The evil wizard jerked his hands, guiding his minions. More dust people crawled up from hiding places beneath the seared ground. For all the attackers that Bannon and Mrra had already savaged, twice as many now joined the fight.
Nicci didn’t have much time.
The Lifedrinker’s sunken gaze met her cold blue eyes. “Please…” he said. “I know I have caused so much harm. I see what I have done, but I cannot make it stop! I just wanted to live, wanted to stop the wasting disease from stealing the life inside me. I never wanted this curse.”
He raised both of his hands, clenched his clawlike fingers into hard, bony fists. His body swelled with dark ripples of energy, and Nicci felt a sudden flood of debilitating weakness that nearly drove her to her knees.
“I don’t know how to shut it off!”
Nicci said in a hoarse voice, “If you found the power within yourself to cause this, then you can find a way to stanch the flow, tie off the wound that is bleeding the world to death. Find it within your own soul.”
His voice was hollow with despair. “I drank my own soul long ago. All that remains of me is the need!” When he surged again, Nicci knew that the magic had entirely possessed him. The spell had become a living thing in its own right.
An overwhelming army of dust people closed in. More venomous scorpions clattered over the boulders, rushing toward Nicci.
Bannon fought with wild abandon. By now he was an old man with sparse gray hair, yet he still defended her with all his strength, giving the sorceress a chance to make her move. The sand panther also looked old, her fur showing spots of mange, but the branded spell-forms seemed to protect Mrra from the Lifedrinker’s deadly appetite.
Nicci herself exhibited many signs of age. The backs of her hands were a tangled map of veins marked with liver spots on skin that had been so creamy and perfect not long ago. Each step she took felt as if she were fighting against a wind of time, age, and weakness.
Behind her, dust people closed around Bannon, but he kept fighting, hacking, chopping them to pieces, even though there were too many. Mrra dove into the fray, trying to protect the swordsman, but a new army of scorpions flowed in, stingers poised and dripping.
Nicci took the final step and reached into her pocket. The Lifedrinker kept draining her magic, and she could not unleash wizard’s fire, could not so much as attempt any of her spells. He would only absorb them and then engulf her.
Nicci pulled out the throbbing Eldertree acorn and spoke through gritted teeth. “You. Will. Stop!”
The Lifedrinker swelled even more, looking at his creatures around him. Oddly, he cried as well, “It must stop!” With a surge of his magic, he stole more life from the world, squeezing last drops out of the air, out of the dust—out of the dust people. As he drained his own servants, ten of the mummified corpses twitched and then crumbled into blackened bone powder. The scorpions cracked, shattered, and fell into dust.
The Lifedrinker howled, squirming in the air, raising his hands, as if by triggering this last great call, he had accelerated a magical wildfire, and now a cyclone began to draw down into the endless pit that formed his lair. “Save me,” he begged.
Nicci took advantage of that one second of respite. “No. No one can save you, Lifedrinker.”
He whispered, “I … am … Roland.”
Nicci held out her palm, cupping the last acorn of the Eldertree, and released a simple burst of magic, gathering the air around her in what would otherwise have been a trivial effort. Instead of manipulating the wind to create fists of solid air against an opponent, she used the air to accelerate the acorn forward. The life-infused projectile sped through the air like a quarrel fired from a tightly wound crossbow.
The Lifedrinker screamed, and the acorn plunged into his cavernous mouth, down his throat.
Contained within its hard shell, the last seed of the Eldertree held the concentrated life of the once vast primeval forest. Deep inside the evil wizard, the hard nut cracked and released a flood of life, like a dam bursting in an enormous reservoir. Resurgent energy flared out in an unstoppable explosion of vitality, of renewal, of rejuvenation.
Roland let loose a shriek that seemed to tear open the Scar itself. The evil wizard was an empty pit, an endless appetite that demanded all life, all energy—and the seed from the Eldertree contained all life, all energy. The thrashing tumor-strangled wizard was like a man dying of thirst who now found himself drowning in a flash flood.
His evil spell tried to absorb the limitless power geysering from the acorn. The dust storms howled around the curved black pillars; tornadoes of unleashed fury whipped the dry ground, flinging sharp obsidian projectiles in all directions.
Spent, Nicci collapsed mere feet from the edge of the Lifedrinker’s pit, unable to move. The battle within the evil wizard continued to build, and he howled with agony. The acorn that had embedded itself inside him blazed and brightened into an inferno of life.
While the Lifedrinker attempted to smother it with ripples of hungry shadows, the remaining dust people collapsed in a rattle of bones and dried skin. The last of the scorpions fell dead, their segmented limbs curling up tight against their armored bodies; their stingers went limp.
Bannon threw the bodies off of him and climbed forward to try to rescue Nicci. He tottered like an ancient man, barely able to survive another hour. Mrra, too, pushed forward, close to the sorceress. Although Nicci was wrung dry and utterly exhausted, she felt the touch of her sister panther in her mind.
The ground shook and rumbled. Stones cracked. Huge boulders fell into the Lifedrinker’s pit. The towering stelae creaked, then toppled like felled trees into the hole. The avalanche continued, and the sinkhole slumped, filling with debris. Lightning struck all around.
The raging battle of life continued. The remnant of the Eldertree struggled to produce new life faster than the Lifedrinker could drain it. The bright flare that surged out from the acorn dimmed and flickered away as dark magic continued to fight, but the shadows faded as well, grew patchier, like a mist burning off under a morning sun.
Finally, the evil wizard, the Lifedrinker—Roland—disintegrated, his body gone. All of his death and emptiness turned to dust, and a last bright echo coughed out of the Eldertree acorn, washing over them.
Nicci staggered backward, feeling the warmth like a summer breeze reviving her. Life. Energy. Restoration.
Her joints eased and loosened. Her throat grew less constricted, and when she gasped in a long breath, she smelled a sweetness in the air that she had not experienced since she had first seen the Scar. Nicci raised a hand to her face as the dazzle cleared from her vision, and her skin felt smooth and supple again.
Bannon picked himself up, coughing and shaking. When he turned toward her, Nicci saw that his hair was again thick and red. The wrinkles that had covered his face were gone, leaving only his usual spatter of freckles.
She brushed herself off, and her eyes searched for the place where the Lifedrinker had collapsed, where Roland had lost his battle with the last seed of the original forest.
There, in the middle of the vast dead Scar, stood a sprig of green, the only thing left from all the exuberant power of the Eldertree acorn. A single spindly sapling.
CHAPTER 54
On their long return trek across the desolation, the ominous tension lifted from the air as if the world had heaved a nervous sigh of relief. Though the Scar still remained bleak and desolate, the Lifedrinker’s corruption was gone, and his blight would fade from the once-fertile soil. The valley would return, just as Nicci had promised Thistle.
The haze of blown dust and salty powder dissipated, leaving a blue sky scudded with clouds. Bannon looked up with a smile. “I think it might even rain within a day or two, wash the valley clean again.” He walked with a jaunty step, obviously proud of himself. He was battered and bruised, with numerous cuts from his last battle, but none the worse for it. “I fought well, didn’t I? Made myself worthwhile?”
Though she was not one to shower unn
ecessary compliments, Nicci did acknowledge the fact. “Yes, you were rather useful when I needed it most.”
He beamed.
Mrra stayed with them, ranging widely, wandering out of sight in the rocky canyons, exploring the foothills, and then returning as if to acknowledge her bond with Nicci. The sand panther was a wild creature, though, and as they approached the uplift of the Cliffwall plateau, she seemed restless, sniffing the air. Looking up the striated cliff, Mrra growled; her long tail thrashed.
Nicci gave a brusque nod, which the sand panther seemed to understand. “You can’t go in there with us. That is a human place.”
Judging by the branded spell markings on her hide, Mrra’s previous captivity among humans had not been a pleasant one. With a flick of her tail, the big cat bounded off to vanish into the dry scrub oak and piñon pines.
Nicci and Bannon began the long climb up.
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