Sen Eva quickly recovered her equilibrium but no longer bothered to hide her anger. It practically shone from her like a force in itself, glowing like red fire.
Dark Lord and Bright Lady, Calen thought suddenly, numb with the shock of realization. She’s casting, the woman’s a mage —
The red fire burst forth from Sen Eva’s outstretched hands. Without thinking, Calen shot out his hand, flinging up what he could only interpret as a field of blue energy, not knowing what he was doing but just wanting to shield himself and Meg from the red force of death and destruction the woman was firing at them. He could see her spell clearly, no squinting required, and there was no question in his mind that she was attempting to kill them both.
The red fire met the blue shield and exploded in a blinding flash of violet light. Calen felt himself falling, like the day he had first met Meg, falling from the treacherous ledge, but this time no strong hand would pull him back because Meg was falling, too, her hand still tightly gripped within his own, and together they fell and fell and fell and he thought, This is it, we’re dead, we’re falling, I’m so sorry Meg I’m —
And then he felt the ground beneath him and had just enough time to realize that it didn’t hurt as much as he’d expected before he blacked out and thought nothing else at all.
“Calen?”
Meg’s voice, calling from some strange distance but slowly growing closer.
“Calen?” He felt her hands then, touching his face. “Calen, please. Open your eyes.”
He opened them. He was lying on the ground. Meg’s worried face was looking down at him. She didn’t look dead.
“You don’t look dead,” he told her.
She stared at him. Then one of her familiar scornful looks stole across her startled features and she shook her head, starting to laugh. He was glad to hear it. Dead people didn’t laugh at you. They were too busy being dead. And if she wasn’t dead, then probably he wasn’t either. Carefully he raised his head and looked around. They were in a forest. He was lying in the dirt and grass on the forest floor, near the base of a large, dark tree. The tree was of a species he’d never seen before. Which was very strange. He sat up.
Meg had stopped laughing and was sitting with her legs tucked underneath her, watching him. Her pale skirts were smudged with dirt. The forest was quiet, and dark for the middle of the day. The thick branches overhead blocked most of the sun.
“Are you all right, Calen?”
“I think so,” he said. Nothing felt broken, anyway, or permanently damaged. It was beginning to become clear that they had not, in fact, fallen from the window ledge. Or at least, if they had, they had not landed in the courtyard. No prickly animal-shaped hedges. No castle, for that matter. Just this quiet forest of strange trees.
“Where are we?” he asked finally.
Meg’s eyes widened slightly. “You don’t know? I thought — I thought you brought us here, somehow. To get us away from . . .” She stopped and shook her head. “What happened, Calen? She was waving her arms around and shouting out words that didn’t make any sense, and then you started waving your arms around —”
“She’s a mage,” he said quietly. “She was casting a spell, trying to kill us.”
“But — that’s not possible. She’s not a mage. How could she be a mage? She’s a scholar. An advisor. She doesn’t even have the marks.”
“I know. I don’t understand it either. But trust me, that’s what she was doing.” He felt cold inside. All mages wore marks. It was — more than law. To have that sort of power, and walk about unknown . . . There had been a time when mages ruled lands and led countries, when they joined together into bands and small armies, long before the present standard of solitary mages pledging their crafts to individual kings and households. It had been a terrible, chaotic time, and only the formation of the Magistratum, the careful application of laws and boundaries, and the clear marking of anyone taught to use the magical arts had been able to restore order and allow non-mages to feel safe in the knowledge that mages would never again seek to use their power to rule and control and destroy.
It had been nearly three hundred and fifty years since the Magistratum was created, and since that time, mages had dedicated themselves to the proper and responsible use of their skills and talents. It was unthinkable to conceal one’s ability to use magic. And it should have been impossible. Every apprentice was given his first mark immediately upon commencing his education. Sen Eva’s face was untouched.
Everything about this was wrong.
Meg stood up, brushing twigs and grass from her dress. She looked very out of place in the forest. “All right. Let’s — let’s just figure out how to get back. We’ll get back, and we’ll tell my parents what happened, and what we heard, and they’ll — they’ll take care of it.” She looked at Calen, despair fighting with hope in her expression. “Are you sure you didn’t bring us here?”
“Yes. At least, I think I’m sure.” He tried to remember exactly what he had done. He had been trying to protect them from whatever Sen Eva was casting, instinctively reaching for what he thought of as blue energy — the color he associated with sleep magic, water magic — maybe just somehow trying to quench the red fire of whatever deadly spell she was weaving. It sounded rather stupid now, but he hadn’t had much time to consider; he had simply acted. He had never tried anything like that before. And all he had been going for was a sort of shield — certainly not a transportation spell of some kind. He didn’t have the first idea of how to go about something like that. He didn’t even know if it was possible.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Meg. Maybe whatever I did reacted with Sen Eva’s spell in some way and sent us here as a result. Or maybe my magic didn’t do anything, and this is all Sen Eva’s doing.” But he didn’t think so — that red fire had been death, he was sure of it.
“Well, could you try? I mean, try to send us back? Not to that same room, of course, but . . .” She trailed off, watching him shake his head again.
“That sort of magic is completely beyond my ability, Meg. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t even know how to attempt it.”
She sighed, then planted her fists on her hips, thinking.
“All right,” she said finally. “First things first. Let’s try to figure out where we are. How’s your geography?”
“Not very strong. I know Kragnir is northwest of Trelian, in the mountains, and Eldwinn is far to the south. I know the towns we passed through on our way from Eldwinn to the capital. I know where Haverton is, where I was born.” He shrugged apologetically. “That’s about it, I’m afraid.”
Meg stared at him. “Well. You weren’t kidding. Not very strong, indeed.” After a minute she sat down next to him. “I’m sorry, Calen. That was unkind. I’m just — upset. And frightened. If we don’t get back in time . . .”
“I know,” Calen said softly. He looked around again. “Well, I can tell you this much. We’re not anywhere near Trelian.”
“How do you know?”
He pointed. “These trees. I’ve never seen this kind of tree before.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Maybe you just never happened to see one.”
Calen got to his feet and touched the bark of the nearest tree, looking up into the branches. The leaves were a very dark green, shaped like five-pointed stars. “Serek makes me study trees. And plants and flowers and herbs and anything else that grows from the ground. It’s important for healing, and lots of other kinds of magic. I’ve painted charts for him detailing all the trees in your father’s kingdom. These were not among them.”
Meg digested that for a moment. “You don’t just mean near the castle.” It was not a question. “You mean we’re not anywhere in my parents’ lands.”
Calen nodded.
Meg bit her lip, staring at the ground. “That’s not exactly good news.” She picked up a stick and poked at the dirt. “Any thoughts on what direction Trelian might be from here?”
He sho
ok his head for what felt like the thousandth time that afternoon. “I could figure out which direction is north, but that won’t tell us which direction we need to go to get home. And, Meg . . .” He thought she must already know, but he still didn’t want to say it.
“Yes, Calen?” Her voice was soft. She was still poking the dirt with her stick.
“Even if we picked the right direction to travel — if we’re outside Trelian, and we are, I’m sorry, but I know we are — there’s no way we’d make it back before the wedding. Not on foot.” And if what they had overheard was still the plan (and why shouldn’t it be, now that they were out of the way?), Wilem and Sen Eva were going to kill Maerlie on her wedding night.
By the time they made it back — assuming they made it back at all — Maerlie would be dead. Meg was never going to see her sister again.
IN THE END, THEY TOSSED MEG’S stick in the air and started walking in the direction it pointed. It seemed as good a way to decide as any. They both knew it hardly mattered whether they were headed toward Trelian or not. But walking felt better than sitting. Besides, it was cool in the forest, and moving helped them stay a little warmer.
Meg picked up the stick again before they left and was using it to strike at the tall thin plants that grew in patches between some of the trees. Calen followed silently behind her. She thought he had been about to speak several times, but so far he hadn’t said anything since they made their decision to start walking. She hoped he wasn’t too angry with her. She was angry enough for both of them. Of all the stupid times to lose her self-control! If she had only remained silent, they could have waited until Wilem and Sen Eva left the room and then gone and told her parents what had happened. They could have saved her sister and the prince and ensured that the traitors were stopped and punished and possibly tortured for their intended crimes. She could have seen to Wilem’s torture personally.
She struck out at another of the tall plants with her stick, slicing off the wispy tendrils at the top of the stalk with the force of her blow.
Wilem’s false affection for her was nothing compared to his plans to murder Maerlie, but somehow Meg couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was stupid, but she couldn’t help it. How could it be so easy for someone to lie that way? Was she just especially gullible? But her sisters had been fooled as well. Everyone had. But no one as — as personally as Meg herself. She flushed with shame at the thought of how she had enjoyed kissing him, how she had daydreamed about doing it again, and again. She had liked him so much. She had trusted him. And just as he’d apparently intended, she’d given him the information he needed to carry out his mother’s terrible plan. He had seemed so good, so strong and honest and true and kind, and he had made her feel special and warm and all the time he was using her, laughing at her behind his sad, dark, beautiful eyes.
She wiped angrily at her own eyes, hoping Calen couldn’t see that she was crying. Weak. She had been weak and stupid, and now Maerlie was going to pay the price for her failings.
“Meg?” Calen asked softly. He was right beside her. When had she stopped walking? She shook her head, refusing to turn and look at him. Couldn’t he leave her alone? Couldn’t he see that she wanted to be left alone? She opened her mouth to tell him that but instead she said, “He had been courting me. I don’t know why I never told you. We went walking together that first night after dinner. He came often, after that, to walk with me or talk, and he told me that he cared about me. And then, last night, he kissed me. And I didn’t know how to tell you; it just seemed hard to talk about him with you, and so I never did. And he was just a liar. A liar and a traitor and now he’s going to kill my sister.”
“You couldn’t have known, Meg.” His voice was still soft. She was facing away from him, so she couldn’t read his face. “He’s obviously well practiced at deceiving people. No one saw him for what he truly is.”
“But I spent so much time with him! I thought I was getting to know him so well. And he was just lying! Lying and lying and lying.” She shook her head, bewildered anew. Why hadn’t she been able to tell? “How can I ever trust my own judgment again? How will I ever know if I can really trust someone?”
He was silent for a moment. Then: “You can trust me.”
Meg’s mind tried to question that; for the briefest second she wanted to ask herself, Can I? Can I really? But she wouldn’t allow it. Calen had risked trouble and worse for her more than once; he was helping her with Jakl and keeping her secret and hadn’t ever asked for one thing in return. He had just saved her life, for gods’ sake! She turned to look at him and even now she could see the difference. Wilem’s eyes had been beautiful, and she thought the sadness in them had been real, but they had never been as clear and true as Calen’s eyes were.
“I know I can,” she said. And she did. She tried to force the truth of her words into her eyes, the way his eyes always shone with truth, so he would be able to see and believe her. “Thank you, Calen.”
He didn’t seem to know what to say back. He gave her a tentative, awkward smile and then made a show of looking around, studying what little of the sky they could see through the trees above. “We should probably keep walking while we have the light,” he said after a moment, “but before too long we’ll need to stop and think about making camp.”
“Camp,” she repeated, looking around at the surrounding forest. “It’s hard to believe that we’re really going to sleep out here in the woods and the dark, with the animals, and . . . who knows what else.” No. She refused to consider what else there might be. Just animals. Little ones, probably. Squirrels and things. But then an alarming thought struck her. “Do you even know how to make a fire?” Meg had a vague idea of rubbing sticks and stones together to make a spark, but had no real sense of how one would actually go about that sort of endeavor.
He smiled at her, a real smile this time. “Fortunately, that’s something I happen to be pretty good at. I’ll show you when we stop.” They started walking again, side by side. “Serek and I had to sleep on the road a few times when we made the trip up from Eldwinn.”
“Was it just the two of you? That must have been, uh, pleasant.”
He laughed at that, and she laughed, too, hearing him. “It certainly was. You know what charming company my master can be. And of course, we had Lyrimon with us, as well.” He began relating stories from the trip, incidents she suspected were far from humorous at the time but that sounded quite funny now. As she listened, Meg glanced at the stick she still held in her hands, then let it fall to the ground beside her. She left it lying there as they continued on their way.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” Meg said, keeping her eyes fixed on Calen’s outstretched hand. He’d told her she wouldn’t be able to see anything, but she wanted to try anyway. A second later the kindling burst into flame. He was right. She hadn’t seen a thing.
“But you can see it?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s not exactly ‘seeing,’ though,” he said. “At least, not the same kind of seeing as when I look at a tree, or a person, or whatever. I used to have to sort of squint and look at it out of the corner of my eye, but lately it’s been getting easier to see without even trying.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that mean you’re getting stronger in your ability?”
Calen shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said. He leaned over and fed some larger pieces of wood into the fire. “The truth is, I don’t know what it means, really. Serek has never talked about this aspect of magic with me. He’s never even mentioned it. I guess he doesn’t want me to use it as a crutch, that he wants me to learn casting without relying on seeing the colors. But it’s strange that he’s never once brought it up. I don’t understand it.”
“You’ve never asked him about it?”
He shook his head and sat back. “No. He’s not the easiest man to ask questions of. And I guess I was worried about how he’d react.” He was quiet a moment, staring into the fire. “Seems sort of s
tupid now, doesn’t it? I should talk to him about it. He’s my teacher, after all. I’ll talk to him when — when we get back.”
“When we get back,” she echoed quietly. They would get back. They had to. Calen had asked her earlier if the king and queen wouldn’t postpone the ceremony once they realized Meg was missing, but she didn’t think so. The wedding was too important to both kingdoms. Probably her parents would create some fiction to explain her absence and then quietly try to find her without raising suspicion. It would be difficult for them, she knew, but she also knew they would put the welfare of the kingdom before their personal feelings. The kingdom could do without her more than it could do without this union with Kragnir. Except, of course, that if she didn’t get back in time, the union with Kragnir would be destroyed by Sen Eva and Wilem. And poor Maerlie. . . .
No. She couldn’t think about that now. Crying again wouldn’t help anything. And there was still hope, after all. Maybe her parents would find her and Calen, somehow. Or maybe they’d discover Sen Eva’s plot some other way. Or maybe Sen Eva and Wilem would fail during the attempt to kill Maerlie, and Prince Ryant would kill Wilem instead. And then her parents would hang Sen Eva in the courtyard. And her limp, dead, evil body would dangle there, picked at by crows and rats, until Calen and Meg returned safely home.
“What are you smiling about?” Calen asked, startling her out of her reverie.
She shook her head. “Nothing.” Back to business. “Do you think Serek might be able to help them find us?”
“I don’t know,” Calen answered. “I’ve been wondering about that myself. He might have discovered we’re gone by now. I contacted him, just for a moment, before Sen Eva began casting.”
She turned to stare at him. “You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked at her sheepishly. “I forgot.”
“Calen!” Gods, he could be exasperating. “So tell me now! What happened?”
The Dragon of Trelian Page 14