Thistle’s honey-brown eyes went wide at her reaction. Bannon looked around in confusion and saw the expression on Nathan’s face. “W-What happened? What’s the matter?”
Nathan slid one of the old, damaged books across the table toward them. “A bow made from a dragon’s rib is an extremely potent weapon, and you are indeed a powerful sorceress to wield it, but that is only part of what the magic requires to destroy Victoria. There is more…” He slowly shook his head. “The price is much greater than we knew.”
He opened the stained volume to the pages that Mia had restored with magic. He touched the words with his extended finger. “Read the ancient text yourself, Sorceress. Draw your conclusions.” His voice grew much quieter. “The words leave no room for interpretation.”
Mia stared at the lines, as if she hoped the letters would change. She slumped heavily into a chair.
Bannon stood straight and determined. “No matter the price, we have to stop Victoria,” he blurted out. “After what she did to those poor girls…”
Nathan’s azure eyes bored into Nicci as he explained. “In order to kill Life’s Mistress, not only must you use a bow made of dragon bone, but the arrow itself has to be tipped with the necessary poison—a poison that can sap all vitality from life.”
“What poison?” Thistle asked.
Nicci looked down at the page and read the words herself even as the wizard recited, “The loss of a loved one.” He drew a deep breath. “No matter how sharp the arrow is, or how strong the bow might be, in order to kill Victoria, the arrowhead must be coated with the heart’s blood of someone that the archer loves, someone the archer kills. And we have already established that you must be the archer, Sorceress.”
Bannon and Thistle both gasped, and Mia slumped in her seat, her shoulders shaking. Nicci felt deep cold rush through her as she read the spell again, grasped what it said. “This is not acceptable.”
Before she could respond, a distant crack resonated through the stone-walled chamber and rumbled through the corridors. Cliffwall scholars hurried down the hall, running to investigate. An old librarian with a long white beard scuttled past the chamber door, his eyes wide with alarm. “The outer wall! Victoria’s vines are attacking the plateau defenses.”
Followed by the others, Nicci bolted out of the chamber and rushed among the panicked scholars through passageways to the outer wall of the plateau. Thistle ran faster, racing ahead to where a frantic crowd tried to barricade the opening that had been breached by writhing, murderous vegetation. Men and women frantically hauled crates and stone blocks from other rooms, any obstacle to block the passage from the intrusion.
Outside, thick, thorny vines from the explosive primeval jungle had climbed the cliff like an invading army. Tendrils and tentacles thrust into cracks in the rock, pushing, prying, breaking open the defenses. The vines had now burst through the outer chambers previously sealed with stone blocks. The wooden bars the defenders had initially mounted in place had now grown into huge writhing thickets that shoved open the temporary barricade, and the broken stone blocks lay strewn in the hall. Wild vegetation spewed into the formerly impervious archive complex.
Mia cried out in dismay when she saw the infestation of dangerous growth. Thistle dodged and danced away from the grasping vines and branches that surged into the corridor. A whipping tendril scratched her skin, but she slapped it away and scuttled out of reach.
Nathan had not brought his own sword, but Bannon leaped to the attack, using his blade to hack the whipping vines and branches. One woody appendage snapped back and slammed hard against the side of his head, stunning him. The young man reeled and his knees began to buckle.
Nathan rushed in to grab his protégé, and pulled him to safety before the vines could lunge for him. Bleeding from the side of his head, Bannon groaned and dropped his sword with a metallic clatter on the stone floor. Nathan dragged him farther out of reach so that he could check his injury.
Mia, left staring appalled at the horrific growth, did not move quickly enough. Before she could dodge out of the way, a thorn-studded vine lashed around her neck, coiled, and tightened. The sharp spikes plunged into her throat, digging through flesh and blood vessels. Gouts of crimson sprayed out as she screamed and struggled.
Whirling, Nathan howled, “No!” He lunged toward Mia to save her, instinctively lashing out with his hand to summon a blast of magic … but nothing happened, not even a flicker. He was helpless.
With an additional jerk and twist, the malicious vine snapped the young woman’s neck, then discarded her body against the curved wall.
Nicci knocked the frightened scholars away as she pushed forward, desperate to find something powerful enough to block this incursion. Ignoring Bannon’s groans and the wizard’s outcry of grief and fury, Nicci thought of how she had manipulated the fused stone down in the vaults, reshaping and moving the rock. Now she called upon the structure of the plateau walls, reshaped the stone as if it were soft candle wax to create an impenetrable curtain across the opening the plants had broken through. Under her guidance, the re-formed slickrock flowed down and severed the writhing vines and branches, sealing off the outer wall of the plateau. The stone solidified, restoring the integrity of the cliff, walling off the incursion of deadly plants. They were safe. For now.
Sobbing, Nathan had dropped to the floor, pulling the dead young scholar against him. Mia bled from the brutal gashes in her neck, soaking the wizard’s borrowed robes with red, and her head lolled. He groaned. “She was so smart, so loyal. Dear spirits, if not for Mia we wouldn’t have found the other part of the spell. Otherwise, all our efforts would have failed. It’s because of her that we have a chance.” He looked up at Nicci with reddened eyes. “We have a chance.”
Nicci assessed the shocked and frightened scholars. She had no illusions about how difficult this terrible enemy would be. “We need the necessary poison for the arrow.” But the task seemed impossible, and dread weighed heavily in the pit of her stomach. The heart’s blood of someone she loved? Her voice was cold. “But I love no one.”
It was a bleak statement, but true. Her one true love, the only man she would ever love, was Richard Rahl. She had given him her heart with a passion that had now transformed, but had never waned. At first, that love had been dark—the wrong kind of love—but Nicci had an epiphany. She had grown and learned her lesson, eventually accepting that Richard would only ever love Kahlan. Those two belonged together in a special way and could never be separated, should never be separated.