Nicci felt a chill as she recalled Red’s words. “Maybe that’s why we’re here.”
“We will do exactly that, child,” Nathan said, “if it’s within our power.”
They worked their way along the widening arroyo and around the bluffs to where the last line of trees had died and the creeks had long since dried up. Thistle gestured proudly ahead. “This is my village.”
Nicci, Nathan, and Bannon stopped to look. They were not impressed.
Verdun Springs had obviously been a much larger town once, thriving at the intersection of imperial roads, forest paths, and commercial routes that led into the fertile farmland and trading villages deep in the valley. But the cluster of low mud-brick buildings had retracted into a squalid settlement, as if the population had dried up as well as the landscape.
Dust skirled along the streets. Rocks had been dumped in piles next to a building. A cart with a broken wheel—and no horse to draw it—leaned against the rubble mound. Countless empty buildings were covered with dust, some of them falling apart.
Nicci counted no more than twenty people toiling under the harsh sunlight. They wore frayed clothes and floppy hats woven from dry grass. Several men were working around the town’s well. One man lowered himself by a rope down into the stone-walled shaft. “Keep digging! If we go deep enough, we’re sure to find clear water again.” Others tugged on a second rope attached to a pulley, drawing up a bucket that held only mud and dirt.
To announce their arrival, Thistle let out a loud, shrill whistle. The man at the well looked up, and the other haggard people stopped to stare. Thistle called out, “This is my uncle Marcus—I told you about him. Uncle, this woman is a sorceress, and the old man is a wizard, but he doesn’t have any magic.”
“I still have my magic,” Nathan corrected. “It’s just not accessible at the moment.”
“The other one is named Bannon,” Thistle continued. “I don’t know what he can do.” The young man frowned in annoyance.
Marcus was a skinny man with dark brown hair going to gray and a bristly beard. His shirt was splattered with mud from helping at the well; he wore a faded, scuffed leather vest. “I welcome you to Verdun Springs, strangers, but I have little hospitality to offer. None of us does.”
“I brought lizards!” Thistle said.
“Why, then we can have a feast.” Marcus smiled. “You always bring more than your share, Thistle. Our family will eat well tonight—and so will our guests.”
Aunt Luna also introduced herself, a dark-skinned woman in a drab skirt with a scarf of rags tied around her head. Though faded now, the scarf had once been bright red. In front of her home Luna had been tending large clay planters, turning rich, dark dirt fertilized with human night soil. Each planter held a splash of green vegetables. Luna wiped her hands on her skirts and tousled the girl’s mop of hair. “We may even find some vegetables that are ready. Better to eat them as soon as they’re ripe than let the Lifedrinker have them.”
Thistle sniffed. “As long as the vegetables are in the pots, the Lifedrinker can’t touch them. He can’t reach through the planters.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t try hard enough,” said her aunt, adjusting the drab red head scarf.
The villagers muttered. The Lifedrinker’s name seemed to fill them with dread.
“We’re glad you could come,” said Marcus, leading them down the main street. “If you visited any of the other towns nearby, you’d find them all empty. Verdun Springs is all that remains. The rest of the people went away, or just … disappeared. We don’t know.” He wiped dust from his forehead.
“Why didn’t you pack up and leave?” Nathan asked, gesturing around at the desolation of the village, the drying well, the dusty streets. “Surely you could find a better place to live than this.”
“Someday this will be a lush valley again, as it was a decade ago. We know how beautiful it can be,” Luna said, and the few villagers next to her nodded.
Thistle beamed. “I can only imagine it.”
Luna said, “I’ve urged my husband to pack up and go into the mountains. We hear there may be other towns up and over the ridge, even an ocean if you walk far enough west.” She heaved a great sigh. “An ocean! I can’t remember so much water. At the time when Thistle was born, there was a lake in the valley, before the Scar spread that far.”
“We won’t leave.” Marcus brushed dried mud from his leather vest. “We will eke out our existence day by day.” He squared his shoulders and added with great pride, “We are hardy people.”
“Hardy?” Nicci raised her eyebrows, thinking that “foolhardy” was a better description.
CHAPTER 37
When night fell, Nicci and her companions sat around a fire pit outside of Marcus and Luna’s home, which was built from mud bricks. The house was spacious and cool, with a large central room, wooden beams across the open, airy ceiling, and small high windows below a clay tile roof. The large home reflected a more prosperous time.
Sitting outside in the warm dusk as they prepared for the evening meal, Nathan and Bannon told the adults the story of their journeys, and Nicci explained about Lord Rahl’s new golden age, though it was clear that neither Marcus nor Luna took hope.
“We can barely find enough water to survive,” said Marcus, “and our food is rapidly dwindling. As I told you, the other towns that once filled this valley twenty years ago are silent and dead.” He pressed his hands together, hunched his shoulders, and looked at Nicci. “I am glad to hear of the overthrow of tyrants, but can your Lord Rahl come to our aid? The Scar keeps growing.”
Nicci narrowed her eyes. “We are here. Now. But we need to know more about the Lifedrinker.”
Worry lines seamed Nathan’s face. “I am not convinced how much assistance I can offer, Sorceress—at least until we get to Kol Adair.”
Thistle sat cross-legged in the dust next to Nicci as she cleaned the fresh lizards for dinner. “Kol Adair? That’s far away.” The girl used her little bloody knife to skin another of the lizards, inserted a stick through the body cavity, and handed it to Bannon, so he could roast it over the low cook fire in the pit. Somewhat queasy, the young man lowered the carcass over the coals, and soon the flesh began to bubble and sizzle.
Bannon wiped a hand across his mouth while turning the stick over the cook fire so the lizard didn’t burn. “How fast is the Scar growing?”
“In twenty years, the entire valley died away, and the devastation continues to spread,” Luna said. “We are one of the last villages on the outskirts.”