He knew she was right. What would they have to think about, and do? He simply did not know.
He exhaled loudly and then stared ahead. “For so long, I thought mages were sort of the end-all of power.”
“They’re still powerful,” she said.
“I know. But it’s not just how powerful they are, is it? It’s what they intend to do with that power. How many of the mages are like Talia?”
Her eyes widened. “The headmaster?”
“I don’t know. But now I feel like we have to at least ask the question. And it’s a question that I never would’ve asked before.”
She stood quietly for a long moment. “Well, let’s get back to town, ask our questions, and then we can decide. First, though, maybe there’s something else that your grandmother left here that you can use.”
She wasn’t wrong. His grandmother was a glyph master, and though Laric didn’t really understand what that meant, other than the fact that she had obviously understood the glyphs that were present on the walls of the chamber beneath her shed, he did know that there would have to be something else that he could grasp from that. Perhaps it would be something she had intended for him to find. Without knowing with any certainty, he wasn’t sure if there would be anything he needed to look into. And increasingly, he couldn’t help but feel as if everything his grandmother had done had guided him in a particular direction, and it helped him find particular aspects of knowledge. How could that not be the case?
“Let’s check the artifacts,” he said.
He headed back into the cavern. He knew that they couldn’t stay here forever. Well, they could certainly stay, but he didn’t think they should stay much longer. He wanted to get back to town, and he wanted to see if there was anything there that Xavier might help them learn.
Laric looked at the wall of the artifacts that were there, but he didn’t see anything that struck him in any particular way. Joselle came over, peered around, and grabbed one of the artifacts.
“She had all these things from Korthal here, all this time? And she didn’t keep anything down below?” his sister said.
“I think that some of the artifacts that were in the lower section of her shed were Korthal artifacts, but the real question is what were they, and what were they for?”
“Maybe the real question is why she would take them out of Korthal and bring them here.”
He glanced over at Joselle. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“We know that Korthal and the mages have battled, right? So if that’s the case, then I guess it sort of makes sense that they might have wanted to evacuate things.”
“So you think these are some sort of relic that she wanted to preserve.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know her the way you did.” There was sadness in her tone. “I wish that I did, but I didn’t. And yet, it seems like the kind of thing somebody would do if they were trying to preserve an element of their culture.”
Laric hadn’t thought about it that way, but maybe his sister was right. Maybe that was what it had been about after all: preserving some aspect of the culture in order for them to do something with it. Though he didn’t quite know, he at least felt like it was one way that he might have a chance to dig into what it was that his grandmother might have found important, and perhaps take that information and use it.
It might help them better understand his grandmother, which would likely help him better understand what she had been hoping to train him for. Because in his mind, she had obviously been hoping to train him for something.
“Say,” Malcolm said, joining them. “Have the glyphs on the portal started to change, or is it just me?”
Laric hurried over to the portal. When it wasn’t active, it simply looked like a slab of stone with a series of glyphs etched into it. Vaguely, he had a sense of understanding those glyphs, though he didn’t know if that came from his grandmother or if it came from Sashaak. There did seem to be the possibility that it came from both, though he wondered how, and why, that would be the case.
“I think they’re the same as before,” Laric said.
“It’s just that this little square,” Malcolm said, pointing to a section of the wall that Laric hadn’t been focusing on, “looked like it was over here before.” He moved his hand to another section. “And this one,” he said, “was over here.”
“Do they move?” Rowan asked from behind him.
Laric gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not even sure how the glyphs work at all. That’s something I think I still need to learn from the dragon, but the answers are distant.”
Distant didn’t mean gone, though. And as he thought about it, he couldn’t help but think that maybe there would be some way for him to find that, but it would involve him speaking more to Sashaak.
Laric wished that he had Malinar around to talk to, because he wanted an opportunity to better understand somebody who was truly dragon-bonded so that he could comprehend what it meant for him.
Or better yet, have a chance to talk to his grandmother.
What he wouldn’t give for that.
“Maybe you can make these if you start to understand the glyphs,” Malcolm suggested.
Laric snorted. “Make a portal? I think I first need to understand the glyphs. I need to understand the potential, and considering that I am somehow connected to this dragon, I feel like there’s quite a bit of potential that I really need to understand, and don’t. And then we have to…” He trailed off.
“What?” Malcolm asked.
Laric frowned. “The portals. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that my grandmother’s knowledge might help me understand how to make them and place them. Maybe that was part of the reason she was here. But if she could do this, why wouldn’t she have just placed them in Korthal, where she could bring her things back here?”
“What makes you think that she couldn’t?”
“Because she used the caravan.”
“Oh,” Malcolm said. “Not just Xavier, but my father.”
“More questions about our grandmother,” Joselle said. “How about we just get going, because I don’t really want to stay here any longer.”
Laric nodded. She was right. It was long overdue that they return to town and get some answers.
His ears began to pop, and he immediately jerked his head around, looking to see who was using spellslips or spellcraft forms. He didn’t see anybody. His gaze darted over to the portal entrance, but it was also closed.
