Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “He doesn’t owe me anything,” she said.

  “Whoever said he owed you anything? I’m just saying that he’s your friend. He would want to make sure he keeps you safe. By reporting you to the Society, it would . . . I guess I don’t really know what it would do,” Eva said.

  “I don’t either,” Jayna said. “At this point, maybe nothing.”

  Though she wasn’t entirely sure. It was possible that he would report her to the Society. Char claimed he wanted to protect her, but at the same time, his allegiance lay with the Society and the sorcerers within it. Plus, he believed her to be a dark sorcerer, or at least to have the tendencies of one. If Char believed he was saving her by reporting her to the Society, then she truly thought he would do so.

  Jayna glanced down at the spellbook. “This one worked, so now I’m going to try another.”

  “Oh, good. I was worried this was going to be the only stick you made.”

  “It’s not just a stick,” Jayna said. She tapped on it, and though it still felt slightly slick, she could also still feel the bit of power trapped within it. “It’s supposed to be a wand of vapor.”

  “You’re creating weapons,” Eva said. “And that’s just one more weapon. It’s not how you’ve used magic before.”

  Jayna stuffed the wand into her satchel. “I’ve used magic to protect. I still will.”

  “By creating weapons,” Eva said.

  “There are reasons.”

  Eva chuckled, leaning back against one of the trees, sweeping her gaze around the forest. She bit her lower lip, and a bit of smoke trailed out, sweeping around her head and neck, then down her shoulders. “Reasons. I seem to remember that you have your own particularly beneficial way of attacking. If only you were willing to do it.”

  “I’m not going to use the Toral ring to attack every time I need to.”

  Jayna looked down at the ring, twisting it. It had a similarly slick feeling to it as the wand had. Maybe there was some oil used in its creation as well, though she didn’t really know. All she knew was that the bloodstone she had used on it had transformed it.

  Eva had recently suggested that her people had some way of creating bloodstone, and though she hadn’t attempted it, Jayna wished she would. With bloodstone, any magic Jayna might create would be augmented and incredibly powerful, especially considering the kind of magic that she was normally able to make.

  “I don’t know why you fight it,” Eva said. “You’re the one who accepted it. It granted you whatever powers you want to use it for.”

  “It’s not just the power. It’s the pain,” Jayna said softly.

  “I understand pain. But it’s not just the pain for you.”

  Jayna looked up, holding Eva’s gaze. “What do you want me to say? That I can deal with the pain when I use it?” Even though it was a burning cold that worked through her, she had learned to tolerate it. “That I’m afraid of the darkness when I use the ring? You know that. I’ve told you that before. The more I access the power within the ring, the more I begin to question whether that darkness is going to come for me. The more I begin to worry that if I were to dive into that power, it would change something for me.” She squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn’t just changing something for her. It was that she feared it would change her.

  Jayna opened her eyes when she felt a strange energy in the air. It had come from nearby, though she wasn’t sure what it was.

  “What was that?” she asked, glancing over to Eva. “That’s not a dark creature.”

  “I didn’t feel anything. Was it in the city?”

  “It came from around here. The forest.”

  It was from a different direction than the one they’d followed to chase down the dark creature.

  Was there another?

  Inside the clearing, Jayna traced a small circle into the ground, then added several different smaller elements to it—triangles, stars, and squares, items that would be able to power any sort of sorcery she would add—then she pushed power out into it, which exploded away from her, washing outward in a wave and over something.

  “There is something here,” she whispered.

  She twisted the dragon stone ring.

  When she did, she could feel energy beginning to build within her, pain shooting through her immediately, almost as if the ring were waiting for her to simply call upon it.

  That was new.

  When she had drawn upon that power before, when she had felt that magic flowing within the ring, she had been able to access it, but it had never come to her quite like this. It had never been simply there, waiting at the outskirts of her ability to detect it.

  “Eva?”

  Eva had both hands clenched at her sides. Blood dripped from her palms where the spiked enchantments she held broke the skin. When her blood struck the ground, it immediately turned to smoke and drifted out and away from her, as if alive. It was Eva’s strange use of magic.

  Eva pushed, and the smoke flowed.

  “Now I can feel something out here,” Eva said softly.

  Jayna reacted. If it was somebody coming upon them—and she feared dark sorcerers, including those belonging to the Order of Norej, or one of the Celebrants of Asymorn—she needed to be ready. She drew the painful power out through the Toral ring and reacted, sending it out in the same circle she had used for the sorcery. It washed out from her, creating a powerful band that swept away and struck something.

  Jayna glanced back to Eva. “Wait here.”

  “I’m not waiting here.”

  Jayna ran into the forest, ducking between branches over uneven ground, until she located where she had felt the resistance to the power she’d pushed out through the Toral ring.

  Smoke, as if a fire had burned, though only a hint of smoke remained.

  “Was this you?” she asked, glancing over to Eva.

  She stepped over to Jayna, biting on her lip. “It was not.”

  2

  Jayna made a steady circuit around the clearing, sweeping her gaze around as she worked, holding her hand out from her as she pushed power beyond herself. She used sorcery this time, not the Toral ring, though it would have worked better to detect what was out there.

  Eva remained motionless standing between the trees, breathing in and out slowly. There was an energy within her, and it seemed almost as if she was trying to test the smoke they had encountered, as if she was afraid of it.

  “Do you detect anything here?” Jayna asked.

  Eva opened her eyes. There was only a faint swirling smoke around Eva, but as usual, Jayna didn’t perceive anything from it. It was simply there. “No. There is nothing here.”

  “The smoke looked like—”

  “I know what the smoke looked like,” Eva said.

  “And it wasn’t yours?”

  “If it were mine, I would have told you.”

  Jayna nodded slowly. She was right, but that didn’t make it any easier for her.

  She wasn’t at all sure what to make of this. The only thing she knew was that there had been some pressure, some smoke, then . . .

  It had been nearby.

  That mattered.

  “They weren’t that far from us,” she said.

  “They were not,” Eva agreed.

  “I don’t like it.”

  She made another circuit around the clearing, pushing out with a tracking spell. It was a matter of using a burst of energy that flowed out from her, cycling it in a steady pattern, but there was nothing.

  “I don’t . . .”

  Jayna leaned down. There was something on the ground.

  A footprint?

  She shook her head. Not a footprint. It did look like some sort of animal print though, and it was near enough to where they detected the energy that she thought it couldn’t be coincidental.

  “Come over here,” she said to Eva.

  Eva gave her an annoyed look, and she relaxed her hands. The smoke began to ease away, drifting a little. She joined Jayna, looking do
wn at the ground. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  “Whatever is down here. Do you see anything?”

  “I see a scuff mark on the ground.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I don’t know. Some sort of animal came through here. Maybe a wolf. There are other creatures that prowl through the forest—as we both well know.”

  “There are,” Jayna agreed. “But do they prowl so close to where we detected this strange magic?”

  Eva shot her a look. “Now it’s strange magic?”

  “It’s something. Not dark, or I would have felt it differently.” She looked up. “You can’t deny that you felt power within it.”

  “I felt some power, but I don’t know what it means.”

  Jayna shook her head, looking around. Now that she had seen one of those markings, she looked for others, but she found nothing as she circled the clearing.

  “Maybe it was nothing,” she muttered to herself.

  She flipped open the spellbook and began to sort through the pages.

  “What are you doing now?”

  She glanced over to Eva. “I was looking to see if there might be a way for me to track more power here. Given that we know there was something here, I wanted to see if I can find anything left behind.”

  “I see,” Eva said.

  “You don’t have to be so supportive.”

  “Obviously.”

  Jayna had studied the spellbooks enough since Char had given them to her that she knew where to find the type of spell she wanted.

  It would be a bit more focused than what she had used before. Then, she had come up with a spell to track the resistance to power, but now she wanted to search for a particular thing.

  She could use that marking on the ground for her search and see if she could follow it.

  If she had some way of capturing some of the smoke before it had drifted away, she might’ve been able to use that to track, but unfortunately, it had faded too quickly. Following that smoke was an opportunity Jayna couldn’t pass up. Not for herself, though. Eva wanted to know more about her kind of magic.

  She found a spell that might work.

  She started reading through the spell, whispering the words. It involved hand movements in the air rather than anything placed on a concrete sort of substrate. The distinction fit the purpose. With this spell, she wanted to let the energy dissipate away from her, to be carried out on the wind, and to do that, she had to place a marking, a binding of sorts, onto the wind and then push her power out through it in order to carry it.

  “Grab me a bit of dirt from where we saw that paw print,” she said to Eva. As Eva collected it, thankfully not arguing, Jayna held on to the pattern. This was a flicker of several lines of energy that she pushed outward, and as soon as Eva brought a fistful of dirt, Jayna nodded. “Throw it right there.”

  “Throw it?”

  When she nodded, Eva tossed the fistful of dirt at the pattern Jayna held.

  For a moment, there was nothing.

  Then she surged power into it.

  She could feel the spell taking hold. It was incredible. There was something quite relaxing about drawing upon the magic she had learned at the Academy, using power like she had once used, and now that she had the books, she would much rather use that kind of magic when she had the opportunity rather than pulling through the Toral ring.

  The spell took hold.

  She pushed outward, away from her, and let the energy carry on the wind.

  Jayna wasn’t sure what to expect, but as that spell began to sweep away from her, she detected its energy. It flowed. Strangely, it seemed almost as if there was something within the spell that was designed to ignore her urging. There was something that pushed against her, sliding away from her.

  Jayna fought, and she added more power into it. She found that she needed even more power, and ultimately had to add some of the painful energy from the Toral ring.

  “What are you doing?” Eva asked.

  “I’m trying to—”

  “Release it.”

  “What?”

  Eva came over and a bit of smoke swirled around her hand as she grabbed Jayna’s wrist, then it began to swirl up her arm, into her chest. The energy rubbed up against what Jayna was trying to hold, as if Eva were trying to combat her.

  “Release it,” Eva said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Something’s not right,” Eva said. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “I can’t feel anything.”

  “It’s burning.”

  Jayna looked over, holding Eva’s gaze for a long moment before shaking her head. “Fine. I’ll release it, but you’re going to help me search for whatever was here.”

  She withdrew her power, and the remainder of the spell drifted away. It faded completely, leaving her with nothing.

  “What was it burning?” Jayna asked.

  This was new territory for them. They’d never found anything like this, and Eva had never had such a struggle.

  “I felt it burning inside.” She looked to Jayna, shaking her head. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  Jayna took a deep breath, letting it out as she looked around her. “Then can you search?”

  “I will do my best,” Eva said.

  She closed her eyes, and smoke began to swirl around her.

  As it drifted outward, a pattern began to form.

  It flowed on the wind, fading away from them.

  They said nothing.

  After a while, Eva glanced over, shaking her head. “I don’t detect anything.”

  Jayna contemplated opening the spellbook and beginning to work through it, trying to find another spell she could use for tracking purposes. Whatever she had used the last time had burned Eva, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be something else in one of these spellbooks. She had two advanced spellbooks, the kind she never had access to at the Academy, yet none of the magic was truly beyond her. She could keep attempting to work through them, trying to find answers, but as she flipped the pages, she wasn’t sure if any of their contents would provide her with the answers she wanted.

  A strange vibration in her pocket caught her attention.

  “What is that?”

  Jayna reached for the vibration and pulled out the coin. “That’s Topher.”

  “What’s he doing to me?”

  Eva pulled out a coin of her own from her pocket and almost threw it, but Jayna shook her head.

  “That’s from his enchantments. He’s calling to us,” she said.

  “Why would he call to us?”

  That was a good question. Topher had never summoned them before. Something had him concerned.

  Jayna looked around the strange landscape, and though some part of her did want to continue looking, if Topher were asking for their help, then she needed to get moving and provide it.

  “We should get back for him.”

  She could return another time. Not only to continue her spell work, but also to track whatever might have been here. Jayna worried that she was leaving something dangerous behind. If it was one of the dark sorcerers, then she would probably find them again—maybe her Toral ring was the key to doing so, anyway—but still, if that were the case, she would’ve expected to have detected something much more acutely than she had. Usually, the Toral ring revealed the presence of dark magic quite quickly and intensely.

  When they reached the outskirts of the city, Jayna glanced behind her, looking toward the forest.

  “I thought you enjoyed the city,” Eva said.

  “I do. Most of the time. It’s just that there’s something about the quiet within the forest—at least, when there aren’t dark creatures.”

  “It’s not just the quiet you like.”

  Jayna held her gaze before shaking her head. “No, it’s not just the quiet.”

  There was freedom in using magic without fear of repercussions. Freedom in practicing sorcery—along with the
Toral ring magic—without worrying that some sorcerer would find out about what she was doing, track her down, and decide they should take possession of her magic.

  The city of Nelar was unique among those that Jayna had visited since taking up her service to Ceran. Most of the outer buildings were relics from the El’aras who had occupied the city before dular had taken it over. Some of them were crumbling, though not nearly as many as she would’ve expected. On the outskirts, especially near the forest, a heavy moss covered everything. People moved comfortably despite the humidity, the one part of the city Jayna had never managed to grow accustomed to.

  As they made their way through the city, Jayna heard shouting in the distance.

  It wasn’t uncommon to hear the shouts of street vendors within Nelar. There was an active crowd here, and quite a few merchants came to the city, or there had been up until the addition of the merchant tax had driven some of them away. Still, this sort of noise and chaos was unusual, even for Nelar.

  “Where are you going?” Eva asked as Jayna began to veer away.

  “I’m going to see what that is.”

  “I thought you wanted to find out what Topher needs.”

  The coin had gone silent, so either he had found what he needed, or something had happened to him. There was no directionality to the coin summons he used, no way for her to follow the power and energy he placed within the coin, and no way for her to know what he truly needed. Topher had believed that over time he would be able to convey messages within the coins, but so far, he had not managed to do so.

  “What if he’s called us back here because of this?” Jayna asked.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I think we need to look. Besides, it’s moving the same way we need to go.”

  The crowd blocked them from getting through—at least, getting through easily. She could loop around, but it would take more time.

  If there was something taking place in the city, they needed to know, if only so they could better understand whether there was anything more ominous taking place. Given everything they had gone through, and the different attacks that had occurred here, Jayna didn’t like the idea of not knowing.