The Princess of Trelian

by Michelle Knudsen

  But she didn’t know what to do instead. How long had it been since Jakl had left? Could she hold out until he brought Calen? Would Calen even be able to help them? Or would she just be bringing him into danger like she did Tessel? Maybe sending for him had been a mistake. Another mistake. What if Jakl returned without him? What if the dragon came just as Sen Eva wanted, and Jakl reacted to Meg’s being in danger in the way that she feared he would?

  This was bad. This was very bad. And it was all her fault. Tessel was right; she hadn’t been acting like the princess-heir. And now all of them were going to pay the price.

  King Gerald and Sen Eva sat in large, cushioned chairs at one edge of the platform. Borle brought Tessel forward and pushed her into the other chair, the one right in front of the torturer. His face grim, the guard secured her arms and legs to the chair and then backed away.

  The torturer produced a black roll of fabric. He placed it on the table. Then he slowly unrolled it to reveal an assortment of shiny metal tools.

  “Please,” Meg said. “Wait.”

  The king ignored her. “People of Lourin,” he called to the audience, “you have asked me to take action in response to the attacks we have suffered at the hands of our neighbor kingdom. You see before you the princess-heir of Trelian, the one who controls the dragon. She is going to call him here for us, and we will execute him. Thus will you be assured of your safety from this day forward!”

  The crowd gave a great cheer.

  “This is a lie!” Meg shouted. “You are all being deceived!”

  People shouted back at her, calling out insults and angry threats, and some began to throw things — bits of trash and rotten food and more than a few rocks. One of the rocks struck her on the cheek just below her eye. Meg turned to try to shield her face and saw King Gerald raise a hand, palm out, toward the crowd. They quieted and waited for him to speak.

  “Sometimes a king must do difficult things in order to protect his people. As you see, the Trelian princess refuses to cooperate. This forces us to compel her by other means. The other girl is the princess’s companion. Perhaps her suffering will affect the princess-heir in a way our own suffering does not.” He seemed to falter suddenly, and Sen Eva placed her hand on his arm. Then he spoke again in a stronger voice. “Delana assures me that it is so.”

  Meg lurched toward Tessel, not even sure what she meant to try to do, but Stefan’s strong hands grabbed her and held her back. She could tell that Tessel was trying to be brave, but when the torturer held up the first of his instruments, her nerve broke. Tears began to leak from her eyes.

  Maybe they’re just trying to scare me, Meg thought desperately. They wouldn’t really . . . She’s a courier. They’re not supposed to —

  And then the torturer leaned forward and made a swift, short cut along Tessel’s inner arm. She screamed.

  “Stop!” Meg shouted. “She’s — she’s a courier! You can’t . . . check inside her pocket, her sash —”

  The shouts of the spectators drowned her out. The torturer leaned forward again.

  “Please!” Meg screamed again. This was horrible, and all her fault; she had to make it stop. “Please! I’ll — I’ll call the dragon. Please, just stop.”

  The noise of the crowd intensified, and the torturer raised his head to look at the king.

  Sen Eva whispered something to him, and King Gerald nodded. “Continue,” he said to the torturer. “The princess has already proven herself to be deceitful. You must continue your work until we actually see the dragon before us. It is the only way to be sure.”

  Tessel struggled in her chair, but the restraints held her fast. Meg struggled, too, trying to break free of Stefan’s grip, trying to get to Tessel, to save her from having to pay for Meg’s stupid, impulsive decision. But she couldn’t get free any more than Tessel could.

  Below the stage, the crowd continued to cheer and urge the torturer on. “What’s wrong with you?” Meg screamed at them. Did they really think torturing an innocent girl was somehow going to solve their problems?

  She turned to look at the king and saw Sen Eva grinning at her. Meg’s hatred burned within her like true fire. One day, I will kill you, she promised silently. One day you are going to pay for everything. Her hatred felt too big to contain; it burned stronger and brighter until she couldn’t understand how Stefan was still holding her, how he didn’t pull away from the force of the heat.

  Jakl, she realized suddenly. He was getting closer. She was feeling him again, and he was feeling her, adding to her rage and hate. She welcomed it, drawing his anger into her, trying to feel it in every corner of her being. Hurry, she thought at him. Oh, hurry. I need you. She was no longer worried about what he might do to the people of Lourin. She looked at them, watching, cheering, calling for Tessel’s blood. They sickened her. She wanted Jakl to burn them all.

  No, she thought. No, no. She was losing herself again. She had to stay present. She still had to stop this war from starting. She couldn’t let Jakl hurt anyone. She had to remember.

  She felt him push himself harder, struggling to reach her. She could hear his roar, feel the rushing of the wind as he flew. She tried to stay focused, tried to remember. It was hard, with the fire burning so hot within her.

  She was dimly aware that somewhere, in the background, Tessel was screaming again.

  IT WAS HARD TO TELL HOW much time had passed when Jakl suddenly seemed to press forward with new effort. The clouds sped by even faster than before, and Calen made himself stare very intently at Jakl’s neck so he could try to stop noticing the clouds. He didn’t really need to see how fast they were going.

  There was a shift in the dragon’s body below them, and suddenly they were dropping through the sky. Calen squeaked involuntarily before he realized it was a controlled, if still alarmingly swift, descent, not the dragon plunging downward to all of their deaths.

  They seemed to be approaching a small city. It was no place he’d been before; he could see an unfamiliar castle in the distance. Not one of Trelian’s provinces, then. Someplace else. He had no sense of which direction they’d traveled, no idea where they were in relation to the Magistratum or anyplace else. Maybe Serek or Anders would know. Or Meg could tell them later. After they reached the ground safely and rescued her from whatever danger she was in and all made it safely back home again.

  As Jakl dropped lower still, the castle grew closer. Calen could see more details below — houses and fields, trees and roads. And up ahead, in an area adjoining the castle proper, a large group of people stood facing a raised platform with a large cleared area before it. There were several figures on the platform, a few seated, the rest standing.

  A few heads turned in their direction, and then suddenly everyone was shouting and people were racing every which way. As they drew nearer, Calen saw with relief that one of the figures on the platform was Meg. She was struggling to break free from a guard, but she seemed all right. Awake and alive, anyway, and not visibly damaged, except for what looked like a cut under one eye. But she was screaming — screaming at the guard, at the people near her, screaming at Jakl. . . . What was she saying?

  Jakl screamed back, then lurched crazily to the side, and Calen threw himself against the dragon’s neck, trying to grab on to whatever he could hold. He heard Serek swearing behind him. A volley of crossbow bolts flew through the space they’d occupied a moment earlier.

  Calen was beginning to make out some of Meg’s words. He heard her scream, “Jakl, no fire! No fire, do you hear me?” and then Jakl lurched again, this time rising up as he did so. Maybe to get out of range of the bolts, Calen thought. Why didn’t Meg want him to use his fire? That would make whoever was shooting at them stop and run away, wouldn’t it?

  Jakl changed direction again, looping around in a stomach-twisting arc and circling low around the outside of the amphitheater. Calen had a moment to realize they were upside down, and then Jakl shuddered violently, and they all fell off.

  Calen had onl
y just inhaled to scream when the ground came up to meet him. The air rushed right back out of his lungs, and he rolled over onto his back and watched Jakl circle back up into the sky. What —?

  “I gather the dragon wanted us to dismount,” Anders said from the ground beside him. “That was certainly, ah, efficient.”

  Serek was already on his feet, racing toward the platform. Where Meg was. Calen scrambled up and hurried after him.

  People were shouting and running all around them. Calen could see groups of archers and crossbowmen still trying to take aim at the dragon. Other guards around the cleared area were holding swords and axes. He had no idea how they expected to reach Jakl with those.

  Calen reached Serek’s side just as they arrived at the platform. Meg stood at the edge, free of the guard who had been holding her, although it looked like her hands were still bound. Her hair and eyes were wild, her expression a strange mix of relief and fear and pain.

  “Sen Eva!” she shouted down to them. “It’s Sen Eva, she’s here!”

  Calen’s blood turned to ice at the sound of that name. He spun around, staring, but he didn’t see her anywhere. Serek had climbed up onto the platform and was trying to untie Meg’s hands, telling her to calm down, but Meg was shaking her head urgently.

  “Serek, the woman in the green dress, behind you, it’s her — I swear it!”

  Calen turned to look. A woman in a deep-green dress was speaking in harsh tones to a group of huddling townspeople. That wasn’t Sen Eva. It didn’t even look anything like her. Had Meg gone crazy?

  He took a few steps closer, trying to hear what the woman was saying above all the other shouting and Jakl’s cries from where he was still circling in the sky.

  “You see the way she called the dragon down to attack you,” the woman was shouting to the people around her. “You saw it with your own eyes!”

  She did sound a little like Sen Eva. That was unnerving. But she wasn’t; she was clearly not the same woman. He looked closer. There was something odd about the woman’s hands. They seemed blurry. Blurred with — he squinted. Then gasped.

  Magic energy. That’s what he was seeing. His mind flashed back to the first time he’d met Sen Eva, when he’d realized what she was. An unmarked mage, an aberration. And now here she was again. Oh gods, it was her. Somehow. But her face! How could she . . . ?

  “Serek!” Calen said, stepping quickly back to the platform. “She’s casting. She is. Something subtle, but it’s there.”

  Serek stared for a moment and then leaped down from the stage and ran toward her. The woman was facing away from him, but as the people around her noticed his approach, she turned to see what they were looking at. Her eyes widened. “You!” she said.

  Serek grabbed her arm and then jerked as if burned. He can feel her ability, Calen realized. The test of touch Serek had never gotten a chance to apply the last time around.

  Serek released her while at the same time flinging a shield around himself to protect against whatever she might cast. Calen vaulted up onto the platform beside Meg and flung up a shield of his own.

  But Sen Eva didn’t cast anything at them. Instead she backed into the crowd, shouting, “You see! Now they have sent their mage against us as well!” The light touch of energy was still flowing from her hands, blue and white and purple, flowing from her and trickling through the crowd around her, flowing through the people and continuing onward. They did not seem aware; they reacted only to her voice, nodding and taking up echoes of her words to pass along to the people behind them.

  “Trelian’s mage!”

  “Trelian moves against us!”

  What?

  Calen turned toward Meg in confusion. She shook her head at him. “Later. I’ll explain everything. Right now we just need to get back.” He finished releasing her hands, and she started to thank him, then stopped as her eyes moved to look at something behind him. “Who’s that?”

  Calen spun back around — all this turning and looking was starting to make him dizzy — to see what new threat was coming at them. But it was only Anders, standing at the edge of the square and appearing very confused as he looked back and forth between Serek and Calen and everyone else.

  “It’s okay. He’s a friend of Serek’s,” Calen told Meg.

  She stared at him, then shook her head again as if filing this startling bit of news away for later. He suspected they would have a lot to fill each other in on once they were back home.

  Meg stopped rubbing her wrists suddenly and reached toward his face. “Your mark,” she said. “Oh, Calen. It’s beautiful.”

  Then a commotion from behind them made them both turn. Serek was surrounded by the townspeople, who were pushing and shoving him, preventing him from going after Sen Eva. Anders was running to Serek’s aid but seemed uncertain what to do. Calen understood — they couldn’t cast anything harmful and risk hurting the other people, but they couldn’t do nothing and let Sen Eva get away. . . .

  “Don’t hurt them!” Meg cried desperately. “They already think we’re attacking them! If anyone else is hurt . . .”

  Anders hesitated a moment more and then sent a burst of grayish energy at the crowd. Some sort of confusion or fog spell, from what Calen could see. The people stopped fighting, rubbing at their eyes or staring around as if unable to see clearly. Anders reached in and grabbed Serek’s arm, then pulled him away from the crowd.

  “Meg,” Calen said, “can Jakl carry all of us? You and me and Serek and Anders and, uh, who’s that?” There was a girl slumped — unconscious? — in a chair at the edge of the platform. She was bleeding from several cuts along her arms and two across her cheek.

  “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 eye
s 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.”