Cursed by Ice Read Free Page B

sinew to flesh. The insides of his ears, his eyes in his sockets, his scrotum and his penis. Eventually his lungs and heart froze solid and he could no longer breathe. When that happened he fell, a solid block of iced flesh, to the ground.
    And after an hour he began to thaw …
    … only to freeze again.

CHAPTER
TWO
    They laid siege to the city the very next day.
    The city walls had pots of boiling oil atop them, which would be dumped upon the soldiers who tried to scale them. The trick was to ascend where the pots were not; the pots were so large and so heavy that they were fixed into the battlements and could not be moved. Unfortunately the soldiers could learn their placement only by trial and error. When the first wave of soldiers attempted the walls, which Garreth had ordered to be attacked from every quarter at the exact same moment, the pots were dumped immediately upon them, scalding every man the oil touched … and showing exactly where the pots were positioned and where they were not.
    Garreth then pulled the men back, and the wounded and burned ones were cared for, the camp mems—priestesses who had the ability to heal—making their way through the injured ranks and giving solace wherever they could. Dethan had done likewise on the opposite side of the walled city, looking for weaknesses that could be exploited.
    The city of Kith’s walls were eight-sided, the octagon large and protective of the inhabitants inside. They roseup at least a hundred feet high, making scaling them a true challenge.
    But when the soldiers attacked again that afternoon, they brought in scaffolds, placing them beyond the reach of the oil pots, and began to scale them by tens and by twenties. Archers came into play, shooting from the city battlements down into the climbing men.
    Garreth walked up to his best archers, a contingent he had set aside for this one purpose.
    “Aim for every archer you see,” he instructed them. “Make every shot count and take your time. Let them show themselves and get overconfident. Then pick them off one by one.”
    “Yes, my lord,” they said in unison.
    And so they did. Archers began to drop from the walls, their bodies falling into the ranks of the advancing men. Either that or they fell back behind the battlements. In the camp, Garreth watched everything with a steady eye and a magnification scope.
    And that was when he first saw her.
    She would have been hard to miss, standing openly on top of the city wall facing him. She did not duck and cover, did not dodge the arrows flying all around her. She was dressed in a brilliant jewel-blue, like the blue of a diri’s egg. She wore a long scarf, which blew in the wind, trailing behind her like a banner—a magnificent plumage for a brave and fearless bird. Her hair was down, it too blowing in the wild wind, the fiery red of it a color unlike anything he had ever seen—deep and dark in some places, light and coppery in others. And of course there was her lavender skin, marking her as Kithian, if being on their battlements was not proof enough.
    Then, like some kind of powerful goddess, she reached her arms up high and wide, tipped her head back, andclosed her eyes. She seemed to breathe in the world around her.
    That was when a shadow, swift and dark, skimmed over their forces.
    Garreth felt himself go cold through the center of his body, as if it were dusk already. He looked up at the sky and there it was, an enormous wyvern, its wingspan massive and magnificent, the scales along its reptilian body gleaming with a blue iridescence. Its dragon’s head was immense, the whole entirety of its body so huge it was a wonder it could be airborne, even in spite of its wide, muscular wings.
    The men began to cry out in fear and Garreth hardly blamed them. To see such a thing bearing down on them, it was no wonder they began to run.
    “Hold steady!” Garreth bellowed, unwilling to lose the ground they had gained. “Archers!”
    The archers immediately