The Dragon of Trelian (15 page)

Meg’s mouth opened in dismay. Calen was rather pleased to see that expression on someone else’s face for once. “Oh, you don’t think he’d really —” She turned back to Jakl. The dragon licked his snout with a long, forked tongue.

Meg put her hands on her hips and bent toward him. “No,” she said. “You are not to eat any people! Ever! Do you understand me?” She looked at Calen. “Does he understand me?”

Jakl looked at Calen, too. Calen swallowed. Those eyes were anything but tame. “I think he understands you. I don’t know if he’ll listen, though. He’s not obligated to obey you, any more than you’re obligated to obey him. But remember how you told me you didn’t think he’d do anything to hurt you? I think that’s probably true. I think he’ll try not to upset you. But if he’s starving, and he needs to eat . . .”

Meg nodded reluctantly. “He’ll need a place deeper in the forest, then. Someplace with lots of wild game, and no farms. Or shepherds.” She frowned. “It’s going to make it harder to visit him.”

A small sound came from a nearby passage. Jakl’s head snapped around, and his eyes narrowed to yellow slits. He began slinking across the cave floor, stalking whatever unfortunate creature waited there.

“You’ll have to find a way, Meg. If he begins to miss you too much, he might come looking for you.”

“That would not go over well, would it? Certainly not right now. The guards are ready to kill anything larger than a dog on sight.” She sat down near a wall. “What could that creature have been, Calen? How could such a monster even exist?”

He had no answer for that. Even Serek seemed at a loss to explain where the creature had come from. It had taken more than thirty men to kill it, and at least four of those were killed themselves in the process. Five more lay with Roeg in the infirmary, struck with the same deadly poison. Calen had assisted Serek with their treatment, enduring again the terrible screams as the reagents they applied fought the poison in the men’s wounds. Serek had hoped to devise a more effective treatment by studying the dead monster, but the soldiers had burned the corpse in their anger and fear, and nothing was left of it but a pile of blackened bones and ashes. Serek had been furious. By the time he had finished cursing the soldiers for their stupidity, Calen guessed that half of them were more afraid of him than they’d been of the creature.

Meg turned her eyes from the entrance of the passage down which Jakl had disappeared (and in which, from the sound of it, he was now eating his recent catch) back to Calen. “Do you think the monster could have been the danger you saw in the spirit cards?”

Calen blinked at her, startled. Could it have been? The possibility had not occurred to him. But even as he considered it now, he realized he didn’t believe it. “No,” he told her. “I don’t think so. Terrible as it was, it doesn’t feel big enough to be the danger I saw.” He fell silent, trying not to hear the messy crunching sounds coming from the other passage. He felt certain he was right, and yet — that would mean that something worse was going to happen. Meg met his eyes grimly, and he could tell she was thinking the same thing. After a second, he added, “I wonder, though — maybe it’s related. Maybe these individual attacks are just the beginning of something larger.”

“You mean, maybe someone is behind them? Maybe they’re not just random terrible things?”

Calen shrugged. “It does seem possible, doesn’t it? Did you ever ask your parents about their conversation with Serek? About the spirit cards? Did they say anything about what they thought the danger might be?”

“No,” Meg said bitterly. “I mean, yes, I asked, but no, they didn’t tell me anything. They won’t talk about it at all. They keep telling us not to worry, they’ll take every precaution, and so on. As though we can just stop thinking about it because they say so!”

Why did adults always seem to want to keep children in the dark about things? Did they really think they were better off not knowing? Or was it just too inconvenient to bother to explain? Of course, Calen reflected, it’s not like he and Meg weren’t keeping a few secrets of their own.

He blinked as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “You know, Meg, I have to say — you’re taking this linking thing much better than I would.” It was true. She seemed to have just accepted it and moved on. “Are you really all right?”

She gave him one of her looks. “What did you expect me to do? Fall apart? How would that help? Besides, it’s not like anything has really changed.”

He stared at her.

She threw up her hands. “Oh, all right. Of course that’s not true. Everything has changed. But I was already concerned about Jakl’s safety before. Now I’ve just got more of a personal stake in it — that’s all. In a way, this might actually help me ensure his safety. If I eventually have to reveal his presence to my parents, they won’t be able to have him destroyed without destroying me as well. And while I’m sure they’d be quite angry with me for letting something like this happen, they probably wouldn’t be angry enough to
kill
me.” She thought about this for a minute. “I’ll just have to make sure no one discovers him by accident and tries to hurt him before I have a chance to explain.”

She turned to look at Jakl, who was now sniffing around near the passage where he had caught the whatever-it-was, apparently trying to discover whether it had brought along any friends.

“Jakl, come here,” she said firmly.

The dragon glanced at her, then turned his attention back to his sniffing.

Meg chewed on her lip, thinking. “Jakl,” she began again, then stopped. She closed her eyes and seemed to be concentrating. One hand reached up to rest over her heart.

Jakl looked over at her again, then turned and came across the cavern to curl up at her feet. She opened her eyes and smiled down at him. Then she looked up at Calen. “I think he can understand me if I speak to him the right way. He won’t obey me — I believe you’re right about that. But if I can make him understand, maybe I can keep him from straying too far or letting himself be seen.”

Calen hoped she was right.

DAYS PASSED, AND MEG FOUND HER
life settling into a kind of daily routine. A progressively strange and secretive routine, but a routine all the same.

Mornings, she woke and dressed and then had breakfast with her sisters and sometimes her parents as well. Wedding plans were discussed, and after the plates were cleared away there were always details to attend to — fabrics to examine, dresses to try on, books to peruse for appropriate readings or blessings. The ceremony would take place at the end of the month, and suddenly that was only two weeks away, and then less, and then
less
— and the amount to do seemed to be increasing as the time remaining disappeared. Only a small portion of the ceremony was standard; the rest fell upon the two families to plan and arrange.

The groom’s family was responsible for the groom’s court, and the bride’s family was responsible for the bride’s court, which was always complicated, and made more so in this case because the bride’s family was hosting the wedding as well. Maerlie had her hands full, but Meg thought she was handling herself very well. She only occasionally lost her temper or seemed noticeably overwhelmed. Her sisters made some tasks easier and some harder. She had all of them to help her, plus Mother and Nan Vera, but also all of them to include in the ceremony with appropriate sisterly and motherly and nursemaidly functions. And all of their opinions to endure. Well, except Mattie, of course, who was too little to have opinions yet.

The group wedding sessions would invariably continue until luncheon was served, after which Meg would steal away to meet Calen and visit Jakl. Maerlie covered her afternoon absences with suitable excuses, never straying from her promise to respect Meg’s need for secrecy. Meg knew she would never be able to express to her sister how deeply grateful she was for her help in this, so she did not try, trusting Maerlie to know how she felt.

Meg’s success in escaping was bittersweet. She
had
to see Jakl — it was hard for her to be away from him for very long, and she was afraid of what he might do if he started to miss her too much — but she was all too aware of how quickly time was passing in the other half of her life. Every afternoon she spent apart from Maerlie was an opportunity lost forever; soon her sister would be far away, and Meg might have to go months, maybe even years, without seeing her at all. That hurt to think about; Maerlie had always been there. Always.

Calen would greet her daily with new information gleaned from his books. Meg was continually astounded by how much there was to know about dragons. They were so much more complex than she had ever imagined. Of course, she hadn’t given much thought to the matter before finding Jakl. Everyone knew dragons existed, but they were so rarely seen that they often seemed more like imaginary creatures than real ones. Not anything people thought about in everyday life. Now she sometimes found it impossible to think of anything else. At the castle, or anywhere other than by his side, her feelings about the dragon and their connection were mixed beyond any hope of sorting out. Sometimes she loved the way she could always feel him and the way their bond seemed to get stronger and stronger with each passing day. But other times . . . she thought about the way it was a chain from which she would never be free. And she
would
never be free — it was that more than anything else that terrified her, the permanence of their link, the notion that whatever path the future held for her would necessarily have to accommodate him as well. Forever.

But once she was close enough to sense him strongly, to be immersed in the warm and gleaming
force
of him, it was hard to be anything other than exhilarated. He was so full of life. She had tried explaining it to Calen on more than one occasion but could never find the words. Jakl was alive in a way Meg had never felt before. He radiated energy like a ball of fire, experiencing sensations more fully than Meg had thought possible — and she experienced them that way, too, now, while they were together. In fact there was always a period of readjustment after she left him, during which the world felt dim and gray and pointless. And he loved her, loved her completely and unquestionably, and she could feel that, too.

All these feelings grew as the strength of their link increased. Meg couldn’t help fearing that it would become harder and harder to leave his side. Would a day come when she would finally be unable to tear herself away? She tried to convince herself that that could never happen, and yet — she could see how it might be possible. What if she stopped wanting to do anything other than be with him?

They had found him a new cave farther away from the castle, one with an entrance passage that seemed large enough that he wouldn’t outgrow it. It was in a small valley deep in the Hunterheart, hidden from casual view and well beyond the borders of any outlying farms. It turned out to be a good thing they didn’t wait any longer; shortly after they moved him, Jakl started flying. Just little fluttering attempts at first, but Meg was thrilled to see how quickly he gained strength and confidence. Well, thrilled and anxious. She hoped he truly understood how important it was not to let himself be seen.

Calen almost always came with her to visit the dragon, and Meg was especially grateful for his company on those walks through the forest. She was grateful for him anyway — it meant so much to her to be able to talk to him about Jakl and have his help in figuring everything out — but everyone knew the woods were no longer safe for wandering around in, and she would have been very nervous making the trips to Jakl’s cave alone. Calen didn’t even seem to think twice about putting himself at risk for her. She hoped she got the chance to repay him someday.

They always returned by early evening, with enough time for Meg to wash and change before dinner. Sometimes she would walk to dinner with some or all of her sisters, depending on where the meal was being served that evening and who else would be in attendance. And sometimes she would walk with Wilem.

He didn’t escort her every night, but often enough that people were beginning to notice. Meg worried about the comments that might reach his ear, and how he might react, but if he was bothered by anything he heard, he gave no sign. He was ever kind and courteous, and although at first he had held to a rather stiff formality of speech that made many of their conversations feel like selections from a book of approved statements and responses for respectable young men and young ladies, lately he had begun to open up to her, speaking more freely of his life and friends and experiences in Kragnir, as well as his hopes and dreams for the future.

Meg was smitten. Part of her rebelled against the idea, wanting to insist that she was not some silly girl who would let herself fall so fully under the spell of any boy, even as fine an example as this one. But she was not so thickheaded that she failed to see the truth of things. Wilem made her feel newly alive just as Jakl did, but in a completely different way. Being with him was one of the few things that did take her mind off the dragon, and when it was time to part company, she had a similar sense of forcing herself to readjust to a dull and lackluster world. Sometimes she worried about that as well. She didn’t want to live her life entirely for Wilem any more than she wanted to live it solely for Jakl. She just wanted to be herself. Was that so much to ask