The evil wizard jerked his hands, guiding his minions. More dust people crawled up from hiding places beneath the seared ground. For all the attackers that Bannon and Mrra had already savaged, twice as many now joined the fight.
Nicci didn’t have much time.
The Lifedrinker’s sunken gaze met her cold blue eyes. “Please…” he said. “I know I have caused so much harm. I see what I have done, but I cannot make it stop! I just wanted to live, wanted to stop the wasting disease from stealing the life inside me. I never wanted this curse.”
He raised both of his hands, clenched his clawlike fingers into hard, bony fists. His body swelled with dark ripples of energy, and Nicci felt a sudden flood of debilitating weakness that nearly drove her to her knees.
“I don’t know how to shut it off!”
Nicci said in a hoarse voice, “If you found the power within yourself to cause this, then you can find a way to stanch the flow, tie off the wound that is bleeding the world to death. Find it within your own soul.”
His voice was hollow with despair. “I drank my own soul long ago. All that remains of me is the need!” When he surged again, Nicci knew that the magic had entirely possessed him. The spell had become a living thing in its own right.
An overwhelming army of dust people closed in. More venomous scorpions clattered over the boulders, rushing toward Nicci.
Bannon fought with wild abandon. By now he was an old man with sparse gray hair, yet he still defended her with all his strength, giving the sorceress a chance to make her move. The sand panther also looked old, her fur showing spots of mange, but the branded spell-forms seemed to protect Mrra from the Lifedrinker’s deadly appetite.
Nicci herself exhibited many signs of age. The backs of her hands were a tangled map of veins marked with liver spots on skin that had been so creamy and perfect not long ago. Each step she took felt as if she were fighting against a wind of time, age, and weakness.
Behind her, dust people closed around Bannon, but he kept fighting, hacking, chopping them to pieces, even though there were too many. Mrra dove into the fray, trying to protect the swordsman, but a new army of scorpions flowed in, stingers poised and dripping.
Nicci took the final step and reached into her pocket. The Lifedrinker kept draining her magic, and she could not unleash wizard’s fire, could not so much as attempt any of her spells. He would only absorb them and then engulf her.
Nicci pulled out the throbbing Eldertree acorn and spoke through gritted teeth. “You. Will. Stop!”
The Lifedrinker swelled even more, looking at his creatures around him. Oddly, he cried as well, “It must stop!” With a surge of his magic, he stole more life from the world, squeezing last drops out of the air, out of the dust—out of the dust people. As he drained his own servants, ten of the mummified corpses twitched and then crumbled into blackened bone powder. The scorpions cracked, shattered, and fell into dust.
The Lifedrinker howled, squirming in the air, raising his hands, as if by triggering this last great call, he had accelerated a magical wildfire, and now a cyclone began to draw down into the endless pit that formed his lair. “Save me,” he begged.
Nicci took advantage of that one second of respite. “No. No one can save you, Lifedrinker.”
He whispered, “I … am … Roland.”
Nicci held out her palm, cupping the last acorn of the Eldertree, and released a simple burst of magic, gathering the air around her in what would otherwise have been a trivial effort. Instead of manipulating the wind to create fists of solid air against an opponent, she used the air to accelerate the acorn forward. The life-infused projectile sped through the air like a quarrel fired from a tightly wound crossbow.
The Lifedrinker screamed, and the acorn plunged into his cavernous mouth, down his throat.
Contained within its hard shell, the last seed of the Eldertree held the concentrated life of the once vast primeval forest. Deep inside the evil wizard, the hard nut cracked and released a flood of life, like a dam bursting in an enormous reservoir. Resurgent energy flared out in an unstoppable explosion of vitality, of renewal, of rejuvenation.
Roland let loose a shriek that seemed to tear open the Scar itself. The evil wizard was an empty pit, an endless appetite that demanded all life, all energy—and the seed from the Eldertree contained all life, all energy. The thrashing tumor-strangled wizard was like a man dying of thirst who now found himself drowning in a flash flood.
His evil spell tried to absorb the limitless power geysering from the acorn. The dust storms howled around the curved black pillars; tornadoes of unleashed fury whipped the dry ground, flinging sharp obsidian projectiles in all directions.
Spent, Nicci collapsed mere feet from the edge of the Lifedrinker’s pit, unable to move. The battle within the evil wizard continued to build, and he howled with agony. The acorn that had embedded itself inside him blazed and brightened into an inferno of life.
While the Lifedrinker attempted to smother it with ripples of hungry shadows, the remaining dust people collapsed in a rattle of bones and dried skin. The last of the scorpions fell dead, their segmented limbs curling up tight against their armored bodies; their stingers went limp.
Bannon threw the bodies off of him and climbed forward to try to rescue Nicci. He tottered like an ancient man, barely able to survive another hour. Mrra, too, pushed forward, close to the sorceress. Although Nicci was wrung dry and utterly exhausted, she felt the touch of her sister panther in her mind.
The ground shook and rumbled. Stones cracked. Huge boulders fell into the Lifedrinker’s pit. The towering stelae creaked, then toppled like felled trees into the hole. The avalanche continued, and the sinkhole slumped, filling with debris. Lightning struck all around.
The raging battle of life continued. The remnant of the Eldertree struggled to produce new life faster than the Lifedrinker could drain it. The bright flare that surged out from the acorn dimmed and flickered away as dark magic continued to fight, but the shadows faded as well, grew patchier, like a mist burning off under a morning sun.
Finally, the evil wizard, the Lifedrinker—Roland—disintegrated, his body gone. All of his death and emptiness turned to dust, and a last bright echo coughed out of the Eldertree acorn, washing over them.
Nicci staggered backward, feeling the warmth like a summer breeze reviving her. Life. Energy. Restoration.
Her joints eased and loosened. Her throat grew less constricted, and when she gasped in a long breath, she smelled a sweetness in the air that she had not experienced since she had first seen the Scar. Nicci raised a hand to her face as the dazzle cleared from her vision, and her skin felt smooth and supple again.
Bannon picked himself up, coughing and shaking. When he turned toward her, Nicci saw that his hair was again thick and red. The wrinkles that had covered his face were gone, leaving only his usual spatter of freckles.
She brushed herself off, and her eyes searched for the place where the Lifedrinker had collapsed, where Roland had lost his battle with the last seed of the original forest.
There, in the middle of the vast dead Scar, stood a sprig of green, the only thing left from all the exuberant power of the Eldertree acorn. A single spindly sapling.
CHAPTER 54
On their long return trek across the desolation, the ominous tension lifted from the air as if the world had heaved a nervous sigh of relief. Though the Scar still remained bleak and desolate, the Lifedrinker’s corruption was gone, and his blight would fade from the once-fertile soil. The valley would return, just as Nicci had promised Thistle.
The haze of blown dust and salty powder dissipated, leaving a blue sky scudded with clouds. Bannon looked up with a smile. “I think it might even rain within a day or two, wash the valley clean again.” He walked with a jaunty step, obviously proud of himself. He was battered and bruised, with numerous cuts from his last battle, but none the worse for it. “I fought well, didn’t I? Made myself worthwhile?”
Though she was not one to shower unn
ecessary compliments, Nicci did acknowledge the fact. “Yes, you were rather useful when I needed it most.”
He beamed.
Mrra stayed with them, ranging widely, wandering out of sight in the rocky canyons, exploring the foothills, and then returning as if to acknowledge her bond with Nicci. The sand panther was a wild creature, though, and as they approached the uplift of the Cliffwall plateau, she seemed restless, sniffing the air. Looking up the striated cliff, Mrra growled; her long tail thrashed.
Nicci gave a brusque nod, which the sand panther seemed to understand. “You can’t go in there with us. That is a human place.”
Judging by the branded spell markings on her hide, Mrra’s previous captivity among humans had not been a pleasant one. With a flick of her tail, the big cat bounded off to vanish into the dry scrub oak and piñon pines.
Nicci and Bannon began the long climb up.
* * *
The people of Cliffwall welcomed them as heroes, which Bannon enjoyed and Nicci tolerated. With a broad grin, the young man patted the sword at his side. “I handled myself well enough. I saved the sorceress too many times to recount.”
Nicci was sure he would recount them anyway.
Bannon accepted the fawning attentions of Victoria’s three acolytes, who took turns fussing over the scabs and scratches on his cheek, his arms, his hands. They dabbed at the wounds with wet cloths, then cleaned the dust from his forehead, wiping his hair. Bannon touched a cut on his face. “Do you think this one will leave a scar?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
Laurel kissed it. “Maybe so.”
Laughing, Thistle ran forward and threw herself on Nicci. “I knew you would survive! I knew you’d save the world.”
“And I’m glad you stayed behind, as you promised,” Nicci said.
Pleased to hear of their adventure, Nathan stroked his chin. “I wish I had been there, though. It would have been quite a tale to include in my life book.”
“We will find other tales, Wizard,” Nicci said. “We have a long journey ahead of us yet. Our work here is done.”
“Yes, your work is done.” He smiled and nodded. “And now that the Lifedrinker has been dispatched, our focus should be on finding Kol Adair, so I can be made whole again—it is quite inconvenient to feel useless! The Cliffwall archives have maps and charts of the world, and Mia will help me sort them right away.”
As the ostensible leader of the Cliffwall scholars, Simon was grateful for what Nicci had accomplished. “Even from here, we could feel when the Lifedrinker was defeated. The weight of the world seemed lifted, as if something fundamental had changed.” He led the gathered scholars in a loud cheer to thank Nicci and Bannon. “Before we devote our full attentions to learning and cataloging, we should make an expedition to the site of the battle and see this new Eldertree sapling.”
Victoria and her memmers nodded in grudging admiration. “Yes, we should all see what remains.”
* * *
The following day, nearly fifty people made their way down the narrow, hidden trail from the mesa cliff into the now-quiet Scar.
Full of energy, Thistle trotted along as the group worked their way through the foothills and out into the devastation. The girl was eager to guide them along the easiest path, scouting ahead. “Now I know I’m going to see this valley the way it was meant to be! Someday, I can have my world back, green and growing.”
“Maybe even with flower gardens,” Nicci said.
She felt that the shadows were lifting from the Scar. They walked at an easy pace all that day, camped for the night, and then set off again the next morning, heading toward the heart of the devastation. Mounds of obsidian glass still protruded from the ground, but the stinking fumaroles had sealed over and the exposed lava hardened. It was only the faintest, first step in the long, painful process of healing.
Finally, near the end of the second day of travel from the Cliffwall plateau, the group of eager travelers gathered at what had been the lair of the Lifedrinker. Nicci and her companions stood with the group, cautiously approaching the crumbling debris that filled the crater.
They paid no attention to the shattered remnants of dust people, the cracked scorpions. Instead, the amazed scholars gathered around the single oak sapling, a delicate tree no taller than Nicci’s waist.
“If that is the sapling from the Eldertree, I don’t sense any magic from it,” Nicci said. “It seems like a normal young tree.”
Nathan said, “All of its magic must have burned out in the final battle with the Lifedrinker. This is all that remains, just an oak sapling, but it is alive. That is the important part.”
Thistle nudged her way through the crowd so she could look at the spindly little tree that stood so defiant in the desolation.
Victoria seemed disappointed. “That’s all? It was … the Eldertree!”
“The acorn’s outpouring of life was just barely sufficient to win the battle,” Nicci said. “The power of life versus the power of death. It was a very close thing. It gave all of its magic to destroy the Lifedrinker—another week or month would have been too late.”
While Victoria and her memmers crowded close, the matronly woman let out a sigh. “It is a good thing our memmers recalled the story. Without us, we would not have found the seed of the Eldertree at all, and Roland would still be alive and dangerous.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Simon’s face. “Yes, Cliffwall provided the necessary weapon to defeat him, and now we must make up for all the suffering.” He raised his voice to address those gathered at the site. “It will be a great deal of work, but we can reclaim this land. The streams and rivers will flow again. With rainfall, we can plant crops and orchards. Many of our scholars came from the towns in this valley, and we can rebuild and replant it.”
Understanding the enormity of the problem they faced, the people muttered their agreement.
Nathan placed his hands on his hips, stretching his back. “The Scar can heal. Now that the blight has been eliminated, the natural beauty of the valley will return. It’ll just take time.” He smiled optimistically. “Maybe only a century or two.”
“A century?” Thistle’s expression fell. “I’ll never see it, then!”
Victoria was grim and determined. She muttered so quietly that only Nicci heard, “It will need to go faster.”
CHAPTER 55
The land was dead and desperate. Victoria knew that the harm would take decades, maybe even centuries, to restore … if left on its own. That was unforgivable. She could not forget what the self-centered, shortsighted Roland had done, how that pathetic man had killed the land … and murdered her dear husband.
But Victoria knew magic, had memorized countless secrets of arcane lore. As the most prominent memmer, she held a wealth of magical information in her mind, and now she searched for a faster solution to revitalize the great valley. The answer was within her—she knew it!
Simon and his scholars could fool themselves that they were experts. They could read books and study spells, but that didn’t mean they understood that knowledge. Just because a starving man looked at a pantry filled with food, he did not have the nourishment he required. The memmers, though, had all that information inside them, part of their being, their heart, their soul.
Ancient wizards had built this hidden archive to preserve history and lore for all future generations to use. Everything a powerful gifted person could imagine was inside these vaults, written down in volumes, stored on shelves … and locked in the minds of the memmers.
That knowledge was part of Victoria.
After the group visited the site of the final battle, the sorceress had seemed so smug, so triumphant about what she had done. Death’s Mistress! Yes, Nicci might have killed the Lifedrinker’s ravenous need, but she had not restored life by any means. That was a much more difficult and time-consuming task.
Victoria found the spindly sapling deeply disappointing, even pathetic. Such a small thing, without any magic? She had hoped for much m
ore from the Eldertree. From when she was a young woman, she recalled the rolling hills covered with thick forests, the fertile basin with sweeping croplands and thriving towns. Though the isolated inhabitants of Cliffwall had only rarely left their hidden canyons, they knew the way the real world was supposed to be.
One of the first outsiders brought back to the archive after Victoria had dispelled the camouflage shroud, Roland had been an intense and nervous researcher, an innocuous scholar who read volumes of spells and dabbled with minor magic. He had been quiet and good-natured, and Victoria’s husband had considered him a friend.
Early on, Bertram had noticed that Roland was growing gaunt and thin. Victoria now realized those were signs of the wasting disease devouring him from within. But Roland had refused to accept his fate; he had made a bargain with magic he did not comprehend. Without understanding what he was about to unleash, he had turned himself into a bottomless pit of need that siphoned away all life, not just his own.
Victoria winced as she remembered the fateful day she had come upon Roland after he met her husband in the corridor. Desperate, begging for help, he had clasped Bertram’s hand, but was unable to control what he unleashed, and the magic kept stealing more and more from her poor husband. Bertram could not pull away, could not escape no matter how hard he struggled … and the monster Roland purloined his entire life, gorged himself on Bertram’s essence.
By the time Victoria saw them, it was too late. Roland fled in terror, and she rushed forward to catch her husband as he collapsed in the corridor. She held him, pressing him against her breast and rocking him back and forth as he faded swiftly. Bertram’s skin turned as gray and dry as the old parchments in the archive. His cheeks sank into dark hollows, his eyes shriveled into puckered knots of flesh, his hair fell out in wispy clumps. In her arms, her husband turned into nothing more than a mummified corpse.
From where he had retreated down the corridor, Roland had watched in horror and revulsion. He held up his hands, denying his own deadly touch. “No, no, no!” he screamed.