you will send your warriors north—but not wholly for Koth’s sake, I think. For there was something else I told the court that they took for a delusion. In truth, I was not certain of it myself until I began escorting Lithans fleeing from the east, and heard the stories they told of their realm . . . and of King Goranik.”
The Krimathean went utterly still, her gaze boring into Lizzan’s.
“I asked if finding him was your quest, do you recall?” Without waiting for the woman to confirm that she remembered, Lizzan said, “If it had been, I would have told you then how the bandits were slaughtered on the Walk, and that when I followed the wraiths into the forest, I saw that not all of them had been killed. The bandit’s leader still stood, and the charging wraiths parted around him as if he were a boulder in a river. My soldiers and I had only glimpsed him before, but that night, I saw the mark of Enam around his eye, and the gray skin that betrays Hanan’s silver blood flowing through his veins. I felt his sheer strength when he knocked me aside as if I were a doll.”
Strength not unlike this woman’s, as her hand turned beneath Lizzan’s and her fingers squeezed to the point of pain. Despite a similar blessed ancestry, her skin was not gray, so her blood must run red instead of silver.
“Then he was gone—and afterward, I was not truly certain that he’d been there. I was not myself as I chased the wraiths into the forest. Battle-madness had come upon me, and in that frenzy, I might have seen anything. As it was, he seemed to me not a man at all, but a creature so foul that even the thought of him now makes my skin crawl. And who has not grown up hearing the horrid tales of the sorcerer-king of Lith? What realm does not fear that he would do to them what he did to Krimathe? So I thought the battle-madness had given the bandit his face and built him into a monster even more terrible than the wraiths.” She drew a shuddering breath. “But the Lithans who fled from that realm described him exactly as I saw, so I knew that I had not imagined it. And in all of their tales, Goranik is dead. Yet nobody is certain of how he died or who killed him—whether his son returned to take his crown, or if it was another warlord who did it. They only know that the throne was suddenly empty. So I believe Goranik did not die, but that he abandoned Lith . . . and that he is now in the north, in the forests surrounding Koth.”
The woman’s fiery gaze shot past Lizzan. Harsh steel scraped through Riasa’s voice as she spoke for her. “It is the sorcerer alone? Is he not with his army?”
“I know not how many bandits still live, but their numbers cannot be many. He could not have hidden an army in those forests.”
Teeth gritted, an expression almost of agony contorted the Krimathean’s features while her gaze pleaded with the captain.
“You cannot abandon your quest, my lady,” Riasa said softly. “Too much depends on it. But I will bring you the head of the king who killed your mother. I will bring you the head of the prince who held you down and—”
Laina gave a sharp shake of her head and tugged at the edge of her cloak.
“That is your quest?” Lizzan asked. “The son? That is why Vela told you to go east?”
The woman nodded, her dark eyes afire with hate unlike Lizzan had ever seen.
“Then I hope you find him quickly, and join your warriors in the north.” Steadily Lizzan held that burning gaze. “You will send them to Koth?”
“She could not stop us,” said Riasa. “Laina is not the only warrior whose mother was killed when Goranik betrayed Krimathe. With or without your approval, my lady, I will lead north any warrior who wishes to go. But I would rather have your approval.”
A tight nod gave that approval. Lizzan sensed the relief that swept through the other Kothans, saw it mixed with admiration when her eyes met Aerax’s.
And he was now under her protection . . . as they all traveled north to find a sorcerer-king who’d already torn Lizzan’s life apart. She suspected that she’d just put them all on the path toward a glorious battle,