Calen stared at him again. Anders was clearly not a normal person. “But . . . aren’t you worried? Shouldn’t we all be worried? What will they do if they catch us? Why are we running away in the first place? Where are we going? Why are you coming with us? What are we going to do?”
Anders looked at him silently for a moment. Then he turned toward Serek’s back and called out, “Boy, you weren’t kidding about the questions, were you! Does he ever stop?”
“Only when he’s unconscious,” Serek called back dryly.
“But —”
“Try not to worry so much, Calen,” Anders said. He reached over and patted Calen’s leg reassuringly. “I know there’s a lot you don’t understand. Let’s just get some distance between us and our soon-to-be pursuers, and at some point we’ll stop, and then I’m sure Serek and I can answer at least some of your many, many questions. For now I’ll just say that it’s quite possible some big, terrible things are happening, or are about to happen very soon, and different mages have different ideas about how to deal with them, and Serek and I have different ideas from Mage Brevera and his friends. Now, pay attention — you’re about to be smacked in the head with a large branch.”
Calen turned just in time to see the branch in question coming directly at his face. He ducked and then was distracted from further attempts at conversation by the fact that Posy seemed to like walking as close to every tree as possible. The horses fell back into single file as the path narrowed out, and for a while the only sounds were the horses’ hooves against the rocky ground and Calen’s occasional curse as he failed to avoid getting smacked or scratched by passing foliage.
When the ground smoothed out again, Serek glanced back to make sure they were all past the rocks and then kicked his horse into a canter. Posy lurched to follow, and Calen grabbed at her mane to avoid being thrown backward. Anders let out a whoop from behind him and then sped past on the right, laughing like a maniac and urging Franny to even greater speed. Killer cast an eye at the approaching Franny and went even faster, making Anders laugh again as he followed closely behind. Thus inspired, Posy’s canter quickly became a gallop as well. Calen tried to be glad that at least horses only flew along the ground, not at ridiculous distances above it like dragons. Sure, he could still die a painful death if he fell off, but at least there wouldn’t be that horrible waiting part as he plummeted through the clouds and sky and all that.
“Good girl, Posy,” he told her nervously. “Just don’t sprout wings, okay?” He felt somewhat more secure as he got used to the rhythm of her feet, but kept the fingers of one hand tangled in her mane, just in case.
An interminable time later, Calen finally became aware that the other horses were coming to a stop up ahead. “Whoa, girl,” Calen said, but Posy had apparently already assessed the situation and was slowing of her own accord.
“We’re only taking a short break,” Serek called over to him. “Just enough time to rest the horses a little and eat something.”
Anders was casting another of those swirly energy spells, this time sending tendrils of magic in several different directions, including back along the way they’d come. At some point Calen was definitely going to make the old man explain how he did that.
But right now he had a different question, one that had occurred to him as he had tried in vain to ignore the pulsing ache in his legs and rear end as the horses had alternately walked and trotted and cantered and galloped, depending on the terrain and whether Serek thought they needed a rest. Even when they’d been walking, they’d been spread out enough that talking hadn’t really been possible. So Calen had merely started cataloging questions in his head to ask later.
He got down from Posy’s back, tied her reins to a nearby tree, and walked over to where Serek and Anders had already dismounted. Anders was rummaging through one of the packs and setting out food items beside it.
“Serek? Why are we doing this?”
Serek rolled his eyes. “I believe you have been told several times now that I will explain —”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Calen ignored his master’s glare at the interruption. “But I don’t mean why are we running. I mean, why are we running? I mean, on the ground, on horses? Why don’t we use that purple transportation spell? Something like that one that sent Meg and me to, uh, wherever that place was we ended up?”
Anders glanced up at him. “I believe you just answered your own question, young Calen.”
Calen tried to recall exactly what he’d just said. “What? You mean because I didn’t know where we were sent? I thought that was just because it was an accident. I didn’t even know what I was doing when that happened.” He looked accusingly at Serek. “I know you know how to transport things. You showed me! In your study that time!”
“Exactly. I know how to transport things. Objects, in my direct line of sight, to another location also within my direct line of sight.” Serek accepted a little plate of food from Anders, who appeared to be in the process of setting out an entire picnic complete with wine and cookies. “How many times have you seen me transport myself somewhere? How often did you notice other mages popping in and out of sight during your stay at the Magistratum? Why do you think we spent two and a half weeks riding and camping to get to the Magistratum if we could have just appeared there?”
“Well . . . okay.” Calen accepted his own little plate of food and sat down on the ground, facing the others. “I guess I kind of thought it was something you saved for emergencies. But if you can look at a thing and move it to the other side of the room, why not a person? And why do you need to see where you’re sending something?”
Anders chuckled to himself. Serek took a bite of meat wrapped in a kind of soft, flat bread. “Because — Lord and Lady, Anders, this is delicious!”
“Wait until you try the cookies,” Anders said.
Serek took another bite and chewed slowly before speaking again. “Because, Calen, transporting living things is not the same as transporting objects. And transporting things to a place you can see is different from trying to transport things to an unknown location.”
“But why does the fact that it’s different mean you can’t do it? I mean, it’s not impossible! It happened to me and Meg, didn’t it?”
Serek and Anders exchanged a look.
“Well,” Serek said after a minute, “you and Meg were actually very lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
“He means,” said Anders, “that many people who experiment with that particular kind of casting are never seen or heard of again.” He paused, then added, “Well, not alive, anyway.”
Calen had a hard time swallowing his latest bite. “What?”
“Attempting to transport human beings magically is actually strictly forbidden,” Serek said. “Even short distances, even from one side of the room to another. That kind of transporting is certainly possible, if rarely of any practical purpose. And that’s because it’s relatively easy to transport something you can see to another location you can see. Just like you saw me do with Rorgson’s skull in my study.”
“But then why —?”
“It’s forbidden because mages couldn’t always agree on what acceptable short distances were, and whether or not it was okay to transport someone to a place you knew well even if you couldn’t see it. Sometimes that worked out all right, and sometimes . . .”
“Sometimes people ended up reappearing in very awkward ways. Like under a cart, or half-embedded in a rock wall,” Anders put in helpfully. He held out another little tray. “Cookie?”
Calen stared at him. “Half . . . embedded?”
Serek shot Anders an exasperated look. “That was one extreme case. Or . . . maybe two. But the point is that trying to transport a person to a place you can’t see is tricky at best and lethal at worst. And mages who tried sending people to places they didn’t know well . . . well, many of those people disappeared forever. And so just to avoid any potential confusion on the rules, the Magistratum voted
to prohibit any transporting of people. At all. There are very occasional exceptions, where mages have done so in emergencies and then petitioned for permission after the fact, but even then, it did not always work out for the best. I’m sure Anders can give you lots of unpleasant examples later on if you’d like to hear them.”
“You bet,” Anders said, nodding enthusiastically.
“But in any case, that is why we are riding horses instead of simply magically appearing in the royal gardens. And as for the other part, about line of sight — even with objects, it’s very difficult trying to send something to a place you can’t see. Difficult and dangerous, since there’s always the chance someone might be, say, standing in the place you decide to transport your object to.”
Anders leaned forward and mouthed the word half-embedded, his eyebrows raised emphatically.
“Oh. I . . . okay.” Calen swallowed again, the lump of food in his throat still not seeming to want to go down. “Got it.”
Serek looked slightly uncomfortable. “I probably should have mentioned all of this sooner, hmm? It rather slipped my mind in all the excitement when it first happened, and then . . . well. You haven’t been, ah, experimenting, have you?”
“No.” Calen felt a little faint at the idea. Thank the gods he hadn’t thought to try!
“Good. Don’t start.”
Calen nodded, looking down at his plate and trying to muster up some appetite for his remaining lunch.
“So,” Serek went on, after accepting a cookie from Anders. “We have a few more minutes before we need to start moving again. Perhaps we can answer some of your other questions.”
“Maybe just one at a time, though,” Anders put in.
Right. Calen tried to refocus. His mind kept calling up disturbing images of people half-embedded in walls. He wasn’t even sure what to ask. “What — what’s happening?” he asked finally. “What were Mage Brevera and those others trying to do? And why?”
“Or three at a time,” Anders said agreeably.
Serek finished his cookie and brushed some crumbs off onto the grass. “You know from the meeting that Mage Brevera thinks that you present a danger to the Magistratum. He also thinks you helped to cause that attack at your marking ceremony, but that, of course, is ludicrous. In any case, he and the others have been trying to determine exactly what kind of danger you pose and how it might be averted before it’s too late. He had also suggested taking some rather drastic measures to attempt to nullify this alleged danger even if they couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.”
Calen didn’t like the sound of the word nullify in this context. He was afraid to ask exactly what that meant.
“Others, including me,” Serek went on, “believe that you are involved in the danger in some way but not as the cause. It’s a matter of interpretation.”
“I’m still on the fence,” Anders said.
Calen frowned at him.
“Well, it’s the truth,” Anders said, seemingly unruffled. “But even if you are the cause of the danger, I don’t agree with the idea that you should be locked up or —”
Serek cleared his throat.
“Or, uh, anything like that,” Anders finished. “If we went around taking drastic action on every single evil omen some fool mage thought he saw foretold in a deck of cards, we’d never get anything else done.”
“I think you came just in time,” Calen said. “Mage Brevera was getting angry. He said — he asked me how long I’d been in contact with Mage Krelig. He thinks I’m working with him somehow! He seemed about to . . . about to do something. Thomil was trying to get him to wait.”
“Ah,” said Anders. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” Calen asked.
Serek answered. “When I realized Brevera and the others were blocking us from communicating — I had tried to reach you with a summoning spell, to make sure you were all right — well, that was sufficiently ominous that I decided to go to the council masters and demand that you be released. But Anders thought . . . um . . .”
“Oh, just tell him,” Anders said.
Serek raised his eyebrows at Anders, and the older mage nodded in confirmation. Serek shrugged and said, “Anders, ah . . . sees things. Every once in a while.”
“Sees things? Like things that aren’t there?” Calen asked. This would not actually surprise him.
“Sort of,” Anders said. “But not the way you mean. I see things that are going to happen. Sometimes.”
“Like prophecies? You have the Sight? Like Mage Krelig does?”
“To a degree. I don’t get them too often, although lately they’ve been coming a bit more frequently than I’m used to. And they’re usually more about current events, or the very near future, than about far-reaching, prophecy-type things. I’ve always thought of them as glimmers. Little glimpses of the future. Or of possible futures, I should say. Often there’s some choice to be made, and I can see glimmers of both possible outcomes of a given decision.”
“And you had one about me?”
“I had one that suggested we should go and retrieve you at once, without trying to get the council’s approval.”
“Did you — did you see what Mage Brevera was planning to do to me?”
“I saw enough that I knew we should get you out of there before he got to do it. Luckily, Serek knows about the glimmers and trusts them, as I do.”
“But the other mages don’t know, do they?” Calen asked, looking back and forth between Serek and Anders. “That’s why you had to give Serek permission to tell me. It’s a secret.”
“It’s . . . just something it seemed better not to advertise. For many reasons. So I will thank you to keep this information to yourself,” Anders said. “Assuming, of course, that we live long enough for it to matter. Depending on who catches up with us first, we may find ourselves the victims of some mysterious accident before we can be brought back to the Magistratum for questioning.”
“Yes,” Serek said, rising. “We should get moving.”
“But — but why couldn’t we just go to the council and tell them what happened?” Calen hurried after Serek toward the horses. “Why did we have to run away?”
“Because,” Serek said, “we have no proof other than Anders’s vision, which is a secret, and your own testimony, which Mage Brevera and the others would no doubt deny. And Anders’s vision also suggested that we might be best served by leaving the Magistratum for the time being. Your part in all of this is very controversial, Calen, and if we stayed, even the council might have seen fit to keep you confined until they felt they knew more about what was happening. There were . . . several meetings while you were being investigated, and there were many conflicting opinions on what was to be done about you. I thought it was best to look into matters on our own. It’s my hope that we’ll come up with something concrete we can bring back to the council and convince them of some other course of action.”
“How will we do that?”
Serek and Anders stopped walking and exchanged another look. “I . . . do not think that is something we should discuss with you,” Serek said.
“But . . . you said you don’t believe what Brevera does, about me being a danger —”
“No,” Serek said. “I said I don’t believe you’re the cause of the danger, but I cannot doubt that you are going to be involved. Some of the fortellings were very specific, Calen. Which makes me think it is best not to involve you in our efforts to sort this out. I am also suspending your lessons for the time being.”
Calen stared at him. “Suspending . . . but why? That makes no sense at all! Shouldn’t you finally be teaching me to defend myself if I’m going to be involved in some kind of danger? This doesn’t seem like the time to stop teaching me!”
Calen expected Serek to be angry at the outburst, but his master only shook his head. “I am sorry, Calen. We can’t know how you are going to be involved. If you are somehow . . . compromised, your knowledge could be used against us.”
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“Compromised?”
“He means —” Anders began.
“I know what he means,” Calen said. “I just can’t believe he would think that I would ever, ever help Mage Krelig.”
“Not willingly, perhaps,” Anders said. “But Mage Krelig is more powerful than you can imagine, Calen. He might be able to . . .” He trailed off, a strange expression on his face. He was looking past Calen, up at the sky.
Serek and Calen both turned to look.
An enormous shape was flying straight at them. It was dark, and fast moving, and very large.
Serek dropped his empty plate, red energy building at once between his palms. This seemed to jolt Anders back to himself as well, and he started casting something of his own, red and orange together.
“Wait,” Calen said suddenly.
“Move aside, Calen,” Anders said. “Go farther back into the trees, but don’t run.”
“Wait,” Calen said again. “I think —”
He saw Anders preparing to strike and reached out abruptly, pushing the mage off balance. He saw the spell dissipate with relief.
“Hey!” Anders said, whirling to face him and showing the first hint of real anger Calen had seen. “Don’t ever —”
“It’s all right, Anders,” Serek said, releasing his own half-formed spell.
“It is not all right!” Anders objected. “It is most certainly —”
“You were about to cast at an ally,” Serek said.
“I — what?”
Calen didn’t stay to hear the rest of Serek’s explanation. He ran forward, waving his arms. “Jakl!” he cried. “Jakl, here! What is it? What’s wrong?” Because something must be wrong. Something must be very, very wrong.
What was Jakl doing all the way out here — without Meg?
CALEN STOOD THERE WAVING HIS ARMS like an idiot, wondering why Jakl hadn’t landed already. Then he realized he was probably standing in the only possible spot where Jakl could touch down, and he moved back hastily. Jakl landed at once, narrowly missing the trees on one side and actually breaking a few branches on the other.
The Princess of Trelian Page 13
