These classes were held in another separate building called the “salle,” a huge barnlike place with one wall lined with something that Mags had never seen before—and would have walked straight into if Beren hadn’t grabbed him in time.
Glass mirrors.
Beren explained them to him hurriedly, but then the Weaponsmaster interrupted them.
“Is this necessary, Beren?” the wiry little man asked, looking them both sharply up and down. Beren was not in the least intimidated, though Mags shrunk back as far as he could.
“Aye, that, sirrah,” the boy replied, in a drawl that Mags understood only because he listened so closely. “Less ye be wantin’ t’ replace ’nother mirroar.”
“Ah, like that is it?” The Weaponsmaster turned to Mags, who wished he could hide from those penetrating black eyes. “I’ve not been briefed on you yet, Trainee. You’re from where?”
“Master Cole Pieters’ mine, sir,” Mags whispered.
“I meant what part of Valdemar.” The look the man gave him made him wish he was invisible. His knees began to shake.
But then—suddenly—the Weaponsmaster blinked and looked off to one side. He stared at the wall for a moment, then nodded and turned back to Mags. “I beg your pardon, Trainee. I have been briefed now. I’d like you to stand over there while I sort the rest of the students out, if you please.”
Mags was only too happy to move over into a corner, away from the mirrors, while the teacher paired everyone up, more or less. He had a couple of people left over, so those he assigned to one of the pairs with orders to do—well, something—and the three of them take it in turns. He surveyed the room for a moment until he was satisfied that all was going well, and only then did he return to Mags.
“Now,” the Weaponsmaster said, his voice firm, but not quite so hard. “I am most put out that Caelen didn’t tell me about you yesterday. Evidently, it didn’t occur to him that I needed to know you hadn’t set your hand to anything in an offensive capacity in your life. This is not altogether bad; you won’t have to unlearn anything. I trust you are not going to be upset because I set you to work with a singlestick instead of a sword?”
Since Mags only knew what a singlestick was because the image of one obligingly appeared in his mind courtesy of Dallen, he shook his head dumbly.
“Good. I expect you’ll be working with it for some time to come.” The Weaponsmaster drew him farther over to the side of the room, where there was a padded pole, and handed him a thick, straight stick as long as his hand and forearm, picking up another himself. “Now, watch me, and do as I do.”
It was not the most exciting thing Mags had ever done, hitting the pole in places where the padding had been marked with red paint, over and over and over in a series of repetitive patterns. In fact, it was not much worse for boredom than chipping sparklies. But all that careful chipping had given him pretty good control over where and how hard he hit things, and the Weaponsmaster seemed pleased enough with him. Most importantly, to Mags’ mind, he had not been required to do anything that involved raising his hand to another person.
A big pole, he could hit, and not have the sense that he was going to be punished for it. Especially when he took care to not think of the pole as anything other than a pole. He was mostly hitting it in the right places when they all broke up to go off for riding lessons.
The riding lessons, however, began with saddling lessons. Mags was altogether shocked to discover that Beren and Lyr were utterly clueless about how to put on any of the tack. Couldn’t their Companions tell them?
:Ah, actually, no,: Dallen replied, at Mags’ mental query. :Not everyone has Mindspeech. Certainly not as clear as you share with me. No, Beren Fetches and Lyr is a FarSeer, which does very little for him being able to put on a saddle. And until their Companions turned up, neither of them had ever seen anything larger than a goat:
Well ... that was interesting. Through Dallen, he had a good idea of what a Fetcher and a FarSeer did. It occurred to him that if the kiddies had had such talents among them, they could have lived a great deal better.
But no matter. He waited quietly while the stablehands patiently showed the two what they should be doing, and then mounted up at the signal. He was obviously not the worst in the class, and certainly not the best, so as a consequence he was left alone with Dallen for the Companion to continue his riding instruction.
And so ended his first day as a Trainee. After supper, he waited while Beren arranged for the special tutoring, then retreated to his warm little room with his books to study until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. And then, with the latch slid across the door, feeling safe for the first time, ever, he slept.
Chapter 8
He stayed quiet, very quiet, in all his classes; at meals, he took a seat as far from everyone else as he could and pretended to be engrossed in his food, or in a book, once he realized it was not forbidden to bring them to the table. He went straight to his room when his day was finished and chose times when no one else was using the bathing room to get clean. Even in the tutoring sessions he never spoke until he was spoken to. If he spoke more than a handful of words in a day outside of being asked direct questions, it was a rarity. People seemed inclined to leave him alone, which suited him completely; he wanted to watch them and listen. There was a war inside him, a war in which everything he had ever learned about people fought desperately with everything that Dallen was telling him. He wanted Dallen to be right ... but he feared the consequences if Dallen was wrong.
After several days, he still hadn’t seen or heard anything to make him think that Dallen was mistaken. But all of his instincts still kept him wary, and he only really felt relaxed when he shot the bolt home on his room, locking himself in. That lock represented the first time he had ever been able to keep anyone away from him, and he could have kissed it. Its mere presence allowed him to sleep more deeply than he ever had in his life.
Dallen had been moved to the loose-box right outside his door, another measure of protection that allowed him to sleep soundly through the night without Dallen’s mental intervention.
But, oh, the amount of learning he was having to cram into his head; sometimes it seemed as if his skull was going to burst. It wasn’t that he disliked it! Oh, no. This was like meat and drink to him. Every new lesson seemed to open up a little more of his mind, and he actually felt starved for the knowledge. But there was so much of it that if he had not been so physically exhausted by the end of every day, he would have been unable to sleep with his brain a-buzz with new information, new thoughts, and new ideas.
After the first two days, they had taken the measure of his learning—or perhaps the depth of his ignorance—and had canceled some of the classes he had been supposed to take in favor of extra sessions of tutoring. Somewhat to his surprise he was not the only one getting the extra attention; the hapless Beren and Lyr were also the recipients of special attention, as well as a fourth, a Bardic-trainee named Callin, who had the voice of an angel and could play virtually anything by ear on his harp, who made up melodies as easily as breathing, and who was utterly and completely illiterate, without even the basic reading lessons Mags had gotten at the mine. They were taught, not by a Herald, but by a woman named Lilli, who wore the Palace livery of dark blue and silver. Whatever her function was in the King’s service, she was a good teacher, patient with their fumbling and ready with an explanation.