to the sound of a disbelieving scoff, she shot an irritated glance in the Kothans’ direction. “They will say there cannot be wraiths on the island—and perhaps it is true. Perhaps they were not truly ice wraiths, but some monster I had never heard of before. I confess that I took no time to sit one down, pour it an ale, and ask what it was or where it had come from.”
“Then why claim they were wraiths?”
“Because they resembled everything I have heard of them—that they are the souls of the dead but do not know the mercy of Temra’s embrace. Instead they are imprisoned in bodies corrupted by magic, and they are twisted by the pain of their undying torment until all they know is anger and hatred.”
“Or hunger,” said the male Parsathean warrior, and when all eyes turned to him, he gestured to the woman beside him. “Ardyl and I have encountered blood wraiths.”
Which must not have given him the scar on his face, or he would be one of them now. A blood wraith’s corruption began in its flesh and could spread to others, but the wraiths in Koth had possessed no flesh. Only ice.
“It is true what they say, yes?” Lizzan asked them now. “They raise the hairs on the back of your neck. And they feel foul.”
“They do.” Ardyl shuddered as if merely remembering the sensation, reaching for her drink. “And never will I forget the sound they made.”
“The screeching,” Lizzan said—and unbidden tears blurred her vision. Here were two people who knew the horrors she spoke of. No longer was she alone in that. “As if they could not bear suffering alone in that twisted ice, and meant to make you join them in that torment.”
“Though the blood wraiths were not of ice . . . it is as you describe,” the scarred warrior said before turning to the monk beside him. “What do you say, Preter? Could it have been wraiths?”
“It should not be possible,” Lady Junica said before the monk gave answer. “There is no magic on Varrin’s island but his own. We are protected from every other god’s power.”
“Therein might lie the answer, my lady,” the monk told her, in a voice more assured than Lizzan expected in one so young. “Most wraiths are born of a god’s corrupted magic. Those in Parsa and around the monoliths—or the blood wraiths that Ardyl and Kelir encountered—are souls trapped by the Destroyer’s foul magics, and his power comes from Enam. But natural magics might have been used instead, as when stone wraiths are created—and one stone wraith by itself might slaughter a thousand soldiers. How many of these ice wraiths were there?”
“I truly do not know.” Lizzan’s face warmed beyond the flush of her drunkenness. “I ought to have known. I ought to have been able to count. But it seemed that they came from nowhere behind us, then razed through our numbers before they raced across the bridge to cut through the bandits. And they were so very fast. But there were hundreds upon hundreds, it seemed.”
The monk’s eyes shadowed as if her answer troubled him, though he did not say why. Instead he frowned thoughtfully, rubbing his whiskerless chin with his forefinger. “Were you able to kill any?”
“I think not. Their limbs would shatter if hit with a bludgeon, but we were armed with swords and crossbows. We were there to fight bandits, not wraiths. By the time we realized how to . . .” Throat closing, she shook her head. “There were not enough of us left.”
“So they crossed the King’s Walk into the outlands?” Riasa asked. “Are these the terrors that we are sent to fight? We will take bludgeons, then, but if foul magics on that island are turning people to wraiths, better to abandon it—just as every other place infested by wraiths is abandoned.”
“No one on the island has been turned into a wraith! And certainly not hundreds and hundreds of people.” Lady Junica leaned forward to address Laina. “If there were wraiths, they are vanished.”
Lizzan nodded, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she set down Aerax’s tankard of water that smelled like mead. “Melted.”
“Melted?”
The disbelieving echo came from at least three mouths, but it was to Laina that Lizzan said, “They had killed everyone. Do you think I did not follow them beyond the bridge? I would have smashed every one of them to pieces.” A raw laugh escaped her. “But there