Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,105

the top of the stairs and found that an explosion had ripped the building free. The tavern that had been here was now completely gone.

She looked over to Eva. “We need to finish this, then we need to figure out what we can about your true nature. Will you do this?”

Eva nodded slowly. “I’m with you.”

“Good. I don’t know if I can do it without you.”

Another explosion thundered. There was a certain regularity to them, and as they made their way around the city, she thought she understood why.

She had seen enchantments of a massive scale before and knew they existed. Rosal’s family home had one. If the intention was to destroy the great enchantment, then in order to do it, they would need to destroy parts of the city that formed an enchantment protecting it.

Jayna and Eva had to intervene.

Jayna stopped for a moment among the scattered remains of the booths and partitions, then she grabbed for Eva, and the two of them went running. Eva called upon the smoke, the power within her, and it circled around her.

“I don’t know what we’re going to need to do,” Jayna said.

“Fight,” Eva replied.

“I don’t know what that’s going to require.”

“Pain.”

She found three people lying in the street, moaning.

Jayna slowed, and her eyes narrowed.

“Dular,” she whispered.

Yet another explosion of energy thundered near her, and she reacted, tracing power out from the dragon stone and creating a protective ring around her. When the attack bounced off, she was pushed to the side a bit, but she managed to hold herself steady.

“We have to stop all of this,” Jayna repeated.

“The fighting, or the destruction of the great enchantment?” Eva asked.

“Both, I suspect.”

And Jayna knew where they needed to go.

Even though she could feel the explosions thundering around the city, they needed to prioritize stopping the destruction of the great enchantment—which meant they had to go to the courtyard. Toward the seven dular homes.

She raced forward. The streets of Nelar in this part of the city were now familiar to her, as were the great houses. Jayna had visited there often enough.

Once she reached the courtyard, magic surrounded her. She could see it flashing with color—some ripples of blue and white, an occasional explosion of what looked like fire—and she felt the overwhelming sense of pressure building around her, tightening her skin. The magic used here was considerable.

“We have to find the sorcerers.” She had a dangerous idea about how to do so and glanced over to Eva. “So we’ll need to summon them.”

“Your connection to Char?” Eva asked.

“Not that. I’m not so sure it’s going to work.” Even if she were to reach Char, she had no idea whether there was anything within that connection that would make a difference. There was something that might, though. “You’re not going to like it.”

She gathered the bloodstone enchantments and dumped them on the ground. Once they were circled around her, Jayna created a spiral of power around them, then burst energy into them.

They exploded in a cloud of smoke that expanded rapidly.

Eva started to call that smoke off, but Jayna stopped her. “We need to use this. We might be able to draw them out this way.”

“Toward me?” Eva asked.

“Not toward you. Well, maybe toward you. But toward this.” She closed her eyes, focusing on the linking spell she shared with Char, and pulled on it.

When she had been trapped beneath the outpost, she had used that connection to draw magic. Maybe there would be some way for her to call to him now. It was worth trying, at least. And maybe if she could do that, she might be able to summon enough of a connection to Char and alert him that she needed to draw the other sorcerers to them.

“I don’t think it made a difference,” Eva said.

“Maybe not. We’ll have to try something—”

Power began to build.

Jayna detected it as a throbbing in the dragon stone ring.

It constricted around her finger, a steady, rhythmic pulsing of power that attempted to squeeze, with more and more energy pulling on it, making it almost unpleasant.

She looked around, and though she could feel that energy, she couldn’t tell where it was. “They’re here,” Jayna said.

“Who?”

“I’m guessing Dorian and others.”

Jayna sent the wind gusting outward, clearing the smoke.

Master Agnew was there. Dressed in his flowing maroon robes, he looked every bit the powerful sorcerer she had known him to be.

Could he really be a dark sorcerer?

There were a dozen other sorcerers with him. Some of them were