Nicci narrowed her eyes. “We are here. Now. But we need to know more about the Lifedrinker.”
Worry lines seamed Nathan’s face. “I am not convinced how much assistance I can offer, Sorceress—at least until we get to Kol Adair.”
Thistle sat cross-legged in the dust next to Nicci as she cleaned the fresh lizards for dinner. “Kol Adair? That’s far away.” The girl used her little bloody knife to skin another of the lizards, inserted a stick through the body cavity, and handed it to Bannon, so he could roast it over the low cook fire in the pit. Somewhat queasy, the young man lowered the carcass over the coals, and soon the flesh began to bubble and sizzle.
Bannon wiped a hand across his mouth while turning the stick over the cook fire so the lizard didn’t burn. “How fast is the Scar growing?”
“In twenty years, the entire valley died away, and the devastation continues to spread,” Luna said. “We are one of the last villages on the outskirts.”
“The Scar grows faster as the Lifedrinker becomes more powerful … and his appetite is insatiable,” Marcus added. “I remember when the heart of the valley started dying, just before Luna and I were married. But we’ll stay here. We’ve lasted this long.”
The night was silent, but the breezes carried an ashy breath with bitter chemical taint. At the scattered mud-brick houses or larger quarried-stone structures around the town, quiet villagers ate their own meals outside, keeping apart from one another. Verdun Springs had fallen into a sullen hush, as if caused by the mention of the Lifedrinker’s name.
Luna looked sad. “Verdun Springs used to have a population of a thousand, and now fewer than a dozen families remain.”
“We are the strongest twenty,” Marcus insisted. It was clear they had had this argument before.
Bannon said, “There are forests and farmlands on the other side of the mountains, plenty of places for you to settle and be happy.”
“It would only delay our fate,” said Marcus, with a stubborn frown. “The Scar is spreading, and sooner or later the Lifedrinker will swallow the world.”
Nicci hardened her voice. “Unless someone stops him.”
Thistle retained a thread of optimism. “I want to stay until the land grows fertile and beautiful again—the way it was before my parents died. I remember it … just a little.”
“You were too young,” said Marcus.
The spunky girl finished cleaning the smallest lizard, which she cooked for herself. She licked the blood off her fingers and left a smear of red on the side of her mouth. Nicci reached forward to wipe off the stain. “Your face is covered with dust.”
“We don’t have much opportunity to wash,” Marcus explained.
Giggling, Thistle licked her fingers and smeared saliva over some of the dust, which did little to clean her face.
The travelers had supplemented the meal by offering dried fruits and leftover smoked fish from their pack. The smoked redfin from Renda Bay was quite a novelty to the young girl, who frowned at the taste and announced that she preferred her fresh lizards.
Nicci got back to business. “Who is the Lifedrinker? And how can he be defeated? Does he have weaknesses?” Maybe this was indeed the reason why they had been driven here. She remembered the witch woman’s words: And the Sorceress must save the world.
Marcus ground his heel in the dust. “We don’t know the full story. We’re just simple villagers affected by that ever-growing stain. But we know he was a wizard from Cliffwall, and something went terribly wrong.” He nibbled on the last shreds of meat on the roast lizard, picking specks of flesh from the bones, and then he crunched the bones, appreciating every morsel. “That’s where you’ll find the means to destroy him—if it can even be done.”
“And what is Cliffwall?” Nathan asked.
“A great archive of magical lore. We thought it was a place of legend for centuries,” Luna said.
Thistle piped up. “It’s real—I’ve seen it!”
“You haven’t wandered that far, child,” chided Marcus.
“I have! It was four days’ walk up into the plateau, but I made it.”
“It was hidden since the time of the ancient wizard wars,” Luna said, “but it reappeared fifty years ago.”
The wizard raised his eyebrows and looked over at Nicci. “A great archive? It sounds like a place we should investigate, regardless. We may find something to help my … condition, even before we reach Kol Adair.” He stroked his chin. “As well as the background on the Lifedrinker, of course.”
Thistle’s honey-brown eyes sparkled. “I can take you there. I’ve seen it with my own eyes!”
“Now, girl…” Marcus gave her a scolding look.
“It is said that someone broke Cliffwall’s camouflage spell decades ago,” Luna said. “The location is still secret, but the hidden people who guarded the place invited a few outside scholars from the towns in the valley. That hasn’t happened in a long time, not since the Scar started to spread and consume all the towns and farms.”
The lonely breeze picked up, carrying more dust in the wind. Nicci heard the cry of a hunting night bird and something stirring in the empty houses. Unexpectedly, she saw shadows moving in the dark alleys between the abandoned stone structures. She sat up straighter, suddenly alert, trying to penetrate the darkness with her gaze.
She also sensed magic in the air—not the usual pervasive vibration that she could always touch. Since arriving in Verdun Springs, she had felt an odd and unsettling note that seeped out of the Scar, but now it suddenly swelled, like the flush of heat just after an oven door was opened. Tense, she rose to her feet and tossed the cooking stick and the last scraps of her roast lizard aside. She stepped away from the fire pit and out into the wide, dry street.
Before Marcus or Luna could ask her what was wrong, the night filled with screams.
CHAPTER 38
Things moved in the night beyond the quiet rustling dust. The terrified cries came from one of the few inhabited houses on the outskirts of the village, where an old man and his wife had been brooding outside by their small fire.
Nicci was already running, her black dress just a deeper shadow in the darkness. Another scream. She bounded toward the old couple’s cook fire, saw many silhouettes as the gray-haired man and woman struggled against figures that closed around them.
The attackers looked gaunt and skeletal, lit by the orange flickers of the small fire. Without thinking, Bannon sprinted along beside her, drawing Sturdy from its scabbard. Ahead, Nicci saw that the attackers were the desiccated remnants of humans, their skin sucked dry of all moisture and baked brown like dried meat.
Running hard, Thistle caught up with Bannon and Nicci. “Dust people! They’ve never come into town before.”
Three shriveled reanimated corpses closed around the old couple, who fought back with helpless terror. They had no weapons, but Nicci did. The sorceress swept out a hand and released her magic. A hammer blow of wind knocked one of the dust people into the air as if he were no more than chaff. When he struck the brick side of the house, his body broke apart, crumbling like twigs and straw.
The old woman battered at her attacker, raking the dried flesh with her nails, but the mummified figure wrapped its arms around her. Immediately, the dry ground beneath their feet changed, becoming no more substantial than foamy water. The desiccated thing pulled the old woman down, dragging her into the pit of dust until they vanished underground.
Seeing his wife disappear, the old man fought even more frantically. A strong blow from his hand knocked the mummified creature’s skull loose, but even headless, the thing grappled with him. The ground turned to soup beneath the old man’s feet, and he sank in up to his knees. He gave a despairing wail, reaching out for something to hold on to.
Nicci struck out with her magic again, the blow of concentrated air so sharp and forceful that it shattered the old man’s undead attacker.
But four more hideous dust people boiled up out of the ground, emerging from the
soft dirt like striking vipers, and together they grabbed the old man and dragged him under. His screams were drowned in sand and dust.
Nicci and Bannon arrived too late. The ground had smoothed over, the attackers gone and leaving only ripples of dry dust.
Bannon crouched with his sword upraised, alert for a continued attack as he turned from side to side in search of other enemies. Nicci grabbed his shirt and pulled him back from where the ground had become dry quicksand.
Then, from additional houses around the dying town, shouts echoed through the night—more people being attacked.
Nathan finally reached them, holding his sword as well. “What are the attackers? Have you seen them?”
“Dust people,” Thistle said. “The Lifedrinker swallows up people wherever he can, and then makes them into his puppets.”
Nicci stood close to the girl. “Stay safe.”
“Where is safe?” she asked, and Nicci had no answer for her.
Darkness filled the streets of Verdun Springs, and the cook fires and lamps in the stone houses shed far too little light for certainty, but the ground stirred. The wind picked up, carrying a choking fog of dust into the town.
Nicci cautiously led her group back toward the center of town. “Stay with me.”
The normally placid dirt streets squirmed, stirred, and gave birth to more horrors. Skeletal hands rose up from the dirt, showing long clawed nails and gray-brown skin that had hardened around the knuckles. The dry ground became as fluid as water, and dust people swam to the surface to hunt the last hardy survivors.
Grasping mummified hands surged around Nathan’s feet, reaching for his dark boots. One latched on, but he swept down with his sword to sever the arm bones before kicking the clutching hand loose.
Bannon ran forward, using Sturdy to chop one of the reanimated corpses through the rib cage, scattering vertebrae, but the cadaverous creatures came on like an army of horrific puppets, boiling up from the ground.
Nicci blasted them with magic, knocking two creatures away from Thistle before she grabbed the girl’s arm.
Bannon slashed apart another reanimated attacker, then cleaved one more down the middle with his backstroke. As he lunged toward a third, though, the dirt street turned into powdery soup beneath his feet, and he stumbled. He let out a terrified yelp as he started to sink, but the wizard was there to catch his wrist and wrench him back out of the dust trap.
In the center of town, a raised dais of bricks and tile stood empty, a stage on which minstrels might have performed at one time, or where town leaders gave speeches. “Go to the stone platform!” Nicci cried.
Still holding Bannon’s arm, Nathan staggered and lost his balance as the ground shifted again. They both stumbled, but struggled ahead in the direction of the stone platform. Nicci used her magic to push them, lifting them up enough that they could escape the slurry of dust. Once on stable ground again, the men scrambled toward the raised dais, a safe island.
From the terrified screams that rang out around the town, Nicci realized that dust people were attacking other families, destroying other homes. She had to get her companions to safety before she could try to protect anyone else.
Bounding ahead on skinny legs, Thistle gasped as the dirt street collapsed beneath her feet. She plunged in up to her waist, flailing, but Nicci grabbed her. With a great heave, she pulled the girl out and away from the grasping hands of more dust people. Nicci tossed Thistle closer to the stone platform, and the scrawny girl rolled, sprang to her feet, and ran the rest of the way there.
Extending her hand, palm out, Nicci turned in a half circle, using magic to knock the desiccated attackers back, and finally joined her companions on the dais. The tiles were stable beneath their feet, but mummified corpses kept coming for them.
Bannon and Nathan stationed themselves on opposite corners of the platform, their swords held high, and they hacked apart any of the dust people who approached. When the dry, shambling monsters closed in, Nicci thought of the brittle dead wood the villagers had collected for their cook fires. Everything here in the Scar was dry as a tinderbox, hard, dense … flammable.
She released a flow of magic to increase the temperature inside the attackers, igniting a spark. Gouts of hot orange fire burned from their chests, but even on fire, the scarecrowish cadavers lurched forward. The smell of burning sinew and bone filled the air, and greasy black smoke rose up from each staggering form.
Nathan and Bannon kept hacking with their swords. A defiant Thistle had pulled out her skinning knife.
Most of the screams in the outlying buildings had fallen ominously silent, but nearby shouts sounded like familiar voices. Thistle cried out, “That’s Uncle Marcus and Aunt Luna. I have to get home!”
From a distance, Nicci could see the girl’s protectors trying to fight off a combined onslaught from the dust people. Thistle tried to bolt toward them, but Nicci grabbed her shoulder. “You can’t run. The streets will swallow you up.”
“I have to. We’ve got to save them!”
Nicci did indeed have to save Thistle’s aunt and uncle—or at least try.
“We can fight our way through,” Bannon said, lopping off the head of a dried attacker with his sword. It bounced on the ground and rolled like a hollow gourd.
“We’ll never make it,” Nathan said. “In three steps, the ground would suck us down.”
From their questionable sanctuary, they watched Marcus smash one of the dust people with a rock from the fire pit. Luna’s red scarf drooped as she thrashed at the attackers, one wooden cooking skewer in each hand. The woman jabbed a hardened stick straight through the empty eye socket of the closest monster, but even with the shaft through its skull, the thing kept coming.
In a flash of planning, Nicci envisioned how best to run from the stone platform all the way to Thistle’s home. “I need to make a safe path.” The open dirt streets were deadly, unless she could change the substance of the ground itself, prevent the dust from becoming a possible conduit. She directed a flow of magic into the dirt and sand, using Additive Magic to coalesce and create, to fuse the grains together. The loose dust cemented into a narrow walkway, as if she had just frozen part of a stream. “Run! They might still break through, but it should stop them for now and give us the time we need. Run!”
The others did not question her. Together, they leaped from the safety of the raised platform. Nicci sprinted ahead, feeling the vitrified sand crunch beneath her boots. She could feel the vibrations as frustrated dust people moved under the ground, trying to break through the barrier with bony claws. The hard surface needed to last for only a few seconds, just long enough for them to run.
They finally reached Thistle’s home. Her aunt and uncle were scratched and bloody, wounded by the claws of the dust people they had fended off. Luna’s faded red head scarf had been knocked askew, and she pushed it back out of her eyes. Nicci loosed another flow of power to ignite the two nearest attackers as she shouted to the other woman, “Take Thistle and get inside!”
Marcus and Luna staggered to the doorway. The floor of their home was made of clay tile; Nicci hoped it would grant enough safety against an attack from below.
The house offered very few defenses, but this was their last shelter. Freed from the grasping hands of the undead creatures, Marcus and Luna retreated deeper inside.
Bannon and Nathan hacked apart two more dust people at the threshold, before they all crowded through the door. Behind them, the pathway of fused sand cracked, then shattered apart, and the dust people emerged from underground, pushing aside the hard slabs.
Marcus and Luna huddled in a corner of the home, holding each other. Luna sobbed, while Marcus opened and closed his mouth as if trying to think of something defiant to say. When the two saw that Thistle was all right, they cried out with relief and gestured for her to come over.
Nathan slammed the wooden door and threw the crossbar into place, but it was a flimsy barricade. Soon enough, the mummified creatures were poundi
ng on it, scratching with their claws. The joined planks began to crack and splinter.
Nicci surveyed the home, studying its possible defenses. Bannon and the old wizard stood back-to-back with their swords ready as the thudding continued against the door. It would only be moments before the dust people surged inside.
Thistle’s eyes were wild, but determined as she stood next to Nicci. “Are we safe?”
Luna reached out her arms. “Come here, girl. We’ll be safe together.”
Before Thistle could start to where her aunt and uncle huddled, the hard clay tiles in the corner dissolved into a soup, and the floor opened up like a trapdoor into a hunter’s pit. Luna and Marcus screamed as skeletal hands grabbed them by the legs and hauled them under.
Nicci rushed to help them, but at that moment, the barricaded door shattered, and an army of dust people boiled inside. Nathan and Bannon stood to block them, sweeping their swords from side to side. Both were grimly silent as they fought with all their strength.
Nicci felt tiles shift beneath her boots as the foundation gave way. Glancing up, looking for any way out, she spotted the iron-hard wooden crossbeams that extended across the ceiling of the mud-brick structure. The beams led to an upper window that was open to the night and the roof. It was their only way out.
“Thistle, I’m going to throw you up there. Grab the beam and work your way over to the window.” She snatched up the scrawny girl. Without arguing, Thistle reached out her hands, and Nicci tossed her high enough that she could grab the crossbeam and nimbly swing her thin legs over it. Once she caught her balance, Thistle scooted along the beam toward the high open window.
Nicci turned to the two men. “Bannon, Nathan, we’ve got to get up there.”
“You’re going to throw me up there too, Sorceress?” Nathan asked, then swung back to cleave the dried skull of another attacker. “Do you think I can fly?”