Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  She had no idea how he managed to do it, but he seemed to separate her from her connection to that type of magic. Activating the dragon stone ring required a connection to sorcery, and despite having the ring encircling her finger, despite the control she thought she had over it, she found she couldn’t access that magic as easily as she wanted.

  He stepped forward. “You will tell me what the dular intend.”

  “I don’t know anything. I’m not with the dular.”

  How could he not remember her helping before?

  He glared at her, a dark expression on his bearded face. “You will tell me, and then I will ensure they do not attempt this again.”

  18

  Jayna looked around the room. The hearth crackled with less heat than before. The desk Agnew had used to separate himself from Asaran looked askew. While she felt her power flowing, she was still cut off from her connection to sorcery, as if he had sliced through it, peeling it away from her.

  Agnew glanced over to the fire. The darkness she had seen in his eyes had faded a little bit, and continued to fade the longer she stood there, unable to escape. She suspected he was trying to peel off any bit of power from any of the enchantments that may have been around. Was that why the Toral ring no longer worked?

  Jayna never would’ve considered it quite that way before—she thought the Toral ring had a very different source of power—but maybe it was nothing more than an enchantment.

  She focused on the ring, squeezing whatever power she could muster through it, trying to force a connection to Ceran. He needed to help.

  Of course, she had tried reaching out to Ceran before, and he had done nothing to help her then. Why would he bother connecting to her now?

  Jayna cried out.

  Agnew glanced over in her direction. He moved toward her, much slower now than he had before. He must’ve been drawing upon magic to move as quickly as he had. She should have considered that. Of course, drawing upon magic to make magic . . .

  The power was all about the patterns, and there might be some benefit to using power in that way. When she had created her patterns to summon and fortify additional power, she had never tried using magic to do it more quickly.

  “I have seen you before,” Agnew said.

  Jayna licked her lips. She didn’t want to implicate Char, and she needed to get away from Agnew. She had hoped that when he let his guard down, she would find some way of slipping past whatever power he wrapped around her. “You might have. I’ve been around Nelar for a little while.”

  He glowered at her. “What do you think you were doing coming here to attack me?” He glanced over to the fire again. “And where did your accomplice go?”

  “My accomplice . . . I’m not working with anyone.” She frowned. “You have to remember me from when I helped stop the Order—”

  “I remember you with them. And now I think”—Agnew tipped his head to the side, a deep frown etched on his face—“we will use you as bait.”

  “Wait. You don’t know what you’re—”

  He flicked his wrist, creating a tight spiral with his fingers, then pointed.

  When he did, Jayna was forced to slide along the stone, out of the room. Her hands were bound at her sides by an invisible constriction of magic, keeping her from doing anything or reacting. As she was forced out of the room, Agnew came up behind her and stopped when they reached the hallway.

  “Davrum,” he said in a whisper.

  She’d almost forgotten about the sorcerer lying out in the hall.

  The smoke had lifted, though the air had a strange, almost dark quality to it. It was as if all the light that had been in the room, all of the energy that should be here, had faded, flickering out of existence, leaving nothing behind.

  “The dular will suffer for this,” Agnew said.

  Jayna doubted that anything she said would be believed. Even if she told him who she was, he was unlikely to believe her. Maybe especially then.

  After all, she had left the Academy, and that made her someone who should not be trusted.

  What she needed, instead, was to find a way to get a hold of Char.

  They had reached a staircase near the back of the outpost. Jayna hadn’t even known such a staircase was here, and he forced her down it. She couldn’t walk. Agnew’s magic bent her knees for her. For a moment, she thought she would tumble down the stairs, but he used a powerful spell to keep her lifted, gliding her down. She tilted slightly ahead, which gave her the unpleasant feeling she might fall forward, but she never did.

  Each moment that passed, she tried reaching through the dragon stone, attempting to call upon power, but while there came a faint flickering of energy, it wasn’t enough to help her escape. She couldn’t find that power, even though it had to be buried within her.

  Jayna wondered if she might manage to create sorcery if she had her hands free. At least she didn’t have to fear her sorcery getting discovered here. There was one benefit of her captivity, though that didn’t leave her feeling that pleased.

  She had to wait. She had to figure out just what Agnew wanted from her, then try to find a way to escape. The farther belowground he brought her, the harder that was going to be. Even with full access to the dragon stone, augmented as it might be with the bloodstone, there were limits to her power.

  What was more, she feared he might bring her someplace where she wouldn’t have access to any sort of power whatsoever.

  He stopped at another doorway. It reminded her far too much of Raollet’s room beneath the earth. Even the faint chill that washed over her was similar.

  Jayna looked over to Agnew, watching for a sign that might tell her what he was planning, but he remained silent.

  The door opened to a tunnel, a wide arching ceiling looming over them, and as he forced her forward to slide along the stones, she kept trying to call upon power. A wash of cold worked through her.

  Enchantments.

  More than that, they were the kind of enchantments that stripped power off of her, and would completely prevent her from reaching for any more of it.

  She was helpless.

  Jayna wouldn’t be able to get out of here.

  That thought struck home more than anything else.

  Agnew walked her to another door, and when he pulled it open, he shoved her inside before hurriedly closing the door again.

  Faint, enchanted light glowed along the floor, illuminating the inside of the room and reminding her of the library. It was empty other than her.

  The power he’d been holding around her started to ease.

  It happened slowly at first, but she soon found that she could move her hands, then her arms, and finally was freed altogether.

  But not entirely.

  Jayna was inside of a cell.

  She focused on the power within the dragon stone ring, but nothing came to her.

  What about sorcery?

  She had a feeling that she was still cut off from that as well. Whatever enchantments had been placed here were more than she could overpower, but maybe . . .

  All she needed was something small. Simple. If that worked, then she could try to expand it from there. She began slowly, sending a bit of power out from her, then adding more. She traced a pattern on the floor, a form designed to concentrate her energy, but she couldn’t—she didn’t have enough power to concentrate.

  She was distantly aware of some remaining part of her connection to sorcery, but it wasn’t enough for her to do anything with.

  She took a seat and pulled out her satchel. As she sorted through the enchantments, pulling one after another out of her satchel, she realized they had all been triggered.

  Each of her enchantments had already been spent.

  There would be no way for her to use anything in the satchel to help her escape—which meant her escape would have to come from her. For a moment, despair washed through her.

  She had to find the strength inside herself.

  She closed her eyes as she
sat in place, thinking back through the lessons she’d had at the Academy. She would need them to regain control. If she still couldn’t reach sorcery here, she might not be able to reach her connection to the dragon stone either. And if she couldn’t do that . . .

  Then she was going to be stranded here until someone realized she was here. She was going to be stuck while the attack in the city persisted.

  And now the dular would be targeted because of her.

  It was bad enough with the Sorcerers’ Society and the dular at odds, but she had a feeling that the Society had never taken their attack directly to the dular in full.

  There would be fighting. War.

  Jayna didn’t want to be responsible for that.

  It was almost enough for her to think there was some power trying to coordinate it, but she was sure this was simply the anger of two factions within the city, both of which wanted power.

  Worse, her friends weren’t even going to know where she was. Eva would’ve known she had come to the outpost, and Char knew she was here, but he wouldn’t have known she was captured.

  The only one who knew of her presence was Agnew.

  She took a deep breath, working slowly and steadily, trying again to call power up through her.

  It simmered beneath the surface. There was a bit of energy there, and the longer she held on to it, the more she thought she could use it, only it didn’t come flowing to her quite as well as she thought it should.

  That energy lingered, drifting upward, yet she could do nothing with it.

  It was as if there was a cover over her access to power.

  Then there was the power within her. As she sat and focused, she could feel energy remaining there, but not enough for her to act upon.

  She remembered the first time she had been at the Academy. She had been helpless, or near enough. Not tormented, not the way she felt now, but still helpless—and terrified, mostly because of her own sense of insignificance.

  How could she not feel that way though?

  Going to the Academy had been an act of bravery, but it had been an act that had left her uncertain, as well. Her brother had been her staunchest ally up until the point she had told him she wanted to go and see what she could learn of magic.

  She hated disappointing Jonathan. Jayna remembered meeting with him, finding him sitting in a room in the upper level of their home, his friend Matthew sitting across from him. A stack of coins rested on the table, along with a sheet of paper with what appeared to be a diagram for a break-in. Jayna had seen those plans before, and understood that her brother used them to help him figure out where he would target his next attack.

  She had never feared her brother and had always respected him; she always knew he was the most skilled of anyone she had ever met. Jayna remembered clutching the acceptance letter in her hand. She hadn’t been afraid of anything else up until the point she had gone to Jonathan with the news of her decision.

  Jonathan looked up at her, his dark eyes unreadable, his black hair, so different from her own, cut close. He looked like a soldier, and with the cloak, jacket, and pants folded neatly alongside the chair next to him, she suspected he needed to look like a soldier in order to carry out his next assignment.

  “What is it, Jayna?”

  Matthew had looked up too, watching her, and it seemed as if his eyes glittered with a spark of amusement. Had he known?

  Since then, Jayna had thought back to that day a few times, considering what she had gone through at that point, and what all of them had known.

  But she didn’t know whether Matthew had known.

  She held out the note to Jonathan, her hand trembling. She realized, though, if she were to do the same thing today, she wouldn’t tremble so much.

  “What is this?” Jonathan asked.

  “I . . . I have something.”

  Matthew chuckled and leaned back, saying nothing.

  “Well?” Jonathan said. “Get on with it.”

  “It’s an acceptance letter.”

  Finally, Jonathan took the letter from her and skimmed it, his brow starting to furrow, and she noticed more and more irritation in the way he clenched his jaw, the tension in his knuckles as he squeezed the letter.

  “I didn’t know you intended to go.”

  “I will if I can afford it.”

  He sat the letter down and looked up at her, the tension fading from his jaw, but the irritation in his eyes remaining.

  “If you can afford it?”

  She nodded slowly. “The Academy is expensive, as I’m sure you know. I’m trying to come up with a payment plan, and given the kind of work I can do after I leave the Academy, I should be able to find a backer, but—”

  “I don’t think you should leverage yourself like that,” Jonathan said.

  “You don’t?”

  “I think it would be a mistake.”

  “I’m not doing this to upset you.”

  He nodded, glancing over to Matthew before turning back to her. “I know you’re not. But at the same time, I need you.”

  “You need me.” She dropped her arms to her sides. “What about what I need?”

  Jonathan looked at her, the hardness in his gaze returning. Her brother had always been quick with a smile, easy with a joke, but in that moment, Jayna had been more afraid of him than she ever could have imagined.

  “You know that with Mother and Father gone, I need your help.”

  She swallowed. All she could do was nod. Here she had something that she had hoped her brother would understand, something that was for her, finally. Something that would allow her an opportunity to do more than she had ever done, to be something more than she had thought she could ever be. She didn’t want to follow in her brother’s footsteps, didn’t want to end up as a thief like him. Even if he was one of the most skilled thieves in the city, that wasn’t what Jayna wanted.

  “I just thought you would understand.”

  “I’m going to need you on this one,” he said, tapping the plan. “When it’s over, maybe then we can talk about how you can progress. I’m sure we can bring you along faster than I was planning.” He looked up to Matthew before turning his attention back to the page. “You know how much you’re needed here.”

  It was the first time she had gotten upset with her brother. Truly upset.

  “You don’t need me. You just want to use me. I’m unpaid, not like the others on your crew whom you have to actually split the profits with. I’m going to find a way to do this, Jonathan. Whether you like it or not.”

  She turned from him, storming away.

  It was one of the last times she had truly talked to her brother before she had left for the Academy. He had gone off, taking whatever job that required him—maybe even for Gabranth—and she had found her benefactor.

  There was a price involved in joining the Academy.

  It was a price she had willingly paid, at least at the time. Sometimes she wondered if she had been used.

  She opened her eyes, looking around the inside of the cell.

  Strangely, thinking of her brother gave her the sense of relaxation that she needed, even though the memory was painful. She didn’t think of Jonathan like that too often these days. She mostly thought about trying to figure out what had happened to him, but she didn’t often reminisce. Now that she knew he had ties to Gabranth, it seemed she had a place to continue her search for answers, though she didn’t know if she’d be able to do that in Nelar—not until Ceran cleared her to leave.

  Even then, it might not matter.

  There were times when she actively tried not to think about Jonathan. When she did, it only made her resent him a little bit—resent the fact that he had tried to keep her for himself. She knew better than to let that feeling linger, knowing that the only reason he had wanted to keep her was to protect her, at least as far as he had claimed.

  Still, why couldn’t he have understood how important it was to her to attend the Academy? Why couldn’t he have seen
that she needed more than what he could offer? Why couldn’t he understand that she wanted to be a sorcerer?

  Probably because of the way he felt about sorcerers. He wanted the enchantments a sorcerer could provide, but didn’t care for the actual sorcerer.

  She never really gave much thought to what her brother would think about her new role if and when she ever found him. She believed she would eventually locate Jonathan, and when she did, when they were reunited, he would appreciate everything she went through in order to find him.

  She looked around the cell. She needed to get out of here, but the connection she had to sorcery wasn’t strong enough. Tracing a few of her familiar spells—blade of light, the starburst, even magic ball—had failed. No spells took hold.

  Without sorcery or her Toral power, she was trapped.

  But what if there was some other way of escaping?

  She got to her feet. She couldn’t simply give up, and she wouldn’t. As she made a steady circuit around the inside of the cell, she looked at the stone walls, surveying the enchantments placed upon them. There was power here, of that she had no doubt, and though she couldn’t see the actual enchantments that restricted her from accessing magic, she could feel them.

  Awareness might give her a way of resisting their effect.

  She traced her hands along the cool, slightly damp walls. The humidity in the air was not quite as pronounced down in the lower level as it was in other places, but there was still a heaviness to the air, and Jayna struggled with each breath she took.

  After her circuit around the cell, she stopped back in the center, looking around for any other way out. She tested stone, pushing on it, thinking maybe there would be a pattern in the stones themselves that would offer her a way to freedom, but nothing tripped. The bars were too stout, the stone too secure. Her only way out would have to be the door.

  She had to find a way to tap into the dragon stone. This place was designed to stop sorcery—not Toral power. Even if sorcery helped access the power of the Toral ring, it wasn’t required. Even more, she had the bloodstone to augment the connection between the ring and the power Ceran granted.