The Grand Mage.
If there was any question about how deep the danger extended, this answered that. Talia had certainly been involved. Daelon. Other mages. Perhaps all mages had been involved.
And here he and Rowan were, stuck.
Their options were to try to deceive him or try to find a way of escaping, but even if Laric was able to deceive the Grand Mage this time, how long would they be able to do so? Eventually, the man was going to want to find out what happened to Talia.
“What have you been doing with my colleague?” the Grand Mage asked.
Apparently, it wouldn’t take nearly as long as Laric had thought it might for the Grand Mage to get to that point. But then, Talia had reached out to the mage council. She had requested help—or had shared what had happened. Either way, Talia was the one to have sent word out.
And he had let her. Thought it necessary, in fact.
“I wouldn’t know,” Laric said, sitting up. “She disappears from time to time. We thought that she came to help us, but she often leaves us.”
“Oh?”
He realized that answer was not going to work. And more than that, he was quite certain the Grand Mage knew it.
Laric attempted to stand, because if nothing else, he was going to try to fight his way out of here if it came down to that. He didn’t know if he would be able to, but he certainly wasn’t going to just let this happen around him, whatever this was.
When he tried to get up, he could not move. His body didn’t work. He felt as if he was being compressed, squeezed down into the chair. It wasn’t that dissimilar to the trap that Talia had used on them. What had he needed to do to escape that? Sashaak had helped, but the dragon’s potential was distant now. Far enough away that Laric couldn’t easily reach for it.
“I need your potential,” he said in his mind to Sashaak.
He had no idea if that message was even going to get out. He didn’t know if there would be any way for him to draw that power, but at this point, if he didn’t do anything, there was a very real possibility that he was going to end up being harmed, and that his connection to Sashaak was going to be stripped away from him.
There was no answer.
“Please,” he said. And once again, there was no answer.
Laric focused, trying to call that power to him and draw on that energy, but nothing came.
The door swung open.
Talia.
She locked eyes with him for just a moment. “I’m glad you finally made it, Grand Mage,” Talia said. “It has taken me a while to answer your summons.”
The Grand Mage flicked his gaze from Laric to Talia.
Summons?
Maybe that was what Laric had been feeling when he had first come back to town.
“It is not appropriate for you to keep me waiting,” the Grand Mage said to her. “I sent notice ahead of my arrival, and you, or one of the others, should have been here to greet me.”
“The others are dead,” Talia said with a shrug. “Daelon first, then Asin, Vianat, and Tisan. There are others, but those are the significant losses.”
“You have just named the majority of the council.”
Laric did not know what to say or what to do. The mage council had come? And Sashaak had killed them. At least that would explain why the power he had felt had been so potent.
“Yes, well this one has formed a connection that he shouldn’t have and has been making mistakes since that point,” Talia said, nodding at Laric.
The Grand Mage looked at him. “Connection? By that, you mean—”
Talia offered a hint of a smile as she cut him off. “Very much so.”
“Has he taken your glyph stone?”
Talia patted her pocket. “No. He has something else.”
“What are you talking about?” Mr. Galinar asked, getting closer to Talia.
Talia glared at him, and then flicked her hand. Power lanced out from her that Laric had never felt or experienced before. It slammed into Mr. Galinar, sending him tumbling backward and toppling into a heap near the wall.
“Was that necessary?” Laric asked.
“You will stay silent, or you will suffer the same fate,” Talia said. “You’re lucky I didn’t do that to you the moment I realized that you were already here. Thankfully, you have a particular feel.”
A feel?
They were talking about a glyph stone. They had some way of tracking power, and some way of using that to identify the dragons. That was what they had been doing, wasn’t it? The mages had been looking for power, and they had been trying to somehow wield it.
Laric had gotten caught in the middle, but it was more than just that, though. He and the others had been caught.
Talia turned to the Grand Mage. “We will have to find the creature and strip him from this one,” she said.
