The Princess of Trelian (37 page)

But there was nothing Calen could to do to stop it.

Then Sen Eva threw herself back in front of her son. The spell hit her straight on, and she screamed horribly, seeming to claw at herself for the few seconds before the magic consumed her entirely. She crumpled within the fiery energy, the flames visible only to Calen but the effect on her body visible to them all.

Calen couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

“No!” Wilem and Mage Krelig screamed together, each for his own reasons. Maurel just screamed, burying her face back in Calen’s shoulder.

Mage Krelig tore his eyes from Sen Eva’s blackened form and glared at Wilem with a new hatred burning in his eyes. He took a step toward him. Wilem didn’t even notice. He was still staring at his mother’s body.

Another flickering of deep red began to gather at Mage Krelig’s fingertips. He was definitely weaker; each spell seemed to take a disproportionate amount of energy from him for reasons Calen did not understand and could not begin to sort out at the moment. But Krelig still wasn’t weak enough. It wouldn’t take a strong spell to kill them, after all. Just a thorough one, aimed with care. And Calen and Maurel, at least, couldn’t even try to run.

Suddenly a welcome roar sounded in the sky above them. Mage Krelig whipped his head around to stare. Jakl roared again, and Calen could almost see the dragon’s desire to burn the man to a crisp right there.

Calen did not think he had ever been so glad to see anyone in his entire life. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he realized that this was what Sen Eva had meant when she said Trelian had broken with Lorin — Meg and Jakl leaving the castle grounds must have ignited the start of the war. But he couldn’t care very much about that right now. Meg was here, with her dragon, and all was not lost after all.

“Meg!” Maurel screamed, trying to struggle to her feet but unable to quite manage it with her hands still bound behind her. Meg turned to locate her sister and stared in shock when she saw Calen. Jakl roared once more, shooting a stream of fire into the air before him. Now the black-clad men around them ran, scattering in all directions like beetles startled from under their rock.

Mage Krelig seemed transfixed, staring up at the girl and dragon who had appeared so unexpectedly out of nowhere. Wilem crawled quickly over and untied Calen’s hands, then picked up Maurel and ran for some of the nearby rocks. Calen ripped the gag from his mouth and started to follow. Maurel was still screaming Meg’s name, and this finally got the mage’s attention. Calen looked back over his shoulder to see Mage Krelig staring furiously after them. Their eyes met suddenly, and Calen’s legs nearly gave out beneath him at the insane power and rage he could see there.

And then the mage’s features shifted in confusion and surprise. And pleasure? And suddenly the world stopped.

Calen blinked and stumbled to a halt. It had literally stopped. All around him. Meg and Jakl were suspended in the air midswoop. Maurel’s face was frozen, her mouth stretched into a scream. Wilem was leaning forward, running for all he was worth, except he wasn’t, because no one was moving.

No one but Calen and Mage Krelig.

“Interesting,” Mage Krelig said, walking closer to Calen.

“What — what did you do?” Calen asked. A million tiny dots of every color imaginable seemed to hang suspended in the air around them.

“A little parlor trick,” Mage Krelig said airily. “I can’t hold it long, though, even at full strength, and can’t repeat it for several months at least, so we’ve only got a moment.” He looked at Calen appraisingly. “I know who you are. I’ve seen you.”

Calen tried to speak around his terror. “You have?”

“Not your face.” He said this as though a face were something like a shirt, that you could pull on and off at will. “Your power. Your . . . ability.”

Calen stared at him.
What?

“I have had many useful visions over the years. I have seen you more than once. And I have . . .
sensed
you; it was your magic at work in the room when I spoke with Sen Eva before she failed me the first time. You are . . . of interest.” The mage looked around at the other people present, chuckling as his eyes passed over Serek again. Then he looked back at Calen and said, “And here I thought I would have to go and seek you out. You will need to come with me.”

What?

“I — I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can. I’ve seen . . . that we might be of use to each other,” he said. “You have an unusual talent, do you not?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, of course,” Mage Krelig said. Then he winked. “But you know that you are capable of much more than what you have done so far, don’t you, my boy? You know that there are things being hidden from you about the ways of magic, that there are things you are told never to do that some mages do quite often. You know that the rules that bind you are like a prison, and you have already begun looking for the key.”

“No, I haven’t,” Calen said. “I don’t even know what you mean. And the rules are — the rules are good. To keep people safe. And . . . and . . .”

Mage Krelig laughed again. “Keep people safe,” he repeated. “Please. The Magistratum is trying to tear your claws off, keeping you a mouse-cat when you’re meant to be a lion. You can’t lie to me about this. I can tell. Your frustration radiates from you. You have tremendous power locked away inside. But clearly you’ve never been trained to really use it, or you wouldn’t have been caught here as a prisoner of my — of
our
late friend.”

“Sen Eva was not my friend,” Calen snapped.

“No, no, of course not. Which is all the worse for you. She could have eaten you for lunch anytime she wanted. But do you know, she is not even that strong in the arts. Oh, she has — had — power, but it was the training, the knowledge that made her great. The same knowledge that I could give to you. I could give you that and more, my boy. Everything you ever wanted to learn. No secrets. No limits. No restraints.”

Calen shook his head. He didn’t quite trust himself to speak.

Because Mage Krelig was right about how badly Calen wanted to learn. He was right about how Serek kept holding him back. How the rules sometimes seemed like pointless obstacles. And hadn’t he broken them on occasion? Hadn’t he already decided for himself that some of the rules simply did not apply?

Only some,
he reminded himself.
A very select number. And only with good reason. There’s nothing to even think about here.

But he was thinking about it all the same.

No.
He tried to focus on what was real. On what he knew to be true. Mage Krelig was a monster. An evil, crazy monster. And what he was offering was to turn Calen into an evil, crazy monster, too. Like Sen Eva.

Never.

He should spit on Mage Krelig’s offer. He should run, now, while the mage was busy holding this impossible spell, run away so that when time started again Calen would be out of reach and ready to be scooped up by Meg and Jakl, to be taken back home to begin planning the fight against the most terrible enemy any of them had ever encountered.

Except . . . he wouldn’t be part of that fight. Serek wouldn’t let him. Serek would keep him in the dark, unable to help, unable to do anything to protect his home and his fellow mages and his friends.

Mage Krelig was offering Calen everything that Serek refused to give.

They told you you would be involved with him,
the little voice inside him said.
So go ahead. It’s what they all expect you to do, anyway.

That was crazy — Mage Krelig was the
enemy.
Calen could not, he could never . . . he could not believe he was feeling even the slightest bit of temptation.

But he was. He couldn’t deny it. Some small, tiny part of him was tempted. To learn, to know everything he wanted to know. No limits. Nothing held back.

And then, beneath the temptation, another thought.

Maybe this was the opportunity he was meant to look out for. Maybe the cards had been telling him about this, this very moment, about this chance to grab the knowledge he yearned for. Not that he would ever really
join
Mage Krelig. Of course not. He was no traitor. He could never put himself against Meg. Or against Trelian. Or against Serek. Even when he couldn’t stand his master, he didn’t
hate
him. At least, not most of the time.

But if he could only
pretend
to join Mage Krelig, to go and learn and then come back — if he could pretend to join Mage Krelig in order to figure out how to defeat him . . .

This was it. This was the chance he was being given. It had to be.

And for a moment, he wavered on the brink of saying yes.

He looked at Meg and the others, frozen in time. Meg, who had come here to save them. Meg, who was his best friend, his only friend, the only one who truly believed in him.

The only one who needed him.

Who trusted him.

She would not want him to do this.

“No,” Calen said. “Never.”

Mage Krelig started to laugh again, a deep, rich, booming sound that filled the frozen silence around them. Then he stopped abruptly. “Ach,” he said. “Losing my hold. You’ve got about five more seconds to decide.” His lingering, easy smile vanished. He looked directly into Calen’s eyes with deadly seriousness. “And if you dare to refuse me again, you ignorant, mewling whelp, I will rip apart every single one of your little friends into unrecognizable strands of bloody, screaming flesh. Accept, and I will let them live.” He paused. “For the time being, anyway.”

The world came abruptly back to life and motion. The first few seconds of sound were almost excruciating — Maurel was shouting; Meg was screaming in tandem with Jakl; Serek was beating against the inside of his shield prison, desperate to get free.

Mage Krelig looked at Calen for one more long moment. “Very well,” he said. He turned toward the others, crimson streaks of magical energy gathering slowly about his hands. Hands that were raised in the direction of Wilem, of Maurel, of Jakl.

Of Meg.

“Yes,” Calen heard himself say. “Okay, yes. I’ll come with you. Just don’t — don’t hurt —”

Jakl swooped down close above them, but the mage ignored him, beaming at Calen. “Excellent!” he said, his good humor back in force. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

Krelig gestured with one hand. There was an immediate answering scream from not very far away, the all-too-familiar-by-now sound of the slaarh.

Jakl turned to face the direction the sound had come from, but a shouted word from Meg brought him back around. He dove again toward the ground, and a burst of pure and perfect orange fire streamed from his open mouth into the empty air. Meg was shouting, and Calen realized she was waiting for him to move away so she could attack Mage Krelig.

He didn’t move.

The slaarh appeared above the trees then, screaming again as it came for its master. Jakl turned and landed heavily beside the rocks, clearly following Meg’s instructions against his own desire to engage the other creature in combat. Wilem boosted Maurel onto Jakl’s back, then climbed up beside her. Everyone turned to stare at Calen.

“Come on!” Wilem shouted. “Calen!”

The slaarh landed clumsily on the ground nearby and lay itself flat. Mage Krelig climbed up rather awkwardly; his casting was clearly catching up with him now. Calen didn’t even want to imagine how much force of will and magic it would have taken to create the spell that had stopped time, let alone to hold it that way.

Calen looked at Meg. He met her eyes, fierce and lovely and confused. His best, truest, only friend. He wished he could explain what he was doing. That he was doing this for her, for them, for all of them. But there was no time, and no way.

He dropped his eyes and climbed up behind Mage Krelig. His stomach heaved at the feel of the creature’s oozy skin beneath him, but he didn’t turn back.

He heard Meg screaming his name, and Maurel too, and Serek was throwing himself against his shield. He wished he could tell all of them why he was going. And that he would find a way to use this, to turn things around. That he would come back.

He
would
come back.

He would go with Mage Krelig and learn his secrets. And then, when the time came, he would be prepared to fight him.

To destroy him forever.

He couldn’t help looking back at Meg once more as the slaarh lumbered into the air.

Her face as she watched him ride off was like a knife in his heart.

L
ATER, BACK AT THE CASTLE, THEY
assembled in the same meeting room they had gathered in only a couple of days before. It was more crowded now. The king stood at the center table, bunched together with the Captain of the House Guard and the Master of Arms and the Commander of the King’s Army, looking down at a large map of the continent. The queen sat in one of the elaborate chairs at one edge of the room with Maurel snuggled tightly in her lap. Wilem sat quietly under the watchful eyes of a guard. Anders and Serek and the mages from the Magistratum took up nearly half the room all by themselves. Even Pela was present, tucked in a chair in the corner and working busily at some piece of sewing in her lap and seeming to ignore everyone else completely.