“Prince Magnus?” The man shook his head. “I’ve never heard of you. What are you doing in my garden? I am Lord Gillis, and these are my private grounds.”
“If this is still Limeros . . .” Magnus began, trying to inject his words with confidence, “then you should obey the command of a Damora without question.”
“A Damora? You say this like I should know the name, but I don’t.” Lord Gillis’s frown deepened. “Why do you wear such a heavy coat on such a hot day? And what is that strange blade in your hands? Are you mad, boy?”
Magnus had started to sweat, and at the reminder of his wintery apparel, he pulled the heavy garment off and draped it over his arm, tucking the obsidian shard into its folds. “My father is King Gaius Damora and you will—”
“Get out of here, boy, before I have you arrested for trespassing.”
Magnus threw down his cloak and took a step toward Lord Gillis. “How dare you speak to me like that?”
“How dare I?” Lord Gillis drew his sword and pointed it at Magnus’s throat. “I believe you’re the one here who speaks without thinking.”
Magnus scowled at him, but he didn’t want to take the risk of getting cut by this fool. Clearly, he wasn’t in the same place as he was earlier, despite his confusion about the statue. The old woman may have knocked him unconscious and then moved him elsewhere—goddess only knew how far he’d been taken.
“Where am I?” he asked.
Lord Gillis regarded him with incredulity. “I told you, boy: on my property!”
“Yes,” Magnus hissed out. “But where exactly is your property?”
“Northern Mytica, of course.”
“Northern Mytica?” he repeated. “Who would refer to Limeros as Northern Mytica?”
Now it was Lord Gillis who regarded Magnus with confusion. “What is Limeros?”
Magnus shook his head, certain he’d simply been misunderstood by this idiot. “Lower that weapon, or the king will have your head.”
“King? King of what? The goddess Valoria is the only one on the throne here in the north, and I am but a humble servant of Her Radiance.”
Magnus’s eyebrows knit together. “Did you say Valoria is on the throne?”
“Of course she is. Where else would she be?” Lord Gillis pressed his sword closer. “Best find your way to someone who might help you with that faulty memory of yours, boy.”
“You’re right,” he repeated, now breathless as he recalled the words of the strange woman with the hawk-like hand. This wasn’t right—none of it. And he had neither the time nor the patience to decipher this riddle. “Yes, I do need to find someone. Is there a city nearby? One where I can find a . . . a woman by the name of . . . Samara . . .” He strained to remember her family name. “Samara . . . Balto?”
“Of course there’s a city nearby. What other route would bring you into my garden, unless you climbed up the cliffs like a sea-spider? But as far as any specific woman there, I can’t help you. Now leave of your own free will, or I’ll have you buried here.”
Pushing aside his uncertainty and confusion, Magnus picked up his cloak and the blade, then turned and stumbled away from the lord, away from the gardens, and away from the stone villa. When he reached the gates, he saw that in the valley below, a mile in the distance, a city rose from the ground where earlier there had been nothing but an expanse of ice and snow and ruins.
He started making his way toward it.
? ? ?
What had the witch done to him?
The glowing symbols on the statue. The symbol she’d cut into his hand. The black shard of obsidian she’d given him that he now hid in the folds of his coat.
True magic. Magic unlike he’d ever heard of, even in legends.
Either that or he’d gone utterly and completely insane.
She’d told him what to do, but he’d barely been listening. He’d been too preoccupied trying to get away from her. Now the memory of the woman’s voice echoed loudly in his mind.
“Should you return here after sunset, there will be nothing I can do to save you.”
While he wanted to do just the opposite, to ignore her words, to be defiant and assume all of this was nothing more than an unpleasant dream, he knew he didn’t have that luxury. This was far too vivid, and the pain of the wound on his right hand too real, to dismiss as only a sleeping fantasy.
The goddess Valoria was on the throne.
And the man referred to this place not as Limeros, but as Northern Mytica.
The witch’s magic has taken me a thousand years into the past.
His stomach lurched at the possibility that this could really be happening, and nausea swelled within him. He’d never heard of magic like this, not even in the books Lucia was so fond of.
Of course, there were the rumors of witches able to boil water with the power of their minds, or those said to coax the growth of herbs to concoct their potions, but this?
He had to stop walking for several moments, bracing his hands on his thighs, until more waves of sickness passed.