“Of course you can,” Laric said. “Because anybody would be able to see the appeal in being able to access a dragon. And it might not even be necessary to be born a certain way, not if what the mages were after is true.”
Power—and the kind that would allow them to link to and control dragons. If the mages had that… Laric knew they would be too powerful then.
“I don’t know what it is that you’re able to feel,” Rowan said.
“Heat,” Laric answered, feeling a little strange as he did. “When I focus, that potential is there. It’s always been there, I suppose, but now it’s different than it was before. It’s like there’s some deep part inside of me that’s reacting in some way I had not ever anticipated. I can feel it, much like I can feel how the weight of the dragon is trying to direct me. I think that if I were to try to understand that potential, I can use it, but it just feels so vast.”
“That’s still not an answer to my question, Laric,” Rowan said.
“The answer is that I don’t know,” he said. “Possibly. Joselle would be the one that would be the most likely, I think, because she would be descended from the same people.”
“But we all have mage potential.”
“That’s true,” Laric said. Otherwise, none of them would’ve been at the school.
“So, what if you teach us the glyphs? Maybe the glyphs your grandmother was working on with you were a way of trying to claim and connect to your potential.”
Laric shrugged. “That’s entirely possible. Knowing my grandmother, that’s exactly the kind of thing I would’ve expected her to have done, and that I could easily imagine her thinking that she needed to teach me. But,” he went on, looking over, “the challenge is in knowing what it was and what my grandmother even wanted me to do. I don’t have any clue about what she was after, only that I knew she was working on certain things, and with certain types of power that she obviously thought I was going to be able to master.”
“I do think that you’re going to have to keep teaching us,” Rowan said.
“We’re going to have issues with the school.”
“That’s not the only issue we’re going to have.”
“What other issue?” he asked.
They had reached the edge of the rock, and from here, Laric was able to scramble out and see the darkness of night blooming in front of him. Everything was quiet, though there was a familiar gust of wind. He could practically smell something on that wind that reminded him of when he had flown on it.
Laric shook those thoughts away. He had not flown on the wind. That had been Sashaak. But those thoughts, and those memories, lingered inside him, almost as if Sashaak demanded that he have them.
“We still have to be concerned about what happens when other mages come,” Rowan said. “Maybe they won’t all be like Talia, but if they are, and if the mages are like her and Daelon, then we need to be cautious.”
He wanted to tell her that the mages were not going to come, but he knew that was not true. How could he tell her that they wouldn’t, especially given what they knew about the dragons, and what they now knew about the dangers they posed?
What was more, he knew that if word got out to the other mages, they would have a hard time with what they would be able to do, and how they would be able to handle the danger of the mages.
How would they hold off a couple more of them?
A dozen?
All of the Mage Society?
Laric didn’t think they’d be able to do that, which made him even more nervous about everything they were dealing with.
“I don’t have an answer,” he said softly.
Rowan took his hand. “I’m not expecting you to have an answer, but I do want you to consider the questions.”
Once out on the rock of the cave entrance, he continued to feel the strange energy that was there. It felt oddly stagnant, which he found unusual, but maybe he shouldn’t. The power that was out there seemed to come from Sashaak, but it also seemed to come from some deeper part of him, as if Sashaak were only one aspect that he was meant to be aware of.
He used a detection spellslip, and without meaning to, he found that he pulled on some of the potential. That made the spellslip much more potent, and in a way that he wouldn’t have anticipated, though perhaps he should have. That power flooded through him, and he attempted to control it. He could feel all of that energy there in him, and though it was working through him, he didn’t know what more he was going to need to do.
The potential added to the spellslip. Augmented it.
Power blossomed around him. And he could feel.
That was the only way Laric was able to describe what it was that he detected. There was a curious and diffuse energy down below, but even as he held on to it, he wasn’t sure that what he was picking up on would be anything more that he would need to be using. That energy seemed to come from different locations all around the mountains.
And what was stranger to him was how he could feel all of those different places around the mountains. It was like a map that formed in his mind.
“That’s outstanding,” he whispered. He looked over to Rowan. “Between the dragon and what I can detect using spellslips, I’m aware of so much more than I was before. It’s odd. It makes me wonder how the mages were ever able to defeat the dragons and the dragonborn. If they have this kind of a connection, I can’t imagine that anything would have been able to stop them.”
But it was more than just what he had said. Mages like Talia had a way of overpowering dragons. And if they were able to do that, what would happen to him? To the rest of them? To the dragons?
“What if there’s something our grandmother taught you that makes you safer?” Joselle asked as she and the others caught up to them. When Laric looked over to her, she shrugged. “Think of everything that she did with you. She wanted you to know things, right? It only makes sense that she might have wanted you to know things that would keep you safe if there were others who had a way of stopping you.”
He could imagine that their grandmother had taught him something like that, as strange as it might be. But he didn’t know why she wouldn’t have shared with him what she was hoping he might learn. Why not tell him what she’d wanted him to do, and why had she taught him what she had? Why keep him in the dark about the kinds of dangers that she’d faced, only to leave glyphs scattered all around?
The dragon egg had served as a way for him to understand the glyphs, but even with that, Laric wasn’t truly sure that he would know enough about what the egg could teach. Perhaps Sashaak would be willing to help, but if so, would it be safe for Laric to trust a dragon?
Even if he didn’t, it didn’t change anything that he had to do. He was going to have to deal with the trapped dragons. He wasn’t sure that he would know how to do that, or if he was strong enough to be able to handle anything like that, but he had to believe that he would need to have some role in it, even if he didn’t know exactly what that role was going to be.
“What are you thinking?” Rowan said.
Before he had an opportunity to answer, a flood of new images came to his mind. At first, he wasn’t sure what they were. Then he noticed specks in the sky. It looked like Sashaak was pursuing something. Maybe the dragon was hunting, and wanted Laric to be aware of how he was doing so.
But that didn’t seem to be the case. He had no idea what those specks were, but he had a feeling from them. It caused a stirring deep inside him. Initially, Laric struggled to understand that feeling, to know what it was that he was picking up on, but the more that he felt it, the more obvious it became that the energy was tied to dragons.
