Intrigues: Book Two of the Collegium Chronicles (a Valdemar Novel) (33 page)

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

Authors: Mercedes Lackey

Tags: #Fantasy - Epic, #Fantasy - General, #American Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction - Fantasy, #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Valdemar (Imaginary place), #Epic

Mags nodded in silent agreement.
“Families,” Bear added, in tones that indicated that something more had shortened his temper than just having to work with difficult patients.
“Wha’s got ye riled?” Mags asked.
Bear sighed. Lena sobbed on, oblivious to what they were saying. Well, Mags couldn’t blame her. This was a horrible blow to her. Here she thought her father had finally noticed her, was impressed by her, and had come to love her. The fact that all these emotions had been created in her by her father in order to manipulate her was probably unbearable right now.
“Got a letter from my family,” he growled. “My brother’s turning up. Head of the Sweetwater House of Healing, if you please, and he’s going to demand that I do my duty to the family, come home, and get married on Midsummer and start spawning babies. They still haven’t given up on that.”
Lena’s sobs were easing off. She sniffed wetly and Bear offered her a scrap of clean cloth. She took it, pulled away from him, and he reluctantly let her go.
“M-maybe you just ought to go along with that for a l-little,” she said, with a faint stammer. “At least your family cares about you, and if you just give them what they want for a moon or two, you can come back here—”
“I don’t want that girl,” Bear snarled, sounding startlingly like his namesake. “I don’t love her! I am not going to get shackled up to some girl I hardly know just so my parents can be grandparents, and it’s not as if they aren’t already, because they are. If I marry anyone, it’s going to be someone I love and would do anything for, not someone my parents picked out because they’re neighbors! Someone like—” he paused. “Never mind. It just won’t be her.”
Lena stared at him, startled by his vehemence. He looked down at his hands. “Sorry. That kind of just jumped out.”
“Nothin’ t’ be sorry fer,” Mags offered. He shook his head. “Sometimes it seems like we all oughta just run away from here, an’—an’ that’s when I run out, cause I dunno what we’d do t’ keep ourselves fed an’ housed up.”
“I could always be an animal Healer,” Bear said sourly. “At least animals are always grateful to you. Nobody thinks you’re second-rate because you treat them with medicine instead of a Gift. Animal Healers are always in demand.”
“I could be a traveling minstrel,” Lena answered, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “I’m good enough for that right now. Maybe we should do that. Run away and do that. Show them all.”
Mags shrugged. “I got nothin’. All I know’s mine work. Jest end up i’ the same situation, jest wi’ a better master. Mebbe. I misdoubt Master Cole was th’ on’y mine owner t’ treat ’is miners thet way.”
And Lena sighed. “Traveling minstrels starve a lot,” she said forlornly. “And my father still wouldn’t notice or care.”
“Well then,” Bear said stolidly. “No running away.”
They all sighed, and looked at one another.
As Mags made his way back to his room in the stable that night, he resolved one thing. He was going to at least ask King’s Own Nikolas if he could help Bear.
If, of course, he could ever see the man.
He decided to take the bull by the horns—or at least, the heifer. He was going to help Amily that evening, since Nikolas hadn’t shown up at his room or even given any indication that he was
ever
going to continue the lessons again, so he would ask the one person who surely
knew
where her father was.
“Lissen,” he said, before they got down to work. “Gotta ast ye somethin’.”
She raised her eyes to look at him. “Of course,” she replied.
“I need t’ see yer Pa. Nikolas,” he said, looking her in the eyes.
She looked away, but laughed, though it wasn’t exactly the laughter of someone who was hearing a joke. “We all need to see him,” she told him, still not looking at him. “He has become a phantom. I know he’s still here in Haven, because dirty plates and filthy uniforms appear in our rooms and have to be taken away, but I haven’t actually seen him personally in the last few days.”
Ever since th’ new set’ a visions,
Mags thought bleakly.
Aye, that figgers. Bet he reckons it’s me after all an’ he’s tryin’ t’ find a way t’ stop me.
“Well, when ye do, tell ’im I need t’ see ’im?” he pleaded. “It’s pretty important.”
“If I see him I will,” Amily replied, looking uneasy, and maybe a little guilty. “But sometimes he does this and I don’t see him for—well, once it was for three moons.”
Well that would be a bit too late . . .
But it would be ungracious to act like a boor about it. Amily couldn’t help what her father thought or did. “All right,” he replied. “Thenkee. Now, hand me my share, aye?”
She did so, and he couldn’t help but note that her hand was shaking a little as she did it.
Bear’s place at lunch was empty.
For a moment, Mags had the crazy thought that Bear’s brother had arrived and essentially kidnapped his sibling—but no, that wouldn’t be possible, would it? Surely no one here would allow that.
:Dallen?:
he asked first, before voicing the question aloud.
:No clue,:
the Companion replied.
:Let me ask some of the others—though, mind you, we usually don’t know what’s going on up at Healers’ Collegium. They have good shields and don’t leak much.:
“Anybody know where Bear is?” he asked aloud. His only response was headshakes.
Well, there was no point in worrying about it. Bear was often called away; this was probably just another one of those times.
They were almost done with the meal when Bear turned up, finally, looking bad. Ragged. He dropped down into his seat and stared dully at his empty plate, a plate which Gennie and Mags took, filled with the leftovers and shoved in front of him.
“Eat!” said Gennie.
“He’s dead,” Bear said, mechanically picking up a fork and getting a mouthful. “I don’t understand it. He just . . . died. He shouldn’t have died. I was crazy-careful about dosages and combinations. I tested everything on myself first—”
He stopped, as if he had said too much. No one else seemed to notice the gaff, they were all staring at him in puzzlement.
“Who died?” Halleck asked.
“Lunatic,” Bear said dully. “The crazy foreigner. I just don’t understand it. I thought I had his fear and his heart rate under control. He was fine last night. I made sure he took everything. The new stuff I gave him was working, at least I think it was, there were moments when he was even coming out of that fear-fit he was in . . .”
“Oh, him.” Halleck shrugged. “Bear, I know he was your patient, and you have to feel bad about that, and I know that the senior Healers trusted him to you to treat, but face it, they only did that because they couldn’t do anything with him. They’d already given up on getting him sane, and everyone else had given up on getting any information out of him. So it’s not as if it’s a tragic loss . . .”
Halleck trailed off, seeing that he wasn’t getting through to Bear.
Mags knew why. Entirely apart from the fact that Bear took the care of every patient he had very seriously, there was the implication that his skills were nowhere near as sharp as he and everyone else had thought. Failure put him one step closer to being hauled home, and his brother was due here any day.
And Mags hadn’t exactly done anything about getting Nikolas to intercede for him.
Of course, that was because Nikolas wasn’t anywhere to be found, but that was beside the point. He hunched over a little with guilt, and finished his lunch in a hurry. “ ’M sorry, Bear,” he mumbled as he got up to leave. “I don’ think ’twas yer fault, if thet means anythin’.”
Bear didn’t even look up.
Mags heard the shouting long before he got to Healers’ Collegium. One voice was Bear’s; the other was very like Bear’s, just deeper. The accent was even the same, which pretty much identified who it was.
Bear’s brother was here.
“. . . and now you see what happens when you think you can muck around with midwife potions and try to do what only a skilled and Gifted Healer can!” shouted the deeper voice. “You are in way over your head, Bear! We should never have allowed you to come here; you let a few early successes go to your head and they made you think you could actually do what only a real Healer can, and now you see the result! You managed to kill a valuable asset to the Crown!”
Mags hesitated. Should he leave? He had no right to listen to this.
But he couldn’t seem to make his feet move.
“I didn’t—”
“Bah, don’t tell me that, I know you, I can read you like a Mindspeaker. Even you think you killed him!” There was steel in that voice, the steel of someone who was absolutely certain he was in the right, and no one was going to tell him any differently. “It’s time you stopped mucking about with potions and accepted your responsibility to the family. You are coming home and getting married. If you want to spend your time dosing animals when you get there, fine. But no more of this ‘herbs can replace a Healer’ idiocy. Good gods, that medicine chest notion—that is appalling! How many more people do you want to kill with that?”
“They’d die anyway,” Bear shouted back. “At least this way they have a chance!”
“You don’t know that! In fact, it’s far more likely that they wouldn’t die without all those leaves and roots, because they would be wise and send for a Healer right away, instead of mucking about with beans and flowers until it’s too late for a real Healer to save them!”
“The Circle—”
“The Circle will see it my way after this,” the brother said, scornfully. “Killing a patient tends to make them wake up and take the blinkers off. So you just resign yourself to doing what you are told for a change. And start packing. There’s going to be a wedding at Midsummer if I have to drag you to the altar tied up.”
Silence, the slamming of a door, then the sound of something breaking.
Slowly, carefully, Mags approached the door to Bear’s conservatory. He tapped gingerly on the window.
Bear opened the door, and glared at him. “I suppose you overheard all that,” he snapped. The young Healer Trainee was disheveled and red-faced with anger. His hair looked like a bird had made a nest in it.
“I gotta think yer whole Collegium overheard thet,” Mags said tentatively.

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