Laric hesitated, and as he focused, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that was true. He hadn’t even thought about that before.
As he approached the stairs that had been damaged, Laric knew that he needed to be careful. He didn’t want to do anything that might give Talia a chance to attack them, but he also didn’t want to be overly cautious.
The debris that had formed where she’d made her way up the stairs was mostly damaged stone. There wasn’t anything here that looked like it was related to the glyphs, but then, when they had come down here before, there had been glyphs all through this space, so he was surprised that there would be something here other than glyphs.
“She basically blasted through the floor,” Malcolm muttered.
“Which is impressive,” Rowan said.
Laric agreed. It was impressive. And it suggested a significant use of power—more than he imagined that Talia was capable of doing. At least, on her own.
What if she still had help? Or what if the other mages had come? There had been others coming, yet he didn’t know if they had made it to them yet. He had thought they still had time, but what if they didn’t?
When they got up to the shed level, Laric saw that it had been mostly demolished. The walls were generally intact, but that was about it. Everything that had been his grandmother’s was now gone. Destroyed.
“It looks like a dragon came through here,” Malcolm said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“This is different,” Laric said.
“The walls are still standing, so that much is different from what we have seen with the dragons. But it looks like she did whatever she could to make sure that you weren’t going to be able to find anything from your grandmother.”
That was exactly what it felt like, though Laric didn’t know if Talia had done it out of spite, or if there was something here that she wanted to keep hidden.
Maybe a bit of both, he decided.
Sashaak poked his head up through the opening once everyone else had climbed out. Laric gave him space, thinking that the dragon was going to step out into the remains of the shed, but he didn’t.
“This was a place of reverence,” Sashaak said.
“The shed?” Laric asked.
“This was once a place of reverence. Now it feels different. I do not know why that is, only that I can feel that some part of it has left.”
Was that his grandmother’s departure that Sashaak picked up on, or was there something else? And did it matter?
Maybe not to Laric. At this point, the only thing that he thought mattered was learning what Talia intended. And he was certain that she intended something.
“We need to go over to the town, and we need to see what else she’s done,” Laric said, looking at Sashaak.
“I cannot stay here.”
“Do you need me to open the portal for you?” Laric didn’t want Sashaak to leave and then get seen by someone from the town. But he didn’t want the dragon to leave at all, either.
“You will open the portal,” Sashaak said.
Laric said nothing about the command, but opened it as directed. He withdrew, and then there was a strange buildup inside Laric, before the sense of Sashaak changed.
“What now?” Rowan asked.
“Now we go back to town,” Laric said. “We see if Talia returned. We watch for mages. We stay alert. And…”
“And what?”
Laric didn’t know what to say.
What would they do?
They could wait. But waiting felt like they were waiting for punishment.
Laric wanted to be proactive, only he wasn’t sure how to do it.
Chapter Twelve
Laric remained near the quarry. They had returned to the town but found no sign of Talia. If she’d returned, no one had seen her, which was frustratingly common with her. But this time, Laric thought that was for the best.
That didn’t mean he had to stop his search.
He thought he had a way of looking for her, but it involved the dragon. Laric had been thankful for the connection to Sashaak—however faint it remained. That was what he needed now. He hoped to have a chance to glimpse through Sashaak’s eyes, though he wasn’t entirely sure it would work the way that he anticipated. He kept focusing and tried to grasp more information from it, but Sashaak would occasionally shift directions, making it harder for Laric to see much other than the clouds around him. It was a little disorienting, and disconcerting.
“Anything?” Rowan asked, dropping onto one of the piles of boulders next to him.
“Not particularly,” he said. “She’s hiding.”
“She probably knows that we’re looking for her.”
“Do you really think Talia is afraid of us?”
“Well, not particularly,” she said. “But if she knows that we’re looking for her, it’s likely that she’s trying to uncover something different.”
