Among other things. Many other things.
At this point he wasn’t quite sure if he was hallucinating, dreaming, or the stone actually was communicating with him. He wasn’t using his mind-voice, that much he was certain of, because it would have hurt if he had been. This was deeper than that, at a level where he thought very clearly, but very slowly—where he was articulate, but it wasn’t exactly in words.
Why are you talking to me?
You are a Herald. You are part of the Web. I am the heart of the Web.
The Web... he thought he remembered that concept, that all Heralds and all Companions were connected in a vast network like a spiderweb—and like a spiderweb, something touching the Web was felt by everything in it.
Can you help me?
You must ask the right questions.
Well, wasn’t that always the case... He sighed in his sleep, if it was sleep. That was the problem: What was the right question?
Who am I?
That was it. That was the one question that was never answered. The one that lurked under the surface of everything he did, just as Amily’s knowledge of her father’s feelings lurked, and Bear and Lena’s fear of confronting what they most desired approval from.
That was what lurked inside Mags. Everyone else he knew, everyone, had a plan, a map, for what they were doing, and every map had the same sort of starting point. This is who you are. This is what you came from. This is where you are going. People might refuse to follow the path on the map, but they still had the map itself, and it gave them the foundation for their entire life—whether that life was spent in rebelling or in conforming. No matter what, they always had an anchor to keep them from drifting away entirely.
He had nothing. He was only what other people thought they saw. Cole Pieters had thought he saw a piece of human trash, valuable only as long as it dragged rock out of his mine. The priests that had visited had seen the offspring of bandits—likely bad blood himself. Here at the Collegium—he was the star Kirball player—he was the pig-ignorant little slave boy who nevertheless fought tooth and nail to learn—he was Amily’s human crutch—he was Bear’s rescuer—
But none of these were him. Or, were all of them?
Who am I? he asked again.
Who do you want to be?
What?
Who do you want to be?
I don’t understand . . .
What you want is an anchor. But an anchor can be at the end of the line as well as the beginning. Who do you want to be? Make that your anchor.
Oh... .Oh!
Yes. Sleep now.
He slept.
Someone was shaking his shoulder. He batted at whoever it was and tried to bury his head deeper into his pillow.
“Mags,” said a voice. One he knew, but couldn’t put a name on. “Mags, wake up.”
He really didn’t want to wake up. Not when he was finally comfortable for the first time in days. Weeks. He hadn’t realized how poorly he’d been sleeping until now. Classes could go hang for one day. He was finally going to catch up—so there.
The voice got sterner. “Mags, you can’t stay here. Wake up, that’s an order.”
Oh, well. If it was an order... but dammit, it wasn’t fair. Why shouldn’t he be able to sleep late just once? The only other time he got to sleep late was when he was in the infirmary.
He dragged himself up out of sleep and levered himself up off the bench with the help of the table. Herald Caelen stopped shaking his shoulder and offered a hand to help him up. He took it, knuckling the eye that had been squashed into the pillow with the other hand.
“Sorry, sir,” he said contritely. “M’room’s like a damn furnace. An’ I don’ thin’ I got a decent night’s sleep this whole fortnight.”
“Yes, well, there’s a lot of that going around,” Caelen replied, pushing him forward a little, past the threshold and closing the door firmly behind them both. He motioned to Mags to keep going along the corridor. “Even those who were not in on the plans for Amily were aware that there was something going on. It made for a lot of uneasy sleep, and the heat is not helping.”
“Mebbe you oughter give people a turn down ’ere, then,” Mags said with a chuckle. “I was sleepin’ a treat.” He gave his hair a hasty comb with his fingers to settle it.
Caelen gave him an odd, sideways look. “Most people would say the opposite.”
Really? That seemed uncharacteristic of Heralds or Trainees. “Uh—why? Sir? Them benches’re purty soft. Good as a bed.”
Instead of answering, Caelen responded with a question. “Did you have any dreams? Sense that you weren’t alone? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”
Mags made a face. “Jest a good solid night. Since most’a my dreams is nightmares, I s’pose not havin’ bad ones is out’a th’ ordinary.” A very vague memory seemed to come near to the surface of his mind, like an ornamental fish in a pool of green water—but it retreated again before he got the shape of it, and he shrugged it off. “Nay, sir. I jest slept, slept real good.”
“Interesting. Well, I’m tempted to tell you to continue to sleep down there until the weather breaks,” Caelen said dryly. “You’re the first cheerful person I’ve spoken to today. Everyone is quarrelling with everyone else. It’s the same down in Haven, and there would probably be fighting all over town, except that no one can muster the energy to fight.” He rubbed the back of his own neck. “I never thought I’d miss winter.”
By this time they had reached the stairs going up. “Reckon iffen ye ain’t gonna lemme sleep down ’ere, I’m a-gonna sleep out i’ Companion’s Field,” he said, following the Dean up the stairs. “Druther get et by bugs than bake.”
“You may regret saying that,” Caelen replied absently. “There are some nasty surprises out there, and being covered in no-see-um bites is no joke. I left your new class schedule in your room. And while I hesitate to make personal recommendations—if I were you, I would avoid my friends for a while.”
Mags winced. He might have no memories of what he’d dreamed of—if anything—before he’d slept, but he had very vivid memories of Amily spinning fanciful tales of near-hysteria, and Bear and Lena breaking into a quarrel before they’d left. “They was achin’ fer a fight when they left m’room,” he said carefully.
“Well... let’s just say they all got one.” Caelen shook his head. “Nikolas is down in Haven, and he was said to have left so quickly that even Rolan was taken by surprise. Lena and Bear had what was described to me as an ‘epic’ and very public battle, parted ways, then Bear promptly stalked down to the Guard barracks and for reasons unknown to me had a shouting match with a Guard Healer by the name of Cuburn. Lena spent the entire afternoon mewed up with Master Bard Dean Lita, at the conclusion of which Bard Marchand was sent for, and there was more shouting, and Marchand was forbidden any further contact with one of the other Bardic Trainees.”
Mags whistled. “An’ I slept through alla thet?”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Caelen replied. “This way you weren’t asked to take a side. That is why I advise you to avoid them if you can.”