The Princess of Trelian (17 page)

Anders turned back to Serek. “The horses should be right outside. Shall we?”

Serek pushed the door open to reveal a narrow alley. They hurried along to where it opened onto a small rectangular area with several large crates piled to one side. A young boy was standing there, holding the reins of three horses in his fist. Each of the horses had several bundles tied to its saddle. Seeing the bundles made Calen remember his own bundle of belongings, no doubt still piled up in the room the mages had been keeping him in. He supposed there wasn’t anything irreplaceable in there, although it would have been nice to have a change of clothes.

“Excellent work, my young friend!” Anders said to the boy. He reached into his pocket and took out a small sack. “Coins for you and some treats for the animals, eh? And an extra bit to pay the stable master if he gives you any trouble.”

Anders handed the sack to the boy and took the reins from him. The boy flashed him a quick grin, then scampered off around the corner. Anders handed the reins of the largest horse to Serek and one of the others to Calen. “Jorry’s a fine lad. Always good for a bit of under-the-table business when I need something taken care of. He’s got a collection of mangy animals he’s rescued and needs the extra coin to buy them food and such. A veritable animal orphanage! If you’re ever in the market for a puppy, let me know.”

Calen had a brief, enchanting vision of bringing home a large dog to take on Serek’s irritable gyrcat. He looked over at Serek.

“No,” Serek said, not looking at him. He was tightening the girth on the saddle and checking the straps. “Check your horse, and let’s get moving.”

Calen was no expert rider, but he’d been on horseback often enough to know what to do. “Nice girl,” he said softly, patting her neck as he checked the saddle.

“That there’s Killer,” Anders said.

Calen jumped back in horror, and Anders laughed. “Oh, just kidding. Does she look like a killer to you? Her name’s Posy. She’s a sweetie. Serek,
yours
is called Killer. Mine’s Franny. They are all good friends, except for Killer, who likes to bite everyone. Just keep him in front, Serek, eh? He’s not one for following.”

Serek acknowledged this with a lazy wave of his hand and neatly hoisted himself up onto Killer’s back.

Calen led Posy over to one of the crates and used it as a mounting block. That was less embarrassing than having her wander off while he was midhoist would have been. Anders did the same, which helped Calen feel a little better.

Once he was up, Anders turned Franny back to face the building. Frowning slightly in concentration, he lifted one hand and created a swirl of orange, white, black, and blue energy. As Calen watched, the swirl expanded and then spiraled out around Anders, Calen, and Serek before flowing back along the alley toward the door, circling there, then shooting into the door itself and disappearing.

Calen had never seen magic behave in quite that way before. It was almost as though Anders had given the spell instructions somehow, telling it where to go and what to do.

“That was . . . how did you . . . ?”

Anders grinned at Calen over his shoulder. “You don’t get to be as old as I am without learning a trick or two, my nice young friend.”

“But —”

“Now, now. Time to go!” He waggled his eyebrows at Calen and then turned his horse away from the alley. Serek was already riding Killer off along the rough dirt road. At minimal urging, Posy and Franny fell into companionable step behind him.

Calen wondered if Serek’s admonishment against questions included all questions, or just those addressed to him. Anders didn’t seem inclined to explain about the spell he’d just cast, but Calen had more pressing questions, anyway. After a moment, Calen leaned toward the older mage, whose horse had come up nearly even with Posy.

“So, shouldn’t we be, um, running?”

“Yes,” Anders said. “Most definitely. But there’s a rocky part up here when we enter the woods. I imagine once we get past that, we’ll be speeding along with all possible haste.”

“Will the Magistratum be sending mages after us?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. I imagine so.” Anders smiled at Calen, then looked ahead and began humming a little tune to himself.

Calen stared at him again. Anders was clearly not a normal person. “But . . . aren’t you worried? Shouldn’t we all be worried? What will they do if they catch us? Why are we running away in the first place? Where are we going? Why are you coming with us? What are we going to do?”

Anders looked at him silently for a moment. Then he turned toward Serek’s back and called out, “Boy, you weren’t kidding about the questions, were you! Does he ever stop?”

“Only when he’s unconscious,” Serek called back dryly.

“But —”

“Try not to worry so much, Calen,” Anders said. He reached over and patted Calen’s leg reassuringly. “I know there’s a lot you don’t understand. Let’s just get some distance between us and our soon-to-be pursuers, and at some point we’ll stop, and then I’m sure Serek and I can answer at least some of your many, many questions. For now I’ll just say that it’s quite possible some big, terrible things are happening, or are about to happen very soon, and different mages have different ideas about how to deal with them, and Serek and I have different ideas from Mage Brevera and his friends. Now, pay attention — you’re about to be smacked in the head with a large branch.”

Calen turned just in time to see the branch in question coming directly at his face. He ducked and then was distracted from further attempts at conversation by the fact that Posy seemed to like walking as close to every tree as possible. The horses fell back into single file as the path narrowed out, and for a while the only sounds were the horses’ hooves against the rocky ground and Calen’s occasional curse as he failed to avoid getting smacked or scratched by passing foliage.

When the ground smoothed out again, Serek glanced back to make sure they were all past the rocks and then kicked his horse into a canter. Posy lurched to follow, and Calen grabbed at her mane to avoid being thrown backward. Anders let out a whoop from behind him and then sped past on the right, laughing like a maniac and urging Franny to even greater speed. Killer cast an eye at the approaching Franny and went even faster, making Anders laugh again as he followed closely behind. Thus inspired, Posy’s canter quickly became a gallop as well. Calen tried to be glad that at least horses only flew along the ground, not at ridiculous distances above it like dragons. Sure, he could still die a painful death if he fell off, but at least there wouldn’t be that horrible waiting part as he plummeted through the clouds and sky and all that.

“Good girl, Posy,” he told her nervously. “Just don’t sprout wings, okay?” He felt somewhat more secure as he got used to the rhythm of her feet, but kept the fingers of one hand tangled in her mane, just in case.

An interminable time later, Calen finally became aware that the other horses were coming to a stop up ahead. “Whoa, girl,” Calen said, but Posy had apparently already assessed the situation and was slowing of her own accord.

“We’re only taking a short break,” Serek called over to him. “Just enough time to rest the horses a little and eat something.”

Anders was casting another of those swirly energy spells, this time sending tendrils of magic in several different directions, including back along the way they’d come. At some point Calen was definitely going to make the old man explain how he did that.

But right now he had a different question, one that had occurred to him as he had tried in vain to ignore the pulsing ache in his legs and rear end as the horses had alternately walked and trotted and cantered and galloped, depending on the terrain and whether Serek thought they needed a rest. Even when they’d been walking, they’d been spread out enough that talking hadn’t really been possible. So Calen had merely started cataloging questions in his head to ask later.

He got down from Posy’s back, tied her reins to a nearby tree, and walked over to where Serek and Anders had already dismounted. Anders was rummaging through one of the packs and setting out food items beside it.

“Serek? Why are we doing this?”

Serek rolled his eyes. “I believe you have been told several times now that I will explain —”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Calen ignored his master’s glare at the interruption. “But I don’t mean why are we running. I mean, why are we
running
? I mean, on the ground, on horses? Why don’t we use that purple transportation spell? Something like that one that sent Meg and me to, uh, wherever that place was we ended up?”

Anders glanced up at him. “I believe you just answered your own question, young Calen.”

Calen tried to recall exactly what he’d just said. “What? You mean because I didn’t know where we were sent? I thought that was just because it was an accident. I didn’t even know what I was doing when that happened.” He looked accusingly at Serek. “I know you know how to transport things. You showed me! In your study that time!”

“Exactly. I know how to transport
things.
Objects, in my direct line of sight, to another location also within my direct line of sight.” Serek accepted a little plate of food from Anders, who appeared to be in the process of setting out an entire picnic complete with wine and cookies. “How many times have you seen me transport myself somewhere? How often did you notice other mages popping in and out of sight during your stay at the Magistratum? Why do you think we spent two and a half weeks riding and camping to get to the Magistratum if we could have just appeared there?”

“Well . . . okay.” Calen accepted his own little plate of food and sat down on the ground, facing the others. “I guess I kind of thought it was something you saved for emergencies. But if you can look at a thing and move it to the other side of the room, why not a person? And why do you need to see where you’re sending something?”

Anders chuckled to himself. Serek took a bite of meat wrapped in a kind of soft, flat bread. “Because — Lord and Lady, Anders, this is delicious!”

“Wait until you try the cookies,” Anders said.

Serek took another bite and chewed slowly before speaking again. “Because, Calen, transporting living things is not the same as transporting objects. And transporting things to a place you can see is different from trying to transport things to an unknown location.”

“But why does the fact that it’s different mean you can’t do it? I mean, it’s not impossible! It happened to me and Meg, didn’t it?”

Serek and Anders exchanged a look.

“Well,” Serek said after a minute, “you and Meg were actually very lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” said Anders, “that many people who experiment with that particular kind of casting are never seen or heard of again.” He paused, then added, “Well, not alive, anyway.”

Calen had a hard time swallowing his latest bite. “What?”

“Attempting to transport human beings magically is actually strictly forbidden,” Serek said. “Even short distances, even from one side of the room to another. That kind of transporting is certainly possible, if rarely of any practical purpose. And that’s because it’s relatively easy to transport something you can see to another location you can see. Just like you saw me do with Rorgson’s skull in my study.”

“But then why —?”

“It’s forbidden because mages couldn’t always agree on what acceptable short distances were, and whether or not it was okay to transport someone to a place you knew well even if you couldn’t see it. Sometimes that worked out all right, and sometimes . . .”

“Sometimes people ended up reappearing in very awkward ways. Like under a cart, or half-embedded in a rock wall,” Anders put in helpfully. He held out another little tray. “Cookie?”

Calen stared at him. “Half . . . embedded?”

Serek shot Anders an exasperated look. “That was one extreme case. Or . . . maybe two. But the point is that trying to transport a person to a place you can’t see is tricky at best and lethal at worst. And mages who tried sending people to places they didn’t know well . . . well, many of those people disappeared forever. And so just to avoid any potential confusion on the rules, the Magistratum voted to prohibit any transporting of people. At all. There are very occasional exceptions, where mages have done so in emergencies and then petitioned for permission after the fact, but even then, it did not always work out for the best. I’m sure Anders can give you lots of unpleasant examples later on if you’d like to hear them.”

“You bet,” Anders said, nodding enthusiastically.

“But in any case, that is why we are riding horses instead of simply magically appearing in the royal gardens. And as for the other part, about line of sight — even with objects, it’s very difficult trying to send something to a place you can’t see. Difficult and dangerous, since there’s always the chance someone might be, say, standing in the place you decide to transport your object to.”

Anders leaned forward and mouthed the word
half-embedded,
his eyebrows raised emphatically.

“Oh. I . . . okay.” Calen swallowed again, the lump of food in his throat still not seeming to want to go down. “Got it.”

Serek looked slightly uncomfortable. “I probably should have mentioned all of this sooner, hmm? It rather slipped my mind in all the excitement when it first happened, and then . . . well. You haven’t been, ah, experimenting, have you?”

“No.” Calen felt a little faint at the idea. Thank the gods he hadn’t thought to try!

“Good. Don’t start.”

Calen nodded, looking down at his plate and trying to muster up some appetite for his remaining lunch.

“So,” Serek went on, after accepting a cookie from Anders. “We have a few more minutes before we need to start moving again. Perhaps we can answer some of your other questions.”

“Maybe just one at a time, though,” Anders put in.

Right. Calen tried to refocus. His mind kept calling up disturbing images of people half-embedded in walls. He wasn’t even sure what to ask. “What — what’s
happening
?” he asked finally. “What were Mage Brevera and those others trying to do? And why?”