Closer to the Chest

by Mercedes Lackey

  “No,” said Amily and Nikolas together, in tones of deep regret.

  “Yes,” said Mags at the same time.

  The silence in the gazebo at that was so profound that every bit of breeze whistling in the reed blinds seemed overly loud. Everyone stared at him. “Maybe,” he amended. “I’m not sure. But I think . . . a definite maybe.”

  Nikolas continued to stare at him, but then narrowed his eyes speculatively. “Are you thinking of—”

  “Aye,” Mags said, nodding, anticipating where his mentor’s thoughts were going. “That . . . thing that’s connected to the stone in the middle of the table in that room in the basement of the Palace. The one I . . . uh . . . talked to when I was a Trainee and Amily was taken by the Sleepgivers, except we didn’t know that was what they were called. The thing that makes powers stronger.”

  “Thing?” said Amily, bewildered.

  “Go on,” urged Lord Jorthun, leaning forward.

  “And what makes you think it will be able to block Farseeing?” Nikolas probed, as Amily looked from one to the other of them, even more bewildered. Did I never tell her about that? Maybe I forgot . . . oops.

  “I think it’s worth waking it up again to see if it can help. It’s blocked things in the past, like the interference of the Sleepgivers’ amulets with protections on the Palace. It might be able to block Farseeing.” It was a gamble, he knew, but it was a gamble in which there was nothing to lose. It didn’t harm him to talk to the stone, or library, or whatever it was. And the worst it would tell him was that it couldn’t do that.

  And I can’t believe I didn’t think of this until today. Was this another manifestation of that odd inability to think of the old magic of Vanyel’s time except as something in the past?

  So think about it as a Mindmagic thing.

  “The thing is . . .” he continued, still pondering out loud. “There might be other consequences. It might block Farseeing out of the area, too. So people up here wouldn’t be able to Farsee down in Haven.”

  “It’s worth it,” Nikolas replied, grimly. “We can always send our Farseers to the other side of the Palace Walls. Or keep one or two here, and send the rest to lodge with Lydia’s uncle until this is over. I don’t want any more girls bullied into throwing themselves into the river, or off the top of a building, or hanging themselves.”

  Well, good, Mags thought. I believe he’s given up on using anyone as bait.

  Nikolas turned to Lord Jorthun. “You warned us, and you were right. You were completely right about him escalating things, Steveral. I am sure that it is the fact that we thwarted him from getting letters to his victims as easily as he once could that made him concentrate on Katlie Gardener. We were lucky once, thanks to quick thinking by Lirelle, Amily, and Mags. We may not be so lucky a second time.”

  “But Nikolas, if we do this, if we block Farseeing up here at the Palace and he is a Farseer, this will only frustrate him further, and he definitely will escalate,” Lord Jorthun warned. “If his intelligence is cut off, he may actually become frantic with rage, and more dangerous, not less.”

  The four of them exchanged long looks. It was obvious to Mags that Lord Jorthun and Nikolas were both weighing all their options. Amily was just anxious, and he didn’t blame her at all. They’d already had such a close call with Katlie . . . when the Poison Pen escalated, what would he escalate to? How much worse could things get? Was it possible even the Royal Family could be threatened?

  “Well, nothing else has worked,” Nikolas said at last. “And we’ve learned next to nothing about him. If this works, and the letters stop, or at least become more general, we’ll know for certain he is a Farseer and he’s not on the Hill.”

  “Well,” Amily said slowly. “One thing at a time. First Mags has to find out if this can be done. If it can’t, we’ve lost nothing. And maybe this stone can tell him something else he might try instead. If it can be done, and we do it, and the Poison Pen isn’t a Farseer, or is on the Hill, the letters will remain the same, and we’ll not have harmed anything.”

  “All good points,” Lord Jorthun replied, nodding his silver head gravely.

  “The question is,” she continued. “If the letters don’t change, how can we tell where and what he is or isn’t? How will we know if he’s on the Hill, or if he’s getting his information by some means other than Farsight?”

  “I’ll think about that,” Nikolas said slowly. “But . . . I do have one idea. The people here up on the Hill have been subject to quite a bit of persecution at this point. It might be worth it to gather everyone together and have the King explain what has been happening. Just . . . get it all out into the open, as we did with the Trainees. And at that point . . .” he paused. “You know, people who have been subject to an ongoing campaign of bullying and harassment are very likely to think very differently about Mags using his Mindspeech powers freely among them than, say, people who have not been subjected to the same treatment down in Haven.”

  “As in . . . they might could give me permission to go all open and just start sifting through their heads?” Mags asked. “It’d be all right to do that?” He blinked and thought about that. :Dallen?:

  :If they give permission, it’s ethical. And anyone who doesn’t give permission could be considered a suspect. So . . . it’s really a winning situation no matter what.:

  “I think your Companion is probably suggesting that anyone who objects is going to become an object of suspicion,” Jorthun said shrewdly.

  “Aye.” He smirked. He couldn’t help it. “There’s no win there for ’im, if he is on the Hill, is there? Either I find ’im, or he refuses, an’ everyone figgers who it is. That’s a lotta highborn who have a lotta connections who can make life pretty miserable for someone that don’t cooperate.”

  “Or the King could politely suggest that anyone who doesn’t wish to cooperate should relocate. Far, far away. The Border, perhaps, or if they have estates, their own estates,” Nikolas pointed out. “Anyone who did would always be under suspicion, there would probably be a great deal of money spent making sure he lost every ally and friend he had, and so far as he would be concerned, his reign of terror would be over since he would be under watch constantly. I would make certain of that, personally.”

  His elation faded when he thought about unintended consequences. And of all people, he knew personally all about unintended consequences. He also knew all about people being perfectly willing to accuse others when they only had a corner of a story. “But what if someone’s innocent, at least of this, an’ doesn’t want me pokin’ about in his head for whatever reason?”

  Nikolas gave a helpless shrug. “We’re speculating—”

  “Well, somebody’d better speculate what t’do t’make sure nobody that ain’t the Poison Pen gets hurt just ’cause ’e don’t want me in his head!” Mags retorted, his cheeks getting a little red with anger.

  There were plenty of people ready to point fingers at me when there was a Foresight vision of a foreigner, the King, and a lot of blood. The unspoken accusations had driven him out of the Collegium to hide in the streets of Haven, and had made him try to drive away Dallen. . . .

  Amily snapped her fingers. “Simple enough. I have a much better idea than running nets through peoples’ heads and getting more trash than treasure. We use the Truth Spell. We ask very direct questions that can’t be evaded. No poking about in peoples’ heads at all. In fact, we could do that with every single one of us that can do Truth Spell, rather than have Mags rummage all by himself. That would take far less time, and people are familiar with the Truth Spell. They know we’ll only ask questions about the Poison Pen and nothing else. They know they won’t have to worry about Mags discovering embarrassing things, or secrets that aren’t theirs to share.”

  Mags sighed with relief. “An’ I could just open up an’ listen close for as long as it took to either find ’im, or figger o
ut he weren’t on the Hill. Passive listenin’, like I do all the time.” He felt much easier about having all the Heralds involved in this rather than just him. After all, leaving aside the fact that he was having serious ethical problems with ruthlessly going through peoples’ heads, he was supposed to be blending in with the rest of the Heralds, not standing out!

  “He could run, of course . . . which would paint a target on him,” Amily observed, clearly feeling pleased, as well she should, for being the one to come up with a good solution. “In fact, that would solve all our problems in one go. There is not a single person in the Court, on the Palace staff, or at the Collegia who should be unwilling to face a Truth Spell.”

  “That brings us back to what we do if Mags’ plan to block Farseeing off the Hill actually works,” said Nikolas. “And we have cut off his information.”

  Jorthun took a long, deep breath. “Then—I repeat, we could turn him from something nasty to something potentially lethal.”

  Nikolas pondered that for a while. “If you’d had this opportunity with your multiple murderer, Steveral, what would you have done?”

  “Taken it, of course.” Jorthun’s mouth thinned again. “I have to remind myself, we are talking about the Hill, not Haven. There are Heralds, Guards a-plenty, and your spies and my spies. There is far more protection for the people up here than I could have dreamed of for those poor girls in Haven. Still. I just want you to be aware of what we might be getting into.” Lord Jorthun closed his eyes, and for once . . . Mags was aware of his age. “I will be advising the King of as much, but I expect him to tell you to go ahead.”

  “Aight then.” Mags got up from the far-too-comfortable woven chair. “Dallen an’ me better get back to the Palace. That rock ain’t the easiest thing t’palaver with. I need to get my head set for talkin’ to it.”

  • • •

  The King had, of course, given the order for Mags to go and “talk to the rock.” Prince Sedric had volunteered to stay with him—but he was just going to talk to the thing this time, not join with it and try to do a mental search of all of Haven. He opened the door into the stairway going down into that basement corridor, and lit his way down the darkened stairs with a little lantern he had brought with him. Well . . . there’s one thing to be grateful for. It’s nice and cool down here.

  Although it was not as punishingly hot as it had been before the rain, it was still summer, and it was still quite warm by midday. As a precaution, the room with the stone was kept locked now that people knew it wasn’t just an odd, ornamental object, but he’d been given a key to keep, and he unlocked the door now. Any room in the basement of the Palace was pleasant, but for Mags, this room was a haven. Not only was it cool, it was shielded somehow, in a way that kept stray nattering thoughts out, but let him selectively get anything he wanted to read from the minds outside. He could easily talk to Nikolas and Dallen, for instance, but all the mental chatter of the surface thoughts of several dozen Trainees was kept out. The result was a mental “quiet” he found very restful.

  He hung up the lantern on a hook at the door, and closed the door behind himself. Nothing had changed. This was still a small room, only big enough to hold a round table with padded benches all around it, that seemed to have a globe made of crystal embedded in it. But he knew from past experience that if he tried to move that globe, he’d be unable to. In fact, somehow that ornament was fused to the top of a rock column that, from his vague understanding, ran all the way down to the bedrock of the earth beneath the Palace. How had anyone done that? Who had done that? He had no idea.

  Magic. The old magic, the magic of Herald-Mages, the magic that had—he thought, everyone thought—died with Vanyel. But it hadn’t. It was just kept outside of Valdemar’s Borders. This crystal globe was somehow connected to that. How, Mags had no idea, and the globe, or the presence living in the globe, was unable or unwilling to explain. Still, this was the one place in all of Haven where it was possible to think and talk about magic with a clear mind. So making people forget about magic surely had something to do with that.

  He knew from past experience that he didn’t have to gaze into the ball or touch it to connect to the presence in it. The past sennights had been stressful enough that instead of leaning over the table and the strange crystalline “ball” embedded in the center of it, he arranged himself in a kind of semi-curl on the seat that encircled the table. He was just short enough to do so comfortably. Then he closed his eyes, and reached for a “presence” that was now fairly familiar.

  And there it was, just as it had been when he left it last, as if no time had passed. Then again, he had no idea whether the thing even noticed the passage of time. It wasn’t quite a “person.” And it wasn’t a “thing.” It was something in between.

  :Hello,: he said. :I have come to ask some questions.:

  He sensed it focusing on him. I am here to answer questions, the presence replied. Please ask.

  :Is it possible to block Farseeing? Can you tell me how, if it is? Can you do it?:

  Well . . . he knew a moment later that perhaps he should have asked a more specific set of questions. Because his mind was flooded with information.

  It was not unlike the time he had taken the Sleepgiver drug, the one that was supposed to wake up all his hereditary memories and turn him into a Sleepgiver himself. The information poured over him in a flood—but having gone through this once, he knew now that he needed to relax and ride on the top of the flood.

  :I’ll remember what you don’t,: Dallen promised, at some remote distance. He acknowledged that and thanked Dallen without words, and let the knowledge swirl through him. How Farseeing worked. What could be wrong when it didn’t. How to fix it. In fact, as far as he could tell, the stone was feeding him with more information about Farsight than most Farseers knew!

  But although this was something like the experience he had—suffered—under the Sleepgiver drug, it was nothing like the ruthless pounding he had taken then. This was a flood, but a slow flood. Like the river once it got down into Haven, spread out into a broader channel, and slowed, rather than how it was when it tumbled down the Hill. Impossible to resist, but it didn’t threaten to drown him.

  And finally, he realized that in all of that was the information, that yes, Farsight could be blocked. And how to do it. And how the stone could help show someone who was a Farseer—as Mags really was not—how to do so.

  Because, it turned out, Farseers could themselves block Farsight, in the same way that Mindspeakers could block Mindspeech.

  :Well,: Dallen said in surprise. :That’s entirely new to me.:

  It didn’t have to be a Herald, the stone let him know. The stone would work with anyone Mags vouched for to boost him—or her.

  :You trust me that much?:

  You trust me that much.

  That answer left him a bit . . . dazed.

  And, finally, the stone gave him the answer he was really hoping for. I can also do this myself. It will not upset the balance. It is merely adding to the shields that are already protecting the . . . And here, Mags got a confused impression of what the stone thought the Palace and the Collegia were. There was no corresponding equivalent in his head. Home/teaching place/place of power/center of the web (what web?)/sanctuary. All these things, and more, shades and subtleties he couldn’t quite grasp.

  But that was all right, the point was that the boundary that the stone recognized was essentially the wall around the entire complex. That was where the shields were.

  It will not be permanent, the stone warned. That would upset the balance.

  :That’s fine,: Mags assured it. :How long can you do this?:

  Indefinitely. But it will upset the balance if it goes on for a year.

  :That’s fine,: he repeated. :Our problem’ll be solved long afore that. I’ll come tell you as soon as it’s safe to stop blocking anyone who wants to poke around up
here. Do it.:

  He couldn’t tell any difference at all, but the stone said, Done. Is there more knowledge you need?

  :I don’t suppose you can figger out anything about our Poison Pen problem?: he asked tentatively. Because if the stone could do this much—what else was it capable of? And how could it hurt to ask?

  Let me look, said the stone, and now he had the disconcerting sensation of someone riffling through his head for a moment.

  There is no exact replica of this situation in the history I hold, the stone said. Please come and inform me when you have a solution so I may add it to my knowledge.

  :I will,: he promised, and then the presence in the stone was gone from inside his head, just like that. He sensed that it was still there, poised within the stone like a flower preserved in amber, serene, and unemotional.

  He reached for Nikolas’s mind, finding it child’s play to touch it down here. :Nikolas, the stone is blocking Farsight around the Hill. Or at least it says it is. You oughta check.:

  :I’m going to find a Farseer now,: Nikolas replied. :Stay where you are until I have an answer, would you?:

  Well, right now, lying on this comfortable bench, in the silence and the cool, there was nothing he would rather do. :Gladly,: he replied, and allowed himself to doze.

  • • •

  “So,” said Amily, with one eyebrow arched, intercepting Mags as he came up from the basement. “How did things go with the talking stone?”

  “Yer Pa says it’s blockin’ Farsight all right. Up here, cain’t see out, out there cain’t see in.” He ran an anxious hand through his hair. “Did I really not tell ye that much about it?”

  “You told me some,” she admitted. “Just . . . not enough, I suppose. So I was a bit startled by what you and Father were talking about.”

  “Well, no time like the present,” he agreed. “Come on down an’ I’ll show it to ye.”

  He turned around and led the way back down the stairs, with cool air wafting around them, as if the building was breathing. There were no lights down here, but then, she supposed they really shouldn’t keep unattended candles burning in a place hardly anyone ever came. This looked to be a very, very old part of the complex; she couldn’t quite tell if this corridor lay under the Palace, or the Herald’s wing.