Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3) Read online

  The only other option was to keep trying traditional sorcery.

  She moved around him so that she had space. The street was wide enough for her to work, and she was left alone as the crowd cleared.

  She traced three interlocking triangles near his head, then moved to his feet, doing the same. She then linked those, sending the energy of her healing spell through him. It was blunt, simple power that flowed through him—and it was all she could do.

  She wanted to try to help him as much as she could. He didn’t deserve to die because of some dark sorcerer attacking, but that wasn’t even the reason she did this.

  What if it had been Char?

  She couldn’t shake that feeling.

  And so, as she poured power through her, she gritted her teeth, focusing on the spell, and nearly forgot about the Society.

  Until she heard a shout.

  She looked up as three maroon-robed people strode toward her.

  Jayna glanced down at the man. His color had improved, and the spell had stabilized him. She could tell the Society she had been trying to help, but she wasn’t sure they would believe her, so she got up and scrambled away. When she reached the corner where she had felt the dark magic, she paused, hiding there for a moment. Two of the sorcerers who had just arrived began to work on the same two fallen sorcerers whom Jayna had tried to heal, obviously recognizing the third one was beyond any help.

  Jayna shook her head before turning away.

  There was too much happening.

  She needed to help, but right now, what she really wanted was to have a drink.

  She passed others as she made her way to the western edge of the city, and many of them had something of a dazed expression. Were they aware of the influence of the dark magic that had touched them, or did they simply get caught up in the riot? Without testing, using her own connection to sorcery, Jayna wasn’t going to be able to find out.

  She was tempted to return back to her home, but not yet. She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go somewhere to get something to drink instead.

  Jayna had visited quite a few other taverns during her time in Nelar, but none of them were as comfortable as the Wicked Pint. Maybe it was because it had something of a rougher feel to it, or perhaps it was that she had come to know the owner a bit more, or maybe it was because the food was good and cheap and she didn’t have much money.

  Her thoughts raced. She was bothered by everything she had seen so far.

  Enchantments meant to look like the Ashara. Dark sorcerers causing the dular to attack. The Society fighting back.

  When she entered the tavern, she took a seat at a table and stared down at its surface. It wasn’t long before somebody came over and she looked up.

  Robert was about ten years older than her, with dark hair and still a little bit of a limp from when he had been used by Gabranth for the festival. Still, his eyes were bright and clear, and he had an easy-going smile.

  “You look like you need a drink, Jayna.”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  “Something happen?”

  She debated how to answer. It wasn’t just that something had happened, but how it was happening.

  The attacks. The dark sorcery. The Society’s involvement.

  And, to top it all off, Ceran’s complete silence.

  “Nothing out of the usual,” she said.

  He snorted. “In this city? I’m not exactly sure what’s ‘usual.’” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Let me get you a bottle of wine. I saw Eva in here not too long ago, so I can send her over too.”

  Jayna nodded.

  She hadn’t seen Eva when she’d come in, but she had been distracted.

  What was going on in the city?

  She twirled the dragon stone ring on her finger, trying to activate it, hoping Ceran would feel it and respond, but even after drawing as much power as she had earlier today, holding it like she had, he still had not responded. He wasn’t going to, then.

  When a figure approached the table, Jayna didn’t even look up.

  “You look like I feel,” Eva said, slinking down into a chair across from her.

  “Probably,” Jayna said. “There was another riot.”

  Eva’s brow furrowed. “Another?”

  Jayna nodded. “And a sorcerer died.”

  She made a point of keeping her voice low, worried it might carry through the tavern.

  “Dark?”

  Jayna shook her head. “I don’t think so. Society. There were two others, but I was able to save them.”

  “You have to be careful,” Eva said.

  “I have to be careful?”

  “Raollet and Telluminder weren’t wrong. You’re getting a reputation. Eventually, you have to pick a side, or one or the other are going to squeeze you.”

  “I’m not picking between the Society and the dular,” Jayna said. “I don’t even know how I would go about doing that.”

  Robert brought the bottle of wine over, setting down two glasses. “Food?”

  Jayna nodded, staring at her hands.

  “What happened to her?” Robert asked.

  “She’s thirsty,” Eva said.

  “One of those days, huh? Well, I’ll make sure you don’t run out of wine. And I’ll keep anyone from bothering you.”

  “Thanks,” Jayna muttered.

  When Eva poured her a glass of wine, she took it, staring down into the cup.

  “I feel like I’m over my head.”

  “This is what you agreed to,” Eva said.

  “I agreed to work with Ceran. I didn’t agree to do it on my own. He hasn’t helped.”

  “But you’re still doing it.”

  Jayna looked up, holding Eva’s gaze.

  As she did, she realized she had to stop wallowing in her own issues.

  Eva had issues of her own.

  “Promise me something, Eva,” Jayna started. “We will work through this together.”

  Before Eva nodded, there was a hint of darkness that flooded her eyes.

  Neither of them spoke as they finished their glasses of wine.

  14

  Dreams troubled Jayna while she slept. It wasn’t uncommon for her to have very different types of dreams these days; sometimes they were more vivid than usual, but sometimes they were simply darker. It was almost as if using the dragon stone ring had changed her dreams, especially now that it had been enhanced by the bloodstone.

  In her most recent dream, she’d been standing on a battlefield, looking out upon hundreds of sorcerers, power blasting all around, with some dark energy situated in the center of it. Destruction surrounded her. The ground was barren, trees had been torn asunder. An entire city laid waste in the distance, burning and smoking, and Jayna was all too aware of its presence.

  In the dream, she could feel the power within her, a mixture of her sorcery and that from the dragon stone ring—power that seemed to compel her, practically demanding she draw upon it in a way that would use even more energy, but doing so would force her deeper into that darkness.

  The battle raged around her, magic and spells that seemed impossible. Sorcerers floated, as if walking on air, while others shot lightning bolts down from the sky. Still others used fireballs larger than any house and sent them streaking toward the people they attacked. Sorcerers faced sorcerers. All around them were others—dular in a violent battle, enchantments flaring. Jayna recognized a concussive blast, the sound rolling outward, and the poor girl holding on to the enchantment reminded her of the girl from the market, somebody who should not have been called into a war like this. There was another blast, something that sent out a surge of energy. Sorcerers were struck by it, and they suddenly stopped—memories stripped from them by the enchantment.

  That left her more troubled than anything else.

  She awoke in a cold sweat.

  It was a dream—nothing more than that—but it had seemed so real and vivid.

  And of course, in the dream, she’d seen enc
hantments that she herself had used. Not only had there been the sound blast that the girl had given her, the enchantment that didn’t harm anybody but could certainly cause significant devastation, but there had been the memory bowl that had stripped memories from the sorcerers. She had seen firsthand just how well that worked when she had stripped Matthew’s memories of his time in Nelar with her.

  Maybe that was the only reason she had a dream like that. It was sadness—or perhaps guilt.

  Jayna sat up, looking around the room. She had a small glowing enchantment resting on a table near the repaired wall, and it gave off a faint orange light. All she had to do was add a little bit more power to it and it would take on a bit more of a glow. She had enchanted the stone herself, turning it into a lantern, not wanting to sleep in the utter darkness. Lately, she found that such darkness troubled her more than it ever had before.

  Jayna swung her legs over the edge of her bed. She rubbed her eyes with her fists, still tired but not able to sleep any longer. How could she sleep when she had dreams like that? Still, she felt a bit restored from the sleep she had gotten.

  She twisted the dragon stone ring on her finger, looking down at it. In the reflected light from the enchanted lantern, it had more of an orange glow to it, and less of the reddish, almost bloody look to it from a layer of the bloodstone that surrounded the pale white dragon stone. Even if she wanted to separate the two by peeling them apart, she didn’t know if she could. They may have been permanently merged—in which case, there would be nothing for her to do about it.

  Still, she appreciated the power within the enhanced, enchanted ring. The dragon stone ring continued to be even more powerful than it had been before now that it was augmented by the bloodstone, and she now had much quicker access to the power of the Toral ring—something she would have had to dig deeply for before. But despite her concerns about reaching for darkness, the sad reality for Jayna was that she had needed that power.

  With everything she’d faced recently, she had required more power than she had before.

  She got up, slipped on her clothes, and packed her satchel, adding a few enchantments into it before slipping it over her shoulder.

  Jayna had no other weapons. She had a belt knife, but she doubted she would be able to do much with that. It wasn’t all that useful for the kind of fighting she engaged in.

  She couldn’t imagine fighting the way some men and women did. She had seen soldiers training in parts of the country, especially in some places outside of Nelar. There was a regimented nature to the way they trained, a consistency to it, and while she couldn’t deny that they had incredible skill, there just wasn’t much use for that kind of fighting when it came to magic. How could there be when a sorcerer, one single sorcerer, could create a blast of fire so large that it would engulf an entire squadron of soldier?

  There were other ways to destroy soldiers. It didn’t even take a fireball. She could rip through the earth, creating a cavern that was large enough to split open, swallow the entire squadron, and crush them. She could use a gust of wind, sending a violent sweep of energy at soldiers, and that could . . .

  What am I thinking?

  Jayna had no idea why she was considering the ways she could destroy soldiers. There was no need to think like that.

  She stepped out into the kitchen, glancing over to the fire that had burned down to embers. Eva was curled up on the floor in front of it, three bottles of wine resting near her head, her glass tipped over. The room wasn’t nearly as warm as it had been before, which she was thankful for, though there was still heat and energy here. Topher was gone. He must have slept in Eva’s room, as he often did.

  Jayna didn’t blame him. It was better to sleep there, comfortable on the bed, rather than sleeping on the floor or in one of the chairs, especially since Eva rarely used her own bed. In the time they had been home, Jayna thought she could count on one hand how many times Eva had rested in her own bed, and many of them had been times when Jayna herself had carried Eva back there after she had passed out in front of the fire.

  The kitchen was a little bit of a shambles. Topher had made a delicious meal for them, but hadn’t bothered to clean up.

  Jayna owed it to him to take care of the cleaning. She would do that later. Given that he was the one cooking for them—and he did it incredibly well—she should at least give him the chance to relax afterward.

  She hoped she showed enough gratitude to Topher.

  It surprised her that she wasn’t as bothered by his presence as she would’ve expected. He offered her something she had needed but hadn’t given much thought to. There were too many times when she and Eva lacked a certain level of self-care. They were so focused on chasing down dark magic, so focused on their tasks, that they both often got too distracted. Jayna simply because she was trying to figure out where the power was coming from, and what she needed to do with that dark magic, and Eva because she would drink to the point where she would collapse, then ultimately sleep through much of the day.

  Topher added something to the mix for both of them.

  He might not necessarily provide a whole lot when it came to helping Jayna search for dark magic, but he was a dular, after all, and he was . . .

  What is that?

  She found a small coin resting on the table.

  It looked like one that Topher had made, though the detail on the coin was different, more complicated. Topher’s coins typically had a simple pattern, little more than a spiraling circle, but this one contained a pattern that looked like a series of interlocking circles occupying the entirety of the coin, as if smaller coins had been stamped upon its surface.

  She squeezed it for a moment, wondering if this was Topher’s work or if he had acquired this from someone else.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jayna spun, looking over to the fire where Eva rested.

  “You’re up,” she said.

  “I’m up.” She glanced at the fire, her brow furrowing, and wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. “You were leaving?”

  “I was going to go visit Char yesterday, but when Topher offered to cook, I figured I should take advantage of it,” Jayna said. “So now I’m going this morning.”

  “It’s early,” Eva said.

  “Maybe, but not so early he won’t be available for me to visit.”

  Eva lowered herself back down to the floor and curled back up, pulling her knees into her chest. “Don’t make too much noise.”

  Jayna just chuckled. She looked again at the mess in the kitchen—the stack of dirty dishes, the flour and spices and remnants of last night’s food—and hesitated a moment, looking for something to write a note to Topher on, but there was nothing. Hopefully he would still be sleeping when she returned from visiting Char.

  She headed out, closing the door behind her and sealing it with another burst of magic, then made her way along the street. When she was a block away from her home, she realized she still held on to the enchantment she’d claimed from the table. Topher might be upset with her, but she would explain she had taken it accidentally. She stuffed it into her pocket and headed through the streets.

  It was early. The sun was up, though it was only slanted across the horizon, sending shafts of pale light streaking toward her. She looked up at it, squinting as it peeked above some of the buildings. The crowd in the morning wasn’t nearly as thick as it was in other parts of the day, and the sounds of the city were different as well. There weren’t the same shouts coming from storeowners, hawkers with carts along the street all trying to get attention, and it wasn’t the jostling crowd of people moving in and out of Nelar, heading toward the capital or beyond.

  In the morning, it was almost still.

  Those who were out looked to be heading to work, or they carried baskets as if they were making deliveries before the crowds became dense, making it difficult to navigate the streets. She passed a squad of a dozen soldiers, all marching in step, and it reminded her of her dre
am. Jayna stepped to the side, thinking about how easy it would be to just blast those dozen soldiers, stopping them in their tracks.

  Those are dark thoughts.

  She was having dark thoughts, and the more she had them, the more she feared the ring’s influence. Somehow, she had to protect herself against it and find a way to avoid falling into that dark energy.

  She wound her way toward the outpost. By the time she arrived, it was later in the morning; the sun was up and she had started to feel warm.

  She hadn’t come to the outpost very often in the middle of the day. It was strange to do so now, and stranger still that she came without any fear of repercussions. She had no intention of using magic, but even if she had to, Jayna doubted they would be able to capture and hold her in any way now that she had the dragon stone enhanced by the bloodstone. Even if they tried, she could use the power available to her to withstand the attack.

  She headed along the path up to the simple stone building and paused there for a moment. There was no feeling of power from the outpost. It was all contained by enchantments within the building itself—ancient enchantments set by some of the first Society members who had founded this place. She was left wondering how many of them were part of the twelve followers of Sarenoth, if any. How many of those sorcerers knew dark magic?

  Maybe none. Maybe all of this was simply Raollet misleading her, trying to get her to waste time looking into something that had no meaning to her. But if he was telling the truth, then she had to wonder if perhaps they did have some dark sorcerers here in the city.

  She focused for a moment on the linking spell between her and Char. It had solidified over time and had been augmented the last time she’d seen him. She thought she could tap into now.

  It would be easier to reach him that way rather than trying to knock, hoping that a sorcerer who was willing to help her out answered the door.

  She stood in the doorway, looking at the outpost.