Free The Mage of Trelian by Michelle Knudsen Page B

sun.
    Beautiful,
she felt him send at her proudly through the link, and she laughed.
    The occasional words still caught her off-guard a lot of the time. She didn’t think he was really speaking in the way a person would speak, though. The words came, as far as she could explain it to herself, in little packages of emotions that
meant
the same things as what the words represented, and she could understand those meanings and interpret them as words. Or something like that, anyway. She guessed it didn’t really matter exactly how it worked. He seemed to pick up on certain words or phrases she used often or that she felt particularly strongly about. And especially ones having to do with him. He was ridiculously vain, she’d discovered. Although perhaps that was her own fault, for admiring him so much.
    “Yes, beautiful,” she said out loud, closing the last of the distance between them and sitting down at his feet. He sank down around her, repositioning himself fluidly to support her back and curl into the smallest circle he could manage, which wasn’t all that small. “And enormous. When did you get so big? I remember when you were barely bigger than Lyrimon.”
    That made him send back a strange blend of embarrassment and contempt for his former tiny size, which made her laugh again.
    “All right,” she said. “I’ll try to keep in mind how gigantic and strong and fierce you are now.” And he was all those things, of course. But also capable of astounding gentleness when he chose. And filled with love for her, which always made her feel safe and protected and just . . . really, really good.
    Even now, when everything else was so very much
not
good.
    “Oh, Jakl,” she said, her smile fading. “I wish none of this were happening.”
    He nudged his head even closer, putting the tip of his snout in her lap. She laid her head down against him and closed her eyes, letting herself be comforted as much as she could. It would all get sorted out somehow. It had to. They’d end the war and get Calen back and stop Mage Krelig from doing all the evil, terrible things he was planning to do, and everything could go back to normal. Whatever that meant. She was having a hard time remembering.
    She stayed there for the rest of the afternoon and into early evening. The sun was just starting to disappear into the horizon when Jakl raised his head abruptly at the same moment Meg felt his alarm through the link.
    “What is it? Is someone —?”
    He uncurled himself and leaped to his feet just as she heard the shouts and screams begin. But it wasn’t until the sky grew bright with flaming arrows that she understood.
    They were under attack.

T HE SHOCK WAS SO GREAT THAT Calen nearly fainted. Or maybe he did faint. The world had seemed to go away for a few seconds — his vision went gray and then white, and then he was sitting on the balcony floor, staring at the bird, who had jumped down from the railing to stand in front of him.
    His first thought when his wits returned was that he must have truly gone crazy at last.
    But he didn’t feel crazy. He felt . . . he felt . . .
    Oh, gods. Thank the gods. Meg hadn’t given up on him. She was trying to find him.
    She was still his friend.
    The bird hopped impatiently before him. “Calen,” it said again.
Meg
said. Through the bird. How was she doing that?
    She couldn’t be doing that. Not on her own. Which meant that Serek hadn’t given up on him, either.
    His relief was so enormous that he had to fight an insane urge to grab the bird and kiss its ugly, feathery head. And then he had to bite his fist to keep from laughing. At himself, at the bird, at everything. Oh, gods.
    All right. Good. Really good. This was really, really good. But what did it mean, exactly? What did he do now?
    Good question. He didn’t see a note attached to the bird’s leg in the way that birds sometimes carried messages. Maybe they had been afraid of the bird delivering its message to the wrong person.