the Boiling Sea. And so did Krimathe.” Her voice lowered slightly, as if so the red-cloaked warrior would not be pained by her words, though that woman was too far away to hear. “But although he laid waste to these northern realms, neither he nor his warlords ever attacked Koth. Is that truth?”
Lizzan sighed. “It is.”
“So if the Destroyer will not go to Koth, that is where we will go,” Mevida claimed, determination ringing through her voice. “I was but a girl when the Destroyer’s army came through our village. My mother hid me away but I remember the screams. I remember how many . . . how many were . . .” Words faltering, she reached out for the older woman’s hand. “And how after the Destroyer’s army left, the road was muddied as if a storm had swept through, but the puddles were all of blood. I will not see it happen again to those I love.”
“And I would like to see a place untouched by the Destroyer’s hand,” the older woman said, her gnarled fingers tightening on her daughter’s. “A realm that has not been wounded, and is not still a weeping scab.”
Koth was wounded. But those who lived in the realm preferred to hide its scars.
Or exile them.
“You might also stay in Oana, then,” Lizzan told them. “Though the Destroyer burned all that stood, the trees are fed by Nemek’s healing baths. To look at them now, you would not know he’d ever been there.”
“But he was there,” Mevida said quietly. “And might be again. So we go to Koth.”
“It is said that the Destroyer fears the ice and cold,” Mevida’s son broke in. “Because he calls upon Enam’s strength for his own, and the sun god’s power is weaker in the north.”
“That is said,” Lizzan agreed. It was said in Koth, too. But Lizzan was not so certain. The sun was not as warm in the north, true; but only someone who had never been blinded by the shine against ice would think Enam’s power weaker.
Yet that thought Lizzan kept to herself. Mevida and her people had hope . . . which was more than most of those fleeing desperately through the realms did.
The boy continued, “It is said that the crystal palace is the finest of all palaces ever built.”
The finest of all palaces. So Kothans said of much that was built or created in their realm—that they were the finest of all things—because those who lived there never stopped improving themselves or their craft, never stopped working and learning. When she’d been young, Lizzan had also believed it. Yet after seeing how Kothans treated those whose names were not written in the books, the cracks in that claim had begun to show through.
But she only agreed, “The palace is beautiful.”
“It is also said Koth’s mountain bridge is too well defended for any army to cross.”
It was as if a knife sliced through Lizzan’s chest. Heart bleeding, she replied, “That is also said.”
“And it is said that, in Koth, a man might become anything he wishes to be. He might even become a king—or a god, as Varrin did.”
“So it is said.” Though that particular rank was a bit harder to obtain. “And what would you be?”
“I know not.” Again his excitement shone through his face, bright with hope. “But that is the wonder of Koth, is it not? That I could be anything. At home, I could only be an innkeeper.”
The old woman swatted his leg. “And what is a king compared to an innkeeper, eh?”
The boy grinned. “Richer.”
Perhaps. But to Lizzan, there was no finer profession than to keep a place for those who had nowhere else to go. To the two women, she asked, “You are innkeepers?”
“And will be again, if we can build a new inn in Koth. There will be many more like us hoping to escape the Destroyer,” Mevida said.
So there would be. “When I was last there, the villages on the windward side often lacked for accommodations.”
Sharp gaze steady on hers, the old woman asked, “What of the rumors that the island has been abandoned?”
Chest tight, Lizzan shook her head. “I know not if they are true. Only that it seems impossible.” But also deemed impossible had been the creatures of ice that had killed her father and slaughtered her soldiers. “The other rumors are true—that terrors haunt the northern forests.”
“Better to face terrors than the Destroyer’s army.”