Xavier chuckled. “See? You don’t know.”
“I haven’t given them that much thought,” Laric said.
“Most people don’t. But I can assure you that mages in the city do. They probably have them cataloged, and the first time the mage came to the city—and stayed—I started to question what was going on. I followed them.”
“You followed a mage?”
“I did. Foolishly.”
As he stood there, Laric felt the sudden buildup of pressure as a spellcraft form emerged. It was not all that potent, other than the fact that it pushed Laric backward a couple of steps. The fact that it had that much potency to be able to do that was interesting.
“All right,” Laric said, holding his hands up. “So you know some spellcraft forms.”
“More than just some,” Xavier said. “But yes. I followed a mage through the city, and I noticed that they were interested in the glyphs. I don’t know if your grandmother placed any more here—assuming that your grandmother was the one responsible for all of these. All I can say is that I realized that the glyphs no longer continued to appear.” He shook his head. “So read into that whatever you want.”
“I don’t understand why she would place them, especially if she didn’t want the mages to be drawn to them.”
“There has to be some purpose behind them. Maybe you can puzzle that out.”
Could he? If he could, he could easily imagine that there would be something he might find, though what?
“I’m happy to help you learn more about what your grandmother was doing,” Xavier said. “I don’t know that I’m going to have all the answers, but ultimately, I think you need to know more about her and where she came from.”
“Korthal,” Laric said.
“I am not sure that she actually came from Korthal,” Xavier said, shrugging when Laric raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know, though it is possible. What I can tell you is that your grandmother knew the people of Korthal. When I traveled with her, she made her way through there with no issue, and she was quick to negotiate. It was easy because she knew the people in ways that I didn’t even know. And I’ve spent quite a bit of my career trying to build a rapport with the people of Korthal.”
“So if not there, then where?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should talk to that dragon,” he said, offering a hint of a smile. “Because there’s more to this than we know. More to it than even those of us who have spent any time there know.”
Laric sighed. “All right.”
“I’m going to make my arrangements, and then we should talk about what you’re going to do with that mage you’ve captured,” Xavier said.
“I’m not sure what we have to do with her. I don’t even know how long we can hold her there. She might be able to escape.”
“She’s a mage, Laric. I think that you have to consider it highly likely that she will escape.”
“The dragon wanted to incinerate her,” Laric said.
“That might not be the worst idea. I’m not saying that I condone murdering a mage, but you may have to consider being more definitive with her, because of the high possibility that others will come for her. Especially since you assisted her in reaching out to others.”
“Well, to our credit, we thought it was necessary to do after the attack. Of course, we also didn’t really understand the nature of the attack at the time, so…”
“Yes,” Xavier said. He clasped Laric on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. There are quite a few people who don’t really understand such things, and I’m fairly certain that you have at least decided to think about the implications of what you’re doing.” He chuckled. “And if you haven’t, then I will do my best to help you do so.”
After Xavier left, Laric looked at the glyphs on the building for a little while longer. His grandmother had done this. But why? And better yet, could Laric learn anything about the glyphs?
There were others in the town. That was what he needed to know now.
But it also felt like he had other things he needed to know, other things that he needed to do, and Laric didn’t know if he had time to before the mages made their next move.
Chapter Six
Laric found himself drawn by power. He wasn’t sure what it was that he was detecting, only that it struck him as energy surging through him, leaving him awash with it. It seemed to be tied to Sashaak, though at this point he wasn’t positive if that was the case, as he hadn’t been close enough to the dragon to be able to test that theory.
He had spent quite a bit of time in the city, testing whether he might come up with anything to help him know what his grandmother had been doing. Increasingly, he had to believe that she had been involved in what Xavier had claimed, but he also didn’t know the details, nor did he know if there was anything more he could even learn about it.
This was his grandmother, though.
He spent far too long walking through the streets, looking at each of the different glyph marks that were present on buildings and attempting to gauge their age. As he did, he could not find anything at all. It seemed to him that there should be something, but then again, he had always overlooked these glyphs and had never really paid much mind to what his grandmother had done—or might have been doing.
How many others had noticed what Xavier had noticed? Laric had a hard time thinking that anybody had, but if they had, perhaps he could ask about them.
At one point, he neared the school grounds. There were other glyphs in the area, which was part of the reason the school had been founded there, though Laric didn’t want to venture too close because a part of him remained somewhat concerned about the headmaster. She was a mage, after all, which meant that she was connected to the mage council in a way that he was not—and now did not want to be.
More than anything, he couldn’t help but feel as if all of this was going to be a problem for him. Eventually, Laric was going to have to decide what he wanted to do. Their town had always been connected to the rest of the kingdom, but it had also been isolated simply by nature of how far away it was from other parts, and how inaccessible it generally was. But mages had valued keeping a presence here.
Laric just hadn’t realized how short a time that had been.
By the time he finished his survey of the city, working through various detection spellslips to see if maybe he could uncover something that his grandmother had left—and failing—he was exhausted. He reached Malcolm’s home and hesitated as he debated whether he should just go inside. In the past, Malcolm’s father had told him to just head in, but he still didn’t feel quite comfortable with doing that. This was not his home, so he knocked.
When the door opened, Malcolm looked out, at first tentative, and then he rolled his eyes. “Why are you knocking?”
“Because it’s not my home.”
He snorted. “You make it difficult at times, don’t you?”
