Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 52

They trudged forward. The Lifedrinker’s presence dragged at their bodies like tar, making their movements sluggish, their bodies weak, but Nicci pushed ahead toward the center of the Scar, and the wizard she needed to kill. For Thistle, for this once-fertile valley, for Richard, the D’Haran Empire, and the whole world …

“We’re almost there, Sorceress,” Bannon said in a voice as thin as old paper. “My sword isn’t dull yet.”

“He will keep trying to stop us, but we don’t know how he will attack us next,” Nicci said. “Be wary.”

The young man managed a hint of cheer in his tone. “And I’ll be useful.” When she made a noncommittal response, Bannon acted as if she had given him a great compliment.

Mrra stayed with them. The sand panther loped ahead, her tan fur blending into the dusty wasteland. The debris around them turned darker, sharper. The boulders were made of shattered volcanic glass, with every angle as sharp as a knife edge. Sulfurous steam made the air thick and nearly unbreathable, and each step sapped more of their strength.

But as they descended the crumbling, uncertain slope at the heart of the dead valley, Nicci could see their destination ahead. Her target.

The evil wizard’s lair resembled an amphitheater with black stelae, spires of rock reaching upward like desperate claws that encircled a central pit. Waves of the Lifedrinker’s appetite had frozen into ripples preserved in the blasted stone.

Overhead, thunderclouds strangled the sky, and a web of tortured lightning skittered around—electric whips that cracked across the sky, then stung the tops of the high stelae surrounding the amphitheater. The wind rose to a keening whistle, accompanied by a basso undercurrent of perpetual thunder.

On the ground to their left, a slab of black rock split off to reveal a raw flow of lava beneath. Molten rock like the blood of the world spilled out from a cracked, festering scab.

Bannon staggered back from the furnace air. More obsidian rocks shattered and thrust upward, shifting, twisting. Mrra picked her steps with great caution, her muzzle curled back in a snarl as more lightning flashed overhead. She prowled along, close to Nicci.

Bannon gasped, brushing loose ginger hair out of his eyes. “How can we go on?”

Nicci chose her footsteps carefully as the ground grew more unstable. She climbed over the sharp edges as she pressed toward the Lifedrinker’s pit, knowing she would find him there. “How can we not?”

She felt the throbbing, desperate presence ahead, and she wrestled to build shields around her, calling upon her knowledge to protect herself with both Additive and Subtractive Magic. She could not let the Lifedrinker seize her gift, her life. Nicci made use of new spells that she had learned only recently while poring over volume after volume in the Cliffwall archives. It didn’t make her entirely safe, but it let her keep moving.

Plodding along in a determined trance, Bannon followed her, step by step. When Nicci turned to encourage him, she was astonished to see his face seamed with wrinkles. His long reddish hair was shot through with streaks of gray. He looked at her in turn, and his hazel eyes went wide with alarm. “Sorceress, you look … old!”

Nicci touched her face, and felt wrinkles in her dry skin as if all the years of her long life were catching up with her. The Lifedrinker was stealing the time they had left. “We must hurry,” she said. She needed to use the Eldertree acorn before it was too late, before the evil wizard grew any stronger.

Dread built inside her, but it was not a fear for her own life, not despair at the thought that she might be growing old: for Nicci, the greatest fear was that she might fail on a quest to which she had given her heart and soul, that she might fail Richard’s dreams of a hopeful new order. “I am Death’s Mistress,” she muttered in a grim whisper. “The Lifedrinker is no match for me.”

Mrra hobbled along, and Nicci saw that the cat’s big paws left blood smears on the sharp obsidian rocks as she padded forward. But Mrra remained close at hand, ready to fight alongside her surrogate sister panther.

The static in the air thickened, and the background sound near the amphitheater increased to a crackling hiss. Nicci’s blond hair rose in a charged corona around her head.

The obsidian rocks ground together, and a belching gasp of brimstone steam coughed upward, nearly choking her. Nicci fixed her gaze to where the circle of ominous sharp spires cast dust-blurred shadows on the ground.

Nicci knew the powerful wizard was inside there. She would stand before him, and she would kill him, even if it cost her last spark of energy.

“Lifedrinker!” she shouted, listening to the deep pervasive thunder in the air. Slashes of lightning whipped through the thunderheads. In a lower voice, she said, “Roland. Face me.”

The ground shuddered and cracked, and scuttling forms emerged, black-armored creatures with multiple legs, glittering eyes, and segmented front limbs that ended in clacking pincers. Scorpions, each the size of a dog, emerged from underground nests to stand as guardians on top of the black boulders. Each long tail was capped with a wicked stinger that dripped venom.

Beside her, Bannon gave an audible gulp. Nicci recalled that Thistle’s parents had been killed by similar creatures.

She stepped forward, remembering her main enemy. She shouted a challenge. “Lifedrinker!”

Suddenly, she remembered what the witch woman had written in the life book: Future and Fate depend on both the journey and the destination.

More rocks shifted as the ground convulsed within the circle of towering stelae, and the blackness from the central pit seemed to deepen. Hulking shapes emerged from beneath the ground, withered and desiccated human forms, black with dust. Their sinewy bodies were covered with festering boils, sick open sores that dotted arms and necks, bulges that pushed out the sides of their faces. These horrors were worse than the previous dust people. They stood in a line, blocking Nicci from going closer to the Lifedrinker’s lair.

Mrra growled. Bannon raised his sword. “We can cut through them, Sorceress.”

The blighted human forms lurched forward, and Nicci drew her knife, careful to restrain her magic, but knowing she might have to use it. With clacking pincers, the scorpions scuttled closer, weaving in and around the desiccated dust people.

Mrra bared her long fangs, and her tail thrashed. Bannon stood at her side. “I’ll fight them so you can get close enough, Sorceress.” He gulped.

Finally, with a swirl of black static and a slash of angry lightning all around them, the Lifedrinker himself emerged from the darkness.