“Yes.” He said it as if it wasn’t even a question.
“Dark sorcerers?”
“What sorcerer isn’t dark?”
“I would say that most are not.”
He grunted and pulled the door closed. “You might be wrong.” He shrugged. “Or maybe you’re right. What does it matter?”
“It matters quite a bit to the El’aras you have tormented.”
“And as I’ve said, I have done no tormenting to the El’aras.”
“You’ve done something.”
He motioned for her to follow and they soon reached a door at the end of the hall. He pulled a long, slender object out of his pocket and pressed it up against the door. It was an enchanted lock, and as it connected with the door, the door came open slowly, revealing a darkened staircase. “Where do you think much of the power that sorcerers harness comes from?”
“What?”
He frowned. “You don’t think it is completely natural, do you?”
“You must not know all that much about sorcery,” she said. “The power of the sorcerer comes from within.” That was part of it, though not all. It was the power within the sorcerer that allowed them to connect to a greater power in the world.
“Does it?” He frowned at her again, then started down the stairs, leading her.
Jayna followed, hurrying after him. Enchanted light glowed along the wall, every five or six steps as they headed down into the depths of the earth. The walls were narrow, and the humidity lifted quickly as they descended.
“Why are you bringing me down here?”
“Because you have asked a series of difficult questions.”
“You could have told me the answers up above.”
“I could have,” he said. “But as I said, I have no interest in drawing that kind of attention.”
“And what kind of attention is that?”
He reached another door at the bottom of the stairs. This one was different than the one above. It was all metal, iron, and rather than pulling out an enchanted item, he pulled a massive key from his pocket and stuffed it into the lock, pushing the door open.
He stepped forward, into the darkness.
Jayna hesitated, glancing up the stairs. She thought again about how she would much rather have Eva with her, especially now. She had no idea what Raollet intended by bringing her down here, but she could imagine him trapping her here, holding her. She had access to enough magic through the Toral ring, especially now that it was augmented with bloodstone, but the iron on the doorway would blunt some of the effect of the spells.
“I’m not going through there,” she said.
“Then you won’t find what you are looking for,” his voice said, coming from the other side of the door.
“Why?”
“Because answers are here,” he said.
Jayna hesitated a moment, twisting her ring on her finger again, before stepping forward.
As soon as she did, she felt a wash of energy come over her. It was cold, as if she had stepped through a waterfall, yet there was power present unlike anything she had felt before. She had thought it wasn’t enchanted, but she was wrong.
Everything about this place struck her as enchanted. She stood in place for a long moment, looking around and feeling the power as it rolled over her.
“What is this place?”
“Come along,” he said.
It was a narrow hall, then it opened up into a wide doorway, and from there they stepped into a large room. As before, there came another washing of power, cold energy that flushed her, leaving her trembling for just a moment. He regarded her as she stood in place, as if trying to decide how she was going to react.
Jayna needed to know whether she still had access to power. Sorcery was one thing, though she didn’t know if she could place a spell in this room, especially given the enchantments along the wall, which might prevent her from drawing upon her magic. But what about the Toral ring?
As she probed around the energy in the room, reaching for what she could detect, she felt a bit of resistance against her. It was subtle at first, but the more she tried to reach for that power, the more she began to feel it continue to push back against her.
Still, she could access the energy through the Toral ring. It was still there. If nothing else, she wasn’t going to be trapped here, powerless.
He watched her.
“You will find that sorcery is not quite as effective down here as it is up above.”
She just nodded.
“The founders of the city, at least those who founded it after the El’aras, decided they didn’t want sorcerers to have unlimited ability to attack.” He swept his gaze around the room. “This was meant to be a safe space for them.”
Jayna laughed as she looked around. “A safe space?” She shook her head. “I think you have it wrong.”
He frowned at her. “Why?”
She shrugged. “There’s nothing about this place that suggests it’s a safe space. This is a prison.”
She paused at one of the walls. Beams of metal were embedded deep within the stone. She could feel the energy of the iron, and it pressed up against her, as if it were carving against some aspect of her sorcery. It was more than that though. She could feel the enchantment upon the wall. She held her hand above the wall’s surface and could trace the pattern of the enchantment, even though she couldn’t see it. She kept her eyes closed as she worked, running her hand in a small circle, feeling for the power within the wall.
“You won’t be able to remove anything here.”
Jayna shook her head. “I’m not trying to. I’m just trying to understand what’s here.”
“You won’t be able to do that either.”
She turned back to him. “What are you?” She was ready with the Toral ring, ready to summon power, to wrap it around him in case he revealed some nefarious intention. That was her concern. She had no idea if he was actually a dark sorcerer, if he served one of the twelve. The knowledge he possessed indicated something potentially dangerous about his position, but what?
“I’m not what you believe,” Raollet said, standing in front of a table.
Jayna glanced down at it. Resting on the table was some massive leatherbound book with pages that looked to be impossibly old. He rested his hand on the book, as if he were touching some source of power.
“If you aren’t one of them,” she said slowly and carefully, letting him decide what “one of them” was, “then what are you?”
He looked up at her. “A scholar. Or I had been in a different time. Now I might be called an opportunist, but I still think of myself as what I had once been.”
Jayna frowned at him. “A scholar?”
“There are some of us in the city who try to understand. We recognize that things are not the way they once were.”
“And by ‘the way they once were,’ you mean when the El’aras ruled?”
“That, and even before.” He flipped one of the pages of the book, his gaze drifting along its surface.
Jayna took a step toward him, looking over his shoulder, trying to make out the writing, but much like in the book he had in the shop above ground, she couldn’t read it.
He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he looked around the inside of the room. “We have tried to understand the powers in the world. We have tried to understand the way they influence us, especially here, at the edge of the kingdom, a place where power seems to stop.”