“You know, walking?” Xavier said, making his fingers wiggle to mime walking. “We can keep moving, and I will check on a few things while you stay with me. Does that sound reasonable?”
It did, and Laric didn’t want to argue with him about it, so he nodded and followed him.
“When I first returned to the city after the attack, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of everything,” Xavier said. “And once I heard about your role in it all, and the fact that you were working with a mage, I hadn’t known just how much to reveal. I still don’t, if you ask me honestly.”
“Even though I know what she was doing?”
“You know what you think she was doing, but that’s not to say that you truly know what she was doing. We don’t truly know what the mages are after.” He paused, and then he pointed into the city. Laric looked over, realizing that he was gesturing toward the school. “How many mages have come through here since you started school?”
“A couple,” Laric said quickly. “We’ve had several headmasters, and we’ve had at least one instructor who was a mage, but apparently was concealing everything else he was doing.”
“Exactly,” Xavier said. “You had people coming here. All the way out here. Think about how unusual that is. Maybe you don’t realize that, but I do. I think others would too.”
“Unusual in the fact that they came to a city out here, or unusual in the fact that they are here at all?”
“Unusual in the fact that they are here at all. What’s out here? I don’t mean that to disparage the town. I love this place. I grew up here, met my first love, and have done all that I can to make sure the town is as safe as I can make it. But unfortunately, there’s only so much I can do to ensure the safety of the town. Once mages started making their presence known—and I’ll be honest, they haven’t always done so—I knew that it was going to be a challenge.”
“I thought there was always a headmaster that came from the Mage Society.”
“There’s always been a headmaster, and when I was younger, most were about as capable as anybody who trains at the school ever gets to be. Maybe a little bit more. They probably know a few more spellslips than most. But very few people that come out of the school ever master even a single spellcraft form.”
“I don’t know if that’s because they don’t have the ability, or if they were just never taught,” Laric said.
“I agree. I’ve always agreed. And once the first mage came, taking over the school, I thought that perhaps they had just decided that it made sense to have a presence out here. But I think it was about more than that.” Xavier paused at a building. “What do you see here?”
Laric looked over. “I see the glyphs.”
Some of the buildings in the city had glyphs on them. Not all, and not even that many, to be honest, but enough that they did give off a certain sense of energy about them.
And now that he knew about what his grandmother had done, and her role in everything, he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps he should be able to identify something from those glyphs. He suspected that if he had time with them, and perhaps if he used the egg that served as some sort of a keystone to understanding the glyphs, he might learn more about them.
“When I was younger, there weren’t so many,” Xavier said.
Laric looked over in surprise. “What?”
“No. Not so many. Not many people realize that. They just think that the glyphs were always here. And some were, but I think that if you travel—and I have traveled—you will see glyphs in many places. Never really understood it, and always had questions about that, and about why there were places that had quite a few glyphs, and places that did not.” He shrugged. “And unfortunately, I just don’t know.”
“Are you trying to imply that my grandmother placed more here?”
“I think that the timing is suspect. Your grandmother knew about the glyphs. She didn’t admit it to me, but then again, she didn’t necessarily need to admit it. I was aware. She sort of kept it to herself, not that I’m blaming her for that. In fact, I think that she probably had every reason to do so. Especially considering the fact that not many people knew anything about glyphs.”
“Why this one?” Laric asked.
“This was the first one I noticed. Take a look at it.”
He crouched down and looked at the stone. The building itself was pretty unremarkable. It was one of the other general stores in town, and he had visited it several times. The glyphs on the corner of the stone, however, were complex. There were various angular shapes that all worked together, and within them, he felt a distinct sense of power.
As he stared, he had a flicker in the back of his mind. At first, he didn’t know quite what it was, but the longer he felt that flickering, the clearer it became for him: Sashaak.
“Strength,” a faint voice said deep in his mind.
“The glyph is for strength?” Laric said, too surprised to do much else.
Xavier shrugged again. “I suppose it could be. Honestly, I don’t know much about glyphs or the purpose behind them, but I think that they all have some purpose. Why this place, though? What reason was there?” He crouched down, tracing his finger along the surface of it. As he did, Laric became aware that Xavier was doing something at the same time. It seemed as if he was forming a spellslip.
“You know magic,” Laric said.
He snorted. “Wouldn’t be much use on the road if I couldn’t protect myself.”
“Just spellslips, or can you do spellcraft forms as well?”
“I know a few spellcraft forms, though not as many as I would like.” Xavier said it as if it shouldn’t be surprising. Even a few months ago, that would have been the most shocking bit of information for Laric. “It has taken me quite a bit of time to learn them, because I didn’t have the formal training. It does, however, help me when I have encountered mages. They wouldn’t expect a simple merchant to know such things.”
“Why tell me? If that’s a secret you’re trying to keep, why reveal it to me?”
“Why reveal to me that you have connected to Malinar’s dragon?”
Laric’s brow furrowed. “I…”
Xavier chuckled. “I don’t really know the purpose of this glyph, but if you’re saying that it’s for strength, then I believe you. Maybe your grandmother saw something here and decided that rather than leaving the building to crumble, she would add some element of strength to it. Or perhaps she decided that she wanted to protect the building in some way. I don’t know. But this isn’t the only place you can find glyphs like this. There are others all throughout town, if you would only look.”
“I’ve seen quite a few glyphs throughout the town,” Laric said. “I don’t think that my grandmother would’ve done all of them. Wouldn’t somebody realize if she had?”
“How many of the glyphs here have you ever paid any attention to?”
Laric hesitated. How many had he?
Before he had even considered the possibility that there was anything he could learn about glyphs, he supposed that the number he had paid attention to had been zero. There was nothing to be done with them, after all. The knowledge of glyphs has been lost long enough ago that he had simply thought that they were all structures, and powers, that he did not have any reason to pay any mind to.
