Valdemar 03 - [Collegium 01] - Foundation by Mercedes Lackey Page A

the other. The only time he had seen wheaten bread was when it was burned and thrown in the pig slop. He and the other kiddies got barley or rye bread, coarse stuff that somehow failed to satisfy. He dipped a corner of the bread and sopped up broth. Ate the bite. Took a spoonful of soup that made his mouth sing with flavor and filled his whole head with the intoxicating aroma. Ate that. Dipped the bread again. He repeated this pattern, slowly, carefully. Even though his empty stomach screamed at him to fill it, faster, now, he went slowly. He hadn’t gotten as far as he had without being able to master his gut. Besides, you didn’t gobble food that tasted like this . . . you gobbled food that tasted horrible so you could get it into your stomach before your mouth could protest.
    Jakyr watched him, eyes narrowed at first, then relaxing. An approving smile touched his lips. Somewhere under the calm, Mags wondered—why did he care if Mags got sick or not? But the calm said, Of course he cares. He’s a Herald. He just does. “There’s a good lad,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from, as much as you want, and when you’re used to being better fed, butter for your bread and meat, and—” He grinned then. Mags paused between bites and found himself stretching his mouth in a return smile. It was a peculiar feeling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled. It made him feel strange, but good, to do so. But he didn’t have a lot of attention to spare for feelings, not when there was good food to be eaten.
    When Mags reached the bottom of the bowl, sopping up the last little bits of broth with the last bite of bread, he sighed, and pushed the bowl and spoon away.
    â€œHad enough for now?” Jakyr asked. Mags nodded. One of the young Guardsmen came over with something, hesitantly. He set down the plate in front of Mags. On it was a sliced apple, whole and sound, not a wormhole or rotten spot to be seen, and a piece of creamy cheese, without a touch of mold to it. “Me gran would say he should have this, too, Herald Jakyr,” the young man said, and Mags got it, unbidden from the young man’s mind, that he had a little brother about Mags’ age, and that Mags himself was wearing this fellow’s outgrown shirt, as he was wearing discarded trews, boots, stockings, smallclothes, from four other young Guardsmen. Oddly enough . . . that felt . . . warming. Like they had given him a bit of themselves with the clothing.
    â€œI expect your gran is right,” Jakyr agreed, and nodded to Mags to start in on the good things. “Have that, lad, if you can find a corner to tuck it in.”
    Again, he ate slowly, the cheese first, savoring the richness of it, soft, creamy, a bit of a bite, and the unexpected crunch of tiny salt crystals, marveling that this was how cheese was supposed to taste. The only cheese he had ever gotten was cheese so covered with mold it was green, and as dried out and hard as a board to boot. Then the apple, so sweet it tasted like the nectar the kiddies used to suck out of the bases of flowers when they got a chance. But by that point, a full belly and being warm and the drone of voices as Jakyr talked to the Guardsmen was making him drowsy . . . then sleepy . . . and he felt himself nodding off with a slice of apple still in his hand. He woke up a bit when Jakyr shook him, and obediently let himself be led off by one of the Guardsmen, the same one that had brought him the cheese, to a room, where there was a bed, the first bed he had ever slept in. The Guardsman helped him off with his boots, and that was the last thing he remembered before falling into a dream of riding Dallen through apple-flavored clouds to the biggest Big House he had ever seen.

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    M AGS’ dreams were soothing, for the first time in his memory, and full of something else, too; Dallen explaining things to him. Never in