The Mage of Trelian Read Online Free PDF

her.
    “No,” he said. “
I
thought you had more sense than to try something this foolish and dangerous. Clearly I was wrong. Anders had a vision.”
    Meg wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. “Anders had a vision about
this
? Why can’t his gods-cursed glimmers show him something useful, like where Calen is, or how we can defeat Lourin, or —?”
    “You know he can’t control what he sees,” Serek said. “Although I disagree that this one wasn’t useful. At least I got out here in time to stop you.”
    Now Meg did laugh. “You’re not stopping me,” she said again.
    “Princess, be reasonable! You can’t possibly —”
    Meg narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’ve given up on him. I have not. I’m going to find him and prove to you exactly how wrong you are. About everything.”
    “Princess —”
    “If you stay very still, Jakl probably won’t crush you.”
Let’s go,
she thought at her dragon. She was done listening to Serek.
    Jakl launched himself upward. Meg spared one glance back for the mage, who was still on the ground, staring after her. And then she turned back around and closed her eyes and let herself get lost in the flying.
    Not for too long, though. It was tempting to just let go and feel the wind and the night and not think about anything, but she had a job to do.
    From the dismal reports, Meg knew some of what she would see before she opened her eyes, but it was still a shock. The damage stretched farther than she’d imagined. Empty husks of buildings littered the landscape everywhere she looked. Farms had been burned, roads destroyed, and people killed, although she hoped that most of them had gotten to safety before Lourin’s army had arrived. Many of them had taken shelter within the outer walls surrounding the castle, in lands set aside for exactly this kind of emergency. But not all of them. Some didn’t want to abandon their homes. Some wanted to stay and fight to stop the enemy soldiers from destroying what they’d spent their lives building. And some had surely been murdered by Lourin soldiers for their trouble. She tried not to picture Trelian’s people —
her
people — falling and dying at the hands of the enemy. Innocent people, caught up in a war that should never even have started.
    That was the worst part of all. Everything — all the blood and death and pain and destruction — it didn’t mean anything. It was all so
stupid
— they weren’t even fighting about anything real!
    Lourin had attacked because Trelian had violated its promise to keep its dragon (
her dragon
) safely contained and on the ground. But her parents had explained to King Gerald a million times why they’d had to break that promise, and anyway, the whole reason for the original promise was meaningless, since it was based on Sen Eva’s lies about Jakl and his supposed attacks. But even though Sen Eva was dead now, her evil influence was still hurting Trelian. King Gerald didn’t believe them, or didn’t care, or both, and he wouldn’t respond to their repeated pleas for talks. He’d persuaded the leaders of his neighbor kingdoms, Baustern and Farrell-Grast, to join him, and as Meg knew all too well from those cursed reports, things were going very, very badly for Trelian at the moment.
    But not for long.
The Kragnir soldiers would soon arrive, and that would turn the tide. That, and whenever they finally let Meg and Jakl do something more than train.
    She stared down at the ruined countryside and felt angry tears trying to squeeze out of her eyes.
    How had everything become such a disaster?
    One problem at a time,
she told herself. Right now, she was looking for Calen. But the more she surveyed the lands around her, the more ridiculous her entire plan seemed. Serek was right, of course. The world was a very big place. And at present it was filled with fighting and fires and danger and enemies, and she should
not
be flying around waiting for