The Princess of Trelian (21 page)

“Tessel,” Meg said in a strange, flat voice. “She’s a Trelian courier. They were . . . torturing her.”

“What?
Why?
No, never mind. Tell me later. Just help me get her out of there.” Calen ran toward the girl and began inspecting the clasps that held her to the chair. “I think I can . . .” He looked up to see that Meg hadn’t moved from where she was standing.

“Meg?”

“It’s my
fault,
” Meg said.

“What are you talking about?”

“She shouldn’t have been hurt. She shouldn’t have been here at all.” She looked at him, and her eyes were brimming with tears.

Calen straightened and walked back over to Meg. “What’s wrong?” he asked, searching her face. “What happened? How did you even get here?”

“I was trying to — I had to —” She stopped and shook her head in frustration. “I thought I was doing the right thing. But I can’t tell what that means anymore.”

“Meg.” Calen grabbed her shoulders. “You’re not making any sense.” He looked her in the eye, still searching. “What’s going on? What
happened
?”

She looked back at him, struggle visible on her face. “I’m so angry, Calen. The people were cheering. She was bleeding and screaming, and they were shouting for more. I
hate
them. I wanted to . . . I had to make sure Jakl didn’t hurt them, but I wanted him to. I wanted him to set them all on fire and burn them to ashes where they stood.” Her voice was rising, her eyes losing focus in a very alarming manner. “I still want to. Burn them, and burn King Gerald, too, and
everyone,
everyone who . . .” She blinked, and her eyes seemed to clear, but she still seemed off, confused. Jakl screamed again above them, and she took a deep breath. “I can’t . . .”

“Yes, you can,” Calen said, far more calmly than he felt. “Come on, Meg. I know you’ve been through something bad here, but it’s okay now. Everything’s okay. If it’s Jakl confusing how you feel, you know how to block that.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t work anymore. Something’s wrong. And it’s not just him.
I’m
angry. So much. I
hate
—”

Calen shook her by the shoulders. Not too hard — he didn’t want to hurt her — but he needed her to snap out of this. He didn’t like it, whatever it was. “Stop it, Meg! You need to focus. You’re just . . . confused right now.”

Her eyes widened suddenly. “Confused . . . Calen, we have to tell Serek. Sen Eva was influencing King Gerald somehow, confusing him, making him believe she’d been his advisor for years.”

Serek and Anders were still looking for Sen Eva among the townspeople. “Serek!” Calen shouted.

The two mages ran over, and Meg repeated what she’d said. Then she looked around. “I don’t know where the king went — the guards must have taken him back inside.”

Serek started at once for a stone archway at the far end of the platform. He called back over his shoulder. “Calen, you come with me. Anders, stay with the princess and do not leave her side!”

“And help that girl,” Calen told Anders. “She’s a Trelian courier. They — they tortured her.”

Anders turned toward the girl in the chair, and Meg gave Calen a grateful look before following the older mage. She seemed to be mostly back to herself again. For now, anyway.

Calen ran after Serek, into the castle. “How do we find him?” Calen asked. But almost immediately a guard stepped into their path, his sword held at the ready.

“Stop there, Mages,” he said.

“Are you loyal to your king?” Serek asked.

The man’s face hardened. “Of course.”

“Then you’ll want to take me to him.”

The guard stood his ground. “I can’t do that.”

“Has he been acting strangely lately?” Serek pressed. “Not quite himself? Giving orders that don’t seem to fit normal protocol?”

Now doubt showed in the guard’s face. But he shook his head. “That’s none of your —”

“He has been under the influence of a very dangerous woman,” Serek broke in. “She’s a mage in secret, and she’s used her magic to convince the king and everyone around him that she’s been his advisor for years. Deep down, I think you know better. She’s probably made you uneasy from the start, yes?”

Another guard stepped out of an adjoining corridor. Calen thought it might be the same one who’d been holding Meg on the platform. “It’s all right, Marcus,” he said to the first guard. Then he turned to Serek and Calen. “Come with me.”

He led them to a small but well-appointed room behind several locked doors. An anxious-looking man who had to be King Gerald sat on stuffed chair. Another guard, looking equally anxious, hovered nearby. He put a hand on his sword as Serek and Calen walked in. “Stefan?” he asked, looking to the guard who had led them inside.

“It’s all right,” Stefan said again.

“Did you find Delana?” the king asked plaintively. “Where is she?”

Stefan knelt before the king’s chair. “These men can help, Sire,” he said gently. Then he rose and gave Serek a hard look. “I trust that you do mean to help,” he said. “If you try anything else, you won’t leave this room alive.”

Serek nodded impatiently and stepped toward the king. He placed one hand on the side of the king’s head and began to send out tendrils of white energy laced with blue, letting them flow from his hand and into the older man before him. After a moment, Serek drew in a sharp breath and then looked up at Calen.

“Do you see anything? Besides what I’m doing? Anything in or around King Gerald?”

“No,” Calen said. He squinted, trying to make sure. But he didn’t see anything unusual other than Serek’s own magic. “Is there something I should see?”

“I would have thought so, but maybe — maybe your sight only applies during the actual casting. This is something else. Something Sen Eva must have laid the groundwork for over time, then strengthened with new magic as needed.”

“What is it?” Stefan asked.

“A kind of persuasion spell. Something to make King Gerald trust his new advisor and make him believe she’d been here far longer than she had.” He looked at the guards. “She must have touched you with this as well,” he said. “Unless you can remember when she arrived — fairly recently?”

Stefan seemed to be struggling with something. “I — I would have sworn she had been here for years. But when I try to think of specific incidents or times . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. She has felt . . . wrong to me, somehow, but I thought I just didn’t like her. King Gerald has held questionable company before, from time to time.” He took a breath. “Can you remove whatever spell we are under?”

“Yes,” Serek said. Again he touched the king, who had sat still and silent like a small, worried child during this conversation. A slow seeping of bright orange — neutralizing energy — left Serek’s hands. After a moment, the king started as though waking from an unintentional doze in his chair. He stared at Serek and Calen and then looked around at his guards.

“What . . . what is happening here?” he asked.

Serek raised and spread his arms, one hand in the direction of each guard, and sent a quick burst of the same quality of orange energy at each of them simultaneously. They both looked startled, and then dismayed.

“Sire,” Stefan said, “we have been the victims of magical treachery.”

The king looked suspiciously at Serek and Calen, and Stefan hastened to add, “Not by these mages, Majesty. A — a common enemy. The woman who called herself Delana.”

“Delana!” the king said indignantly. “Delana has been my . . .” he trailed off uncertainly. “No, that’s not right.” He looked again at Serek, and then at Stefan.

Serek stood. “I’ll leave you to explain. I must get the princess-heir back to Trelian.”

Now the king seemed to come fully back to himself. “The dragon-girl! No, I cannot allow —”

With the barest flick of his fingers, Serek cast again at the king and his guards — a version of the immobilization spell he’d used on Mage Brevera and the others. Calen stared; was Serek allowed to do that to a king?

“I apologize, King Gerald, to you and to your men,” Serek said. “But I have a duty to take the princess home, and you have been fed a great deal of misinformation that is still clouding your judgment. You will find yourself able to move again shortly; I trust you will think carefully and sort out the truth before taking any further action against Trelian.”

He turned to leave, and Calen hurried after him, glancing back only once to see the king staring furiously after them. They ran back outside to find Meg and Anders waiting, Tessel supported between them. Anders was holding some sort of blocking spell around them — intended, Calen could tell by the colors, to both protect them and make them less noticeable to anyone who might forget the dragon long enough to remember that the princess was still there.

“Can the dragon carry all of us, Your Highness?” Serek asked.

“I — I don’t know,” she said. “He only needs to get us a safe distance away from here, if he can’t make it all the way. Although . . . I don’t know how we’ll get to him while they’re still shooting at him. He’s already . . . it’s very difficult to keep him from fighting back. He’s so angry. . . .”

Calen was struck by the tension in Meg’s face. She shouldn’t be struggling with Jakl that way. He frowned. Now wasn’t the time, but he was clearly going to have to find out what was going on. If she was having trouble with the link . . . He hated that he hadn’t been here to help her.

“Can we stop the arrows somehow?” Calen asked Serek. “Give him a chance to come down and get us?”

The two mages looked at each other. Then Anders had Meg help him lower Tessel gently to the ground. He turned toward the confusion of people and guards and began sending clouds of blue energy spiraling out from his upraised hands.

“Sleep spell,” Serek said, adding his own casting to Anders’s. “Do you think you can join in, Calen? I know we haven’t practiced combined casting, but given that you can see what we’re doing . . . I think you’ll be able to match our progress. Just try to stay even with our levels. Don’t push; only follow. Do you understand?”

Calen nodded. He cleared his mind and then let his own casting begin, matching his own spell to what he could see of Serek’s and Anders’s. There was something he wasn’t quite getting, he could tell. . . . Serek and Anders had truly combined their casting somehow, and his own magic was only supplementing theirs, not really joining . . . but he thought it was enough. It felt . . . strange, almost as if the combined spell were pulling at his magic somehow, helping it flow from him more easily.

Around them, the people who were just beginning to come out of their disorientation from Anders’s last spell suddenly fell to the ground. People dropped in a widening circle as the spell grew outward. Calen trusted Meg wouldn’t count this as hurting them; the worst anyone would experience might be a bruise, or maybe a headache.

Anders sent additional tendrils of the spell outward, toward those outside the amphitheater. Calen followed him, and he could feel when his magic encountered the bowmen and dropped them as well. In moments, everything was quiet.

Jakl swooped down in a heartbeat, somehow managing not to squash any of the sleeping people as he did so. Serek released the spell and gently told Calen to do the same. “Anders will finish it,” he added.

Calen turned to Meg and helped her with Tessel. Between the two of them, they managed to help the barely responsive girl up and onto the dragon’s back.

Anders had finished off the spell but was watching the sleeping townspeople, probably checking for any signs of movement. Serek was stepping carefully among the slumped forms, looking at faces and clothing. Looking for Sen Eva, Calen realized. Well, of course. They couldn’t just leave her there, could they?

But after working his way through the entire crowd, Serek looked over at them and shook his head. Then he walked back toward them and climbed up behind Calen. Anders followed behind Serek.

“Where did she go?” Calen asked Serek over his shoulder.

“I don’t know. She had ample time to flee while we were with King Gerald. But we can’t risk staying here longer. We’ve got to get back and tell the king and queen what’s happened.” He sighed. “All of it. I’m afraid the situation is even more complicated and urgent than we’d feared.”

“Those really terrible things are already starting to happen, aren’t they?” Calen asked.

Serek didn’t answer. But he didn’t really need to, Calen supposed. It had kind of been a rhetorical question. The reappearance of Sen Eva alone was enough to qualify as terrible, and with this talk of war and Meg being held prisoner and the Magistratum chasing after them . . . Calen was afraid they were already well beyond terrible and onto . . . whatever was worse.

He was still trying to think of the right word for “more than terrible” as Jakl launched back into the sky and headed for home.

H
ER PARENTS WERE SO FURIOUS THEY
couldn’t even look at her. Meg understood why they were angry. She didn’t blame them. Her father was pacing as he spoke, looking at Serek, Anders, and Calen in turn. Her mother followed the king with her eyes, her expression grim.

Jakl had been able to make it all the way back after all, though he’d needed what strength Meg could share with him toward the end. Which had meant that when they’d arrived, both she and Tessel had had to be half carried up into the castle. Tessel had been taken straight to the infirmary. Mage Anders had healed the worst of her cuts and bruises back in Lourin, but she had still kept slipping in and out of consciousness. He’d said she probably just needed some time to recover from the shock and pain of what had happened.