The Mage of Trelian (5 page)

Pela smiled. “Who’s your friend, Mage Anders?”

“I call this one Blackie,” he answered, giving the cage a little pat. “Actually, I call most of them Blackie. It’s hard to tell them apart. Except that one over there with the one white feather on his wing. I call that one George.”

“Let’s get started,” Serek said. He gestured toward a small table surrounded by four wooden chairs. “Princess, would you sit?”

If Mage Serek was going to act like their altercation in the field had never happened, Meg decided she could do the same. She took one of the chairs, and after a moment Pela sat in the one to her left. Serek took the one across from her.

“Are you going to do the kind of spell that you and Calen used to find Maurel when she was lost?” Come to think of it, why in the world hadn’t they done that sooner? But Serek was shaking his head.

“Krelig will have protected himself against any straightforward location spells. Remember, Sen Eva
wanted
us to find Maurel that time. Krelig . . . I do not think he is ready to be found. We believe he needs some time to prepare for his next move. And to try and get from Calen whatever it is he expects to get.”

“Do you have any idea what his next move will be?” Meg asked. “Or — or what it is he wants from Calen?”

Serek and Anders exchanged a look.

“We expect him to attack the Magistratum in some way,” Serek said.

“What’s left of it, anyway,” Anders put in. He made a face. “It’s kind of a mess at this point.”

Serek closed his eyes briefly in a way that somehow clearly suggested he was praying for patience. “We don’t know what form that attack will take, however. And he’ll probably attempt to win over as many of us to his side as possible first.”

Pela uttered a nervous little laugh. “But — but surely the other mages would not . . .” She trailed off, looking back and forth at their somber faces.

“There are many who do not believe we can successfully stand against him,” Serek said. “Some of those might decide to join him rather than die fighting him. More than some, perhaps.”

“But that’s cowardly!” Pela exclaimed.

“Yes,” Anders agreed. “But still true. Mages aren’t soldiers, Miss Pela. There’s no requirement for bravery. Or good character, or sense, or intelligence . . .” He paused a minute, then continued: “Or pleasant appearances, or tact, or taste, or good grooming habits —”

“Or patience,” Serek said, closing his eyes again.

“All mages have to be is good at magic,” Anders went on. “Good at magic and able to follow the rules. And there are plenty who struggle with that second part. And if Mage Krelig wants to throw all the rules away . . . that’s going to be pretty appealing to certain among us.”

Pela just shook her head, clearly dismayed.

“And Calen?” Meg prompted.

“You know that Calen has some very special abilities,” Serek said. “Mage Krelig no doubt seeks to use those abilities for his own ends. If enough of us do stand against him, I believe we can win. But if Calen’s talent gives him an extra advantage . . .”

“But Calen wouldn’t really help him!” Meg said, exasperated.
He wouldn’t.
“He must just be . . . he must just be pretending. . . .”

“Maybe,” Serek said, then held up his hands in response to Meg’s darkening expression and added, “Probably. Almost certainly. But Mage Krelig can be . . . very persuasive. He persuaded Calen to go along with him in the first place, didn’t he? Who’s to say he won’t have ways to ensure Calen’s continued cooperation?”

“But —”

“I don’t believe Calen
wants
to help him. I don’t believe Calen is a traitor. But do I believe that he might be caught up in something bigger than he can handle? Do I believe he might not be able to avoid helping Krelig in the end? Yes, I think those things are possible.”

Meg clenched her fists. “But —”

“Which is why,” Serek broke in, “I think we need to find him and do everything we can to get him back. Soon.”

Meg forced herself to take a few deep breaths.
Calm down,
she told herself.
He wants to help, so just calm down and listen.

“All right,” she said at last. “So how do we do that?”

“Magic!” Anders said, spreading his hands wide on either side of his head and waving them around dramatically.

Everyone ignored him.

“As I said,” Serek went on, “Krelig will be protected against any standard sort of location spell. So we’ve been trying to come up with alternatives that are more . . .”

“Sneaky,” Anders put in.

Serek paused, then conceded, “Well, yes. More sneaky. Something he won’t have anticipated or prepared against. And we think we have found a good approach.”

“It was my idea,” Anders reminded them.

Meg looked around the crowded study doubtfully. “You’re going to attack him with birds?”

“We’re going to use the birds to find Calen and try to communicate with him.”

Meg blinked. “You can do that?”

“Magic!” Anders whispered, waving his hands around again.

“We think so,” Serek said. “We believe that if we can infuse the birds with a strong enough sense of who Calen is and — most important — a strong enough desire to find him, they’ll be drawn to wherever he is. And once they find him, be able to give him a message. At least to let him know that we are looking for him, and that we want to bring him home.”

Meg didn’t quite understand the infusing part, but the rest of it sounded . . . well, it sounded a lot more promising than her plan of going out every night and having Jakl scan the ground for signs below them. “But how can I help with that? I can’t do any magic.” She glanced at Anders and waved her hands in the air experimentally. He grinned at her.

Serek rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage him.” Then he looked at her seriously, leaning forward across the table. “You can help because you know Calen better than anyone. And . . .” He hesitated, seeming to search for just the right words. “Ability is important in magic,” he said at last. “Ability and power and knowledge: all of those are essential. But the most essential part of casting any spell is intention. Desire. The force of will that drives the magic to do what you want it to do. As much as I want to bring Calen home — and I do sincerely want that, very much — I think it is safe to say that no one wants to bring him back home more than you.”

Meg swallowed, feeling suddenly on the verge of tears. Serek was certainly right about that last part. She nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. Pela reached over and took her hand under the table. Meg squeezed it gratefully.

Serek held her eyes a moment more, then sat back, apparently satisfied. He gestured to Anders, who turned and opened up the cage beside him. The crow
quork
ed quietly and fluttered its wings a little, but otherwise seemed undisturbed by the sudden attention. Anders held it gently with both hands and carried it over to them, then placed it in the center of the table. The crow tilted its head and regarded Anders silently from its new location.

“Blackie seems to like you,” Pela murmured, smiling.

Anders blinked at her, seeming surprised. “Of course he does. Everyone likes me.”

Pela laughed, and for once Meg appreciated Anders’s strange good humor. She looked back at Serek, feeling more or less back in control of herself.

“All right,” she said. “How do we begin?”

C
ALEN TOOK A BREATH AND TRIED
again to clear his mind. The spell wasn’t a difficult one — or, at least, it
shouldn’t
have been — but it was hard to concentrate through the pain.

You won’t
be
in pain once you heal yourself. Come on. Try again.
He nodded, not caring how crazy it was to nod in response to something he said to himself inside his own head. He couldn’t spare the mental energy to care about anything other than focusing enough to cast this spell. He looked again at the angry red welts that lined his left arm. There were more across his back and the back of his legs. They pulsed excruciatingly with every heartbeat, some of them leaking blood at the places where his skin had been entirely stripped away.

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about anything.
He tried closing his eyes, but he could still see Mage Krelig’s wild face, streaks of red magic flying from his outstretched fingertips, the last thing Calen saw before he recovered his wits enough to run. The mage had been in a foul mood all morning, but his sudden fury and lashing out had seemed to come from nowhere.

Because he’s a crazy person, remember?

I know.

Calen closed his eyes and worked at gathering the energy for the healing spell. He tried to will himself not to feel the pain, to imagine how good he would feel once the spell was cast and his body was healed. Slowly, he felt it beginning to work. Yellow and green energy materialized in a gentle cloud around his arm, penetrating the wounds and encouraging his skin to knit back together. He wanted to make it happen faster, but resisted trying to speed up the spell. It was hard enough keeping his concentration steady as it was.

Once his arm was healed, he moved on to his back. Then his legs.

Finally, exhausted but now suffering only the lingering memory of the pain, Calen relaxed. He lay back on his bed and gave himself a few minutes just to be still, breathing, relishing the feeling of not bleeding anymore.

Then he tried to think about what had just happened.

Not that it was always possible to make any sense of Mage Krelig’s actions — he often behaved erratically, surprising Calen with sudden anger or, almost as often, surprising him by not being angry when Calen expected him to be. But usually Calen could at least identify the trigger of the man’s rages. This time there hadn’t been anything at all.

Yes, there was. You’re still not learning quickly enough.

That wasn’t quite it, though. It wasn’t about the learning, exactly — it was about that great reserve of power Krelig seemed to think Calen had inside him. Power he thought Calen was willfully refusing to let out. But Calen had done everything right today — he’d mastered every spell, he hadn’t been slow — and then suddenly Krelig had just attacked.

I have to get out of here.

He knew that was true. But he didn’t like to think about it very much. For one thing, he had come to realize just how difficult it was going to be to get away. Krelig left him alone for hours at a time, but he always seemed to know where Calen had been. If Calen tried to leave on foot, he had no doubt that Mage Krelig would be able to find him without any trouble. Calen didn’t even try to make himself believe that his invisibility spell would fool Krelig for a second. It had fooled him once, briefly, but that was back when Krelig was still on the other side of the portal, and even then, he was able to sense that there was magic at work in the room. If he could sense that much while peering through a window from
another world,
he certainly wouldn’t have any trouble sensing what Calen was up to when he was right here.

Calen had thought about trying to steal a slaarh and ride it back to Trelian, but that idea had so many things wrong with it, he could barely count them all.

The only idea that seemed to hold any promise was his jumping spell, the one he’d used to travel to where Maurel had been taken by Sen Eva. But he would only be able to go short distances at a time, only transport himself to spaces he could actually see before him, and the land around the castle was dense with trees. He wouldn’t be able to see very far at all. Which meant that it would probably be very easy for Mage Krelig to catch up with him.

There was one more option, but he knew it wasn’t one he should even think about. That was the idea of jumping all the way back to Trelian. He was pretty sure he could do it, in theory; he’d transported both Meg and himself a great distance that first time when he’d cast the spell by accident. But Serek and Anders had explained later on that Calen had been very, very lucky. That there were all kinds of terrible things that could happen when a mage transported himself to a place he couldn’t see. Not the least of which was that something else, or even some
one
else, could already be in the place you were transporting to. Which meant that when you appeared, you might . . . overlap. You could end up partially inside a wall. Or a person.

In his head, Calen heard Anders’s gleeful voice whisper:
half-embedded.
He shuddered.

No. He couldn’t try that. Even if he was desperate. Because even if he was willing to risk his own life, he couldn’t know that he wouldn’t be risking the life of someone else.

Unless he could know for sure somehow that the place he was transporting to was empty . . .

No.

Besides, he was pretty sure that Krelig had some sort of wards placed that would prevent him from transporting himself out of the castle. Probably also wards that would alert him if Calen just walked out. Calen had tried to detect any such wards, but so far he hadn’t had any luck. He could see his own wards when he cast them, but then even those faded into invisibility once the spell was done.