Mags stared at him, fascinated and appalled. “Yer jokin’. No? Thet’s s’posed t’ be a medicine?”
Bear grimaced. “Not only that, but one with a lot of people that swear by it. Thank the gods it’s only supposed to be for going bald, and you are supposed to rub it in your scalp, not eat it. I don’t want to think about how you’d stink when you were using it, or what it would do to a scalp wound.”
“I’d be more like t’ swear at it then swear by it.” Mags shuddered. “An’ here I thought yer messes was foul!”
Bear shrugged. “Right now I’m trying to work out how to dry that bread mold that works on wounds so that you can get it to sprout again. And how to describe exactly what it looks like so people know whether or not the right stuff sprouted. As it stands, the only way we have to get the stuff out is to take a live batch out by hand and cosset it the whole way.”
Mags shook his head. “I dunno. Yarbs an’ things, ye kin prolly get people t’ believe on’y the stuff i’ th’ kit works right. But ye start sendin’ out mold, an’ people’ll start thinkin’ mebbe you was wrong an’ them dried beetles’d work jest fine.”
“That’s a good point.” Bear slowly chewed and swallowed. “I have a favor to ask. Think you could come give me a hand with the Lunatic?”
Mags blinked. This was—unexpected. “Aye but—how? I ain’t a Healer nor a Mindhealer.”
“Actually, that’s the point. The Mindhealers don’t want to get near him, I guess their shields aren’t as good as yours, or else the way they have to work is completely without shields. When he talks, he doesn’t speak Valdemaran, and that’s a problem. Sometimes people who’ve gone mad actually make sense once you figure out what the meaning is behind what they are saying.” Bear scratched his neck. “Am I making any sense here?”
Mags nodded. “I’m follerin’ ye so far.”
“I’m hoping with all your shields, you might be able to get stuff leaked over that I can use to try and understand what’s going on in his head.” Bear sighed. “I’ve got him calmer now, at least. And he’s put on a little weight. So we’re more or less back to the point where he was during the blizzard.”
“I’ll give ’er a go,” Mags said. “But I ain’t promisin’ nothin’.” He felt a little uneasy saying even that much, but this was Bear, and he would do whatever he could to help out his friend.
He just wished he could have gotten hold of Nikolas to ask him about keeping Bear here. He was pretty certain that if Nikolas made the request, things would be sorted in a hurry.
He followed Bear back to Healers’ Collegium, and into yet another part of the building he’d never been before. They entered by a different door than before, one tucked out of sight. Once inside, Bear took him through a pair of double doors at what must have been the other end of the big sickroom. This was a short section with a corridor that looked a lot like the one in the part of Heralds’ Collegium that held the student rooms. Except the corridor was much narrower. He couldn’t help but notice the very heavy doors to each room, the thick walls (as evidenced by the narrowness of the corridor), and the odd atmosphere of the place. It felt... as if everything was slightly wrong, somehow, as if what he was seeing was not what anyone else saw. That made no sense, on the face of it, but if the people kept here were all mad, well, maybe that was the literal truth; what they saw was nothing like what he was seeing.
Sounds were muffled, and the air felt—not stale, exactly, but as if it never moved.
“How many people ye got i’ here?” he asked in a whisper. It felt as if he should whisper, as if there were things here he didn’t want to wake up.
“Around ten. Most of them aren’t as bad as Lunatic. Most of them we can help,” said Bear with a sigh. “Not all of them. Got a woman who killed her babies, thinking they were demon-possessed. Now she knows they weren’t, so now she keeps trying to kill herself. I don’t know what they’re going do about her. Husband wants her sent home so that she can kill herself. Says it’s only fair, that she’d hang for murder now that she knows what she did, so we might as well let her hang herself. The Healers don’t want that to happen, so they keep her here. She just keeps getting worse. Mindhealers can’t do anything with her now.”
Mags winced. “Nothin’ good gonna come of that, no matter what. Keep ’er, turn ’er loose, whatever. Even if she stops tryin’ t’ kill herself, law might hang ’er.”
“I know. Makes me glad I’m not a Mindhealer. Here we are.” They stopped in front of one of the doors, and Bear took out a key to unlock it. “Not sure what you want to do, but based on how the Mindhealers reacted, I’d be careful about dropping shields.”
:I can get them back up for you faster than you can for yourself,: said Dallen.
“Dallen reckons he kin help,” Mags reported.
“Good, that’s something the Mindhealers didn’t have.” Bear swung the door open and they went inside.
The room was absolutely stark and bare, although Mags got the feeling that this was because of the occupant rather than some omission on the Healers’ part. The only furnishings were a bed, a table, and two chairs. All were made of metal and bolted to the floor; the table and chairs were under the window, the bed pushed up against the wall. The walls were utterly smooth and featureless—if nails had been used to put them up, there was no sign of them, no way to pry one out of the wall and use it as a weapon or to harm yourself. Nevertheless, walls, floor, and ceiling were all a soft, soothing rose-ocher color, and someone had carefully painted wonderful designs on them in darker rose and cream. The single window in the wall had a metal grate with small holes in it bolted over it, protecting the thick glass panes from the occupant. It looked out over a bit of garden.
The foreigner was on the bed, at the head of it, curled up in the corner against the wall. His back was wedged into the corner, his arms were wrapped around his legs, and his chin was propped on his knees. He regarded them with unfocused and uninterested eyes.
“How are you doing today?” Bear asked. The man blinked once or twice, and mumbled something Mags couldn’t make out. It didn’t sound Valdemaran.
“You really need to try and speak a language I can understand,” Bear said, gently. “I can’t help you if I can’t understand you.”
The man muttered something else.
Mags wasn’t getting anything at all from him through full shields, so, cautiously, he dropped the first one.
Very faintly, he began to sense something. Now, the good thing about Mindspeech was that it was always in a language you understood—which only made sense, really, since it was thought to thought, and shouldn’t need a translator. And right away, Mags understood why the Mindhealers hadn’t wanted anything to do with this man, if it was true that they had to drop all their shields in order to treat him.
First, there was the dim sense of incredible fear. Then came the man’s thoughts, which were, strangely enough, completely organized and circular. It was almost prayer-like, as if the repeating loop kept whatever the man was afraid of away.
The problem was, this was babble. Babble with an undertone of stark terror. Mags was getting that panicked fear even through very good shields, and Mindhealers tended to be Empaths, people who picked up emotions rather than thoughts. It would have been torture for them to encounter that much sustained terror, and then to have that babble running around in your head—assuming they were also Mindspeakers—well, he would have thrown up his hands and walked off too.
“. . . and all the things that are not there, they flock and fly and stare and stare, and all their eyes are big and bright and burn away the dark of night, and there is nowhere left to hide, they’re everywhere, they get inside, and even though they are not there, they’re watching watching everywhere, and more and more come every day, oh gods I wish they’d go away, and all the things that are not there, they flock and fly and stare and stare . . .”