He didn’t know if it would make a difference. When it came to dragons, it was possible that it would not.
“Why do you say that?” Joselle asked.
She tucked her hair back, and her shoulders were a little slumped. With her posture like that, she looked younger than she was. At least, she looked more inexperienced. With everything they’d been through, they were all more experienced than before. And he would need to continue to work with them to understand different spellslips.
That was something he could teach, but it would take time. Now that they had Talia secured, Laric had to hope that they had time, but there was another concern that he knew they were going to need to work on.
There were other dragons around the mountains. That was what Daelon and Malinar had said.
The other dragons would have been like this dragon. They would have been influenced by the mages and might even have been getting close to having a measure of control exerted over them.
Laric would need to better understand how the dragons could avoid that, but he didn’t know if there was going to be any way for him—as inexperienced as he was—to be able to do it.
The chamber felt strangely empty compared to what it had been before. Artifacts still lined the wall, though Laric had not spent much time examining them. He would need to, though. The walls were lit by glyphs, but he had not yet determined how that had occurred. Probably something from when Malinar had still lived.
“The dragon grants knowledge,” he said. “I don’t exactly know how it works, at least not entirely, but I think there are things we can learn from him.” Assuming that Sashaak would be willing to return and work with him again.
He kept trying to send more thoughts through to Sashaak, but there still wasn’t a connection there—nothing Laric thought he’d be able to borrow from as he attempted to make that connection more secure.
“So we’re going from learning from a mage to learning from a dragon,” Malcolm said. “Sounds like an upgrade to me.”
“We’re not going to be able to learn from the dragon,” Iveris said.
“Why not?” Malcolm asked. “We can work with the dragon the same way that Laric does.”
“Yeah, but we’re not dragonborn, so what makes you think we’ll be able to do anything that he does? Even if we can learn some spellcrafting forms, we aren’t going to be able to do close to what he does.”
Some of the irritation that Iveris had been showing over the last few weeks had faded, though it wasn’t completely gone. Laric didn’t know if it ever would be.
“You all know how to use the same spellslips that I started with,” he said. “That has to matter in some way. I don’t know what that way is,” he went on, wanting to cut off any questions that others—especially Iveris—might have, “but I think we can start with them. Work up to something more complex. Rowan is having success with the spellcraft forms, and I think that Malcolm isn’t far off from being able to do it as well.”
“Well,” Iveris said, “just because the two of you are able to do that doesn’t mean the rest of us will be able to. There are different ways of using spellslips, and we are still struggling with what they might be, and whether or not we’re going to be able to do anything. We understand that we aren’t like you.”
Rowan looked at her sister. “We will work together. Laric thinks he’ll be able to help us, and if he believes that what he has learned, and what he’s going to be able to learn, from the dragon is going to make a difference to us, then it will.”
Laric frowned. He didn’t even know if it was. For that matter, he didn’t know if Sashaak would teach him anything that would be all that useful to him. He was worried about whether the dragon would even continue to communicate with him, as more and more, Laric couldn’t help but feel as if everything that Sashaak was going through, and everything the dragon was feeling, was conflicted. Then again, how could it not be? Sashaak saw Laric as an extension of the mages. And in a certain way, perhaps that was what he and his friends were. He had learned spellcraft forms from the mages. He had come here with Talia, or at least thinking that he was coming with Talia, in order to defend this place from the dragons.
Why should Sashaak want to work with them? And maybe he didn’t. Maybe the dragon only would because he thought that was what Malinar wanted.
“I suspect that the dragon does know something,” Laric said. “And given everything he has been through, I also suspect that he isn’t going to hold out on us. But I don’t really know.”
“So we have to trust that you can convince the dragon?” Iveris asked.
“I suppose.”
“Well, then what do we do?”
“There are other dragons,” Laric said.
Iveris’s entire demeanor changed briefly. “Other dragons? Do you think that we can all—”
“I doubt that we all will be able to do what Laric has done,” Rowan said. “Maybe in time, but right now, I think we should be thankful for the fact that we have access to a single dragon. The bigger issue is that the other dragons are tied to mages, haven’t they been?”
“That’s my concern,” Laric said.
“Well, maybe we can go and help the dragons,” Iveris suggested.
“How do you propose we do that?” Malcolm asked.
“I don’t know. Why don’t we do the same thing and travel the same way that the dragons did with Korthal?”
Malcolm froze. He looked over to Laric. “Is that even possible?”
“I think we have to work on trust with the dragon before we think about even riding on one, though maybe?” Laric said.
The idea did appeal to him. What would it be like to ride on top of the dragon? He could imagine the sense, partly because he had been able to see through Sashaak’s eyes, and he had been able to feel what Sashaak wanted him to. He would expect to feel the wind gusting around him, the heat coming off Sashaak. He would expect to feel some of the energy that was there as well. He would expect to experience all of it, but he was not sure if he would even be able to do so.
How could he find a way to do all of that?
He breathed out a frustrated sigh and scrambled up the rock. When Rowan called after him, he looked back to her. “I want to see what the dragon is seeing,” he said. “We know that there isn’t anything down here that we have to be worried about. The dragon has dealt with that, so now it’s a matter of trying to figure out if there’s any way that I might be able to see anything more out here.”
Rowan followed.
The two of them moved faster than the others, and once they were about halfway up the rocky slope, Rowan looked over to him. “Do you think it’s possible?”
“That the rest of you might be able to connect to a dragon?”
She nodded. She glanced behind her—down toward her sister, he suspected. “She’s not wrong, you know. If it’s possible, I can see the appeal.”
