The Mage of Trelian (6 page)

Well, you have to figure out something,
he told himself angrily.

Of course, the reason he hadn’t figured anything out so far was also the other reason he didn’t like to think too much about leaving. He hadn’t learned enough yet. He was sure there was so much more he could learn from Mage Krelig — maybe once he learned enough, he’d be able to cast his way out. His way home.

He just wasn’t ready.

But you might not have much time. Not if he’s losing his mind completely. If he gets mad enough, he might just kill you.

I know.

Calen got up from his bed and went out to his balcony. Some of the little cheerful birds were there, perched along the outer wall. He’d started remembering to tuck away pieces of bread from breakfast, and he took one out now, holding it out in one hand toward the nearest bird. The bird hopped cautiously toward him, paused, then darted closer and snatched the bread from his hand before flitting back away. Calen laughed.

“I’m not going to hurt you, little friend,” he said. He watched it finish off the bread, then leaned his forearms on the wall and looked out over the treetops. A dark shape flying in the distance made him catch his breath for a second, but he realized almost immediately that it couldn’t possibly be anything as large as a dragon. After a moment, he could make out the shape more clearly: it was just a crow.

He watched it swooping in seemingly aimless patterns above the trees. Looking for good places to find a snack, maybe.
Sorry, crow,
Calen thought.
I’m out of bread for today.

He went back inside. He was about to lie back down on the bed when he heard a deep ringing sound, like a bell, only he knew it wasn’t really a bell. It was something Krelig did to summon Calen to him when he wanted him.

Calen looked unhappily at the door to the hallway. He did not want to go back out there. But he had to. Disobeying was not really an option. Especially not when Krelig was already angry.

Maybe he won’t be anymore.
That was a possibility. His moods shifted so quickly, after all. He might be all smiles by the time Calen reached him. And if he wasn’t, well, this time Calen would be ready, at least. He’d been caught too much by surprise earlier to do anything other than run. He thought that he could get a shield up in time to block Krelig’s attack for a few seconds, if he went in ready to do so. Long enough to get back out the door, at least.

Unless he’s really trying to kill me next time,
he thought miserably. He didn’t think he could hold out even a few seconds against Krelig at full murderous strength.

Calen pushed that idea away and made his way down the hall and back toward where he could sense Krelig waiting. The bell sound was usually, as now, accompanied by an awareness of Krelig’s presence in a certain direction, so that Calen could make his way directly to where his master was as quickly as possible.

Never keep a crazy man waiting,
Calen thought to himself, crazily.

He had to stop doing that.

You’ve been talking to yourself in your head a lot lately.

I know.

When he arrived at the right place, Calen cleared his mind and tried to be ready. Then he took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

“Ah, Calen! There you are, my boy.” All smiles.

Calen started to relax, but as he stepped into the room, he realized that Mage Krelig was not alone. Five other mages sat in chairs that had been arranged in a semicircle around where Krelig was sitting. They were looking at Calen curiously.

“Come in, come in!” Krelig said, gesturing at Calen enthusiastically. “Our guests want to meet you.”

Calen stepped cautiously forward. He hadn’t seen anyone other than Krelig in . . . weeks? Months? He had lost track of exactly how long he’d been here, he realized. It was strange to be around other people again. What were they doing here? For a second his heart seemed to stop inside him, caught in a sudden terrible fist of hope. Could they be here to try to get him out?

Then he remembered Krelig’s announcement about expecting company.

Oh. Of course.
He was an idiot.

They were here to join Mage Krelig. Traitors to the Magistratum.

Just like you.

Shut up. I am not a traitor.

He studied them more carefully, as they were studying him. Three men and two women, their faces all marked to various degrees, identifying them as mages and reflecting their levels of experience and ability.

“
This
is the boy everyone was fighting about?” the younger of the two women asked. She had blazing red hair tied up in a loose knot behind her head. Calen guessed she was only a year or two older than he was, but the extent of the tattoos on her face was impressive. He’d seen mages much older than her with a lot fewer marks. He didn’t much care for her tone, though. And who was she calling a boy? She wasn’t exactly anyone’s grandmother!

“I know he doesn’t look like much,” Krelig responded infuriatingly, “but he’s quite powerful. Not able to access all of it yet, but we’re working on that, aren’t we, Calen?”

“Sure,” Calen said, his eyes still fixed on the others. A few of the mages seemed almost embarrassed to be there. Or to be seen there, maybe. They all seemed uncomfortable, anyway. Except the obnoxious girl.

Krelig went on, seemingly oblivious to the tension among everyone else in the room. Or just not caring. He spoke directly to Calen, as though the others weren’t sitting right there. “These few are just the beginning. More will follow soon. You will see.”

Calen nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“Mage Krelig,” one of the men said hesitantly, “what should we — what will —?”

Krelig glanced at him sharply, as if he’d forgotten the other mages already. “Yes, yes,” he said. “We will talk about all of that soon enough. For now, I think you should rest. You must be tired after your long journey.” He turned back to Calen again. “Take our guests upstairs and show them to their rooms.”

The obnoxious girl snorted. “Is he your apprentice or your servant?”

Krelig turned slowly back around. He looked at her until her smirk disappeared. Then he said, “He is whatever I need him to be. You would do well to follow his example if you desire a permanent place in my little army, my dear.”

She looked down and away, not speaking. But she didn’t seem very chastened; her smile didn’t return, but her mouth twisted slightly, and Calen could see one of her eyebrows arched in a somewhat skeptical expression. He felt a mean little smile tug at his lips. That was definitely not the right response.

“Do you?” Mage Krelig asked softly.

Her eyes snapped back up. She looked around, confirmed that he was talking to her, and asked finally, “Do I what?”

“Do you want a permanent place here?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Sure of course what?”

The other mages were beginning to look even more uncomfortable. Calen stood patiently, knowing he should be worried that the girl was ruining Krelig’s good mood, but he was too glad to see her getting taken down a peg.

She looked around again and uttered a defensive-sounding laugh. “I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to be here. It wasn’t easy, you know! I don’t really know what you expect me to say —”

She broke off with a gasp and clapped a hand to her arm. When she took her hand away, Calen saw a deep red line across the skin there. She stared at it, then back at Mage Krelig.

“Do you think I care what you had to do to come here? Do you think anything you had to endure could possibly compare to hundreds of years of exile, having to claw your way back to this world by casting across time and space and relying on the assistance of incompetent, unskilled, ignorant —” He broke off, seeming to recognize for once that he was sliding into a rant. He took a breath, then continued. “Now. I’m going to ask you one more time. Do you desire a permanent place here, Mage Helena?”

She finally seemed to start to understand. She glanced again at the red lash on her arm, then back up. “Yes. Yes, Mage Krelig. I want a permanent place here. I — I desire that very much.”

He didn’t answer at first, just gazed at her with his deceptively calm eyes. “Good,” he said at last. “I was beginning to wonder if you really wanted to be here at all. You don’t ever want to make me wonder about you again.”

“No,” she said at once, all swagger and scorn gone from her voice. “No, Mage Krelig. I won’t. You won’t need to wonder about me. I promise.”

He nodded, then smiled. “Excellent!” He gestured carelessly at her, and Calen saw the healing energy fly toward her a split second before she gasped again and the wound closed itself up, disappearing as though it had never existed.

“Now, Calen.” Krelig nodded toward the door Calen had so recently entered through.

“What rooms should I give them?”

“I don’t care. Any rooms you want.”

Calen turned and walked out, not waiting to see if they were even out of their chairs yet. Soon enough he heard their hurried footsteps on the stone floor behind him. He led them to the opposite side of the castle from where his own room was. He wanted them as far away from him as possible.

When he reached the entrance to the long hallway he’d selected, he waved vaguely in the direction of the several closed doors that lined each side. “You can take any of these rooms you like.” Then he started back the way they’d come.

The obnoxious girl — Mage Helena — stepped up beside him. “Is he always like that? So — so volatile? I didn’t —”

Calen whirled to face her. “Don’t speak to me,” he said coldly. “I’m not your guide or your ally or your friend. You’ll figure out what it’s like here soon enough. Either that, or he’ll probably kill you. But don’t expect me to make your life any easier. Or to be any part of it at all.”

Her mouth opened, but he strode off before she could say whatever she was about to say.

This was not good. Now that some mages had started to arrive, how quickly would others follow? Did it mean that Krelig was going to be ready to do something soon? Calen had to escape before that happened. Before
anything
happened. Before his presence here could actively help Mage Krelig in any way.

He thought about his jumping spell again.

No.

I know. I know. But . . .

No. Jumping to places he could see would take too long. And jumping to places he couldn’t see would be too dangerous. He had to think of something else. He had to.

He’d learned so much since he’d been here. He’d gotten better, and faster, and he could cast new, more difficult spells and more than one at a time and protect himself against more of what Krelig cast at him, but nothing he’d learned seemed immediately applicable toward helping him get away. Which was probably not an accident. Mage Krelig was not an idiot. He knew Calen hadn’t wanted to come here. He must suspect that Calen would escape if he could. Unless he was crazy enough to believe that Calen might have completely changed his mind.

But Krelig didn’t seem to care about Calen’s motivations. He just wanted Calen here so that he’d be able to use Calen’s abilities in whatever way he could to help destroy the Magistratum and set up his terrifying new world order. He seemed to take it for granted that now that Calen was here, he’d remain. At least for as long as Krelig wanted him to. And why not? Where could he go? How could he possibly escape? He didn’t even know where they were, let alone how to get back home.

Calen went through the door into his room and out onto his balcony. He looked out at the treetops and the sparkly glimpses of the river through the forest and the birds and the slowly moving clouds and tried not to despair. He would figure something out. He would. He had to.

He’d thought about trying to contact Meg through dreams, trying to re-create some less-terrible version of the dream spell that Sen Eva had used to try to influence Wilem and drive Meg insane. But he was too afraid that something could go wrong. And that whole experience had literally been a nightmare for Meg. He couldn’t really bring himself to consider violating her mind in that way, not after how horrible it had been for her before. His intentions would be different, of course, and he hoped (gods, he hoped) that she’d be glad to hear from him . . . but not that way.

Which left . . . what? The summoning spell he’d used to contact Serek in the past was too obvious; Krelig had certainly blocked against that, and even if he hadn’t, he would know — Calen was certain he would — if Calen attempted it. He needed something Mage Krelig would never have thought of himself, and so wouldn’t be on guard against.

Some of the little birds came to see if Calen had brought any bread for them.

“Sorry, friends,” he said. “No more bread today. I’ll have some more tomorrow.” They couldn’t understand him, of course, but that didn’t stop him from talking to them. He supposed it was slightly less crazy than talking to himself, anyway.

Not much, though.

Shut up.

He saw the crow from earlier again, circling over the trees. Or maybe it was a different crow; it’s not like he could tell one from another, really. He tried to remember if he’d seen any crows around here before today. Mostly he just remembered the cheerful colorful birds, and maybe a hawk or two, which he remembered because he worried that they might attack his little feathered friends.

And this crow was acting so . . . odd. Circling and circling, but not over a single spot, as he’d seen carrion birds do when there was something dead on the ground below, waiting to be eaten.
What are you up to, Mr. Crow?
Idly, Calen sent a tendril of white energy toward it, crafting a little impromptu spell of the sort he’d use to investigate an object or search for information. He used something similar when he was trying to find Krelig in the morning for lessons, but that was purely about location. This one was more about a general sense of what the crow was about. He didn’t expect to be able to read its mind or anything like that — even if crows had enough thoughts in their brains for there to be something
to
read, he didn’t know any kind of spell that could see inside someone else’s head. Even Mage Krelig didn’t seem to know that kind of spell, or he surely would have used it on Calen by now. And on everyone else, too.