Nicci said, “We can be attacked just as readily during the day.”
As they considered their choices, the dry, caked dirt stirred beneath them. Reacting quickly, Nicci pushed Thistle to safety and she herself sprang back as dark, desiccated hands reached out of the dust. Cracks spread apart in the ground, and dust people crawled up from below. Bannon yelled and raised his sword, running toward the attackers.
Nicci let magic boil into her hand. She had battled these things before. She released a surge of fire, igniting the nearest attacker before it could crawl entirely out of the cracked soil.
Jumping onto a flat rock for stability, Bannon swung his sword with a vicious sweep that decapitated three mummified men clad in dirt-encrusted rags. But even headless, the creatures still lunged forward, blindly grasping for victims. Dodging from rock to rock, Thistle ducked under the outstretched claws, and Bannon cleaved a cadaver’s torso in two, then hacked off its brittle legs at the knees.
Nicci released a focused hammer blow of wind that shattered the bones and dried sinews of another emerging creature, leaving it in a pile of broken debris half out of the ground. Another push of air knocked the unsteady dust people backward into the bubbling mud pits. The creatures fell into the roiling, churning cauldrons, where they thrashed and sank.
Thistle sprang onto the back of a desiccated creature that advanced toward Nicci from behind. The girl tugged at its shoulders and battered her fists onto its sticklike ribs, stabbed the dry body repeatedly with her knife. The mummified creature broke and fell to the dust.
As Nicci turned to thank her, another pair of dust people crawled up out of the ground, lunging toward Thistle with a clearly focused intent. One was a shriveled woman with a faded red head scarf wrapped around the tufts of wiry hair on her skull. The other, a man, wore the tattered remnants of a leather vest.
Thistle lifted her knife to swing at the new attack, but then she froze in horrified recognition. The dust people stumbled toward her, much too close, hooked hands grasping for the girl. “Aunt Luna? Uncle Marcus!”
Nicci recognized them as well, and she swept in, placing herself in front of the stunned girl. The creatures that had been her aunt and uncle wanted to drag Thistle back with them, but Nicci stood before them. “You can’t have her!” Leathery, cadaverous hands touched her arms, her black dress—and Nicci released a furious surge of magic, sparking fire within the inhuman remnants of Marcus and Luna.
The sudden fire burned a hot, purifying white, consuming the remains of the two in an instant. As they reeled away from Nicci, the pair fell into fine gray ash, dropping with a rushing sound that was almost a sigh. Thistle let out a despairing cry.
Panting heavily, the three stood together, poised for more attackers, but the Lifedrinker sent no more dust people after them. The battle was over as swiftly as it had begun. In the distance, they heard scuttling movement, a clatter of pebbles … not reanimated corpses this time, but other creatures—armored things with many legs that kept to the shadows.
Thistle clung to Nicci’s waist. “The Lifedrinker knows where we are. He is spying on us.”
“Are you sure we should keep going out there in the darkness?” Bannon asked. He could barely keep the quaver from his voice.
“It would be a waste to sacrifice ourselves now,” Nicci said. “Until we discover a way to cut off the Lifedrinker’s magic, we have seen enough. For now.”
They made good time retracing their steps toward the rising land at the north end of the vast dead valley, but it was long after dark when they reached the dying forests and remnants of trees in the foothills. The dry grass, dead weeds, and gnarled, leafless trees seemed welcoming by comparison. They were exhausted by the time they found a place to camp.
“At least we have enough wood to build a fire now,” Bannon said. “A very large fire.”
Still shaken from seeing the remnants of her aunt and uncle, Thistle brought several armloads of dry mesquite and made a pile at their chosen campsite. “It’ll be very bright and warm, but won’t the Lifedrinker be able to see such a big fire?”
Nicci used her magic to ignite the pile, and the bright fire crackled with intense flames and ribbons of aromatic smoke. “He knows full well where we are. Now at least we will be able to see any attack that comes.”
Bannon and Thistle hunkered close to the comforting flames. “Both of you sleep,” Nicci said. “I will keep watch.”
They bedded down, though they remained restless for many hours. As she sat alone, Nicci listened for sounds beyond the pop and crackle of the burning wood.
The Scar remained silent, an emptiness in the dark that seemed to swallow up sound as well as life. Nicci sensed some other presence out there, however, something prowling in the dying hills around them. Alert, she peered into the blackness beyond the firelight, but could see nothing, hear nothing. Yet she felt it … something strong and deadly.
Something hunting them.
CHAPTER 45
Surrounded by gifted scholars, Nathan found their dedication refreshing and inspirational. “If I had a thousand years with this grand library, I’d become the greatest wizard who ever lived,” he said with a good-natured but weary smile, as Simon brought him another stack of volumes.
“A thousand years…” said the scholar-archivist with a shake of his head. He arranged the selected volumes in careful stacks on Nathan’s cluttered study table. “I would like nothing more than to spend centuries reading, studying, and learning … but alas, I have only a normal life span.”
“That was one of the few advantages of being trapped inside the Palace of the Prophets, the webs and spell-forms that prevented us from aging,” Nathan said. He looked at the mountains of books brought to him for his review, stacked by subject, some of the passages marked with colorful strings or feathers to separate the pages. “But if the Scar continues to grow and grow, there may not be more than a normal life span left for any of us.”
Intent on searching for any useful information about the Lifedrinker, the Cliffwall students pored through book after book, scroll after scroll, highlighting any writings that might bear relevance. Nathan wanted to find the original spell Roland had used to fight his wasting disease, the spell that had transformed him into the Lifedrinker.
During his years in the palace, Nathan had become an extremely fast reader. Even though he’d had all the time in the world, he also had access to thousands and thousands of books, and even forever hadn’t seemed like enough time. He could skim a document as fast as he could turn the pages, and he could absorb several thick volumes in an hour.