Festival of Mourn (The Dark Sorcerer Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He started laughing, but it was softer, wispier than before.

  “Where?”

  She blasted him again, more power surging from her hand into his mind.

  “Rendal, if you are in there, I need to know where the festival will take place.”

  There was a moment when she feared he’d died, and any chance to have answers died with him. Then he took a gasping breath.

  “On the next new moon. In the depths of night. He must feed.”

  With that, Rendal sagged back. His breathing stopped. She checked his neck, but he was gone.

  She pressed her power down, forcing the dark energy to stay within his dying body until he was fully gone. Once he was, the darkness would go back to where it came from. She crouched there, waiting for a long time, hating that letting a man die was now a part of her task, but she could feel his energy pushing against her. She could feel the way it flowed, and she could feel it disappearing gradually until it was completely gone.

  At least she had an answer, sort of.

  The next new moon. Midnight.

  But where would Asymorn be able to feed?

  21

  Daylight came far too early for Jayna. Everything within her ached; she’d used far more magic than what she had needed to use since coming to Nelar. There was no pulsing in the ring, though she’d attempted to summon Ceran earlier.

  He had fallen silent.

  Ever since trying to contain the power within of Rendal, she had attempted to call to Ceran. At this point, she was well beyond her comfort level. He would have to come to the city and help her find the festival.

  Only he hadn't answered.

  Every time she tried, it felt as if something was pushing against her.

  Not when she had used power on Rendal, but when she attempted to send that power beyond, toward Ceran, there was a resistance she didn't usually feel.

  It meant she would have to do this alone.

  She looked at the ring, realizing there simply wasn’t enough power in it to deal with seven dwaring and Asymorn, should he be freed—not unless she fully gave into it.

  She paced around the inside of her home, glancing over to Eva situated in front of the hearth, holding on to a glass of untouched wine. Her dark hair was swept back over her shoulders, and her back was bowed, her gaze lost as she looked into the flames, almost longingly.

  “I’m not even sure where to start,” Jayna said.

  She had found a stone sitting on the table when she returned home—small, perfectly smooth, and pale white with a single marking. She twisted it in her hand.

  She wasn't sure what the object was, but when she attempted to push her sorcery through the pattern, she had a dull sense of a reflected power within it.

  An enchantment, but one unlike any she'd ever seen before.

  It had been left with a note written in a beautiful scrawling script. El'aras.

  They had gifted her something, but what?

  “You convinced your friend to stay out of it,” Eva said.

  She shook her head. “You saw his reaction. He wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

  As they’d dragged Rendal from the outpost, Char had looked devastated. Jayna had tried to explain what they’d needed to do, who Rendal was, but Char hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Jayna had revealed dark magic, and he was scared.

  She had told him about the new moon, but then he’d left her, turning away and closing the outpost. Closing himself.

  She could feel him though. The connection they shared linked them even now.

  Eva shrugged. “He’s a sorcerer.”

  “Not fully trained.”

  “There are others in the outpost.”

  “Who will burn off my magic if they discover me,” Jayna said.

  “Then we are on our own,” Eva said. Jayna nodded. “Which means we start with the new moon.”

  The new moon. It meant they had less than a day to not only figure out what the Celebrants intended, but also some way to stop them.

  “If they are as powerful as it seems, and if they have access to as much magic as it seems, I’m not sure we are going to be able to prevent them from releasing that power,” Jayna said.

  “Char—” Eva started.

  “He won’t want to reveal anything to the Society.”

  At least, that was Jayna’s belief. She needed Char to keep things from the Society, but she felt as if they might need the Society’s help to prevent the Celebrants and their festival from succeeding. If they didn’t, she feared they would face a very different danger.

  “Then what would you have us do?” Eva asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We have little time. Hours rather than days,” Eva said, swirling her wine but not taking a drink.

  “Hours and not days, and he said Asymorn would need to feed when released.”

  She would have to contain the dwaring to stop the festival, but Jayna had no idea if they had enough power, magic, and concentration in order to do so. If they were fully fed, and if they emerged from their hosts with incredible power, they could turn upon the world and attack—something she found far too easy to believe. Still, she wasn’t sure what it would take to contain them.

  Already it was going to strain her ability.

  Removing even a single one of the dwaring had been incredibly difficult. Almost too difficult. She had captured it inside of the enchantment, along with Eva’s help, but now they were dealing with the possibility of needing to confine seven of them—seven that were fully formed and incredibly powerful. And there was still the possibility that one of the dwaring roamed free. It had escaped when they had attempted to contain it. There had been no sign of it, which worried her.

  “I will keep looking for where this might take place,” Eva said.

  “You don’t have to look. We can both look.”

  Eva got to her feet, swirling the wine bringing it to her nose and sniffing. She took a long drink before setting it down on the table next to the stuffed chair. “I will look.”

  Jayna didn’t know whether she could trust Eva to search, at least not in her current state. She’d been drinking ever since they had returned from Char and the outpost. She worried that Eva was not in the right frame of mind to participate in stopping the festival.

  But even though she was worried, she still had to complete her own preparations.

  Eva glanced to the wineglass, looking at it longingly before heading outside and closing the door behind her. The day was bright and warm, yet Jayna didn’t feel any of that warmth. She didn’t feel any of that comfort. She didn’t feel anything other than a sense of rising dread within her at what was to come.

  She looked back down to the spellbook. There had to be something in it that would help, but so far, she had not found anything. Thankfully, she had found the tracking spell—for all that had done for her. It had helped her find some answers, though not all of them.

  And now she needed to use the spellbook to reach more of an understanding. She needed to find some way to perform the correct enchantment so she could be ready to hold the dwaring.

  She tried summoning Ceran again, but if it hadn’t worked the last time, she doubted it would happen now. Either he couldn’t come or he didn’t detect the summons.

  There were several different enchantment options within the spellbook. This was a fairly advanced spellbook, and when she had first gone to the Academy, everything within the book would’ve been beyond her, but not only had she learned to master quite a bit in the time she had been there, she had also learned quite a bit studying her magic and through the power permitted to her through the dragon stone ring.

  Finally, she came across a section that looked to be only enchantments.

  The spellbook wasn’t arranged in any sort of sensible fashion. It was different from the spellbooks she used in her earliest days at the Academy, as well. Those spellbooks were all coordinated based on topics of interest, along with what sort of progression a sor
cerer needed in order for them to gain the necessary skill to use the spells.

  This one was an advanced spellbook. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to navigate through one of those.

  She flipped through the pages, looking at one enchantment after another.

  There were quite a few Jayna knew how to make naturally. Enchantments for items she could sell were the easiest. A hint of strength. A hint of speed. Better eyesight. Hearing. Ways of alerting the enchanted. All of those had value. They were expensive—not only for the person who bought the enchantment, but for her to make. In order to find the necessary ingredients for many of them, she had to have access to resources that weren’t always the easiest to obtain, now that she was separated from the Academy.

  This one.

  She paused, skimming the page.

  It looked as if it would work.

  Maybe not nearly as well as the enchantment Char had made—something that Jayna was increasingly certain was far more impressive than what she had realized at the time—but it should work. It was a simple containment, but the nature of the enchantment, and the power that would be involved, was far more complex than many of the other containment spells or enchantments that she found elsewhere within the book, and different even from other enchantments she knew about. It was why she had hesitated.

  The containment required quite a bit of magic and the right ingredients.

  She had to be careful as well. She needed the Sorcerers' Society to help, but she didn't need them slowing her down. At this point, she suspected Char had shared what was going on, and though she didn't want to deal with that, she couldn't deny there might be some benefit in having their involvement.

  Jayna knew better than to attempt the enchantment too late in the day. She needed to do it now, recover, and be ready to call upon power later in the day, near the new moon, when the festival would take place.

  Thankfully, most of the ingredients for the enchantments were items they had around the home. It involved silver, a hint of wood, and a bit of salt, of all things. The ingredients in creating the enchantment were the easy part. The harder part was the actual magic involved.

  She gathered the silver first. She had quite a bit within the home. Many of her jobs were paid in silvers, which were certainly valuable enough, though she would much rather have a pocket full of gold coins. Using silver as an ingredient would certainly make these enchantments more valuable, but silver itself tended to counteract magic, especially when surrounded by a significant amount of power.

  It was the same with the salt. It would hold when combined with the silver and bound by wood. Hopefully all of it would hold. She arranged the items on the table, sweeping her hands around as she prepared for the actual spellcraft involved.

  That was the complicated part of magic.

  She should have asked Char for help with that kind of magic as well. Maybe if she would’ve asked him to assist her in creating the enchantments, she could have easily facilitated this without risking the Sorcerers’ Society noticing.

  Now she had no choice but to get to work.

  She separated her ingredients into seven different stacks, readying each of them for the enchantments. When she had done that, she cleared a section of the table and layered out the pattern, tracing it with her finger, mostly for practice. When she felt comfortable with the pattern, she reached for the salt, using that to form the pattern and solidify the enchantment. She then placed the silver at the center of it and added the wood. As she did, she could feel the enchantment starting to sink in and solidify.

  Jayna had only to push out with a burst of sorcery.

  It was a matter of sealing it in the enchantments, letting it take hold.

  The energy fluttered for a moment before solidifying. It took hold within the enchantment, and gradually, the silver around the salt bound together, coalescing around the wood. She then felt a tension in the air.

  She recognized that tension. It came from the Sorcerers' Society—their way of trying to track unregulated sorcery. She had to be careful.

  The enchantment wasn’t nearly as large as the one Char had created, but she had to think it would work. She had used the spell in such a way so as to ensure she could draw power out from the enchantment and contain the dwaring when she pushed them into it. She could seal it inside with her ring, and she could use even a bit more sorcery, if necessary, to confine it.

  Now she had to make others.

  She had six more to create—not difficult for her to do, now that she had proven she could create one, but she needed to conserve energy.

  She worked through them. By the time she finished the seven enchantments, she was tired. She looked to the entrance to the home, noting that the sunlight had started to shift its position. It was getting later; soon they would be nearing nighttime, and getting closer to the new moon.

  Jayna leaned back in the chair. She was tired—not physically, but from using so much magic. She hadn’t used sorcery like that in quite some time, so expending all of that energy had been more of a challenge than she had expected. If only she had asked Char to create the enchantments for her, but after what had happened with Rendal, he had wanted them out of the outpost. She wouldn’t have needed to struggle quite as much, and she could’ve preserved her strength for battling the Celebrants of Asymorn and dealing with the Festival of Mourn.

  She had hoped he would help, even after she’d left him at the Academy. She had thought he wouldn’t hold a grudge, but even he had abandoned her now. She tried to suppress the hurt.

  The door opened and Eva entered. She glanced from Jayna to the table covered with the enchantments, her pale face wrinkled with a frown. “Did you do it?”

  “I think so. These should work. They were difficult enchantments to make, but I think they’ll hold.”

  Eva headed into the kitchen, pulling open one of the cabinets.

  “You don’t need any wine.”

  Eva looked over her shoulder. “Who said anything about getting any wine?”

  “I just . . .” Jayna shook her head. “Did you find anything?”

  “I’ve been looking for a place where the dwaring could feed when they emerge. That’s going to be the key to whatever they do. The moment they emerge, they’re going to need more power.”

  “Even though they would have fed on their hosts?”

  “Feeding on the host is only a part of their need. In order for them to draw the necessary power, they’re going to need to keep feeding.”

  “‘The necessary power.’ By that, you mean the power Asymorn will need.”

  Eva pulled open another cabinet, pulling out a bottle of wine and setting it on the table in front of Jayna, dropping into a chair across from her. She looked at the bottle of wine, but didn’t open it. “Everything I’ve been able to determine about this prison—and from what I can tell, it is a prison—suggests he has been confined for an impossibly long time.”

  “And if he were freed?”

  “If he were freed, then it is not difficult to believe that he would find some way to use the power of the dwaring, and the power he has channeled through them, to fuel something more.”

  Jayna studied Eva for a long moment. “Why do I get the sense that you know more than you’re letting on?”

  “I told you about the stories I remembered.”

  Jayna nodded. “You did.”

  “Stories like that are meant to scare, but they’re also meant to inform.” Eva leaned forward, watching the bottle of wine, looking as if she wanted to grab it, lift it, and take a long drink. “I had another memory of those stories.”

  “You did.”

  Eva shook her head. “It was after we were in the outpost. After Rendal came out.”

  “And?”

  Eva looked at the bottle of wine. “There were twelve like him. Beings of power. Dark power. The stories claimed they lived in our lands a long time, destroying much, before they were contained.”

  “You said it was just a story.�
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  “Just a story,” Eva said, nodding. “Just a story, but a dangerous one.”

  Jayna grabbed the enchantments off the table, gathering them together, and then stuffed them into her pocket. When they were facing the Celebrants, they would have to be careful, and they would have to be ready. She didn’t want to forget the enchantments. Jayna didn’t know if she would have enough strength to make another enchantment, nor did she know if she would have the time to do so while facing the possibility of an attack.

  “You said there were others like Asymorn?”

  Eva nodded. She looked up and grabbed for the bottle of wine, holding on to it.

  Jayna grabbed for it as well, and squeezed her hands on the bottle, wanting to prevent Eva from taking a drink.

  “If there were a dozen like him, and if there are other Celebrants, what would happen if those Celebrants attempted to free the others?” Eva jerked on the bottle of wine, pulling it free from Jayna, and she pulled the cork off, taking a long drink of it before setting the bottle back down.

  Jayna sighed deeply. “So even if we stop these Celebrants, and we prevent Asymorn from returning . . .”

  “It may be only the beginning of something more.”

  Jayna leaned back. In the time she'd served Ceran as Toral, she had experienced terrible dark magic, but mostly dark creatures. This was the first time she had ever faced dark sorcerers. She didn't care for it.

  It was almost as if she were starting to truly understand some of the darkness that existed in the world, and some of the powers that threatened the world.

  She had learned about some of that darkness when she found out what happened to her parents, but now she had to wonder how and why Jonathan had gotten caught up in it. How had he known Gabranth?

  If she could contain Gabranth, she might get answers.

  “We’re going to stop them,” Jayna said.

  “I hope so,” Eva whispered.

  “We are going to keep the Celebrants from releasing Asymorn.” And then they would have to uncover more about Asymorn. Whether Ceran could provide them with answers, or whether they went to another source, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she uncovered more details than what she had. If this was the kind of darkness Ceran wanted her to deal with, then she was determined to handle it.