Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #3)

by Steven Erikson

Another Seerdomin wizard appeared from the legion’s ranks, mounted on a huge dun charger. Sorcery danced over his armour, pale, dull, flickering on the double-bladed axe in his right hand. ‘Oh,’ Blend whispered. ‘That’s a sharp illusion.’ He rode to join one of his fellow mages. Who turned. The axe flew from the rider’s hand, its wake sparkling with suspended ice. Changed shape, blackening, twisting, reaching out clawed, midnight limbs. The victim screamed as the wraith struck him. Death-magic punched through the protective weave of chaotic sorcery like a spearpoint through chain armour, plunged into the man’s chest. The wraith reappeared even as the Seerdomin toppled – up through his helmed head in an explosion of iron, bone, blood and brains – clutching in its black, taloned hands the Seerdomin’s soul – a thing that flared, radiating terror. The wraith, hunched over its prize, flew a zigzag path towards the forest. Vanished into the gloom.