Valdemar 03 - [Collegium 01] - Foundation

Table of Contents

 

 

Novels by MERCEDES LACKEY
available from DAW Books:

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR
ARROWS OF THE QUEEN
ARROW'S FLIGHT
ARROW'S FALL

 

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE
MAGIC'S PAWN
MAGIC'S PROMISE
MAGIC'S PRICE

 

THE MAGE WINDS
WINDS OF FATE
WINDS OF CHANGE
WINDS OF FURY

 

THE MAGE STORMS
STORM WARNING
STORM RISING
STORM BREAKING

 

VOWS AND HONOR
THE OATHBOUND
OATHBREAKERS
OATHBLOOD

 

THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES
FOUNDATION

 

BY THE SWORD
BRIGHTLY BURNING
TAKE A THIEF
EXILE'S HONOR
EXILE'S VALOR

 

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES
SWORD OF ICE
SUN IN GLORY
CROSSROADS
MOVING TARGETS*

 

Written with
LARRY DIXON:

 

THE MAGE WARS
THE BLACK GRYPHON
THE WHITE GRYPHON
THE SILVER GRYPHON

 

DARIAN'S TALE
OWLFLIGHT
OWLSIGHT
OWLKNIGHT

 

OTHER NOVELS:
THE BLACK SWAN

 

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS
JOUST
ALTA
SANCTUARY
AERIE

 

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS
THE SERPENT'S SHADOW
THE GATES OF SLEEP
PHOENIX AND ASHES
THE WIZARD OF LONDON
RESERVED FOR THE CAT

 

And don't miss:
THE VALDEMAR COMPANION
Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

 

*Coming soon from DAW Books

Copyright ©2008 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

All rights reserved.

 

Time Line by Pat Tobin.

 

DAW Books Collectors No. 1452.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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First Printing, October 2008

eISBN : 978-1-101-11776-7

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. AND OFF FOREIGN COUNTRIES
―MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A

 

S.A.

 

M
AGS did not shiver in the cold; his body was used to it by now. Besides, it was warmer down here in the mine than it was up there, up at the sluices, and almost warmer than it was in the doss room, at least until everyone got packed in and the heat of their bodies combined enough that they could sleep.

He knelt in the shaft in the approved manner, rock just a few finger lengths from his nose, his knees fitted into smooth hollows that he himself had painstakingly cut out. His lamp, strapped to his forehead, cast a dim light on the rock face in front of him. That was the only part of him that was warm—his forehead behind the reflector of the oil lamp.

Around him, behind him in the darkness, came the sounds of tapping and echoes of tapping. He had just begun his half day down here, but of course, he was hungry already. The porridge of barley and oats that they all got for their breakfast didn't last for very long. But he was used to that; in fact, the times when he wasn't hungry were branded in his memory.

There had been the day that the cook had fallen ill and the bread had burned and been thrown out by the helpers rather than saved to feed to the children over a period of days—he'd just come off the sluices in time to see the bread in buckets waiting to go into the pig trough. He'd rounded up the rest, and they had all snatched themselves burned loaves before they could be fed to the pigs. They'd gone to sleep quickly that night, stomachs tightly packed with the bread. There was the day he'd stumbled across a cache of apples—probably stolen by one of the house servants—and had eaten his fill. And of course, the day, once a year, when the village priest visited to inspect, a day when they all were washed, given decent clothing, and fed an enormous meal of bread and soup.

His mouth watered just thinking about the soup, and his stomach growled. This afternoon, maybe he could slip off to the piggery again and get at one of the buckets of scraps before they went into the trough. Demmon had found half a meat pasty in one once, the foul bugger, and gloated about it. He was always snitching things and not sharing. And he was always scanting on the work, too, never putting props in his seam, leaving it for the next shift. Served him right he'd got caught in that cave-in. Share around, that was the rule. That way if the grub you snitched was bad, nobody got too sick to work, and if it was good, you all got a taste. Share the warmth, share the rags you snitched so that everybody had some cover, 'cause if someone got cold-sick, it meant you all had to make up for him.

The only thing you couldn't share was the work in the seam. There was only room for one in the little tunnels that riddled the rock like wormholes.

Mags carefully positioned his chisel and tapped at a likely spot in the seam with his hammer. It was a good broad seam, this one, as wide as the tunnel was tall, which meant there was no problem with spending most of his time hammering out waste rock and getting shouted at for not bringing up any sparklies today. In fact, he had three good ones so far, the yellow ones. They were all in the pouch around his neck that he'd bring out at the end of his shift. Master Cole liked the yellow ones. He liked the green ones even better, but his sons usually worked seams that had the green ones in them. He didn't trust the orphans on those seams, though what he thought the orphans would do with a big green sparkly, Mags couldn't imagine. Where would they go with it? Who'd buy a gemstone from a scrawny, raggedy brat? And that assumed they could somehow get off the property in the first place.

This mine produced a lot of different sparklies. Yellow, a pale green that wasn't as good as the dark green ones, dark red, purple ones of all sorts of shades, a paler yellow than the ones Mags had in this seam, a pale blue, and a clear with silver threads running through it. More of that last than anything else, and it was what the youngest mined. When you had more experience, you moved up to the pale yellow and dark red. Then the pale green and the purple. Then the dark yellow and the pale blue. Those took a good eye and a good hand.

Mags' tapping released a chunk of rock. There was nothing in it that he could see, but it wasn't waste—it would go up to the hammer-mill and the sluices. He shoved it behind him for the collector, the youngest kid of all, who would pull out all the rocks from the tunnels and throw them in the donkey cart.

He set his chisel into a good spot and began tapping again. One more sparkly and he'd get a second slice of barley bread with his broth. Oh, that would be good.

There were two sounds in the mine where he was, the tapping and the steady drip of water. Closer to the mouth, you could hear the bellows that drove fresh air down here, and the creaking of the pumps that pulled water out. Not that they'd drown if the pumps failed, but Master Cole had learned that working in water rusted the tools and meant sparklies were lost. So no working in water.