Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,11

but mostly translucent barrier. Shouts rang out. Some people were getting crushed up against the barrier, falling to the ground. Cries of pain mixed with the panic. The barrier wasn’t going to hold. They weren’t going to be able to stay here like this, and they certainly weren’t going to be able to move through the crowd very easily.

She tried a different approach.

“Be ready,” she said.

“For what?” Char asked.

“The next step.”

She squeezed her hand around the Toral ring, letting the energy she could feel within it flow through her, and prepared for the next blast. As she often noticed these days, there was a hint of darkness at the edge of her vision when she drew upon the ring’s energy.

As she did, it exploded outward, creating a circle of power that echoed away from her.

That energy sent people staggering, and the people nearest to the barrier fell backward as it shattered.

Jayna hurriedly reached into her pouch, grabbed two of the concussive enchantments she’d gotten from the little girl in the market, and triggered them, sending one in front of her and another behind. The two blasts thundered, and Jayna hurriedly wrapped herself and Char in enough of a shell of power to protect them from the explosion, but those on the street weren’t nearly as lucky.

The explosion wasn’t going to harm anyone. It was loud, though. There was a whoosh of energy that sent people flying backward again, then they lay there, stunned for the moment.

She grabbed Char’s arm, pulling him along the street with her. They stepped over some of the fallen people and forced their way into the crowd.

“This is your plan?” Char asked.

“I didn’t really have much of a plan. I probably should start doing that,” Jayna said. She looked behind her. Much of the crowd was starting to get up, and those who did looked even angrier than before. Maybe she was making a mess of this. It might’ve been easier had she left Char to continue getting through the crowd on his own, but she couldn’t simply abandon him.

“Let me try something,” he said. “I’m going to use something I learned here. It’s a bit of a healing spell.”

“I’m not sure healing is going to make a difference right now,” Jayna said.

Char stopped in the middle of the street as people began to get up, and Jayna realized a healing spell was a particularly bad idea; if he helped the crowd recover more quickly, they would only come at him again. At the moment, he and Jayna had the advantage in that he had them down. With another few concussive blasts, Jayna thought they could keep moving beyond the attack.

Yet he looked like he was unwilling to move.

Jayna wanted to grab Char, wanted to drag him along the street with her, but he stood in place. He was tracing out a strangely complicated pattern on the ground with one foot, but also making another pattern with both hands. They were far more complex than any of the patterns she had seen in the spellbooks he had given her.

Here she thought that working with the spellbooks would give her an understanding of the magic a sorcerer would possess, but she didn’t have anything quite like that.

Of course, Char was working with a very different kind of healing magic. He was gifted in a way that permitted him to use that kind of power more so than she could. With his connection to his magic, along with the knowledge he possessed, he could use that to defend himself.

More than just defend himself.

The energy he called upon was vast. The pattern he traced around his feet focused the power, and the energy he sent outward from his hands washed it over the crowd, directing it. He completed both at the same time, something Jayna wouldn’t have been able to do. As that power took hold, the crowd started to calm.

“Are you compelling them?”

“This isn’t a compelling kind of spell. You know I wouldn’t use that kind of magic,” Char said.

“It seems like you’re calming them.”

“Not calming. Soothing. It’s the same sort of spell I would use on somebody if I were trying to help with an injury.”

“It can’t be the same,” Jayna said.

“Well, I did anchor it so I could summon more than I usually would. Given the size of the crowd . . .”

His gaze became unfocused, and he continued sweeping his hand in a complicated arc as he wove through the pattern, working the magic. The