Bastion (11 page)

:Of course I’m laughing. The idea is utterly absurd. Admit it.:

Well . . . it was absurd.

:All right then. Get some sleep, the gods know you will need it. Who knows, something new might be turning up tomorrow.:

5

A
nd in the morning . . . something did turn up.

:Up, you,:
he heard in his mind as he first swam up into wakefulness.
:The Dean wants to see you. I told you someone would have something for you soon, and I was right.:

That woke him up in a hurry.

By now mornings were unpleasant. Not in the sense of having to get up, but in the sense that it was always dark and perishing cold outside when he did. There were brick ovens built into the outside of the stable, one at his end, one at the opposite end. When he’d first returned, it was still warm enough that no one bothered to fire them up except at night. Now they were kept burning all night long, imparting heat to his room and the rest of the stable.

:Do you know what it is?:
he asked, scrambling out of bed and hunting for a fresh uniform. It was too blessed cold to wash up at the stable pump, but he did have a basin and a reservoir of tepid water here; when he first moved into this room, someone had kindly arranged for a tank of rainwater to be stored right up against the chimney brick, and as long as there was a fire there, the water was bearable. He dipped out enough to wash in, since it seemed there was going to be no time for a proper bath.

:I haven’t been taken into their confidence,:
Dallen replied, sounding a little miffed.
:All I know is that the plan also includes Amily, Bear, and Lena.:

All right, that was more than a bit of a puzzle! How could a plan include Bear and Lena that had to do with
him?

He made great haste to finish his washing, got himself into that clean uniform, and hurried to breakfast. There was no point in going to the Dean’s office on an empty stomach.

:Do Amily, Lena, and Bear know about this already?:
he asked as he loped up the path. There was heavy frost everywhere, and the leaves were all in their autumn colors and already starting to fall. His breath puffed out in clouds, and he was glad of his cloak. Winter would not be long in coming.

:I doubt it. I think this is something Nikolas and Caelen cooked up between them.:

That was even more interesting. He hurriedly got himself his food and bolted it without tasting it. At this point, he was beginning to feel that almost
anything
would be better than spending his time in somewhat disorganized research and being interrogated until his head hurt.

The Dean was right in his office, as usual, and Mags wondered for a moment if the man ever
left.
But Dean Caelen was clearly waiting and watching for him, for as soon as Mags came into view, the Dean waved him in, then closed the door.

“Mags, I’m sure you are aware that your situation is making some people nervous about your continued presence here at the Collegium.” The Dean took a seat behind his desk and clasped his hands on the top of it, peering at Mags earnestly. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear: No one is at all concerned about your loyalty or stability, but they are concerned about what your presence might bring here.”

“Can’t say that I blame ’em, sir,” Mags replied honestly. “I’m more’n a bit nervous m’self. I dunno how much of those memories they dumped into me are really for true. For that matter, I dunno what else they got into that could bring other trouble here. I mean,
I’m
sure they broke that contract with Karse, and
I’m
sure they ain’t gonna go and write up a new one, but—”

The office was curiously quiet; with all the Trainees slowly fumbling their way toward breakfast there was none of the usual background noise penetrating the Dean’s sanctuary. The Dean held up his hand. “You can rest your mind easy on that score,” he said, with a slight, encouraging smile. “We do have agents inside Karse. The Karsites are not at all pleased with those fellows. In fact, there are orders out to kill them on sight, and we’ve good reason to believe that the Karsites have set their demons to hunt for them as well. So—no reconciliation likely there.”

Mags nodded slowly. “That’s one less worry, then. But they’re still after
me.
And everything I know says they’ll come here to get me. And . . .” he let his voice trail off, because anything else he would say would just be obvious. That the assassin clan had already gotten onto the grounds of the Palace and Collegia not once, but multiple times. That
maybe
that strange stone embedded in the table in the lowest level of the Palace could tell where they were, but not very accurately, and there were not very many people who could talk to the stone in the first place. That—

He could go on forever, really, with good reasons why people would, and
should,
be nervous about his presence. And he was only one fairly common Trainee, no matter how much Nikolas liked him or thought he had potential. It wasn’t as if Nikolas couldn’t train, say, Corwin to replace him. Or Barrett. It wasn’t as if he was the Heir. There was no good reason to muster resources to protect him. It had been bad enough when quite a number of resources had been gathered to rescue him. He just was not that important.

“Mags, are you listening to me?” the Dean’s voice rose, breaking Mags out of his preoccupation.

“Oh, no, sorry, Dean Caelen,” he said, shamefacedly.

“I thought you looked as if you were miles away.” Rather than sounding annoyed, the Dean sounded sympathetic. “Mags, we’ve put our heads together, and we are going to try something to shake them off your trail. Oddly enough, it was a helpful suggestion from some of those who were not happy about Heralds going to a Collegium system in the first place. They pointed out that in other years, you’d have just gone off with a mentor, just like every other Trainee. You’d be hard to follow in the Field. And the mentor in this case would eventually send back word of your tragic death at the hands of bandits or something of the sort. Your pursuers would not know that the Death Bell
always
rings when a Herald dies, but your friends, of course, would, and would not be fooled.” Dean Caelen shrugged. “Then, once your training in the Field was complete, you’d return with a new name and identity, get your Whites, and be sent off to some other remote Circuit.”

“But—” Mags faltered, unable to see how that applied to him. There were so very many things he still needed classes for!

“But you’re thinking you still need classes,” the Dean responded. “Actually, we looked into that. We’re not sure that you do. Perhaps some other Trainee might—but you are not destined to be sent into the Field, Mags. You don’t really need to know how to run a survey, you don’t really need a class in adjudication, you’ll never be asked to do a score of things that Heralds riding Circuits need to know how to do. What you
will
need to know are things Nikolas is already teaching you—things you’ve proven yourself proficient in. You’re a natural with weapons. And you’ll need to know how to properly survive in the wilderness, without any sort of help at all, because it is entirely possible in your line of work that you will find yourself forced to do just that. You need to learn how to read people, how to know what they mean, rather than what they say. How to know when they are hiding something. How to get it out of them. To get to the point, Mags, you don’t need classes to get the rest of what you’ll need to know, you can get it all from being tutored, directly, with a senior Herald. So for the remainder of your time as a Trainee, we are going to revert to the old ways. You’re going out in the Field with a senior Herald.”

“Yes but—” He could already see a huge hole in this. The assassins knew all about his closest friends, about Amily, and they wouldn’t hesitate to take
them
and use them against him.

“Mags, we’ve been discussing this for days, Nikolas and I,” Caelen told him, interrupting the frantic flow of his thoughts. “I am fairly certain you are worried about your friends. That’s why they’ll be going with you.”

Mags felt his jaw dropping. “What?”

Caelen shook his head wryly. “It’s so mad an idea it practically has to work. Lena is ready for Scarlets and needs to go on her Journeyman’s ride to gather the material for a Master piece. Healers don’t have an equivalent, but Bear is more than ready for his full Greens. He is going to be granted them so that he can go with her to continue teaching the use of his healing kit to an even wider audience. The Healers will approve when Dean Lita suggests it; they’ve already been discussing sending him out anyway, and only the fact that his wife was still a Trainee was stopping them.”

It occurred to Mags that for Lena, having a husband like Bear was the ideal situation. He wasn’t a Gifted Healer, so no one would object that he was being “taken away” and leaving a hole in the Healers’ ranks. Sending him out with Lena, however, was going to allow him to disperse his vital information even faster than he had before—and away from Temples and Houses of Healing, some of which had senior Healers who, like his own father, objected to anyone who wasn’t Gifted practicing any form of medicine.

Best of all, with the Collegium supporting Bear monetarily, they didn’t have to rely on the whims of Lena’s audiences for their income.

Eventually—Mags suspected it would be sooner rather than later—she would find a permanent patron and settle. And Bear would settle with her, probably as the family Healer, or in addition to the family Healer.

That gave Mags a sudden pang of sadness. Because that
was
going to happen. They were all going to part ways, eventually. They’d write . . . he might be able to visit them . . . but they would never again be as close a group as they were now.

But Dean Caelen was continuing. “Amily will supposedly be sent off to visit relatives. You won’t leave together; it will look as though each of you is heading off in a different direction, and then you’ll catch up with each other at some point outside of Haven.”

Mags felt a little dazed at this plan. Caelen was right, it was an absolutely mad notion. Except it was incredibly sane. Amily was a brilliant fighter, obviously whichever Herald was to serve as Mags’ mentor would also be a good armsman. Mags reckoned himself the equal of most now—

:Two Companions are not to be sneezed at, either,:
Dallen pointed out.

They could easily defend themselves
and
Lena and Bear if it came to it. But with luck, it wouldn’t. With luck, all would go according to plan, Mags would be reported dead, and the trail would stop. They’d all return in a year, or maybe two, and . . .

Well, that was when they would all part ways. But they would have had a final, wonderful year together.

“The initial plan is this. We’ll send Bear and Lena out first, with a caravan big enough to sleep all of you,” the Dean continued. “That way no one will be able to track your passage by looking for you at inns. You’ll actually be rather comfortable, I would think, since I expect you’ll be camping at Waystations.”

“And . . . where will we be goin’, sir?” Mags asked, unable to think of anything else to ask.

The Dean rubbed his hands together, looking satisfied. “Well, now, this is the beauty of it. The Circuit we’re sending you to cover is out in the hills not desperately far from that mine you came from. Once you get to the hard winter part of it, you’ll actually be able to make a sort of headquarters in a part of the hills known as The Bastion. From there, it is an easy ride to each of the villages you are to visit.”

There was something here Mags was missing. “So . . . there’s somethin’ special about The Bastion?”

“There certainly is.” The Dean smiled knowingly. “It’s the place where the bandit horde that captured your parents was laired up. If there is anything left that can tell you anything about them, you’ll have plenty of time to look for it over the winter.”

•   •   •

Mags left the Dean’s office with feelings so mixed he was having trouble sorting them out. His room at the stable seemed a good, quiet place to try to get a grasp on everything that was about to happen to him, so that was where he went, sitting quietly on his bed, back to the wall, staring blankly at the opposite wall.

He couldn’t exactly argue with this plan. It was a good one. He could, quite literally, vanish. No one would be looking for him when he was declared dead, and yet not one of his real friends was going to suffer a moment of grief. Even those who weren’t Heralds or Trainees would be quietly put in the know by those who were.

He’d be
with
his friends and be able to
protect
his friends. Everyone who was truly at risk would all be in the same place, and they could watch each others’ backs.

He’d be with Amily—and finally away from all those all-too-watchful eyes that seemed to think they needed to keep him and Amily under supervision. Not that they’d be unsupervised, obviously, but at least there wouldn’t be the feeling that every single person—and Companion!—on the Hill was reporting back to Nikolas on everything they did.

This was not going to be easy, though. He had no real experience of wilderness living in the hard conditions of winter. Not to mention everything else that was going to be expected of him.

And just
which
Herald was going to be his mentor? Not Nikolas, of course; the King’s Own couldn’t be spared. Mags dreaded going off for months with a stranger; what if whoever it was didn’t much like him?

But . . . they were going to be spending time, and a lot of time, in the last place his parents had been alive. What chance was there he’d find some clue as to who they had been? Now that he had the benefit of those memories dumped into his head, he knew he could infer quite a bit from very little, if he could find some belongings of theirs. Even fragments would help!

He couldn’t help but also feel some panic at the idea that suddenly, with very little warning, he was going to be thrown out on Circuit. No matter what Dean Caelen said about him “not needing” to learn how to stand in judgment on people, that was exactly what Heralds on Circuit were often required to do! What if he made mistakes? What if those mistakes hurt people? Heralds were often the only recourse people in these remote villages had to an impartial judge—what if he made the wrong decisions?