Another explosion thundered over her.
She glanced behind her to see Raollet lingering in the room, the book clutched up against his chest. She shook her head. He wasn’t going to be much help.
Here she had spent months fearing that he would send people after her given what she had done to his shop, but he was terrified.
And if he had told her the truth, then as a scholar, it made sense that he would be terrified. He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t the kind of person to go chasing down somebody else with magic. He wasn’t the kind of person to deal with the sort of power she felt thundering up in the shop overhead.
But she was.
She started up the stairs, already pulling upon power through the dragon stone ring. While the ring connected her to the energy she had within herself, it also connected her to something different, something grander, something that seemed far more expansive. As she held on to that power, feeling the way it flowed out from her, she began to build it up, pushing it in front of her.
Then she reached the top of the stairs.
There was no movement, just a strange energy here.
Smoke covered everything. She saw the haze hanging over the interior of the shop hallway, the back area that she had blasted free to release the El’aras, and worried that perhaps it was the El’aras who had come back, but there was something about it that struck her as unusual.
It was the way the haze persisted.
The smoke man— one of the Ashara?—had returned.
Rather than going any farther, Jayna waited. She traced out the pattern needed to create the wind, added a burst of energy through that spell, and the wind carried the smoke away, lifting it entirely.
It left the hallway empty.
There was no sign of the man.
She held on to a surge of power, wrapping it around her.
It wouldn’t take much more than that. She had to be ready for another blast. When she had faced the man before, she had felt the way he had wrapped his smoke around her protective layer, and though she had managed to overwhelm him, it had involved her tapping into the darkness. She didn’t want to have to do that again so soon. She was still weak from the last attack, and she feared what might happen if she had to tap into that strength again. It might diminish her capacity to resist the dark energy.
She strode forward, but the hallway remained empty.
Strangely, a tingling sort of energy pushed against her.
That’s new. It hadn’t been here when she’d come through before. Jayna held on to the power through the dragon stone ring as she moved forward, using that to hold off whatever energy tried to constrict around her, and preparing for the possibility that there might be an attack.
Nothing came.
She moved carefully, slowly, then stopped.
That tingling pressure began to build.
It wasn’t her imagination. It was real, and it was near her.
Not the smoke magic of the man who’d attacked, but something else. As she continued to move carefully, she looked for anything that might have triggered that feeling. She found nothing—just the energy that was present, something within the room that continued to build.
The hallway was narrow, empty, but she didn’t think she was imagining that power.
There was one way to tell.
Not through her dragon stone ring. That might work, but there was a better way.
The spell she needed was fairly complicated, but it would help her reveal any magic that existed, whether or not it was something she recognized.
Jayna crouched down as she looked along the hall. She began to work the pattern with her left hand, tracing out a series of triangles, then the circles and stars that surrounded them. She then touched it with a bit of the painful power coming from the Toral ring, but not much. There was no point in pouring too much power out of her and into it. All she needed was a bit, something different than that of sorcery.
As she pushed that energy through the spell, it flowed along the hallway.
And then something pushed back.
Power slammed into her.
Jayna was tossed onto her backside. She dusted herself off as she got up, bracing for another attack. She pulled several of the concussive blasts out of her pocket. Those might be effective.
The girl had been working on them, hopefully perfecting them, and even if she hadn’t, Jayna had used them effectively before. Having that kind of power available to her would limit her need to throw up an offensive spell. She could focus on defense.
She stepped forward.
“Is it safe to come up?” Raollet’s voice called from below.
“I don’t know,” Jayna shouted back.
“I figured you would have destroyed everything by now.”
He sounded as if he were closer. Could the fool truly have been climbing the stairs?
He had been cowering down in his room, only emerging now that she had begun to make her way along the hallway, fighting her way through whatever spells had been placed there.
Raollet poked his head around the corner, through the open doorway.
“I’m not keeping you safe,” she said.
“I will wait here until you tell me it’s clear,” he said.
Jayna sighed then crouched down, tracing out the pattern for spell detection once again. The last one had ricocheted backward, sending her across the hall, and she feared the same thing would happen this time. At least she would be prepared for it.
When she touched the Toral ring to it, adding a hint of different power, she heard a soft gasp from behind her. Jayna ignored him and pressed power out from her that flowed into the pattern.
It streaked outward, washing in a wave of white light.
She braced herself. Unlike the last time, Jayna created a barrier around herself with the magic ball spell. Thankfully, when the spell tracked through something again this time, it merely triggered it without releasing a blast of violent power. Jayna stood and waited until the energy dissipated, leaving her. Finally, she breathed out.
“An enchantment,” Master Raollet said.
“That was just an enchantment?”
“Well, it was my enchantment. It was meant to be triggered if there was an attack.” He frowned at her. “I never would’ve expected that you would have . . .” He shook his head. “No matter. You have released the enchantments in the hallway.”
“You could’ve warned me about them.”
“I didn’t think they would have been activated.”
He pushed past her, but Jayna grabbed him and shoved him back.
She moved forward, holding on to power through the dragon stone ring and readying another spell with her free hand, tracing a flare of fire. It would be brutal and potentially violent, but it would also keep her from danger.
“Is that really necessary?” Raollet asked, looking past her.
“It’s necessary if I want to live.”
“If they wanted to attack you, they would’ve done that by now.”
“Unless they’re after you.”
He harrumphed and she ignored it, slipping along the hallway, moving carefully, quietly, until she had a chance to see the open shop.
Once she did, she frowned. A haze of smoke hung over it. It was the same sort of haze that had been in the hallway when she’d first emerged from the stairs.
“Another enchanted attack,” he whispered. Raollet pointed. “See how the smoke drifts? They wanted to look like the Ashara, even if these lands are not conducive to them.”