Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,46
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.”
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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.”
“Wouldn’t you be intrigued to know?”
Jayna shrugged, looking around the room, feeling the power there. Maybe this was a cell, as she had initially suspected. The energy that constricted around her would certainly hold, and given the iron worked into it—which had always affected magic—there was no reason it wouldn’t.
She pushed those thoughts away. What was she doing thinking about that sort of thing when she had something more urgent to focus on?
“I suppose I haven’t really given it much thought. I didn’t know if it mattered. It happened so long ago that the Society spoke of it as myth.”
Like stories about the Ashara.
“History matters, Jayna Aguelon. The more you know about history, the easier it is for you to anticipate what might happen in the future.”
“You care about history because you care about the power that you cannot acquire.”
“That is but a part of it,” he said, nodding. “There is something to be said about some of the older enchantments.” He smiled tightly, slipping his gaze along the walls before looking down at the book then up at her. “The earliest dular had a very different appreciation for what they could do with their enchantments.”
“You mean they had weapons.”
“Not everything is a weapon, Jayna Aguelon.”
That was different from what Telluminder had said to her about the enchantments, though maybe Master Raollet was right.
“No, not everything is a weapon,” she agreed with him, and crossed her arms over her chest, her mind racing. How much of this had Ceran known?
More than ever, she wanted an opportunity to talk to him, to try to find out what he might have known. He had wanted to show her some of the twelve, but if the twelve had been the original sorcerers . . .
It meant they were incredibly old.
Sorcerers don’t live that long.
She had learned about some sorcerers who could extend their lives, and magic in general permitted a longer lifespan than others, but she had never known any sorcerer to live for centuries at a time.
“You are troubled by this,” he said. “I’m not surprised. It might be difficult for you to take it in.”