Eventually, as if the ground swelled as it gained altitude, the land split into more deep canyons. Confident in where she was going, the girl wound them through the maze until Nicci, Nathan, and Bannon had no idea where they were or how they could ever retrace their steps. Even so, Nicci placed her faith in the girl.
As they traveled through one bright morning where the canyons widened and the rock walls broke into towering hoodoos that stood like eerie and misshapen sentinels, Nicci asked, “How old were you when your parents died?”
“I was very little,” Thistle said. “Back then, there were still many people in Verdun Springs. The Scar hadn’t spread to our town yet, but the Lifedrinker was dangerous even if he was far away. I remember my mother’s face … she was very beautiful. When I think of her, I think of green trees, wide fields, running water, and pretty flowers … a flower garden.” She laughed at the absurd idea of wasting garden space on mere flowers.
“As the Scar absorbed the valley, my parents would try to scavenge any crops they could still harvest. One time, they made an expedition to an almond orchard, because even if the trees were dead, there were still dried nuts to gather. My mother and father never came back.…” Thistle walked in silence for a long moment, leading the group around looming hoodoos. “The Scar might look dead, but some creatures are connected to the Lifedrinker, and he doesn’t just kill them. He changes them, uses them.”
“Like the dust people?” Nicci asked.
Thistle nodded. “But not just people. Also spiders, centipedes—and lice, terrible monstrous lice.”
Nicci felt a twist inside of her. “I hate lice.”
“Lice drink life as well,” Bannon said. “No wonder the wizard likes them.”
“What killed your mother and father?” Nathan asked.
“Scorpions—big scorpions had infested the almond trees, and when my parents came to harvest the nuts, the scorpions fell upon them, stung them. When Uncle Marcus and two other villagers went to look for them days later, they found my parents’ bodies, their faces all swollen from the stings … but even though they were dead, the Lifedrinker made them into dust people too. My parents attacked Uncle Marcus.”
Her words tapered off, and Thistle didn’t need to continue the story of what the villagers must have done to get away. “After that, I stayed with my aunt and uncle. They said they would take care of me, that they would watch over me.” Her voice was bleak. “Now they’re gone. Verdun Springs is gone.” She swallowed hard. “My world is gone.”
“And you are with us, child,” said Nathan. “We’ll make the best of it.”
Bannon pushed ahead. “Yes, we will—if we ever get to Cliffwall.”
Looking up at Nicci for reassurance, the orphan girl nodded. “We’ll be there by tomorrow.”
*
The next morning Thistle led them along the floor of a canyon whose rocky bottom looked as if it had suffered flash floods during storms, but not for some time. The sky closed in as the canyon walls rose higher and drew together, looking sheer and impenetrable.
The wizard frowned, trying to gain his bearings as the shadows lengthened. “Are you certain this isn’t a dead end, child?”
“This is the way.” Thistle trotted ahead.
The canyon narrowed, and Nicci felt uneasy and vulnerable, realizing this would be a perfect place for an ambush.
“It closes up,” Bannon said. “Look ahead—it’s a dead end.”
“No,” the girl insisted. “Follow me.”
She led them up to where the rock walls formed the end of a box canyon, leaving only what looked like a narrow crack of two mismatched slickrock cliffs. Thistle turned to the travelers, then rotated sideways and shimmied into the crack.
She vanished.
Nicci stepped forward to see that the crack was a cleverly hidden passageway that led through a narrow elbow in the blind wall. After inching her way along through the claustrophobic passage, Nicci saw light ahead.
The girl squirmed out and stepped into a widening canyon. Nicci joined her, and Bannon and Nathan emerged behind them. Nicci caught her breath.
They all drank in the view of Cliffwall.
CHAPTER 40
Past the bottleneck of the closed-in stone passageway, the hidden network of canyons on the other side of the towering barricade wall was a whole world cut off from the rest of the landscape. Steep-walled finger canyons spread out like outstretched hands cutting through the high plateau. Nicci and her companions absorbed the view. This place was a hidden, locked-away network of secret, sheltered canyons.
The main canyon through the cracked plateau was broad and fertile, cut by the sinuous silver ribbon of a stream that collected drips from numerous overflowing springs. Sheep grazed on the lush green grasses, and fenced fields were bursting with tall stalks of wheat and corn. Vegetable gardens crowded with squash and beans had been laid out in confined ledge niches that pocked the cliffs. Orchards grew along the streamside, many of the trees in blossom. Wooden hutches held beehives that added a faint hum to the air. Hundreds of people worked the fields, tended the flocks, climbed the canyon walls on wooden ladders. It was a thriving, prosperous society.
All along the cliffs that enclosed the canyons, large overhangs and alcoves created natural sheltered caves in which buildings had been constructed, clay brick and adobe buildings. Some of the natural grottoes held only two or three dwellings, while larger overhangs held a veritable city of adobe towers connected with walkways.
The opposite side of the canyon held a singularly enormous cave grotto, a yawning alcove that held imposing stone buildings with blocky fa?ades. The architecture had an air of ancient majesty. Nicci realized this must be the legendary wizards’ archive, only recently revealed.
Cliffwall was like a fortress in its huge, defensible alcove, stone-block structures five and ten stories high, massive square walls with defenses. A narrow, winding path chiseled into the cliff was augmented with knotted ropes and short ladders to grant access from the canyon floor to the yawning grotto above.
Once through the bottleneck into the canyon, Nathan tilted his head back and stared in awe, his mouth agape. “It reminds me of the Palace of the Prophets. Ah, I do miss the library there.”
Bannon displayed the same wide-eyed wonder Nicci had seen on his face when he was in the city of Tanimura. “Was the Palace of the Prophets really that big?” he asked.
Nathan chuckled. “Size is a relative thing, my boy. The cliffs and the overhang definitely make this look imposing, but the palace was at least ten times the size.”
“Ten times?” Bannon said. “Sweet Sea Mother, that can’t be possible!”
“No need for comparisons,” Nicci said. “Cliffwall is impressive enough, and it has the advantage of being intact. Perhaps we’ll find what we need to know about the Lifedrinker.”