Foundation

puzzled assent, he got a most peculiar sensation, as his own eyes flickered over the backs of the books without his own volition.

:That one,: Dallen suggested, and his eyes rested on the tack of one in dull blue leather. Carefully, Mags pulled it out and carried it over to one of the benches.

He was almost afraid to touch the pages with his rough hands, they seemed so fragile to him. When he opened the book, he wasn’t sure what he was going to see. But his speculations were not what met his eyes; what he saw was long rings of words in sentences, written small, like rows and rows of ants on the page. It took him a breathless moment to realize that these were words he knew, that he recognized, that he had written. Most of them, anyway.

:I will help you with the others,: Dallen promised . :Now don’t be afraid of the pages. They will withstand being turned, they are are tougher than they look. Go ahead.:

He took a seat on one of the benches, with the weak, but warm sunlight pouring over his back and licked his lips, then plunged in.

Slowly, sentence by sentence, sometimes word by word, Mags began to read his first book.

It was harder work than he thought, but it was also engrossing, once he realized that this book was telling a story. Of course, he didn’t understand a lot of it, because it talked about things that were so foreign to his life, but Dallen helped by giving him mental images of what was going on. It was ... magical. That was the only possible word for it. Here he was, puzzling out a story that someone else had told, someone who probably lived a very long way away from here, and every person that picked up this book would get to learn the same story.

He got so involved in it that when a bell sounded through the building, he jumped. He didn’t yelp. Yelping got you hit. But he was genuinely startled, and he sat there for a moment with his heart racing, wondering if he had somehow done something wrong and triggered an alarm.

:.That is the bell for noon meal,: Dallen informed him merrily, taking no notice of his panic. And his stomach rumbled. He was so used to being hungry that it hadn’t registered with him. But his stomach had gotten two good, big meals so far, and it wanted another.

He could find his way around a mine, so it was not hard now to remember his way back to the mess hall. But even if he had not known how to get there, the stream of Guards all going in one direction would have given him the clue. This time the room was full of men, and he wondered what it was he should do and where he should go.

But one of the young men spotted him, no doubt because in his ordinary, if over-large clothing, he stood out among the blue uniforms like a rock on a snowdrift. The fellow steered him over to a table, and consulted with someone who was bringing platters of food around.

And that man returned with another big bowl of soup and a half a loaf of bread. “Healer’s orders, Trainee,” the man said, putting both in front of him. “Soup fer you, he sez, till ye be used ta eaten regular. Mebbe some cheese an’ fruit. An’ no beer for ye. I’ll bring the tea, foreby.”

Mags hardly cared. This time the soup had chunks of chicken meat in it as well as the thick rafts of vegetables, and round white things he couldn’t identify, but which tasted glorious. There was more wonderful cheese, and another apple. More herb tea, this time sweetened with honey that somehow blended with the flavors of the herbs and made them stand out more. Part of him still wanted to be wary, afraid that someone would decide to take all this away from him, but Dallen kept up a steady flow of certainty, and eventually he just gave himself over to the food.

He ate until he couldn’t eat any more, and he intended to go back to his book again. But somehow he found himself in that room full of beds again, and thought he would lie down for just a little bit.

And that decision was the last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him.

It seemed only a moment later that he woke to Dallen’s prodding and the sound of a bell again. Outside the windows, the sun was setting. Inside, the sounds from down the hall made him realize that the Guardsmen were heading in the direction of the mess hall. And once again, his stomach growled, telling him in no uncertain terms that it was empty, it had gotten used to being full, and it wanted to be that way again, now.

He spent the next several days in the same way: getting fed, sleeping a very great deal, slowly becoming more and more facile at reading books, absorbing what was in the books that Dallen selected for him.

If he didn’t speak much, it was because he spent most of his time watching everything. From time to time, with a vaguely worried look on his face, Herald Jakyr would seek him out in the book room or at meals and ask him some pointed question or other. Mags’ answers must have satisfied him, for the Herald would get a relieved look on his face and go off about his business.

That business took him away from the Guard Post more often than not. Mags didn’t mind; while he was gone, the Guardsmen generally let him poke around as much as he cared to as long as he was not underfoot.

By watching, he learned how to groom a horse—and by extension, Dallen. He learned how to saddle and bridle one, too, and what to feed it. He learned all manner of useful things, in fact, although the one thing he didn’t learn, because he never could bring himself to pick up a weapon, was how to use a weapon. He watched the Guardsmen at their practice, and every time he even thought about picking up a knife or a bow, he wanted to crawl away and hide. It made his skin crawl and his stomach tie up in knots in a way that nothing Dallen could do would soothe. He kept thinking about the time when he was still in the kitchen and someone had raised a mining hammer as a weapon to Master Cole.

Master Cole had gathered everyone outside to watch.

“I be judge and jury here,” the Master had said harshly. “Ye dared t’ raise yer filthy hand t’ me, dared t’ try an’ strike me dead, and me boys as witness to it.”

He had glanced around at all of his sons, who had nodded and mumbled “ayes.”

“Then I gives ye the sentence ye’d hev served me, if ye could.” And he had then taken the massive, stone- headed mallet at his side, and brutally beaten the poor wretch to death, and beyond, into a pulp, while every other person on the property was forced to watch.

Then the mine kiddies had been ordered to take up what was left and leave it in a played-out seam. The supports were pulled out, the seam collapsed. Everyone understood that this meant if and when someone came looking for the boy, there had been a terrible “accident.”