Obsidian Blade
A Falling Kingdoms Story
Morgan Rhodes
AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
An Imprint of Penguin Random House
Penguin.com
Copyright © 2016 Penguin Random House LLC
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Ebook ISBN: 978-0-448-49470-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter 1
Just before the fire consumed the witch earlier that morning, she’d begged for mercy. She’d sworn she held no magic within her—that her accusers were wrong. But her dying screams fell on deaf ears.
Magnus knew those screams would haunt him for a very long time.
The reedy sound of the guide’s voice cut through the frozen air, thankfully drawing him out of the horrible memory.
“There’s a legend that the immortals once gathered here to work their elementia,” Vesper said, “protecting mortals from the darkness that lies beyond this world.”
Magnus was being led against his will by this small, round man with the rest of his father’s royal entourage. King Gaius had only recently learned of these ruins, rumored by many in the area to be as cursed as the barren soil of the neighboring kingdom of Paelsia. No one had built here since the original villa had crumbled to the ground centuries ago. Given that the grounds had an excellent view of the Silver Sea, Lord Gareth, the king’s highest advisor, had suggested the king inspect the site he proposed could become a new temple where locals could pray to the goddess Valoria.
When better to go for a tour than directly after a public execution? Magnus thought uneasily.
Vesper clasped his gloved hand over Magnus’s shoulder, making him cringe.
“Prince Magnus,” the guide said. “Just imagine what it would have been like here, a millennium ago. A magnificent and expansive garden of roses and lilies, well tended by a staff of gardeners for the lord of the villa. Much different than it is now, yes?”
With distaste, Magnus lifted Vesper’s index finger and flicked his hand away from him. “I’m afraid my imagination is as weary today as I am, since all I see is an ice-covered ruin—one I wish to leave as soon as possible. Father?”
The king, surrounded by three of his most loyal counselors, sent a glare toward Magnus.
Ah, yes. The greatest sin in Limeros: interrupting the king when he was involved in more important conversation.
As if Magnus cared. After witnessing the witch’s death, he couldn’t give a smaller damn about interrupting even the goddess herself. The last thing he wanted was to stand around in these frigid temperatures while everyone else discussed plans for the future.
“Yes, my son?” the king hissed. He wore a black leather cloak lined in fox fur. It was a near match for the one Magnus wore.
Magnus tugged at the coat’s itchy collar. “When will we return to the palace?”
“When I’m finished here.”
“And when will that be? In another thousand years, so we can see if the immortals will return here to prance around naked and cause flowers to sprout?”
The king’s eyes narrowed, and Magnus knew he’d taken yet another step over the line of proper—but, to him, irrelevant—royal decorum.
Vesper frowned. “I’m not sure if legend states whether they were naked or not.”
Magnus ignored the man as he forced himself to maintain eye contact with his father.
King Gaius nodded at his advisors and the two uniformed guards who stood nearby. “Allow me a moment to speak with my son.”
Everyone, including Vesper, bowed and moved toward the other side of the crumbling wall that had once been part of the great villa.
A shiver went down Magnus’s spine as the king drew closer to him, a sensation that had little to do with the near constant winter the kingdom of Limeros had to endure.
“I suppose you want me to apologi—” Magnus began, just as the king backhanded him across his scarred right cheek. The unexpected pain made Magnus bite his tongue hard enough to taste blood. He stumbled backward from the blow, landing hard on his knees.
The king glared down at him. “I brought you with me today because you’re sixteen now. Old enough to witness a witch die for her crimes and to join me on a tour of these ancient grounds. You are no longer a boy but a young man, one who should be ready to represent the crown in all ways necessary. Act like it. Do not embarrass me again.”
Magnus’s eyes stung as much as his face did, and he hated himself for flinching as the king raised his hand again.
He forced out the words through gritted teeth. “Apologies, Father.”
It was how such altercations always seemed to end between them—Magnus stinging from a blow and the king staring down at him with barely concealed disappointment that the many beatings he’d given his son only seemed to fuel Magnus’s insolence.
“We will leave when I say we leave,” the king bit out.
Without another word, King Gaius turned on his boot heels to join the others, out of sight of the icy gardens.
Magnus squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the ruins of a stone statue that partially protruded from the snowy ground. His life would be so much easier if he could be more like his younger sister, Lucia: polite, attentive, and studious. Everyone liked Lucia, and Lucia, seemingly, liked everyone.
How could two siblings be so utterly different from each other?
Magnus had no true friends, apart from his sister. No one knew him—not really. Even during the past summer on the Isle of Lukas, where many royals and nobles from around the world sent their children to hone their skills in the arts, few went out of their way to speak with him in a manner that felt truly genuine. Which was fine with him. He preferred to be alone whenever possible.
The only thing he gained from that summer was a sketchbook filled with useless scribbles. Lucia, however, thought they were great works of art, especially a portrait he’d done of her from memory.
“All right,” he mumbled to himself, his eyes still shut. “Let’s pretend to be a proper prince who has the love and respect of the infamous King of Blood, shall we?”
He drew in a sharp breath of frosty air and turned around to return to his father and the others.
But it wasn’t Gaius’s steely gaze that met him. A woman stood only a couple of feet before him. The black hood of her cloak hung heavily around her deeply wrinkled face. Her mouth turned down at the sides in a frown, her jowls hanging like saddlebags. Her eyes, a faded green and cold, peered down at him with distaste.
“So you’re the one I will send this time,” she rasped out.
Magnus’s surprise turned to disdain. “Step back from me, old woman. I have no patience for beggars today.”
She pursed her thin, colorless lips. “I??
?m no beggar. But I do get what I need, by whatever means necessary.”
“Really.” He pushed up against the stone statue, his height now dwarfing that of the hunched woman. “Do you know who I am?”
“Prince Magnus, son of King Gaius Damora.”
He raised his chin. “Then you should know not to bother me.”
The woman smiled at him, a cold smile that matched their icy surroundings. “You don’t believe, do you?” she asked.
“Believe in what?”
“Magic.”
He shrugged. “I have yet to see proof of magic, but many claim its existence.”
“You watched a witch die today. You heard her screams as clearly as I did until they finally ceased.”
He cringed as the memory returned to him, fresh and raw. “She was put to death for her crimes.”
“Crimes,” she scoffed. “Accusations only. If she was a witch, she was too weak even to help herself in the end. Someone like that isn’t any threat to your father’s kingdom. He prefers his victims like that—those who can’t, or won’t, defend themselves. Those he can hold up as an example, so others will fear him. Your father has mistaken fear for respect. But a discussion of your father’s shortcomings is not what I’m here for today. No, today, Prince Magnus, you are going to do me a favor, and in doing so, you will come to fully believe in magic.”
He scanned the garden, looking for a sign of one of the palace guards who might have been sent to check on the errant prince. “Is that so?”
“Try as you might, you can’t fool me with your seeming apathy toward everything. I know that you feel. I know that you hurt. I know that you could be brave if you’d allow yourself the chance. And I know you will be of value to me today.”
Her words were painful, like small pebbles pushed up under his fingernails. “Like I said before, old woman, I have no time for beggars.”
“And like I said before, I am no beggar.” She drew her hands out from beneath her cloak, and Magnus felt his stomach drop to his knees. In her right hand, she held a sharp shard of shiny black rock. Her left hand wasn’t a hand at all—it resembled the foot of a hawk, bearing pointed, curved talons.
Magnus’s stunned gaze snapped to hers. “What are you?”
She raised her wrinkled brow. “Nothing you’ve ever known before.”
Before he could move or speak again, she clasped his left wrist with her talons and, moving so swiftly he didn’t have a chance to pull away, sliced the tip of the black shard into the palm of his hand. The pain was swift, and the blood dripped from the wound she made: a circle with a jagged line through the middle of it.
“What—?” Magnus yanked his hand back from her, staring at her with horror. “Are you insane, woman? My father will have your head when he learns of this!”
“Your father won’t learn anything of this, because, my dear prince, when this all over, you won’t remember what has happened here today. A pity, really. I see great potential in you.”
He fisted his wounded hand and stared at her in shock.
“That,” the woman said, “was the last bit of magic left within my obsidian blade.”
“You will die for this,” he promised her.
“No I won’t.”
He attempted to storm off, or to shout to alert the others, but he suddenly couldn’t seem to move or speak.
“Something to say to me?” she asked calmly, after watching him struggle for a few moments.
He turned his stunned gaze from his currently immobile legs to the woman. “You’re a witch—a real witch.”
“Something like that.” She took the weapon and placed it in his unwounded hand. He stared down at it, dazed. “Now, listen carefully. You must find a woman named Samara Balto in the city beyond this villa—”
“What city?” he managed. “There’s nothing but more ruins beyond this property, unoccupied for centuries!”
“Show her this blade,” the woman continued, ignoring his protests, “and she will know what I want and why I want it. When you’ve successfully done this, return to this garden before the sun sets, place your hand against this stone statue, and you will return here.”
Her words were absolutely ludicrous.
“Return here? You make no sense at all!”
“It will make sense soon enough,” she assured him. “And at that time you will do as I say.”
“I will do nothing of the sort!”
She regarded him for a moment in silence. “There’s not much that you care for in this world, is there? Apart from, say, your beautiful sister.”
Magnus’s eyes narrowed upon this evil and insane creature, surely coughed up by the darklands themselves. “If you dare to threaten Lucia—”
“I don’t threaten, I only try to explain. Should you fail me, you will not return here. You will be separated from your sister, and from your future throne, forever.” There was no maliciousness in the woman’s faded eyes, only bottomless determination. “I do this only out of necessity, Prince Magnus. You were here at the moment I needed you, and so you are the one fated for this task. There can be no one else.”
She grabbed his injured hand and pressed it, bloody palm down, on the very statue he’d been leaning against earlier.
The statue began to glow as if lit from within. Symbols etched into its surface now blazed bright white against the gray stone.
“Should you return here after sunset,” she said solemnly, “there will be nothing I can do to save you.”
The light from the statue swelled, surrounding Magnus, blinding him. And then it felt as if the world dropped out beneath his very feet.
The brightness disappeared, and for a moment, his entire world turned to darkness.
Chapter 2
Slowly, the darkness lifted, replaced by the glare of the midday sun. Magnus’s eyes widened as he took in the view before him.
Gone were the ice and the ruins. In their place was a garden, green and fragrant with sweet-smelling, colorful flowers. A summer butterfly flitted past, its iridescent blue wings flapping through the air as it floated down to perch upon a ruby-colored lily.
A narrow, winding trail of sparkling stones led through the expansive garden to a tall, stone villa, fit for the finest lord in the land.
“How . . . ?” Magnus said, his voice small. “How did I get here?”
He stumbled backward, momentarily overwhelmed, but something solid stopped him. He turned to see a marble statue protruding from the ground—one in the likeness of the goddess Valoria and twice the size of an actual person. She held her hands out to her sides, and in her palms were the symbols of her elemental magic: two parallel wavy lines for water, and a circle within a circle for earth.
Magnus took a step closer. His breath quickened. This was the same statue from the ruins. It was nearly unrecognizable now, since before it had been crumbling and ice-covered, but Magnus was sure this was the same statue the witch had forced his hand upon.
Magnus touched it again, bloody palm down, hoping that it would begin to glow with the strange symbols as it had before. He pressed his hand against the cool marble until his wound ached even more, then he pulled away, defeated. He dug into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief and wound the cotton material around his right hand.
“Now what do I do?” he murmured, turning around in a slow circle, looking for clues as to where he was and how to get home.
He took another look at the statue. The goddess’s beautiful stone face was carved with exact precision. It looked just like the many other statues bearing her likeness throughout Limeros. Most Limerians stayed true to their religion, one that demanded strict adherence to the many rules and laws of the land, including no alcohol, no frivolous art or music, and two days of every week devoted to silence and prayer.
Magnus had never been terribly religious, only doing enough to not stand out
when he was unable to find a reasonable excuse not to go to services in the palace temple or the grand temple in Ravencrest.
But right now, as he found himself in such unfamiliar and uncertain surroundings, he was ready to fall to his knees and pray to Valoria for assistance.
“Who are you?” a sharp voice made him jump. He spun around to face a man as fat and bald as the royal entourage’s guide Vesper, however this man wore an unfriendly, narrowed expression.
Magnus let out a sigh of relief. “I am Prince Magnus, and you will help me find my father.”
“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.