Valdemar 03 - [Collegium 01] - Foundation (31 page)

There were several more dishes scattered throughout the meal that had similar stories attached to them. All of the stories followed the same theme: in the despair, the dark, and the cold of Midwinter, something happened to bring the hope of spring, and to bring life back to the people. Or sometimes to bring it back to the gods themselves.

There were, it seemed, a great many versions of how and why spring returned and a god or goddess was born or reborn, and Master Soren honored them all impartially. Which was noble, but contradictory and a little confusing.

There were a lot of dishes—but no more than a taste of anything was served. Mags instinctively understood the reason for this without Dallen telling him; this was not a feast meant to remind you of plenty, it was to remind you of hardship, of the privation of winter, of seeing the stores you had gathered shrinking, and knowing you must husband what you had left, for who knew when—or if—spring would ever come. A lot of the food was nothing one would expect on a rich man's table: a soup made with the inner bark of trees; tough, coarse bread of the sort he and the kiddies used to eat; cabbage boiled to transparency. Mags caught Lydia or Amily giving him a knowing glance from time to time, or a curious one, as if they were asking silently,
is this what you used to live on?
They were too polite to ask directly, but he nodded a little and saw Lydia's eyes darken in sympathy and Amily's lips tighten with anger. That actually made him feel good, though he flushed just a little. They were both rather different from Lena, who seemed in a knot half the time with worry.

Finally, the strange meal was over. He had, of course, eaten far more than he'd had to subsist on at the mine. But he could see that Lydia was not the only one who'd been struck by the realization that
he,
someone they knew, someone they had spoken to, had actually lived, or rather, starved, on such food. It made it all more real to them. And he thought that there was something else in those looks of theirs. That they would never again take their good fortune for granted.

They all returned to the Great Hall, where most of the candles had been put out, and most of the light came from the fire on the hearth. They took their seats, and Mags wondered what was going to come next.

What came next, was that Bard Aiken reached down for his lute, and made sure of the tuning. Once the strings were set to his liking, he began to play, very softly. Mags listened to the wandering notes, thinking about Lena, wondering what her night was holding. Was she feeling happy and warm and safe, surrounded by her friends and family? Or was she feeling anxious, strained, wondering if she could possibly live up to the expectations they had for her? He sometimes thought that her anxiety over doing well would eat her alive.

Aiken spoke over the music, his voice as soft as the notes, but startling Mags nonetheless.

“This is a song I learned from my mentor, who was taught it by his mentor, Bard Stefen, who wrote it,” said Aiken, as his fingers moved from aimless half-melody to the first chords of the song itself.

:Bard Stefen?:
he thought, startled.
:The famous Bard Stefen?:

:Yes,:
Dallen replied simply, which made Mags' eyes widen. He had read about Herald Vanyel and Bard Stefen, and they had seemed as unreal and impossible as just about everything else he read of. Yet here was someone who had learned this song—written by Stefen—from someone else, who had in his turn learned it from Stefen directly.

Suddenly the tale of Vanyel became real. Just as tales of starvation and poverty had become real to the guests at the dinner table because of his presence.

It was . . . unsettling.

As the song was unsettling, a vivid word picture of another, long-ago Midwinter Eve, when the writer was snowed in, stuck in some remote place, all alone, with only his music and his memories to sustain him through the long, bitter night.

The Bard finished the song, and somewhat to Mags' surprise, handed the lute to the man sitting next to him.

“I can't boast of having a song at my fingertips written by Stefen,” said the man, who Mags had not recognized in the dark but who he now saw was the priest, Father Gellet. “But this is what I do have.”

Mags expected something religious, and indeed, it could have been described as a hymn—but it was never meant for choirs. This was a song in a melancholy, minor key, and yet, it was about hope. It began in the depths of this, the longest night of the year. “What if morning never comes?” it asked. But there was a reply.

In the song, one by one, all the birds that had been shivering in the chill raised their voices at the sight of that star, singing the hope, the surety, that the gods were good and morning
would
come again, because it had so been promised.

It put the hair up on the back of Mags' neck in a way nothing before ever had.
Not
in a bad way. It was hard to put a finger on how it made him feel—shivery, very aware of everything around him. It made him want to hold his breath, and his eyes stung a little.

When the priest was done, there was silence. Finally, the Bard coughed and cleared his throat. “When you took holy orders, Gellet, the world lost one of its finest Bards,” he said gruffly. “You make the music come alive in ways I can only dream of and envy.”

“You say that every year.” The priest handed back the lute, and the Bard took it with a rueful smile.

He cradled the lute against himself. “I say that every year, and every year I mean it. Your Gifts are wasted—”

“My Gifts are used in the service of something other than my own vainglory. But that is an argument for another night, Aiken. Mags, have you any song or story to drive winter away?” The priest turned his head toward Mags, and in the flickering firelight Mags could see his face holding only curiosity.

Mags shook his head. “Nothin' cheerin',” he said quietly, thinking of all the Midwinter Eves that he had spent, huddled with the rest of the kiddies, trying to keep warm enough to enjoy the little bit of extra rest on this, the longest night of the year. “Nothin' anyone wants t' hear. Some of ye might know I was one of them mine slaveys, an' . . .” he paused a moment, and decided to err on the side of the least discomfort for everyone. “. . . an' we didn' keep the holidays. Mostly, we didn' even know they was holidays.”

“I do, I have a true story from today,” Amily said, and told an odd little story about finding a bird that very morning, lying stunned in the cold—how she had taken it up and warmed it in her hand until it recovered, how it had stayed on her hand, flicking its wings and looking at her, and only after what seemed to be a period of deliberation, flying away.

The priest laughed deep in his chest at her clever descriptions. “I often wonder what they think in those tiny heads when we do things like that. Do they mistake us for gods, do you think? After all, we take them up when they are helpless, we heal them and warm them, and let them go again.”

“My pet birds have never mistaken me for anything other than a source of seed,” Lydia laughed. “But now I have a story I found when I was searching in some old books for something for Uncle Soren.”

Lydia's story was more like a fable, of how some long-ago Prince of Valdemar had looked out of a window one terrible Midwinter Night, and had seen a ragged woman struggling home through the snow laden with fallen branches—how he had bundled up his own as-yet untouched dinner and followed after her to find that she was caring for two aged parents and had little food and less wood. And how, even as he built up the fire for her and spread out the feast for them, the storm was worsening, until by the time that he left, he could not see his own hand before him. And how, just as he was starting to be overcome with the cold, a glowing figure appeared before him, neither man nor woman, and guided him back to safety.

It had to have been a very, very long time ago, since the forest was long gone from anywhere near Haven, and branches that fell or needed to be trimmed within the Palace walls were always taken away to be given to the poor. It was a nice story, though, and it made Mags feel very warm inside, even if he rather doubted that it had ever happened. And if it had, well . . . did that Prince give away his dinner every time he saw a poor woman? It was a good gesture, but it was only that, a gesture, and there were a lot of poor people to be fed and warmed. . . .

“I believe I will sing,” said Marc, and surprised Mags who had been expecting one of the drinking songs Marc was so fond of, by singing of how on Midwinter Eve, all the animals got speech at the stroke of midnight, and how they used that time to pray to their own God of the Beasts that Man might be kinder to them in the year to come.

“You know,” said Marc's father into the silence when Marc was done. “That is why I came to work with the birds. So let that be my tale.”

And a strange tale it was. It seemed that when the older man had been a boy, he had heard that very song and was determined to hear the birds speak at midnight. So he had slipped away from the bed he was supposed to be in and got into the Royal Mews. “And whether it was at midnight or no, I swear to you, when the birds quieted after my disturbing them, they
did
start to speak. Before long, I knew every little thing that was troubling them, from the little hobby whose perch was too big for his small claws to the eagle who hated the man who cleaned his stall. At some point I fell asleep in there for true, with my head pillowed on a sack. The birds woke me when morning came and my parents and all found me, and I got a round scolding for being there, but when I rattled off all that the birds had said in the night, the Royal Falconer then started and looked at me like I had grown a tail. ‘I was going to change that hobby's perch this morning,' was what he said in answer. ‘And I'd suspected that old Char had got on the wrong side of the eagle somehow. And as for the rest of it—well, I don't
know
it to be true, by damme if I'm not going to act on it. And as for you, my lad, I am going to be talking to your da.' And so he did, that very moment.”

Marc nodded. “So that was how you ended up 'prenticed to the Royal Falconer.”

“Did you ever hear the birds speak again?” Lydia asked, her eyes wide.

He shook his head. “Not in words. And I can't swear I heard them that night, either. I could've dreamed it all. But I have always known how the birds were feeling, what troubles them, what ails them. Marc has none of that for birds, but he has for the dogs.”

Marc nodded. “Though I can't say I've ever heard them speak at midnight on Midwinter Eve.”

“That's because your old papa always made sure you weren't creeping about in the kennels on Midwinter Eve,” the Falconer chuckled.

And so the first part of the evening passed. There were no sad stories, no sad songs. Everything spoke of hope, even if some of the tales were, in Mags' estimation, entirely absurd.

And then, just before midnight, they all stopped talking, and Lydia picked up the candles, distributing them to all the guests. As if that was a signal, the servants came in, doused the remaining lights and smothered the fire with a blanket. And they all sat there, in the dark, with the room growing colder and colder.

Mags wondered what it was they were waiting for. As the dark and cold closed in around him, he shivered, reminded all too clearly of those winter nights in the sleep-hole. None of the kiddies had ever actually died of cold in their sleep . . . but some of the older miners had. . . .

Then, into the silence, bells began to ring.

Mags thought they began up at the Palace, but soon enough, bells were ringing all over Haven. And that was when the priest struck a light, using an iron, a flint, and a little ball of lint, all from the tinderbox on the table.

One spark jumped into the lint on his first try, and he managed to breathe it into a tiny flame successfully. Quickly he added bits of wood that must have been oil soaked from the way they flared up, and used it to light his candle.

Lydia began to sing.

The others evidently knew this song, for they immediately joined in, as the priest touched his candleflame to Aiken's, who touched his to Marc's, and so on around the circle to Mags while they sang.

When the flame came back to the priest, he exchanged his candle with Master Soren's. Solemnly, Master Soren went to the hearth and rekindled the fire.

Servants came then with small shovels, each taking a coal as the fire roared up again. After a moment it occurred to Mags that they must have put out all of the household fires, and now they were going to restart them as Master Soren had, from the first tiny spark of the new year.

The last of the servants remained, relighting all of the candles as the song ended.

Soren looked at the priest with a grin. “A good omen as always, Gellet, getting a flame with the first spark.”