“Now, time to find him,” Laric said.
“What do you think we need to do?” Rowan asked.
“Well, I think we need to get out of here first. Then we need to find the others—”
“I will get to the others,” the headmaster said. “The school should be a place of safety, not violence. No students should have to fear for their safety when they learn.”
“Thank you,” Laric said.
He didn’t know what else to say. He hadn’t expected that from the headmaster. In fact, he really hadn’t known how he felt about her before, but seeing that she was open to helping… He needed to try to take advantage of whatever assistance he could.
He nodded to Rowan. “Well?”
“How do you propose we find him?”
“That’s easy,” the headmaster said. “He will be minimizing everything around him. I don’t know what he calls it, but that is what I have always called it. He doesn’t like it when others use their gifts around him. You probably noticed that on your way here. He had Mr. Galinar doing something similar, though I didn’t realize how effective it was until I started trying to test myself around it.”
“A minimization?” Rowan asked.
“That is what I’ve always called it, but perhaps there is a different term. I don’t know what it is, though I’m guessing you could track it. You’re looking for an absence of power.”
“Well, that might be a little difficult,” Laric said. He turned to Rowan. “Especially considering what Xavier has been trying to do, why don’t you go to him and get him to drop whatever he’s doing. I’m going to find the Grand Mage.”
“You can’t do it on your own,” she said.
“I don’t intend to. I’m going to get help.”
“Help?”
“Right. And I think this place was designed for that help.”
Rowan watched him, her frown deepening. Then she looked up at the walls, and up and up. “The glyphs.”
“Fire,” Laric said. “I think this place was designed to summon fire. And because of that, I think this was designed to help dragons. Let’s just hope that I’m right.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Laric reached the top of the school tower, and once he was up there, he felt the wind blowing around him. The tower itself was unremarkable, though he could feel the presence of the glyphs and was not sure why he was so aware of them. They radiated a certain sort of energy, but he guessed that it came from the flames he’d added that were still coursing along the walls as if they were moving from panel to panel and building on each other. It was strange for him to be so aware of that, but he realized the purpose. It wasn’t to try to help Sashaak so much as it was acting as something of a beacon.
A way of summoning power.
He felt that clearly. That power was there, working through the tower, and the flames were emanating outward. They were not yet spreading, however. And that, more than anything else, told him all he needed to know about this place and the purpose behind it.
It was a place of dragons.
Maybe it had always been a place of dragons, or maybe it had once been a place of dragons and needed to be again. Perhaps that was the reason his grandmother had come here. Perhaps that was what she had hoped to bring back.
He stood atop the tower, looking down. Even from here, he could feel the waves of that restrictive energy. They were from Xavier, he knew, and there was some element of them that was radiating in a way that Laric could not fully comprehend. That energy swept outward in a circular fashion, making it impossible for Laric to do anything more than simply know that it was there.
And overhead, he felt something. Sashaak.
“I need your help,” Laric said.
“I felt the summons,” Sashaak replied.
The darkened shape swooped toward him. Laric was thankful that it was night, but even in that, he wasn’t entirely sure that the darkness would make much of a difference because the flames on the tower were likely going to draw the attention of others.
But it didn’t matter. Not really. Sashaak flew toward him and then hovered above. Laric hesitated atop the tower for just a moment, and then he jumped, scrambling on Sashaak’s back, planting himself firmly and using the belt spellslip that he had been taught.
Sashaak circled, quickly taking flight.
“We need to find the Grand Mage,” Laric said. “He’s going to be down there somewhere.”
“How?”
Laric filled him in on what had happened, and learning that the council and the Grand Mage himself had been involved in some of the Korthal destruction caused a surge of anger to sweep through Sashaak. There was nothing Laric could do about that at this point, but he appreciated the fact that Sashaak was angry and felt that he needed to do something about it.
Sashaak roared.
Laric wished he could suppress that because he didn’t want Sashaak to scare people in the city, but how could he tell a dragon not to do something?
Maybe it didn’t even matter. The only thing that really mattered was finding the Grand Mage, but Laric wasn’t sure how to find him or where he would be able to detect him. Or if he would even be able to detect him at all. If they didn’t get to the Grand Mage soon, would there be any—
Sashaak suddenly started to plummet.
“What’s going on?” Laric asked.
“Potential,” Sashaak said.
