The Mage of Trelian (32 page)

He wondered what Serek’s plan was. He hoped it was a good one.

He kept his eyes on Krelig, on the early seconds of color that appeared before each spell. But he could see the dragon in his peripheral vision, swooping and striking and breathing fire and doing all the magnificent things that dragons could do when they were free to fight and fly with abandon.

And then he saw the dragon suddenly dive closer, dropping to where the enemy mages were.

And snatching one of them up from the ground.

Calen stared. So did the other mages. Was
this
the plan? This was not a good plan! What was Meg
doing
?

Several of the traitor mages turned to cast spells at Meg and the dragon. Jakl was impervious, or at least highly resistant, but Meg wasn’t. Fortunately the mage dangling from Jakl’s claws was too busy screaming in terror to do very much else. From the shape of him, Calen thought it was Mage Neehan.

Krelig was the only one who refused to be distracted by this latest development. And so Calen forced himself not to be distracted either.
Have to focus. Jakl will take care of Meg.
Whatever it was she thought she was doing.

Gods, Meg. Please be careful. Please.

He heard her mocking, exasperating voice in his head.
Of course! You know me!

Curse you, Serek,
he thought,
if this was your idea.

This was definitely not a good plan at all.

J
AKL SHOT BACK UP ABOVE THE
fray, the screaming mage struggling in his claws.

Idiot,
Meg thought. Did he want to be dropped from this height? And right into the middle of the fighting?

The slaarh and the soldiers were a confused mass of color and noise and motion below them. Meg had been helping where she could, using the tactics that she and Jakl had practiced so many times with Captain Varyn: snatching up soldiers in trouble, carrying reinforcements to where they were needed, attacking enemies directly whenever they had a clear opening. She kept a special vengeful eye out for slaarh that she could target without endangering their own soldiers in the process. Dragonfire was one of the few things that could hurt those monsters (the others being strong magic and lots and lots of sharp swords and axes and other pointy things, applied with great force and in great numbers), and she wanted to hurt as many of them as she possibly could.

The mages had insisted that the invisible barrier was still there, but since all the nonmagical fighting was happening outside of it, that didn’t stop Meg and Jakl from helping the soldiers. Mage Estrella, the older woman who’d been seated behind her on the last trip, was still with her on the dragon, her hands clasped tightly around Meg’s middle. Meg had wanted to leave her with the others, but they had all agreed that Meg might need a way to communicate with the mages inside the castle, and Estrella was the best among them at what they called summoning. She was also able to attack some of the slaarh magically from above, and it was clear that the soldiers on the ground could use all the help they could get.

They had been circling back around, looking for more men in trouble, when Estrella suddenly leaned forward and shouted so that Meg could hear her above the fighting. “I have a message from Mage Serek!” she said. “They need us to take out Krelig’s traitors. They’re too strong all together.”

“Take out how?” Meg shouted back. Did he want her to
kill
them? Meg knew they were the enemy, knew they were trying to kill Serek and the others right now, but she still couldn’t feel easy about having Jakl just swoop in and set them all on fire. They were still
people.
And Serek wasn’t technically authorized to give her that kind of order. Would this go against what her father had said about careful use of the dragon’s power?

But Estrella told her what Serek had in mind, and she felt a little better. Slightly terrified, but she could deal with fear.

And of course, Jakl wasn’t terrified at all. That helped a lot.

“But what about that barrier?”

“Gone!” Estrella said. “He must not have been able to maintain it, or else Mage Serek and the others discovered how to force it down. In any case there’s nothing there now.”

Meg could only take her word for it; she hadn’t been able to see it when it
had
been there. She couldn’t help bracing herself as they flew closer, but nothing stopped them.

So they snatched up one of the mages standing at the far end of the line, and now Meg was carrying him back to where the others from her last group were waiting. Some of Krelig’s mages had tried to attack them, but between Jakl’s resistance and Mage Estrella’s defenses, nothing got through.

Now they dropped their squirming, still-screaming passenger from just enough of a height that he wouldn’t break anything in the fall. Probably wouldn’t, anyway. The other mages wouldn’t kill him, Estrella had said, but they’d make sure he couldn’t do anything else to help Mage Krelig.

Then they went back to get another one. This time the enemy mages were ready.

It’s okay,
Meg told herself. And Jakl, but mostly herself.
We can do this.

Then one of them created some kind of magic fireball and sent it directly at Meg’s head.

Meg screamed and threw herself flat against her dragon, overcome again with memories of burning and falling. It was just like what had happened in the dungeons, only worse, because now people were really trying to set her on fire, and she might fall, it might all happen again, just like before. . . . She could hear Estrella shouting something at her but she couldn’t understand, couldn’t even think. She had to hold on, she couldn’t fall again, she couldn’t let the fire touch her, she
couldn’t,
oh gods, she wouldn’t be able to bear it, she . . .

Jakl was reaching toward her through the link, concerned, concerned and
guilty,
so guilty for having let her fall the first time.
Not your fault,
she thought at him, trying to pull herself together. She
had
to pull herself together!

The mages had seen the effect the fireball spell had on her, though. They started sending more of them, great blasts of flame coming at her from several directions at once. Jakl flew upward, above them, but some of the spells changed course and
followed
them as they flew. Meg looked back over her shoulder, dismayed and horrified. She hadn’t known magic could do that. Would Jakl be able to outpace them?

And what if he can? Are you just going to run away?

No, but — but . . .

Estrella let go with one hand and reached back, pointing at one of the fireballs. It seemed to close up into itself, collapsing into nothing. She repeated the process with two more. But more were coming up from below. They’d seen how to keep Meg away, and they were going to keep casting those things at her until they either killed her or drove her away for good.

She couldn’t let that happen. She had to go back. Had to.

We have to go back,
she thought at Jakl.
You’ll be all right; the magic can’t hurt you.
His response through the link was immediate and unmistakable.
I’ll be all right, too,
she promised him. And herself. She’d have Estrella looking out for her. And Calen’s gift of strength. Was this what Anders had known she’d need it for? Gods, she hoped so. She hoped there wasn’t something even worse coming.

“Can you protect us from the fire?” she shouted to Estrella.

The woman nodded, but with some hesitation. “Not completely,” she shouted back. “I can block some of the magic, but not all, I think. If they hit us, we’ll still be burned. But . . . probably not killed.”

Meg nodded back, trying not to feel disappointed. This woman had to be a hundred years old, and she’d been awake since gods-knew-when and then riding on a dragon and casting spells left and right in the middle of a battle. . . . Surely she was starting to get tired. None of the mages had infinite reserves of power, she knew. Although it sure seemed as though Mage Krelig did.

She shook herself out of her thoughts. Mage Krelig was not her responsibility right now. She had a mission, and she had to focus on that.

She could do this. She had to. The mages were depending on her.

Calen was depending on her.

All right,
she told her dragon.
Quick as you can. Let’s get another one.

He turned with startling speed, diving back down toward the line of mages. They were all facing her now, except for Krelig. The woman at the far end of the line screamed as she saw them coming for her, and sent a last desperate ball of fire in their direction, but Jakl dodged it and snatched her up — not very gently, either — from the ground. Meg managed to choke back her own screams this time and just concentrated everything she had on holding on. The dragon shot back up again, racing the fireballs that were still trailing them. Anything that came right at him failed to land, his natural resistance causing the magic to skirt aside, but that didn’t extend to Meg and Estrella. She felt the heat of one of the spells approaching from the side and pressed herself lower against Jakl’s neck but refused to turn her head. There was nothing she could do about that. She just had to hold on and stay with them. Jakl rocked sideways, trying to get her away from the fire. Estrella finally managed to target it and neutralize it, and then they were up and away. Some of the fireballs had petered out on their own, Meg saw, although a few still followed doggedly in their wake.

The mage they’d grabbed this time wasn’t nearly as panicky as the first one. Jakl didn’t feel her struggling at all, in fact. But she didn’t feel limp in his grasp, so he didn’t think she’d fainted. Meg could feel all this through the link with him, as well as his growing suspicion, which immediately became her own.
Distract her,
Meg thought at him.
Don’t let her cast anything!
She couldn’t hurt Jakl with magic, but Calen had told her how creative and devious and horrible Krelig had trained his mages to be, and Meg had no doubt that the mage could be dangerous down there if they gave her the chance.

Jakl shook the woman violently in his claws, and Meg heard her shout angrily from below. Good.
Keep doing that.
He sent back a feeling of delighted compliance. The mage shouted again, more in fear this time than anger, Meg thought.

Good. You deserve it, you traitor.

They dropped her with their own mages, who surrounded her at once. One of them stretched a hand toward the sky behind them, and Meg saw the rest of the trailing fireballs wink out of existence.

Then they flew back to fetch another traitor from the line.

Each time they returned, though, the enemy mages’ resistance was stronger, and Meg had to work harder at fighting to keep her fear at bay. Jakl was able to grab two mages together on the fourth trip, but one of the others on the ground sent a fire spell at them before the dragon could twist them out of range. Meg and Estrella both screamed as something hot and painful grazed along their left side.

No, no, no, not again,
her mind gibbered uselessly.
No,
I can’
t, please —

But she wasn’t falling. She wasn’t. She could still feel her dragon there beneath her. She had been burned, but she was still there. Still there, and Jakl needed her, and Calen needed her, and she was not going to give in to the rising panic in her head. Meg forced herself to turn her mindless screaming into words.
“Hold on!”
She didn’t know if she was screaming this more to herself or to Estrella, but she supposed it didn’t matter. The pain was excruciating, like half of her arm had burned away, but it couldn’t have, really, because she was still gripping Jakl for all she was worth. She felt Estrella’s arms tighten around her waist and was ashamed of herself. If this hundred-year-old lady could stay calm and hold on, then Meg could, too.

She felt Jakl start to try to take some of the pain from her.
No!
She pushed him back and away through the link.
You need to stay strong. I’m all right. It hurts, but I can take it. I can. Just keep going.

Reluctantly he did as he was told. Meg held on, and fought her fear, and made herself stay present.

It’s just pain. They’ll heal you as soon as you reach them. This is nothing. You’re fine. You’re not falling, and you’re fine.

She wasn’t
fine,
of course; that was a ridiculous lie — she was terrified and in agony and fighting with everything she had just to hold herself together, but she
was
holding herself together. She hadn’t lost herself to panic, and she was counting that as a great big giant victory right now.

Jakl made it to the drop-off point and let go of the mages from perhaps a slightly higher distance than he had previously, but instead of circling back to the fighting, he brought them gently in for a landing. One of the mages ran toward them at once; either he’d seen what had happened or Estrella had managed to alert him as they flew back.

Meg gasped as the healing energy enveloped her arm. She couldn’t seem to make herself release her grip on the dragon, so she just stayed there, pressed against him, trying to slow her crazily beating heart. He pressed back at her, through the link, a mix of apology and comfort and love and shame, but she tried to tell him that the apology and shame weren’t necessary. He’d been wonderful, and she was fine. Would be fine. She just needed the comfort and love right now, which he was happy to keep giving her.