“I felt it burning inside.” She looked to Jayna, shaking her head. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Jayna took a deep breath, letting it out as she looked around her. “Then can you search?”
“I will do my best,” Eva said.
She closed her eyes, and smoke began to swirl around her.
As it drifted outward, a pattern began to form.
It flowed on the wind, fading away from them.
They said nothing.
After a while, Eva glanced over, shaking her head. “I don’t detect anything.”
Jayna contemplated opening the spellbook and beginning to work through it, trying to find another spell she could use for tracking purposes. Whatever she had used the last time had burned Eva, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be something else in one of these spellbooks. She had two advanced spellbooks, the kind she never had access to at the Academy, yet none of the magic was truly beyond her. She could keep attempting to work through them, trying to find answers, but as she flipped the pages, she wasn’t sure if any of their contents would provide her with the answers she wanted.
A strange vibration in her pocket caught her attention.
“What is that?”
Jayna reached for the vibration and pulled out the coin. “That’s Topher.”
“What’s he doing to me?”
Eva pulled out a coin of her own from her pocket and almost threw it, but Jayna shook her head.
“That’s from his enchantments. He’s calling to us,” she said.
“Why would he call to us?”
That was a good question. Topher had never summoned them before. Something had him concerned.
Jayna looked around the strange landscape, and though some part of her did want to continue looking, if Topher were asking for their help, then she needed to get moving and provide it.
“We should get back for him.”
She could return another time. Not only to continue her spell work, but also to track whatever might have been here. Jayna worried that she was leaving something dangerous behind. If it was one of the dark sorcerers, then she would probably find them again—maybe her Toral ring was the key to doing so, anyway—but still, if that were the case, she would’ve expected to have detected something much more acutely than she had. Usually, the Toral ring revealed the presence of dark magic quite quickly and intensely.
When they reached the outskirts of the city, Jayna glanced behind her, looking toward the forest.
“I thought you enjoyed the city,” Eva said.
“I do. Most of the time. It’s just that there’s something about the quiet within the forest—at least, when there aren’t dark creatures.”
“It’s not just the quiet you like.”
Jayna held her gaze before shaking her head. “No, it’s not just the quiet.”
There was freedom in using magic without fear of repercussions. Freedom in practicing sorcery—along with the Toral ring magic—without worrying that some sorcerer would find out about what she was doing, track her down, and decide they should take possession of her magic.
The city of Nelar was unique among those that Jayna had visited since taking up her service to Ceran. Most of the outer buildings were relics from the El’aras who had occupied the city before dular had taken it over. Some of them were crumbling, though not nearly as many as she would’ve expected. On the outskirts, especially near the forest, a heavy moss covered everything. People moved comfortably despite the humidity, the one part of the city Jayna had never managed to grow accustomed to.
As they made their way through the city, Jayna heard shouting in the distance.
It wasn’t uncommon to hear the shouts of street vendors within Nelar. There was an active crowd here, and quite a few merchants came to the city, or there had been up until the addition of the merchant tax had driven some of them away. Still, this sort of noise and chaos was unusual, even for Nelar.
“Where are you going?” Eva asked as Jayna began to veer away.
“I’m going to see what that is.”
“I thought you wanted to find out what Topher needs.”
The coin had gone silent, so either he had found what he needed, or something had happened to him. There was no directionality to the coin summons he used, no way for her to follow the power and energy he placed within the coin, and no way for her to know what he truly needed. Topher had believed that over time he would be able to convey messages within the coins, but so far, he had not managed to do so.
“What if he’s called us back here because of this?” Jayna asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“I think we need to look. Besides, it’s moving the same way we need to go.”
The crowd blocked them from getting through—at least, getting through easily. She could loop around, but it would take more time.
If there was something taking place in the city, they needed to know, if only so they could better understand whether there was anything more ominous taking place. Given everything they had gone through, and the different attacks that had occurred here, Jayna didn’t like the idea of not knowing.
Eva reluctantly followed her, and Jayna looked back at her every so often, needing to prod her forward and guide her.
She reached one of the main thoroughfares through the city. The streets were all named after some of the initial settlers within the city, and this one took its name from one of the original founders, a wealthy dular. Jayna had never bothered to learn the names. They didn’t make much difference to the kind of work she did.
They had to fight their way through the crowd within the street, moving east, as if they were following some parade route.
“What’s going on here?” Jayna asked as she took in the size of the crowd. It was unusual for Nelar.
An older man with gray hair and flat brown eyes looked back at her. He had a haggard face, unshaven, and wore a brown jacket and pants. “One of the damn sorcerers decided to disrupt the vendors again.”
“What?”
“They keep thinking to attack. We know what happened. We know they were responsible for destroying Hosten and Bilander homes.”
They were two of the seven manor homes at the center of Nelar. The ruling dular families. And Jayna knew the sorcerers weren’t responsible for that destruction. That had been the work of a Toral serving a different—and more dangerous—Sul’toral.
Jayna had known there was a bit of unease within the city since the attack, but she hadn’t stayed connected to the dular enough to learn more about the specifics of their unease. That had been a mistake. If the dular blamed the sorcerers . . .
Jayna glanced over to Eva and found her frowning.
“Where is the sorcerer?”
The man ignored her and shouted again.
“I don’t like this,” she said to Eva, keeping her voice low. If there was a crowd of angry people in Nelar, Jayna didn’t want to get caught up in it, and she didn’t need a sorcerer to lash out at the crowd. Most of the time, the sorcerers would refrain from using their magic too aggressively, but if they felt they were under attack, she wouldn’t blame them for using their power in a way that would cause damage—and she knew the kind of power they could unleash.
“What can you do about it?”
“Not a whole lot,” Jayna admitted.