" My children,” Lik-Rifa growled, her voice like a mountain slide, like a
summer storm fractured with lightning, rumbling into the distance. A tremor
passed through her, from snout to tail, and then her shape was shimmering,
twisting and coiling like mist, shifting and changing, contracting, shrinking, until
a woman stood before Ilska and her kin. She was tall, taller than any man, at
least as big as the bull troll Elvar had slain on Iskalt Island. Her body was lean
and striated, skin pale and raw and scabbed, weeping pus. Blood oozed from
wounds. She was clothed in a tunic of grey, red-woven at the neck and hem, a
belt studded with gold about her waist and a dark cloak billowing about her like
wings. Her hair, black as jet, streaked with silver, was pulled back tightly, braids
woven into it. She had a sharply beautiful face. Red coals glowed in her eyes.
“What has become of my world, my children, my warbands?” she said, her
voice hard as the north wind, a tremor shivering through it. She looked around at
the battle-plain, the shapes of the long-dead become part of the landscape. Her
red eyes flickered to Ilska. "

― John Gwynne , The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)