“You think you know,” Eva said softly.
Jayna watched her friend. Eva needed reassurance, but Jayna wasn’t sure what she could say to give her that. “You don’t have to worry about me reacting in some way.”
“I don’t.”
Jayna paused. “Is it what you might do?”
Eva nodded slowly. “I don’t know what will happen.”
“You don’t know because you won’t look for those answers.”
Now wasn’t the time to have this conversation, but she had a feeling that Eva needed to. Perhaps they both did. They needed to work through what was going on and deal with the Ashara so they could be ready for whatever else might happen.
And something more was going to happen.
“You can’t keep running from who you are—from what you are,” Jayna continued.
“What if what I am is not what I want to be?”
“You get to choose what you get to be.”
As she said it, Jayna realized something. She’d been fearing the same thing as Eva all this time. She was worried about the Toral ring and the darkness within it, fearing the energy there and what it might do to her or how it might change her, but maybe that was a mistake.
How could it change her if she refused its influence? She might be able to embrace that dark energy, but that didn’t mean she would become it.
She could use the darkness but not become like those she’d chased.
More than that, even as she’d had to call upon it, she’d known it was dark, and she hadn’t allowed it to seduce her.
She got to choose.
“Come on,” she urged, dragging Eva through the streets. “We need to go see Raollet again.”
Eva wasn’t fighting, but if she had, Jayna wondered if she’d have to force her to come.
Now that she knew how to pull smoke into the dragon stone and bloodstone ring, she might be able to force Eva.
No. She wasn’t going to think like that. She had no reason to force Eva to do anything. Eva was her friend, and though she might not know exactly who or what she was, and though her kind might be willing to attack in the city for whatever reason, trying to regain control of it, Jayna wasn’t about to hold that against her.
“We need to know more about the Ashara and why they might have come here. And we need to know why this is all tied to the Society and the dular now battling. But first, I need food. Water,” Jayna continued.
Eva looked over and nodded.
They found a street vendor and purchased meat and ale, downing it quietly before they both ran through the streets. She was surprised there were any vendors out, but given that they were on the outskirts of the city, closer to the outpost, perhaps they were not quite influenced by the growing war in the city. Or maybe they didn’t care.
Jayna was hungry, thirsty, and didn’t want to linger for too long, feeling like there was an urgency to her actions. She raced forward, and they rounded farther along the outskirts of the city. They were close to Robert’s tavern, the Wicked Pint.
She ran, Eva staying with her. Every so often, Jayna was aware of some energy building up around her, a burst of power that exploded, always near the center of the city. It was faint, subtle, but when it came, she started to wonder how careful she needed to be, if there was some aspect of it that would put them in danger.
She glanced over to Eva. “How bad is the attack?”
“Not bad yet, but they continue to move. They’ve targeted the dular and they’re damaging their enchantments. There’s a limit to how quickly the dular can replace them, and if they destroy them . . .”
Jayna knew what would happen then. If they destroy the enchantments, the dular would not have any way of defending themselves.
They raced around until they reached the narrow streets of the outskirts, the shops where Raollet would be. The moss glowed softly, its greenish light guiding them. Her breath was hot and heavy in her ears, and she needed to slow, stop, gather herself, but at this point, she didn’t trust herself to do that.
Up ahead, the moss seemed to glow brighter.
That’s not moss.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Eva asked.
Jayna nodded. “Something happened here.”
She pointed in the distance, and as they approached, she could see Raollet’s shop had been destroyed. Again. At least this time it wasn’t her fault. The entire front of the shop had collapsed. The moss glowing on the stone had taken on something of a brighter form.
Jayna approached slowly. She felt for magic and prepared a spell, using it to try to track something, but she didn’t feel anything. She looked over to Eva. “Who do you think did this?” Increasingly, she thought Raollet had been attacked by an actual Ashara. Who would be responsible for this now?
Whoever it was had smoke, nothing more than that, and certainly not enough power to destroy the entirety of the shop.
She wondered how many of his enchantments were still inside. And what about his books? Jayna stepped forward, into the rubble. She pushed power out through the dragon stone ring, blasting at the stone and crushing a section of it, clearing it away.
As she moved deeper into what had been the shop, she found there were enchantments scattered all around. When she leaned down, she noticed they had already been activated. Every single enchantment she came across was triggered.
Jayna stared, feeling the power within her and looking on with frustration.
“Somebody powerful came through here,” she said.
“How do you know?”
Jayna picked up a spear-like object and handed it over to Eva.
Eva traced her fingers along its surface. “This isn’t an enchantment.”
“It’s a spent enchantment. It’s no longer active. And all of these are like that.”
The hundreds upon hundreds of enchantments that had filled Raollet’s shop were all spent. There was nothing remaining, nothing here that she could even access.
Where is Raollet?
He wouldn’t have abandoned his shop, which meant that whoever had attacked here had done so with enough power to overcome him. But could they have killed him?
She picked through the rubble more carefully and used the energy of the dragon stone to strengthen her. She only rarely used the power that way, but as she did, she pulled massive blocks of stone out of the way.
Eva joined her. Smoke trailed from her hands, snaking through the rubble. It took only a moment, but then she shook her head. “He’s not here.”
Jayna climbed over the rock, reaching the back section of the shop. From here, she found the room that had been used to contain the El’aras. It was crumbled as well. Some of that was her fault. She had destroyed the walls, revealing the outside, letting the El’aras escape. But not all of the damage was her doing. Some of it came from whatever had happened here, whatever attack had destroyed this place.
She found the hall leading to his old shop and wove through it. There were sections where the walls had crumbled, crashing into heaps of rubble, and Jayna had to pick her way around them, but this area wasn’t completely destroyed.
Then she reached the doorway at the end of the hall.
The walls had mostly remained upright here, though some of the stone crumbled inward, collapsing against them, and she pushed outward, using a mixture of sorcery and energy from the dragon stone to stabilize and secure the walls, placing several patterns as she walked. She didn’t want the stone to crash in upon her, and didn’t know if she could hold it up. She lingered there, standing in front of the doorway.
“There’s another door just like this inside of the outpost,” she said softly.
“Why would they have one?”
Jayna shook her head. “I don’t really know.”
Would there be places like this throughout the city?
Jayna pushed a burst of painful power through the dragon stone, cold shooting up her arm and across her chest, and sent it crashing into the door, un
locking it. There was no point in holding back now; she needed to get in and see if Raollet was here, and if so, if he was injured. She pushed outward with a ball of flame, creating a pattern that floated in front of her. She let it drift downward, illuminating the stairs on the other side of the door.
Eva stayed behind her, smoke swirling around her and also climbing around Jayna.
Strangely, this time it didn’t feel like it burned and constricted the way it had the last time. This time, there was something almost comforting within it, as if the power Eva used were meant to fortify her.
They started down the stairs.
When she reached the other door at the bottom, Jayna tested it, finding it locked.
She focused, pulling on power through the dragon stone, and when that wasn’t enough to open it, she blasted at it with even more energy, using the natural augmentation of the bloodstone.
The combination slammed into the door, shattering it open.
“I need to get better control of that,” Jayna muttered.
“I thought you’d avoided using power like that.”
Jayna held out the ring and tapped on it. She had been avoiding showing it to Eva, concerned about how she might react after learning that she had added the bloodstone to the ring, but maybe that was a mistake. “There’s something in this. I don’t really know what it is, but the combination of the bloodstone and the dragon stone has allowed me to access even more power.”
Eva frowned, staring at the ring. “That’s how you call the power away.”
Jayna nodded.
“Bloodstone is connected to what I can do. I don’t know how or why, but it is connected,” Eva said.
“I’m not trying to misuse your power,” Jayna said. She didn’t need Eva thinking that, especially since Eva already struggled with how her power would—and should—be used.
Eva nodded once. “I know you aren’t.”
They started forward into the darkness.
The cold washing around her began to build, and she pushed out through the bloodstone the way she had before, layering a fog of smoke around the room, muting the enchantments that were meant to limit her power, which allowed her to move through here without fear of losing control over her magic.
When she reached the next door, she paused.
“You might need to open this one,” Jayna said.
Eva held out her hand and a drop of blood dripped to the ground. Then she summoned the smoke, turning it into something like a spike of power, and it streaked into the door where she twisted it.
The door opened with a click.
Jayna chuckled to herself. “That certainly is easier than what I’ve been doing.”
“Not for me,” she said.
They stepped forward and Jayna sent out a spell that formed a glowing light in front of her to guide their way, but they were soon met by a blast of wind. Jayna braced herself, creating a barrier with the magic ball spell in front of them, shielding them from the wind.
It gusted for what seemed an hour, and when it finally faded, she pushed outward with the ball of flame and stepped into the room.
“You can stop using your enchantments on us,” she said to Raollet.
He stood behind the desk, a table full of items arranged on it, and held a wand-like object upright, as if to attack again. “Jayna Aguelon?” He glanced over to Eva then back to Jayna. “How are you capable of doing that?”
“Let’s just say I have a little experience in this kind of room,” Jayna replied.
“You should not be able to defend against this. This is an outpost.”
“Exactly.” She looked around. The room was unharmed.
“I take it you came down here when your shop was destroyed?”
He nodded. “The shop. Everything within it. The sorcerers came here, thinking they would destroy all the dular enchantments in the city.”
“Not destroy them. Activate them.”
“They don’t need to trigger them,” he said. “They have some way of mitigating the enchantments’ power.”
Jayna frowned. That fit. When she had been placed in the cell, Agnew had some way of neutralizing her enchantments, but not all of them—at least, he hadn’t managed to neutralize Topher’s enchantment, for whatever reason.
“I’m sorry about your shop.”
“It’s not your fault. This time.”
“I’m not entirely sure about that.”
She didn’t know what was her fault, what was the fault of the Ashara, or what was the fault of the Sorcerers’ Society. But she knew she needed to get more answers.
“I need to understand the Ashara.”
“That’s why you came here?”
“I came here for answers. You’re the only one who knows about them.”
“I’ve told you. All I know are stories. Nothing more than that. Anything known about the Ashara, truly known, has been lost.”
Jayna sighed. She hated the pressure in the room, hated the way it made her feel, the way it seemed to constrict around her, fighting against her use of magic. All she wanted was to end that, to find some way of overpowering it.
She pushed out a hint of smoke and it trailed out along the walls, muting the enchantments in the area. Then she took a deep breath, slightly more relaxed. Before muting them, she had felt an ongoing unease.
“What did you do?”
She looked over to Raollet. “Why does it matter?”
“You shouldn’t have been able to . . .” He tipped his head to the side, and for the first time, he seemed to see her ring. “Bloodstone. That’s what you have, isn’t it?”
Jayna grasped her hand around the ring and looked to Raollet. “What does it matter?”
“You shouldn’t be using power like that. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m well aware of how dangerous it is. I’ve seen it.”
He frowned. “Have you?” He glanced down at the book before looking up at her. “There were rumors of bloodstone in the city recently.”
“More than rumors,” she said. “I helped prevent the bloodstone from blasting through the dular houses—at least, as many as I could.”
“You were the one who did that?”
“I had no choice. If I hadn’t, the houses would have been destroyed, and the dular would have been killed, and . . .”
The very thing she was trying to prevent—this battle—would have likely already happened by now, despite her intentions to stop it.
The dular had ultimately blamed the Society for the fires, although the Society helped put out the flames in the dular homes. And now the Sorcerers’ Society was attacking the dular because they believed the dular were responsible for an attack on the Society. War had broken out in the city. Despite every effort she made to stop it, war seemed to happen anyway.
“I just need to know about the Ashara,” she said to him. “Something is taking place, and I’ve been trying to prevent it, but regardless of what I’ve done, darkness keeps coming.”
He looked down at the book before looking back at her. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help you.”
“Because you’re afraid?”
“Because I don’t know.” He eyed Eva and frowned, studying her as if just noticing her, before turning his attention back to Jayna. “Nelar has been a place of power for a long time, though none of us have known why.”
“None of you?”
“Those of us who study these things. We have not understood why Nelar would be so important. There has been power in Nelar for as long as Nelar has been a city. Even before it was part of the El’aras, it was something else.” He shook his head. “We don’t know, but there are remnants of it even now. You can look around the city, you can see that the city itself has changed, and you can see evidence that some of these buildings existed from a time before even the El’aras.”
“Like this one?” Jayna asked, looking around.
“This is dular,” he said.
“The enchantments within it are
dular, but the building itself, and the stone, and everything here . . .” Jayna shook her head. “I don’t think this is dular.”
“Perhaps not,” he said. He folded up the book and stuffed it under his arm. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers for you. I’ve been looking into the Ashara since you left. I wanted to understand why these enchantments have been used, and I can’t find anything. Only more stories. The Ashara. The El’aras. An ancient disagreement. And then it stopped.”
“Why?” Jayna asked.
“I don’t know. It just . . . stopped.”
“Well, I’ve seen at least one Ashara recently, maybe more than that.”
“No. There would not be more than one. They would not travel together. If you have seen an Ashara,” he said—and there was a hint to his tone that suggested he still didn’t believe her—“then you have seen just a single one.”
Jayna started to smile. “A single Ashara? I’ve seen more than that.” She saw Asaran, but then she had seen at least one other, unless the man who’d attacked her in the street hadn’t actually been Ashara and had only used enchantments. There was no doubt in her mind that there was more than one Ashara here. At least two. Maybe even more. And then there was somebody else who had used enchantments to make it appear as if the Ashara were here.
“The stories do say that the Ashara can change forms,” Raollet said.
“Yes, they can take on human form.”
“They are creatures that take on human form when they want. Not that they are humans.”
“And?”
“And because they can take on that form, they can be anyone they want.”
“So you’re saying that even though I think I’ve seen multiple Ashara, what I’ve really seen is—”
“A single Ashara.” He leaned forward, gripping the book against his chest. “If that’s what this even is. Or perhaps it’s only enchantments.”
“It’s not just enchantments,” Eva said.
“If you’ve seen a single Ashara, then the challenge is trying to understand why they have come to the city, and what they intend.”
She frowned, thinking about what had happened since the Ashara had been seen here. They had come, and the dular had been targeted by the Sorcerers’ Society, then the Society had started to attack.
Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer Book 3) Page 24