Page 8 of Liar Witch

“You have killed one of us.” He stares at the crystal, which sits in his clawed hand. “The first to do so. We were curious...”

“Most people aren’t curious about death.”

“Wraith are death. We do not fear it.”

This conversation is making as much sense as Alletta, the insane witch, does. Not that it matters. The wraiths can be as crazy as they like, as long as they let me leave.

“Will you let me go?”

Acelin considers it for a moment. “Do you know why wraith attack those who dwell above?”

“We’re told that you’re mindless. That you love violence and hate us.”

The wraith floats away, and I follow instinctively. He leads me past more crystals, standing upright like some great, strange stone monument.

We’re in some kind of cavern, lit entirely by that strange light. The floor is covered in what looks like snow, but is really just smaller crystals.

Most mages would probably sell their own mothers to have access to so many crystals. This cavern would be a powerhouse for our people.

“Do you believe this? Do we appear mindless to you?” Acelin asks.

I… had once. Yet this wraith is speaking to me without a hint of malice. He seems sad, not wrathful.

“Until you started talking to me, yes.”

The Wraith King makes a frustrated noise, then goes quiet. He seems even more pensive than before.

“Do you know what this is?” He holds out the small crystal from the Claw. It’s barely larger than my fist, yet glows fiercely in his bony palm, like a tiny firefly is trapped inside. “This is memory. All the experiences of the individual who lived before you killed them reside in this. At a touch, we can relive anything that ever happened to him. Even his death at your hands.”

I frown. “You mean to say, the crystals are the bodies of dead wraiths?”

“We have no form unless we focus on maintaining one and thus, we cannot die like you do. We are energy and memory.”

Goddess, my head hurts just listening to him.

“You’re saying he’s still alive? Just in the crystal? He’ll come back?”

“His memories remain, but he will not return like we often do. You have destroyed his energy, yet his experiences will nourish future wraith who will merge with his crystal to learn. To be in either form—” he waves his free hand at his own, ghostly body, then at the crystal— “makes no real difference to us. Our old ones often choose to remain in the crystals to preserve their energy, and the young ones make pilgrimages to learn from them. When we commune with them, living or dead, we learn all that they are and have been. Our race has the gift of sharing entire lifetimes with just a touch.”

Acelin places the tiny crystal at the base of one of the monoliths then turns to me. “When your people started dragging our sacred stones from our temples beneath the mountains, we sent warnings. We learned your tongue to beg your leaders even as mages tinkered with our heritage. We were ignored.”

“No.” My denial is automatic. “Someone would have known. Someone would have done something.”

“Those who sympathised were killed by those profiting from our demise. Our destruction continued, unchecked. We became… enraged. So much death. Some were so young, others so old, with memories so precious to our people. You stand in the remnants of Inis Mor, our once-great city of arts. The wraith whose memories light this space were great poets. Their songs so deep that the emotions behind them have no name in your language.”

I stare at the small crystal, pulsing with light against the larger one.

The Alchemist had mentioned using crystals in the Mortal Cure. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Eagle of Galmere, or her mother, had decided to ignore the threat of the wraiths and continue mining, just to keep their elixir of youth.

Did immortality really mean more to the human royals than the lives of thousands of people?

“So the crystals the mages use...”

“Their power destroys our memories, desecrates our crystals and replaces it with their magic. They cut the stone and carve it with their glyphs, destroying our energy. In essence, they destroy our souls.”

“So you can die.”

The look he gives me is almost sad. “Yes. We can, in our own way. We live an average of a thousand years before our crystals go quiet. Our memories remain, but our energy has ended. Does your Goddess not teach that all things must? Will you abandon us to our fate, believing this?”