“What was that?”
He shrugged, looking up at her. “Here. It’s a place where power seems to stop, such as it is. Not the power of sorcery. That does not seem to have any bounds. As far as we can tell, the Society has influence wherever they choose to go.”
“Because sorcery is a part of the world,” Jayna said.
“Or because sorcery borrows power from the world,” he said.
She shrugged. “I’m not so sure how that is all that different.”
“It is different enough that it matters.” He flipped the pages of the book again before looking back up at her. “When you begin to read accountings of the powers in the world, you find all sorts of things. Not only the El’aras, but stories of the Ashara, Porapeth, Ogaran, and several others.”
Jayna frowned. She hadn’t heard of Porapeth or Ogaran. Now she didn’t know if Raollet was trying to tell her his own stories, or if there was something more to it.
He traced his finger along the surface of the page, pausing at several different words.
He looked back at her. “Can you read this?”
She shook her head quickly. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
He smiled tightly. “I didn’t know you couldn’t, but I suspected.” He shrugged. “This is one of the earliest volumes like this in Nelar.”
“They didn’t speak the common tongue at the time?”
“The people who first migrated to Nelar, the dular who settled here, all came from different places. There was a unifying language that came together, bridging them, and you know that as the common tongue, but before that, they did not all speak the same.”
“What is this?”
“This would be Brish. It’s a complicated language, one that few people speak these days.”
“You do.”
“Oh, no. It’s not something one speaks so much as reads. It’s a difficult language to speak.” He frowned as he paused his finger at one word. “Thankfully, I have learned quite a bit from this. Having had a chance to study this language has given me an opportunity to learn about things such as the El’aras, and what was involved in excluding them from the kingdom.”
It would be interesting to learn, she couldn’t deny that. The El’aras had lived in these lands, all of these lands, far before anyone else, and had only been excluded from them through the settlement of the kingdom, forced outward. Jayna had learned some of that within the Academy, but not all of it. There were aspects to what had taken place that she simply didn’t know.
There was something about what he’d been telling her that bothered her more than she could put a finger on. “Why would anybody care to make it look like the Ashara attacked?”
“I don’t know. If you believe the stories, the Ashara once were seen in these lands, though it was long ago.”
Jayna started to smile. “Why would they have disappeared?”
“I imagine for the same reason that magic is targeted by the Society. The Ashara would feel threatened.”
“You said they were supposed to be the natural enemy to the El’aras.”
“That was long ago,” he said, waving his hand. “If the stories are even true. If not, then it doesn’t matter. Whoever the El’aras fought were pushed back from these lands as the El’aras claimed this place as their own.” He turned a few pages in the book. “There was a time, before humankind spread through here, when the El’aras were the conquerors. Eventually, that changed, and humankind became the conquerors.” He shrugged. “Perhaps there was a time when the Ashara were the conquerors, if you were to reach far enough back in history, and if you believe the stories.”
There was no doubting in Jayna’s mind that Eva had a specific kind of magic that was unique to her, something that Jayna had never experienced before—and something that left her wondering just how much power Eva really had.
What if she was Ashara?
As strange as it felt to acknowledge it, the stories might fit with what she knew of Eva.
Not the shape changing, but Raollet didn’t claim to know much about that anyway. What if something in that change stole her memories?
“You still haven’t explained why you brought me down here.”
He nodded and flipped to the end of the book. “You asked a very specific question.” He paused, looking over her shoulder and back toward the stairs, tipping his head to the side and frowning. After standing there for a little while, he finally relaxed and looked back at the book. “You mentioned a specific name.”
“Sarenoth.”
“I have not heard it said quite like that, though perhaps that is its pronunciation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you have mentioned several other names. Asymorn. Norej. There are a few more I have uncovered in my research, but they all serve the same entity.” He tapped on a section of the book. “It’s spelled quite a bit differently.”
She leaned over, and though she couldn’t read the words, the letters were mostly the same. Sar’entothel.
“Do you think it’s Sarenoth?”
“It is a similar sound. Perhaps it’s a translation. As I said, this is Brish, and at the time this book was written, there were others written as well, others that had different languages involved. He was celebrated as a god, the same as Arathon, Grathorl, Var’anlal, and others whose names I cannot even speak, or read for that matter.”
Jayna hadn’t heard of any of those gods. Maybe Ceran had, and she tried to commit the names to memory so she could ask him the next time she saw him.
“They were celebrated as gods?”
She hadn’t learned that about them, but maybe it was true.
“Gods. Or simply great power. How am I to know?”
She watched him. He was a scholar and knew more than she had realized. It would make sense that the twelve would want to serve a god, but if they did, it would have to be some dark god. One responsible for the dark magic in the world.
“What more do you know about the twelve?”
“Why, the same as you, I suppose.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting on about.”
“The twelve, such as you call them, should be known to any who has attended the Academy, such as yourself. Perhaps they were called by a different name then. In fact, that would make the most sense.” He flipped the book closed and rested his hands on it, then looked up at Jayna, fixing her with a hard stare. “The twelve were the original sorcerers.”
11
Jayna’s heart skipped. She didn’t think that was correct.
It couldn’t be, could it?
Ceran would’ve said something to her. Ceran had recruited her, looking for somebody who was willing to hunt dark magic, and had picked her specifically for her willingness to do so. Jayna had eagerly agreed to search out dark magic, especially given what she had learned about her parents. Plus, she thought it might give her an opportunity to find out more about what had happened to Jonathan.
She held his gaze. “What do you mean, they were the original sorcerers? When I was training at the Academy, we never spoke of the founding of the Sorcerers’ Society.”