Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 40

Past the bottleneck of the closed-in stone passageway, the hidden network of canyons on the other side of the towering barricade wall was a whole world cut off from the rest of the landscape. Steep-walled finger canyons spread out like outstretched hands cutting through the high plateau. Nicci and her companions absorbed the view. This place was a hidden, locked-away network of secret, sheltered canyons.

The main canyon through the cracked plateau was broad and fertile, cut by the sinuous silver ribbon of a stream that collected drips from numerous overflowing springs. Sheep grazed on the lush green grasses, and fenced fields were bursting with tall stalks of wheat and corn. Vegetable gardens crowded with squash and beans had been laid out in confined ledge niches that pocked the cliffs. Orchards grew along the streamside, many of the trees in blossom. Wooden hutches held beehives that added a faint hum to the air. Hundreds of people worked the fields, tended the flocks, climbed the canyon walls on wooden ladders. It was a thriving, prosperous society.

All along the cliffs that enclosed the canyons, large overhangs and alcoves created natural sheltered caves in which buildings had been constructed, clay brick and adobe buildings. Some of the natural grottoes held only two or three dwellings, while larger overhangs held a veritable city of adobe towers connected with walkways.

The opposite side of the canyon held a singularly enormous cave grotto, a yawning alcove that held imposing stone buildings with blocky façades. The architecture had an air of ancient majesty. Nicci realized this must be the legendary wizards’ archive, only recently revealed.

Cliffwall was like a fortress in its huge, defensible alcove, stone-block structures five and ten stories high, massive square walls with defenses. A narrow, winding path chiseled into the cliff was augmented with knotted ropes and short ladders to grant access from the canyon floor to the yawning grotto above.

Once through the bottleneck into the canyon, Nathan tilted his head back and stared in awe, his mouth agape. “It reminds me of the Palace of the Prophets. Ah, I do miss the library there.”

Bannon displayed the same wide-eyed wonder Nicci had seen on his face when he was in the city of Tanimura. “Was the Palace of the Prophets really that big?” he asked.

Nathan chuckled. “Size is a relative thing, my boy. The cliffs and the overhang definitely make this look imposing, but the palace was at least ten times the size.”

“Ten times?” Bannon said. “Sweet Sea Mother, that can’t be possible!”

“No need for comparisons,” Nicci said. “Cliffwall is impressive enough, and it has the advantage of being intact. Perhaps we’ll find what we need to know about the Lifedrinker.”

In the bright daylight, some of the local people had spotted the visitors emerging through the hidden entrance to the canyon. Two boys working a vegetable plot halfway up a cliff whistled an alarm. The shrill sound echoed and ricocheted, amplified by the angled canyon walls. Others converged, responding to the alarm.

While Nicci might have preferred to reconnoiter the canyon structures to assess the Cliffwall defenses and any possible threat, Thistle shouted and waved at the people coming closer. “Hello! We are strangers from the outside. We need to look into your archive.”

More alarm whistles echoed from the alcove settlements, and in the towering fortress of the Cliffwall archive, dozens of people bustled to the windows and doors. Nicci couldn’t hold Thistle back as she boldly strode forward into the canyon, confident they would all be welcome here.

A group of Cliffwall dwellers hurried toward the four travelers. Thistle put her hands on the hips of her ragged dress and raised her voice. “We are here to defeat the Lifedrinker! I brought you a sorceress, a brave swordsman, and an old wizard.”

“I don’t appear that old,” Nathan said, salvaging his pride. “And I am a prophet as well as a wizard … although at present I am unable to use either of those faculties.” He tapped his head. “Still, the knowledge is here.”

“They are here to find out how to stop the Scar,” Thistle proclaimed.

Nathan looked up at the people drawing closer. “Hello! We understand you have an archive of knowledge? Ancient records that might prove useful in dealing with this terrible enemy that plagues the land?”

Nicci added in a harder voice, “Information that will give us the tools and weapons to defeat him? We need it.”

One middle-aged farmer wore a brown tunic flecked with grass ends and chaff from cutting wheat. “You would have to see Simon for that. He’s Cliffwall’s senior scholar-archivist.” He indicated the towering fortress alcove up the side of the cliff, where more than a dozen people were working their way in single file down the narrow pathway to come meet them.

“And Victoria. They need to see Victoria,” added a woman whose tight bun of pale hair was tied in a gray scarf. She had wide hips, stubby callused fingers, and biceps that were larger than Nathan’s and Bannon’s combined. “She’s the one who decides what knowledge the memmers preserve.”

The farmer brushed at the fragments of wheat, then placed a stalk between his teeth. “Now, now, it all depends on the type of information they need.”

“We haven’t seen strangers and outside scholars for years, not since the Scar wiped out the valley,” said a red-faced shepherd who came puffing up, catching the end of the conversation.

“The scholars have needed new blood,” said the hefty woman. “No one here has found a way to stop the Lifedrinker. We need help.”

“Cliffwall was hidden behind a camouflage shroud for thousands of years,” said the redhead. “And even though the spell is gone, the spirits of our ancestors would torment us if we simply handed over that knowledge to any bedraggled visitor who asks! We are very careful about how many outside scholars we allow here.”

“We’re here to help,” Nicci said.

“And we’re not all that bedraggled,” Nathan said.

“I’m not a stranger,” Thistle insisted. “I watched you a year ago, and you never noticed. I’m the only survivor from Verdun Springs.”

“Never heard of it,” said the shepherd.

“That’s because you’ve been locked in these canyons forever,” Thistle said. “The rest of the world has gone on while you stayed hidden here. Everything is dying, and you don’t even know it.”

Nicci put a hand on the girl’s shoulder to calm her. “We have come here to help. If I have the right information, maybe I can find a way to stop your enemy.”

“And bring back the green valley,” Thistle insisted. “They can do it.”

They all turned as the group of robed scholars hurried toward them from the towering fortress archive. The people began to talk at once. “Simon, these people came from the outside.”

“This girl led them. She says she’s from a place called Verdun Springs.”

“One is a sorceress and the other is a wizard.”

“And a prophet.”

“Victoria, look, that one’s a sorceress!”

“They want to study our information, look into our archives…”

“We’ve needed some fresh scholars.”

Nicci tried to sort the overlapping chatter as a man stepped forward, obviously in charge. “I am Simon, the senior scholar-archivist of Cliffwall. I supervise the cataloging of the knowledge preserved here by the wisdom of the ancients.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “Senior scholar-archivist? You seem rather young for the job.”

Simon appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with thick brown hair that stuck out in unruly spikes, since he apparently didn’t have the inclination to care for it. His chin and cheeks were covered with a wispy corn silk of beard. “I’m old enough to do my job. And I started young, brought here twenty years ago as a prodigy from one of the valley towns.”

“The camouflage shroud broke down only fifty years ago,” said a matronly woman who took her place next to him—Victoria, Nicci presumed. She was in her sixties, with gray-brown hair tied back into a braid that she wound in a coil around her head. Her face was smooth, showing only the beginnings of crow’s-feet around her eyes, and her rounded cheeks were flushed a healthy pink. Her warm voice sounded to Nicci like the voice of a kindly grandmother from a children’s tale, but with a hard edge.

“We’ve been the guardians of Cliffwall since the old wizard wars, but we have only recently opened the archives to outsiders again. Simon’s scholars have completed barely half of the cataloging work. But my memmers can perhaps explain what you need to know, directly from our memories—once you convince us of your need.”