Foundation: The Collegium Chronicles, Book 1

Valdemar: The Collegium Chronicles, Book 1
by Mercedes Lackey

Mags had been working at the Pieters’ mine, slaving in the dark, cold seams, looking for sparklies, for as long as he could remember. The children who worked the mine were orphans, kids who had been abandoned, who had lost their parents, or were generally unwanted. Cole Pieters, who picked up these pitiful strays, preferred them around eleven, though he would take them as young as nine if they were strong and looked as if they could do the work and withstand the punishing conditions. But Mags was different.

Mags was “Bad Blood” because his parents were bandits who had been killed in a raid by the Royal Guard. “Bad Blood” because he’d been found in a cradle in the bandits’ camp. Blood so bad that no one had wanted to take him in except Cole Pieters.

Mags was good at survival. Every time he found a sparkly, it earned him an extra piece of bread, and that extra piece kept him alive, unlike so many of the less fortunate kids who died of exposure and starvation at the Pieters mine.

Mags knew nothing of the world beyond the mine, and was unaware of how unusual his paltry existence was. Then some strangers on huge white horses forced their way past the Pieters family and carried him away to Haven to become a Herald Trainee.

But the world of the Collegium was not all heavenly. There was political upheaval in Valdemar’s capital, for the ancient way of training Heralds — the system of one-on-one mentoring that had been successful for centuries — was failing. Many veteran Heralds had died in the wars, and there were too many Trainees to go around. A Heralds’ Collegium was being built, and many thought it was wrong to train Heralds in classrooms the same way the Bardic and Healer Trainees were schooled.

But dissent among the Heralds was not the only discord in Haven, for the court had been infiltrated by foreign “diplomats,” who seemed to be more interested in seeding discontent than in actual diplomacy… and Mags seemed to be the only one who’d noticed…