Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  She shook her head slowly.

  “It seems like the Ashara, whoever that may be, is trying to instigate a war,” Jayna said.

  “If that’s the case, there may be very little we can do to stop it,” Raollet replied.

  22

  Eva stood off to the side, saying nothing. Jayna was tempted to reach out to her, to say something, wanting to figure out a way to let her know she didn’t blame her for what was happening, but she could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

  What would happen to Eva if they came across this Ashara again?

  Eva had encountered them one time, and he had been close enough that Jayna had been concerned about what he might do and if she could prevent his actions. But she wondered if perhaps Eva had little choice in this matter.

  She was going to need to get involved.

  “We need to figure out where he’s gone,” she said softly to Eva, who just nodded. “And we have to figure out why he’s decided to do this.” Eva nodded again. “I know you’re afraid.”

  Eva looked up at her and frowned. “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “You should be,” Jayna said. “And I understand it. Gods, I’m afraid, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to stop this.” She looked over to Raollet. He held the book clutched up against his chest and he watched Jayna, seemingly ignoring Eva altogether. Maybe that was for the best. Jayna didn’t want Eva to draw any attention from him, especially as it would only raise questions from him about who she was and why she was here—and what sort of power she had. “Do you have some place you can go?” she asked him.

  “I thought I would stay here,” he said.

  Jayna flipped her gaze to the door. “I’m sorry I destroyed your doors.”

  He frowned, watching her. “You should not have been able to do so.”

  “Maybe they weren’t as protective as you thought.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Either way, are you going to be safe here?”

  “There is another place I can go.” He smiled tightly. “I am not the only scholar in the city.”

  Telluminder might be one too, though she wondered if his shop had been targeted as well. She wouldn’t put it past the Sorcerers’ Society to have already reached Telluminder since his shop also had enchantments, and she doubted he had an underground space the way Raollet did.

  “Find safety,” she said. “Until this is over, you might need it.”

  “What do you intend to do, Jayna Aguelon?”

  “I intend to stop the attack taking place in the city.”

  “If the Sorcerers’ Society has decided to finally take action on the dular, there may be very little you can do,” Raollet said.

  “Finally take action?”

  He shrugged. “The dular in the city have been acting without influence for nearly a century. They have grown powerful, and if I know anything about the Sorcerers’ Society, it’s that they do not care for others growing powerful while they dwindle.”

  Jayna frowned. “I wouldn’t say that the Sorcerers’ Society has grown weaker at all.”

  “According to them, perhaps they have. You have managed to keep yourself safe, but how many of the others in the Society could say the same thing?”

  Jayna looked around the room. This place was designed to hold sorcerers.

  So was the one at the outpost.

  Why would they have something similar in both locations? Would it work the same way on the dular?

  She didn’t see why not. Dular magic was very similar to that of the Society’s, and sorcerers and dular had overlapping skills, even if they managed to create enchantments in a different way.

  “You should get to safety,” Jayna said.

  “There is no safety, not if the Society has decided to attack the dular,” he said.

  “Not with that attitude,” she said. She nodded to Eva, and they got up. She climbed the stairs, reaching the shattered remains of his shop, and looked around.

  Occasional thunderous booms echoed, and Jayna realized that war had truly started. The battle was going on. The explosions came with a regularity, a steadiness, though not so fast and furious that she expected she would be able to track them to a single location.

  “What do you think?” she asked Eva.

  “Is it your intention to find this Ashara, or to stop the Sorcerers’ Society and their attack?”

  “Can we do both?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.”

  Jayna started along the street, following the power she felt building and exploding all around her, but she couldn’t do anything about it yet.

  She still needed to move though.

  “We need to see how bad this is.”

  Eva let out a breath traced with smoke. “I’ll go with you.”

  They crept through the streets, and as they made their way around the outskirts of the city, Jayna paused for a moment, listening to the occasional explosion of energy. She realized something. There were no lanterns lit out here in the periphery of the city. Nothing enchanted, not like there usually would be. As she looked along the street, the only thing she saw was the phosphorescent glow of the moss.

  How could they trigger—or simply block—so many enchantments so quickly?

  More than that, how was it that the dular were not better equipped?

  She would’ve expected that the dular would be able to create more enchantments fairly rapidly, but they had limitations to their power.

  “Everything feels off,” Eva said.

  Jayna nodded. “It is off.” She hurried forward, and it didn’t take long before she reached the market. She focused as she stopped, looking for any signs of activity, but it was empty. There were no vendors, nobody standing and trying to sell enchantments—nothing. Everything here had been destroyed.

  Jayna sighed. “This might be beyond us.”

  And it might be something she didn’t need to get involved in, anyway.

  This was between the dular in the city and the Sorcerers’ Society, not any sort of dark magic. This wasn’t the kind of thing Ceran had asked her to do.

  But she didn’t feel as if she could simply abandon the city—not with so much strangeness taking place, not without knowing what was going on. She felt she needed to do something, to intervene in some way, but . . .

  Jayna wondered if she even could.

  She heard the occasional explosion as she wandered through the streets, distant enough that she still couldn’t feel the source of it, though she recognized the power that was there.

  She wanted to stop, wanted to examine the source of that power, wanted to better understand whether this was an explosion of dular enchantments or whether this came from sorcerers, but she wasn’t even sure if it mattered.

  She headed toward the seven great houses of the city.

  Eva stayed quiet, though occasional smoke drifted around her.

  They reached the courtyard outside of the seven homes. The fountain still flowed, and the homes themselves were intact, other than the two that had been destroyed.

  “Where is everybody?” she whispered.

  “Ask your friend,” Eva suggested.

  She focused on Char. The faint awareness of him was still there in the back of her mind—subtle, but she thought she could find it. She used power to pinpoint the connection, then released it.

  “He’s not far from here,” she said.

  Jayna trailed after that energy, following what she could feel, and recognized that there was something nearby. Shadows moved along the street, heading away from the courtyard, sneaking quickly.

  Something in that movement struck her as familiar.

  If she went in the opposite direction, she would reach Char, but she wondered if perhaps she should head toward the person she’d just sensed. Could it be Matthew? Jayna followed them and Eva stayed silent.

  Jayna began to focus on a spell, beginning to build power. As she headed along the street, trailing after the figure, a burst of power slammed into her.
>
  She was thrown off to the side, while Eva remained motionless.

  Something looped around Eva, holding her hands at her side.

  “Eva?”

  “I’m unharmed,” she said.

  Smoke started to swirl around Eva, and she stretched her hands off to the side, shattering whatever bindings had been lashed around her.

  Jayna scrambled to her feet, reaching for the power of the dragon stone and creating a quick barrier around herself.

  The attack had come from an alleyway.

  Not Matthew. Not with that kind of power.

  “Who do you think that was?” Jayna asked.

  “Somebody who is about to find a different fate,” Eva said.

  Anger filled her voice, and as she stared into the distance, Jayna worried about Eva getting upset—worried that if she was filled with rage like that, she might take a dangerous tactic. But at the same time, she understood Eva’s irritation.

  “We should be careful,” Jayna said.

  “You be careful. I was attacked,” Eva replied.

  Jayna chuckled. “I was attacked as well. We both were.”

  “No.” She started forward, smoke drifting off of her. It began to slide down the alleyway.

  Jayna reached the entrance of the alley at the same time as a burst of light came streaking toward them.

  Jayna barely had a moment to react.

  She quickly solidified the barrier around them, trying to prevent power from striking them. She had no idea what this enchantment might be, what this power might be, but she could feel it coming toward her.

  It reminded her somewhat of the streaking band of power that had come from Agnew, only this one was not nearly as focused, and when it struck her barrier, it didn’t wrap around in the same way. It merely fizzled out.

  It did push her back a step though.

  She gritted her teeth, stepping forward again, and she called upon more power, letting it flow through her, then released the barrier as she and Eva moved ahead.

  “Sorcerer?” Eva asked.

  “I don’t know. It didn’t feel quite like any sorcerer.”

  More than that, if it had been a sorcerer, she would’ve expected to detect some twinge of energy, and there was nothing. If it was a sorcerer, then it was one who didn’t have much control, or much power.

  She didn’t know how many sorcerers were in the city, though from what Char had said, they had begun to fortify the city following the last attack, which suggested to her that there were more present now than there were before.

  “We should be—”

  Another attack blasted, streaking toward them, and Jayna reacted, solidifying her magic ball barrier once again, blocking the next attack.

  She didn’t want to lash out until she knew who was attacking. She didn’t think it was Char, and she had no interest in attacking a sorcerer unless she needed to, but she grew tired of getting assaulted by magic.

  It had already been a long day, and this only made it even longer.

  She focused on the alley, on the power she felt there, and remembered the last time she’d been blasted by a similar sort of magic.

  And she’d been right when she’d first seen the figure moving.

  Damn him.

  “Careful,” she warned Eva. “I know who this is.”

  Jayna traced her hand in a quick pattern then pushed outward, using a sweeping of magic that would almost blast through the enchantments, before withdrawing it. She didn’t need to do the same thing Agnew had done with all of the enchantments in the city. She didn’t need to incapacitate the dular—and whoever might be working with them.

  “If you’re there, Matthew, step forward.” She called out into the darkness and waited.

  It didn’t take long.

  Matthew appeared out of the shadows. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I can feel your enchantments,” Jayna said.

  Matthew frowned. “What sort of recent Academy graduate has the ability to feel enchantments?”

  Jayna glanced over to Eva. “Someone who is a little bit more than just a recent Academy graduate.” She looked in the distance. The power still exploded all around her. It came from the center of the city, though it echoed on the periphery. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I told you to stay away from this,” Matthew said.

  “You did. And I’m trying to get a sense of why you’ve gotten involved.”

  “Jayna—”

  Jayna darted forward, wrapping him in the power of the Toral ring. Matthew knew something, and with everything she’d gone through, and everything she still had to deal with, she was not about to take her time trying to understand it anymore.

  “Matthew Veran. If you know something, you are going to tell me. I am here to stop this war.”

  “You’re with the Society. You’re not here to stop war. You’re here to start it. I know everything about that. That’s why I was . . .”

  “That’s why you were what?” Jayna asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Matthew said.

  As she looked up at him, she pressed two fingers into his chest and began to let power flow from her fingers into him. It was merely a vibrational sort of energy, nothing more than that.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not with the Society, Matthew. And the only reason I’m here now is so I can try to stop this war before it gets out of hand.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not with the Society?”

  He glanced from her to Eva, and Jayna poked him in the chest again, forcing his attention back to her. “Keep your eyes on me,” she snapped. “And I mean what I said. I’m not with the Society. I am here to ensure this stupid war doesn’t evolve into something worse. If you know something, then you need to share it with me. Now. Before it gets to be something it doesn’t need to be.”

  “Jayna . . .”

  “No. We’re going to talk. You’re going to provide me with what I need.”

  “Listen. I was hired for a job. I did the job—”

  “What was the job?”

  “You know I can’t tell you about that.”

  “I know who and what you are, Matthew. And I know you can tell me about the job. I know you will tell me about the job.” She jabbed him again, sending another vibrating pulse into his chest, and Matthew just watched her, his eyes narrowing. “We don’t have much time. This is getting out of hand, and if I can’t figure out how to stop it . . .” She glanced over to Eva. “It’s got to be about more than just the sorcerers and the dular,” Jayna said softly.

  Matthew regarded her, frowning. “What did you get yourself involved in?” he whispered.

  “Apparently something big,” she said.

  Matthew took a deep breath and grabbed her hand, pulling it back. She tried to push a bit more power into him, but he had an innate resistance.

  Jayna wondered if he even knew what he was doing.

  “You don’t want to be involved in this,” he said. “You don’t want to get caught up in the fighting.”

  “I’m not going to get caught up in any fighting beyond what I’ve already been involved in. I’ve seen what the Society has done, and I’ve seen what the dular have done. Neither side is innocent here.”

  She still didn’t understand why. The Society generally had not acted in such a way before, so for them to do so now was shocking. Even the dular had not acted in such a way before, preferring to stay more reserved, to avoid fighting. The only thing she could come up with was the possibility that something or someone instigated this.

  And there was only one reason that would be desirable.

  “Listen,” Matthew started. “I was hired to make a bargain. I had to acquire some items from a difficult-to-reach source.”

  Jayna frowned as she looked at him. “What item, and what source?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Matthew, if this will help stop a war, you need to say.”

  He looked as if he wanted t
o resist, but Jayna was prepared to use sorcery on him to coerce him into answering. He finally shrugged slightly. “There’s an ancient temple to the north of the city. I had to meet someone there.”

  “An ancient temple? That would be . . .” She frowned, glancing over to Eva. “El’aras lands.”

  “I know. I had to gather some stones from within the temple. It was supposed to be an easy job, but . . . well . . . it would’ve been easier had your brother been there.”

  Jayna wished she could get the details of that from Matthew, but a different concern began to fill her.

  Stones.

  If Matthew still had his memory from what had happened in the city before, maybe he would’ve made the connection, but she had taken that from him.

  Perhaps Eva was right. Maybe it would’ve been better for her to have left Matthew’s memories.

  “I need to see them.”

  It had to be bloodstone, didn’t it?

  Matthew shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  Maybe she could convince him in a different way. If not, then she wasn’t above forcing him. If it meant stopping war, she would do it. “After you acquired the stones, what happened?”

  “Everything went to shit,” Matthew said. “I just want to get out of here. I don’t want these damn stones anymore, and I didn’t even need the money.”

  “You still have them?”

  “I was supposed to use them around the city. Just that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘use them’?”

  “Just toss them into a few different stores, all around the city, and . . .” He shook his head. “That’s about it.”

  Jayna stared at him for a few moments. “I need them, Matthew.”

  Matthew frowned at her.

  “This is bigger than a job,” Jayna stated.

  “Jayna—”

  “Matthew, I’m not going to argue with you about this. I’m going to need those stones.” She started forward, pressing her hand out, already beginning to hold on to the spell that would hold him.

  Matthew stepped back, raising his hands. “You can have them. I already got paid for the job.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulling out a pouch, and he held it out to her.

  Jayna took it, glancing inside. Bloodstones. They were all small, some incredibly so.