Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “He is darkness,” Asaran said.

  She almost laughed at it, but she remembered the anger within Agnew when she had fought him and remembered how he had brought her to the cell beneath the outpost, how he had been so willing to assault her. Could Agnew be Dorian?

  “I don’t understand. Why Nelar?” Jayna looked from the woman to Asaran, and tried again to see the others behind them, but still couldn’t. She had a distant sense of power, and it left her concerned. It seemed as if there were explosions nearby, vaguely behind her, and they continued to reverberate.

  Could the activity up in the city be increasing?

  “Because Nelar is home to one of the great enchantments: a powerful seal placed here, part of the prison that separates Sarenoth from the world.”

  “I see,” Jayna said, though she didn’t. Not really. “And let me guess, when Gabranth was here on behalf of Asymorn, and when the Order of Norej was here, they were trying to reach that enchantment?”

  “Destroy it,” the woman said.

  “And now Agnew? Or Dorian—assuming they’re the same person?”

  “Dorian,” she said. “And he has been searching for it.”

  “I’m going to assume he found it?”

  The woman nodded. “It’s never been hidden. It has been protected, but after the Order of Norej attacked the city, the great enchantment was damaged. Exposed. Now one with the strength to break it will allow the power of him to begin to infiltrate the world.”

  “Attacked? Only a couple houses were burned.”

  Jayna’s breath caught.

  Houses had burned. Great houses had burned. Some of the first dular of the city. People who had been here from the very beginning, from the founding.

  But that wasn’t it.

  That couldn’t be it.

  They wouldn’t be an enchantment.

  There was something else that it could be though.

  Jayna used the ring to fortify herself for a moment as she looked at the others around her. “It’s not the houses,” she said. “The courtyard. The fountain.”

  “Very good,” the woman said. “And Dorian discovered the truth that night. He’s been trying to use his influence to cause even more havoc but has not managed to accomplish unleashing Sarenoth’s power.”

  She’d seen the dark magic used on the dular and the Society’s willingness to attack them, but how did that connect to the Ashara enchantments? And to what Dorian wanted? “What does any of that have to do with the great enchantment?”

  “It has everything to do with it. Dorian didn’t know how to find the great enchantment, and now that he has uncovered it, learning about its presence has taught him something he didn’t know before: how to destroy it.”

  “How?” Even as she asked, Jayna thought she knew. “Bloodstone,” she said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “It is but a part. In order to truly destroy the great enchantment, an item of power built by two ancient enemies, they would need something to interact with it.”

  “The Ashara and the El’aras?”

  The woman nodded.

  “So let’s just say these attackers have the bloodstone,” she said, glancing over to Eva, “and it’s tied to the Ashara. What do they need of the El’aras?”

  “They would need an El’aras to power it.”

  Her heart started to flutter.

  Raollet and the captured El’aras that she’d seen at his shop started to make a different sort of sense. She wouldn’t have expected he would have them for many other reasons, but who else could have captured them? She’d thought it was for the festival, but perhaps there had been a deeper purpose to them all along.

  She’d not known the full extent of Gabranth’s plan.

  “There aren’t any El’aras in the city.”

  “Not yet, but with the enchantments used, they thought to draw them into the city.”

  The Ashara. That was what these attackers intended, and it was the reason behind using those specific enchantments. If the Ashara hadn’t been seen in Nelar in generations, the sudden appearance of enchantments designed to look like Ashara might be enough to draw them in.

  “I see,” Jayna said.

  So not only were they dealing with a potential battle between the sorcerers and the dular, but now they were dealing with a possible battle between the Ashara and El’aras.

  “We need to stop this,” she said.

  “That has been our intention,” the woman said.

  “Well, seeing as how you’re not doing that great of a job, I’m going to get—”

  Jayna didn’t get the chance to finish. An explosion thundered. The woman darted toward the doorway and froze, power building from her.

  She was a sorcerer. Powerful, too.

  “Who are you?” Jayna asked.

  “My name is of no significance.”

  Jayna laughed softly. “It seems to me it’s quite significant. Who are you?”

  “Rayna Qal.”

  Jayna frowned. She’d heard that name before, but she wasn’t exactly sure where. Was it with Char? When she had been sorting through the books at the outpost, she had come across many different names, but she didn’t think that was why it was familiar to her.

  No. Ceran.

  It was an offhanded comment. A brief mention, nothing more than that.

  “But you were—”

  Another explosion struck, thundering. It radiated throughout the city overhead but shook even here.

  “They are coming,” Rayna said.

  Jayna looked over to Eva. “Are you willing to help?”

  Eva looked to Asaran before turning her attention back to Jayna. She nodded. Normally that would be enough for Jayna, but there was a hint of a question that burned in Eva’s eyes that suggested she wasn’t quite certain, and that worried Jayna.

  “If you aren’t able to—”

  “I’m not going to stay and hide,” Eva said.

  The Guild and the others with Rayna began to make their way out, hurrying head of them.

  Jayna and Eva followed.

  What did she know now?

  Only that there was some dark sorcerer in the city, who had been in the city from the very beginning. If Agnew was actually Dorian, could he be one of the twelve followers of Sarenoth?

  Her power might not be strong enough for defeating him, if that was the case.

  She tried to activate the dragon stone ring, hoping Ceran would know she needed his help. She wasn’t sure if he did.

  Jayna reached the top of the stairs and found that an explosion had ripped the building free. The tavern that had been here was now completely gone.

  She looked over to Eva. “We need to finish this, then we need to figure out what we can about your true nature. Will you do this?”

  Eva nodded slowly. “I’m with you.”

  “Good. I don’t know if I can do it without you.”

  Another explosion thundered. There was a certain regularity to them, and as they made their way around the city, she thought she understood why.

  She had seen enchantments of a massive scale before and knew they existed. Rosal’s family home had one. If the intention was to destroy the great enchantment, then in order to do it, they would need to destroy parts of the city that formed an enchantment protecting it.

  Jayna and Eva had to intervene.

  Jayna stopped for a moment among the scattered remains of the booths and partitions, then she grabbed for Eva, and the two of them went running. Eva called upon the smoke, the power within her, and it circled around her.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to need to do,” Jayna said.

  “Fight,” Eva replied.

  “I don’t know what that’s going to require.”

  “Pain.”

  She found three people lying in the street, moaning.

  Jayna slowed, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Dular,” she whispered.

  Yet another explosion of energy thundered near her, and she rea
cted, tracing power out from the dragon stone and creating a protective ring around her. When the attack bounced off, she was pushed to the side a bit, but she managed to hold herself steady.

  “We have to stop all of this,” Jayna repeated.

  “The fighting, or the destruction of the great enchantment?” Eva asked.

  “Both, I suspect.”

  And Jayna knew where they needed to go.

  Even though she could feel the explosions thundering around the city, they needed to prioritize stopping the destruction of the great enchantment—which meant they had to go to the courtyard. Toward the seven dular homes.

  She raced forward. The streets of Nelar in this part of the city were now familiar to her, as were the great houses. Jayna had visited there often enough.

  Once she reached the courtyard, magic surrounded her. She could see it flashing with color—some ripples of blue and white, an occasional explosion of what looked like fire—and she felt the overwhelming sense of pressure building around her, tightening her skin. The magic used here was considerable.

  “We have to find the sorcerers.” She had a dangerous idea about how to do so and glanced over to Eva. “So we’ll need to summon them.”

  “Your connection to Char?” Eva asked.

  “Not that. I’m not so sure it’s going to work.” Even if she were to reach Char, she had no idea whether there was anything within that connection that would make a difference. There was something that might, though. “You’re not going to like it.”

  She gathered the bloodstone enchantments and dumped them on the ground. Once they were circled around her, Jayna created a spiral of power around them, then burst energy into them.

  They exploded in a cloud of smoke that expanded rapidly.

  Eva started to call that smoke off, but Jayna stopped her. “We need to use this. We might be able to draw them out this way.”

  “Toward me?” Eva asked.

  “Not toward you. Well, maybe toward you. But toward this.” She closed her eyes, focusing on the linking spell she shared with Char, and pulled on it.

  When she had been trapped beneath the outpost, she had used that connection to draw magic. Maybe there would be some way for her to call to him now. It was worth trying, at least. And maybe if she could do that, she might be able to summon enough of a connection to Char and alert him that she needed to draw the other sorcerers to them.

  “I don’t think it made a difference,” Eva said.

  “Maybe not. We’ll have to try something—”

  Power began to build.

  Jayna detected it as a throbbing in the dragon stone ring.

  It constricted around her finger, a steady, rhythmic pulsing of power that attempted to squeeze, with more and more energy pulling on it, making it almost unpleasant.

  She looked around, and though she could feel that energy, she couldn’t tell where it was. “They’re here,” Jayna said.

  “Who?”

  “I’m guessing Dorian and others.”

  Jayna sent the wind gusting outward, clearing the smoke.

  Master Agnew was there. Dressed in his flowing maroon robes, he looked every bit the powerful sorcerer she had known him to be.

  Could he really be a dark sorcerer?

  There were a dozen other sorcerers with him. Some of them were sorcerers Jayna had healed.

  Agnew looked at her, frowning.

  “You are the one. You attacked us—”

  “Dorian,” Jayna said. She wasn’t sure if it was even right, but she watched Agnew, gauging any sort of response.

  He stared at her.

  She needed to know.

  Rayna had told a compelling story, and the idea fit—that there was some great enchantment here that they were trying to damage—as much as she wanted to deny it. She had been struggling with trying to understand why Nelar had been the target, why there had been so much power present here, but it made sense after talking to Rayna.

  Three of the sorcerers were stopped near the fountain and took up positions around it. It occurred to Jayna that explosions continued to thunder out in the city, the power of them ricocheting all around her, an overwhelming sort of energy.

  “Stay away from there,” she said to them, letting her voice carry on a spell.

  “Jayna?” Char asked.

  So he had come.

  “Don’t.” She flicked her gaze to Eva. “Keep them away from the fountain.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Not really,” Jayna muttered.

  Smoke started to swirl from Eva, and it radiated in a band outward, toward the courtyard, blocking access to the fountain.

  Agnew watched her. “You dare to attack the Sorcerers’ Society? You would dare come into our place with that kind of magic?”

  “I would dare,” Jayna said. “Seeing as how I trained with the Academy, I think I have a right.”

  She had avoided the Society all this time—avoided admitting what she had been, what she had done—but that time was past. She had to embrace it.

  She had sorcery, and she had something more now.

  And the steady constricting of the Toral ring told her there was dark power here.

  “I’ve been trying to understand it. It’s taken me a while, but the Guild of the Insurn revealed the truth to me.” There it was. His eyes twitched just a little bit at the mention of the Guild of the Insurn. “And then they called you Dorian.” Agnew didn’t react. “The attacks on Nelar only began after you arrived here.”

  “The city has been unstable for many years. They needed a firm hand.”

  “The firm hand of someone who’s presumably a healer?” Jayna shook her head and took a step toward him. So far, Eva and her magic managed to keep anyone from getting too close to the fountain, though Jayna wondered how long it would last. “I don’t think so. And then there was the callous way you deposited me into the cell beneath the outpost.” She sensed a flicker of uncertainty on Char’s face. “That is not the action of a healer. I was there for the better part of two days. No food. No water. A captive. In a place designed to trap energy.” That was the part of all of this that Jayna still struggled with. As far as she had uncovered, there were three such places all throughout the city, but perhaps there were more. “A place that is designed to separate a sorcerer from their magic. A prison.”

  Agnew frowned at her.

  “And all this time, the attacks have persisted. First the Celebrants of Asymorn. Then the Order of Norej. Both times, sorcerers of some renown and power had been involved.”

  She could feel movement nearby, and Jayna focused on the dragon stone, drawing energy up through the bloodstone, and realized that the smoke she had trapped within it was still active. She pressed it out, creating a band around the courtyard.

  She shook her head. “No one is moving. Not until we get through this. It’s been the Society all along.” She frowned at Agnew. “That’s where the darkness is. That’s what’s corrupt.”

  “You don’t know what you speak of,” Agnew said.

  “I finally think I do. You want people to serve, but you want them to serve so you can force them to help break these enchantments. How many are there?”

  Agnew didn’t react.

  Frustration filled Jayna—the frustration of not knowing what was happening, the frustration of fighting an enemy she had not been able to find nor do anything about, the frustration of her captivity.

  As she stared at Agnew, she embraced that anger and frustration.

  There was no point in fighting it any longer. Why should she bother when she could pull on that power? She had already chosen to use the magic within the dragon stone. There was no darkness in it. The only place the darkness could come from would be her, from the sorcery she used.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Agnew said.

  “No.” Jayna took a step toward him and held out her fist. The dragon stone practically glowed with the energy she pulled, and she pressed out and around, surroundi
ng Agnew.

  It left the two of them confined.

  The others could not hear them speaking. They were hidden, trapped in the shell of power that Jayna had erected around them, but there might be some way for her to allow at least one person to hear.

  She focused on the linking spell she shared with Char. Maybe he could hear. She needed for him to know.

  Dorian looked around, a casual expression on his face. “Do you think to imprison me?”

  “I don’t know if I can, Dorian.”

  He stared at her, a blank look in his eyes that left Jayna wondering if perhaps she had it wrong. Maybe Rayna was not right about Agnew. Jayna had seen him helping defeat the Order. Why would he do that if he was secretly serving Sarenoth?

  She felt power building from him.

  It was not sorcery, not the way that she would normally expect.

  What she felt was dark magic. It triggered the dragon stone ring, constricting tightly around her finger.

  It was painful in a way that she had never felt before. Maybe it was the bloodstone merged with the Toral ring, or perhaps it was just the power of Agnew—or Dorian, as the case may be.

  She held her hand out, pointing to the Toral ring. “I know what you are.”

  He laughed, and all the kindness that she’d always seen on his face suddenly faded. Now there was a darkness, a sneer, and he turned to her, clasping his hands in front of him. “It has been many years since I’ve been called by that name.”

  “You’ve hidden within the Society.”

  “All of us have hidden within the Society,” he said, laughing. “All this time, and there’s been a pursuit to try to make sure the twelve remained imprisoned.” He started to create a spell, his fingers working quickly. “I will let you in on a secret. There was never any prison.”

  He whipped his hands down, and the shell she’d formed around him shattered.

  Jayna was thrown back, and she hurriedly scrambled to her feet.

  Another sorcerer darted toward her. The Toral ring constricted. Dark magic.

  She turned, twisting her hand in a quick spell, and she blasted it at him, adding power through the dragon stone. It caught him in the chest with a spiral of power, throwing him back.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Another sorcerer wrapped bands of power around her, then another did the same on the other side, holding her in place. Jayna had felt power like this before. It wasn’t even dark magic, which made it more distressing. These were sorcerers of the Society, serving Agnew as they believed they were supposed to.