“Not flying, but with magic, I will control the air and change your weight. I can move you.”
Without further ado, she released her power and yanked Nathan up high enough to grasp the crossbeam; then she did the same for Bannon. Not expecting it, the young man flailed and nearly dropped his sword, but managed to grab on to the beam without losing Sturdy.
Thistle had scooted her way to the window. The two men, balanced on the crossbeams overhead, reached down, and Nicci jumped, stretching out her hands as ten of the staggering monsters lurched into the dwelling. Bannon and Nathan deftly caught her and swung her up.
Dust people filled the confined home, reaching up toward the open ceiling, but they could not get to their four potential victims overhead.
At the open window, Thistle looked back and stared at the empty corner that had just swallowed her aunt and uncle. Tears streamed down her narrow face, carving tracks through the dust there.
“Climb out onto the roof,” Nicci said. “We should be safe up there.” Just then, the base of the home’s mud-brick walls shifted and started to crumble, as if the hardened structure were beginning to dissolve back into dust. “Quickly!”
Thistle scampered through the window and swung herself onto the tiled roof, while Bannon and Nathan followed with as much urgency. Sliding along the wooden crossbeam behind them, Nicci looked down to see more dust people rising from the broken floor. The walls shivered with rapidly spreading cracks.
She realized that even the rooftop would not be a place of safety.
The group sat gasping for breath out in the open night air and heard the hollow hiss of an army of dust people plodding through the streets of Verdun Springs.
Thistle’s entire home began to collapse beneath them. One wall sank down, destabilizing the roof, and loose clay tiles clattered like broken teeth to the ground. Bannon tried to keep his balance, but slipped and scrabbled as tiles broke under him. He was able to snag a wooden anchor beam, and Nathan grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him back up to temporary safety.
Nicci stood at the roof’s apex, searching for any possible escape. The orphan girl ran to the other end of the roof and pointed to an adjacent stone structure, a square, flat-roofed shop building made of quarried blocks rather than mud bricks. “Over here! This looks safer!”
The gap between the buildings was six feet wide. But with desperation, and a possible nudge of magic, the four ran across the crumbling tile roof, jumped, and all landed on the flat, open roof of the stone building.
Behind them, Thistle’s home collapsed, the brick walls crumbling, the roof sagging inward. The girl watched in dismay.
Standing on the roof of the much sturdier building, Bannon stomped with his boot. “At least this roof is solid beneath our feet, made of old wood, reinforced. And these stone-block walls won’t collapse so easily.”
Nathan pointed out an opening in the roof, which led down into the main shop below. “But those creatures could follow us, climb onto the roof.”
Pursuing them, the dust people tore open the unlocked door below and burst into the abandoned shop. They made their inexorable way upward, climbing the stairs to the open roof.
“We are still trapped.” Nicci scanned toward the edge of town, the rocky bluffs and canyons on the outskirts of Verdun Springs. “If we can get out there away from town, in among the bluffs, the dust people won’t be able to attack from underground. Maybe we can defend ourselves in the stone outcroppings.”
“It’s much too far,” Bannon said from the edge of the rooftop, swallowing hard.
“And those things are much too close,” Nathan added.
“They are slow-moving … unless they ambush us,” Nicci said.
With gasping, scratching sounds, two dust people clambered to the top of the stairs and emerged onto the shop roof, climbing through the trapdoor. With a swift kick, Nicci knocked both stick figures back down the steps, but more cadavers surged up the interior stairs.
Nicci looked around into the night and realized that the rest of the town had fallen silent. There were no more screams.
“Are we the only ones left?” Thistle whispered.
Nicci did not give any excuses. “Yes. But we will get out of here.”
They watched in dismay as two recently inhabited brick buildings also sagged and collapsed as the Lifedrinker’s magic turned the brick structures into dust.
Angry, Nicci focused on the rugged bluffs outside of town—a place of sanctuary where the solid ground would protect them. Better than here.
“Be ready,” she said. “I’m going to fuse the dust like I did before. I’ll make another path for us to run on, and it won’t last long. And the other dust people will come after us as swiftly as they can. We just have to be faster.” She turned to the young girl. “Can you do it?”
“Of course I can,” Thistle said. “Say when.”
Nicci gauged the most direct path to the bluffs outside of town. She gestured. “That way. Don’t look back. Don’t stop for anything—just run. I’ll make the ground hard, but we still have to jump off the roof.”
“I would make a comment about my old bones,” Nathan said, “but now isn’t the time.”
Bannon pointed down. “I’m more worried about those old bones.”
Nicci unleashed her magic and marked a path. With Additive Magic she created a solid structure, melding the sand and dust into flat, hard islands. Stepping-stones, since she did not have enough strength left to solidify the whole area. This would be enough. She made one appear, then another.
“Go!” she shouted. “I’ll make the rest along the way.”
Without hesitation, Thistle leaped off the roof and landed in the soft dirt. Before the dust people could respond, she sprang onto the nearest hardened stepping-stone, then jumped to the next, running ahead. Nicci dropped after her, following close behind so she could reach out and keep creating the path as fast as the girl could run.
Nathan and Bannon tumbled down after them. By now, some of the dust people realized what their intended victims were doing, and the sticklike mummies streamed around the remaining town structures. Two dry cadavers rose up to the left of Thistle, dodging the hardened sand. Seeing this, Nicci reacted with an angry snarl and thrust with a blast of air, which smashed the dust people to splinters of bone and dried flesh.
But more came.
Nicci and the girl ran toward the rock outcroppings, with Bannon and Nathan close behind. They fled the abandoned town. When they finally reached the hard rocks, Thistle scrambled up the outcropping, finding hand- and footholds as she climbed higher away from the dust people. The other three followed her, crawling up the pocked bluff walls until they reached the relative safety of a solid outcropping.
Thistle didn’t want to stop. “I know a way, follow me. If we go deeper into the canyons, they’ll never find us.”
Together, they fled into the night. Climbing higher into the rocks, Nicci glanced over her shoulder in time to see the last of the brick buildings collapse into dust. Then even the stone buildings began to shift as the ground underneath melted away and swallowed them. Soon enough, all sign of Verdun Springs had vanished forever.
CHAPTER 39
Even terrified and in shock, Thistle knew her way through the dark wilderness. Moving solely on adrenaline, she guided them by starlight along smooth slickrock ledges farther into the canyons, far from the reach of the dust people. They were all too exhausted and shaken to engage in conversation. The girl was obviously struggling to absorb what she had just been through, but she survived with a furious lightning-bolt determination that Nicci admired.
Finally, the companions reached the top of the bluffs, high above any threat from the Lifedrinker’s minions, and Thistle squatted on a flat rock under the stars. Her thin legs and knobby knees stuck up in the air; her shoulders slumped. She rested her hands on her patchwork skirt and just stared into the empty distance.
Nicci stood beside her. “I believe we are safe now. Thank y