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 more he held on to that pattern, the more she could feel the spell working.
It was flowing out over the crowd, washing farther outward, as if to soothe them even more than he had before.
Jayna grabbed him, forcing his concentration away from the casting, stepping him out of the pattern, and guided him along the street.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“We need to get moving.”
“We can continue to soothe them though,” he said.
“I don’t know how much more you intend to do, but you have already soothed these people. We need to keep moving now.”
“Keep moving where?”
She had to keep the crowd from following, and she had to get him back to the outpost, where he could then hide out. The outpost was as magically protected as any place within the city. She doubted that the dular would attack the outpost the same way they had attacked in the streets, but she didn’t know for sure.
“Along the street. Just keep going.”
He glanced back at her, watching her, a question burning in his eyes, but she ignored it as she encouraged him to keep moving. The crowd squeezed around her, crashing toward them both. They were mostly soothed, but not entirely. The farther they went, the more certain she was that there was a kind of energy pushing upon her, but Jayna no longer sensed the same strange kind of dark energy that she had before. Now she felt the pressure around her coming from the crowd, nothing more than that.
Occasional bursts of energy struck from behind, the crowd using enchantments again as they shook off the effect of Char's spell. Jayna solidified her barrier around her, but every so often, there came a more powerful attack, and she stumbled forward again.
She glanced back to make sure that Char remained with her. He swung his gaze from side to side, panic settling in.
“You stay with me,” she said.
“I am staying with you.”
“They haven’t been able to collapse it yet.”
“Only because I soothed them. Let me try again.”
Jayna shook her head. She doubted he had enough strength to stop another attack.
It was better for them to just keep moving.
The crowd wasn’t nearly as agitated as it had been before, and she took that as a good sign, that whatever Char had done had mitigated some of the violence. It was a useful spell. Jayna wondered if she might be able to recreate it, having seen it once.
It was far more complicated than any spell she would feel confident in creating quickly, though. If she were to use something like it, she would need time to study the spell to ensure she knew all the aspects of the pattern, and time to work through it. Not at all like Char’s approach.
His was a mastery of the magic that she simply did not yet have. Jayna wondered what it would take for her to get to that point. Maybe she would never learn that mastery because of her commitment to the Toral ring and the power it granted her. She had become reliant upon a different kind of magic.
They reached another intersection, and farther down the street, the crowd began to thicken again. Jayna dragged Char the opposite way.
“I thought you were bringing me back to the outpost,” he said.
“That was my plan, but if the crowd keeps sending us this way . . .”
“You don’t think you can get us through this?”
She arched a brow at Char. “You didn’t want me to.”
“It’s not that. It’s just . . .”
She didn’t give him a chance to finish. She hurried him forward, and they reached an alley. Jayna looked in either direction. “Down here,” she said.
“Why down here?”
“Just come along.”
They stepped into the alley and she held up the Toral ring, clenched her jaw, then focused. The connection to power she needed to use now was a bit different. It was concentrated magic she borrowed from Ceran, but it was concentrated in a way that would permit her to hold up a wall, of a sort, using it to masquerade the space in front of her. All she needed was to create an illusion of a seamless wall. Let the crowd move past.
“You’re just going to create another barrier?” he asked, leaning close to her.
He had a distinct pine scent to him, along with something else she couldn’t quite place. Char had always had a distinct smell, something she’d found appealing. She had always pushed those feelings away, though, wanting to maintain their friendship, and knowing that expressing her feelings could complicate that.