The Princess of Trelian

by Michelle Knudsen

  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.

  H
e 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.

  LATER, 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.

  But not everyone was there. Not quite.

  “King Gerald’s men are deployed along our western border,” the king was saying, “and our scouts say their main forces are marching now.”

  “There has been no formal declaration of war from Lourin’s allies,” the commander said, “but we cannot expect anything else.”

  Meg tried to care about those things. She knew she had responsibilities here, people depending on her, a role to play in what happened from this point forward. She wanted to pay close attention and find a way to help. And she did care. She cared a lot. It was just hard to make her mind focus on any of those things for very long right now.

  She looked over at Serek. His eyes were shadowed and dark as he spoke with his companions. She’d had to fetch Anders and two of the other mages to help release him from that invisible magical enclosure he had been trapped in.

  Serek had asked Meg, more than once, whether Calen had said anything to her about what he’d been planning, what he had been doing at Bellman’s Pass, if she could think of any reason why he might have chosen to go off with Mage Krelig in that way. But he hadn’t, and she couldn’t.

  Calen hadn’t said a word to her at all.

  “Serek,” the king said now, “what are your intentions? Can I count on your assistance here, or will your other duties draw you elsewhere?”

  Serek exchanged an unreadable glance with Mage Anders. “I am . . . not yet certain, Sire. I am still hoping for an intervention from the council.”

  “Not bloody likely,” one of the other mages muttered.

  Serek ignored him and continued, “I remain your mage and advisor for the time being, at least. Although you know I cannot use magic to directly harm your enemies.”

  “Not Lourin. No, I know that,” the king said. “But what about the others? If we find ourselves under attack by other enemies? I realize Mage Krelig may not be interested in us specifically, but he has already set his creatures against our people once.” The soldiers had managed to bring down the slaarh that Meg and Jakl had left behind at the castle, but five more men now lay near death in the room at the end of the infirmary.

  “His loss of Sen Eva will surely slow him down,” Anders put in. “But we cannot expect that he will wait long to act. Especially since he appears now to have, ah, another . . .” He glanced at Meg, faltering.

  “Don’t you say it,” Meg warned him, glaring. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t.

  “Meg,” her father said sadly, “you yourself told us what you saw. It seems clear that what the mages feared has come to pass. Calen has chosen —”

  “No,” Meg said. “Stop saying that.”

  “Princess,” Serek began.

  “No!” Meg screamed at him. The world went away for a moment, as it had done sometimes when she had been suffering from the nightmare rages, but this time she knew where the rage was coming from. Distantly, she noted that she could hear Jakl roaring outside the castle, hear him with her ears as well as feel him through the link. He was angry, too.

  She realized suddenly that she was standing, that she had moved across the room, that her hands — her hands were fists, beating viciously against Serek’s chest. She had slammed him up against the wall.

  Everyone had frozen in shocked silence. Meg looked up at Serek’s face. The sadness she saw there was worse than anger would have been.

  “Princess,” Pela said softly, suddenly at her side. “Princess, you must calm down.” Gently, the younger girl reached up and took hold of Meg’s hands, drawing them away from the mage.

  “I’m sorry,” Meg whispered. She backed away. “I just can’t —” She looked at the ground, unwilling to meet anyone’s eye. “There must be a reason. He wouldn’t . . .”

  She trailed off, because of course, he had.

  Calen had willingly climbed up on the back of that monster and ridden off with Mage Krelig. She wished she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, so she could pretend it wasn’t true. She wanted to believe that he’d been under a spell, that he’d been confused, that he hadn’t known what he was doing. But he had looked her right in the eye, and his gaze had been clear and aware and open and sad. He had known.

  Serek’s concerns, now validated. But she couldn’t believe it. That wasn’t Calen. It wasn’t. He would never, never turn against them. He must have had some reason, some stupid, foolish notion that he could help save them by giving himself up.

  He would never abandon her that way.

  But he did.

  She needed him, and he had left her. He had gone off with the enemy.

  Nothing, not any other thing out of all the crazy things that had happened or could happen could ever have shocked her more. Not even Sen Eva’s sacrificing herself to save Wilem. She had been astounded when Wilem had told her, and when Maurel and Serek had confirmed it. But even that was easier to accept than what Calen had done.

  “Meg,” her father said again. “Are you — are you with us? I know how angry you are. But we need you here. You and — you and Jakl, both.”

  She looked up at him, surprised. “You’re going to let us help? Directly?” She made herself ask the real question. “You’re going to let my dragon openly fight for Trelian?”

  The room had gone very quiet again. Everyone’s eyes were on the king now.

  He nodded, his expression an odd mix of reluctance and determination. “Even assuming we will have Kragnir on our side, a war against Lourin and its allies is not a fight our armies can win for us alone. And if this war is truly of use to Mage Krelig, if our fighting among ourselves is going to make his conquest easier, then we have a responsibility to end it as soon as possible. Your dragon, Meg — in him we have an advantage I cannot in good conscience ignore.”

  He looked at the queen, who met his eyes steadily, seeming to answer a silent question.

  He turned back to Meg. “We have all seen how brave, resourceful, and dedicated you are.” He held up a hand to stop her response. “You are also impulsive, and willful, and stubborn. If you are going to be of any use to us, you will need to learn to follow orders, to work with the others who fight on our side, but . . . yes. If you are willing,” he said, “I believe we will need you both to win this war.”

  “I am,” she said at once. “We both are.”

  The meeting continued, her father’s military advisors seeming very excited about the possibilities now open to them. The mages soon left for a meeting of their own, and Meg knew they were discussing not only what to do about Mage Krelig but also what might be the fate of the Magistratum if the mages could not come together in agreement.

  Meg’s mother caught her eye across the room. Maurel was sleeping, and the queen was stroking her hair. Queen Merilyn smiled just a little, and for the first time in a long while, Meg could see something other than fear and worry in her mother’s expression.

  I am going to make you proud, Meg thought.

  Maybe she would never be the kind of princess-heir the people of Trelian could be comfortable with. But she would be the kind who could protect them, who could defend them from their enemies. She thought they would come to appreciate that.

  Sh
e felt Jakl’s excitement, his readiness to fly and fight at her command. Not yet, she thought at him fondly. But soon. We are going to show them all what having a dragon on their side is truly about.

  She only wished that Calen could be here with them. Instead of . . . instead . . .

  She tried to make herself think it: Instead of on the side of our enemies.

  But she still didn’t believe it.

  He had left her. But not forever. Calen was her best friend. More than her best friend. More than family. And he always, always would be. No matter what. He had left her, but she was going to get him back.

  And gods, was he going to be in trouble when she did.

  MICHELLE KNUDSEN is the author of many books for children, including the fantasy novel The Dragon of Trelian; the New York Times best-selling picture book Library Lion, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes; and Argus, a picture book illustrated by Andréa Wesson. She says, “I always seem to learn things from the characters in my stories. In this novel, they remind me that people can always continue to surprise you, even when you think you know them very well indeed (and apparently that goes for dragons, too).” Michelle Knudsen lives in Brooklyn.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2012 by Michelle Knudsen

  Cover ilustration copyright © 2012 by John Blackford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.