Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 43

Though Nicci wanted to begin her research in how to combat the Lifedrinker, she knew they were all exhausted from their long journey. Deep night had set in outside.

“Let us show you to your rooms,” Victoria said. “You must rest.” She glanced down at Thistle. “The girl needs her sleep.”

“I’m still awake. I’ll help.” She looked at Nicci, determined. “And tomorrow I can study alongside you.”

“Are you able to read?” Nicci asked.

“I know my letters, and I can read a lot of words. I will be much better after you teach me. I learn fast.”

Nathan gave a good-natured chuckle. “Dear girl, I appreciate someone so willing to learn, but that is quite an ambitious goal. Some of these languages and alphabets are unknown even to me.”

Nicci fixed her gaze on Thistle’s dust-smeared skin, her bright and intelligent eyes. “When the Sisters trained me in the Palace of the Prophets, I spent more than forty-five years as an acolyte learning the basics.”

The girl looked amazed. “I don’t want to wait forty-five years!”

“No one does, but you’re an intelligent girl. Since you learn quickly, it might take only forty years.” Thistle did not at first realize Nicci was teasing her. Then Nicci continued in a more serious tone, “We need to defeat the Lifedrinker long before that, or there won’t be any world left.”

Victoria shooed them along. “Rest now, time for a fresh start tomorrow. We have separate quarters for each of you. They are austere, but spacious. We will let you unpack and rest.”

“Not much to unpack, since we lost almost everything when the dust people attacked,” Bannon said. “We’ve been living with little more than the clothes on our backs.”

With a warm smile, Victoria promised, “We will provide clean clothing from the Cliffwall stores, and we will launder and mend your own garments.”

The matronly woman showed them to private chambers deep within the plateau, where the temperature was cool and the air dry. Beeswax candles burned inside small hollows in the stone walls, adding a warm yellow glow and a faint sweet scent. Each room’s furnishings consisted of a reading desk, an open floor with a sheepskin to cover the stone, a chamber pot, an urn of water, a washbasin, and a narrow pallet for sleeping. In each room, fresh, loose scholars’ clothes had been laid out for them.

Victoria offered the spunky orphan girl a place of her own, but Thistle followed Nicci into her chamber. She bounced up and down on the pallet’s straw-filled bedding. “This is soft, but it may be prickly. I’d rather sleep on the floor. You can have the pallet. That sheepskin looks warm enough for me. I’ll stay close if you need me.”

Even though the girl seemed perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, Nicci asked, “Why don’t you want your own room? You can sleep as long as you like.”

Thistle blinked her honey-brown eyes at Nicci. “I should stay nearby. What if you need protection?”

“I do not need protection. I am a sorceress.”

But the girl sat cross-legged on the sheepskin and responded with a bright grin. “It never hurts to have an extra set of eyes. I will keep you safe.”

Although she would not admit it, Thistle obviously did not wish to be alone. “Very well, you can guard me if you like,” Nicci said, remembering all the girl had been through. “But if you are to be effective in protecting me, I’ll need you rested as well.”

After they had changed into the borrowed clothes, one of the Cliffwall stewards arrived at their door to gather the bundled-up garments to be laundered and mended. The waifish girl’s rags needed a great deal of repair, as did Nicci’s black traveling dress. After handing over the old clothes, Nicci sorted through the scanty possessions she had managed to save from Verdun Springs.

Eager to help, Thistle laid out the items on the writing desk—the long sharp knife, some rope, near-empty packets of food. Although exhausted, the young girl kept up a chatter. “I never had any brothers and sisters. Do you have a family?” Her elfin face was filled with questions. “Did you ever have a daughter of your own?”

Nicci arranged the bedding on her pallet, keeping her face turned away so that she could ponder the proper answer. A daughter of her own? Someone, perhaps, like Thistle? The idea had not occurred to her, not for a long time at least. She touched her lower lip, where she had once worn a gold ring.

“No, I never had a daughter.” It should have been a simple answer, and Nicci was puzzled as to why she had hesitated. “That was never meant to be part of my life.”

After all those times Jagang had sentenced her to serve as a whore, or when he himself had forced himself upon her, Nicci surely had the opportunity to become pregnant, but thanks to her skills as a sorceress, she had never needed to worry about a child. She had always prevented herself from conceiving. Early on, Nicci had learned how not to feel anything—no passion, no love of any kind.

The girl examined the items Nicci had removed from the pockets of her old travel dress, her belt, and her side pouch. She unrolled a cloth-wrapped packet among the paraphernalia. “Oh, a flower!” Thistle said, looking at the violet-and-crimson petals. “You carried a flower all this way?”

Nicci instantly swept up the cloth packet, whisking the dried blossom away from the startled girl. “Don’t touch that!” Her pulse raced.

Thistle flinched. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I…” She cleared her throat. “It must be very special to you. Is it a pretty keeepsake from a suitor?”

Nicci narrowed her blue eyes, amused by the idea. Bannon had indeed offered the flower as a romantic gesture—a notion she had thoroughly quashed. “No, not that at all. The deathrise flower is deadly poison—one of the most potent toxins ever found, very dangerous.” She wrapped it carefully in the cloth again, then placed it in the highest alcove above her sleeping pallet. “It would lead to a long and horrible death. Maybe the most horrible death ever known.”

Thistle looked relieved. “So you’re protecting me! And I’ll be safe, too. Because we protect each other.” The girl rearranged the sheepskin on the empty space on the stone floor, ready to curl up and go to sleep.

Nicci blew out one of the candles, but before she could extinguish the other, Thistle asked, “If that poison is so deadly, couldn’t you use it to kill the Lifedrinker?”

“No, I don’t think it is potent enough for that.”

Thistle nodded, then wrapped the sheepskin around her and lay down on the hard stone floor, which she insisted was perfectly comfortable. “Then we’ll have to find a different way.”

Nicci used magic to snuff out the candle on the opposite wall, plunging the room into darkness.

* * *

Though he was anxious to study Cliffwall’s wondrous books and scrolls, Nathan slept for many hours that first night. He felt safe, warm, and comfortable for the first time in a long while.

After waking refreshed, he hurried to the dining hall, where he scrounged a few scraps of breakfast, since most of the scholars had eaten much earlier and hurried to work. His borrowed scholar’s robe was comfortable, though a bit drab and not at all fashionable. He supposed it would do until his more acceptable clothes came back from the washing and mending teams. For now, he would scour the library in hopes of finding how to stop the Lifedrinker’s voracious, out-of-control spell that sucked away all life.

In the first of the library chambers, he considered a wall of fat leather-bound volumes. So many of them! Scrolls lay unfurled on tables as intent scholars discussed the possible meanings of obscure lines; other readers hunched over open tomes, writing notes with chalk on flat slates.

When he looked at the dizzying number of shelved books in front of him and the other walls with an equal number of shelves—and knowing there were numerous rooms identical to this—the scope of Cliffwall’s knowledge felt as intimidating as it was exhilarating.

In the Palace of the Prophets, books had been Nathan’s quiet companions for a thousand years, his source of information about the outside world. Recently, Richard Rahl had also granted him access to all of the books in the People’s Palace of D’Hara, but most of those works had dealt with prophecy, and so were no longer relevant. Now the world’s future might depend on what he read here.

And there was so much more than the witch woman’s cryptic line in his life book.

Being surrounded by these works made him feel as if he had come home again—even if it was a huge home and a cluttered mess. “Dear spirits, how can I find any information here, except by accident?” He paced in front of the shelves, pondering, while acolyte archivists rolled scrolls or replaced volumes in their proper spots.

Victoria approached him, accompanied by her three lovely acolytes. “My memmers and I are here to be of assistance, Wizard Nathan. Simon’s catalog system is confusing to most, and he is the only one who knows where the volumes are. But I have committed many of these works to memory, and my lovely acolytes each hold more than a hundred volumes in their own minds. I can also bring you Gloria, Franklin, Peretta, and ten more well-trained memmers. You could sit back while we recite our knowledge to you.”

Nathan found it amazing that these young women—or any of the memmers—were able to commit thousands of pages of dense and precise magical lore to memory, even if they did not organize or, perhaps, understand the words they could recite.

Audrey, Laurel, and Sage looked at him with such intensity that he felt a warm flush come to his cheeks. He gave Victoria a polite, gentlemanly smile. “I am impressed with your skill, madam, and I would certainly welcome the company of such beautiful ladies, but I’m afraid they would distract me. I’ve spent years reading books with my own eyes, and that’s the way I should search for the information.”

Victoria’s grandmotherly face wrinkled with disappointment. “Generations of memmers have well-respected skills. We possess the information you need. If you tell us what you are searching for, we can quote the relevant passages for you, if we remember.” She waved a hand dismissively. “These books are just the static preservation of words. We would bring those words alive for you. We could tell you everything we know.”

The woman’s determination made him uncomfortable, and he wanted to get to work in his own way. “It doesn’t seem pragmatic, I’m afraid. I can’t study so much magical lore if it is locked inside your heads, and I don’t have the time to listen to your people speak aloud one book at a time.” He traced his fingers along curious symbols on the spine of one black volume. “Some of these tomes are written in languages I don’t recognize, but I am fluent in numerous others. I can read quite quickly.”

“But not all the books are available to you,” Victoria said. “You saw the archive tower that melted in the … accident. All those books were wiped out.”

“Your memmers can recall the volumes that were lost there?” Nathan asked.

The three young acolytes nodded. Victoria lifted her chin with a measure of pride. “Many of them. We don’t exactly know what was lost. For the most part, they were works of prophecy, but many were miscategorized.”

Nathan let out a sigh of relief. “Prophecy? Well, then, with the star shift, prophecy is gone and any such volumes would contain little of practical value. Prophecy is of no use to us—and certainly of little interest in our quest to stop the Lifedrinker.”

But he did not so easily dismiss the prediction Red had made. And the Sorceress must save the world.

Victoria could not hide her indignation at his attitude. “If that is what you truly wish, we will leave you to your studies, then. My memmers are always here to assist. We can recall many things that Simon and his scholars have not yet bothered to read.”

Nathan gave the woman his sweetest smile. “I thank you. Everyone at Cliffwall has been so generous. If the knowledge is locked away here, we will find it, and we will use it to defeat the Lifedrinker.” He fought back a flush of embarrassment, as he realized that his own unfortunate lack of magic would make him of little use in the actual battle against the evil wizard. “Nicci is a powerful sorceress. Do not underestimate her. She used to be called Death’s Mistress, and she struck fear across the land.”

Victoria’s expression turned sour, unimpressed. She seemed a competitive sort. “Death’s Mistress? We have no need of further death. Let us hope she can bring life back to our fertile valley.”

The woman departed with her acolytes, leaving him alone to face the disorganized books, scrolls, and tomes before him. He didn’t know where to begin his search for the original spell that had created the Lifedrinker, or where to find an appropriate counterspell.

But he had other priorities as well. If Nathan could restore his own magic, he could fight beside Nicci against the Lifedrinker. Somewhere in the library must be information about how and why he had lost his gift, or perhaps an accurate map showing how to find Kol Adair. Everything was connected.

He walked along the shelves from one side of the great chamber to the other, running his finger across the spines of the leather-bound volumes. He didn’t know where to start.

So he carried a volume at random over to a table and took a seat next to an intense young scholar who didn’t even look up from her reading. Nathan opened the book and scanned the handwritten symbols on the page, not certain what he was searching for, but sure he would uncover useful information, nevertheless.