Read Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) Online

Authors: Mercedes Lackey

Tags: #Fantasy - Epic, #Fantasy - General, #American Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction - Fantasy, #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Valdemar (Imaginary place), #Epic

Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) (38 page)

BOOK: Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel)
10.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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He couldn’t hear Dallen at all. He began to think that if Dallen had not actually repudiated him yet, it was only because Dallen was not in any physical shape to. As soon as Dallen was as healed as he could get, the Companion probably would do exactly that. And in the meanwhile the silence meant that Dallen had decided that Choosing Mags had been a terrible mistake, and this was the way to keep him isolated until the Companion could be rid of him.
It hurt, it hurt terribly, but he had to acknowledge that everyone was better off without him.
And all he was waiting for now was for that ghostly, silent presence in the back of his mind to one day become an echoingly empty place.
When that happened . . . well, then he would decide what to do.
And it occurred to him that once Dallen left him, there was one option he hadn’t considered—a painless, easy way to put an end to everything. One that now, in retrospect, he wished had happened last winter, in that blizzard.
All he had to do was be patient and wait for winter. Whether or not a blizzard came, there would be snow. Then all he needed to do would be to walk out into it, until he started to feel sleepy; he could ignore the cold, he had done so before. Then, when it was too hard to move, too much effort to keep going, he could sit down, close his eyes, and let the snow take him and his misery away forever.
15
:M
AGS. . . .:
The voice in his mind echoed through the nightmare. He always had nightmares, worse than ever before, far worse than he’d had at the Collegium. The cocoon-like bedding at least kept him from thrashing—not that anything would wake up the boy—but he had them every night. The odd thing was, even though they were horrible, and even though he woke up from them with the top of his bedding soaked with tears and the rest damp with sweat, he welcomed them. He always woke exhausted, which left his mind in a numb fog. And a numb fog was preferable to thinking.
:Mags. . . .:
After days of working here—he still didn’t know who he was working for—his body knew when to wake up. Had to be before Cookie came in, since he would kick them awake. Which, oddly enough, seemed kind of fair, to Mags—Cookie didn’t kick Mags hard enough to break anything, and he and the boy did have to clear away from in front of the hearth so that the fires could be built up again, and the big water kettles swung into place on their cranes to heat. Cookie was a strange combination of brutal and fair. He never meted out punishment to anyone who hadn’t earned it, but those who earned it got the receiving end of a beating just short of breaking bones. Cookie was exact in doling out precisely enough punishment that the recipient was still capable of working. The boy had gotten two beatings since Mags had been here, both for shirking. So far, aside from morning kicks, Mags was unscathed.
He woke straight up out of the nightmare; he was just in time to hear Cookie’s heavy footsteps in the passage outside the kitchen. The voice still echoed in his head as he struggled out of his cocoon and rolled it up into the bundle that Cookie preferred, shaking his head a little to clear it and knuckling his eyes to get the fog out of them.
It wasn’t Dallen, of course. Dallen was surely only days away from withdrawing from Mags completely. Maybe that was why he was hearing the memory of Dallen’s mind-voice in his dreams, the few dreams he had that weren’t nightmares, the ones on going to sleep and again on waking.
“Bath,” said Cookie, when he saw Mags waiting beside his bundle. He gestured to the door, and Mags went out into the yard while Cookie kicked the boy awake. Cookie set a great deal of store by cleanliness, and every other day was a bath day for the potboys. “Bath day,” in the sense that they went out into the yard, stripped down to singlets, doused themselves under the pump that stood out there, washed with the same soap they used for the pots, washed their clothing the same way, put it on wet and came back to work. Small wonder they’d actually need a new suit of clothing every six moons. Mere cloth couldn’t stand up to that sort of treatment every other day.
He was already clean by the time the boy came out to the yard with a bruise along one side of his face. Mags wondered what he had done to anger Cookie this time. It didn’t seem that difficult to avoid a beating. All you had to do was work hard, not steal, not be insolent or waste time. Just how stupid was the boy?
When he took his place obediently at his sink, he noticed that Cookie’s eyes were bloodshot, and he held his head as if it hurt him. Last night had been some sort of feast, and a lot of bottles had gone up to the dining hall from the locked cellar. It appeared that Cookie had helped himself to at least one. Well perhaps the boy hadn’t been at fault this time.
Better stay extra quiet today, at least ’till Cookie gets his head back.
It was one of those rare moments these days when he actually thought something, a real thought, instead of just letting fatigue keep his mind numb and as empty as possible.
:Mags!:
His hands closed convulsively on the pot and pumice-stone, and powerful emotions he couldn’t name washed over him and drowned him for a while. Meanwhile, as he had schooled it to do, his body kept mechanically on with his task.
No, it wasn’t possible. Dallen wasn’t trying to speak to him.
No—wait. Dallen was going to repudiate him. That was it—he’d finally come to his senses, and in order to repudiate Mags, it had to be that Dallen had to actually say as much to him. And although the deepest part of Mags was screaming “No!” most of him was bracing itself and acknowledging that it had to be done. He cautiously opened himself to Dallen a little. Just enough so that Dallen could say what he had to and get it all over with.
Dallen probably had a lot to say, too, now that he had spent so long in so much pain. That was it—Dallen was only calling him so that the Companion could tell him how worthless he was before casting him aside.
:Mags . . . :
the mind-voice started to fade away, with a sense that Dallen was dropping off into a stupor again. But the last words were clear.
:Mags . . . come home!:
If he had not long ago trained his body to keep doing whatever task it was he had been set while his mind either dropped into a stupor of its own, or ran in frantic circles, he would have earned a bruised face himself at that moment. His thoughts reeled. This wasn’t possible; Dallen could not possibly want him back. And even if somehow, his Companion was too insane, too stupid, or too softhearted to repudiate him, the rest of the Companions would properly never permit him to return to the Collegium. Not ever. He was a danger to every Companion and Chosen in Valdemar. And Bear was right, he just plain didn’t deserve to be up there.
Well, there was only one thing for it. If Dallen would not do what he should, Mags would continue to force the issue on him. Someone had to do what was smart, what was right. He was on fire with the need to protect Dallen from himself, protect the Collegia, the Heralds, everyone up there on the hill from him.
As he scrubbed and rinsed, he carefully, painstakingly, built up a wall in his mind, layering it over what he already had in place, closing Dallen out completely. Normally he would not have had the energy for this, but with all that welter of emotion behind him, for the moment, he could do just about anything.
Let Dallen wear himself out against that wall, and give the other Companions time to convince him what he must do to save himself. Whatever selfish, poisonous thing was inside Mags, whether it was some parasitic, strange other personality, that had attached himself to him, whether it was his real self and the “Mags” he thought was himself was just a kind of mask, or whether it was just because underneath it all he couldn’t control the evil inside himself, it must never be permitted inside the walls of the Collegia again. One disaster had been enough. There was nothing about him that belonged up there.
That done, he let the fires that all those emotions had ignited burn out, let himself sink into apathetic despair, let weariness of body and spirit take over, and numb his mind into the state of not-thinking again.
This was the right thing to do. This felt right; it was right. This was the only thing that was right, in all of his dreadfully wrong world. He had to stick to it. He couldn’t be saved, but at least he could save Dallen.
The numb state lasted until the luncheon pots were done and he and the boy were feeding at the communal table. As ever, the boy’s hands scrabbled among the crusts and bread for anything good, and he stuffed what he found into his face so fast that Mags wondered why he never choked. The boy seemed to live for food, in a strange way that even the mine-kiddies had never matched. He and the boy never left this table hungry—they might not be well fed, but they were certainly full. So why was it the boy tried to stuff himself as if he thought he would never eat again? The boy’s behavior made no sense to Mags. The boy seemed to live for and obsess over food. It was a mystery.
As ever, Mags methodically ate whatever was nearest, without regard to its condition; it was all so tasteless to him it might as well have been dead grass. He ate to keep his stomach from complaining, to get him through another day. But there was no reason to be as fixated on food as the boy was.
:Mags!:
He started, and checked his mental wall as the boy looked at him curiously for a moment, then fell back to eating. The wall was still there. There was no way that Dallen could have breached it.
:Mags, come home!:
How was Dallen talking to him? Never mind, this needed to be put to a stop.
No!
he thought and
:No!:
he shouted back.
:I’m—ye need t’ stop this, Dallen! Ye need t’ cut me off!:
There was no reply, only the sense of stuporous slumber again. Mags shook his head. He must have imagined it. Or else, he’d half fallen asleep, sitting here, and dreamed it.
Or else he was going crazy. This was not at all unlikely, actually. Being insane would actually be something of a relief. If he could blame the way he had hurt Dallen and treated Lena on insanity, well . . . it might ease his guilt a little.
Mad, bad, and dangerous to know
, he thought, up to his elbows in soapy hot water. In a way the idea that he might be insane was oddly comforting. Insanity would explain why he had lashed out like that. Well he could be all three here, and it wouldn’t matter. No one would care if he was mad, or evil inside, as long as he cleaned the pots. He had no friends, he had no access to weapons of any kind, he was not in charge of anything dangerous. He couldn’t hurt anybody here, he was never going to make a friend to be hurt again, so the danger of knowing him was not an issue.
The afternoon was always the hardest part of the day. The scents of the cooking and baking were enough to convince even a full belly that it wanted more. The boy always slowed down, knowing that this was the busiest part of Cookie’s day, and that Cookie wouldn’t see him shirking. And today the kitchen got so warm it was hard not to fall asleep where he stood. If he closed his eyes even for a moment he would find himself slowly tipping over toward the water and come to himself with a jerk, and today was no exception.
He couldn’t imagine how the others stayed awake. Maybe it was just that they all had more sleep than he ever did. Certainly the boy was as alert as a hungry rat, watching the roasting meat, hoping for a moment of distraction or inattention when he might be able to dash in with a bit of the bread he’d stuffed into his pockets and sop up some of the juices collecting in the trays under the spits. Those were supposed to be reserved for sauces and gravy, and Cookie guarded them jealously, but the boy never gave up hope of getting some. He’d actually succeeded, probably more than once, or he never would have kept trying, but Mags had seen him manage the trick once. Once, when the rest of the kitchen had been busy and Cookie had gone after something from one of the locked cellars or pantries where the expensive things like wine and meats were kept.
Today the boy got the moment of distraction he’d hoped for, and more. The door was open to let in what breeze there was, and suddenly, without warning, one of the biggest wasps Mags had ever seen soared lazily inside; it was a huge black thing, easily the size of a man’s thumb. Perhaps it had been attracted by the scent of the fruit being made into pies, or the jellies in their bowls. One of the kitchen maids spotted it, pointed, and screamed.
Then she made the mistake of flailing a towel at it without actually hitting it. That made the insect angry, and it dove aggressively down out of the air and attacked her, darting in, landing on her long enough to sting her on the neck. She shrieked with pain, while the other maids screamed and flapped their towels and aprons ineffectually at her, missing the insect altogether and further enraging it; it zig-zagged around the room, looking for more enemies to sting.
The whole kitchen erupted into a bedlam of screaming, flapping towels, people ducking out of the way, while the enraged wasp tried to find itself another target.
Mags abandoned the sink and ducked as low to the floor as he could get, making himself less of a target, as the boy saw his chance and made for the roasts. Cookie waded in at that point, as the wasp landed on the back of one of the cook’s helpers to sting him. Cookie smacked the victim and insect with his huge hand, smashing the wasp, and sending the hapless helper tumbling over into a cupboard. The maids, sure that the insect was still in the air, flailed and screamed with their eyes closed—or like Mags, ducked under the table, unaware the danger of being stung was over.
BOOK: Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel)
10.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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