Valdemar 03 - [Collegium 01] - Foundation by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page B

same Gift, and to some who did not—that he could read the thoughts of others, if he exerted himself, as easily as he read his letters. He knew now that he’d had this thing, this Gift, for the last two years, and it hadn’t been whispering he’d been overhearing from others; it had been that when he tried to hear what they were saying, he heard it straight from their minds. In the mine, when he’d stolen to the mouths of tunnels, in the sleeping hole when someone had muttered in their sleep. Dallen showed him in that moment the rudiments of how to use that Gift, and how to control it, and promised there would be others who would teach him mastery of it. All of this was filling up his empty head until he was quite sure it was going to overflow, and then . . . it stopped.
    He blinked, coming back to himself, and feeling a strange . . . calm . . . overlying everything. He had never felt quite like this before. Underneath it was still the terror, but right now it was the calm that was in control. That calm came straight from Dallen, who was a stick to lean on, a shoulder, a support until he could deal with all of this by himself.
    He didn’t understand more than a fraction of what had been poured into him; it was all so foreign to what he knew life was supposed to be like that he might have been standing among moon-creatures. But he also knew that, eventually, he would understand. That, too, was part of the calm.
    :Time to pay attention to the rest of the world, Chosen,: Dallen said with an overtone of amusement. :Otherwise they are going to think that I have stolen your mind away.:
    He blinked, and fell out of the entrancement as easily as he had fallen in, staggering a little at the abrupt transition, and looked around to find that he and Dallen were surrounded by a ring of people, all watching them closely.
    Everything seemed sharper, clearer; he was aware of the things around him in a way that he had not been until now. The chill against his skin, the soft hide of Dallen under his hand, the way Dallen’s breath, hay-scented, huffed against his shoulder.
    He looked up into the skeptical eyes of the Herald. Jakyr, said memory. Herald Jakyr. “His name’s Dallen, Herald Jakyr,” Mags muttered, still trying to sort through the most immediate of the things dumped into his mind. “I’m . . . Mags. Don’t got no other name.” He caught a flicker of something from the Herald and scowled, feeling insulted. This man had no call to think of him as some sort of idiot! “And I mebbe scrawny, but I ain’t lackwitted,” he added with irritation. Then, belatedly, he realized that he had just been impudent to a master; he paled and appended, “Sir.”
    And involuntarily cringed, waiting for a blow that was, in his mind, inevitable. He had been insolent. He would pay for that.
    He couldn’t help himself. When you answered smart, you got smacked, if you were lucky, and beaten if you weren’t. But Herald Jakyr only chuckled. “Aye, I’ll take your word for it, Mags.” He placed a hand on Mags’ shoulder and his eyes went sad as Mags winced without thinking. “I can see you’ve had a hard time of it. Well, from now on, things will be better. You have my word on it.”
    Jakyr’s words startled Mags, despite all that knowledge that was in him now. So many things he hadn’t expected, well, this was one of many. That someone he didn’t even know would be kind to him. He felt the stirring inside of nameless emotions, things he had not felt, and had not dared to feel, in . . . in as long as he could remember, really. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. His mouth went dry and his eyes wet. It had been so long since someone was kind . . .
    A long-ago dim memory half came to the surface and then subsided. Rough hands, but a soft voice, comfort and protection. Not complete protection, though, for that voice in memory sometimes sobbed,