“Don’t be like that. You can’t be great at everything,” she said.
“I don’t really feel like I’m great at all that much,” he said.
“You are good at enough. Although I think a lot of what you’re good at has been tied to your grandmother, hasn’t it?”
“See?” Laric said. “I’m not even good at all that much to make you think that I’m good at all that much.”
She shook her head. “Let’s go.”
Xavier set out, and they kept pace. They hadn’t gone far before he motioned to an old ruin that was just to the north of the city.
“I checked this place out before,” he said to Laric. “In case you were wondering. Your grandmother used to visit places like this all around the city. Never really understood it at the time, but if she was placing glyphs, then I wondered if there might be some here that would help explain what she was doing.”
“No glyphs, then?” Rowan asked.
“Nothing that I would consider new. That’s not to say that there is nothing here, though.” Xavier frowned. “Although when it comes to what she’d been doing and what she had been placing, it was difficult to know what was new and what was not.”
Laric nodded, and they rode close to the ruins. He found his gaze skimming across them, testing whether there was anything there whatsoever. He focused on what he could feel, yet there was nothing that struck him in any sort of way that would make him think there was anything to be said about this.
Distantly, he grew more aware of Sashaak. It seemed as if leaving town and heading north allowed Sashaak to create a greater connection to him. That was a disorienting feeling for Laric to experience, partly because that connection made it seem like he was up in the clouds with Sashaak, enough that he felt a swirling bit of power with each sense of movement. It was more than a little disconcerting.
At one point, Rowan nudged him. Laric blinked, glancing in her direction.
“You need to be careful,” she said.
“I just feel like I’m floating.”
“I get that. Obviously, the dragon is trying to keep a strong connection to you. But you still need to be careful.”
She wasn’t wrong, and he wondered if there would be any way that he could master the connection that he had.
He was going to need to do something. Sashaak had taught him different spellcraft forms, which Laric had continued to practice, ensuring that he knew more and more about what Sashaak wanted him to understand, but he also felt a growing uncertainty that the link that he shared to the dragon was more than just about spellcraft forms. It was about the potential that Sashaak offered him, which allowed Laric to tap into something greater inside of himself.
“You haven’t ridden the dragon?” Xavier asked as they moved past the ruins.
“I’m not so sure the dragon is open to me riding him. I have a connection, but…” Laric felt a little strange sharing that much, especially with somebody who was not part of the core group he had been working with. More and more, though, he’d been feeling like he at least needed to share something with Xavier, who had been helpful. “But the connection is different for me, and I think for the dragon. He had more with Malinar.”
“It was a longer bond,” Xavier said. “At least a decade, probably longer, so that’s not terribly surprising. I would imagine you just have to continue to build that relationship.”
Laric wasn’t sure what that would feel like, and the idea that he would build any sort of relationship with Sashaak seemed odd. But the connection to Sashaak still felt strange to him. The fact that he was connected to a dragon was strange to him. And as time went on, he couldn’t help but feel as if everything that he was encountering with Sashaak was going to be that way.
“I won’t be able to do that here, though,” Laric said, guiding his horse closer to Xavier.
“Doubtful,” the man said.
Rowan watched Laric. “But you have known that, haven’t you?” she said.
Laric nodded. “I’ve known that I won’t be able to stay with the dragon, so I’m going to have to either choose to go with the dragon wherever he wants to take me, or I’m going to have to ignore the connection that I have.”
“Could you do that?” Rowan asked.
“I think so. I don’t know. I don’t get the feeling that the dragon is going to force me to hold on to a connection to him. It’s just there. And it’s not even just about the connection I have. It’s more about the potential that I feel, and the power that exists within it as I pick up on certain elements of that.”
“That’s interesting,” she said. “Can you use that potential from a distance?”
“Sometimes I think I can,” Laric said. “But other times it feels like the distance is insurmountable. I’m aware of it, but awareness doesn’t equate to an understanding.”
He wished that it did, and increasingly, he started to wonder if maybe there wasn’t going to be any way for him to do more than what he already had. He felt this emptiness when he didn’t draw on or connect to that potential. Laric knew that if he ignored the connection he had to Sashaak and the potential it gave him, he would come to regret it.
And that made everything harder.
“Let’s push ahead,” Xavier said. “Because if she’s not where you think, I want to have time to hunt her down so that she doesn’t surprise us. And if you can, ask that dragon of yours to keep an eye out for her so she doesn’t slip behind us and get into town while we are unaware.”
Laric looked back toward the town, which was growing ever more distant behind them. He hadn’t even considered that, but Xavier was right. That was a possibility.
“Maybe we should have warned Malcolm and the others to be careful,” he said.
Xavier shook his head. “I doubt she’s going to attack the city. Not when she needs something. She doesn’t want the mages to look like they’re responsible. I suspect that what she really wants is to make it look like you are responsible, especially now that you have this dragon connection. You are going to need to be careful, more than anything else. So, as I said, let’s get moving, stay ahead of whatever she intends, and deal with this mage.” He looked over to Laric. “And then you can take care of the rest of what you will need to do.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sashaak continued to circle.
Laric felt the presence of the dragon with an increasing certainty, as the longer that Sashaak circled, the more that Laric started to make out elements of what Sashaak was able to see. Those elements seemed to bloom inside his mind in a way that alerted him to the various types of potential that Sashaak had begun to pick up on.
Still, even though he saw that potential, he had not been able to see anything that suggested to him where he might find Talia. And that was what he needed, though he also did not know what that was going to look like.
Rowan remained quiet. She was riding more comfortably than he was, seated atop the horse. They passed by several small, twisted trees, and the land sloped gently upward. Laric was thankful that he was on the horse, which was trotting at a reasonable pace, because it would’ve taken him quite a bit longer to walk all this way. Periodically, Laric couldn’t shake the thought that it might have been so much easier for him to fly by dragonback, if only Sashaak were willing. He had no idea if Sashaak would be willing, though.