The Princess of Trelian (6 page)

Because they can’t see anything,
he realized. The shapes were made of magic — swirling energy-creatures of black and red and violet with threads of green and other colors running like veins through the hazy forms of their bodies.

Calen looked desperately around for Serek; he had to tell him what was happening. A few mages seemed to have managed to cast protection spells, but most appeared too busy trying to escape the invisible assault to cast anything. Should he try to help? Somehow he knew Serek had meant for him to stay put and not do anything, but surely he wasn’t supposed to just stand by when he was the only one who could see what was going on.

He shook himself free of his tangled thoughts.
Stop dithering and do something,
he told himself. The entire chamber was filled with writhing, fighting creatures; it was pure luck that none of them had found his little corner so far. He couldn’t count on that luck lasting for long.

With a practiced ease, he cleared his head, preparing to focus on casting . . . something. Serek, curse him, still hadn’t taught Calen anything useful about magical weapons. But Calen could figure something out. He knew he could. Something damaging but focused — he didn’t want to hurt one of the mages by mistake.

Red energy was the most destructive; he’d seen Sen Eva use it as a weapon, and he’d seen Serek use it to try to wipe out an infection in a wounded soldier. There was a spell Calen had used to kill root-beetles on some plants in the Mage’s Garden once. Maybe if he started with that but tried to make it bigger, more powerful . . .

He concentrated, drawing the red magic into something he could see between his palms. Then he thought about trying to shape it, like a beam, something he could send at the creature nearest him. When it felt like the right shape, the right intensity, he
pushed
it from him with all the force he could muster.

It shot from his hands just as he’d envisioned and struck the creature in the back of the head. The creature shuddered and turned around. When it saw Calen with his arms still held out before him, it let out an ominous-sounding growl, its blurry, magic-formed face seeming to snarl. It did not, Calen noted with a sick, sinking feeling, appear to be damaged in any way. Just enraged. Then it launched itself at him.

Calen tried to back away, but he was still in the corner. He did the only other thing he could think of: he flung up a shield like the one he’d used to fend off Sen Eva that time on the tower. The creature threw itself against the magic barrier, and now Calen could see quite clearly: yes, those were indeed teeth. Teeth and claws. Big ones. Only inches away from his face, held off by his hastily constructed shield.

He looked wildly around, trying to see if anyone might be near enough to help him. He saw Serek and Council Master Renaldiere pushing their way through a group of mages to reach the front edge of the stage. The council master shouted something, and Serek nodded. Then they both raised their hands and began to channel a mix of green, gold, and white energy. At another shout from Renaldiere, both men released the magic, sending a burst of mixed colors up and out into the chamber. Calen was still trying to figure out what the spell was supposed to do when the energy formed a thin, sheetlike form and then descended to land lightly atop everyone and everything in the room. A subtly glowing sheen of magic seemed to coat everyone, mages and creatures alike. And suddenly the creatures became solid, their blurred limbs and features shifting into horrible, fully physical reality.

Calen nearly screamed. They were far worse this way. The creature attacking him now had dark, bristly fur, huge, claw-tipped arms, and a terrifying, wolflike snout dripping with saliva as it tried again and again to bite him through the shield. Why,
why
would Serek and the others do this? They had just made the things more real, more terrible.

He got it about a second later: the spell made the creatures visible. To everyone. Now that the mages could see what they were fighting, they were far better able to defend themselves. The tide turned fairly quickly after that. All around the room, mages began casting defensive spells and magical attacks, and in short order the creatures began falling and fading, killed or destroyed or undone. Someone — a mage Calen didn’t know — finally noticed Calen’s difficulty and sent something red and powerful at the attacking beast. It slid to the ground, clearly dead, but Calen still waited a few more seconds to release his shield.

Mages who had been knocked down began to get back up, some with the help of other mages’ hands or healing spells. A few did not get up at all. Calen couldn’t tell if they were unconscious or . . . worse. He saw one young apprentice, a boy of maybe six years old, crying unashamedly. Other mages were turning toward the stage in search of the council masters.

“What were those things?” someone shouted toward Renaldiere and Galida — probably not for the first time, but the noise level had finally gone down enough that individual voices could be heard. A chorus of angry shouts followed, seconding the question: “How could we have been attacked here —?”

“How did they break through our defenses?”

“And who could have —?”

“And
why
—?”

Council Master Galida turned from the older woman she was speaking with and held up her hand against the rising tide of voices. “Peace,” she called out to the assembly. Calen was chilled to hear that strong voice shaking a little. “We must act quickly to see if there is anything we can learn.”

Calen saw other mages nodding at this, and then Galida and Renaldiere began calling up white energy, their hands held wide before them to focus the power. Other mages joined in, and before long nearly every mage in the room — every full mage who was able and wasn’t busy with healing or helping someone else — was standing still, facing the stage, and creating his or her own sphere of white, glowing energy. Calen itched to cast with them, but he knew better than to try. He didn’t know exactly what they were doing, and joining in blind could disrupt the spell. Or worse, change the effect to something other than what was intended. He knew firsthand that when different spells clashed, the effects could be dangerous and unpredictable.

White magic usually meant communication, or exploration. Or
information.
Would what they were casting now help them discover where the creature spell had come from?

Renaldiere said something Calen didn’t understand, and all the mages raised their arms as one. At a final word from the council master, the white energy suddenly burst forth from every pair of outspread hands, shooting out and into and through the walls and ceiling. Almost at once, small bursts of energy began coming back through the walls. The council masters both cocked their heads as though listening. After a few minutes, the frequency of the return bursts dropped off, and then they stopped altogether. Galida shook her head in frustration. Renaldiere gestured at the assembly, and everyone released the spell.

“Thank you,” Galida said to the group. Her face was drawn, but her voice was steadier now. “You may go; we will reconvene this evening to discuss what has happened.” She picked out two mages near the stage. “Nyar, Espion, please see to the wounded. Draft whomever you need to assist you. Council members, please stay behind.”

People began to disperse, some limping on the arms of friends, some helping Nyar and Espion see to those who hadn’t risen on their own. Another group of mages began to dispose of the dead creatures that hadn’t already been magically unmade. Everyone looked very worried. Serek spoke for a few minutes more with some of the other mages on the stage, then came back down to where Calen was waiting. He gave Calen a grim look.

“I see that you are practically bursting with questions,” he said. “Wait until we get back to my rooms, and I will do my best to answer them. Do not ask me anything until we get there. Understood?”

“Yes,” Calen said. He
was
practically bursting with questions, but he thought he could hold them inside for a few more minutes. He followed Serek back out through the double doors and up the stairs. Along the way, they passed small groups of mages clustered together, speaking in hushed voices. Several of them glanced up as they walked by, and it seemed to Calen that they kept their eyes on him a little longer than he was quite comfortable with. He was glad when they reached Serek’s rooms, which were just down the hall from Calen’s.

They entered, and Calen sat on a simple wooden chair next to a sturdy table in the main room. Serek’s quarters were bigger than his own, with a separate bedroom and more places to sit. Serek sat down across from him. Calen waited, trying not to bounce in his seat. Finally Serek rolled his eyes and said, “Very well. Go ahead.”

“What
happened
?” Calen asked at once. “Where did those things come from? There were so many colors, and I didn’t — I didn’t even know someone could do that, make
things,
creatures, whatever they were, just out of magic —”

“I don’t know what happened, exactly,” Serek said. “No one does at the moment. Other than whoever is responsible for it, of course. As for where they came from, well, that is something we are very interested in finding out.” He looked at Calen appraisingly. “What did you see? You said there were a lot of colors?”

“Yes. More than I could really sort out. It’s strange — I’ve never seen any other kind of magic that was so tangled up that way. It was like it was trying on purpose to be confusing.”

“Maybe it was,” Serek said thoughtfully. “Perhaps it was designed to keep us guessing, to make it harder for us to defend ourselves. It should not have taken us so long to figure out that there were invisible creatures, not just random forces. . . . Well, you may be right about the confusion aspect. We’ll have to bring that up tonight.”

“We? I’m going to the meeting?”

“You’ll need to tell them what you saw, Calen. You’re the only one who was able to see the spell, after all. When Renaldiere and I made the things visible, we altered the original spell. Helpful for fighting back, but not so helpful for discovering what the spell was in the first place, or where it came from. You might be able to give some valuable insight.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Calen tried to sound more confident than he felt. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could tell them that would be useful. But he was glad he was going to the meeting. There was no telling if Serek would be as willing to answer his questions later on. He didn’t always have much patience for Calen’s wanting to know everything all the time. And he thought Calen was better off not knowing some things, although Calen failed to see how that could ever make any sense. How could it hurt him to know as much as possible? Weren’t teachers supposed to
want
you to want to learn?

There was one thing Calen wanted to know most of all. “Whoever cast that spell, it had to be a mage, didn’t it? But not — I mean, no one here would have . . .” Calen hesitated, then made himself ask what he really wanted to know: “Do you think it could have been Sen Eva? Or . . . or Mage Krelig?”

Mage Krelig was that scary portal mage who had been helping — or commanding, or using, or all three — Sen Eva. Serek and the other mages had figured out who the man must be from Calen and Meg’s reports of what they’d heard him saying to Sen Eva and from the things he had apparently taught her how to do. He was the only mage of that kind of power whom anyone could remember having been magically exiled.

But there had been no sign of Sen Eva in months, and as far as they knew, Mage Krelig was still stuck in whatever faraway world he’d been exiled to, because his evil plan had fallen apart when Calen and Meg had helped to stop Sen Eva on the rooftop. Sen Eva had gotten away, but she’d failed to kill Meg’s sister and start the war with Kragnir. And the prophecy Mage Krelig had talked about had something to do with a war. So without the war, he couldn’t come back. So they were safe now. Or they were supposed to be.

“That’s what we were trying to figure out with the mass casting,” Serek said. “We were looking for any sign of an intruder, or anyone suspicious in any way. But we found nothing.” He curled his hand into a fist, more frustrated than Calen had ever seen him. “I don’t understand it. To enter the Magistratum undetected and cast something like that and then just vanish — it should not be possible.”

This was very bad, Calen realized. It was one thing for him to be confused; he was still just an apprentice. But Serek was a lot older and knew so much. It was frightening to see him so completely at a loss. And surely the council masters were supposed to be really knowledgeable and powerful, and if
they
were confused, too . . . Well, maybe they just needed some time to think. Maybe at the meeting later, with everyone having calmed down a bit, they would be able to figure it out.

Calen tried to think of how best to phrase his next question. Serek looked at him for a moment, then said, “Spit it out, Apprentice.”

“
Now
will you teach me some kind of attack spell?” Calen asked. “The creature I tried to kill almost killed me instead!”

Serek became very still. His gaze turned icy. “You tried to kill one?”

“I couldn’t just stand there doing nothing!”

“That was absolutely what you should have done!” Serek stood up and began to pace angrily. “I believe I have told you countless times not to attempt spells that I haven’t actually taught you, regardless of what you think you might be capable of!”

“But —”

“I assume whatever it was you tried to do failed?”

Calen dropped his eyes. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “But I still —”

“Still haven’t learned your lesson?”

“If you would just
teach
me how to attack with magic, I wouldn’t have to try to make things up on my own! I don’t understand —”

“Exactly,” Serek broke in. “You don’t understand. Which is why you should not be playing around with magic against my wishes.”

“Playing —!”

“Enough,” Serek said. “Go back to your room, Calen. I’ll come get you when it’s time for the meeting.”