Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 38

Things moved in the night beyond the quiet rustling dust. The terrified cries came from one of the few inhabited houses on the outskirts of the village, where an old man and his wife had been brooding outside by their small fire.

Nicci was already running, her black dress just a deeper shadow in the darkness. Another scream. She bounded toward the old couple’s cook fire, saw many silhouettes as the gray-haired man and woman struggled against figures that closed around them.

The attackers looked gaunt and skeletal, lit by the orange flickers of the small fire. Without thinking, Bannon sprinted along beside her, drawing Sturdy from its scabbard. Ahead, Nicci saw that the attackers were the desiccated remnants of humans, their skin sucked dry of all moisture and baked brown like dried meat.

Running hard, Thistle caught up with Bannon and Nicci. “Dust people! They’ve never come into town before.”

Three shriveled reanimated corpses closed around the old couple, who fought back with helpless terror. They had no weapons, but Nicci did. The sorceress swept out a hand and released her magic. A hammer blow of wind knocked one of the dust people into the air as if he were no more than chaff. When he struck the brick side of the house, his body broke apart, crumbling like twigs and straw.

The old woman battered at her attacker, raking the dried flesh with her nails, but the mummified figure wrapped its arms around her. Immediately, the dry ground beneath their feet changed, becoming no more substantial than foamy water. The desiccated thing pulled the old woman down, dragging her into the pit of dust until they vanished underground.

Seeing his wife disappear, the old man fought even more frantically. A strong blow from his hand knocked the mummified creature’s skull loose, but even headless, the thing grappled with him. The ground turned to soup beneath the old man’s feet, and he sank in up to his knees. He gave a despairing wail, reaching out for something to hold on to.

Nicci struck out with her magic again, the blow of concentrated air so sharp and forceful that it shattered the old man’s undead attacker.

But four more hideous dust people boiled up out of the ground, emerging from the soft dirt like striking vipers, and together they grabbed the old man and dragged him under. His screams were drowned in sand and dust.

Nicci and Bannon arrived too late. The ground had smoothed over, the attackers gone and leaving only ripples of dry dust.

Bannon crouched with his sword upraised, alert for a continued attack as he turned from side to side in search of other enemies. Nicci grabbed his shirt and pulled him back from where the ground had become dry quicksand.

Then, from additional houses around the dying town, shouts echoed through the night—more people being attacked.

Nathan finally reached them, holding his sword as well. “What are the attackers? Have you seen them?”

“Dust people,” Thistle said. “The Lifedrinker swallows up people wherever he can, and then makes them into his puppets.”

Nicci stood close to the girl. “Stay safe.”

“Where is safe?” she asked, and Nicci had no answer for her.

Darkness filled the streets of Verdun Springs, and the cook fires and lamps in the stone houses shed far too little light for certainty, but the ground stirred. The wind picked up, carrying a choking fog of dust into the town.

Nicci cautiously led her group back toward the center of town. “Stay with me.”

The normally placid dirt streets squirmed, stirred, and gave birth to more horrors. Skeletal hands rose up from the dirt, showing long clawed nails and gray-brown skin that had hardened around the knuckles. The dry ground became as fluid as water, and dust people swam to the surface to hunt the last hardy survivors.

Grasping mummified hands surged around Nathan’s feet, reaching for his dark boots. One latched on, but he swept down with his sword to sever the arm bones before kicking the clutching hand loose.

Bannon ran forward, using Sturdy to chop one of the reanimated corpses through the rib cage, scattering vertebrae, but the cadaverous creatures came on like an army of horrific puppets, boiling up from the ground.

Nicci blasted them with magic, knocking two creatures away from Thistle before she grabbed the girl’s arm.

Bannon slashed apart another reanimated attacker, then cleaved one more down the middle with his backstroke. As he lunged toward a third, though, the dirt street turned into powdery soup beneath his feet, and he stumbled. He let out a terrified yelp as he started to sink, but the wizard was there to catch his wrist and wrench him back out of the dust trap.

In the center of town, a raised dais of bricks and tile stood empty, a stage on which minstrels might have performed at one time, or where town leaders gave speeches. “Go to the stone platform!” Nicci cried.

Still holding Bannon’s arm, Nathan staggered and lost his balance as the ground shifted again. They both stumbled, but struggled ahead in the direction of the stone platform. Nicci used her magic to push them, lifting them up enough that they could escape the slurry of dust. Once on stable ground again, the men scrambled toward the raised dais, a safe island.

From the terrified screams that rang out around the town, Nicci realized that dust people were attacking other families, destroying other homes. She had to get her companions to safety before she could try to protect anyone else.

Bounding ahead on skinny legs, Thistle gasped as the dirt street collapsed beneath her feet. She plunged in up to her waist, flailing, but Nicci grabbed her. With a great heave, she pulled the girl out and away from the grasping hands of more dust people. Nicci tossed Thistle closer to the stone platform, and the scrawny girl rolled, sprang to her feet, and ran the rest of the way there.

Extending her hand, palm out, Nicci turned in a half circle, using magic to knock the desiccated attackers back, and finally joined her companions on the dais. The tiles were stable beneath their feet, but mummified corpses kept coming for them.

Bannon and Nathan stationed themselves on opposite corners of the platform, their swords held high, and they hacked apart any of the dust people who approached. When the dry, shambling monsters closed in, Nicci thought of the brittle dead wood the villagers had collected for their cook fires. Everything here in the Scar was dry as a tinderbox, hard, dense … flammable.

She released a flow of magic to increase the temperature inside the attackers, igniting a spark. Gouts of hot orange fire burned from their chests, but even on fire, the scarecrowish cadavers lurched forward. The smell of burning sinew and bone filled the air, and greasy black smoke rose up from each staggering form.

Nathan and Bannon kept hacking with their swords. A defiant Thistle had pulled out her skinning knife.

Most of the screams in the outlying buildings had fallen ominously silent, but nearby shouts sounded like familiar voices. Thistle cried out, “That’s Uncle Marcus and Aunt Luna. I have to get home!”

From a distance, Nicci could see the girl’s protectors trying to fight off a combined onslaught from the dust people. Thistle tried to bolt toward them, but Nicci grabbed her shoulder. “You can’t run. The streets will swallow you up.”

“I have to. We’ve got to save them!”

Nicci did indeed have to save Thistle’s aunt and uncle—or at least try.

“We can fight our way through,” Bannon said, lopping off the head of a dried attacker with his sword. It bounced on the ground and rolled like a hollow gourd.

“We’ll never make it,” Nathan said. “In three steps, the ground would suck us down.”

From their questionable sanctuary, they watched Marcus smash one of the dust people with a rock from the fire pit. Luna’s red scarf drooped as she thrashed at the attackers, one wooden cooking skewer in each hand. The woman jabbed a hardened stick straight through the empty eye socket of the closest monster, but even with the shaft through its skull, the thing kept coming.

In a flash of planning, Nicci envisioned how best to run from the stone platform all the way to Thistle’s home. “I need to make a safe path.” The open dirt streets were deadly, unless she could change the substance of the ground itself, prevent the dust from becoming a possible conduit. She directed a flow of magic into the dirt and sand, using Additive Magic to coalesce and create, to fuse the grains together. The loose dust cemented into a narrow walkway, as if she had just frozen part of a stream. “Run! They might still break through, but it should stop them for now and give us the time we need. Run!”

The others did not question her. Together, they leaped from the safety of the raised platform. Nicci sprinted ahead, feeling the vitrified sand crunch beneath her boots. She could feel the vibrations as frustrated dust people moved under the ground, trying to break through the barrier with bony claws. The hard surface needed to last for only a few seconds, just long enough for them to run.

They finally reached Thistle’s home. Her aunt and uncle were scratched and bloody, wounded by the claws of the dust people they had fended off. Luna’s faded red head scarf had been knocked askew, and she pushed it back out of her eyes. Nicci loosed another flow of power to ignite the two nearest attackers as she shouted to the other woman, “Take Thistle and get inside!”

Marcus and Luna staggered to the doorway. The floor of their home was made of clay tile; Nicci hoped it would grant enough safety against an attack from below.

The house offered very few defenses, but this was their last shelter. Freed from the grasping hands of the undead creatures, Marcus and Luna retreated deeper inside.

Bannon and Nathan hacked apart two more dust people at the threshold, before they all crowded through the door. Behind them, the pathway of fused sand cracked, then shattered apart, and the dust people emerged from underground, pushing aside the hard slabs.

Marcus and Luna huddled in a corner of the home, holding each other. Luna sobbed, while Marcus opened and closed his mouth as if trying to think of something defiant to say. When the two saw that Thistle was all right, they cried out with relief and gestured for her to come over.

Nathan slammed the wooden door and threw the crossbar into place, but it was a flimsy barricade. Soon enough, the mummified creatures were pounding on it, scratching with their claws. The joined planks began to crack and splinter.

Nicci surveyed the home, studying its possible defenses. Bannon and the old wizard stood back-to-back with their swords ready as the thudding continued against the door. It would only be moments before the dust people surged inside.

Thistle’s eyes were wild, but determined as she stood next to Nicci. “Are we safe?”

Luna reached out her arms. “Come here, girl. We’ll be safe together.”

Before Thistle could start to where her aunt and uncle huddled, the hard clay tiles in the corner dissolved into a soup, and the floor opened up like a trapdoor into a hunter’s pit. Luna and Marcus screamed as skeletal hands grabbed them by the legs and hauled them under.

Nicci rushed to help them, but at that moment, the barricaded door shattered, and an army of dust people boiled inside. Nathan and Bannon stood to block them, sweeping their swords from side to side. Both were grimly silent as they fought with all their strength.

Nicci felt tiles shift beneath her boots as the foundation gave way. Glancing up, looking for any way out, she spotted the iron-hard wooden crossbeams that extended across the ceiling of the mud-brick structure. The beams led to an upper window that was open to the night and the roof. It was their only way out.

“Thistle, I’m going to throw you up there. Grab the beam and work your way over to the window.” She snatched up the scrawny girl. Without arguing, Thistle reached out her hands, and Nicci tossed her high enough that she could grab the crossbeam and nimbly swing her thin legs over it. Once she caught her balance, Thistle scooted along the beam toward the high open window.

Nicci turned to the two men. “Bannon, Nathan, we’ve got to get up there.”

“You’re going to throw me up there too, Sorceress?” Nathan asked, then swung back to cleave the dried skull of another attacker. “Do you think I can fly?”

“Not flying, but with magic, I will control the air and change your weight. I can move you.”

Without further ado, she released her power and yanked Nathan up high enough to grasp the crossbeam; then she did the same for Bannon. Not expecting it, the young man flailed and nearly dropped his sword, but managed to grab on to the beam without losing Sturdy.

Thistle had scooted her way to the window. The two men, balanced on the crossbeams overhead, reached down, and Nicci jumped, stretching out her hands as ten of the staggering monsters lurched into the dwelling. Bannon and Nathan deftly caught her and swung her up.

Dust people filled the confined home, reaching up toward the open ceiling, but they could not get to their four potential victims overhead.

At the open window, Thistle looked back and stared at the empty corner that had just swallowed her aunt and uncle. Tears streamed down her narrow face, carving tracks through the dust there.

“Climb out onto the roof,” Nicci said. “We should be safe up there.” Just then, the base of the home’s mud-brick walls shifted and started to crumble, as if the hardened structure were beginning to dissolve back into dust. “Quickly!”

Thistle scampered through the window and swung herself onto the tiled roof, while Bannon and Nathan followed with as much urgency. Sliding along the wooden crossbeam behind them, Nicci looked down to see more dust people rising from the broken floor. The walls shivered with rapidly spreading cracks.

She realized that even the rooftop would not be a place of safety.

The group sat gasping for breath out in the open night air and heard the hollow hiss of an army of dust people plodding through the streets of Verdun Springs.

Thistle’s entire home began to collapse beneath them. One wall sank down, destabilizing the roof, and loose clay tiles clattered like broken teeth to the ground. Bannon tried to keep his balance, but slipped and scrabbled as tiles broke under him. He was able to snag a wooden anchor beam, and Nathan grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him back up to temporary safety.

Nicci stood at the roof’s apex, searching for any possible escape. The orphan girl ran to the other end of the roof and pointed to an adjacent stone structure, a square, flat-roofed shop building made of quarried blocks rather than mud bricks. “Over here! This looks safer!”

The gap between the buildings was six feet wide. But with desperation, and a possible nudge of magic, the four ran across the crumbling tile roof, jumped, and all landed on the flat, open roof of the stone building.

Behind them, Thistle’s home collapsed, the brick walls crumbling, the roof sagging inward. The girl watched in dismay.

Standing on the roof of the much sturdier building, Bannon stomped with his boot. “At least this roof is solid beneath our feet, made of old wood, reinforced. And these stone-block walls won’t collapse so easily.”

Nathan pointed out an opening in the roof, which led down into the main shop below. “But those creatures could follow us, climb onto the roof.”

Pursuing them, the dust people tore open the unlocked door below and burst into the abandoned shop. They made their inexorable way upward, climbing the stairs to the open roof.

“We are still trapped.” Nicci scanned toward the edge of town, the rocky bluffs and canyons on the outskirts of Verdun Springs. “If we can get out there away from town, in among the bluffs, the dust people won’t be able to attack from underground. Maybe we can defend ourselves in the stone outcroppings.”

“It’s much too far,” Bannon said from the edge of the rooftop, swallowing hard.

“And those things are much too close,” Nathan added.

“They are slow-moving … unless they ambush us,” Nicci said.

With gasping, scratching sounds, two dust people clambered to the top of the stairs and emerged onto the shop roof, climbing through the trapdoor. With a swift kick, Nicci knocked both stick figures back down the steps, but more cadavers surged up the interior stairs.

Nicci looked around into the night and realized that the rest of the town had fallen silent. There were no more screams.

“Are we the only ones left?” Thistle whispered.

Nicci did not give any excuses. “Yes. But we will get out of here.”

They watched in dismay as two recently inhabited brick buildings also sagged and collapsed as the Lifedrinker’s magic turned the brick structures into dust.

Angry, Nicci focused on the rugged bluffs outside of town—a place of sanctuary where the solid ground would protect them. Better than here.

“Be ready,” she said. “I’m going to fuse the dust like I did before. I’ll make another path for us to run on, and it won’t last long. And the other dust people will come after us as swiftly as they can. We just have to be faster.” She turned to the young girl. “Can you do it?”

“Of course I can,” Thistle said. “Say when.”

Nicci gauged the most direct path to the bluffs outside of town. She gestured. “That way. Don’t look back. Don’t stop for anything—just run. I’ll make the ground hard, but we still have to jump off the roof.”

“I would make a comment about my old bones,” Nathan said, “but now isn’t the time.”

Bannon pointed down. “I’m more worried about those old bones.”

Nicci unleashed her magic and marked a path. With Additive Magic she created a solid structure, melding the sand and dust into flat, hard islands. Stepping-stones, since she did not have enough strength left to solidify the whole area. This would be enough. She made one appear, then another.

“Go!” she shouted. “I’ll make the rest along the way.”

Without hesitation, Thistle leaped off the roof and landed in the soft dirt. Before the dust people could respond, she sprang onto the nearest hardened stepping-stone, then jumped to the next, running ahead. Nicci dropped after her, following close behind so she could reach out and keep creating the path as fast as the girl could run.

Nathan and Bannon tumbled down after them. By now, some of the dust people realized what their intended victims were doing, and the sticklike mummies streamed around the remaining town structures. Two dry cadavers rose up to the left of Thistle, dodging the hardened sand. Seeing this, Nicci reacted with an angry snarl and thrust with a blast of air, which smashed the dust people to splinters of bone and dried flesh.

But more came.

Nicci and the girl ran toward the rock outcroppings, with Bannon and Nathan close behind. They fled the abandoned town. When they finally reached the hard rocks, Thistle scrambled up the outcropping, finding hand- and footholds as she climbed higher away from the dust people. The other three followed her, crawling up the pocked bluff walls until they reached the relative safety of a solid outcropping.

Thistle didn’t want to stop. “I know a way, follow me. If we go deeper into the canyons, they’ll never find us.”

Together, they fled into the night. Climbing higher into the rocks, Nicci glanced over her shoulder in time to see the last of the brick buildings collapse into dust. Then even the stone buildings began to shift as the ground underneath melted away and swallowed them. Soon enough, all sign of Verdun Springs had vanished forever.