Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,44

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.”

“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