Foundation

class.:

Mags had the feeling that if he didn’t do as Dallen suggested, he was not going to get any rest on the subject, so the first thing he did was approach both the boys before the class began and suggested it. Thankfully, they were both younger than he was; if they had been older, he would have been terrified to talk to them. But Beren and Lyr, who, it turned out, were old friends from some place in the wild hills where no one knew how to read and write, took this suggestion with relief and exuberance, grabbed it with both hands, and Beren immediately volunteered to approach the Herald himself at dinner. Mags felt limp-kneed with relief of his own at that. He promised he would stick around until Beren had an answer and a time and place for these extra studies, and that was when the Weaponsmaster showed up.

These classes were held in another separate building called the “salle,” a huge barnlike place with one wall lined with something that Mags had never seen before—and would have walked straight into if Beren hadn’t grabbed him in time.

Glass mirrors.

Beren explained them to him hurriedly, but then the Weaponsmaster interrupted them.

“Is this necessary, Beren?” the wiry little man asked, looking them both sharply up and down. Beren was not in the least intimidated, though Mags shrunk back as far as he could.

“Aye, that, sirrah,” the boy replied, in a drawl that Mags understood only because he listened so closely. “Less ye be wantin’ t’ replace ’nother mirroar.”

“Ah, like that is it?” The Weaponsmaster turned to Mags, who wished he could hide from those penetrating black eyes. “I’ve not been briefed on you yet, Trainee. You’re from where?”

“Master Cole Pieters’ mine, sir,” Mags whispered.

“I meant what part of Valdemar.” The look the man gave him made him wish he was invisible. His knees began to shake.

But then—suddenly—the Weaponsmaster blinked and looked off to one side. He stared at the wall for a moment, then nodded and turned back to Mags. “I beg your pardon, Trainee. I have been briefed now. I’d like you to stand over there while I sort the rest of the students out, if you please.”

Mags was only too happy to move over into a corner, away from the mirrors, while the teacher paired everyone up, more or less. He had a couple of people left over, so those he assigned to one of the pairs with orders to do—well, something—and the three of them take it in turns. He surveyed the room for a moment until he was satisfied that all was going well, and only then did he return to Mags.

“Now,” the Weaponsmaster said, his voice firm, but not quite so hard. “I am most put out that Caelen didn’t tell me about you yesterday. Evidently, it didn’t occur to him that I needed to know you hadn’t set your hand to anything in an offensive capacity in your life. This is not altogether bad; you won’t have to unlearn anything. I trust you are not going to be upset because I set you to work with a singlestick instead of a sword?”

Since Mags only knew what a singlestick was because the image of one obligingly appeared in his mind courtesy of Dallen, he shook his head dumbly.

“Good. I expect you’ll be working with it for some time to come.” The Weaponsmaster drew him farther over to the side of the room, where there was a padded pole, and handed him a thick, straight stick as long as his hand and forearm, picking up another himself. “Now, watch me, and do as I do.”

It was not the most exciting thing Mags had ever done, hitting the pole in places where the padding had been marked with red paint, over and over and over in a series of repetitive patterns. In fact, it was not much worse for boredom than chipping sparklies. But all that careful chipping had given him pretty good control over where and how hard he hit things, and the Weaponsmaster seemed pleased enough with him. Most importantly, to Mags’ mind, he had not been required to do anything that involved raising his hand to another person.

A big pole, he could hit, and not have the sense that he was going to be punished for it. Especially when he took care to not think of the pole as anything other than a pole. He was mostly hitting it in the right places when they all broke up to go off for riding lessons.

The riding lessons, however, began with saddling lessons. Mags was altogether shocked to discover that Beren and Lyr were utterly clueless about how to put on any of the tack. Couldn’t their Companions tell them?

:Ah, actually, no,: Dallen replied, at Mags’ mental query. :Not everyone has Mindspeech. Certainly not as clear as you share with me. No, Beren Fetches and Lyr is a FarSeer, which does very little for him being able to put on a saddle. And until their Companions turned up, neither of them had ever seen anything larger than a goat:

Well ... that was interesting. Through Dallen, he had a good idea of what a Fetcher and a FarSeer did. It occurred to him that if the kiddies had had such talents among them, they could have lived a great deal better.

But no matter. He waited quietly while the stablehands patiently showed the two what they should be doing, and then mounted up at the signal. He was obviously not the worst in the class, and certainly not the best, so as a consequence he was left alone with Dallen for the Companion to continue his riding instruction.

And so ended his first day as a Trainee. After supper, he waited while Beren arranged for the special tutoring, then retreated to his warm little room with his books to study until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. And then, with the latch slid across the door, feeling safe for the first time, ever, he slept.

Chapter 8

He stayed quiet, very quiet, in all his classes; at meals, he took a seat as far from everyone else as he could and pretended to be engrossed in his food, or in a book, once he realized it was not forbidden to bring them to the table. He went straight to his room when his day was finished and chose times when no one else was using the bathing room to get clean. Even in the tutoring sessions he never spoke until he was spoken to. If he spoke more than a handful of words in a day outside of being asked direct questions, it was a rarity. People seemed inclined to leave him alone, which suited him completely; he wanted to watch them and listen. There was a war inside him, a war in which everything he had ever learned about people fought desperately with everything that Dallen was telling him. He wanted Dallen to be right ... but he feared the consequences if Dallen was wrong.

After several days, he still hadn’t seen or heard anything to make him think that Dallen was mistaken. But all of his instincts still kept him wary, and he only really felt relaxed when he shot the bolt home on his room, locking