The Mage of Trelian (11 page)

Up!
she thought, and Jakl shot upward, out of range. The arrows arced harmlessly below them.

Jakl swung back down immediately and sent another stream of fire — this time at the archers instead of just the arrows.
Attack my castle, will you?
Meg thought at them. She laughed as, nearly as one, they turned and ran. Jakl inhaled for another blast, but Meg stopped him. Trelian soldiers were streaming out after the fleeing archers, and all of them were headed for the trees beyond the cleared lands directly around the castle grounds. She didn’t want to risk hurting any of their own soldiers or setting the trees on fire. Instead she directed Jakl back toward the other side of the wall.

The fighting there seemed to be dying down; it appeared to have only been a small group of invaders. Not that that made it any less terrible that they had managed to get inside the walls. But it looked like Trelian’s soldiers had it under control now. Meg had Jakl circle around again, trying to see if there was anything else they could do. She saw Mage Serek and Mage Anders, apparently casting some sort of spell at the gate and the walls on either side.
A little late for that,
she thought bitterly.

Jakl set down again at her silent direction, and she looked around from this closer vantage point for any other way that she could help. She knew that Jakl would keep alert for any approaching danger, but the remaining invaders seemed well occupied with Trelian soldiers, and she didn’t think it likely that any would try to take on the dragon. She saw Captain Varyn drive his sword into an enemy soldier, pull it out, then swing around to fight someone else. She saw a few others from her own company, and plenty she didn’t recognize.

And then she saw Wilem.

What was he doing? He had no business fighting, with his injuries! She stared, unable to look away, as he moved awkwardly on his bad leg while trying to fend off the sword of an attacker. At least his injured arm wasn’t his sword arm. He swung without hesitation, meeting the other man’s sword thrusts with his own, but she didn’t see how he could keep it up much longer when his leg was obviously not strong enough to fully support him. The invader seemed to be thinking the same thing. He drove Wilem relentlessly backward, striking with less care but greater force as Wilem’s limp became more pronounced.

Meg didn’t know what to do. Jakl couldn’t help here; he’d end up setting them both on fire. No one else seemed close enough to help, and Meg hadn’t had any ground-fighting training at all. Which she suddenly decided had been a very stupid decision on someone’s part. She was just thinking that maybe she could still do something to distract the other man — throw a rock at him,
something
— when Wilem surprised them both with a quick swipe to his enemy’s thigh. The man staggered, and then Wilem buried his sword in the other man’s throat.

Meg gasped as the soldier fell, one hand starting to reach for the sword but never completing its journey. Wilem dropped to one knee, clearly having used the last of his strength for that killing blow.
Now
someone noticed, Meg saw with exasperation. Another Trelian soldier came running over and helped get Wilem back to his feet. They exchanged some quick words, and then the other man supported Wilem as they moved slowly back toward the castle.

Meg looked around, abruptly aware that she hadn’t been paying attention to anything else for several minutes. But the last of the enemy soldiers seemed to have been subdued. Many were clearly dead, but perhaps some were only unconscious and could be questioned later. She hoped so. They needed to find out how these men had gotten inside the walls!

Captain Varyn came toward her, and Meg slipped down from Jakl’s back to meet him. He looked tired but undamaged.

“Not bad,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “That was quick thinking, taking out the archers.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Emergency war council in ten minutes,” he said. He looked down, then added, “You might want to find some shoes.”

Meg looked at her bare feet as he walked away. That was what she got for wearing princess clothes. Her shoes must have fallen off somewhere along the way.

She sent Jakl back to his paddock with thoughts of love and gratitude and admiration and stepped carefully toward the castle to find her nice, sturdy boots.

Pela was sitting in Meg’s room when Meg got there. She jumped to her feet when Meg opened the door.

“Princess! Are you all right?” And then, scandalized: “Where are your
shoes
?”

Meg laughed. She couldn’t help it. Pela was always so refreshingly herself. “I have no idea. I thought I’d put my riding boots on. The brown ones.”

“With your dress?” Pela stepped closer. “Oh, and it’s a bit dirty, isn’t it? We should —”

“No time,” Meg said. “Emergency war council, and I need to be there.”

“But it would only take a second —”

“Pela.”

Pela sighed. “Very well, Princess.” She opened Meg’s wardrobe to get out the boots. “But not the
brown
ones,” she muttered to herself.

Meg surrendered enough to let Pela choose the pair that she thought would look least offensive, and to let her quickly tie Meg’s hair back in a simple knot, since its former, more elegant arrangement had come entirely undone while she was flying around.

“I suppose that was your first real taste of what fighting in the war will be like,” Pela said around the hairpins she was holding in her mouth.

“I guess that’s true,” Meg said. She hadn’t really thought about it that way, but of course Pela was right.

“How do you feel?”

Meg opened her mouth and then closed it, unsure how to answer. How did she feel? She hadn’t been afraid, she realized. Racing toward the battle, all she could think about was getting there, helping to protect the castle. Flying and letting Jakl loose his fire at the enemies had felt . . . good. But it was a complicated kind of good. She thought about Wilem’s sword driving into that other man’s neck. She didn’t think that she and Jakl had actually killed anyone. She could have, she thought, in that moment; she had been so angry . . . but now she was relieved that it hadn’t been necessary.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” Meg said finally. She stood up. “I need to go now.”

“Of course, Princess. I’ll see you when you get back.”

The emergency war council consisted of Meg, her parents, Commander Uri, Captain Varyn, and Captain Naithe, who was the Captain of the House Guard. Serek and Anders had gone to help the medics tend to the injured.

“I think we’re all in agreement,” the king began, “that what happened this evening should not have happened.” He looked around at the rest of them. “How did they get inside?”

“Mage Serek reported that all of the mages’ wards are still intact,” Captain Naithe said. “They checked everything along the wall and added new layers of protection, but there was no sign that anyone had tampered with any of their spells.”

“And all of our men were at their assigned posts,” the commander added. “At present, I cannot see how it was possible for them to get inside, Your Majesty. But we will get to the bottom of this. We did manage to capture a few of the invaders alive, but none of them are talking yet. In the meantime we’ve increased the guard all along the perimeter, but that’s only a temporary solution. I think that if tonight’s events have shown us anything, in addition to our defenses not being as secure as we imagined, it is that we cannot go on much longer as we are now. We are stretched too thin. We
must
have Kragnir’s reinforcements.” He looked at Captain Varyn, who nodded slightly, then back at the king. “We need to send Captain Varyn’s company to Kragnir to deal with the blockade. Including the princess and her dragon.”

Finally,
Meg thought. She looked at her parents, but they weren’t saying anything.

“You must see that they’re right,” Meg said. She couldn’t believe they were going to argue with her about this again. Not after what had just happened.

“Meg —” her mother began.

“Merilyn,” the king said softly, “we knew this day would come.”

Her parents looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Then Meg’s mother nodded, dropping her gaze.

Meg took her mother’s hand. “You can’t keep me safe by keeping me here,” she said gently. “Look what happened tonight. And this is what I’ve been training for all this time.”

“Yes, I know,” her mother said. She looked up. “I know. And you’re right, of course. It is still a hard thing, though. To send your daughter off to war.”

“I’ll have Jakl to keep me safe,” Meg said. “You know he won’t let anything happen to me.”

“You saw how well they did tonight,” Captain Varyn said. “They’re ready. Both of them. I would never suggest sending them if they were not.”

The queen nodded again. “Yes. Thank you, Captain. And you, Commander. Our kingdom could not be in better hands.”

“I do have one condition,” King Tormon said then. “The commander and I have discussed this before, and it has been an additional reason I’ve been reluctant to send the dragon out with the soldiers. He must be kept under control.”

“What does that mean?” Meg asked.

“It means,” her father said, “that although I know Jakl could simply set fire to all the enemy soldiers in his path, we cannot allow him to do so.
You
cannot allow him to do so. Your dragon is a tremendous advantage, and we need to let our enemies see that . . . but we also need to make sure that they don’t fear him so much that they decide he must be destroyed at any cost. If we appear to be reckless with his power, if we allow ourselves to become what King Gerald already accuses us to be, then our enemies will see the dragon as a reason to continue the war rather than a reason to surrender. Do you understand? If they perceive him to be a weapon we will use without any restraint, without any regard for human life, they will not be able to stop until they kill him.”

Meg sat back, trying to take this in. “So . . . you’re saying he needs to be just scary enough to make them want to give up fighting, but not so scary that they cannot feel safe until he is dead.”

He smiled at her, but it was not a happy smile. “Yes, my daughter. Exactly. Are you sure you can keep Jakl under your control? A battlefield is not a training field. You will be in danger, and I know that Jakl would do anything to protect you. Can you make him understand that protecting you means not completely destroying those who stand against us? Those men . . . they are our enemies. But they are also men, and they are fighting at the command of a king who acts without reason. We must continue to act
with
reason, no matter what happens. We need to be able to repair our relationships with Baustern and Farrell-Grast, at least, when all of this is over. And perhaps someday with Lourin as well. We cannot make them hate us beyond all reconciliation.”

“I understand,” Meg said. “And I’ll make Jakl understand, too.”

The king nodded. “Very well, then. I trust in you, Meg.”

“We’ll leave at first light,” the commander said, standing. “I’ll send a list of what you should bring, Your Highness. I hope you understand that we must all travel light. . . .”

Meg rolled her eyes. “I won’t try to pack
all
of my fancy dresses. Don’t worry.” Captain Varyn cleared his throat, and Meg realized that her response might have been bordering on insolence. “Apologies, Commander. I will be grateful for your guidance in exactly what to pack.”

The two men took their leave. Meg realized that she was still holding her mother’s hand.

“Captain Varyn won’t put me in any unnecessary danger,” Meg said.
There will be more than enough perfectly necessary danger to go around,
she added silently.

“We’re both very, very proud of you,” her father said. “But . . . please be careful. As careful as you can be, anyway, given the circumstances.”

“I will. I promise.”

There didn’t seem to be very much else to say after that. It was an odd role reversal; it wasn’t so long ago that her parents had been the ones telling Meg that everything was going to be all right. But ultimately they all knew that this was necessary, and besides, it was a princess’s duty to put the safety of the kingdom before her own. They had raised her to believe that, after all. They couldn’t change their minds about it now.

She headed back to her rooms to tell Pela.

“I suppose they won’t allow me to come with you,” Pela said, sighing.

“No,” Meg said. “And I wouldn’t allow it, even if they would. It would be too dangerous.”

“But who will . . . ?”

“Pela, I won’t have to be making any decisions about what to wear or how to arrange my hair. The only thing I’ll need to put on in the morning is my armor. They are going to send us a list of what to pack. And I’m hopeful that I won’t be gone for very long.”

“Well,” Pela said briskly, “we do know that you’ll need good riding clothes, at the very least.” She got up and turned to the wardrobe, no doubt already calculating in her mind how many different outfits she could convince Meg to bring with her. She had just opened the doors when a clatter at the window made them both jump.

“What in the world?” Pela asked.

There was a dark shape on the other side of the glass.

Meg supposed she should be wary, especially given the evening’s events, but she wasn’t. Her heart was nearly leaping out of her chest, but not in fear. Or at least, not only in fear.

She ran to the window and opened the latch.

A big, ungainly crow pushed its way inside and fluttered awkwardly to the floor.

The girls looked at each other, then back at the bird.

“Blackie?” Pela said uncertainly.

Meg felt terrible, painful hope crushing her heart. She struggled to control it.
It might not be from him,
she thought.
It might not mean anything. It could have gotten lost, or maybe the magic wore off
and it forgot what it was supposed to be doing, or . . .

“Meg!” the bird croaked. In Calen’s voice.

Meg fell to her knees beside it. Pela rushed over to join her on the floor, decorum forgotten.