:In the past, Herald Jakyr would have served as your mentor, since he was the one that found you and brought you in. If for some reason you just didn’t suit, or he couldn’t take you, someone else would have taken you on. Then one of two things would have happened. Either your mentor would be assigned to the Court or Haven and you would have spent all your time here as you will now, or you would have gone out on circuit with your mentor. In that case, you’d have spent as much time with him, away from this place, as you did here, attending classes. And it would have been his job to keep you at your lessons.:

Mags thought that over as well. :I’d’a gotten right lost, doin’ things that way.:

:Well, there wouldn’t have been a choice. The Heralds who actually stay in Haven are very few. They were already mentoring up to eight Trainees. And that was getting to be a strain, not much “better” than having you all in the Collegium. So you would have had to go out with someone who ran messages, served as an envoy and negotiator, or was on circuit. That’s what Jakyr does, by the way,: Dallen added by way of an afterthought. :He’s a negotiator.:

Mags picked up on what Dallen did not say. :And I’d’a been in the way.:

:I’m afraid so. But so would most Trainees. There just is no choice, Mags. As much as some of the Heralds want to keep the “old ways,” it just is not possible. Just think how much you are going to have to learn before you are fit even to think of going with a mentor! And Beren and Lyr are even more uneducated than you. I have no doubt that at some point soon we will get a Trainee who is not even aware that the arts of reading and writing exist. How could a Herald-mentor hope to teach people like that and still continue to do his or her work?:

It was a good question, and one for which Mags had no answer. Nor did anyone else, he suspected.

It did open his eyes, however. Here was one issue on which the Heralds themselves were at odds. And in a way that heartened him. He had never quite believed in the attractive mental picture Dallen was painting for him. This cracked that façade. If they were at odds over this, chances were there were other quarrels of which he was not aware.