Bannon shouted in dismay. “Laurel, no! Audrey, Sage!”
Astonishingly, when the forest women tossed Simon’s butchered corpse onto the barren ground beyond the fringe of the expanding forest, his blood was like a magical elixir, a potent life-giving spell. As the red droplets soaked into the dead soil, new roots writhed about like earthworms. Shoots of green grass and unfurling leaves lifted upward to form a carpet in the fading shape of a man.
When the young women laughed, it came as the sound of a storm in thick trees.
Nathan and Bannon drew their swords. Nicci stood ready to release her magic if the vicious women lunged after them. “Beware, the attack could come from anywhere.” But the three acolytes did not step beyond the edge of the growing forest.
Even Nicci did not expect what they all saw next. Weeds, vines, and thorny brambles continued to erupt from the spilled blood in the pattern of Simon’s body, but in the thicker jungle, trees rustled, and the undergrowth backed away as if bowing to a powerful lord. The three deadly forest women respectfully moved apart as a larger form emerged from the forest: a throbbing female titan with skin like bark, leaves, and moss, a naked body with enormous swaying breasts, the broad waist and hips of a gigantic oak, and hair made of vines and ferns. Her face no longer carried even a hint of matronly kindness.
Victoria … or, what had once been Victoria.
The fearsome forest woman towered above the gathered people from Cliffwall, and her voice boomed out. “This is my forest, and you are no longer welcome here—nor in this world.” She focused her startling, burning eyes on Nicci, who returned the gaze defiantly, not backing down. Victoria added in a mocking tone, “For I am Life’s Mistress.”
Branches cracked. Leaves and branches swelled, and the explosive outpouring of growth continued to spread.
CHAPTER 62
Nicci did not like to retreat under any circumstances, but the insane jungle was too unpredictable and could easily tear the Cliffwall scholars to pieces. As well as Thistle.
She pulled the girl to safety, away from the thrashing forest. The scholars’ faces were filled with despair after the slaughter of Simon and the monstrous appearance of Victoria and her acolytes, but she shouted, driving them into action, “Get back!”
Nathan and Bannon helped to herd the Cliffwall people away from the boundary of the deadly jungle, and the others needed little encouragement to run.
Nicci glared at the swollen, transformed figure of Victoria. The green female thing had an uncontrolled, hungry magic similar to Roland’s—and just like Roland, Victoria would have to be stopped. For this, Nicci suspected they might need a weapon even more powerful than the Eldertree acorn.
And the Sorceress must save the world. Maybe she wasn’t done here yet after all.
As the panicked scholars fled back to the uplift of the plateau, Bannon withdrew into a sense of sick denial after what he had seen the three young women do to Simon. “Sweet Sea Mother, they were so beautiful, so loving and kind. I loved them, and they loved me.”
“They loved you so much, they wanted your blood,” Nicci said. “They would have torn you apart, but Simon paid the price for you.”
Bannon shook his head. “We have to save them! They’re entangled in an evil spell, but I know their hearts are good. We can bring them back, I know it.”
Nicci frowned at him. “Don’t delude yourself with unrealistic hopes, Bannon Farmer. Those things are no longer the women you knew. We will certainly have to kill them.”
The young man stared at her, his mouth open in disbelief. “No, it can’t be. My life was happy, almost perfect for once.…”
With an understanding nod, the wizard squeezed his shoulder. “Sometimes outward beauty only masks a darkness inside.”
When they finally climbed back up the slope and returned to the hidden archive inside the plateau, Nathan strode directly toward the large library chambers, wasting no time. “Once again, we need to learn about a corrupt, uncontrolled spell,” he said, “so we can fight it.”
Nicci turned Thistle about, leading her toward their quarters. “I will destroy her, just as I destroyed the Lifedrinker.”
The girl hung her head, sniffling. “I just wanted to see my valley restored, but that jungle is almost as bad as the Scar.” Her voice hitched as if her throat were full of tears.
“We must eradicate both threats and help the valley return to normal, without being crushed by evil masters,” Nicci said. “That is what Lord Rahl stands for.” She touched the girl’s curly mass of hair, and Thistle looked up at her with complete faith. “That is precisely why we are here.”
“I know,” Thistle said.
* * *
With no clear leaders, the people of Cliffwall turned desperately to Nathan and Nicci for answers. The old wizard buried himself in the archives again, absorbing volume after volume, scroll after scroll, so that he could counteract the dark fecundity that “Life’s Mistress” had clumsily unleashed.
Mousy, dedicated Mia hovered by Nathan’s side, reading documents with lightning speed, tracing her fingertips over the handwritten lines. She could take in the gist of the text and cull out the important books she felt Nathan should read.
Nicci, though, decided to seek information in a more direct fashion. Because the memmers held the knowledge within their minds, she interrogated Victoria’s people face-to-face.
Marching into one of the classroom chambers where the memmers would recite their lessons, she faced them with her hands planted on the curve of her hips. “Victoria commanded you to search for fertility spells, horticulture magic, even restorative lore that could be applied to wildfire damage in forests. One of you must have recalled the dark spell that she used.” She narrowed her eyes, looking for an unexpected flush or a wary flinch among the memmers. “Someone pointed her to whatever incantation or blood magic she invoked. I need to know what it was.”
“Victoria wanted to save the valley and save us all,” said Franklin, blinking his owlish eyes. “She had only the best of intentions. We all wanted to help.”
“Best of intentions?” Nicci’s glare froze them as if she were a predator about to pounce. “You never learned the Wizard’s Second Rule.”
Gloria, a plump and earnest young memmer, frowned. Her lower lip trembled. “The Wizard’s Second Rule? What is that? Is it in the archives?”
“Any student of magical lore should know it. The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. Victoria proved exactly that. Rather than patiently waiting for nature to reclaim the valley, she unleashed even more dangerous magic, and now it is out of control. With her good intentions, Victoria may well have doomed us all, unless we can find a way to stop her.”
Gloria swallowed hard. “But how can we undo what she’s done?”
“First, we must understand the magic she used, the exact spell she triggered. Did one of you help her to find it?”
The memmers fidgeted uncomfortably in their memorization room. Franklin said, “She hoped one of us might recall something that we had committed to memory, but there were so many possibilities, none of them clear. She wanted to help the valley grow back faster.”
Nicci’s voice was sharp. “I can tell when you are lying.” They feared she was using some rare truth-sensing magic, but she did not need that. She could see their nervous twitches, their averted eyes, the sweat sparkling on their skin. She raised her voice into loud command. “Which spell did Victoria use? Tell me what blood magic she invoked to trigger that wild growth.”
Gloria flinched. “It was an ancient fecundity spell, one that could awaken the earth. It was in an obscure language we didn’t exactly know how to pronounce or interpret.”
Nicci straightened her back. “So she unleashed such a terrible spell without recalling how to say the words?”
“She knew,” Franklin said defensively. “We all knew. Memmers remember perfectly from generation to generation.”
Nicci pressed harder. “You are saying that what we sa
w out there in the Scar, that explosive deadly growth, was exactly what Victoria intended?”
The memmers were embarrassed. Franklin finally gathered the courage to answer. “We do remember some fertility spells, but we don’t know how to counteract them. Very few ancient wizards ever wanted to stop life, growth, and prosperity.”
“There were some reciprocal spells,” Gloria admitted, “but they are dim in our minds, relegated to minutiae. The details were not considered useful, and our ancestors already had so much to remember and preserve.”
“Write down whatever you remember, and I will study the information,” Nicci said.
Gloria went to a podium in their memorization room, on which an open tome rested on display. During their daily lessons, the acolytes often listened to a speaker, committing line by line to memory. Instead of reading aloud now, Gloria picked up a quill pen, dipped the sharpened end into an inkpot, and began to scratch out words on a scrap of paper. She paused, closed her eyes to summon the details, then wrote more words. She kept her hand on the paper. “This is the spell that Victoria used. I think.”
Franklin came forward to study Gloria’s letters, corrected one piece of punctuation, altered one word. The memmers gathered around, nodding as they proofread. Once they all agreed on the precise formula and the arcane words, they handed the paper to Nicci.
As she scanned the spell, most of the words were mere gibberish to her. “Nathan might be better informed than I.” She tucked the paper into the fold pocket of her dress, then extended a finger, scolding the memmers. “Ransack all the knowledge inside you. Find some way that we can fix the damage Victoria has caused.”
* * *
From the window alcove on the outer side of the plateau wall, Nicci gazed across the tortured valley, where a crimson sunset deepened like the blood of the sacrifices Victoria had shed. She had given the written spell to Nathan, who read with great eagerness, then deep concern.
“This is every bit as bad as I anticipated. Perhaps worse. The power invoked comes from a language even older than High D’Haran. It will be difficult for us to find a magic powerful enough to overturn it.”
“Richard did not send us out to solve simple problems,” Nicci pointed out.
“Of course. I just wanted you to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge.”
As the red-gold rays of dusk fell over the broad valley, she concentrated on the swarming forest at its core, the primeval jungle that glowed an unhealthy green.
Drawn by the view as well, Bannon joined her, gazing out with a forlorn expression. “First, all life was draining away in the world, and now there’s an unstoppable flood of life. How do we fight it?”
“We will find a way,” Nicci said. “And then I myself will destroy the woman who calls herself Life’s Mistress.”
“I want to do something, too,” Bannon said. “You and Nathan can study all the books to look for a solution. You both understand the magic and can read mysterious languages, but I’m just waiting here, feeling useless. Like I was when we waited for a weapon against the Lifedrinker.” He sighed in obvious frustration. “You admitted that I can be useful, Sorceress. Isn’t there something I could do?”
“Help the farmers harvest crops. Tend the flocks, work the orchards,” Nicci suggested. “Learn a skill, perhaps as a carpenter.”
Anger flashed across his face. “That’s not what I mean! There’s got to be some way to save Audrey, Laurel, and Sage.” His face was wrenched with helplessness. “I love them.”
“And they are hungry for you. Remember what they did to Simon.”
His expression grew steely. “We need to understand what is happening out there, Sorceress. You know I can handle myself. I’m going to go on a scout, and I’ll come back and tell you what I see.”
“That’s a foolish risk,” Nicci said.
“You’ve called me a fool before! I want to do this. Don’t try to stop me.”
“I cannot stop you, Bannon Farmer, but if you are going to expose yourself to such great and unnecessary danger, at least make certain you return with valuable information.”
He lifted his chin, relieved that she didn’t argue with him further. “I will.”
Looking long and hard at him, Nicci added in a softer voice, “And be careful.”
CHAPTER 63
Being surrounded by so many books and so much knowledge usually exhilarated Nathan. The secrets and stories contained in those soft, well-worn volumes had made his centuries of captivity a little more tolerable in the Palace of the Prophets. The Sisters’ huge library held countless tomes describing magic that Nathan could never use, thanks to the wards, webs, and shields woven throughout the palace architecture, not to mention the iron collar of his Rada’Han. Still, reading the legends, histories, even folktales had brought joy to his tedious existence.
When Lord Rahl’s star shift had made all books on prophecy useless and irrelevant, he had offered to let Nathan keep one small library for his own entertainment, perhaps even out of nostalgia, but the wizard soon decided that what he really wanted was not to bury himself in old archives but to go out and live his life, to write his own story. And that was exactly what he did.
He patted the mysterious leather-bound life book the witch woman had given him. Now he had other reading to do. Vital reading.
He let out a weary sigh as dutiful Mia brought him a new stack of volumes. “I have no idea what these contain, Wizard Rahl, but they look interesting.” Mia got directly to work, showing him a tome at random. Many of these new books looked waterlogged, scuffed, or tattered. “Somewhere in our archive we’ll find a way to stop Victoria. Cliffwall has every answer, if only we can find it.”
Nathan chuckled. “Are you suggesting the ancient wizards in the time of Baraccus and Merritt knew all there is to know?”
The studious woman’s brow furrowed as if he had questioned her reason for existence. “Why, of course! This is Cliffwall. All knowledge was placed here for safekeeping. All knowledge.”
He drew two fingers down his chin and gave her an indulgent look. “I’m glad you have such faith in the ancients.”
Mia nodded. “They were much more powerful than anyone alive now.”
“But if they had all that knowledge, then why did they fail?”
She responded with a stern look. “Just because knowledge exists, doesn’t mean people know how to use it.”
“Well, I wish I had your confidence, young woman.” Nathan peeled open the cover of the book he had chosen, frowning to see that the pages were swollen and rippled, as if they had been soaked in water and improperly dried. Some of the pages were torn, the ink smudged and unreadable. He brushed clumpy dust off the cover of the next book in the stack. “Where did these volumes come from? Did you dig them out of a hole?”
Mia looked embarrassed. “After the sorceress opened the sealed vault beneath the damaged tower, our laborers used picks and chisels to break into other previously inaccessible chambers. Some of the books had been partly fused into walls, others buried under rubble. No one has looked at them yet, but I wanted you to see them right away, in case they were important.”
He picked up a third book, trying to decipher the embossed symbols on the cover. “I thought the damaged tower contained only books on prophecy. I doubt they will help.”
“No, the prophecy sections were in the upper levels. In the final days of building Cliffwall, the ancient wizards were in a panic to finish, being hunted down by the forces of Emperor Sulachan. The lower vaults were piled with last-minute additions. No one has seen them except you, Wizard Rahl.”
“Then I am absolutely delighted by the opportunity, my dear.” He patted the empty chair beside him. “Would you help me study them? I only have two eyes, and together we could read twice as fast.”
Mia beamed. “I’d like that.” She sat beside him, chose a book at random, and began working her way through the smudged and faded letters.
* * *
Deep within the resurgent f
orest—which was her heart, her very soul—Victoria felt the magic of reawakened life pulsing through her … and, by extension, through everything she had made, the burgeoning life that came from the stillborn ground. The tortured Scar had been as painful to her as the stillborn baby that she and Bertram had so wanted to have.
But unlike her bloody and painful miscarriages, Victoria now had the power she had always longed to have: a woman’s power to create and nurture life. As proof, she needed only to look out at the flourishing new jungle she had created. The growth charged forth like a wild stampede, but Victoria didn’t want to control it, not at all. She wanted it to fill the valley, roll over the mountains, and sweep across the continent, pristine, primeval, and unstoppable.
Life would triumph over death. Her unquenchable victory would overtake all efforts to stop it. “Victory” … the very word was in her name. She was Victoria. She was Life’s Mistress. Within her, she had a power to rival the Creator Himself.
As she pondered her new role, thickets rose and swirled around her body. Thorny vines and flowers exuded a heady, hypnotic perfume. The trees grew so swiftly they swelled, shattered, and toppled over. And then even the splintered trunks hosted swarming worms and beetle grubs, as well as fungi and molds that churned the fallen tree into mulch, which became fertilizer for more life.
And yet more life.
Her acolytes, who wielded the same energy of vibrant fertility, had gone separately across the primeval jungle. They were stewards of the reawakened life now, nurturing the trees, the insects, the birds, and more. Victoria would see to that. The world would once again be pristine.
As Life’s Mistress, she would never be satisfied to merely return this valley to its former baseline, an exploited landscape with enslaved herds and rigidly defined croplands. Victoria understood now what her true role in the world was. All the generations of memmers and their preserved ancient lore had led to this. Victoria could not be content with memorization for its own sake; she had to find those powerful spell-forms, the maps of magic that would let her accomplish what was necessary.