He pulled the cloth bag that held the present out from under the cloak folded on the bench beside him. Bear finally seemed to wake up a bit.
“Mags, you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t spend money someone gave you on presents for others—”
“Why not? ’S mine now, right? S’pose to get things as make me happy? Well, gettin’ you an’ Lena somethin’ makes me happy.”
With a nonplussed look on his face, Bear opened the bag, revealing the sheepskin mittens that Mags had gotten him.
“I hardly know what to say—this is exactly what I needed!” Once again, Mags got the feeling there was more behind that statement than he could properly comprehend. But some of it slipped out. “I think you know me better than my own family, and we haven’t been friends for more than a couple of moons.” The last was tinged with bitterness.
:Oh, dear ...:
:Mebbe families ain’t all shiny an’ flowers.:
:Sometimes not even with the best of intentions.:
Fortunately, what could have been a very uncomfortable moment indeed was salvaged by Lena’s arrival. She did not look happy, but she didn’t look as miserable as Bear was.
She helped herself to the food, but Mags could not help noticing that she took less than half of what she usually did. If only he had something he could talk to them about, something to distract them!
Oh, wait—he did!
“Ye know them nasty bodyguards? Them furriners?” he began. “Well, hang if they ain’t actin’ strange.”
He went on to tell them what he had overheard, then what he himself had seen. Bear and Lena both perked up—with a certain amount of very unsympathetic comments—as he gave some pretty elaborate descriptions of their behavior, helped out by Dallen.
He didn’t have to figure out how to tell the story of the “haunted” ax, though. Lena suddenly looked as if something had occurred to her.
“Oh, Havens!” she exclaimed. “I wonder if—”
“What?” Bear asked before Mags could.
“Well, there is a rumor going around that the Palace is haunted. Some wild story about weapons flying off of walls and cutting things in half. I wonder if this has anything to do with why those bodyguards are so nervous?” Her eyes sparkled. “I wonder if it is the ghost of some Royal Guardsman who is offended by them?”
“Where d’ ye hear these things?” Mags asked, both amused and puzzled. Amused because at least he wouldn’t have to figure out some way of telling the story without revealing how he had learned it.
“Bards hear everything, because anything could lead to a new song,” she replied, now actually eating instead of shoving her food about on the plate.
“And Bards gossip worse than a pack of old women,” Bear added, but with a smile. “Do you really think it’s a ghost?”
“Well, I ’spect they do,” Mags put in. “They sure act like it.”
“I can’t think of why something like that would happen otherwise.” Lena’s eyes were shining now. “There aren’t any classes for another two days, I am going to poke around and see what else I can find out. A mystery! I love mysteries!”
Now that she had cheered up, Mags felt it was a good time to give her the present he had gotten her. He reached into his tunic and brought out the pretty little wooden box that Lydia had helped him pick out to hold it. “Went t’ the Midwinter Market. Jakyr come in late an’ only stayed a day, I reckon ’e felt guilty, so ’e give me some money an’ I reckoned I’d get ye both summut. So ... ’ere.” He handed her the box, which had a harp carved on the top of it. She exclaimed over the pretty thing, then opened it. Mags was very pleased with that find, which had been a stroke of pure luck. Just as there were merchants who tried to pass off inferior articles as more valuable than they were, there were also those who didn’t know what they had. He had found, in a secondhand dealer’s booth, this very pretty string of deep red beads. The merchant thought they were glass, but his expert eye had seen that they were, in fact, garnets.
“Oh, Mags!” She pulled the beads out of the box and ran them through her fingers. “Please tell me they didn’t cost you a fortune!”
“Bah, this’s me!” he scoffed. “I got help bargainin’.” In fact, it had been Lydia who helped him bargain for that, and for the pretty carved wooden charms he had attached to all the page-markers. “I still got coin fer me.”
Thus reassured, she flung her arms around his neck and hugged him quickly. “It’s so pretty! And Bardic Scarlet, too! Thank you!”
“Show ’er yer mitts, Bear,” Mags urged, and Bear displayed his mittens. “Can’t have his precious fingers froze, now c’n we?” he teased, and she laughed.
“He needed mittens like those on our trip,” she said. “He had to borrow a pair of mine, and they weren’t nearly as nice and warm as these. His poor fingers kept getting cold and stiff.”
Then she snapped her fingers. “And that reminds me of something else. On the way home, Bear and I were talking, and—Mags, do you want to find out what really happened with that raid on the bandits where you were found?”
That came as such a complete surprise to him that all he could do was gape at her and say, “Wha—” He stared stupidly at her for a moment, then gathered his thoughts. “Uh, I—guess—”
“Well, we can do that. The records of all the Guard reports are kept here, and Bards get access to everything but the sealed stuff. All we need to do is find the report of that raid and see what it says.” She looked at him in triumph. “What’s the worst that can happen? We find out you are just what that horrible man claimed you are, a bandit child, which is scarcely your fault. But I think he lied. I think we should look into it.”
Mags felt a little thrill of mingled apprehension and excitement. Could he—
::I think you should, too, Mags.:
Well, that settled it.
“We’ll do it,” he said decisively.
———
With both boys in tow the next morning, Lena went in search of where and how to get at the Guard Archives, and that was when they ran into their first snag. Although Bards had access to the Guard reports, Bardic Trainees needed special permission.
“You’ll have to get one of your teachers to give you a letter stating that you need to use the Archives for research, Trainee,” said the stolid old man in Guard Blue sitting behind the desk at the entrance to the Archives. “We can’t have every young Trainee in here poking around just to satisfy her curiosity or to win a bet. Those are the regulations.”
Lena sighed, but she didn’t push the subject. “I’ll be back with that letter,” she said firmly.
“And when you are, I’ll let you in. Not before.” The man crossed his arms and gave her a stern look. “There is sometimes sensitive and personal information in those reports. Things other people would rather not have bandied about. As a courtesy to them, we don’t let just anyone come in here and start reading through things.”
It was witheringly clear that he was not going to budge an inch on this. Mags tapped Lena on the shoulder. “’S all right, we c’n come back later,” he said. Reluctantly, she nodded.
All three of them left the Guard barracks, which was some distance away from the rest of the complex of buildings, and trudged back through the snow to Healers. “D’ ye think you c’n get that letter?” Mags asked anxiously. Now that he had committed to finding out the truth, he wanted to get on with it.
Lena snorted delicately. “He’s making a big fuss about nothing. Hardly any of the Trainees want to come here; it takes a lot of work to read something in a Guard report and come up with a song. Everything has to match—you can’t change the story just because you don’t like the way it came out or the person that should be a hero is a really unpleasant person. That is why people trust Bardic news and Bardic history songs. It’s a lot easier to just make something up for a tale song. I can get that letter. I just need to figure out which of my teachers is most likely to give it to me.”
They pushed through the
door into Bear’s quarters. And there was someone waiting for them. One of the Palace servants in the special blue-and-white livery rose from his seat, a look of relief on his face. “You’re the herb Healer?” he blurted.
“Trainee,” Bear corrected. The man waved that off.
“Everyone says that you are the one that knows everything there is to know about herbs. I need something to make people sleep. Those wretched bodyguards are demanding it for one of their masters.” The poor fellow looked exceedingly harried.
“Such things are dangerous—” Bear warned. “Too little and they don’t work, too much and they can kill. And you can become addicted to them.”
“Frankly, Healer, if that man doesn’t stop moaning about being watched all the time, I may kill him. He hasn’t slept in three nights. Please, give us at least one night of peace!” The man gestured entreatingly. “I’m begging you!”
Mags, Bear, and Lena all exchanged looks. “I’ll get my bag. My friends are coming with me.”
“I think that is a good idea, Healer. I don’t trust those men. I wouldn’t be alone with them for my own weight in gold.” He waited patiently while Bear gathered up his necessaries and loaded Mags down with them. Then he gestured to them to follow.
They followed him up to the Palace, with Mags struggling to contain his excitement at being asked, invited in, to see the very men he was supposed to be keeping a remote eye on. Lena did not even try to pretend to calm. Her eyes sparkled, and she almost skipped.
They went in through a door he would never have dared use if he had been here alone. It was, however, clearly a servants’ entrance, since it was plain and let out into a utilitarian hallway, not at all dissimilar to the ones in the Collegia. And, to be fair, Mags would not have known it was “utilitarian” if he had not had Dallen’s point of view to give him a comparison.
Shortly, however, he had a comparison of his own as they entered into a hall that clearly housed something other than servants.
Whitewashed plaster and black beams gave way to rich wood paneling. The wooden floors were polished to a soft gleam, and shiny metal polished lanterns were mounted at intervals along the walls. Though they were not lit at the moment, it was clear that this hall would be as brightly illuminated at night as anyone could wish.
This, of course, would allow the visitor to admire the beautiful little tables holding statuary that stood beneath each lamp, and the paintings between them. None of them got a chance to do anything of the sort, as the servant hurried them along as fast as he could manage.
He tapped once at a door in the middle of the hallway, and quickly ushered them all in. When Mags entered, he saw two of the bodyguards standing at strict attention, one on either side of the window, and a man huddled with his head in his hands, sitting on a padded chair beside a small table. This was so opulent a room that it made his head spin a little. It was completely carpeted, with stunning hangings softening the effect of the wooden paneling. He had thought that Master Soren’s house was the height of luxury. Now he had a new benchmark. This was the height of luxury.
There was a fourth man standing in the shadows. He emerged when the three of them entered with the servant. Now, Mags had heard of something called cloth-of-gold, but he had never actually seen anyone wearing it.
This man was.
He wore a tunic of peculiar cut, half black velvet and half a shining fabric that could only be cloth-of-gold. It was very short, and very tight, and with it he wore trews that were also half gold and half black, but on the opposite sides. He had the sort of face that, even had Mags not been getting the feeling of danger from him, would have made him cautious. It was an angry face, and the face of a man who is not used to being told “no.”
“Who are these children?” he barked at the servant, who quailed.
“The young man is the best herbalist at Healers’ Collegium,” the servant said, turning his wince into a bow. “The other two are his assistants.”
“And where are the Healers, the adults?” The man seemed outraged.
“Your man will not tell them anything, my Lord,” the servant replied. “And they tell me there is nothing wrong with him that their powers can heal. They suggested medicines. This young man can compound those.”
The man with his head in his hands moaned, and said something in a foreign tongue.
“What’s he saying?” Bear hissed.
“He’s saying something about eyes,” the servant whispered back, as the man in gold and black glared at Bear, looking him up and down with contempt. “The eyes, the eyes, always watching! That’s about all he’s said for the last three days.”
“The eyes,” Lena murmured. “Something about that sounds familiar.”
“Well, you think about it while I look at this fellow.” Paying no attention to how the apparent leader glared at him, Bear walked up to the man on the couch and forced him to sit up and take his hands away from his face. He peered in both eyes, together and separately, checked him for a fever, and then got out some instruments from his case and began doing other things with the help of the servant, who translated.
“Mags, would you get out the mortar and pestle, and start grinding up those herbs I brought with me? Lena, you keep them all separate in those dishes that are with the mortar and pestle.” Bear was tapping the man with a little hammer, though what purpose that could serve, Mags had not a clue.
Now grinding things was no new task for Mags. He’d been put to that sort of work about the time he first remembered being in Cole Pieters’ custody. So he fished out the implements and the little packets of herbs and started grinding. He left one sprig of each intact and put it on the pile of powder he spilled out into the dish Lena held out for him.
Meanwhile the man kept glaring, while Bear asked questions in a coaxing tone of voice and the man occasionally answered with something besides “the eyes.” And Lena had her brows creased and her lips pursed in that way that Mags knew meant she was thinking very hard indeed.
Bear left off his examining and questioning when Mags finished the last of the herbs. Motioning both Mags and Lena out of the way, he began measuring things into the mortar, added a bit of liquid from a little flask he took out of the bag, then began mashing it all together with the pestle until he had a paste. Then he took bits of the paste that he carefully scooped out with the tiniest spoon Mags had ever seen, dusted his hands with what looked like flour, and began rolling the paste, scoop by scoop, into pellets. And when he had finished everything in the mortar, he began his measuring and mixing again.
Eventually it was done; he threw the remaining ground-up herbs on the fire, where they went up the chimney with a smell like bitter burning leaves. And now, at last, he turned to the man in gold and black, who was fuming furiously.
“First of all, your servant here hasn’t slept in so long he’s not even able to think anymore,” Bear said matter-of-factly. “Now maybe you know better than me why he hasn’t. But these pills I’ve made him are going to make his thoughts stop running around so he can sleep. But he says that this started when he crossed into Valdemar, and he claims it won’t stop until he leaves, so if you want to keep him alive, I suggest you send him home. He’s doing you no good here, and my pills won’t shut everything out for him. I tell you true, if he doesn’t get real sleep, he’ll die, and that’s a fact.”
The man’s face turned a deep crimson, and Bear added, “And if you don’t do something about your temper, you’ll burst a vein in your head like your father did and die.”
At that, the man went deathly white. “How did you know about my father?” he gasped.
Bear shrugged. “The way you are? Some things I can see about you? That runs in families. Cut down on red meat, stay away from strong drink, watch your temper if you want to see your son grow to be a man. Otherwise ...” He let his voice trail off. “At any rate, my lord, I’ve done what I can. Whether or not there actually is anything here in Valdemar to bother this servant of yours, he thinks there is, so
get him out of here if you want him to live. Give him three of those—” He nodded at the pills. “Four times a day, at regular intervals. Even when he finally sleeps, wake him up to give them to him.”
He picked up his bag, and motioned to Mags and Lena, who followed him out. The servant closed the door behind them all.
“I think you may be the first man other than the King to get Lord Krahailak’s respect,” the servant said, looking impressed. “And you just a boy!”
Bear shrugged. “I just acted like my father. Hang if I can figure out what has that fellow so spooked, though. You sure you translated him right?”
The servant nodded as he led them back through the hallways. “He has been raving about the eyes for the last two days. But before then, in fact, ever since he arrived here, he has been acting ... nervously. As if he felt that something was watching him, but couldn’t see it. It is very strange. The Lord sent for him, and now, whatever it was he was supposed to do, he clearly can’t. That is why the Lord is in such a rage.”
“Well, he can be in a rage.” Bear shrugged. “Isn’t gonna change anything. That man is not going to do anything, and if he doesn’t go home, he may be that way forever.”
Suddenly Lena looked as if she had finally remembered what she had been trying to think of, and Mags could see she was fairly bursting with impatience to tell them. But she wasn’t going to do it in front of the servant. Only when the man left them at the exterior door, and they were safely out of earshot, did she burst out with it.
“I remember the eyes!” she exclaimed. “They’re vrondi.”
“They’re which-what?” Mags asked. He had read about a lot of things, but this was nothing that had shown up in any of the books he’d been going through so far. It sounded like a foreign thing.
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