Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 39

Even terrified and in shock, Thistle knew her way through the dark wilderness. Moving solely on adrenaline, she guided them by starlight along smooth slickrock ledges farther into the canyons, far from the reach of the dust people. They were all too exhausted and shaken to engage in conversation. The girl was obviously struggling to absorb what she had just been through, but she survived with a furious lightning-bolt determination that Nicci admired.

Finally, the companions reached the top of the bluffs, high above any threat from the Lifedrinker’s minions, and Thistle squatted on a flat rock under the stars. Her thin legs and knobby knees stuck up in the air; her shoulders slumped. She rested her hands on her patchwork skirt and just stared into the empty distance.

Nicci stood beside her. “I believe we are safe now. Thank you.”

Thistle began trembling, and Nicci didn’t know how to comfort her.

Fortunately, the wizard came up and bent down next to her. “I am terribly sorry, child. That was your home, your aunt and uncle.…”

“They took care of me,” Thistle said in a quavering voice. “But I spent most of my time alone. I was fine—and I will be fine.” She looked up with fiery determination, but when her honey-brown eyes met Nicci’s, they filled with tears. Her lips quivered and her shoulders began to shake. “Uncle Marcus and Aunt Luna always said I was too much responsibility for them to handle. Too prickly.” She sniffled, and Nicci could see her iron-hard strength. “I will be fine.”

“I know you will,” Nicci said. “Truly I do.”

A moment later, the girl broke down into sobs, rubbing her eyes. Bannon awkwardly put an arm around her shoulders, like a big brother. She turned, embraced him, and cried into his chest. The young man blinked, not sure what to do in the storm of grief. Reflexively, he held her in return.

“We will rest here,” Nicci announced, looking around at their high ground. “This place is defensible. We can move on in the morning.”

“Nowhere is safe,” Thistle said in a harder voice. She shook herself. “Except with you. We’ll all be safe together.”

Nicci took first watch while the others tried to sleep. They had lost their packs and traveling supplies during their frantic flight, but they made do. Nicci had her magic to assist them, but she suspected that Thistle’s survival abilities would be essential to their mission, even if they headed away from the spreading desolation.

Bannon and Nathan stretched out on the open rock, trying to rest. Exhausted, the old wizard slept soundly, and his eyes fell half closed, so Nicci could see only the whites between his lids. She was used to the fact that wizards slept with their eyes open, an eerie habit that unsettled those unaccustomed to seeing it. Now, though, she was more disturbed to realize that Nathan Rahl’s eyes were mostly closed. Perhaps it was another indication of how much of his magic he had lost since the world had changed. He was no longer whole. How had Red known what lay in store for them?

Nicci sat in silence, staring up at the stars, still trying to understand the new patterns, but she could find no message there. She listened with suspicion to every rustle of underbrush and clatter of loose pebbles in the night, but the sounds were merely caused by scurrying rodents.

At last she had time to think. She pondered the D’Haran Empire, the sprawling Old World, this mostly unknown continent that Lord Rahl needed her to explore. How was she to save the world? The very idea seemed laughable. Right now, her most immediate concern was the Lifedrinker, whatever he was. His Scar was spreading, encompassing a greater and greater swath of land. And he had already attacked them with his dust people.

That was the Lifedrinker’s first mistake, Nicci thought. It was personal now.

She needed to know more about the evil wizard, what his goal was, how and why he had sucked dry those other townspeople from the valley and turned them into his reanimated servants. Was it just his appetite? Stealing more souls, absorbing their energy? The Lifedrinker’s dark magic, whatever it was, had spread like a potent poison more deadly than thousands of deathrise flowers, like the one she still kept with her, wrapped in her dress pocket.

She knew they needed to find the place called Cliffwall.

Having seen the people of Verdun Springs dragged beneath the dusty ground, including Thistle’s aunt and uncle, Nicci felt a powerful resolve. She had a deep hatred for oppression, for the destruction or enslavement of good people. The Lifedrinker was the epitome of tyranny, and Nicci considered it part of her mission for Richard to put an end to the threat. Prophecy or not, that was what she knew she had to do.

The orphan girl woke before dawn, instantly alert. Thistle looked around, saw Nicci, and scuttled over to be next to her. The two sat in silence for a long moment before the girl spoke. “I can lead us to Cliffwall—I know I can. There, you’ll meet the scholars and learn the information you need to destroy the Lifedrinker. I hate him! And I will take you there.”

“I believe you,” Nicci said. “And you will prove it to us soon enough. Nathan and I are both scholars of magic. If the answer is there, we will find it.” She narrowed her blue eyes and looked down at the lost little girl. “Regardless of what is in the library, I swear to you, we will find a way to rid the world of the man who did this.”

Thistle gave a solemn nod. Unshed tears welled in her large eyes. “And after that, can I stay with you? I … don’t have anyone else.” When her voice cracked at the end, the girl covered it with a loud clearing of her throat. She looked away, as if ashamed of her desperation.

Nicci could not imagine bringing this child, however talented she might be, along on their difficult journey to Kol Adair. But Thistle had already been broken so badly in one night that the sorceress simply answered with, “We shall see,” rather than dashing her hopes.

* * *

They were ready to move as soon as dawn broke. Thistle shook Bannon and Nathan by the shoulders to wake them. “It might take several days to get to Cliffwall, and the canyonlands up in the plateau can be a maze, but if you follow me”—she gave them a forced smile—“I’ll keep you safe and on track.”

Bannon tied back his loose hair. “But we don’t have any water or food. We don’t have our packs.”

The girl placed her fists on her raggedy skirt and lifted her chin. “I’ll find what we need.” She sprang off and led them along the top of the bluff, then into even higher canyonlands away from the once-fertile valley that was now the Scar. The seemingly endless expanse of slickrock rippled with upthrust fins of red rock formations, like the backbones of some mythical monster.

The landscape was scored with a dizzyingly complex labyrinth of cracks and canyons, deep gorges that spilled into oblivion with no exits that Nicci could see. The muted reds and tans were interspersed with dark green splashes of piñon pines, mesquite scrub, even tall cacti. Down in the sheltered canyons, a fuzz of pale green mixed with spiky black branches showed where thick tamarisks clogged the channels. This was a healthy desert with natural vegetation; the spreading stain of the Lifedrinker had not extended this far … but Nicci suspected that would change before long.

Nathan shaded his eyes and looked out across the desert highlands. “It is beautiful, I’ll grant you that.” He placed a hand on the leather pouch that still held his life book, one of the few things he had managed to keep with him. “But I despair at the thought of mapping it. How can we not get lost?”

Thistle said, “I already told you, I’ll be your guide. I can show you where Cliffwall has been hidden for thousands of years. I’ve explored it all. I know where I’m going.”

“You explored all of this?” Bannon sounded skeptical.

She huffed. “I am eleven summers old.”

“I see no reason to doubt her.” Nicci followed as the girl set off, prancing from rock to rock, scrambling up steep slopes while Bannon and Nathan worked hard to keep up.

Thistle guided them along the fingers of canyon rims, then back around again to a deeper cut. As they rested, the orphan girl stayed near Nicci, and gazed back at the barren emptiness of the Scar, many miles behind them. Thistle gave a long wistful sigh, her face a mask of sadness. “I heard people talk about how beautiful this land was once, with forests, rivers, crops. Like a paradise, the perfect place to live. When my aunt and uncle talked about it, they would begin to cry, saying how much it had changed in just my lifetime. It sounded so wonderful.” She sniffled. “That’s why Uncle Marcus and Aunt Luna insisted on staying here. They said our valley would come back … someday.” She looked at Nicci. “You’re going to bring it back, Nicci, and I’ll help you. I will! Together we’ll fight. We’ll bring all the life back to this valley.”

The girl showed such adamant hope that Nicci did not wish to disappoint her. “Perhaps we will.”

Toward the end of a long day of traveling, Thistle led them to the lip of a wide canyon and found an impossible trail that took them painstakingly down toward the bottom. “There’ll be water here and a place to camp.”

Indeed, Thistle knew exactly where to find an excellent shelter under an overhang, where they built a campfire of brittle tamarisk and mesquite wood that burned hot with fragrant smoke. A seep of water provided all they needed to drink and to wash.

As twilight closed in, the girl darted off into the winding canyon and returned a short while later with four lizards for them to eat. They roasted the reptiles whole, and Nicci crunched the crispy scaled skin, bones and all.

Thistle led them onward for three days, climbing higher into the plateau through desert scrub, mesquite, sagebrush, creosote bush, and spiky yucca. They entered the uplands well above Verdun Springs, circling around the foothills that enclosed the vast valley and up into the high plateau.

Eventually, as if the ground swelled as it gained altitude, the land split into more deep canyons. Confident in where she was going, the girl wound them through the maze until Nicci, Nathan, and Bannon had no idea where they were or how they could ever retrace their steps. Even so, Nicci placed her faith in the girl.

As they traveled through one bright morning where the canyons widened and the rock walls broke into towering hoodoos that stood like eerie and misshapen sentinels, Nicci asked, “How old were you when your parents died?”

“I was very little,” Thistle said. “Back then, there were still many people in Verdun Springs. The Scar hadn’t spread to our town yet, but the Lifedrinker was dangerous even if he was far away. I remember my mother’s face … she was very beautiful. When I think of her, I think of green trees, wide fields, running water, and pretty flowers … a flower garden.” She laughed at the absurd idea of wasting garden space on mere flowers.

“As the Scar absorbed the valley, my parents would try to scavenge any crops they could still harvest. One time, they made an expedition to an almond orchard, because even if the trees were dead, there were still dried nuts to gather. My mother and father never came back.…” Thistle walked in silence for a long moment, leading the group around looming hoodoos. “The Scar might look dead, but some creatures are connected to the Lifedrinker, and he doesn’t just kill them. He changes them, uses them.”

“Like the dust people?” Nicci asked.

Thistle nodded. “But not just people. Also spiders, centipedes—and lice, terrible monstrous lice.”

Nicci felt a twist inside of her. “I hate lice.”

“Lice drink life as well,” Bannon said. “No wonder the wizard likes them.”

“What killed your mother and father?” Nathan asked.

“Scorpions—big scorpions had infested the almond trees, and when my parents came to harvest the nuts, the scorpions fell upon them, stung them. When Uncle Marcus and two other villagers went to look for them days later, they found my parents’ bodies, their faces all swollen from the stings … but even though they were dead, the Lifedrinker made them into dust people too. My parents attacked Uncle Marcus.”

Her words tapered off, and Thistle didn’t need to continue the story of what the villagers must have done to get away. “After that, I stayed with my aunt and uncle. They said they would take care of me, that they would watch over me.” Her voice was bleak. “Now they’re gone. Verdun Springs is gone.” She swallowed hard. “My world is gone.”

“And you are with us, child,” said Nathan. “We’ll make the best of it.”

Bannon pushed ahead. “Yes, we will—if we ever get to Cliffwall.”

Looking up at Nicci for reassurance, the orphan girl nodded. “We’ll be there by tomorrow.”

* * *

The next morning Thistle led them along the floor of a canyon whose rocky bottom looked as if it had suffered flash floods during storms, but not for some time. The sky closed in as the canyon walls rose higher and drew together, looking sheer and impenetrable.

The wizard frowned, trying to gain his bearings as the shadows lengthened. “Are you certain this isn’t a dead end, child?”

“This is the way.” Thistle trotted ahead.

The canyon narrowed, and Nicci felt uneasy and vulnerable, realizing this would be a perfect place for an ambush.

“It closes up,” Bannon said. “Look ahead—it’s a dead end.”

“No,” the girl insisted. “Follow me.”

She led them up to where the rock walls formed the end of a box canyon, leaving only what looked like a narrow crack of two mismatched slickrock cliffs. Thistle turned to the travelers, then rotated sideways and shimmied into the crack.

She vanished.

Nicci stepped forward to see that the crack was a cleverly hidden passageway that led through a narrow elbow in the blind wall. After inching her way along through the claustrophobic passage, Nicci saw light ahead.

The girl squirmed out and stepped into a widening canyon. Nicci joined her, and Bannon and Nathan emerged behind them. Nicci caught her breath.

They all drank in the view of Cliffwall.