A City in Ruin (The Dark Sorcerer Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  She could hear voices in the distance, the sound of people calling to each other—merchants with their wares, others selling items—and she wondered if this was only a place to sell enchantments, or if there were other items for sale. Typically in these underground markets, people could buy more than just enchantments. Maybe this was the kind of place where Master Raollet had acquired the El’aras. She wandered through the booths, taking a moment to pause every so often, examining the different items, and Topher hurried ahead.

  She had visited several dular markets, but not this one.

  She hadn't even heard of this one before.

  Of course, if there were particular items they wanted concealed, it made sense that she wouldn't have. She had brought money though. She might be here looking for information about the enchantments, but she could also find her own enchantments. She wouldn't want to leave something useful behind.

  Wheeled booths lined the road, most of them wooden so they could be folded down into carts for storage. Hundreds of people crowded the market.

  She coughed, clearing her throat, and Topher paused to turn back to her.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “We should take a few moments here,” she said.

  “I thought we were going to see this guy.”

  “We are,” she said. “But we have time.”

  If the market was open, there was no place else he would go. And more than that, she thought there was value in having an opportunity to see what kind of items were here. While enchantments made by sorcerers were usually more powerful than those made by dular, she could still find something useful here. There might be enchantments she could use to protect herself.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have much money to spend. She had some extra coin, but following the job stopping the Celebrants, she hadn’t taken on any ancillary jobs as she once had. She wished she had more time to do so. At least then she could feel as if she were using her magic in ways that weren't always so dark.

  Topher looked back at her.

  Jayna stopped at the nearest stand, looking at the items in it.

  The person behind the stand was an older woman with long brown hair, a simple brown dress of heavy wool, and a dark, almost hollow expression in her eyes. She had to be the dular who made these items, but she didn’t look like most of the dular whom Jayna had encountered before.

  “If you’re just going to look, then you can move along,” the woman said.

  “What do you have here?” Jayna asked.

  “What are you looking for?” the woman snapped.

  Jayna glanced over to Topher before grinning as she turned back to the woman. “I just wanted to know what sort of items you had. If you don’t have anything of use—”

  “Who says it’s not of use? You? You don’t look like you can tell much of anything.” The woman then looked at Topher. “And how about you? You might have some sense in you, but I doubt it’s of much help.”

  Jayna found herself smiling. This woman and her snarkiness left her amused more than anything else. “Maybe you could share with me your most impressive items.”

  “Why would I do that? Just so you can decide they aren’t worth what I say they are?”

  “What’s your talent?” Topher asked.

  Jayna glanced from him to the woman. She hadn’t even considered asking that question.

  As she looked along the row of items here, she realized something else: First, she should have checked in on that, and also, each stand would have items of different power. Each stand would be useful in different ways.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m asking so I know what kind of items you might have here,” he said.

  “Items?” She waved her hand. “Be gone if you think all I have are items. What I have are valuable markers.”

  “Markers?” Jayna asked, leaning over. Some of the different enchantments were shaped in strange ways. She had experience working with and even creating enchantments, but she didn’t have experience assessing them.

  She studied the various items, trying to determine if there was anything here that might be beneficial to her, but she couldn’t even tell. They would all have come from the same talent, but most of these looked different, as if there was no consistency among them.

  She glanced over to Topher, and he had picked up a long, slender rod with a circular pattern etched along the surface of it. He twisted it in his hand, tapping it in his palm for a moment before setting it back down. “Unless you can share with us what your enchantments can do, I’m afraid none of them are valuable,” Topher said.

  He had lost some of the uncertainty he had around Jayna and Eva.

  It was interesting seeing him like this.

  Of course, he was one of the dular, or he had been before everything happened to him. She shouldn’t be at all surprised that he would feel some comfort around them, and wouldn’t struggle nearly as much here as he did in other circumstances.

  Maybe this was how she was going to get him to leave. She needed to find a place like this—a place where he could be more comfortable, more in his own element—and once she did, then she could let him get back to his life, while she and Eva kept on with theirs.

  “My items are made with a spark of fire,” she said.

  “A spark of fire?” Jayna asked, holding a cylindrical object. There was a pattern on the surface of it that looked to be a similar spiral to the one she had seen Topher holding. Maybe the pattern was what mattered, as if the spiral itself would somehow augment its power, though she wasn’t sure. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The spark holds the power within it.”

  “I understand how an enchantment works,” she said, shaking her head as she stared at the woman. “What I’m asking is for you to tell me what your enchantments do. If you aren’t willing to do that, then . . .”

  She breathed out a sigh of frustration, turning her attention over to Topher.

  Jayna didn’t even know why she was bothering here. At this point, she didn’t need this woman. She needed to figure out what was going on with Rosal, and ensure he didn’t sell any other enchantments like the one that was used in her attack, which could be dangerous.

  “Where are you going?” the old woman asked as Jayna started to move away.

  “I figured you were done talking with us. I didn’t need to cause trouble with you.”

  “Who said it was trouble?”

  “You did,” Topher said.

  The woman scoffed, waving her hand again. “You young ones. Always so uncertain. If you want to know what these do, all you have to do is ask.”

  “We did ask,” Topher said. He glanced at Jayna and shrugged.

  He started down the road, moving on to the next booth, and Jayna headed away too, but the old woman grabbed her wrist, pulling her toward her.

  “I’m sure you could use a spark,” she said with a low and raspy voice.

  “Release my arm.”

  “Or what?”

  Heat began to build from the woman.

  Was she actually triggering one of her own enchantments?

  More than that, she seemed to be using it against Jayna. This was surprising, strange, but at the same time, at least she had a chance to observe the kind of magic this woman had. As the heat began to build from the woman’s hand, Jayna looked down, noticing the ring the woman wore. It had the same spiraling pattern as the other enchantments she had on her shelves.

  Jayna chuckled, smiling at the woman. “That is an interesting trick you have there. I’m afraid it isn’t powerful enough for my needs.”

  “I told you it was a spark,” she said.

  “A spark isn’t quite what I’m looking for.”

  She pressed her other hand on the woman, and she pushed a hint of power through the dragon stone ring. Cold seeped up into her—starting with her first finger and moving to her upper arm—but then she pushed it out in a hint of a soft pop of power. It was little more than that, but she used
it in a way that would spread a surge of energy across the woman’s hand, and the woman jerked back, crying out.

  “What is that? What did you use on me?”

  “If you’re going to use your enchantment on me, then I thought I’d use mine on you.” Jayna smiled at her. “Try that again, and you’ll see that’s not the extent of what I can do.”

  She headed along the street until she caught up with Topher.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I wouldn’t have expected anybody to attack their customers. Shouldn’t she want to sell her enchantments?”

  Jayna snorted. “It's not your fault.”

  “What did she do to you?”

  “She thought she would demonstrate her enchantment.”

  “Was it useful?”

  “Not so much. There was a little bit of a spark, some heat, but nothing more than that.”

  “I wonder why she didn’t want to explain what it does,” he said.

  “Probably because it was so insignificant,” Jayna said.

  It wasn’t meaningless, but it wasn’t very potent. She had a hard time seeing the value in an enchantment like that.

  Which was probably the point. That woman probably knew she was going to have a hard time selling her enchantments if she had revealed how minimally effective they are.

  She glanced over to the next stand. This one had three people operating it, obviously a family—a mother, father, and a dark-haired daughter, who shared her father’s dark hair and her mother’s full lips. They were all dressed in sheer silk gowns, but had nothing else unique about them.

  Topher paused, looking at the items arranged in their stall.

  Unlike the last woman’s stand, all of the items here looked to be a bit different. Jayna knew to look for the pattern on them, because regardless of anything else, the pattern was what allocated power to the items. That was what mattered.

  She glanced over to Topher. He smiled at the little girl, who couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve, before nodding to her parents. “What items do you have?”

  “What are you looking for?” the man asked. He had a long chin and a narrow smile. Despite that, there was something almost pleasant about the way he smiled. “Unlike other dular, the intent of the enchantment is what matters to us. We have stored energy in our enchantments in various ways. We figure that we can provide you with whatever you’re looking for.”

  Jayna looked over to Topher.

  “I’m looking for something that might have stored energy. Something a little more violent.”

  The man frowned. “Violent?”

  “Let’s just say that I was attacked in an alleyway. What would you have that might offer me an opportunity to defend myself and find a way to escape?”

  “There are a variety of items, but what you’re looking for is not the kind of thing we sell.”

  “Do you have anything that could be used in that way?”

  “As I said, we don’t keep anything quite like that. We’ve chosen to use our enchantments for good—not that most of the people here care about such things.”

  Jayna started to smile. Did he really want to deter his potential customers? “I didn’t say it wouldn’t be for good.”

  The man turned away from her and looked at Topher. “What about you? Are you looking for something violent?”

  “I’m out here with her. We just came to see what you might have.”

  The man frowned as he looked at Topher. “You should know better.”

  “I’m sorry,” Topher said.

  Topher slipped off, and now Jayna frowned, glancing from the other dular to Topher before following him.

  “What was that—”

  She looked down to see the young girl had followed and now looked up at her. “I might have something that would work for you.”

  “Do you?” Jayna grinned at her. “What exactly do you have?”

  “I can hold sound. I’ve found a way to focus it. My enchantment traps it inside, so when you release it, it’s pretty powerful.”

  “How powerful?”

  “Powerful enough.”

  “Does it sound like a scream?”

  “It sounds like nothing you have ever imagined.”

  “I don’t know about that. I have a pretty good imagination.”

  “It sounds like thunder. Some of them, at least. Not all of them. Some of them aren’t nearly as loud as that. But all of them are potent.” She glanced back to the stand. “My father doesn’t like me using them. He thinks it’s misguided.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I just like being able to make things for people who appreciate them.”

  “You don’t think your father appreciates what you make?”

  “I . . .”

  She looked over her shoulder before turning back to Jayna. “I can’t be gone for long. If you want them, all I want is a single silver. I can give you a dozen for that.”

  Jayna glanced back to see the girl’s mother watching, but there was no sign of her father. At least he was preoccupied. Jayna reached into her pocket. “I can give you one gold. Nothing more than that.”

  “I don’t need a gold. I just need the silver.”

  Jayna flipped her the coin. “You keep the rest. You keep making your enchantments. And if they are as good as you say, I might be back.”

  The girl smiled. “They’re better.”

  She handed a pouch to Jayna, who took it and shook it for a moment. There had to be more than a dozen in here, but she had spent a gold coin on an untested enchantment, so she figured she probably deserved more than a dozen.

  She glanced over to Topher, who shrugged.

  “What if they don’t work?” he asked.

  “Then I’m out a gold coin.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I mind, but I also recognize that if it does what she tells me it does, then it might be more valuable than any of the other enchantments I’ve used.”

  If the enchantments were as effective as the girl claimed, she could easily come up with plenty of uses for them. A blast of explosive sound might incapacitate any attacker, but wouldn't have the same destruction that some other offensive-type magic would. Her own sorcery was plenty devastating when she used it, and she didn’t need to tear down the city while trying to find who created this enchantment.

  Even better, enchantments like this would be hard for the Society to trace.

  She followed Topher, heading from one stand to another, pausing as they looked at one where three people were arranged in the booth. It looked to be three independent sellers, each with her own strip of the booth, and each with enchantments that didn’t have the same level of detail and decoration as some of the others she’d seen. Jayna paused long enough to lift one of the enchantments, a small bowl with a pattern of streaking lines in the bottom of it.

  “It will hold your memories,” the woman said. She had a soft, lilting way of speaking. Accented.

  “What sort of memories?”

  “The enchantment is designed to help capture your thoughts, and it will hold them for you.”

  “How do I get them back?”

  She glanced from the woman to Topher before her dragon stone ring squeezed her finger briefly. She frowned, searching for the source, but didn’t see anything. There might have been a flicker of movement down the street, but in the market, there was movement everywhere.

  “That is more difficult,” the woman said. “Once you extract your memories, the enchantment merely holds them. Putting them back requires a different kind of magic.”

  Jayna handed the bowl back. “What good is an enchantment that holds memories if I can’t return them?”

  “What good is having certain memories?” the woman asked.

  Jayna held her gaze. The woman had dark skin, curly black hair, and freckles of pigment along the corners of her eyes extending up onto her forehead.

  “You don’t mean storing good memories,” Jayna realized.

&nbs
p; The woman just watched her.

  She had plenty of memories she would love to lose—especially since starting to work with Ceran. There were terrible dark creatures she would love to forget having faced.

  “I would let one go for only a few coppers,” the woman said.

  “I don’t know if I could use it.”

  “You don’t want to remove some of your memories?”

  “I want to keep all of my memories,” Jayna said. “Good and bad.”

  She had other bad memories, beyond the dark creatures. Too often, she had dealt with memories of what had happened to her parents, losing her brother, and even the pain of what had happened when she had separated from the Academy. All of those could be stored in this device, ripped free from her, and Jayna wouldn’t mind one bit. The thought of having those memories taken from her, what it might be like to find a way past them, was compelling.

  At the same time, who would she be without them? Those memories were what she was made of.

  She glanced along the street for a moment and realized something. Eva was there. She couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she wasn’t thinking about this enchantment in quite the right way.

  Something like this wouldn’t necessarily be a detriment to someone like Eva.

  Jayna fished into her pocket and pulled out three copper coins. “It’s all I have.”

  The woman smiled at her. “That is enough. Just be prepared to focus on the memory you want extracted, and let it stay within the enchantment.”

  “What if it doesn’t want to stay in the bowl?”

  “All memories will stay.”

  Jayna opened her mouth to ask another question, to try to figure out more, when a shout came from down the street. Everything within her went tense, but the shout was somebody calling for attention. It was a vendor trying to draw people to their stand.

  Jayna hurriedly stuffed the bowl into her pocket, and she nodded to the woman before following Topher down the street.

  “What do you think is going on down here?” she asked him.

  “I don’t exactly know. When I’ve been to markets like this before, it’s never been this active.”

  “Never?”