Nicci forced herself to move three more steps, and the Lifedrinker did not retreat. He seemed to grow larger, swollen with dark energy, like a man-shaped pustule about to burst from its own evil.
The twisted, festering dust people surged closer. Bannon threw himself between Nicci and the mummified attackers. “I’ll clear the way!” He lopped off a desiccated arm at its elbow, then sliced off the head of a second creature. The skin-covered skull rattled onto the blasted ground, its bared teeth still clacking and snapping.
With the oustretched palm of his other hand, the young man shoved another grasping creature, knocking it back into two oncoming foes. Though by now he looked like a greatly aged man himself, Bannon swung and chopped with his sword, splintering ribs, separating shoulders, cleaving body cores. “Complete your mission, Sorceress! Kill the Lifedrinker!”
Nicci could feel herself withering with age and weakness, second by second. She remembered an old crone she had seen long ago in Tanimura hobbling through a market at a snail’s pace, as if each step required careful planning and then a rest afterward. Now, Nicci understood how that felt. Her bones were brittle, her joints swollen and aching, the skin on her arms dry and shriveled.
With a snarl, the sand panther also threw herself upon the dust people, shredding the husks of the Lifedrinker’s victims as if they were no more than straw and kindling. Mrra’s curved fangs ripped the reanimated corpses into scraps of bone and dried flesh.
Behind the dust people, enlarged scorpions moved with angular arachnid speed. In a flash of tawny fur, the big cat dodged the venomous stingers, then bounded onto a rock, leading several scorpions away. When one of the lashing stingers was about to pierce Mrra’s hide, Bannon swung his sword to amputate the segmented tail. Then he skewered the scorpion’s hard shell and flung the dying creature into two oncoming dust people.
Snarling, Mrra lunged back into the fray as more desiccated corpses closed in on Nicci, who was fighting her way closer to the Lifedrinker.
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.