Foundation

by Mercedes Lackey

He had not done that in all the time he had been here. Dallen had warned him that he shouldn’t—had cautioned him that because he had been Chosen, his Gifts would be opening up at a tremendous rate.

  Now he realized just how much that Gift had burgeoned. The moment he dropped those shields, it felt as if he was in the center of the Midwinter Market, only a thousand times more crowded, and everyone was talking at once. Worse, it was mostly fear, as people all over the complex, all over Haven, reacted to the storm. It felt like being in the storm all over again; all those minds, all those internal voices, none of them putting a watch on what they were saying—it all overwhelmed him, threatened to wash him away in the flood, and he felt as if he was drowning in it—

  Then he sensed Dallen, strained to hear him, and got the sense of what Dallen wanted him to do. He began raising the shields again, but one at a time this time. First, all those people farthest away, down in Haven. He didn’t need to listen to them. He couldn’t help them now if he wanted to, anyway. And they, almost certainly, would not want him to know what they were thinking.

  That cut the clamor down to a fraction of what it had been, and he let out a sigh of relief. The next shield was easier: to screen out those who were closest to him, in the same building. They wouldn’t want him to hear their thoughts either.

  And that improved things a very great deal indeed.

  Now he was able to actually pick out individual “voices.” One by one, he sorted through them, not really listening to what they were babbling, because most people just had a running internal babble going on, but looking for the nuances that told him they were safe and indoors. Their fears, while real, were not immediate. And their minds were ... well, they weren’t numb, the way his mind had been when the cold was getting to him.

  He found five that were not.

  “Gardener—” he heard himself mutter. “Just at Palace kitchen door—ah—in. Guard—Guard needs help. In th’ rose garden, lost the rope. ’Bout—’bout a horse-length from it. Fell an’ slipped an’ lost it. Got sense to stay where he is—”

  He heard Caelen shouting directions but paid no attention. There were still three more. “One ’f them pesty furrin mercs. Headin’ for town t’ drink. Near th’ gate, I think. Damn fool.”

  He had never quite realized how brutal and how crude these men were until he got a glimpse of their thoughts. His lip curled with distaste as he heard more from that mind than he wanted to. There was a Herald in the gatehouse, with the Guardsmen on duty there. “I got that one.”

  He had never done this before ... he hesitated a moment, then realized that if he waited for Dallen to do the contacting, he might lose some details. He did a kind of mental cough, and—well it felt as if he was tapping on the outside of the other’s mind, as if on a door.

  The reply was instant, if wordless. Shields dropped; he got the feeling that the Herald’s Mindspeaking ability was minimal. But it was enough. He “showed” the other where the mercenary bodyguard was, and got a sense of thanks before the shields came back up again.

  “All right. Herald at gatehouse an’ three Guards’ll fetch ’im in.” He tried not to chuckle with a certain nasty satisfaction. Because the idiot refused to heed the warnings, now instead of spending the storm in luxury with the rest of his fellows, he would be spending it sleeping on a stone floor and eating the trail rations that the Guards had stocked in the gatehouse.

  He moved on to number four. “Cook’s helper, gettin’ wood, slipped an’ fell an’ the wood fell on ’im. Collegium kitchen, so many people in there he ain’t been missed yet.”

  He heard Caelen relaying the orders, and he checked briefly back with the Guard and the gardener. He found the gardener already back inside, and three people picking the Guardsman up out of the snow.

  He moved on to the last one. “Bardic Trainee, wants t’ get snowed in w’ his girl; she’s a Heraldic Trainee. He’s halfway between Bardic and Heralds’ an’ he just ran out ‘f strength. He’s set down in th’ snow an’ he don’ know if he don’ get up now, he never will. That’s all.”

  He was about to put up all of his shields again, when—something—brushed against his mind.

  His throat closed on the scream he wanted to utter, choked silent with fear. This—this was the thing in his dreams, the thing that pursued him, or pursued something he needed to protect! It was cold, it was evil—and it was not sane.

  Dallen sensed it in the same moment, but Dallen’s reaction was not fear, but fury. He felt Dallen gathering all his mental power, like a thunderbolt, and aim it ready to strike this vicious thing down where it stood—

  Too late. Whatever it was ... was gone.

  :What—was that?: he managed to get out.

  :I don’t know, Chosen,: his Companion replied grimly. :But whatever it is ... there is something it wants here. Something ... or someone.:

  ———

  Mags poked listlessly at the remains of his stew, and listened to three of the most senior Heralds in the Circle debate what he had felt over his head. They had cleared everyone else out of this tiny room as soon as he had recovered enough to get what he had sensed out in coherent sentences, and Herald Caelen had sent for Nikolas and a third man, who evidently had been in the Palace, doing some searching of his own. From all Mags gathered, he was as strong a Mindspeaker as Mags, and a great deal more practiced and disciplined. He had “gone looking” for what Mags had sensed, and had come up with nothing. He looked enough like Nikolas to have been his father, although there was nothing in their manner to indicate that was the case.

  Now here Mags was, sitting on a cushion on the hearth, head aching, body feeling as if he had been beaten black and blue, utterly exhausted. In that sense of unreality that comes with exhaustion, he was feeling less and less with every passing moment that he had ever sensed anything at all that wasn’t some dream-fragment out of his own mind. After all, if it couldn’t be verified ...

  “Stop that,” came a calm voice to his right. He turned and stared at the Herald, the Mindspeaker.

  “Sir?” he managed, meeting those calm gray eyes. He wished he felt like that, so calm, so sure of himself.

  “Stop second-guessing yourself. You sensed something. Your Companion, who was snug in his stable and not half frozen and having hallucinations, also sensed it. All we are trying to do is figure out what it was that you sensed.” The Herald smiled at him. “Storms like this can do some peculiar things. I have heard, although I have never seen it myself, that they can carry with them the echo of thoughts from incredibly far away.”

  “Ye thin’ that’s what I got?” Mags asked hopefully. He really did not want to think that there was something with a mind like that snowed in or near the Collegia. Truly, he did not. He would never be able to close his eyes again.

  “It certainly corresponds to what I felt near a colddrake, long ago,” the older man said cautiously. “And according to the theory, since they are very powerful mentally, it is certainly possible for a colddrake’s thoughts to have been carried on a storm like this one. Especially if the drake was anywhere about where it started.”

  Mags nodded and finished his stew, conscious that there must be no wasted food for as long as they were all snowed in.

  “I’m not convinced—” Nikolas said warily. “That’s just entirely not reasonable to me. How could the thoughts of a beast from beyond our borders get here? And why would Mags sense it wanted something here? That is the part that makes the least sense of all! What could it want here, of all places? No one here is—cursed, or haunted, or—”

  It was Caelen who snapped his fingers then. “Of course!” he exclaimed.

  Nikolas raised an eyebrow. “Of course what?”

  “That’s the answer. Those bodyguards—why in the name of all that is holy would they have been so convinced, immediately, that they were being haunted?” Caelen smiled broadly. “Anyone else, any other hardened fighters I have ever seen, have always been extremely skeptical of hauntings, rather than credulous.
Unless—?”

  “Unless they have had visitations before,” Nikolas said slowly. “That ... Caelen, that makes altogether too much sense.”

  Mags stirred uneasily. Something about this theory didn’t feel right.

  “And if one is being troubled by a vengeful spirit, perhaps in dreams, how does one deal with the nightmares?” Caelen persisted.

  The third Herald answered, a little grimly. “Steady drinking, usually. And if the visitations were ugly enough, the nightmares bad enough, it might just drive a man to ignore warnings of an impending blizzard to try and get to a source of really strong drink.”

  He turned to Mags. “Trainee, did you get any sense at all of whether this—thing’s—target was Valdemaran?”

  Mags had to shake his head, even though he had some grave misgivings that the solution was this simple. After all, this was not the first time he had had a brush with this thing. And when he had, it had been pursuing something he cared about, and he didn’t give a crumb about those bullying meres.

  But the answer certainly seemed to satisfy the others. “I think it might be wise to make sure these men have access to either distilled spirits or that herb Healer’s sensitivity-deadening potions for as long as they are snowed into the palace,” Nikolas was saying. “Things are going to be tense enough as it is before we dig ourselves and the city out. The last thing we need is for one of those men to go mad.”

  “Agreed,” said the third Herald. “And just to be on the safe side, I will keep watch for the revenant myself. If I sense it, I will see if I can find a priest about to cast it out.”

  “Well, historically, they never stay cast out for long,” Nikolas observed, as Mags shuddered at the thought of having that in his head again.

  “True, but by then, they should be gone.” Caelen looked down at Mags. “And so should you, young Trainee. You look as if you would not make it as far as the second floor before you passed out.”

  “’M all right,” Mags said, struggling to his feet. “Just a bit—”

  He blinked as he found himself sitting again. “Huhn—”

  Caelen brought over a roll of bedding, which even if it was not his, looked enough like it not to matter. He unrolled it and pointed at it. “You. Here. Sleep.”

  Even if they hadn’t been the three most senior Heralds in the Circle, Mags would not have had the strength to argue with them. He was just so tired—

  And yet he knew that there was no way he would be able to sleep. Not with that—thing—out there. He’d never be able to close his eyes, knowing it was there somewhere. And he still didn’t believe it was after the foreigners, whatever it was.

  Someone had to stay alert, and that someone might just as well be him.

  He rolled over and faced the fire so that the three Heralds, still discussing what they were sure was a revenant, would not be able to see that his eyes were still open. He would just rest here for a little while. Just rest.

  Just—

  —sleep.

  20

  THE storm had blown itself out, after three days, although only the first day and a half featured the terrible winds that shook the buildings. Mags had slept through most of that, despite being sure he would do nothing of the sort.

  Now there was a different problem entirely. The temperature had dropped, making the upper floor of Heralds’ Collegium too cold to sleep in, forcing those who had been up there down to further crowd the rooms below. The same was true at Bardic, only more so, since the ancient building was nothing like as weather tight as the newer structures of Healers’ and Heralds’. That caused a migration through the narrow slots between the buildings, cut through snow that was waist-high at the least, and further crowding conditions at the other two Collegia.

  This was all incidental to the crisis down in Haven. The cold had caused the snow to harden, making it even more difficult to shovel, and once you did shovel out a path, where did you put the snow you had removed? In some places the snow had drifted so deep that you couldn’t cut a path, you had to make a tunnel, but that, of course, meant there was always the risk of cave-in and injury. The problems of getting food and help to people, of keeping people warm, that the Palace complex was experiencing were only magnified down in Haven. And then there were the cold-and-snow-related injuries—slips, falls and broken bones, frostbite or even entire frozen limbs, other illnesses made worse by the conditions—Healers were being called for at all hours of the night or day. It took them candlemarks to get down to their patients and back again. The Guard was doing its best to get the snow cleared so life in Haven could get back to normal, Heralds were acting as rescuers and couriers, Bards were doing whatever they were asked to do—and most of the time, no one knew where anyone else was, unless they were Heralds.

  So perhaps it was not so surprising that until Mags asked, no one realized that Bear had been missing since the snow stopped falling.

  ———

  “Ah, Trainee, we seem to be thrown together by circumstance. Would you pass the salt, please?”

  Mags looked up to see that he had squeezed in next to the Guard Archivist. Mutely he passed the saltcellar.

  “I must compliment you on your research ability,” the old man continued, salting his pea soup. “Your friend the Healer thanked me, and so did his superior later. You seem to have uncovered some intriguing information on herbal remedies that neither of them recognized. And that was incidental to your intended search. Very well done.”

  Mags frowned, then quickly put on a more pleasant expression. “Well, I’d do about anything for Bear,” he said.

  “So I see.” The Archivist ate complacently. “I should like to reward that diligence if I may. Perhaps if you can give me an idea of what you are looking for in those records, I can do some delving for you when my other duties are complete.”

  Mags was not as surprised as he might have been, because he was rather occupied with the question of why Bear had lied when he’d handed over the notes he had taken. “Sir, that’d be ... real good of ye,” he said, hoping he sounded grateful and sincere. “Ain’t no secret.” He described how he had been found, the raid of the Guard on the bandit stronghold, and what little he could remember.

  The old man nodded. “So, nothing more than due diligence to find this. I will assist you as I can.” He finished his soup and Mags got up to let him get out. “Of course, that will have to wait for some time, until things return to normal. We’ve left the Archive building snowed in; there seemed no good reason to heat it in this emergency, and it didn’t seem likely that anyone would want to get in there.” He chuckled then, just before moving away. “Well, perhaps your eager Healer friend. He was terribly anxious to discover whether your research privileges would expire when you found what you were looking for, and whether his were independent of yours. I was able to reassure him on that score.”

  With that, the old man worked his way into the press of people trying to get fed, and was gone, leaving Mags feeling distinctly uneasy.

  Bear had been acting oddly since coming back from Midwinter holidays. He had tried to act normally, but sometimes he had been sullen, almost angry, and now that Mags came to think about it, when the idea of checking the Guard reports had come up, though Bear had been relatively quiet about it, there had been an oddly keen quality in his interest. And when Mags had gotten them all permission, there had been a light in Bear’s eyes that was all out of proportion to the somewhat dull prospect of reading old reports.

  And now this.

  Why would Bear lie?

  He bent his mind toward the stables, where Dallen, like the other Companions who were not immediately needed, was drowsing in a kind of semihibernation. Even the Heralds working down in Haven were mostly not bringing their Companions. There was just no room for them in the narrow snow passages, and there was not that much for the Companions to do except pass an occasional message.

  :Dallen?:

  It took the Companion a few moments to respond. Mags explained to him what
had just happened, when he was sure Dallen was awake enough to take it all in. :Why would Bear lie?: he asked.

  :I’m not sure.: Dallen pondered that a moment. :If I were to guess ... if he is looking for something, and he doesn’t want you or Lena to know about it ... he either thinks the information could hurt you, alter your opinion of him, or makes him feel ashamed. And before you say that whatever it is wouldn’t matter, it clearly matters enough to him to lie about it. So it matters.:

  Mags moved out of the noisy dining hall to the end of the hallway where there was relative peace. :I don’ like it.:

  :Nor do I. Keeping secrets of that sort almost always leads to trouble.:

  :Should I ask him ’bout it?:

  Dallen pondered that for a bit. :I think you had better. I will query Nikolas if you could have permission to reveal your role for him to Bear—trade a secret for a secret, as it were. You see if you can find him. Get Lena; she can be of great help.:

  And that was when Mags discovered that Bear was missing.

  ———

  “... no, sir, he’s not there.” Lena made a better impression on Healer Praston than Mags had. The Head of the Healers’ Collegium, from a very highly placed family, had listened to Mags’ uncultured speech, looked at Mags’ short stature, and concluded immediately that Mags was a hysterical and unlettered boy, probably overstressed by the entire situation they were all in. Lena, on the other hand, had pulled on every bit of dignity she could manage, as well as the most cultured accent she could feign, and had the Healer listening and paying attention to her with the first few words she spoke. “He had no reason to leave his rooms for this long, and the three Bardic Trainees who were squeezed in there have been tending the warming furnace for him since yesterday.” She grimaced. “He wouldn’t tell them where he was going, so they assumed it was to see a girl.”

  Praston grimaced. “All right, chances are he is fine; perhaps he was called down into Haven and neglected to tell anyone. But we should be sure—”

  “Sir,” Lena said patiently, “we are sure. His medicines are all there, his bag is there. He’s very meticulous about organizing his medicines, too; I can tell you that nothing at all is out of place or missing.”