Intrigues

He considered trying a probe, but something held him back. It wasn’t ethics; the man thinking these things was a clear danger to Valdemar, and a mental probe was exactly in order here. It was something else, some subtle sense of warning. The man himself might not be aware of Mindspeech . . .

But slowly, Mags became aware that there was a shadow there, hovering behind the mind in question. He thought perhaps it was something that had been put to guard him from outside. That was what was making his actual thoughts so obscure and hard to read. And that shadow... there was definitely something about it that made the hair on the back of Mags’ neck stand up, the way it did when a large and dangerous dog growled. Danger. Definite danger there.

So he clung to the contact this time rather than trying to shut it out, and tried to glean what he could from the fragments he picked up. Oh, he wanted to shut it out, the pain of being touched by it was as bad as anything he had ever known—but this was important. Every fragment of information he could glean was more that could tell the Heralds who it was, and where he might be.

There were fleeting memories of the Palace—and that suite that the fake envoys had been in. So... yes, this was one of the foreigners. He sensed Dallen struggling to stay awake and take all this in, but he couldn’t spare anything to help at the moment, as it was taking every bit of his concentration to absorb the bits and pieces he was getting and put them together into a coherent pattern.

Oh, the man was angry, so angry. Mags could scarcely believe that anyone could be that angry and still be as under control as this man was. It was as if his rage was the food he lived on, the fuel for the furnace that forged him.

This was nothing like the mad mind of the assassin; this rage was as cold as the mad one’s had been hot. Calculating, that was what it was. He might be insane—in fact, Mags could not imagine how anyone who was carrying around this much anger could not be insane—but he was as meticulously organized as a fine clockmaker. This man did nothing without examining every possibility and figuring out where it could take him. That was part of why it was so hard to read his thoughts—he actually thought these things through, several of them at a time, much faster than Mags could follow just one! Brilliant, he was blindingly brilliant.

And yet, there was something about that mind that was very akin to the mad one. It was not in the level of organization, and not in the level of intelligence. It wasn’t the anger, although the mad assassin had been very angry. It felt almost as if—as if the two, this man and the assassin, had been related, physically related in some way. Could there be, in fact, a kinship connection? There might be!

He repressed the thought that perhaps the reason why he was so sensitive to these minds and no one else was, was because there might be a kinship connection with himself. That wasn’t important right now. And as Dallen had stressed to him, just because your parents had been bad, it didn’t follow that you would be.

What was important was figuring out where this man was, and what it was he was going to do.

It was very like trying to ride the back of a wild and dangerous, ravening beast—a beast that had no idea Mags was there. All he could do was hold on for the ride and hope the beast didn’t notice.

After several moments, he still couldn’t tell which of the foreigners this man was... he only knew which one he wasn’t, because this mind was nothing like the mind of the man he had seen down in Haven and followed to the travelers’ inn. And there had been no kinship connection there, either.

He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated with all his might, but could not even get a sense of direction from that mind. All he could say for sure was that it was down in Haven somewhere. He got flashes of what looked like a great many people eating and drinking together; another inn, but it could have been one of dozens. Even if Mags had been able to recognize it, there was no guarantee that the man would stay there for any length of time. In fact, given that they had been discovered now, it was very unlikely that they would take any two meals in the same place.

There were layers to the man’s anger. There was a fundamental rage that drove him all the time, waking and sleeping. And there was a hatred for Valdemar atop that—but not the sort that he would expect to find in, say, a Karsite, who hated and feared everything that Valdemar represented.

No, this was a more generalized hatred. He didn’t want to be here, he hated this place, it wasn’t home, the people were soft and simple fools, their Heralds were unnatural and perverted creatures with a sick and twisted bond to their horses, and he wanted to be gone as soon as possible.

But he couldn’t leave. He had a task to perform here.

Frustratingly, Mags could not get a sense of what that task was. Only that there was a very important task to be accomplished and he had not been able to do it.

And atop that, another level of anger and acute frustration that there was something he needed, desperately needed, in order to finish that task. And it wasn’t something that he could just buy or make or have made. It was something personal and very specific. He had thought he had it, but he didn’t. He must have left it, because it was missing, and now he could get nothing done. Try as he might, Mags could not get a sense of where the man thought he had left this thing, much less what it was.

Right now, getting that thing back, whatever it was—that was his primary goal. He thought now he knew where it was. He was working on several plans simultaneously to get it. It was all those plans, being thought through together, that made it impossible to see what the object was and where it was.

:... oh... now I understand.: Dallen’s mind-voice was a whisper, as if he, too, was afraid to disturb that mind.

:Understand what?: Mags demanded.

:Later—:

The mind buzzed with these plans, to the point where Mags couldn’t follow any of the threads of thought at all. Plans branched off plans, and the mind worked at all of them, simultaneously, until Mags felt dizzy—

Then, suddenly—the mind was gone.

:What happened?: he said, alarmed. :Did I—did he —:

:I don’t—think so,: Dallen replied with difficulty. :I don’t think he knew you were there. I think... I think there is just something that links you randomly. It holds you together for a bit, then he spins away and the connection breaks.: Mags sensed a lot of pain, physical pain in Dallen.

:What’re ye doin’, ye gurt fool?: he demanded, alarmed, :Ye ain’t tryin’ ter walk are ye?:

:No... no. I just let my pain drugs wear off, so I can think and talk to you. It’s worth it. A little pain is not an issue with something this important in the offing.: There was a sense of a weak laugh. :I will muddle through.:

Mags wanted to throw his arms around Dallen’s neck and beat him with a stick at one and the same time. He was so glad that Dallen had been able to follow all this, so glad that Dallen would be able to tell all the other Companions immediately. And he wanted to beat the big moron for hurting himself to do so and shrugging it all off.

:I promise I will drink them very soon now. I think there is something up here at the Collegium that has been preventing you from making that connection quite so often,: Dallen continued. :There are a lot of shields here, and every Gifted tends to naturally create a differently sized shield as well. Some don’t even have a specific person that they are tied to, and are probably the result of many Heralds and Healers being in the same place for a long time. Most of those shields don’t extend much past the surface of one’s own mind, but some can extend to cover the Collegia and Palace as well. Those big ones aren’t strong, and they are entirely subconscious, but having several of them in place could have interfered with you making conscious contact with that mind before.:

:Could thet be where m’nightmares’re from?:

:Oh yes. In sleep you are more likely to get seepages. And it was just our bad luck that we were on the Kirball field, outside those shields, when whatever it is happened that allows you to link briefly with that madman.: He got a sense of Dallen wincing as his poor legs complained to him.

:Gods.: He breathed heavily, as if he had been running. :An’ if I go back—no chance up there thet I’ll hook him again. Then no way, I cain’t go back up there. Not if I’m gonna have any hope of findin’ him.:

:Not when we have no idea how you link to him, not when it seems to be triggered by