The Dragon of Trelian

by Michelle Knudsen

  She nodded, her eyes guarded. “What’s the bad news?”

  “It’s not — it’s not bad news, exactly. Just, um —”

  “Calen.”

  “Right. Okay. This connection that you have, it’s called linking. Dragons usually link with other dragons, if they link at all — many don’t — but sometimes they can be led to link with humans instead. Hundreds of years ago, there were people who regularly stole baby dragons from their nests and attempted to link with them. Actually, I think this might be the source of some of the legends we have today — I found a whole book of those, mostly nursery stories, and you probably heard some of them yourself when you were little — those tales of people enslaved by dragons, like that one about the woodcutter’s son who goes off and . . .” He noticed Meg’s impatient stare, which seemed to be deepening toward more of a glower, and skipped ahead. “Well, anyway, those people who stole the babies, depending on how successful they were, either they raised the dragons into a sort of symbiotic partnership or, uh, the dragons killed them.”

  “Oh.”

  “But you’re definitely past the stage where Jakl would have killed you if he were going to. So don’t worry about that.”

  She looked at him in exasperation. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “Well, so you’re linked with Jakl, right? Somehow you managed to do whatever needed to be done to forge the connection without, um, getting killed, and so now the link will continue to get stronger over time. You won’t be able to sense what he’s thinking, exactly — dragon’s brains don’t work like ours that way — but if the link gets strong enough, you’ll be able to sense what he’s feeling so clearly that it will almost be like you can hear his thoughts.”

  He glanced at her and went on, quickly. “The bad news, if you want to call it that, is that dragons, if they link, link for life. It can’t be undone. You and Jakl will stay connected, no matter what.” He swallowed, watching her face. “Even in death.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Do you mean that if one of us dies, the other dies, too?”

  “Um, well, not always,” he said weakly. “The book definitely mentioned a few cases where the survivors, um, survived.”

  She looked at him. “But?”

  “But then they went mad.”

  “I see.”

  They kept walking. Calen was quiet. He thought Meg could probably use a few moments to digest what he had told her. He knew he had needed a few moments when he realized what the book was saying. She and Jakl were connected in a way most people would never understand. He imagined parts of it must be powerfully appealing — to be so close to someone that he or she could actually feel what you were feeling, to never, ever be alone — but there were risks as well, and Meg had taken this on without the slightest idea what she was getting into.

  When they reached the cave, Meg sat down near the entrance with her back against the rocky wall. Calen sat beside her.

  “You said it was a symbiotic partnership,” she said. “How so?”

  “Each of you can draw on the strength of the other. I’m not sure if that means physical strength, exactly — although you will be able to lend each other healing energy if one of you is sick or injured. But also emotional strength. Force of spirit.”

  Meg nodded. She hesitated, then asked, “Will it — will it change me? Change who I am, I mean? Will I start to think I’m a dragon?”

  “Oh, no. No. I don’t think it works that way. I mean, I’m sure it will change you in certain ways — obviously, someone who’s linked with a dragon is going to be different from someone who is not — but you won’t lose your personality. You’ll still be yourself, and Jakl will be himself. You may just . . . overlap at times.”

  “But you don’t really know that. You can’t really know.”

  Calen sighed. “I don’t know it from personal experience, no. Of course not. But nothing I read made any mention of that sort of thing happening. And there are ways to shield your emotions from your link, to a degree. I read about those. I can’t see how that would be possible if you weren’t still a separate person.”

  “And you can teach me? About shielding? And . . . and everything else you found out?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’m not sure I dare remove any of the books from the mage’s quarters. But I can take notes, and maybe we can find a way to sneak you into the library, if we know Serek will be away.”

  She took another deep breath. “Well. I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” Some of her usual confidence was edging back into her voice. She smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you, Calen.”

  He smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

  They stood up. Meg stepped into the cave entrance, then turned back. “Does Jakl know? Did he do this on purpose?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s probably something dragons know how to do instinctively. Maybe when you found him, after he was alone so young, he latched onto you the only way he knew how.” He hesitated, then went on. “Meg, there are some other things I need to tell you about.”

  “I’m sure there are. But tell me inside. He knows we’re here, and he’s impatient to see me.” She shook her head, her expression a mixture of wonder and chagrin. Then she disappeared into the dark.

  Calen hurried after her. He didn’t want to navigate that passage alone.

  Jakl didn’t look impatient to Calen; he looked asleep. But of course Meg would know better. As Calen emerged from the darkness into the dim light, the dragon uncurled and wrapped himself around Meg, who laughed and hugged him. Calen remained a respectful distance away, not wanting to intrude on their greeting. He squinted, trying to discover if he could actually see anything to indicate the link, now that he knew to look for it. There was nothing — at least nothing that his inner eye could make out.

  His regular eyes, however, noticed that Jakl was larger than he’d been only a few days ago. His wings were especially changed. They were larger, fuller — more like the wings of the adult dragons Calen had seen drawings of in the library.

  “I think you’re going to have to move him, Meg. Very soon.”

  She glanced at Calen and then extricated herself from the dragon’s embrace, stepping back to take a good look at him. Jakl sat and looked back at her calmly.

  “You’re right, Calen. Gods, he’s growing so fast. Is that normal?”

  He shrugged. “I think so. Everything I read indicates that they grow quickly in the first year.”

  “Look at his wings! Do you think he’ll be able to fly soon?”

  “Meg, I’m not suddenly some kind of all-knowing dragon expert, you know.”

  She turned to look at him. “Well, you know more than I do. Can you try to find out? I want to know everything. Oh, I wish I could look through those books myself.”

  “All right. Give me a list of questions and I’ll try to find the answers for you. I do know that he should be able to fly before he gets his fire.”

  Meg tapped on her chin, thinking. “Where can we put him where he won’t be discovered? Especially if he does start trying out his wings. I can’t have him swooping around the castle! My parents would have him killed.” She didn’t say what they were both thinking — that her parents would be killing her as well.

  “You’ll definitely want to keep him far from the castle. And far from any outlying farms, too.”

  “Why farms?”

  “Well, think, Meg. He’s probably been surviving so far on small animals in and around the cave. As he grows, he’s going to start needing larger, um, meals. You don’t want angry farmers complaining to the king about missing sheep. Or, um, shepherds.”

  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 understan
d 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. Alwa
ys.

  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?