Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 44

While Nathan assessed Cliffwall’s countless volumes of preserved magical lore, Nicci decided she needed firsthand knowledge about the Lifedrinker. While she was an accomplished scholar in her own right, she wanted to investigate the Scar with her own eyes.

Bannon was also restless, wandering the silent halls of the giant archive. He practiced with his sword, prancing about in the open halls, because his mentor was too preoccupied in the library. He would dance, slash, and twirl down the corridors, frightening a few distractible scholars as he fought his own shadow, and usually defeated it.

When Nicci proposed a cautious reconnoitering of the Scar to learn about the Lifedrinker, Bannon jumped at the chance. He raised his sword. “I’ll go along, Sorceress. Sturdy and I will be your protectors.”

Thistle was always at her side, and she sniffed at the young man’s eager bravado. “I am Nicci’s protector.”

“I need no protector, but you are welcome to come along, Bannon Farmer. There may be more dust people to fight.” She turned to the orphan girl. “But you will stay here, where it is safe.”

“I don’t want to be safe. I am safest when I’m with you.”

Nicci shook her head. “Bannon and I will go scout, and we’ll be back in a day or two. You stay here.” Disappointment flashed in the girl’s eyes, but she didn’t argue further. She darted off to find Nathan and see if he needed her help.

Nicci once again wore her black travel dress, which had been cleaned and mended. The people of Cliffwall provided packs, water, and food for their scouting expedition.

Before she and Bannon set off into the broad desolation, Simon joined them at the outer wall of the plateau, from which they would climb down into the foothills. “Most of those who go to seek the Lifedrinker never come back,” he said.

“We don’t intend to fight him now,” Nicci said. “We are just investigating, checking to see his defenses. And when I return, armed with the intelligence we’ve gathered, I can help Nathan look for what we need among all those volumes.”

She and Bannon left Cliffwall in the early morning, emerging from the opposite side of the plateau onto a steep, winding path. They picked their way down the sheer slope to the foothills, where the vegetation had begun to wither as the Lifedrinker’s desolation expanded. The low mesquite trees and piñon pines had bent over, as if in the agony of a long poisonous death. Thorny weeds tore at their clothes as they walked along, descending through the hills. Black beetles scuttled along the ground, while spiders hung forlorn in empty webs.

Much farther out into the valley, the terrain was cracked, lifeless desert. Nicci tried to imagine that broad expanse filled with croplands, thriving villages, and well-traveled roads, all of which had now been swallowed in the dust over the past twenty years. From the vantage of the foothills, the waves of oncoming desolation were as apparent as ripples in a pond.

She narrowed her eyes as she gazed toward the heart of the crater. “The Lifedrinker will be there. We’ll get as close as we can for now, gather information, but I will save the real fight for when I know how to kill him.”

Bannon squinted toward their destination, then gave a quick nod.

Before they left the last hills, Nicci heard a rustling of shrubs behind her, a loose stone kicked aside, the crack of a dry mesquite branch. Bannon spun, raising his sword, and Nicci prepared to fight.

When the dry boughs of a dead piñon moved aside, Thistle pushed herself through, looking around. Spotting Nicci, the girl smiled. “I knew I would catch up with you sooner or later. I came to help.”

“I told you to stay behind,” Nicci said.

“Lots of people tell me things. I make up my own mind.”

Nicci placed her hands on her hips. “You should not be out here. Go back to Cliffwall.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you are not.”

Thistle clearly wasn’t going to listen. “I know these lands. I’ve lived here all my life. I led you to Cliffwall, didn’t I? You would never have been able to find it without me. I can take care of myself—and I can take care of you.” She put her hands on her rag skirt, imitating Nicci’s stance. Her lips quirked in a defiant smile. “And if I wanted to keep following you, how would you stop me?”

Nicci gave a quick answer. “With sorcery.”

The girl huffed. “You would never use sorcery against me.”

Thistle’s bold confidence brought a wry smile to Nicci’s lips. “No, I probably wouldn’t. And I’m fully aware of how useful you can be out in the wild, perhaps even more so than Bannon.”

The young man flushed. “But I’ve proved my usefulness in battle. Think of how many dust people I killed back in Verdun Springs, and all the selka before that.”

“And you may need to fight and kill more enemies.” Nicci didn’t want to waste any more time. “Very well. We will go together, scout the Scar, and return quickly. But stay alert. We don’t know what other defenses the Lifedrinker might have.”

Descending from the last foothills, they headed along cracked canyons that led into the Scar. The breezes swept up white, salty dust from the dry ground, and Bannon coughed as he wiped bitter white powder from his face. Nicci’s eyes stung. Her black dress was also smeared with tan and white from all the blowing alkaline powder. She rationed her water, knowing they would find none in the desolation.

The ruined landscape seemed to grow angrier as they continued. The sun pounded down as they emerged from the widening washes of dry rivers that were now just barren, rocky beds. Salt-encrusted boulders protruded from the ground, and all that remained of round lakes were cracked mosaics of dry mud. Dust devils swirled ghostly curls of powder.

Weary in the oppressive environment, the three engaged in little conversation, and paused to rest infrequently. When they sipped a drink, their water tasted bad from the caustic dust on their lips.

Farther along, the cracks in the ground exhaled fumes where steam rose up from underground vents. Nicci smelled the burnt tang of brimstone. Bubbling mud pots looked like raw wounds; bursting and splattering, they emitted the foul stench of rotten eggs. Thistle sprang from rock to rock, picking out a safe path for them.

The stirred debris in the air made the sun appear swollen in the late afternoon, and Nicci felt uneasy about the prospect of camping in the Scar. “It’s been hours since we last saw even a dead tree,” Bannon said.

“We can find shelter in the rocks,” Nicci said. “Or maybe we should just walk through the night. I can make a hand light to guide us.”

The girl looked uneasy. “Dangerous things come out at night.”

Bannon looked around warily, but the sulfurous steam from fumaroles and bubbling mud pits made the air thick with haze. The sounds would have masked any stealthy movement.

Nicci said, “We can be attacked just as readily during the day.”

As they considered their choices, the dry, caked dirt stirred beneath them. Reacting quickly, Nicci pushed Thistle to safety and she herself sprang back as dark, desiccated hands reached out of the dust. Cracks spread apart in the ground, and dust people crawled up from below. Bannon yelled and raised his sword, running toward the attackers.

Nicci let magic boil into her hand. She had battled these things before. She released a surge of fire, igniting the nearest attacker before it could crawl entirely out of the cracked soil.

Jumping onto a flat rock for stability, Bannon swung his sword with a vicious sweep that decapitated three mummified men clad in dirt-encrusted rags. But even headless, the creatures still lunged forward, blindly grasping for victims. Dodging from rock to rock, Thistle ducked under the outstretched claws, and Bannon cleaved a cadaver’s torso in two, then hacked off its brittle legs at the knees.

Nicci released a focused hammer blow of wind that shattered the bones and dried sinews of another emerging creature, leaving it in a pile of broken debris half out of the ground. Another push of air knocked the unsteady dust people backward into the bubbling mud pits. The creatures fell into the roiling, churning cauldrons, where they thrashed and sank.

Thistle sprang onto the back of a desiccated creature that advanced toward Nicci from behind. The girl tugged at its shoulders and battered her fists onto its sticklike ribs, stabbed the dry body repeatedly with her knife. The mummified creature broke and fell to the dust.

As Nicci turned to thank her, another pair of dust people crawled up out of the ground, lunging toward Thistle with a clearly focused intent. One was a shriveled woman with a faded red head scarf wrapped around the tufts of wiry hair on her skull. The other, a man, wore the tattered remnants of a leather vest.

Thistle lifted her knife to swing at the new attack, but then she froze in horrified recognition. The dust people stumbled toward her, much too close, hooked hands grasping for the girl. “Aunt Luna? Uncle Marcus!”

Nicci recognized them as well, and she swept in, placing herself in front of the stunned girl. The creatures that had been her aunt and uncle wanted to drag Thistle back with them, but Nicci stood before them. “You can’t have her!” Leathery, cadaverous hands touched her arms, her black dress—and Nicci released a furious surge of magic, sparking fire within the inhuman remnants of Marcus and Luna.

The sudden fire burned a hot, purifying white, consuming the remains of the two in an instant. As they reeled away from Nicci, the pair fell into fine gray ash, dropping with a rushing sound that was almost a sigh. Thistle let out a despairing cry.

Panting heavily, the three stood together, poised for more attackers, but the Lifedrinker sent no more dust people after them. The battle was over as swiftly as it had begun. In the distance, they heard scuttling movement, a clatter of pebbles … not reanimated corpses this time, but other creatures—armored things with many legs that kept to the shadows.

Thistle clung to Nicci’s waist. “The Lifedrinker knows where we are. He is spying on us.”

“Are you sure we should keep going out there in the darkness?” Bannon asked. He could barely keep the quaver from his voice.

“It would be a waste to sacrifice ourselves now,” Nicci said. “Until we discover a way to cut off the Lifedrinker’s magic, we have seen enough. For now.”

They made good time retracing their steps toward the rising land at the north end of the vast dead valley, but it was long after dark when they reached the dying forests and remnants of trees in the foothills. The dry grass, dead weeds, and gnarled, leafless trees seemed welcoming by comparison. They were exhausted by the time they found a place to camp.

“At least we have enough wood to build a fire now,” Bannon said. “A very large fire.”

Still shaken from seeing the remnants of her aunt and uncle, Thistle brought several armloads of dry mesquite and made a pile at their chosen campsite. “It’ll be very bright and warm, but won’t the Lifedrinker be able to see such a big fire?”

Nicci used her magic to ignite the pile, and the bright fire crackled with intense flames and ribbons of aromatic smoke. “He knows full well where we are. Now at least we will be able to see any attack that comes.”

Bannon and Thistle hunkered close to the comforting flames. “Both of you sleep,” Nicci said. “I will keep watch.”

They bedded down, though they remained restless for many hours. As she sat alone, Nicci listened for sounds beyond the pop and crackle of the burning wood.

The Scar remained silent, an emptiness in the dark that seemed to swallow up sound as well as life. Nicci sensed some other presence out there, however, something prowling in the dying hills around them. Alert, she peered into the blackness beyond the firelight, but could see nothing, hear nothing. Yet she felt it … something strong and deadly.

Something hunting them.