Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Jayna didn’t know what she would use that information for, but it would help her further her knowledge and understanding of the twelve—and the darkness that Ceran wanted her to defeat. It could provide her with names, which might be valuable.

  “We’re still going to have to figure out what’s taking place here in the city.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I suspect it’s tied to the sorcerers, and the dular, and . . .” Jayna shrugged. “I don’t really know. But we can keep digging into that. It’s something else I can ask Char about when I go see him.”

  “And not about me?” Eva asked carefully.

  “No. Not about you.” She wouldn’t tell Eva that Char was looking into information about her just yet. That would come later, when Eva decided she wanted to know more about herself—what she was and what she might be able to do. Eventually, she would have to accept that, wouldn’t she?

  Jayna headed toward the kitchen, carrying the bottle of wine and her glass, when the front door opened.

  Topher entered, grinning at her. “Jayna. You came back. Eva was back here earlier, but she didn’t want to talk.” He pouted for a moment. “Then again, Eva never wants to talk. I figured you might though.”

  “I’m just getting ready to head out,” she said.

  “Already? You’ve had a long day. Why don’t you stay? I can make you some food. We can sit and talk.”

  Food sounded good, and Topher’s cooking, in particular, sounded wonderful. She didn’t necessarily need to go now. Nothing would change in the interim. Along with finding information about the founding of the Society, she had to look into the Ashara and learn what she could about them, but she doubted these enchantments would be used to attack Char or the Society inside the outpost. It was too well-protected.

  “I suppose I could sit and eat.”

  She pulled out her chair, taking a seat at the table, and Topher laughed. “I didn’t mean just yet. I just got back from doing what you asked me to do.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Looking into the dular. Did you know that Rosal has taken over his father’s position?”

  “I didn’t,” Jayna said, sitting up. “What happened to his father?”

  As far she knew, he hadn’t been injured in the attack. She’d protected him, removing the bloodstone from his home before anything could’ve happened to him. That should have kept him safe.

  “I don’t know. They don’t really like to talk about it.”

  “They?”

  “The seven. You know they’re particular about what they share.”

  “I don’t. I’m not connected to that part of Nelar. That’s why we have you, Topher.”

  He grinned at her. “You do have me for that. That’s great. And well, I don’t know if I can tell you a whole lot more than that, just that Rosal is leading the family now.”

  Jayna leaned back in the chair, frowning. It surprised her that Rosal would be leading his family. He had never struck her as particularly skilled. He was pretty, sure, but not all that talented without using the bloodstone. That said, he certainly could be charismatic—she saw that when he spoke at the market, working on selling the bloodstone enchantments. He could be compelling, but for him to lead one of the great houses within the city . . .

  It just didn’t fit.

  If her plan to go to Char for help didn’t pan out, she could always go to Rosal for information. Whether he’d answer her was a different matter, however.

  “Keep looking into it,” she said to Topher.

  “Why? What do you think we’ll find?”

  She shook her head. “I really don’t know. Whatever is there is important, but I don’t know why.”

  “Is it always like that with you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you know something is important but you don’t know why?”

  She looked over to Eva, seeing her resting back against the chair, eyes closed, the fire crackling in front of her and radiating heat. “Sometimes.”

  13

  The surge of the ring caught her attention.

  It was a new day and Jayna had been on the outskirts of the city practicing spells again, hoping to gain a better understanding of her spellbooks. It was a way of trying to clear her mind. Eva was looking for more information and Topher had gone off to question the dular, which left Jayna feeling adrift.

  She could have gone with either of them, but she felt her time would be better spent working in the spellbooks while looking for something that could generate a smoke spell that would appear like Ashara magic, but she hadn’t yet found anything.

  When the ring began to constrict, she thought perhaps it was a dark creature. It hadn’t been one when she had felt it the last time though, so she wasn’t exactly sure if that was it, but the tension in the ring persisted, constricting more and more.

  Not a dark creature.

  A dark sorcerer.

  She hurriedly wiped away the spell she had been tracing out on the ground, tucked the spellbook into her pack, and paused. She was near some of the old El’aras ruins, close enough to the forest that she could use it to absorb the power of sorcery she was drawing upon and diffuse it enough so that the Society wouldn’t detect it.

  Where was the power coming from?

  She couldn’t tell.

  She continued following the steady constriction she detected. It had to be somewhere nearby.

  It brought her back into the city. She wove past a row of shops, all of them tucked into old El’aras structures, and headed past a small plaza where she detected a hint of smoke drifting. She paused for a moment. As she stared at the smoke, she couldn’t tell if it was an enchantment like she had seen in Raollet’s shop, or simply chimney smoke.

  A shout in the distance caught her attention.

  She tore her gaze away.

  Now wasn’t the time for her to be worrying about smoke coming from a single building.

  She focused on the tightness she detected in her ring.

  Dark magic.

  Jayna began to call upon the power within the Toral ring. Cold crept into her finger, then up her wrist and all the way up her arm. The power within the ring was considerable, and it surged far faster than it had when she had first been gifted the ring. That was partly because of the additional power Ceran had granted her when she had needed to take on the Order of Norej, but it was also because of the bloodstone that had augmented the Toral ring.

  Holding on to that power, she ignored the darkness she detected at the edge of her awareness, focusing instead on the power within the ring, wanting that to guide her. If there was a dark sorcerer here, she needed to be prepared for it. Her own sorcery spells might be effective—she had seen how they could be used against different dark sorcerers—but she also knew that the Toral ring would be much more effective.

  She could feel something deeper in the city.

  She hurried forward, and as she made her way into the city, she realized something else.

  The streets in the city’s periphery were mostly empty—not completely, as there was an occasional person poking their head out of a window or standing in a doorway—but for the most part, no one was out walking.

  Her heart started to hammer again.

  The last time she had felt dark magic had been in the crowd.

  Jayna hurried forward again.

  And then she saw it.

  She was near the center of the city. In the distance, she could almost imagine the dular manor homes of the ruling families. A crowd had started to form. It was late in the day, near dusk—not a time she would’ve expected there to be a crowd like this. Why now?

  And why here?

  As she moved along the street, the crowd surged ahead of her.

  Jayna jogged and began to join them, but she didn’t feel any other power, only the constriction of the ring on her finger.

  If she could figure out who was driving the crowd, maybe she could understand the magic that
was involved and come up with some way to counter it.

  Immediately she focused on Char. He knew how to do this.

  There was a sense of him in the back of her mind, an awareness she had through the linking spell that joined them. She tried to pluck it, pulling on that connection, but she couldn’t tell if he recognized what she did. If he was aware of it, there might not be anything he could do anyway.

  He had used a healing sort of spell on the crowd before, though Jayna wasn’t sure if she had enough understanding of that kind of magic to do something similar.

  Then she found the crowd gathering.

  She forced her way forward, feeling the agitation. Someone near her shouted, then somebody else threw something. There came a flash of fire, a rumble, and a strange trembling on the ground. Enchantments.

  Then she saw a maroon-robed figure lying motionless on the ground. She only caught glimpses of it, but panic began to set in.

  She tested for her connection to Char, and was thankful it wasn’t him. He was still too far away.

  But there was a sorcerer down.

  She forced her way forward, preparing several different spells, and found that it wasn’t just one sorcerer—there were several.

  She saw three maroon robes. Dular pressed ahead, and the steady rumbling of power was almost too much. Jayna began to focus on her own power, anger building within her, when a hand grabbed her and jerked her backward.

  She spun, immediately raising her Toral ring, then lowered it.

  “What are you doing here, Matthew?”

  Matthew’s eyes were wide. “We need to get you out of here, Jayna. Can’t you see what’s going on?”

  “I saw,” she said.

  There was the continued, steady feeling of tension around her. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was starting to act against her. The dark magic was affecting her. Was it because she held on to the energy through her Toral ring, or would it have been worse if she hadn’t?

  “Come on,” Matthew said, dragging her.

  “I can’t.”

  “You cannot stay here.”

  He dragged her, and though she wanted to fight, he made a certain sort of sense. The sorcerers who were down were beyond her ability to help. The dular were too numerous, and it was entirely possible that there was too much power from them for her to be able to do anything.

  She focused again.

  Could she really leave the sorcerers behind?

  There came an explosion of sound followed by a gust of wind, and a burst of power slammed into her. It came from where the sorcerers were lying motionless.

  Matthew jerked on her again, dragging her.

  “You don’t want to be there. You don’t want to see it.”

  “See what?”

  Matthew’s eyes practically begged for her to come with him.

  She followed him, weaving against the crowd. When they neared its edge, he nodded back the way they had come. “Do you think that’s the first time this has happened?”

  “I’ve seen it happen before.”

  “I just saw two sorcerers dead,” Matthew said. “I don’t know how many were there, but—”

  “Probably three,” Jayna said softly.

  Matthew nodded. “Three. What would happen if they got a hold of you?”

  “They wouldn’t know—”

  Jayna cut herself off before explaining too much to Matthew. As far as he knew, she was a part of the Society. She might not have her robes on, but would he know that distinction?

  “You should get out of the city, Jayna. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s dangerous. Let someone else deal with it.”

  Sorcerers were dead. Dark magic instigated the riots, she was certain of it, and she could still feel it building with the constricting of her ring. She knew she couldn’t leave it alone.

  “You’re right,” she said, deciding she needed to placate Matthew. “I need to get out of here before something happens.”

  He visibly relaxed. “Good. Now, I might be able to get you away from here, to a place you can be safe, but—”

  “I don’t need your protection,” she said.

  “Jayna, I know that—”

  “I don’t need your protection, Matthew,” she repeated, more stridently this time.

  He looked as if he wanted to argue before stepping back and shaking his head. “You know where to find me.”

  “I know where you brought me, but I still don’t know what you were doing.”

  “I can’t talk about it. But if you see anything burning that shouldn’t be, just stay away from it.”

  He slipped away before she had a chance to ask what he meant.

  Burning? Like when Rosal had used his enchanted bloodstone? Or was he talking about the smoke enchantments designed to look like the Ashara?

  Jayna tried to chase after him, but she’d already lost him—and if Matthew wanted to disappear from her, she wasn’t going to be able to find him.

  But he knew something.

  The Toral ring constricted again, and Jayna turned her attention back to what she detected.

  She raced forward, fighting through the crowd. She could still feel the dark magic around her, but that was it.

  She ignored the fallen sorcerers.

  They were probably beyond her ability to help, at least until the dular cleared.

  But it wasn’t beyond her ability to explore—and try to stop—the dark sorcerer who was instigating things.

  She opened herself up to the power of the Toral ring even more. The cold worked up to her shoulder and began to burn through her chest. She had learned to deal with most of that pain, but it was still powerful, still almost more than she could withstand. She tried to ignore the way the cold pressed in upon her, but it hurt.

  Clenching her jaw, Jayna fought through it, suppressing the pain she felt.

  The ring was even tighter now and she followed it, feeling its pressure.

  That sense veered off from the crowd.

  Jayna pushed through several dular, one of them looking in her direction, but she hurried forward before somebody realized that she had been a part of the last crowd. She made her way to a quiet side street with a row of homes, but the ring continued to squeeze, telling her she was heading in the right direction.

  She slowed down.

  She could still feel the pain from the ring, the way it squeezed and constricted, warning her there was something here, though she wasn’t sure where it was coming from.

  Then it stopped—suddenly, and with no warning. Either the use of dark magic had abruptly abated, or something had happened to the dark sorcerer using it.

  It reminded her of what she had experienced following the last riot in the city.

  Jayna paused.

  She released her hold on the power coming through the Toral ring, the pain retreating as she did, and breathed slowly, trying to determine whether there was anything more she might feel. But she couldn’t come up with anything.

  There might be something here, but she wasn’t going to find it using her Toral connection.

  What if she tried sorcery?

  There were a few different tracking spells she might be able to use, but what would she track?

  A heavy burst of power erupted back in the direction of the crowd, and Jayna froze, turning toward it.

  That was sorcery—incredible sorcery.

  She realized that the crowd had started to disperse. The moment the dark magic had faded, the crowd must have gone cold, its influence upon them fading as well.

  What was the burst of power she had detected though?

  The Society. It had to be. They were making their way here.

  Jayna hurried back toward the street where she had seen the fallen sorcerers, lingering near the corner and watching as the crowd dispersed. The three sorcerers continued to lie motionless in their maroon robes.

  Jayna darted forward and checked on them.

  Two women and one man. One of the women was g
one. Her eyes were glazed, and her head looked as if she had been struck, blood streaming from her scalp and pooling along the street. Jayna moved on, a need for practicality driving her to check the next sorcerer.

  The other woman was breathing, though shallowly. She checked for a pulse, and found that it was weak.

  Pressing her hand on the woman, she focused on what she already knew of healing, wishing she had focused more on that after having gotten the spellbooks from Char. She hadn’t really had the need to heal all that often, but she needed to now.

  As she focused, pushing power down, she felt a trembling. She had to try to trace out a quick pattern and activate it, pushing her connection to sorcery through the woman until the spell triggered something within the woman and her own sorcery took hold. This would link the two and allow the woman’s natural abilities to take over, helping her to heal herself.

  It was similar to a linking spell, but not quite the same. It wasn’t true healing, but it should buy the woman enough time until the others from the Society arrived.

  The man was going to be more difficult. He had a puncture wound in his belly.

  As she focused on him, she felt something coming toward her and she looked up.

  A pair of dular were approaching.

  “Back away,” Jayna said.

  She twisted to face them, grabbing for an enchantment in her pocket that wouldn’t harm them. She found the wand she’d made instead.

  “Are you with them?” one of the dular asked.

  “Back away,” Jayna repeated.

  One of the men surged forward, and Jayna raised her hand. She focused on the power within the wand and drew that through her, blasting him with a burst of pale vapor that sent him flying back across the street where he crashed into a nearby building. The other man looked at her, then darted away.

  She looked at the wand—more useful than she’d expected—and tucked it back into her pocket.

  She pressed her hand on the sorcerer and he moaned.

  She traced a quick, circular healing pattern—a series of circles that, when joined together, might allow her to help him—but she wasn’t going to be able to link him to his own magic. There was the possibility that she could use her Toral power to help heal, but Jayna wasn’t even sure if that would be enough.