The Princess of Trelian

by Michelle Knudsen

  “Oh,” she said. She hadn’t even considered stopping to change before going to tell her parents what had happened, and then they had all started talking, and fighting. . . . “Um, maybe that would be a good idea.”

  “Meg —”

  She held up a hand. “I’m not stalling, Calen — I promise. But I shouldn’t really be seen sitting around in the garden in tatters like this. Meet me in an hour?”

  “All right,” Calen said. He hesitated, then added, grinning, “You do look pretty awful.”

  Meg swatted at him as he ducked away, and then she let Pela lead her off toward her rooms. Pela babbled on about all the things the servants had been saying and asked endless questions about Tessel and Calen and Anders and Serek without waiting for any of the answers. It was just as well; Meg didn’t feel much like explaining the little she could explain or coming up with suitable excuses for not explaining the rest.

  She had to admit that it was lovely to let Pela take care of her. Without once waiting for direction, Pela called up some hot water for a bath, helped Meg out of her dirty clothes and into the tub, and helped her to wash and dry and change into fresh clothing. Meg felt rather more like herself again once she was clean.

  She sat at her dressing table to let Pela put up her hair. It made her think of the way Maerlie used to arrange her hair for her sometimes. She wished her sister were here now. Maer had always been so good at making her feel better. Although she would certainly not have supported Meg’s secret journey into Lourin. She’d probably be just as angry with Meg right now as their parents were.

  “I wish you had told me,” Pela said suddenly, breaking into Meg’s thoughts.

  “What?” Meg looked at the younger girl in the mirror, but Pela’s eyes were still on Meg’s hair.

  “About going to Lourin. I could have helped you.”

  “Pela —” Meg broke off, unsure what she meant to say. I couldn’t trust you not to tell my parents? I didn’t want to risk getting you in trouble? I couldn’t possibly explain why I needed to go there without telling you things I need to keep secret? Those were all true, but she didn’t feel like she could say any of those things straight out. “I know you want to be helpful,” she said instead, “but there are some things I just need to do on my own.”

  “But you didn’t do it on your own; you took that courier girl with you.” Pela frowned and twisted up another section of hair. “But I didn’t mean you should have taken me with you. I just meant you should have told me. I can’t help you if you won’t let me.”

  Meg was still trying to think of how to respond when Pela stepped back and smiled at her in the mirror. “All done, Princess,” she said brightly. “Now you look just like you should. Do you like what I did with your hair?”

  “Yes, Pela. Thank you.” Pela was right; she did look much more princess-like now.

  “I’ll take care of those dirty clothes,” Pela said. “Unless you’d like me to walk you down to the garden?”

  “No, that’s all right.” Meg stood and started for the door, then turned back. “Thank you, Pela. Truly. You really are a great help to me.”

  “Of course, Princess,” she said. She gave Meg a little curtsy and ushered her out the door.

  Calen was waiting for Meg on one of the stone benches. She almost stopped for a second just to stand there and appreciate how wonderful it was to see him, here, finally, back where he belonged. She was sure he was glad to be back, too. He’d only had a chance to tell her tiny snippets of what had happened at the Magistratum, but it certainly did not sound good, for the most part. Except for his new mark. He seemed very proud of it, holding his head up with a little more confidence than he had before. She was glad to see it.

  She sat down beside him and smiled unashamedly. “It’s so good to have you back home, Calen,” she said.

  “It’s good to be back,” he said. “I, uh . . . you know . . .”

  “Missed me?”

  “Yeah.” He looked up to catch her grinning at him. “Just a little,” he added hastily. “Not a whole lot, or anything.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  They sat there for a moment, Meg still smiling, Calen picking at a loose thread on his sleeve.

  “So,” he said, finally. “Tell me.”

  Her smile fled, and she looked at him seriously. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, Calen. To us.” She told him about Jakl’s sudden rages, the way it was getting harder and harder to maintain the barrier when she needed to protect herself from the dragon’s emotional influence. “And it’s not just Jakl,” she added. “It’s me, too. Sometimes I get angry all on my own, and he’s the one who’s influenced by me. It’s like . . . like there’s always this terrible rage, waiting inside me, and sometimes it just washes over me. But either way, wherever it starts, we both end up feeling it by the end. And then it just gets worse, and feeds on itself through the link. . . .” She trailed off, knowing Calen understood.

  “That’s definitely not good,” he said, frowning. “I need to figure out why that’s happening. We can’t have Jakl going all crazy one day, and you not being able to stop him.” He hesitated, then added, “Or have you going all crazy instead.”

  “Right,” she said. “There’s also . . . I’ve been having these nightmares. I thought maybe they had something to do with it. Jakl is definitely experiencing them with me in some way. Emotionally, at least, if not the specific images. They’re different from regular bad dreams. And . . . Wilem has apparently been having them, too.”

  Calen looked up at her sharply. “Wilem?”

  “Yes. Not the same kind, though. His sound . . . well, I meant to tell you and Serek about them right away when you got back, but with everything else that happened I didn’t get the chance. Wilem thinks Sen Eva is sending his nightmares. You know, magically, somehow. He says the dreams are about him hurting people and running off to join her. About doing things he doesn’t want to do. He’s worried that he might be a danger to my family.”

  “Of course he’s a danger,” Calen said. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking about?”

  “No! No, of course not. Although I don’t think . . . he did tell me about the dreams voluntarily. Made the guards come find me so he could tell me directly, in fact.”

  “You don’t think he could have had some hidden motive?”

  “Well, it did occur to me,” she admitted. “Maybe he was trying to find out if I was having dreams, too. I almost . . . I didn’t quite tell him. But he may have guessed.”

  “Hmm.” Calen fell silent, thinking. “I don’t like the sound of any of this. We need to tell Serek, definitely. As soon as possible.”

  “Could we — could we not tell my parents? About my dreams? I told them about Wilem’s, but I just . . . didn’t want to tell them about mine.”

  “What? Why not? Meg, it could be important!”

  “I know,” she said. “I know! It’s just . . . they don’t know how to deal with the link, or the dragon, and they already look at me so differently. And they’re talking about the people not supporting me as the princess-heir because of Jakl, and I’m still trying to figure out how to make them have more confidence in me. . . . I don’t want to give them one more reason to think there’s something wrong with me.” She was horrified to realize she was close to tears. She hadn’t meant to talk about this.

  “Meg, of course there’s nothing wrong with you. I’m sure they don’t think that!”

  She shook her head. “You haven’t seen the way they look at me sometimes. Like I’m a stranger. Like they don’t know me at all.” Now she did start crying. She wiped angrily at her face, not looking up.

  Calen reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it gratefully but still couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I promise. I’ll figure out why all this is happening. And in the meantime, your parents . . . they’re just trying to adjust, Meg. You are different. You know that. But not in a bad way
.” He laughed a little. “Hey, if I could get used to the new you, they will, too. You’ll see. They just didn’t have the same, um, close-up level of introduction that I did.”

  She smiled a little at that, but it still hurt to think of how they looked at her. Especially today, when she got back. She’d thought they would be glad to see her. Angry, of course, but mostly happy that she had made it back all right and with such important information. At least now they knew about Sen Eva! But they’d been too incensed to acknowledge any amount of value in what she’d done. Meg knew she’d been wrong to go, but . . . she had still hoped her parents would appreciate the positive side, small as it was. And that their relief that she was all right would be . . . well, that it would be the most important thing to them. And it wasn’t. Clearly, it wasn’t at all.

  She couldn’t help wondering if they secretly wished she just . . . weren’t here. If they wished she and Jakl could go off somewhere and not keep scaring all the loyal subjects and striking fear into neighboring kingdoms and generally complicating the lives of everyone around them.

  And really, no matter what Calen said . . . there was something wrong with her. The way she was feeling lately, the anger, the slipping away from herself . . . The link kept changing her, making her feel so out of control, so different, changing her thoughts and feelings and influencing the way she acted, letting her put other people in danger. . . . There was something very wrong with her, indeed.

  But she didn’t want to try to convince Calen of that. Not when he was the only one who believed in her.

  The doors to the garden entrance opened, and a pair of kitchen boys came walking toward them. One was carrying a basket, the other a stoppered bottle and two cups.

  “Princess?” the first one said, dipping his knees respectfully. “Miss Pela said you and Apprentice Calen missed dinner. She had us bring you out something to eat.” He frowned thoughtfully at the bench, then made little waving motions until Meg and Calen realized what he wanted and moved to make more space between them. The two boys quickly unpacked the contents of the basket on a little linen square and set out the bottle and cups, then bowed and retreated into the castle.

  “Wow,” Calen said around a mouthful of food. “I think I like this lady-in-waiting of yours.”

  Meg smiled. “Me, too.”

  She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the food was in front of her. Calen seemed to feel the same. Conversation lapsed as they both concentrated on filling their empty stomachs.

  “So,” Meg said after a while, trying to pull herself out of her dark mood. Although Pela’s thoughtful little picnic had already done much to help with that. “Tell me about the Magistratum! Did it hurt, when you got your mark? What was it like? Did you have to let people watch?”

  He told her the whole process, and she oohed and gasped in the right places, and she could tell he liked describing how much it had hurt and how he’d managed to endure it without doing anything embarrassing. The story got less fun when he told her about the attack at the marking ceremony, though. And less fun still when he told her about those other mages, the ones who took him away and locked him up and forced him to give them drops of his blood.

  “Oh, Calen,” she said after he described trying to contact Serek and realizing he couldn’t do it. “That must have been awful. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “And I still don’t understand what they think I’m going to do. I wish they could at least be clear about what they think makes me a danger to the Magistratum. Then maybe I could do something about it.”

  “Hey,” she said firmly. “You told me that Serek said you might just be involved in the danger, not the cause of it. Maybe you’ll be the one to stop the danger, whatever it is, and that’s how you’ll be involved! Don’t go taking everything those other mages said to heart. If Serek thinks they’re wrong, then so do I.”

  “Anders is still on the fence,” Calen said, somewhat bitterly. “And even Serek . . . he’s not really sure that the other mages are wrong. He just didn’t want them to lock me up or — or do anything unpleasant to me while they were trying to figure it all out. But he also won’t tell me what he and Anders are doing to figure it out. Or even what they really know so far.”

  He looked up at her, and his eyes were more angry than she’d ever seen them.

  “Serek’s even suspending my lessons! And so now this big danger is coming that I’m going to be right in the middle of somehow, and I’m going to end up completely unprepared and unable to avoid it or fight back or defend myself because they won’t teach me anything.” He kicked at the ground with his foot. “I hate this. Everyone is afraid I’m going to do something terrible. And there’s nothing I can say or do to convince them it’s not true.”

  “Who is Anders, anyway?” Meg asked. “How long have he and Serek known each other? And from where?”

  “I don’t know. You know how Serek is about sharing personal information. And I didn’t have that many opportunities to talk to Anders alone. He’s kind of . . . odd. But he knows how to cast in ways that I’ve never seen before. I think he’s very smart, even though he acts a little . . .”

  “Eccentric?” Meg suggested.

  “Yeah. Maybe now that we’re not running for our lives, I can find out more about him and ask how he knows Serek. I got the feeling it was from a long time ago, somehow.”

  “Just one more mystery we’ll need to figure out,” Meg said. “Although perhaps that one’s not quite at the top of the list.”

  “Yeah,” Calen said again. “I guess it’s somewhere down below figuring out what Sen Eva is up to.”

  “And what those mages think you’re going to do.”

  “And what’s going on with Jakl, and your link.”

  “And who attacked the Magistratum during your marking ceremony. And why.”

  “And what’s causing those nightmares, for you and Wilem.”

  They looked at each other grimly.

  “I thought the Magistratum was going to take care of everything,” Meg said. “Weren’t they supposed to take care of everything? Weren’t you and Serek supposed to show up and tell them what happened, and then they’d just, you know, fix everything?”

  Calen sighed. “That’s what I thought, too. But they can’t even agree on what the problems are, let alone what to do about them.”

  “It’s all going to be okay somehow, though, isn’t it?” Meg asked. “Eventually?”

  “Yes,” Calen said. He said it with such conviction that she couldn’t help but believe him.

  “I’m really glad you’re back,” she said quietly.

  “Me, too, Meg. Really glad.”

  Then they sat there in the moonlight, being glad together, and didn’t say anything else for a long time.

  MEG NODDED AT THE GUARDS OUTSIDE Wilem’s door. One of them turned and knocked loudly, calling, “The princess is here to see you!” Then they all waited for him to come and let them in.

  Calen didn’t know why everyone was being so polite. Wilem was a criminal. They shouldn’t have to knock or ask permission to enter. He was a little worried that everyone was forgetting who Wilem was. What he’d done, or almost done. He would have thought Meg, at least, would never forget . . . but now he wasn’t so sure. She had seemed almost concerned about him, when she’d told Calen about the dreams.

  The door opened. Wilem immediately stepped back, and one of the guards escorted him to a chair. Meg and Calen followed him inside. Once they were seated as well, Meg told the guards to close the door and wait outside.

  “Are you sure, Your Highness?” one guard asked. He looked less than happy about the idea.

  “Yes, we’ll be fine. I’ll call you if we need you.”

  The guards retreated, closing the door.

  “Good morning, Princess,” Wilem said respectfully. “Hello, Calen.”

  “Good morning,” Meg said back.

  Calen didn’t say anything. He studied Wilem acro
ss the small, low table that separated him from where Meg and Calen were seated. Wilem looked a bit different from how Calen remembered. Thinner, and he seemed tired. Well, we’re all tired, Calen thought, although actually that wasn’t quite true; he’d slept better last night than he had in what felt like weeks. He was glad he’d had the chance to rest and wash and change before coming here. Not that he cared what Wilem thought about him, of course. But it would have bothered him to be sitting here all rumpled and dirty while Wilem looked like he was ready to go off to some fancy dinner. He seemed rather better dressed than a prisoner ought to be, in Calen’s opinion.

  “How have the dreams been?” Meg asked. Meg had told Calen that her own sleep had been free of nightmares last night, but she’d had such nights on occasion before; she didn’t seem to believe that meant they were going to stop for good.

  “Worse,” Wilem said. “Last night — last night I woke up with my hand on the door.”

  Meg looked worried at that. “What were you dreaming about?”

  “I can’t remember,” Wilem said. At Calen’s contemptuous snort, he continued, “I swear. I wish I could. I know — I know it was not anything good.” He glanced at Calen. “I see that you have returned. I assume Mage Serek is back as well? Will the two of you be able to stop this somehow?”

  “Maybe,” Calen said. “You’re certain they’re not just regular nightmares?”

  Wilem shook his head. “They feel different. As if someone else is there, in the dream. Directing me, somehow. Princess Meglynne has certainly told you that I believe it to be my mother, trying to influence my actions.”

  “Was last night the first time you woke up in the process of doing something?” Calen asked.

  “Yes. Last night’s dream was stronger than any other so far. Everything felt more urgent, somehow.”

  Calen shared a glance with Meg. That made sense. Sen Eva could be trying to advance her plans, whatever they were, more quickly now that she knew they knew she was up to something. Assuming the dreams really were her doing. And assuming Wilem wasn’t just lying.