She shook her head. “No one is moving. Not until we get through this. It’s been the Society all along.” She frowned at Agnew. “That’s where the darkness is. That’s what’s corrupt.”
“You don’t know what you speak of,” Agnew said.
“I finally think I do. You want people to serve, but you want them to serve so you can force them to help break these enchantments. How many are there?”
Agnew didn’t react.
Frustration filled Jayna—the frustration of not knowing what was happening, the frustration of fighting an enemy she had not been able to find nor do anything about, the frustration of her captivity.
As she stared at Agnew, she embraced that anger and frustration.
There was no point in fighting it any longer. Why should she bother when she could pull on that power? She had already chosen to use the magic within the dragon stone. There was no darkness in it. The only place the darkness could come from would be her, from the sorcery she used.
“You’re making a mistake,” Agnew said.
“No.” Jayna took a step toward him and held out her fist. The dragon stone practically glowed with the energy she pulled, and she pressed out and around, surrounding Agnew.
It left the two of them confined.
The others could not hear them speaking. They were hidden, trapped in the shell of power that Jayna had erected around them, but there might be some way for her to allow at least one person to hear.
She focused on the linking spell she shared with Char. Maybe he could hear. She needed for him to know.
Dorian looked around, a casual expression on his face. “Do you think to imprison me?”
“I don’t know if I can, Dorian.”
He stared at her, a blank look in his eyes that left Jayna wondering if perhaps she had it wrong. Maybe Rayna was not right about Agnew. Jayna had seen him helping defeat the Order. Why would he do that if he was secretly serving Sarenoth?
She felt power building from him.
It was not sorcery, not the way that she would normally expect.
What she felt was dark magic. It triggered the dragon stone ring, constricting tightly around her finger.
It was painful in a way that she had never felt before. Maybe it was the bloodstone merged with the Toral ring, or perhaps it was just the power of Agnew—or Dorian, as the case may be.
She held her hand out, pointing to the Toral ring. “I know what you are.”
He laughed, and all the kindness that she’d always seen on his face suddenly faded. Now there was a darkness, a sneer, and he turned to her, clasping his hands in front of him. “It has been many years since I’ve been called by that name.”
“You’ve hidden within the Society.”
“All of us have hidden within the Society,” he said, laughing. “All this time, and there’s been a pursuit to try to make sure the twelve remained imprisoned.” He started to create a spell, his fingers working quickly. “I will let you in on a secret. There was never any prison.”
He whipped his hands down, and the shell she’d formed around him shattered.
Jayna was thrown back, and she hurriedly scrambled to her feet.
Another sorcerer darted toward her. The Toral ring constricted. Dark magic.
She turned, twisting her hand in a quick spell, and she blasted it at him, adding power through the dragon stone. It caught him in the chest with a spiral of power, throwing him back.
It wasn’t enough.
Another sorcerer wrapped bands of power around her, then another did the same on the other side, holding her in place. Jayna had felt power like this before. It wasn’t even dark magic, which made it more distressing. These were sorcerers of the Society, serving Agnew as they believed they were supposed to.
Which meant Jayna couldn’t harm them.
Oh, she certainly could harm them, but she didn’t want to. Until she knew whether they were using dark magic, she didn’t dare.
“Tell them who you are,” Jayna said.
Dorian stood across from her.
“Tell them, or I might be able to merge my memories with theirs so they can know the truth.” Jayna didn’t know if her memory spell would even work, but she thought there would be a way to mix it with their memories. Maybe it would be enough. Either way, the threat itself was more than enough.
Dorian smiled tightly. A burst of power erupted from him, and he re-created the shell of power she had used to seal him inside, now trapping her inside, separating her from the other sorcerers.
“You were the one instigating the dular agitation.”
He smirked. “The dular rioting gave the Society reason to take action. It made it easier for me to do what I needed to do.”
“The others in the Society will learn what you did. Not all of them are dark sorcerers.”
He chuckled. “They don’t need to be dark sorcerers to serve the same purpose. And thankfully, the Society will not be fragmented by one such as you. This city has hidden the presence of the great enchantment for too long.”
“You didn’t even know it was here,” Jayna said.
“We suspected. The rothand was to have uncovered the key to it, but unfortunately they failed.”
Rothand. Decay.
What sort of ceremony had he used on this?
Jayna knew it was all tied together.
Ceran hadn’t said anything about the rothand. Either he hadn’t known, or he didn’t think it important for her to know.
Rothand. The festival and Asymorn. Norej.
Now Dorian.
How many others?
“How did you not know?” Jayna asked. She needed time to figure out how to break free of the wrappings of magic holding her in place.
“The El’aras have been clever in how they hide them, then they used the dular to work with them. And the Ashara.” He spat the last. “Now we will remove the seal, and we will be one step closer.”
“One step closer to what?” Char asked.
Dorian turned to him. He raised his hand, creating a quick whip of power, and Jayna recognized the spell.
“Shield yourself,” she shouted, making a point of getting her voice heard through the barrier.
It was something that would affect his memory. It might even control him.
Char raised his hands, crossing his arms in front of him, and he threw them down with a sharp crack of thundering energy.
He had grown more skilled.
Dorian’s spell struck and bounced off, disappearing harmlessly.
Jayna looked around. Where was Eva?
Smoke filled the clearing, though she couldn’t see where Eva had gone.
Dorian just chuckled. “Perhaps I will have you stay here and watch as I destroy this great enchantment. And then I will dispose of you.”
He marched away, and Jayna focused, holding on to the energy within her, trying to borrow power from the dragon stone, using the augmentation of the bloodstone, but that power as it came through her wasn’t enough. She could feel its energy within her, but she couldn’t do anything with it.
They were blocking her.
It was some sort of spell designed to cut her off from power.
She had a way past it though. She had done it before.
She focused on the linking spell with Char. He was there right in front of her, their connection stronger than before.
She pulled on it, and through the energy within the spell, drawn across it, she could feel a tie to sorcery. It was like pulling through mud, slow but steady, and as she called on it, she could feel it gradually drifting into her.