Valdemar 03 - [Collegium 01] - Foundation (36 page)

“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.

“Vrondi.
They're in a song about Vanyel, how he made a spell to keep Valdemar safe.” She waved her hands around while she talked, excited now. “In the song, they are incredibly important to protecting Valdemar from supernatural threats.

They're sort of little spirit-tattletales. They find people that aren't Heralds or Bards or Healers that are doing—things—and they run and tell the Heralds about it.”

“All right,” Mags said, puzzled. “So how come I ain't never been told about 'em?”

“I don't know . . .” She shook her head. “I can look for more things about them, but I don't know. But here is the other thing; they also watch the people that are doing those things until a Herald comes. And watch. And watch. You know how you can tell when someone is watching you? Well, imagine if there are dozens of invisible somethings watching you, all the time, and you can never get away. That's the
vrondi.
”

“That's crazy,” Mags said flatly as Bear stared at her. And it did sound incredibly silly, here in broadest daylight, with a perfectly solid building next to them, hard-packed snow under their feet, and enough of a chill wind to tease down the back of the neck as a reminder that winter was not over—oh no, not yet—and the coldest moons were yet to come.

She glared. “Don't blame me, it's what the
song
says. I found it in our archives when I was researching music that was written about being a Herald by other Heralds. When I asked my teacher, he laughed and said it was just one of those songs to scare children into being good, but what if it isn't? I mean, it was written by another Herald after all, and one who knew Vanyel if the dates are right.” She crossed her arms over her chest, looking annoyed, a gesture a little marred by the heavy coat she wore that prevented her from actually
crossing
them.

“Yes, but—” Bear objected. “Dozens of invisible creatures who only exist to catch someone doing—what? I mean, it can't be something common, or there'd be dozens of people like that man back there. It doesn't make any sense.”

“I don't know,” Lena replied stubbornly. “The page had gotten spoiled, and I couldn't read what it was that the
vrondi
were supposed to watch for. I don't know what it was. All I can guess is that there aren't any Heralds that can see them anymore, and maybe that's the problem. Since no Herald can see them, they can't get one to pay attention, so they have to keep watching. And you're right, that foreigner has to be uncommon and whatever he was doing, it has to be bad for Valdemar. But you just think about that man back there, and you think about what he was saying. Bear, you're the Healer, I'm not. You would know if he had some sort of sickness. Can you come up with anything that
does
match his symptoms?”

Bear paused right there in the middle of the path, his brows furrowing in thought as they both watched him. “Well,” he admitted reluctantly. “No.”

“Hmph.” Lena nodded, satisfied.

Bear clearly wasn't. “That doesn't prove anything, Lena. You can't prove a cat's a cat by disproving it's a dog. But on the other hand . . . Well, I thought maybe he might have some Gift that was coming on him late. You know, something like Mindspeech.” He shrugged. “So I gave him some stuff that blocks Gifts, and something to quiet his nerves, and willow because by now he's got a powerful headache. I figure if that works, he'll fall asleep on his own. If it doesn't—” He shook his head. “I'm not allowed to handle the strong things, things that can really knock you out. One of the full Healers will have to do that. Whatever it is, it's a mystery and—” Now he looked sharply at Lena, “—if your song is right—what was it he was
doing
that called those things down on him?”

A shadow seemed to fall over them all. She nodded soberly. “That's the real question, isn't it?”