The girls were feeling guilty and scared after the near-disaster in the playroom, but once I managed to coax them outdoors, they quickly forgot about the fire. Soon enough, we were engaged in a game of hide-and-seek. The vast gardens would ordinarily make it quite a challenge, but as I closed my eyes and counted to thirty, I could hear the girls giggling as they scampered off in different directions. I was going to have to make an effort not to find them too fast—I could ferret them out all too easily with my shifter senses.
“Ready or not, here I come!” I called, finally opening my eyes. The girls were nowhere to be seen, but as I stood up, my nose twitched, easily separating out their scents. I decided to follow Tinari first, whose scent was redolent of candy and book binding glue. Pretending to look around and search, I casually made my way around the side of the palace toward the rose garden.
On my way to Tinari’s hiding place, I passed by one of the shallow pools dotting the palace garden. I stopped for a second to admire the glimmering carp swimming below the surface, then frowned as I realized I couldn’t see any. Despite the bright, sunny weather, the water was an odd dark color obscuring the normally clear depths. Had somebody contaminated the water with some kind of dark ink? And what would that do to the poor fish? Drawing closer, I noticed a ripple near the edge closest to me, and the hairs on my arms rose as I scented a strange brand of magic. It was a lot stronger than the usual burnt-sugar smell, with an exotic undertone.
“What the hell is going on here,” I murmured, bending at the waist a little so I could get a better look. I wasn’t stupid enough to let the dark water touch me—if there was some kind of spell at work, that might not be safe. I was just about to call to the gardener when a giant pale hand shot out of the water and grabbed me around the waist.
“Hey!” I yelled, shock and horror filling me as I struggled against the fist. What the hell was going on here? I blasted it with fire, but the flames had no effect as the hand yanked me beneath the surface of the pool. The water was only four feet deep, so I expected to hit the ground instantly, but instead I was dragged deeper, and deeper, until the water pressure was unbearable. My head was splitting, my lungs were bursting for air, and there was only cold darkness. Not a single life form was around me aside from the giant fist crushing my ribs, not even the flash of a fish scale.
By Magorah, I thought dimly as I began to lose consciousness. My struggles grew feeble as I ran out of air and lethargy weighed down my limbs. Am I about to die?
7
Just when I was certain I was about to expire from lack of oxygen, the hand hurled me out of the water. I crashed into the grassy earth at full speed, and would have cursed when I felt my nose crack if I hadn’t been so busy coughing up gallons of water.
“What the ever-loving fuck?” I managed to gasp when I’d finally expelled the last of the water from my lungs. Sputtering, I rolled onto my back and pressed a hand to my nose. It was already healing, but I sped up the process with a little burst of magic as I stared up at the sky. It was still blue, and the sun was shining between the puffy white clouds, but the air was a good twenty degrees colder and the scents around me were unfamiliar. What the hell had happened? Where was I? None of the magic I’d studied explained the trick with the giant fist, and there was nothing in Fenris’s memories to explain it either.
“She looks like a drowned rat,” a female voice sneered in a strange language, and I froze. Pushing myself up, I twisted around to see that three women were standing a short distance away, staring at me. There was also a little boy hiding in the branches of an old tree nearby. I’d been so discombobulated by my arrival that I hadn’t noticed them at first.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded as I struggled to my feet. Fenris’s knowledge allowed me to understand her—she was speaking some version of Manucan, an old dialect. My shoes were filled with water, and my damp clothes were working against me. Scanning the area briefly, I saw that I was standing in the garden of an old country house made of gray stone, partially overgrown with moss and ivy. While it looked ancient, the mansion was in good repair, and the gardens had a variety of well-trimmed trees and bushes. Everything but the house and sky was in shades of lush green, and the air was damper than back in Canalo.
The three ladies standing before me were regarding me with various expressions of disdain or curiosity. The one on the right, silver-haired and hunched with age, seemed the kindest, her pale blue eyes shining with worry and excitement. The one in the center was middle-aged, and my eyes widened as I took in her silver-threaded dark red hair and her violet eyes. And the one on the left, who stood far taller than the others…
“I am Ta’sradala,” she said imperiously, looking down at me from her straight nose. She wore a pale green gossamer gown and had long hair the exact same shade as Iannis’s cascading around her willowy frame. Her shimmering violet eyes were narrowed with disdain, and her mouth was curled back into a sneer, but even these things did not detract from her ageless beauty. Her alabaster skin glowed as if power simmered just beneath the surface, and by the way the air shifted subtly around her, I expected that it did. "And you, little beast, are not worthy to stand before me.”
“Let me guess,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and mustering all my bravado, because I was not about to let these women see that, inside, I was starting to quake in my boots. “You’re Iannis’s grandmother, and you”—I turned to the middle-aged woman—“are his mother.”
“Ennartha ar’Sannin,” she said, inclining her head slightly. Unlike Ta’sradala, her expression was blank, but I had no doubt that she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me. “Welcome to Manuc, Miss Baine.”
“Welcome indeed,” Ta’sradala scoffed. “We should smite her right where she stands. I will not allow such riffraff to mingle with my bloodline.”
“Excuse me?” I snapped, taking a step toward her. My shock was quickly dissipating as fury took its place. “I don’t care who you are or how powerful you are. You don’t have the right to yank me from my home and then insult me on top of it.”
Ta’sradala laughed, and the sound was beautiful and horrible all at once, like chimes that were out of tune. “You should be thankful you are not actually on my doorstep, or you would be dead,” she said. “Though perhaps I will send you to the Tua realm, just to see if your feeble body can handle it.”
“You two are being rude,” the elderly woman chided, moving toward me. I stiffened, keeping my guard up, but I didn’t scent any ill intent from her as she patted my arm. “I am Deryna, Iannis’s aunt. My nephew has very good judgment—he must have seen something in you. I don’t think we should be so quick to dismiss her, Ta’sradala,” she said to the Tua woman. “Why don’t we get to know each other before doing anything hasty?”