“Right,” he said, and then he laughed. “Some sort of a key. I don’t know that my grandmother’s universal key is going to work here.”
“There’s only one way to know for sure, Laric.”
He stared at the markings, tracing his hand around them for just a moment, and as he did, he tested them, curious if he could pick up on anything. So far, there was nothing. No sense of energy. No sense of power within it.
He focused on the key, however. If that was going to be the way he would uncover something, then he needed to try to draw on that spellslip’s power. He focused and used what his grandmother had given him.
And waited.
Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
He glanced over to Rowan. “It doesn’t look like it’s doing anything.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Maybe my mistake.”
“It’s not really a mistake. It’s more about understanding what she had here, right? These glyphs are the key, but right now I’m not particularly sure I can identify it. I feel something, though.” He shook his head. “And I realize how that sounds.”
“It sounds the way it has sounded from the very beginning. Unfortunately, we don’t know.”
It would be so much easier if they did. So much easier if they could just keep on working how they had been, and perhaps find answers.
“I’m a little worried,” Laric admitted, looking over to Rowan. “We had three mages attack us. We had Talia attack us. I don’t know how many others are out there, and I don’t know what we are going to be able to do if she continues to attack. I don’t know how to stay ahead of her.”
Rowan was quiet for a few moments. “I don’t either,” she said. “But I don’t know that we have to know.” She turned to him and looked him in the eye. “All of this that’s been happening, everything that we have encountered, is beyond us. But we don’t have to do it by ourselves.”
“The problem is that if we stay—”
“Can we leave, though?”
The strength of her question and the way she said it made him doubt. Could they leave?
“I know you have to be considering what it might be like to go,” she said. “You’re starting to wonder if you can remain, and if there is going to be any way that you can protect your sister, Malcolm, me… and maybe even Xavier. But even if you go—and I don’t know where you would go—do you think that changes anything? Talia has shown a willingness to be involved in an attack on our town already. Daelon was with her. We know that. If she decides to take that same approach and turn it against us, you leaving isn’t going to make a difference. It can’t.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just feel like maybe I need to see something else. I need to try to understand what my grandmother was doing. I need to try to make sense of all of this. But I don’t know how.”
“There’s something you haven’t considered, Laric.”
“Which is?”
“Talking to the dragon.”
He started to smile, but Rowan shook her head.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “I know how it sounds. I know it seems a little ridiculous, but think about it. You haven’t considered talking to the dragon.”
“I don’t know that talking to the dragon is going to make that much of a difference.”
“You don’t know until you try.”
“It’s not safe to do too close to town,” Laric said.
“Go out to your grandmother’s place. I could come with you, or you can do this by yourself. It’s going to be safe enough out there, right? Or maybe go to the cave in the mountains, but that will probably take too long to get there.” She looked over her shoulder at the horses that were stabled. “Unless you decide to take one of Xavier’s horses with you, and then maybe it won’t take quite so long.”
“No,” he said, “maybe you’re right. Maybe I do need to go out to the shed and see what she has out there. I need an answer.”
“You really do. And there’s one more thing that you haven’t fully considered, but I think you need to.”
“And that is?” he asked.
“That is that you, and we, have a weapon they don’t.”
He grinned. “The dragon.”
Rowan nodded. “Exactly. They have to use spellcraft forms to try to force the dragon to do their bidding, right? But whatever connection you have to the dragon doesn’t involve that. Not that we know about.”
And as Laric thought about it, he knew that she was probably right.
“Maybe I’ll go in the morning,” he said. “I need some sleep. Actually, I’d like to clean up. Then sleep.”
“Yeah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You do have a bit of a stink to you.”
“You don’t smell like flowers yourself.”
Rowan crossed her arms. “Well, we were almost incinerated by a dragon, almost crushed under the weight of a cave, and we’re standing in the middle of a barn. So I think I deserve a pass.”
He laughed. But even as he did, he couldn’t shake the troubled thought that lingered.
This wasn’t over. They still had to deal with the mages. They would still have to find some way to make sure they were safe, assuming that he decided to stay. And at this point, he simply was not sure that was wise to do. A part of him wondered if he needed to learn more about Korthal and about the war with the mages, because what he had known was clearly not the truth.