“Is that right?” Jayna asked.
“More than I would’ve thought. I certainly spent more time here than I had spent in other taverns before I came here.” He grinned slightly. “Not that I never visited taverns, mind you, but never quite so much as I have since coming here.”
“What happened to Robert?” Jayna asked.
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. People all around me have ended up missing, not just Robert. There were two others, both men who came to this tavern. Regulars, I suppose you’d call them.”
Jayna looked over to Eva, frowning. “What do you think happened to them?”
Topher shrugged as he took another drink. “Can’t say that I know. I’ve been looking into it. Searching for answers, as it were. I found this.”
He had a scrap of paper in hand, and he slipped it across the table. Jayna glanced at it briefly, knowing already what she was going to see.
It was the same marking she had seen in the Wandering Hen.
The same symbol Jonathan had left on the letter he'd sent her.
“That’s how I heard about you, Jayna. Heard you were looking for someone in the city.”
Jayna tensed. She had been careful to avoid asking too many questions about her brother, at least not openly. The kind of questions she could ask about Jonathan were the kind that would end up putting her in danger. Given the type of men Jonathan had spent time around, and the kind of power he might have gotten involved in, she knew better than to expose her connections to her brother too openly.
And she had needed to be careful for other reasons.
She was in the city in pursuit of rumors of dark magic—along with whatever she could discover about her brother. Besides the banewig, now the dwaring were more evidence of dark magic. And tied to the festival, if only she could learn how.
“What did you hear?” Jayna asked.
“I just heard you were searching for someone. A man with a marking like this.” He shrugged. “And I heard you had ways of helping others.”
Jayna glanced to Eva, who ignored her. “I don’t do that too often.”
“That’s not what I hear,” Topher said, grinning. He was oblivious to the pointed stare Jayna gave him. “There were a couple of people who said you healed them when they got hurt. Figured that with what happened to me, I could go to you.”
“What do you mean what happened to you?” Jayna asked.
Topher glanced from her to Eva. “I don’t really know. I was looking for Robert, you see. Came over here to the tavern, but he’d been gone. I made a point of coming over here every day since he disappeared, but never found anything. I started to give up hope, but I began to poke around, asking questions of my own. I made sure the tavern was taken care of.”
“I’m sure you did,” Eva said, swirling her wine before taking a swig and setting it down.
“Right,” Topher said. “Anyway, I made a point of keeping the tavern cleaned up, but I never left it open. I figured Robert wouldn’t much approve of that. Not that I have any way of running a tavern, such as it were. I’m more of a patron than a businessman.”
“You’re something,” Eva said.
Topher grinned. “Thank you.” He took a drink of ale, setting it back down again. “Anyway, I think I saw who attacked me at a market not far from here. You probably know the one. Hester Square Market?”
Jayna nodded. “I know the one.”
Given its proximity to the edge of the city, there were quite a few strange people who frequented it. Nothing at all like some of the places Jayna visited. Many of the markets in the city served more of the local crowd, whereas the Hester Square Market tended to cater to more of an exotic kind of crowd. Darker magic, if anything.
“Anyway. There was this man. Didn’t get a good look at him, but he obviously got a look at me. He slammed into me. After that, I started getting sick. Then I got sicker.”
“And you ended up at my place?” Jayna asked.
“Not at first. It took a few days.”
Jayna looked over to Eva. It had been a few days? What would happen if one of the dwaring stayed inside somebody for more than a few days?
The creature had already been powerful. She could feel that when she had pulled it off. She remembered the way it had slithered, squirming against her, fighting everything she attempted to do to remove it.
If something like that were to have gotten even more powerful . . .
She didn’t know what would’ve happened. It was possible it would have continued feeding, but she had a sense there was something more to it than that.
Eva ignored her again.
“Anyway. I started feeling off. Couldn’t really explain it. I found myself losing stretches of time. Hours.”
“Probably because you were drinking,” Eva muttered, taking a swig of wine.
Jayna chuckled nervously. They still had the dwaring to deal with and she didn’t know how they were going to destroy it. “How did you end up at my place?”
“It just got to be too much,” Topher said, rubbing the back of his neck. He leaned forward with a pained stare toward the mug of ale. “I needed to get help. I knew it. I hadn’t found any sign of Robert or any of the others, and then I started getting sick. Nothing ale could take care of.”
“Why would you think ale would take care of anything?” Jayna asked.
“Something my mother used to tell me. You have to feed a flu.”
“You feed it ale?”
“I don’t know. Better than some of the other things Robert had here.”
Jayna leaned back, looking at the wine. She wasn’t really thirsty, and after seeing the expression on Eva’s face, and the darkness that crept through her, she didn’t really want to drink anything and end up in a similar condition.
“Anyway, will you help me find out what happened to them?”
Jayna looked over to him, shaking her head. “I think you’ve got the wrong person. I’m not somebody who searches for other people.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing? Gods, you did remove whatever it was from me.”
“It’s a dwaring,” Eva said.
“Right,” Topher said. “A dwaring. If you could take that out of me, then surely you can help me track Robert. He couldn’t have gone far.”
“Maybe he’s dead,” Eva said.
Topher regarded her a moment before laughing softly. “Maybe, but it’s just not like him.”
“To be dead?” Eva asked.
Jayna suppressed a smile.
“Maybe I don’t know what he’s like,” Topher said. He drank the last of his ale, and looked at the empty mug with disappointment. “Still, I feel like I need to find him. He helped me out when I first came to the city, and gave me a place, you know. I want to do whatever I can to pay him back for his kindness.”
This was going too far. She didn’t mind taking small jobs while waiting for Ceran to tell her what else he needed from her, but finding a tavern owner seemed a stretch.
But there was the symbol.
Ceran would understand, wouldn’t he?
“You haven’t even paid me for my service,” Jayna said.
Topher looked over, grinning. “What do you charge?”
“Not enough,” Eva muttered.
“What can you pay?” Jayna asked, ignoring Eva’s comment.
“I don’t have much.”
“Figures,” Eva said.
“But I can give you this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a coin made out of stone. It was circular and flat, with an engraving along its surface. He slid it across the table to Jayna, who took it. As soon as she did, she recognized a hint of power within it.
“It’s an enchantment,” she said.
Topher nodded. “I’m not all that powerful, but I’ve got a little bit of talent. Sort of natural, as it were. My parents always said I could have studied at the Academy if I had the chance.” He grinned at her. “Not that I could do what you do
, you know. Just that if I had taken the time to really get serious about harnessing power . . . I never really wanted to take the time, though. I was satisfied with what I could do.”
“You’re a dular?” Eva said with a sneer.
“Not really one of the dular,” Topher replied, sitting back and stiffening. “Not like they have here in Nelar. I don’t have nearly their level of talent.”
Jayna flipped the stone in her hand. Despite his protestations, there was some skill involved in it. It would have taken a reasonable amount of magic to make it—for him, or whoever had done so. Enchantments took on aspects of the power of those who created them. There were some sorcerers who had exquisite enchantments. The detail in them looked more impressive than anything any artisan could make. Oftentimes, the enchantment itself was prized simply for the artwork involved in it, and less so for the magic embedded within it. The more powerful the sorcerer, the more exquisite the nature of the enchantment.
There were others, like the dular, who had a natural gift for creating enchantments, though they were limited in the kind of enchantments they could create, tied to some part of themselves. Some dular enchantments were powerful, especially if they poured enough emotion into the creation. In the case of this one, she had a sense that it was somewhere between what she saw from most of the dular, and what she detected from sorcerers like Char.
“What does it do?”
“That’s just it,” Topher said. “It doesn’t have a whole lot of use. It is a bit of a tracker, though it’s keyed to me.”
Eva started to laugh, and Jayna shot her a look until she cut herself off. “What do you mean, ‘it’s keyed to’ you?”
“Just like I said. If you ever needed to find me, this will help.”
“So basically, you’re giving me something that will help me find you again?” Jayna flipped the stone coin in her hand before setting it back down on the table.
“Well, if we’re going to be working together, I think that would be useful, don’t you?”
“Whoever said we were going to be working together?” she asked.
“You don’t want to work with me?” There was real hurt in his tone, and something else as well.
Disappointment? Fear?
Jayna recognized those emotions.
She swept her gaze around the inside of the tavern. He was missing his friend. It wasn’t so different from her missing her brother. Well, maybe a little bit. Losing a friend wasn’t quite the same as losing the only living family member she had. But there was more to Topher’s situation. It was about how he had been attacked.
She let out a sigh. Ceran had sent her looking for dark magic users. She had found them. Not the way she had expected, but now she had someone who had been targeted by them. What happened to Topher had to be connected to the festival.
Which meant that she had to understand what was going on.
The Festival of Mourn and the dwaring.
She squeezed a pulse of power through the dragon stone ring.
She hoped there would be a response soon. Ceran would have to know she had used that power.
“We do need to know more about the dwaring,” she said to Eva.
“No,” Eva said. She shifted and pulled the enchantment out of her pocket, setting it on the table. “This is all we need to know about. And even with this, I think we need to dispose of it. That’s probably the whole reason you were sent to this fire-blasted place.”
“Not until we find out what happened,” Jayna said, taking the enchantment and sticking it into her pocket. It was weighty enough that she wouldn’t be able to ignore it completely. Though Eva might be right—it was possible this was the only reason they were here. Ceran guided her to track dark magic, and what else was this dwaring but dark magic? Usually, he came the moment she found it, destroying the darkness before she ended up in too much trouble. “If there are others like this, we need to figure out what happened and why they are out there.”
“We?” Eva asked.
“I’m going to need your help.”
Jayna had a feeling that Eva’s help was not only going to be useful, but necessary. Eva knew something about the dwaring, even if she wanted to deny it.
More than that, Eva seemed to know some way of holding them. The enchantment might be a part of it, but if it came down to finding more dwaring, and others who had been attacked by them, she was going to need whatever strange blood magic Eva possessed in order to maintain the trap. Then they could figure out how to dispose of them.
All she had to do was find out how—and why.
“Fine. I’ll help,” Eva said.
Jayna nodded, turning her attention back to Topher. “It looks like we will help you find your friend.”
He lifted the mug of ale, looking into it before setting it back down. He flashed a smile at her, not bothering to hide the heavy relief in his eyes, nor did he conceal the worry when he flicked his gaze toward the enchantment that sat in her pocket. He lifted the mug again and tilted it in his mouth, as if there were still something in there. Then he moved it away and glanced inside, shaking it before finally setting it back down on the table and rubbing a fist on his temple.
For all his stumbling and bumbling, Topher was more worried than he let on.
Jayna figure that was probably good.
Given what he had gone through, and what they might still have to face, she needed him to take it seriously. She didn’t really know what was going on, and she didn’t really know what she might need to do, but she would need somebody who took things seriously.
Now if she could only keep him and Eva sober, they might actually be able to get something done.
9
The Hester Square Market was a large complex on the outskirts of the western edge of the city. As they approached it, Jayna saw a low wall that surrounded it, with a small wooden gate allowing carts and vendors to head into the square. Buildings remained somewhat distant from the market, almost as if concerned about getting too close. On the far western side of the market, a dense forest rose up, though Jayna had never attempted to even step foot inside. Beyond the trees, somewhere deeper into the forest, the El’aras had power. She may have had some training at the Sorcery Academy, but she didn’t have enough knowledge, skill, or strength to be able to withstand one of the El’aras—let alone face more than one.
She was tired, having slept for only the latter part of the morning, and she rubbed a fist across her eyes, trying to knuckle out the sleep from her, though it did little to help. Eva somehow managed to look much more alert than her, and that was after having had several glasses of wine the night before. Or morning.
They had changed clothes, with Jayna dressing in a simple gray dress and throwing a brown cloak over her shoulders. Her clothing suited Nelar, at least for the most part. The cloak itself would shed moisture. If it were to rain—which it most undoubtedly would not—it might get saturated, but with little more than a mist in the air, the cloak would provide some protection.
Eva had on a pale white dress, a silver chain around her neck, and somehow, her skin looked as if it glowed in the early afternoon sunlight—she often seemed as if she glowed, especially in the daylight, which Jayna had chalked up to whatever magical heritage she had. Not that Eva would talk about it. That was, if she even remembered it.
Topher still hadn’t shown up.
“He had better get here soon,” Eva muttered. She swept her gaze around the market before finally turning and looking at Jayna. “This isn’t the kind of place I wanted to spend my day.”
“Me neither, but with what we’ve seen so far, I think we need to be here.”
“What exactly do you think we’ve seen?” Eva asked. “You’ve seen a strange creature feeding off of a dular.”
“Exactly,” Jayna said, locking eyes with Eva. “We found a darkly magical creature feeding off of someone with magic. What do you think would happen if that were to attack me? Or you?”
“The dwaring wouldn’t att
ack me,” Eva said, turning away.
She was surprisingly certain despite how little she remembered of her own past. “Fine. If it attacks me?”
“I’m sure you would be protected as well.”
“Why?”
She flicked her gaze to the ring on Jayna’s finger before looking back at her. “You would be fine.”
Jayna didn’t think the ring would offer all that much protection, but maybe it did. When she had pulled on the dwaring, she felt no sense of it attempting to come to her. That left her thinking that maybe she was safe.
It hadn’t gone after Char either.
Only Topher.
Maybe that was because it had already latched onto him and was feeding, but maybe there was something more to it.
“What else do you know about the dwaring?” she asked, sweeping her gaze around the outskirts of the square. Vendors lined the inside of the wall, and there were more lines of vendors inside the square. Mostly carts, some formal wagons, and only a few small tables. There wasn’t much of a crowd at this time of day. A smattering of people wandered through the market, though there were larger clusters in some places. Jayna couldn’t see what drew interest in those areas, but was curious.
“I’ve told you all I remember about them.”
“You’ve told me what you want to tell me, but maybe you know more. We just have to dig at it until we figure it out.”
She looked over again, shaking her head. “It’s all I know,” Eva snapped.
A pair of short, bald men headed into the market. Neither of them looked in their direction, but one of them had a small ring on his finger. She stared for a moment, worried that maybe he was a Toral even though she’d never seen another one before, until she recognized the symbol on it.
Not a Toral. A sorcerer.
She slipped into the shadows of an overhang.
“What do you think they’re doing here?” she whispered.
“What?” Eva asked.
Jayna looked around her, but there was still no sign of Topher, so she moved Eva off to the side of the road until she could get a better view of the two men who’d just entered. Both wore black cloaks that were faded to a dark gray. She had suspected that at least one of the men was a sorcerer, based on his ring, and wondered if the other might be as well. Sorcerers would have the same traveling cloak given to them by the Society, though the cloak usually had a series of symbols marked along it, the signature of the Sorcerers’ Society.
Festival of Mourn (The Dark Sorcerer Book 1) Page 9