Mercedes Lackey - Foundation

And that was when he woke up, to a room full of empty beds, the sun shining in through the real glass windows. In a bed, under warm blankets. Not cold. Not aching. With a kind of alert lassitude suffusing him, as if his body was saying, At last, now I can let go, stop being alert, stop being afraid. Now I can rest.

A sound at the door made him turn his head in time to see a brown-haired, stooped man in green tunic and trews come into the room and head straight for him. “So, the sleeper awakes, and hungry I hope?” the man said.

Who was this? And what did he want? Mags did his best not to try to hide under the covers. Dallen quickly moved to reassure him, and Mags pushed himself up reluctantly, and nodded. He was so used to awakening hungry he hadn’t even thought about it. Of course he was hungry. He was always hungry.

:This is a Healer. He wants to discover how healthy you are. That is his job.: Mags had never seen a Healer before. When any of the kiddies got hurt or sick, they either got well on their own, or died. When any of the Pieters family got hurt or sick, Cole Pieters sent for one of his fat priest friends.

Mags had gone to sleep fully clothed, and all anyone had done was to cover him up and take his boots off. And for a fraction of a moment, as he pushed the covers back and saw his feet were clad only in socks, he had been afraid the boots had been stolen, until Dallen again washed him with reassurance. While he sat on the edge of the bed and fished for them, the man in green gave him a penetrating look. He was a cheerful sort of fellow, and truth be told, like just about everyone here, he was not the sort of person Mags was used to being around. He must have been about Cole Pieters’ age and, like Pieters, he was balding, but there the resemblance ended. He must have been very fit when he was younger; now there was a bit of fat around his middle, but nothing like Pieters’ enormous belly. His oblong face with its bushy eyebrows looked as if he smiled much more often than he frowned, and his frank brown eyes had a direct gaze to them that wasn’t hard to meet unless you were used to ducking your head and hiding your eyes as Mags was.

“I had the cooks save you some porridge,” the man said, watching him shoving his feet into his boots. “I hope your Companion has explained to you that you are expected to be very cleanly—”

Mags ducked his head. “Yessir,” he said, and left it at that.

“Well, we’ll leave your bath until after you’ve eaten. Best time for you is in the morning for now, that way you won’t conflict with the Guardsmen. Ready?” The man stood up. “I’m Healer Betwick, by the way. I serve the Guard here.”

Whatever a Healer was ... presumably they healed people ... though how they did that was an utter mystery to Mags. Then again, practically everything going on now wasan utter mystery to Mags. “Yessir, Healer Betwick,” Mags replied, as Dallen and the memories poured into him showed him what a Healer was.

And yes, they did heal people, in a bewildering variety of ways. This particular shade of green was accepted as their color, and if you saw someone wearing it, you knew he was a Healer. Just as, if you saw someone in White, you knew he was a Herald, in Scarlet and he was a Bard. Whatever a Bard was—

Before another flood of memories could start, triggered by that word and half-query, Mags followed the man out of the room into a hallway he only vaguely recalled, and from there, not to the big room with all the tables—

—Guards’ mess , memory prompted.

But to a spacious and fragrant kitchen full of very busy people. Or, actually, there were only four of them, but they were so extremely busy it seemed as if there were at least eight of them, and Healer Betwick evidently deemed it prudent to stay out of their way.

He motioned to Mags to go and sit on a stool at a little table off to the side and well away from all the activity, then went over to the hearth and fetched a bowl waiting there, keeping warm.

When he brought it back to Mags, the boy saw it was full of porridge with little dark things scattered over the top of it. “What’s those?” he asked, a bit apprehensively.

“Currants. Dried ones. They’re sweet, you’ll like them, and they are good for you.”

Reassured that they weren’t rabbit droppings or something else that didn’t belong in food, Mags dug in. The Healer was right, he did like the currants, he liked them a very great deal. Half the time the porridge he’d been fed by Master Cole hadn’t even been made with salt; this had been sweetened with honey as well as the berries.

While he ate, the Healer talked in an undertone to the cook, who was a large, balding man with enormous biceps. In fact, so far, Mags hadn’t seen any women here at all. Which was interesting, because Master Cole had very firm ideas about what was “man’s work” and what was not, which meant there would have to be an awful lot of men doing “women’s work” here if there were no women about.

:Cole Pieters is wrong about most things.: Dallen sounded amused. :And the few he is right about, he is right entirely by accident:

Mags nearly choked on his porridge, which caused one of the kitchen staff to make a detour, fetch a mug and pour it full of something, and plunk it down next to Mags, all without missing a beat in his other task. Mags looked at it. It wasn’t water ... it was hot.

:Herb tea. You will like it. Be careful not to burn your mouth.:

The novel sensation of drinking something hot—and flavored—was startling, and a pleasure he had never expected. For that matter, being able to drink water that was fresh and clean, not out of the sluice and full of silt, or stale from sitting in a mildewed bucket all day, or metallic-tasting mine water, had been an unanticipated pleasure. The only time he had ever been able to drink clean water was when he had escaped for a bit to hunt wild food and got a drink from the stream where he went to hunt cress.

The food was doing more than just fill his stomach, it was filling his senses. His nose was so full of the aroma of the tea, all sweet and green, that he felt as if he was floating in it. The porridge had left the flavor of honey and currants in his mouth. And this all seemed to be waking up his thoughts, too. He found himself with a newly-aroused smoldering anger at Cole Pieters. How hard would it have been to give the kiddies clean water to drink? How hard would it have been to give them hot water to drink in the winter? It didn’t even need any flavoring in it, and the fires were going for the cooking already. That simple device would have cost nothing, yet would have made such a difference ....

:Cole Pieters is a vile, cruel man,: Dallen said, his thoughts gone cold and hard. :And no one was aware just how vile and cruel he is until now. He will be dealt with.:

Dallen gave him nothing more, shutting off the thought, leaving Mags wondering just what “dealt with” meant.

Mags was carefully scraping the last little bit of the porridge out of the bowl and sucking the last of the sweetness off the spoon when Herald Jakyr came ambling into the kitchen. He was immediately greeted not only by the Healer, but by the cook as well, and his presence evoked smiles from the rest of the staff. He seemed to be a great favorite—the helper in charge of the bread pressed a roll hot from the oven on him, the one in charge of soup begged him to taste it, and the cook himself carved a bit off a haunch of bacon and fried it then and there, to add to the roll. Mags was ignored, which was exactly the way he liked it. He sat and sipped his tea while the adults discussed him as if he was not there.