Foundation

All conversation ceased immediately, and all heads turned toward the front of the room.

“Thank you,” the man said, in a firm, carrying voice. “I have been asked to inform the Collegia of an impending emergency. Messages from the field have given us warning of the approach of a killing storm. The Herald FarSeer attached to the King’s Council has also seen this storm strike Haven, and some of the Gifted among my Temple have confirmed it. We had been informed of this impending storm from Heralds posted west of us; we had hoped it would blow out before it reached the city, but it has only strengthened. It has already paralyzed the countryside to the west of Haven, and it will be on us at about sunset.”

Already there was a murmuring; he held up his hand and got silence once more. “This is not a storm to be trifled with. We expect several feet of snow, with such a powerful wind that there could be drifts as high as the rooftops. During the storm itself, movement even between buildings will be very hazardous, if not deadly. All classes are canceled. Trainees are being asked to help carry firewood and stack it at the doors of all buildings. Those who are not Trainees are asked to report to your immediate superiors for assignment to other work parties. We must ready each building here to be self-sufficient for a minimum of three days.” The murmuring began again, and the priest raised his voice. “Quickly! There is no time to waste!”

With that, people began to head out of the building, some of them on the run. Mags stared at his two friends, who looked incredulously back at him.

:This is no prank, Mags,: Dallen said. :Come get me. We’ll haul logs.:

Lena and Bear looked at him still as if they could not believe what they had just heard; he nodded as the babbling that had broken out all over the room turned into a roar of voices. Heralds and Trainees were explaining to their friends what he was about to tell his. “It’s no joke. We gotta get goin’. Dallen says him ’n me are gonna haul logs. We best get at it.” He gave them what he hoped was a stare that conveyed the gravity of the situation. He had been through blizzards like this. They might not have.

Lena took a deep breath, looking as if she didn’t quite believe it could be that bad, but didn’t dare disbelieve him either. “Well, in that case—”

“We get to it,” Bear said firmly. “We daren’t lose my plants. Lena, let’s get wood stacked against the wall by my furnace in case no one thinks of it. Mags? In case no one thinks of my furnace?”

He nodded, making an instant decision. Dallen, he was sure, could make it right. But better to take care of it now than to wait for permission, which might come too late or not at all. “Dallen an’ me’ll bring ye logs, but getting ’em split’ll be up t’ you.” Mags went to the line of pegs where all the coats and cloaks were hung; he wiggled his way in among all the others going after their gear, grabbed his coat, and hurried down to the stable where all the Companions, partnered or not, were being put into abbreviated harnesses with chains on the sides. Mags recognized these from his lessons as the “pulling harnesses” all Heralds took with them into the field. Dallen seemed to know where he was going, so Mags just hauled himself up onto his Companion’s bare back and joined a procession of similarly mounted Trainees, Companions alone, and even stablehands with common horses down a little road he hadn’t paid much attention to before this. It ran along the inside of the wall around the Palace and Companion’s Field, and it ended in the biggest pile of logs he had ever seen in his life.

Until this moment it had never occurred to him to question where all the firewood came from for all the buildings within that wall. Now he knew. It looked as if an entire forest had been brought here and stacked up. There were three men in heavy clothing with iron bars on the top of each stack of logs, carefully levering logs away so that they tumbled down the side of the stack to land on the snow. Once a log was down, a Companion and Trainee, or a Companion alone, or a regular horse led by a stablehand, went up to the log. Chains were hitched around it, the chains from the harness fastened to it, and off they went, heading for the Palace.

When it was Dallen’s turn, Mags, who had watched the procedure carefully, jumped off and did his own chaining-up, much to the approval of the log tenders. He didn’t bother getting back on; Dallen couldn’t go fast with that heavy log behind him, and he didn’t want to burden his Companion any more than he had to.

Already there was a sense of urgency in the air that Mags entirely approved of. No one who hadn’t tended a fire himself had any idea of how much wood was going to be consumed over the next three days. In a way, he hoped that there were snowdrifts up to the rooftops. Those drifts would seal off the wind and insulate against some of the worst of the cold.

:I have approval to take our logs to Bear, Chosen.: Dallen’s muscles rippled as he pulled the dead weight forward. Mags wished he could take some of that burden himself. :Bear was right. Some of those medicinal plants are absolutely without price, and we cannot risk them freezing. That was good forethought on his part.:

:I’ll tell him ye said so.: Mags raced ahead to pull a fallen branch out of the way, then returned to Dallen’s side. He watched the log as it plowed a furrow through the snow to make sure it didn’t get hung up on anything, and ran ahead to get obstacles out of Dallen’s way.

After that, they both saved their breath for work. Despite the unspoken feeling of urgency, there was no outward sign of a reason for that urgency. Overhead, the sky was blue and mostly cloudless. But Mags remembered very well that first blizzard of the year, the one that he and Jakyr had barely beaten. It, too, had begun with cloudless skies, and had churned up over the horizon like some terrible monster.

They left their log with Bear, who had managed to round up three woodcutters, all in the green of Healers, and returned to the log pile at a trot. Soon the steady procession of logs had worn the road smooth, which made pulling easier for horses and Companions. Each time Mags got to the buildings, he could see them swarming with people bringing in supplies of all sorts, workmen nailing shutters on the windward side of the building closed, and a steady procession coming toward the stable of carts hauling hay from what must have been a storage barn. He wondered where they were going to put it all, then ceased to worry. Let them figure it out; his business was not in the stable. Right now, he and Dallen had logs to haul.

After six runs, something had changed up at the Palace, heralded first by a crack that sounded as if lightning had struck the place and made everyone jump. It turned out that there were some mechanical aids for reducing all that wood to manageable size. For the life of him, Mags could not see how the things worked, but there were two devices that were splitting entire logs lengthwise into quarters, which were then taken to two-man saw teams to be reduced to fireplace and furnace size. The sound of the logs splitting was startling even when you knew it was coming, and the horses shied every time it rang out. They were all working as hard and as fast as they could; horses and Companions alike steamed with sweat, their breath coming in great moist clouds as they pulled on their burdens.

Finally, as dusk fell, the sound of horns rang out over the entire complex, joined by all the bells of the Collegia.

:That’s the signal,: Dallen said, heaving at the log. :No more. The storm is almost on us, and these will be the last loads.: