Smoke and Memories (The Dark Sorcerer #3) - D.K. Holmberg Page 0,95

looked to Raollet. “What does it matter?”

“You shouldn’t be using power like that. It’s dangerous.”

“I’m well aware of how dangerous it is. I’ve seen it.”

He frowned. “Have you?” He glanced down at the book before looking up at her. “There were rumors of bloodstone in the city recently.”

“More than rumors,” she said. “I helped prevent the bloodstone from blasting through the dular houses—at least, as many as I could.”

“You were the one who did that?”

“I had no choice. If I hadn’t, the houses would have been destroyed, and the dular would have been killed, and . . .”

The very thing she was trying to prevent—this battle—would have likely already happened by now, despite her intentions to stop it.

The dular had ultimately blamed the Society for the fires, although the Society helped put out the flames in the dular homes. And now the Sorcerers’ Society was attacking the dular because they believed the dular were responsible for an attack on the Society. War had broken out in the city. Despite every effort she made to stop it, war seemed to happen anyway.

“I just need to know about the Ashara,” she said to him. “Something is taking place, and I’ve been trying to prevent it, but regardless of what I’ve done, darkness keeps coming.”

He looked down at the book before looking back at her. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help you.”

“Because you’re afraid?”

“Because I don’t know.” He eyed Eva and frowned, studying her as if just noticing her, before turning his attention back to Jayna. “Nelar has been a place of power for a long time, though none of us have known why.”

“None of you?”

“Those of us who study these things. We have not understood why Nelar would be so important. There has been power in Nelar for as long as Nelar has been a city. Even before it was part of the El’aras, it was something else.” He shook his head. “We don’t know, but there are remnants of it even now. You can look around the city, you can see that the city itself has changed, and you can see evidence that some of these buildings existed from a time before even the El’aras.”

“Like this one?” Jayna asked, looking around.

“This is dular,” he said.

“The enchantments within it are dular, but the building itself, and the stone, and everything here . . .” Jayna shook her head. “I don’t think this is dular.”

“Perhaps not,” he said. He folded up the book and stuffed it under his arm. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers for you. I’ve been looking into the Ashara since you left. I wanted to understand why these enchantments have been used, and I can’t find anything. Only more stories. The Ashara. The El’aras. An ancient disagreement. And then it stopped.”

“Why?” Jayna asked.

“I don’t know. It just . . . stopped.”

“Well, I’ve seen at least one Ashara recently, maybe more than that.”

“No. There would not be more than one. They would not travel together. If you have seen an Ashara,” he said—and there was a hint to his tone that suggested he still didn’t believe her—“then you have seen just a single one.”

Jayna started to smile. “A single Ashara? I’ve seen more than that.” She saw Asaran, but then she had seen at least one other, unless the man who’d attacked her in the street hadn’t actually been Ashara and had only used enchantments. There was no doubt in her mind that there was more than one Ashara here. At least two. Maybe even more. And then there was somebody else who had used enchantments to make it appear as if the Ashara were here.

“The stories do say that the Ashara can change forms,” Raollet said.

“Yes, they can take on human form.”

“They are creatures that take on human form when they want. Not that they are humans.”

“And?”

“And because they can take on that form, they can be anyone they want.”

“So you’re saying that even though I think I’ve seen multiple Ashara, what I’ve really seen is—”

“A single Ashara.” He leaned forward, gripping the book against his chest. “If that’s what this even is. Or perhaps it’s only enchantments.”

“It’s not just enchantments,” Eva said.

“If you’ve seen a single Ashara, then the challenge is trying to understand why they have come to the city, and what they intend.”

She frowned, thinking about what had happened since the Ashara had been seen here. They had come, and the dular had been targeted by the Sorcerers’ Society, then the Society