As he roamed the grassy headlands, he headed back toward the cliff edge to watch the white waves roll in. He wondered who Nicci was, what drove her. Did she think about him, too? Bannon pondered what he could do to make her notice him, to consider him a worthwhile traveling companion, instead of just a coincidental one.
Bannon peered over the verge and watched rooster tails of spray leap into the air. A flash of color caught his attention, wedged into the mossy sandstone just down the cliff, and he knelt to see a clump of unusual flowers growing within arm’s reach. The blossoms were vibrant, the deepest and most intense violet he had ever seen, shot through with veins of crimson and a central splash of yellow stamens. They had thick fleshy stems and swordlike green leaves.
The beautiful flowers gave him an idea, a perfect idea. Beautiful flowers for a beautiful woman!
Bannon stretched out, extending his arm over the edge to reach the blossoms. He picked four of them—a bouquet. It was a small gesture, but perhaps Nicci would be grateful. Perhaps she would notice him.
He bounded back through the grasses, searching for his companions, and he was panting hard by the time he caught up with them. The breezes blew his ginger hair wildly around his head as he hurried up to Nicci.
When he extended the flowers, all his suave words were snatched from his mouth as if the wind had stolen them. He could only manage to blurt, “I found these for you.”
She frowned with a glimmer of annoyance, but when she looked at the flowers, her expression filled with interest. She narrowed her blue eyes and reached out to take one of the flowers from his bouquet, leaving him with the other three. She showed extreme care as she touched the stem with just her fingertips.
Bannon waited for her to smile with delight or nod in warm appreciation. He couldn’t remember whether he had ever seen her respond with a genuine smile.
“Where did you find these?” she demanded.
“Over by the cliff.” He pointed. “Growing in a cranny in the rock.”
“Such flowers are rare. I could have made use of them many times.” She looked over at Nathan.
The wizard’s eyes were wide with recognition. “Do you know what those are, Bannon Farmer?”
“Pretty flowers?”
“Deathrise flowers,” Nicci said, studying the one in her hand.
Bannon looked at the rest of his bouquet, confused.
“Deathrise flowers,” she repeated. “One of the most dangerous plants in existence. They are extremely hard to find, and valuable. Assassins would pay a king’s ransom for these four. But this is far more than we could ever use.” She held up the stem in her hand. “One will be more than sufficient.”
“What—what do you mean?” Looking down at the violet-and-crimson flowers, he felt his skin crawl.
“Do you expect to kill an entire city, my boy?” Nathan asked. “Or maybe just a village?”
Bannon blinked, still trying to grasp what they were telling him. “You mean they’re … poison?”
Nicci’s face smoothed in a fascinated smile as she rolled the thick stem in her fingers, careful not to touch the broken end. “The deathrise flower has many uses. From the petals one can concoct an ink so lethal that any victim who reads a message written with such ink will die a painful, lingering death. Consuming even one seed causes a horrible agony that has been described as swallowing mouthfuls of glass shards, then regurgitating them, and swallowing them all over again.”
Bannon’s stomach twisted into a knot. “I—I didn’t mean…”
Nicci continued, “Tinctures, extracts, and potions can be made from all parts of the deathrise flower. Emperor Jagang had his alchemists and apothecaries test the various mixtures on his prisoners of war.” She raised her eyebrows. “About five thousand died in those preliminary experiments. The camps for the test subjects became known as the Places of Screaming. Emperor Jagang pitched his tent nearby so he could drift off to sleep listening to that music.”
Bannon felt sick. He stood trembling, looked down at the other three deathrise flowers in his hand, afraid to move his fingers.
“Even touching the juice to your skin will cause rashes and boils to break out.” Nicci looked at the single flower she had kept, obviously impressed although not in the way Bannon had wanted. “I thank you very much. One never knows when such measures might be required.” She wrapped the flower carefully in a scrap of cloth and tucked it into her pack. “I am pleased with how you think.”
Embarrassment—and the fear that his hands and arms were about to burst into leper’s sores or swollen boils—rendered him speechless. He turned and bolted headlong into the wind, running toward the pine trees, intent on reaching the pond and the stream again. When he reached the weeds of the shore he flung the deathrise flowers as far as he could out into the water, then dropped to his knees, plunged his hands into the pond, and dug his fingers into the sand. He scrubbed and scrubbed his palms, his fingers, the backs of his hands, his wrists, all the way up his arms. He frantically tried to remember any place he had touched with the deathrise flower. He filled his cupped palms, and was about to splash water in his face, but he didn’t dare go near his mouth or eyes.
Even when his hands looked clean, he plunged them into the sand again, scrubbing and scrubbing. He scoured his skin a third time and a fourth, until even his fingertips were raw, his palms pink, his knuckles sore. Finally, he stepped away, breathing hard, still afraid that the poison had gotten inside him.
He swallowed. What more could he do? He would find no antidote here … if an antidote even existed.
Heart pounding, pulse racing, he struggled to regain his composure. Finally, he left the pond and ran to catch up with Nicci and Nathan.
* * *
At dusk, four dwarf deer crept out of the eucalyptus forest where they had rested in the tangled shadows throughout the day. They ventured forth, their delicate hooves stepping on twigs while they worked their way along a faint game trail.
Though there were few large predators here on the coastal headlands, the deer possessed natural caution on their journey to the freshwater pond where they drank each night at sunset. The deer approached the shore, uncertain and skittish. They took several steps, then paused, their ears flickering to detect any threat, then moved forward again. One hung back as a sentinel while the other three stepped to the pond’s edge.
The deer sensed something amiss. The water was smooth and clear as always, but they noticed, without comprehension, the glimmering silver shapes that drifted on the surface of the pond. Hundreds of the small fish that had darted like small mirror flashes in the last sunlight now floated belly-up like a stain on the water.
The deer struggled to understand what had changed. Frozen like statues in the forest, they waited for long minutes, but nothing approached, nothing attacked. Finally, one of the deer dipped into the water and drank. The next two joined her, drinking their fill. When it was his turn, the sentinel buck also drank, and the twilight shadows deepened around them.…
By the next morning numerous fish still drifted on the surface, though some of the bodies had begun to sink. On the shore, four dwarf deer also lay dead.
CHAPTER 21
They camped in the shelter of thick cypress. During the night, the maddening, mournful breezes died down, which allowed a thick fog to settle in. The cold wet swaths made the three miserable while they huddled near a small fire, adding more moist twigs in an attempt to keep the blaze going. Nicci used her magic to maintain the fire, but the flames gave out too little heat.
Nicci had never been overly concerned with her personal comfort, so long as she could function. Now that they’d been shipwrecked on the unknown coast, despite the unexpected rock cairn reaffirming their destination of Kol Adair, she could not guess how many miles they might need to walk before they found a settlement in this wild coastal wasteland.
Despite the solitude, Nicci reminded herself that this land, bleak and untamed as it was, was now part of the D’Haran Empire. Nicci wa
s doing what she had promised Lord Rahl, and she would, in fact, walk from one end of the world to the other for him, if that proved necessary. But neither she nor Nathan could continue their quest until they actually found a village or city.
Finally, morning brightened the murk, and Nicci stopped wasting effort to keep the useless fire going. “We should get moving. That will generate heat.”
Nathan used the tortoiseshell comb to untangle his long white hair. “I don’t know if even running will keep us warm enough.” He looked in disappointment at his moist and rumpled shirt. “I never realized how many ways I relied on my gift. A little internal magic could always keep me warm on a blustery, miserable day like this.”
Nicci shouldered her makeshift pack. “We won’t be any colder than we are now, and at least we’ll cover distance.”
Bannon squinted into the fog. “But can we see where we’re going?”
“We’ll see when we get there,” Nicci said.
Nathan tucked away his life book in the leather pouch and fastened the flap. “I doubt I can add much detail to my map today.”