The Princess of Trelian (35 page)

They fell down dead without a sound.

Calen stared, shocked by what she had just done. He said a silent prayer for the fallen men. Sen Eva didn’t even spare them a glance.

Serek turned to look at him, but Calen couldn’t even begin to decipher his master’s expression. He swallowed and pulled Maurel tighter against him, holding the shield firmly in place. It looked like he was on his own again, after all.

M
EG WAS JUST FINISHING BREAKFAST WHEN
she felt Jakl lurch suddenly through the link. She was so disoriented for a moment that she stumbled up from her chair, causing Nan Vera to leap to her feet in alarm, nearly dropping the baby.

“I’m okay!” Meg shouted at her. “Just — just give me a minute.” She steadied herself with a hand on the table.
What?
she thought at Jakl.
What is it, what’s wrong?

In response, he sent her a terrifying image of one of the slaarh. She nearly screamed. It was just as horrible as her memories, and it was — oh, gods.

It was coming toward the castle.

She took off at a run, ignoring Nan Vera’s startled cries and racing as fast as she could toward her parents’ study.

She burst in, scaring them both. “Meg!” her father said. “What —?”

“Slaarh!” she said. “Coming here. Right now. Jakl can see it. I can’t — I don’t think I can hold him on the ground. I don’t think I should. If it’s coming to attack, he’s the best defense we have.”

Her parents stared at each other.

“There’s no time to deliberate!” she said. “I’m trying to stay true to your wishes, but this — we can’t just sit here and let it attack us!”

“You’re sure?” her father asked.

“Yes!”

The king took a breath. “All right. Let him go.”

She did.

She felt Jakl rush up at the sky as if gravity itself were his enemy, flinging himself to meet the invading creature before it got close enough to hurt them. To hurt her, especially.

Meg turned to run outside. She wanted to be there for her dragon, to see and help him, but Anders was suddenly there in the doorway.

“Something happened,” he said. “Serek — he’s trapped, something, I couldn’t see it clearly, but it didn’t work. They didn’t —”

“Maurel?” the queen asked, getting to her feet. “What happened? Is she all right? Is she —?”

Anders shook his head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t even a complete vision. Just enough to see that Serek can’t save her now.”

“Meg,” the queen said suddenly. “Meg can still save her.”

“Merilyn!” the king said, at the same time Meg said, “What?”

“She is the only one who can get there quickly enough,” the queen went on. “If we try to send anyone else — the mages, an army — it could be too late.” She looked at her husband. “The dragon is already in the sky, Tormon. We’ve already broken our agreement.”

The king was shaking his head. “No. Merilyn, listen to yourself. One of our daughters is already in danger, and you want to send Meg —”

“I can do it, Father.”

“No, Meg!” he said, turning to her. “Absolutely not.”

“I can. But Jakl can’t take me there if he’s here fighting the slaarh.”

“No. I cannot allow it.”

“Can’t allow him to stop fighting here, or can’t allow me to go?”

“Both! I don’t —” He curled his hands into fists and pushed them against his forehead. “Meg, I can’t let you put yourself in that kind of danger.”

“Father,” Meg said. “If Jakl dies fighting the slaarh, you know I’ll be dead, too. So it’s a choice of the danger here or the danger involved in letting me try to save Maurel. If you could draw off the slaarh with soldiers, Jakl and I can get to Bellman’s Pass in half an hour. Maybe less. Probably less. And I can get her back. I swear it.”

“Meg, I can’t —”

“Jakl will keep me safe, and if I can get to the others, he can help me get them home safely as well. There’s no one else who can do that.” There was no guarantee Jakl could really keep her anything close to safe, of course, but this was not the time for total honesty.

“What other choice do we have?” the queen asked her husband.

“Any other choice!” he said. “This is madness. Madness on top of madness. I never should have sent anything less than an army —”

“Sire,” Anders said gently, “you did the right thing. My visions don’t always make sense, but they are always right. Always. I know it doesn’t look that way, but you cannot punish yourself now for that decision. Somehow, that was the best available course.”

“And is sending another daughter into harm’s way also the best available course?”

Anders looked troubled. “I don’t know. But . . . it is true that the dragon can get there far more quickly than any man or horse. Time is not something we have in abundance.”

The king suddenly looked at Anders with narrowed eyes. “How do we even know we should trust you?” he said. “Who
are
you? How do we know your visions aren’t just tricks to make us act as you desire?”

Anders, taken aback, did not seem to know how to answer. The queen lay a hand on her husband’s arm.

“Now is not the time to start accusing each other,” she said. “We must deal with the problems before us.”

“Perhaps — perhaps we could send a soldier with the dragon —” the king began.

“No,” Meg said. “Jakl wouldn’t carry a stranger off and leave me here. And I can’t make him. It has to be me. And if — if there’s any trouble, he might need me to be there, to help him.”

Her father looked uncomfortable; she knew he didn’t like to think too deeply about what her connection to the dragon really meant.

The queen turned away from King Tormon and took Meg’s hands in her own. “Go, Meg. Please. Bring your sister home.”

Meg nodded once. “Send those soldiers to take on the slaarh,” she said. Then she ran from the room.

She knew she would have to wait for the soldiers to be ready before she let Jakl take her away, but she still felt a terrible urgency to get outside, to see with her own eyes instead of only through the link.
Coming,
she thought at her dragon.
Keep fighting for now, but when I say, come down and get me.
She tried to send images along with her words, and she felt his understanding.

Pela nearly tackled her just as she was nearing the front door.

“Not now, Pela,” Meg growled. Jakl had engaged the slaarh. She could feel them fighting, feel Jakl’s anger tinged with fear. Most of all she felt his hatred of that abomination, his desire to destroy it as well as the human riding on its back.

There was a
human
riding on its
back
?

“This will just take a moment,” Pela insisted. Meg realized the girl’s arms were full of clothing. “I brought your riding clothes. New ones, actually. I had them made for you when I got a good look at those terrible rags you kept riding around in.”

“Pela, there’s no
time
—”

“Yes there is,” she said calmly. “Time enough for this. It will be better if you change before you go. You don’t want to tear up your legs.”

She had a point. And Meg had to wait for the soldiers anyway.

They slipped into an empty room across the hall. Pela had her stripped down and dressed more quickly than Meg would have thought possible. At the last, she reached up and tied Meg’s hair back with a pretty but strong-looking length of cord. “To keep it from your eyes while you’re flying,” she explained.

Meg met Pela’s eyes and squeezed her hand in quick but heartfelt gratitude. Then she ran outside to see her dragon.

Jakl was magnificent, as she knew he would be, screaming and hurling flame and attacking with claws and gracefully dodging the return attacks from his ungainly opponent.

The soldiers appeared then, racing from the barracks with weapons at the ready, bowmen already launching bolts toward the monster, swordsmen waiting to see if any of the action got near enough to the ground for them to be useful.

All right,
Meg thought at Jakl.
Come get me.

He took a final swipe at the slaarh and dove for her, and the second he touched down she flung herself at his back. He was up as soon as he felt her slide into place atop him.

“Go,” she whispered. “Go, go, go. Let’s bring them home.”

Jakl roared assent as he pushed himself forward, racing for the pass.

Lost in dragon-fueled imaginings of rescue and revenge, Meg gasped as screams — human ones — jerked her suddenly back to her immediate surroundings. Jakl reared, either in response to her shock or because he had seen for himself.

Below them, a pair of slaarh was attacking a farm near the road. She could hear people shouting between the terrible screams of the monsters themselves.

Jakl started for them without thought, and for a moment Meg felt as he did — the need to attack, to stop the creatures’ destruction, to strike from above and burn them until they either died or fled. But then she pulled herself back, trying to focus.

No,
she thought at her dragon.
We have to keep going. We cannot stop for this. We need to save Maurel.

But then she thought of Tessel and faltered in her resolve. Where did her duty truly lie? Was she sacrificing those people in order to save her family?
No,
she thought.
This is different.
This was about saving Maurel, but also about stopping Sen Eva. About bringing her down before she could carry out her plans, which by all accounts would be a million times worse than anything the slaarh were doing now.

It was still hard to keep flying and leave those screaming people behind them.

Jakl pulled up reluctantly. Meg allowed herself one final look back, searing the scene and the sounds into her memory. She felt the fire boiling up again inside her heart.

Sen Eva would pay. She would pay for all of it.

C
ALEN STOOD THERE, HOLDING MAUREL
, praying that he would be able to protect her from Sen Eva.

Sen Eva turned to him, her face cold and angry, but then something abruptly shifted. She got that faraway look again. And then she smiled.

The smile was more frightening than the anger had been.

“It’s time. Finally.” Her smile grew even wider.

Calen glanced at Wilem, who had watched all of this from where he’d sat down moments — only moments? — before. “Do you know what she’s talking about?” Calen asked.

Wilem shook his head.

Sen Eva reached up and pulled on a delicate chain she was wearing around her neck. A polished blue crystal slid out from inside her dress. It took Calen only a moment to recognize it.

Oh. Oh, no. When she said it was time, she meant . . . time to finish what she’d been trying to do in the first place. What all of her efforts had been leading toward since the beginning.

Time to bring back Mage Krelig. That’s what she meant. Time to open the portal and help him cross over.

Sen Eva had won.

And all the rest of them had lost.

He looked at Serek, who was still trapped like a bug in a jar. He was shaking his head, although whether in denial or plea Calen couldn’t tell.

Sen Eva held the crystal in her left hand and held her right hand out before her, beginning to mutter the words of some incantation under her breath.

“Time for what?” Calen asked loudly, interrupting her concentration.

She stopped and frowned at him in irritation. “Be quiet.”

“If you wanted me to be quiet, maybe you should have used a stronger sleeping spell,” he said back. “Why didn’t you just kill me, anyway? Aren’t you worried I might stop you from doing whatever it is you’re trying to do?”

Sen Eva stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, my,” she said. “You do think highly of yourself, don’t you? No, dear boy, I’m afraid you don’t worry me in the least. And you should be thanking me instead of making a nuisance of yourself. You’re about to see the beginning of a whole new world.”

“I kind of like the old world,” Calen said. “Why don’t we just stick with this one?”

She rolled her eyes and made a gesture at one of her men. “Really, Apprentice. Annoying me is not your wisest course of action. And you’re not going to distract me, so stop trying. Just be quiet now and watch. Maybe you’ll learn something.”