But after draining all the life energy from Bertram, he did indeed seem stronger, invigorated by what he had stolen. Roland, fast becoming the Lifedrinker, had fled Cliffwall, running into the vast valley. Only later did Victoria learn that he had killed ten other scholars in his frantic, blundering attempts to keep himself strong, trying to get away from the isolated archive.
Now the Lifedrinker was dead, but that was not enough for Victoria. She could not bring Bertram back, but she needed to restore the fertile valley and reawaken life, and she was sure she had the power to do so. Unlike the deluded, inept Roland, she would not make any mistakes.…
By the time the expedition returned to the plateau two days later, Victoria knew what she had to do. Sage, Laurel, and Audrey were her three best memmers, but she also had Franklin, Gloria, Peretta, and dozens more students, all of whom were repositories of knowledge. Even now that she had brought down the camouflage shroud and made the wealth of knowledge available to any student who could read, Victoria insisted on keeping the memmer tradition alive. Maybe her acolytes would remember something even more important.
Back inside the great Cliffwall library, Simon insisted on holding a celebration feast, but Victoria could not pretend to be as overjoyed as the others. There was still so much work to do, centuries of work—and that was much too long to wait.
Much as the researchers had scoured the archive for a way to destroy the Lifedrinker, Victoria now sought a fecundity spell, some powerful magic to restore everything the evil wizard had taken. If a corrupted spell could steal life away, could not another spell bring it all flooding back? Victoria needed to find that type of magic. Surely some solution lay among all the wisdom preserved here from the ancient wizards.
She spread the word among her memmers, who pondered and sifted through the countless books they had committed to memory. They talked to additional scholars, who combed through now-forgotten volumes from the deepest vaults and dustiest shelves, incorporating that knowledge into their own memory archives.
There had to be a way!
Victoria met privately with her trusted acolytes, keeping her voice low as if they had started a conspiracy. “You are all fertile, all throbbing with life. I can sense it in you. You must create life.” She smiled at them, feeling the warmth within her. “And you have gone to Bannon Farmer?”
The three young women looked both eager and embarrassed. “Yes, Victoria,” Sage said. “Many times.”
“We are trying,” Laurel said.
Audrey smiled. “Trying as often as possible.”
Sage said, “But none of us is pregnant. Yet.”
Victoria sighed and shook her head. “The seed sometimes goes astray, but it will happen in the normal course of things. It is not enough, though. We will have to try something else. The ancient wizards must have known a spell to restore life, magic to encourage growth and rebirth.”
“Restore life?” Laurel was astonished by the idea. “You want to bring back the dead?”
“I want to bring back the world,” Victoria said. “A fertility spell to remove the blight and corruption out in that desolation. I want to bring back the forests and rivers, the meadows and croplands. I want to fill the streams with fish. I want to summon flowers and then bees to pollinate them and make honey. I want the land to thrive again.” She drew a breath and looked at her followers. “I refuse to wait decades for that to happen.”
While Cliffwall scholars as well as the other canyon villagers engaged in giddy revelry to celebrate the end of the Lifedrinker, Victoria’s special memmers meditated, sifting through the vital information in their perfectly preserved memories, searching for some way to accelerate the process.
Victoria spent her every waking moment wrestling with the mountains of words she had locked inside herself. Her head pounded, as if the proper spells were struggling to break free, but she did not have the key to release them. Not yet.
Standing outside under the great cliff overhang in the gathering dusk, she watched shadows fill the finger canyons. Evening lights glimmered from the windows of other alcove settlements across the canyon. Insects buzzed in a low contented music, and she heard the whisper of wings as two night birds swooped by. The world seemed at peace, awakening.
Victoria reflected on the damaged tower that had held the prophecy library. She could remember the terrible day when an inadvertent spell had liquefied the structure and drowned the hapless but foolish apprentice wizard in a flood of stone. Such incidents, even though they were rare, frightened the other scholars from attempting major spells.
Now, standing in the cliff grotto, she looked at the damaged tower with scorn. She had no respect for the clumsy student who had failed to understand the power he unleashed. Another disaster, just like Roland.
Victoria would never allow such a thing. She had higher standards.
As she thought of the mistake that had been made here, something clicked in her mind and she remembered part of an old fertility spell, not just for a woman to have children—perhaps to reawaken the womb of a barren woman, like Victoria herself—but a creation spell, a fecundity rite tied to deeper magic that could increase crops, expand herds, rejuvenate forests. She felt the tickle of faint memory, a spell buried deep among so much other knowledge. Victoria tried to sharpen the arcane thoughts at the distant edge of her mind.
She remembered her stern mother, whose angular face looked like the wedge of a hatchet. While her mother had forced Victoria to memorize the lore word for word, she had never bothered to make sure young Victoria comprehended what she knew; her mother cared only that she could accurately repeat every line, even if it was in a language neither of them understood. The woman had repeatedly whipped Victoria with a willow switch, raising red welts, spilling blood. Sometimes, she had cuffed her daughter across the face, boxed her ears, or made her bleed from the nose in an attempt to make her try harder to remember, to use her gift and make no mistakes.
Mistakes caused harm. People suffered when an error was made, even an innocent error. Weeping with sincerity, young Victoria had promised her mother she would make no errors. And she had watched that woman shove her good-natured father out of the cliff overhang to his death—a deserved fate, according to her mother, since he had made a mistake, a potentially dangerous mistake.
Victoria could make no mistakes.…
Now, once she touched the scattered, ancient spell and followed the memories buried in her past, Victoria could see the words unfurling in her mind. The arcane language, the unfamiliar phrasings, couplets with pronunciations that seemed to defy the letters with which they were written. Victoria remembered the fecundity spell, repeated from generation to generation, passed from memmer to memmer. The thoughts were faint and wispy, frayed from disuse, but she possessed the knowledge. She could use it.
Satisfied, Victoria reentered the main library fortress and hurried to her quarters. Though she had committed everything to memory, she lit her lamp and bent over the low writing desk. On a scrap of paper she began to write, preserving the words she had brought to the forefront of her mind, rolling them over in her mouth, making sure each detail was correct. She spoke the sounds carefully aloud to be sure she got every nuance correct. After she wrote down the fecundity spell, she read it and read it again until she was sure she was right.
Victoria braced herself. She knew what she had to do, and she understood the instructions perfectly.
The land had already been bled dry. What did a little more blood matter?
CHAPTER 56
“Cliffwall served its purpose, exactly as the ancient wizards intended,” Simon told Nicci and Nathan, still looking very pleased with himself. After the defeat of the Lifedrinker he seemed more relaxed and focused in his role, back to what he believed his true work should be, though he still looked too young to be the senior scholar-archivist. “Now, at last, our scholars can continue their cataloging and their pure research. There is so much to learn.”
The teams of dedicated research
ers returned to their everyday work of listing the countless tomes, reshelving volumes by subject, and noting the type of knowledge contained in various disorganized sections. Obviously, decades of work still remained.
Simon looked around with giddy wonder as he tried to encompass the thousands of books shelved haphazardly in the vast library rooms. “The project seems overwhelming, yet for some reason, I feel energized now, more hopeful than I’ve been in twenty years.”
“And well you should feel that way, truth be told,” Nathan said. “Simply rediscovering the potential wonders in this library will be an adventure in itself, however. Besides, as you know, all the rules just changed with the star shift. We don’t yet understand how much of this information is still accurate, or if everything needs to be relearned, retested, rediscovered.”
Simon seemed content. “We are ready, whatever the answer. If your Lord Rahl intends to create a new golden age, then all of this magic can serve humanity.”
* * *
Bannon basked in the attention, although one person could handle only so much feasting and dancing. He took a moment to marvel at all that had happened to him in the past month. Despite the horrific ordeals he had endured, the young man realized he now had the life he always wanted.
While battling the selka or the dust people, even facing the Lifedrinker himself, he had been sure he would die. But afterward, the colors of those memories shone bright and vibrant—and they were stories that he could tell until he was a gray-bearded old man, preferably with a wife, many children, and many more grandchildren. In fact, he already wished he could relive some of those adventures.
And love! Here at Cliffwall he had discovered the joys of three beautiful women who adored him and schooled him in the ways of physical pleasure. Though at first Bannon had been embarrassed and awkward, he was an eager student, and now his nights were filled with warm skin and sensuous caresses, whispered laughter and shining eyes. How could he choose a favorite among them? Fortunately, Audrey, Laurel, and Sage were happy to share.
For so many years, he had been trapped in a nightmare, and now he lived a dream that he could never have imagined.
After the late celebrations, Bannon wandered through the Cliffwall complex, searching for the three young women. They had rewarded him most enthusiastically after his triumphant return, but now Victoria had gathered all of her memmers, giving them some very important task that took all of their attention and energy. The lovely young women had expressed their sadness that they couldn’t tend to Bannon, claiming other urgent priorities. He hadn’t seen them in two days.
Missing Audrey, Laurel, and Sage, Bannon searched the library rooms, the dining hall, and the acolytes’ quarters, casually looking for them. He found one of the other memmers, a middle-aged man named Franklin with large, owlish eyes and a square chin. “Victoria took them outside, somewhere in the Scar,” Franklin explained. “I think she found the answer they were looking for, something to help the valley return to life.”
Bannon gave a solemn nod, not wanting to seem desperate. “It must be important work, then. I’ll leave them to it.” He went off to his own quarters, hoping they would come back soon.
* * *
Thistle was still content to sleep curled on the sheepskin on the floor in Nicci’s chamber. “I was worried about you out there,” she said. “I didn’t want to lose you. I already lost everyone else.”
Nicci’s brow furrowed. “I promised I’d come back. You should have believed me.” While the seamstresses repaired her black travel dress, yet again, she had changed into a comfortable linen gown.
“I did believe you,” the girl said, her eyes bright. “I knew you would kill the Lifedrinker. And now I’m ready to go see the rest of the world with you. Will we leave soon?”
Nicci considered the long journey ahead, the unknown lands and the many possible hazards. “You have been through a lot already, and our journey will be full of hardships. Are you sure you want to go?”
On the sheepskin, Thistle sat up in alarm, drawing her scuffed knees to her chest. “Yes! I can hunt, I can help you find the trail, and you know I can fight.”
“Someday, people will rebuild Verdun Springs,” Nicci said. “Don’t you want to go back there? It’s your home.”
“It’s not my home. I lost my home a long time ago. I won’t live long enough to see the valley green and lush again, so I want to see what other places are like. You’re my new home now.” She scratched her mop of hair. “When you leave, I’m going with you again.”
Amused by her determination, Nicci readied herself for bed and lay back on her own blanket. “Then I don’t think I could stop you.” She pulled the blanket over herself, released a hint of magic to snuff out the lamp, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER 57
After the draining, skeletal touch of the Lifedrinker, Nicci slept deeply, plunging into odd dreams.
Though asleep, she ranged far … and she wasn’t herself. Her mind and her life rode in another body, traveling along on powerful, padded paws. Her muscles thrummed like braided wires as she raced through the night, her long tail lashing behind her, pointed ears cocked and alert for the faintest sounds of prey. The slitted pupils of her gold-green eyes drank in the starlight.
She was Mrra. They were bonded on a deep inner level. Panther sisters. Their blood had intermingled. Nicci had not sought this strange contact in her dreams, but neither did she fear it. She prowled the night, part sorceress, part sand panther. And more.
Lying on the hard pallet inside her chambers, Nicci stirred, twitched, then dropped into a deeper sleep.
Mrra was out hunting, and Nicci hunted with her. They roamed together, and joy sang through her powerful feline body. They raced along for the sheer pleasure of it, not because they were in a hurry. Although hunger gnawed at her belly, she was not starving and she knew she would find food. She always did. With her panther senses, Mrra could catch any scent of prey on the wind, hear the movement of a rodent, see any flicker in the deepest shadows.
And she was free! No longer a prisoner of the handlers. She was wild, as a sand panther was meant to be.
Mrra flowed through the night, exploring the edge of the Scar, which no longer smelled of the festering blight, sour and bitter magic, such as what she had experienced in the great city. This night, the Scar was quiet and Mrra sensed death and silence, but there would also be prey as creatures ventured back into the crumbling wasteland.
Mrra clung to her connection with Nicci. Throughout her life, the sand panther had been spell-bonded with her two sisters, cubs from the same litter, bound inexorably together by the wizard commander, and then turned over to the handlers for training.
Now Mrra’s sister panthers were dead, slain in combat—as they were meant to die. Nicci and her companions had killed them, the girl and the young male warrior, but Mrra held no hatred for what the others had done. In the troka, the spell-bonded panthers were meant to fight, just as they were meant to eat, breathe, and mate.
The big cat could not think far ahead, did not plan or envision things that might be. Nicci was her bonded partner now. A longing growl rumbled through her chest, and she hoped that she and Nicci could fight together again, side by side. They could tear apart many enemies, just as they had fought the giant lizards or against the Lifedrinker.
Mrra bounded onto a slickrock outcropping, where she sat on her haunches under the moonlight, staring across the landscape. Narrowing her golden eyes, twitching her tail, she sniffed the air. Her whiskers vibrated. The hunt was just like a battle, and every day was a battle. Her troka had escaped from the great city after killing their handlers, and then the three sister panthers raced into the expansive wilderness and the life they were meant to have.
All three of them had been free, for a time.
As Nicci stirred in her sleep, the dreams became more vivid, the memories more precise.…
Violent experiences, razor-sharp recollections of razor-sharp pain. She had been young, and her li
fe was full of mirth and joy as she played with her sister cubs. Then the wizard commander had seized them, forcibly holding the young cubs down while he brought out white-hot irons tipped with spell symbols. Mrra had thrashed, and raked the handlers with her claws, but the leering wizard commander had thrust the searing brand against her hide, burning the symbols into her skin, sizzling the tawny fur. The smoke of burned flesh and hair rose up in a thick cloud, stirred by her feline shriek.
The agony had been unforgettable, and Mrra’s pain resonated with the pain of her sister panthers bonded to her, as the spells braided the three into a troka so that they shared their minds, their thoughts, and their blood.
That was just the beginning. Once the three panthers were linked by the first blazing symbol, the wizard commander branded more spells into their flesh. And because the three panthers were connected, each one experienced the hideous pain again and again, until their minds were as marred as their beautiful bodies.
After the cats recovered, the handlers began to train them, using hard and painful lessons that involved blood, prey, fear—and more blood. As she and her sister panthers grew stronger, though, Mrra learned to enjoy the tasks. She became faster, deadlier. Her troka became the best killers the great city had ever seen.
Mrra’s existence became the hunt and the kill. She learned to attack and slay humans inside a gladiatorial coliseum. Some of the prey were terrified and helpless: they ran, but to no avail. Others fell to their knees, weeping and shuddering as the panther claws tore them apart. Some victims were fearsome human warriors, and those provided the best sport, the most challenging battles. Other prey wielded magic, but the symbols branded onto Mrra and her sister panthers deflected the magical attacks.
She remembered the roar of the crowd, the cheers, the howls of bloodlust. With blood-spattered fur, Mrra would lift her head up to the bright sun, and glare at the stands teeming with spectators. She flashed her long, curved fangs and let out her own victorious roar. She remembered the heat of the sun and sand, the taste of the hot blood as it gushed out of a torn throat. Mrra remembered killing victims. Killing warriors. Just killing.