“You are doing it wrong,” Sashaak said.
“How am I doing it wrong?” Laric asked.
“You are not controlling the focus.”
How much could he learn from Sashaak? Those visions and those memories might be all that he needed to understand the power that he now had access to—and the potential.
“The focus is what you were shown.”
“Fine,” Laric said, and he shifted, moving so that he could get away from Sashaak a little bit. “If you want me to focus, then give me some idea about how it is I’m supposed to focus.”
He sat quietly, waiting for an answer. For a moment, he didn’t think the dragon was going to share anything, but then he saw another image. Laric wasn’t sure what to make of it, but this one was far more focused than the last ones had been. The image flooded into his mind suddenly, and with crystal clarity.
Once again, Sashaak was flying. Only this time, the dragon was flying over what looked to be a grassy plain. It was difficult for Laric to identify because from above, everything was a blur. There were occasional dots of flowers, but he was mostly aware of the green beneath them. He realized that what he was seeing was through Sashaak’s eyesight. That itself was strange, but then again, maybe Sashaak was trying to give him something else.
Then he felt something different. A use of power. A spellcraft form.
It was chasing him.
He wondered if Malinar was there with Sashaak at this point, if he was riding on his back, and if he was the one who recognized the spellcraft form more so than Sashaak. It was difficult for Laric to know if it was one or the other, but then again, he also didn’t know if it made all that much difference. The only thing that really mattered was the fact that he could feel it.
Sashaak chased, and Laric had to focus. That was what Sashaak wanted.
He recognized what Malinar was doing. It had to be him. He was drawing upon the potential of Sashaak, and he was fortifying it, but he was also shearing off some of the magic of the attack.
And as the attack was thwarted, Laric recognized how that magic had been formulated in the first place. It was not all that complex.
Then the image was gone. Laric snapped back into where he was, and the way he was there with Sashaak, and he could feel everything.
“Now, repeat.”
Chapter Ten
Laric spent most of that night practicing.
They’d talked about heading back, but there was a quiet comfort found in the cavern, and here they could practice without fear of someone seeing what they were doing. They also had plenty of time to return to town.
For all of Sashaak’s reluctance to be an instructor, he was a far more eager and willing one than Laric expected. Laric had already learned about a half dozen different spellcraft forms.
The easiest one was the spellcraft form that targeted earth. It had been used against Sashaak, but it had also been fairly useless against him. But it was one that many mages—and Laric assumed that it was mages who were targeting Sashaak—had used on Sashaak. But so far, none of them had been effective.
Why had the one that Laric had been given first been effective?
There were several others he learned too. Wind had also been a common tactic used against Sashaak, but so far, most of those wind attacks had also been relatively useless because the dragon knew ways of countering them. And he could feel how Sashaak used his power. He could feel the elements of fire.
Laric now had three different uses of fire. He could create a beam of flame, but it was not a very thick one, and it ended in a puff of smoke. He could also create a stretch of fire that shot away from him, lasting about two feet before it dissipated altogether. And then there was the smoke. That seemed to be the most useful, since Laric could create a hazy smoke that covered everything. It was also the easiest for him to do, as apparently it took the least amount of potential and was still a useful technique. That was one that Laric wanted to better understand, because he couldn’t help but feel that if he were able to use smoke in that manner, he might be able to find a way to conceal all of them.
There was also the possibility that he might be able to mix what he was learning here with something else.
He had used a concealment spellslip that his grandmother had taught him, but he still didn’t know if the spellslip could combine with Sashaak’s potential all that well or not. He suspected that many of his spellslips could, but they all required a different kind of power. And until he knew how to push through all of that, he didn’t know if the potential that he could summon would even make much of a difference based on what he had seen.
The others spent the night working on spellslips, with Rowan leading the lessons. Everyone was a relatively eager student until the middle of the night, when Iveris announced that she was tired and that she was going to sleep. She glared at Laric before curling up on her jacket in a huff.
“What was that about?” Laric asked Rowan.
She shrugged. “I think she’s disappointed that your magic doesn’t allow you to simply make a bed for her.”
“That’s not how this power works.”
“Oh, I know it, and she knows it. But she’s just—”
“Being Iveris?”
Rowan laughed. “Pretty much. Though why wouldn’t you be able to use a bit of wind to harness that power so you can create something of a mattress out of it?”
“I suppose it would work,” he said, “but the technique might not have much permanence to it.”
“We’re not looking for permanence, are we? Just a little power that you can push through.”
“Temporary permanence,” he said with a chuckle.
They continued to practice, and after a while, he moved on to helping Rowan with some of the different spellcraft forms. Either she was getting better at them, or Laric was getting better at teaching them. Neither knew which it was. But the tethering of a spellslip to the form seemed to be the most significant change that either of them had accomplished. He wasn’t sure why it had worked, only that it had.
When he said as much to her, she frowned. “I think the form is easier knowing that there’s something holding it, if that makes any sort of sense.”
“I think it does,” he said, “but it shouldn’t, should it? We should be able to make this form hold regardless.”
“We should be able to, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way.”
