Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Novels by MERCEDES LACKEY available from DAW Books:

  THE NOVELS OF VALDEMAR:

  THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

  ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

  ARROW’S FLIGHT

  ARROW’S FALL

  THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

  MAGIC’S PAWN

  MAGIC’S PROMISE

  MAGIC’S PRICE

  THE MAGE WINDS

  WINDS OF FATE

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  WINDS OF FURY

  THE MAGE STORMS

  STORM WARNING

  STORM RISING

  STORM BREAKING

  VOWS AND HONOR

  THE OATHBOUND

  OATHBREAKERS

  OATHBLOOD

  THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

  FOUNDATION

  INTRIGUES

  BY THE SWORD

  BRIGHTLY BURNING

  TAKE A THIEF

  EXILE’S HONOR

  EXILE’S VALOR

  VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES

  SWORD OF ICE

  SUN IN GLORY

  CROSSROADS

  MOVING TARGETS

  CHANGING THE WORLD

  FINDING THE WAY*

  Written with LARRY DIXON:

  THE MAGE WARS

  THE BLACK GRYPHON

  THE WHITE GRYPHON

  THE SILVER GRYPHON

  DARIAN’S TALE

  OWLFLIGHT

  OWLSIGHT

  OWLKNIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS:

  GWENHWYFAR

  THE BLACK SWAN

  THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

  JOUST

  ALTA

  SANCTUARY

  AERIE

  THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

  THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

  THE GATES OF SLEEP

  PHOENIX AND ASHES

  THE WIZARD OF LONDON

  RESERVED FOR THE CAT

  UNNATURAL ISSUE*

  *Coming soon from DAW Books

  And don’t miss:

  THE VALDEMAR COMPANION

  Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

  Copyright © 2010 by Mercedes Lackey

  All Rights Reserved

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1524.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44381-1

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, October 2010

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Betsy Wollheim and Russ Galen.

  1

  MAGS slapped the palm of his hand against the blue-painted wood of the stable door, and it banged open, whacking into the frame as Mags hurried through it. The noise echoed through the stable, startling the Companions that were huddled together in the aisle nearest the door into backing up a pace or two. Brick walls didn’t do much to deaden sound. The chill wind that followed him through chased down his neck as the last icy grasp of winter clawed at him. Behind him, a few stubborn patches of granular snow lingered at the bases of trees and under bushes, but most of the ground was bare, which was a welcome relief after a winter season that seemed as if it would never end. The huge blizzard that had virtually closed down Haven, Palace and all, had been followed by snowfall after snowfall until Mags began to wonder if spring was ever coming.

  Then, finally, the snow stopped, and began to melt. And now the weather was changing, but winter was definitely not going quietly. Occasionally a frigid wind showed that it wasn’t quite done yet.

  Mags pushed the door closed, leaning into it as the wind whistled around the edges, before the spring latch dropped into place with a snick. He took a long deep breath of the comforting smell of the Companions’ stable; clean straw, clean “horse,” a hint of damp wool, another hint of woodsmoke. If “home” had a scent, this was it.

  All of the pristine white “horses” in the building looked in his direction for a moment before going back to whatever it was they had been doing. For a moment, Mags was the focus of a sea of blue eyes.

  The largest stallion in the building, who had presumably been chatting with two other Companions in the middle of the aisle between the stalls, gave him a long look down his aristocratic nose that Mags read as disapproving.

  Bad manners to interrupt. Just Not Done. Besides, You Let The Cold Wind In. Also Not Done. Hmph. It wasn’t in Mindspeech, but it might just as well have been. The stallion’s ears were slightly laid back and he swished his tail in irritation.

  “Sorry, Rolan,” Mags said quickly, ducking his head as the King’s Own Companion continued to give him the Stern Look of the Elder. He strolled under the watchful gaze down to the end stall near the door to his own small room and came face to face with his own Companion, Dallen. Horses—or Companions—couldn’t grin, but he sensed more than a little amusement from his bondmate.

  :Don’t worry about Rolan; he likes to think that he stands in one place and the universe revolves around him,: Dallen said. Dallen’s blue eyes shone with amusement, and while one ear twitched in Mags’ direction, the other pointed back toward Rolan.

  A snort from the other side of the stable told Mags that Dallen hadn’t bothered to keep that little comment “quiet.” Rather than Mindspeaking directly to Mags, Dallen had communicated it openly so that every Companion in the stable could hear it. Mags grinned. There were times when Dallen’s cheekiness didn’t just border on impudence, it jumped right into the middle of impudence and splashed it all around.

  :Rolan’s just being prickly. People have been banging through that door all day; and of course they let the freezing cold draft in every single time it starts to get a little warmer.: Dallen reached over his shoulder and tugged his blue-and-white blanket a little higher on his shoulders with his teeth. :This is why I am sporting my natty little rug, here. Of course some people don’t want to wear their blankets because they can’t show off their muscles, so when a draft roars in, they are the first to complain.:

  There were whickers from all over the stable at that one. And another, louder snort. Mags smothered a giggle with both hands.

  :THANK YOU FOR YOUR AMUSING OBSERVATIONS, DALLEN, : came a very loud, ringing mind-voice, one that was probably heard all the way down to the edge of Haven. :I’LL BE SURE TO RECOMMEND YOU FOR COURT JESTER.:

  Now there were whickers from virtually every stall. Including from Dallan, who had no problem poking fun at himself. Dallen tossed his head
and somehow managed for just a moment to cross his ankles and his eyes, inducing more giggles from Mags.

  :Until this weather breaks, when I don’t need to be out with you I’m staying right here in my stall hugging the hay—it shields me a little from the blast of cold air each time someone comes in,: Dallen continued complacently, as King’s Own Companion Rolan went back to whatever important thing he had been discussing. :But I am well known as a lazy lout.:

  “Not lazy,” Mags replied, getting a brush to get whatever invisible bits of dirt and hay might be caught up in his Companion’s shining mane and tail. “Just practical. If I didn’ have to go back and forth t’ classes, I’d hole up in m’ room an’ not move till it got true-warm.” He sighed a little. “Been so long since I seen a warm sun, I’m beginnin’ t’ disbelieve in it! Don’ wonder that Rolan’s tetchy.”

  Dallen nodded vigorously. :Oh I heartily agree with you. All those days of dark cloud and endless snow made people depressed and edgy, and now I think maybe some of us are losing our patience as well. It’s hard to be cooped up in here, knowing that Spring is taking its time in getting here properly.: The stallion stretched, arcing his neck so that Mags could get at all the itchy spots with the brush as he did so. :I’m not the only one wanting a nice walk out on a lazy hot day with the sun blazing down. Too bad that won’t happen for at least a couple of moons yet. And when I think about how it feels to have a good roll in long grass, and a gallop on a warm summer night—bah, I start to feel out of sorts too. Especially when I think about those gallops on summer nights, because I do look so splendid by moonlight!:

  Mags had to smile at that, and his mood lifted. He leaned into Dallen’s neck and continued to brush, letting the motion soothe them both. It had been another slightly edgy day for him, and maybe Dallen was right about people being out of sorts because they were cooped up. He couldn’t understand why—well, he couldn’t until he thought about it from the point of view of the other Trainees. Most of them thought being “forced” to stay warm and indoors was a trial, and not a hitherto unimaginable luxury . . . actually he was probably the only one who felt that every day was spent in luxury.

  Eh, not quite. There’s a couple from sheep-country. An’ a couple farmers. An’ that gal whose da is a blacksmith . . .

  Still, he was the only Trainee who came from what—to the others—was unimaginable poverty. The vast majority of the Trainees came from the highborn families, or at the very least, the prosperous. Even the poorest shepherd was appalled when he heard about the conditions Mags and the other younglings with him had endured.

  People were always complaining about something—the food, the work, the beds, the uniforms didn’t fit, their rooms were too hot or too cold, or so-and-so was too hard a teacher. Sometimes he wondered if they just made things up to complain about.

  Whereas . . . he was grateful to wake up in any kind of bed at all. Doubly grateful that it was a warm bed in a warm room, a clean warm bed on top of all of that.

  For most of his life, his bed had been filthy straw in a hole under the barn floor, and a blanket more holes than cloth, a bed he shared with a dozen other slave-children. It had never been warm, even in the heat of summer. It had never been clean.

  He had never been clean, not even when they were all given the rare good meal and apparent good treatment on the occasion of a show visit to satisfy those who were supposed to ensure their well-being. Baths? Never heard of them. The only time dirt got washed off was by accident, as he worked the sluices, washing the gravel from the mine for tiny bits of gemstone.

  Having a warm, soft bed—that was obvious, of course anyone would like that. But following his rescue and subsequent “civilizing,” he had quickly discovered he liked being clean. And after that first bath it had just gotten better, although initially the experience had terrified him.

  To put on clean clothing that wasn’t rags, eat good food that filled you up—it was, by the standards he had grown up with, the stuff of which dreams were made. No, not even dreams. When he’d been a slave, he hadn’t even known that such things were possible, so how could he have dreamed about them?

  Dallen was the reason all this had happened to him. Dallen had Chosen him, Dallen had come for him, and when the Companion couldn’t get him away from the man that had kept him and the others in terrible slavery, Dallen had fetched help in the form of another Herald—Jakyr.

  Of course, at the time, Mags had been as terrified of the Herald as he was of his master, though in a way that had been good, because his fear had kept him too paralyzed to move or run until Dallen got him sorted out.

  Then, oh how his life had changed!

  Becoming a Trainee had changed his life so dramatically that he sometimes thought he had become an entirely different person.

  Take the food. No more thin cabbage soup and bread that was mostly chaff, or even sawdust. No more digging into garbage pits and the pig-slop for food that was too spoiled for the people living in the “big house.” As a mine-slavey, his highest ambition had been to hit a richer vein of “sparklies” to earn himself one more tiny piece of bread than anyone else had.

  And the living conditions. No more sleeping in a pit on rotting straw in a heap of other dirty children. Or trying to keep warm with only a thin blanket and the body heat of the rest. Or wrapping his feet in straw and rags because you hadn’t ever put a pair of shoes on your feet. No more chilblains. The Trainees here, at least so far, didn’t even know what a chilblain was!

  And no more spending virtually every waking hour on his belly in a mine shaft, chipping out gemstones by hand, penalized by having some of his food withheld when the “take” wasn’t good enough—as if he had any control over what the rock yielded to him!

  That was the biggest change of all, at least, on the inside of him. Now he was using his head for thinking and learning all the time. His world had gone from the confines of the mine and yard to—well—a whole world. His days were spent doing things that were difficult but rewarding, and there was no punishment meted out if he wasn’t good at them. Instead of punishment, he got help.

  Unbelievable.

  No, the others had no idea how good they had things here.

  And to be honest, he didn’t want them to know, the way he knew. No one should have to live like that.

  But the differences between his life and theirs still made the adjustment hard for him in ways he suspected no one really understood. He didn’t even understand it, except that he was always in a state of vague discomfort except when he was alone with Dallen. He felt like a kitten being raised by chickens. It was obvious that no one here reacted the way he did to things, and everyone here knew from their own experience how people were supposed to treat each other.

  He hadn’t been raised like a human being, he’d been raised like—no, worse than—an animal. He knew how to read and write, because it was the law, and the owners of the mine he’d worked at grudgingly made sure the children learned that much, but he didn’t really know how to conduct himself among people who had what he now knew were “normal” lives.

  He stumbled and fell in so many situations that required an understanding of how people were supposed to be. That got him in trouble—or at least, garnered him odd looks—so many times in a day that he didn’t bother to keep track. He was never quite sure of exactly what it was he had done or said when he violated some code or guideline for behavior that others just took for granted. At least, not until after the fact when Dallen would explain it to him.

  And no matter what he did, how much he learned about behaving like other people did, simply because he was so grateful for the smallest of things—and so completely unused to them—he often had the feeling he was never going to fit in.

  He’d been a Trainee for months now, and he still felt as if he was running in a race in which he would never catch up. That no matter how hard he tried, everyone else was always going to be smarter, faster, stronger than he ever would be. It went without saying that everyone, fro
m the lowest servant to the highest in the land, was used to simply having more things than he did. The most that one of the mine children could claim was a ragged scrap of a blanket, and then only if someone bigger didn’t take it. The idea that he actually owned things was sometimes preposterous to him. Under it all was a fear he could never quite shake, that someone would find him out and it would all be taken away from him. That fear had faded over the months, but it was still there, an undercurrent to everything.

  :You know, all I can do is to keep telling you is that you do belong here, I Chose correctly, and no one is ever going to send you away,: Dallen said, breathing warm hay-scented breath into his hair affectionately. :Eventually I’ll wear all that away, like water wearing away a rock.:

  Mags sighed, and patted Dallen’s neck. Even Dallen didn’t quite understand it. He couldn’t help it. This was the way he had lived forever and ever, and . . . maybe the rock was just too hard to wear away.

  And then there was . . . well, his position here. Most of the people around him, his fellow Trainees in particular, were used to a lot of deference from those of lesser rank, and of course, most folk outside the Collegium were of lesser rank. They were self-assured, they expected that people would speak to them respectfully. He was in the habit of expecting as many blows as words, and no one, ever, had spoken to him with respect until he had put on Grays.

  The Trainees were used to treating each other with a casualness that came hard to him, while he had to battle to keep from giving them the same deference the servants gave them. That, of course, was viewed as “sucking up.”