Redoubt (23 page)

When that happened—as, indeed, it had, when the truth had come out of Mags—they would
be in more trouble than they could possibly imagine.

No wonder they had been petrified. No wonder they had tried to shoot Dallen . . .

Not that they’d ever had any chance of actually hurting the Companion. All things
considered, it was unlikely that any of the boys would have been able to hit a barn,
much less a Companion as agile and clever as Dallen. None of them were marksmen, though
they liked to think that they were. They were never given the leisure to practice,
for one thing. Cole Pieters made sure his boys were no good with anything that might
be used as a weapon, other than the crudest implements of club and ax. The mine-kiddies
were better marksmen with rocks than the Pieters boys were with any weapon.

But despite their father’s orders, probably they hadn’t been shooting to hurt—because
the penalty for harming a Companion was life in penal servitude, and not even their
father’s threats would convince them to risk that—but to drive Dallen away. A stupid
idea, since a Companion on Search couldn’t be driven away from his Chosen with a drakken,
but the Pieters boys were all very stupid. Sly, but stupid.

And then, when Herald Jakyr had turned up, summoned by Dallen’s frantic demands to
his
Companion, it was too late. Not even Cole Pieters would dare harm a Herald. Jakyr—that
was probably where his mind had gotten the name
Jak
from. He’d never known a “Jak” in the mine that was near to his own age, near enough
to have haunted him.

Oh, it all came back to him now.

And so did the memories connected with that rooftop. Or at least he
thought
he knew what had happened, because whatever had occurred, it had been very fast indeed,
and he didn’t have any actual
memory
of when he’d been taken down, much less what had done it.

But he remembered going up on the roof, as always. He’d been minding the shop alone.
Dallen was at the inn. Everything had been completely normal, other than the fact
that the sky was overcast and there was fog coming up off the river. He’d felt that
“watching” sensation, just like always. He had paused to take his bearings before
a lightning run across the rooftops to get away from it as quickly as he could, because
it was still giving him the crawlies to feel those unseen eyes on him.

And then, out of nowhere, he felt . . . something. Whether it was that the watcher
had alerted these two men, or that the watcher had, itself, somehow moved to strike
him unconscious, he didn’t know. There had just been that flash of knowledge, the
certainty that
something changed,
and then nothing.

Dallen! Dallen must be frantic by now!

He dropped all his shields—because Dallen must be pretty far away at this point, and
he was going to need all the reach he could get—

That is, he tried to drop all his shields. But it was as if he didn’t have shields
to drop. Or the shields weren’t his.

Or his Mindspeech had somehow been cut away.

It felt like a blow to the gut. It left him gasping, literally gasping, as if someone
had ripped out his innards, and he was in too much shock to feel pain. And he must
have made enough sound that the men at the front of the wagon heard him. The wagon
stopped again, and as Mags felt rising panic, he heard the footsteps coming around,
felt the man get into the wagon, felt the hand in his hair.

Then it was as he remembered from his nightmares, and the waterskin was forced into
his mouth, and all he could manage to do was keep his eyes shut and to drink as little
as possible. He was afraid to let too much of the liquid dribble out of his mouth.
It was broad daylight, and his captors would see and force more down his throat. Obviously
they wanted him for
something,
but without Mindspeech, he hadn’t a clue as to what that would be. Or
could
be.

He only knew for sure that he had to stay lucid, somehow. Had to keep his awareness
of who and what he was.

The man finally let him back down into his cavity, and wave after wave of vertigo
swept over him, until finally feverish delirium took him.

But now, he knew what that was. And he clung on tightly to his knowledge of himself.
My name is Mags. I’m a Herald Trainee. My Companion is Dallen . . .

He wouldn’t think about what not having Mindspeech would mean. He did know, at least,
that there were Heralds with very little, very weak Gifts. It was the Companion that
made the Herald, and surely he could keep right on doing what Nikolas was training
him for even if his Mindspeech was gone forever. He’d just have to be cleverer than
before.

And all right, even if he couldn’t do
that,
the main job of a Herald was to see that the Kingdom’s laws were known and obeyed,
and you didn’t need a Gift to do that. All you needed, when it came right down to
it, was for people to
think
you had a Gift. He could do that.

In his feverish state he saw himself tricking people with some of the sharpster moves
he had been learning from Nikolas and some of Nikolas’ slightly disreputable friends.
“Cold reading,” was what one of the actors had called it, a fellow who had eked out
his small pay from small parts by telling fortunes. If you threw enough hints out,
people would tell you with their reactions if you were close to the truth, and you
could soon have them convinced you could read their minds or were talking to spirits
or could see the future. He claimed you didn’t actually
need
the Truth Spell if you were good enough at cold reading. He could do cold reading.
He’d been doing some of it on the shop customers. He could imagine himself somewhere
on Circuit, in the field, being persuasive, coaxing, being . . .

He found that he was surrounded by a small group of people in rustic garments. They
were angry, very angry . . .

This is a drug dream.
Now he knew what that other voice inside him was. It was the part of him that still
hung on to reality. Even if this felt, looked, sounded, even
smelled
like reality.

“. . . stole it, I tell ye!” growled one old man, who seemed to be the leader of one
side. “Stole it right out o’ my pasture, she did!”

They were all crowded into what looked like the common room of a tavern. Dark, smoky
wooden walls. Smells of food and beer. He was sitting at a table, the others clustered
around him.

The be-aproned woman who led the opposite group snarled at him. “I no more stole it
than I’m the Queen of Valdemar!
He
let it stray, it ate half my cabbages, and I’m keeping it in payment for my loss!”

She turned to the man next to her, as Mags concentrated on trying to catch all the
tells
Sieran had shown him. “Haber! You be my witness! Tell the Herald!”

The man turned to Mags, a hangdog expression on his face.
“Gabble gabble,”
he said, and waved his hands apologetically.
“Gabble, gabble gabble gabble. Gabble.”

The angry man stamped his foot and snarled.
“Gabble!”
he spat.

It’s them . . .
Mags managed to think through the fog and the confusion, and through the intensely
real
feeling that all this had.
It’s them. The ones driving the wagon. They’re talking.

He couldn’t quite break free of the hallucination, but part of him, at least, now
knew it was a fever dream and nothing real. So when it all started to go wrong, and
the crowd turned on him, he made it all stop, made it all go back to the beginning.
He’d learned how to do that with his nightmares, thanks to the Healers. He still had
the nightmares, but at least now he could control them.

“. . . stole it, I tell ye!” growled the old man, who was complaining to Mags about
a disputed goat. “Stole it right out o’ my pasture, she did!”

He paid more attention to the old man this time, a wizened old goat in linen shirt
and breeches and a leather apron. The old man was afraid, underneath all that bluster
he was afraid of the woman. In fact, everyone was at least a little afraid of the
woman. Why were they afraid?

He interrupted her when she began her response. “You’re lying,” he said flatly, and
that was when her face stretched out and grew a set of terrible jaws, bat-wings burst
out of the back of her shirt, and she reached for him with awful claws.

But again, he managed to remember,
this is drugs. This is a fever dream.
He managed to wrest control away, and send it all back to the beginning again.

“. . . stole it, I tell ye!” growled the old man, whose eyes were bleak and blank.
“Stole it right out o’ my pasture, she did!” Mags knew what was in his mind without
needing Mindspeech. He didn’t expect to win, but he wasn’t going to give up without
a fight. He couldn’t afford to. He was going to starve without that goat.

But Mags was ready this time, and the moment the woman began to change, the knife
was in his hand one moment and in her throat the next, and she fell over, black blood
pouring out of her throat, face caught halfway between woman and monster, as all of
her neighbors stared.

Then Mags wasn’t looking down at a dead woman. He was looking up at a live one. She
smiled at him, and he felt transfixed with utter delight, his entire being suffused
with a golden glow of happiness and well being.
“Gabble gabble gooo,”
she crooned at him.
“Gabble Meric good boy gabble.”
She picked him up, and he giggled giddily. She was half his world, and he adored
her so much, the source of food and warmth and comfort!
“Gabble goo goo goo,”
she whispered in his ear as she cuddled him against her breast. Her breast! The source
of all things wonderful!

But he wasn’t hungry right now, so he stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked on that
until she pulled it out and gave him his bappy to suck instead. He loved his bappy,
a cool stone with a hole in it, just exactly the right size to pop in his mouth and
ease his gums when they hurt. It sometimes annoyed him that he couldn’t swallow it,
it was so smooth and nice, but it was fastened quite thoroughly to a big piece of
cloth that prevented him from doing so. He nestled against the Breast, the wonderful,
bountiful Breast, and sucked his bappy, and fell asleep, listening to Her whisper
to him.
“Gabble gabble Meric gabble . . .”

He slept then, both in the drugged dream and probably in reality, because when he
next was aware of anything at all, it was that the wagon was swaying quite a lot,
it was dark, too dark to see, and he was cramping again. But he clamped his mouth
shut on his moans. He didn’t want his captors to realize he was awake. Eventually,
he knew, they would decide it was time to drug him, and then it would be back to the
hallucinations again—

Can I make them think I’m getting weaker, so the drug has more of a hold over me?

He thought maybe he could. When they got him out to take care of his bladder, he could
be a little rubber-kneed. There might be other things he could do. Now that he knew
what was going on, maybe he could—

The wagon stopped. He tried not to brace himself.
Stay quiet, stay limp,
he repeated to himself, over and over, just as in the mine he had repeated over and
over to the ghosts to leave him alone.

And that made him think of something else entirely. What if that watching thing was
somehow with them now? How would he know? Without Mindspeech he couldn’t sense the
thing! He felt panic churning in his gut, although enough of the drug held him still
that muscles that should have been rigid with fear were just cramped and painful.
It was just adding insult to injury that the drug that kept him paralyzed did nothing
about the pain or the cramps. He was so caught in his tangle of fear and hurt that
he didn’t even realize the men were in the wagon with him until they hauled him up
and out.

He didn’t have to fake being weak-kneed; his muscles really were so cramped that they
were not cooperating with his captors. He kept his eyes shut this time until they
were done with him.

But they must have realized what being curled up was doing to him—finally. Instead
of putting him back, they hauled him with his arms draped over their shoulders some
distance from where they had taken him, and laid him down, stretched out, on a blanket
that was now spread out over something softish. Leaves, or pine needles, maybe. They
extended all his limbs as he feigned unconsciousness. He didn’t have to pretend that
he couldn’t move. He still couldn’t, and he fought down another round of panic as
he wondered if he really
was
paralyzed as well as without Mindspeech.

But . . . no. He remembered bits from Bear’s chattering. People who were paralyzed
couldn’t feel their limbs, either, and he certainly felt his. It was just the drug.
In fact, one of his hands and both of his feet were practically on fire now . . .
they’d been “asleep” from pressure and now were “waking up.” And his right ankle just
ached from having been bent at a bad angle for so long.

He heard the sound of a fire being started with flint and tinder. After a while, he
cracked one of his eyes open, just a little.

It was sunset. He couldn’t see exactly where he was, but it looked like a forest,
a thicker forest than the last time they’d stopped. More pines, fewer trees with leaves.

He cracked the other eye and edged his head over by the tiniest possible increments.

Both men were engrossed in doing something over the fire, with their backs to him.
Cooking, he thought. Well, that made sense, soup would go bad pretty quickly; they
were obviously taking great care with him for some reason, and they wouldn’t want
to poison him with bad soup, so they would have to stop to make fresh fairly often.

They were talking quietly, so quietly he couldn’t hear anything but a murmur.

He still couldn’t imagine what they wanted with him.