scarcely be seen, but there was a bright look to them, like a bird’s eye. And Mags did not “hear” anything at all amiss in the thoughts that ticked away in his head like the regular dripping of water on stone. Numbers—this man thought mostly in numbers. He loved them, loved the patterns they made, loved the pure logic that governed them, loved that three and three always made six, never four, never seven.
Mags shook his head.
“Well then, ’tis time to learn, and as I’ve time meself, I’ll teach ye. Pull up yon stool.” He nodded at a tall stool in the corner. Mags obeyed.
The man pulled open a drawer in his desk and extracted a piece of slate and a square-cut stick of white stuff. “Ye’ll be usin’ this; ’tis slate an chalk. ’Tis easy rubbed out, y’ see?” He made a mark and buffed it away with a sleeve. “Now, ye kin count right enough, aye?”
“To a hunner’ sir,” Mags almost whispered.
“Right enough. Well, there’s marks for them numbers, just as there be marks that make letters that make words. On’y these be a bit more straightforward, belike. This be ‘one’—”
Mags caught on quickly. And although he had not realized it until the man—who he learned was Guard-Clerk Sergeant Taver—showed him, he did know some primitive reckoning. After all, he had to keep track of the sparklies he found. He took to the figuring quickly, learning how to add and subtract double-digit numbers by the end of the afternoon, much to Sergeant Taver’s delight. It was Taver who took him in to supper that night, in fact, and much enjoyed letting the “dunderheads” know that already the “wee boy” could outreckon no few of them.
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