The Princess of Trelian

by Michelle Knudsen

  She shouted an order, and several men ran off toward the second row of rocks. And then one of those terrible slaarh screams tore through the air around them. Maurel screamed again and leaned desperately into Calen. Even the men guarding them seemed uneasy. Calen put his arms around Maurel, shaking, as one of the monstrous creatures rose clumsily into the sky from behind the row of tall stones. One of the men was riding it, holding on to a chain looped around the creature’s disgusting head and neck. The slaarh screamed again and took off in the direction from which Calen had come. In the direction of the castle.

  Sen Eva stood there watching them, smiling. Behind her, more slaarh were lumbering up into the sky. These didn’t have riders. Calen didn’t know what any of it meant. What was she sending them to do?

  A shout from some of the guards made Sen Eva turn. And then she froze, staring, as Wilem walked into the pass.

  Calen stared. What was Wilem doing here alone? Was this part of Serek’s plan?

  “Hello, Mother,” Wilem said.

  “Wilem,” she said. Her coldness slipped, and a terrible hunger showed on her face. “Have you — have you come to your senses, then? Are you truly —?”

  “No,” he said, and her face closed up at once, slamming like a heavy door. “I am here to try to reason with you, if I can.”

  “I should have known you would never truly understand.” Her voice had changed again. The hope and arrogance both were gone, and she sounded just like a regular person having a regular, if disappointing, conversation. She sat down on a flat rock and looked sadly at her son.

  “I don’t understand,” Wilem agreed. “I wish you could let this go.”

  She laughed bitterly. “It’s far too late for that, I’m afraid.” She seemed about to say something else, then changed her mind. “I won’t get drawn in to talking to you. I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by coming here, but it was foolish. And now you’ll have to stay. Why don’t you have a seat with your new friends? Please don’t speak to me again. I can’t allow you to distract me, and if you try, I’ll be forced to take unpleasant measures.”

  Wilem’s eyes widened when he saw Calen. Then he looked back at his mother, clearly confused. “But — we thought, I thought . . .” He stopped and tried again. “Are you not willing to make a trade for Princess Maurel?”

  “A trade? Oh, I see.” She shook her head slowly. Almost regretfully. “No, I’m afraid you have misinterpreted the situation, my dear. I did not truly expect that you would come to me, although I could not help but try. Can you blame me for not wanting to give up hope of having you by my side in the new order?”

  “What new order? Mother, why are you doing this?”

  “You know why,” she said. “And now please stop talking to me, as I asked. Or I will have to silence you.”

  He stood looking at her a moment more, then came and sat beside Calen without another word.

  Calen was trying to figure out how to ask where Serek was without actually giving anything away to Sen Eva, when there was a commotion up near the road.

  The soldiers who had ridden off with Serek the day before suddenly rushed the pass and clashed with the outer perimeter of Sen Eva’s men. Sen Eva glanced at the fighting for only a moment. Then she turned and scanned the surrounding area.

  Bolts of red and orange energy suddenly came flying at her from behind the fighting men. Sen Eva threw up a protective shield just in time and sent her own red magic flying back toward the source.

  Serek! It must be. Calen’s embarrassment was nothing compared to his immense relief. Now things would be all right. Wilem must have been intended as a distraction, or maybe he really had meant to attempt negotiation before they resorted to fighting. It didn’t matter now. Serek came slowly into view, still casting. Calen waited to watch Sen Eva fall before Serek’s magical attack.

  Except she didn’t. They kept firing things at each other, but nothing seemed to land. They both had shields before them, and they were both apparently able to block whatever the other mage was sending. Sen Eva had obviously had a lot more practice than Calen when it came to fighting with magic — which really wasn’t very surprising, he supposed, given that he knew pretty much nothing. Serek also appeared to know a lot more than he’d ever deigned to share with his apprentice. Which, again, wasn’t really a surprise.

  Finally Sen Eva pointed a hand in Maurel’s direction. “Surrender or I’ll kill her,” she said. “Right now.”

  “No, you won’t,” Calen said, and flung up a shield of his own.

  “Calen?” Serek asked, staring at him in obvious bewilderment. And in that moment of confusion, Sen Eva fired at Serek again.

  Calen fired a second later, barely thinking, trying to send something to protect his master. Desperately, he willed his magic to reach Serek first, or at least to catch up with Sen Eva’s and alter it somehow. Serek belatedly tried to refocus his own magical defenses. Calen couldn’t see if he had managed to cast anything before there was an explosion of color where Serek had been standing a moment before.

  Calen lurched to his feet, pulling Maurel with him. I killed him, he thought. I distracted him and I killed him and now he’s going to be dead and it’s my fault, my fault, my fault. . . .

  But no! He wasn’t dead. He was . . . what? Calen squinted, trying to understand the chaos of color that still swirled around his master. It looked as though Serek had managed to put up some kind of shield, but it had — it had fused, somehow, with the other magic. He didn’t seem able to dismantle it. Sen Eva was staring as well, trying to figure out what had happened. Almost experimentally, she released a small bolt of red magic at the shield. Nothing happened, but when Serek tried to fire back at her, his magic couldn’t get past it, either.

  “Hmm,” said Sen Eva. “That’s interesting. Well, I suppose it will do for now, as long as you can’t actively annoy me from in there.” She turned away, dismissing Serek from her attention. Almost as an afterthought, she lifted a hand and sent small bolts of deadly energy at the Trelian soldiers, still fighting valiantly against Sen Eva’s greater numbers.

  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.

  MEG 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 inv
ading 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.

  CALEN STOOD THER
E, 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?”