The people of Cliffwall welcomed them as heroes, which Bannon enjoyed and Nicci tolerated. With a broad grin, the young man patted the sword at his side. “I handled myself well enough. I saved the sorceress too many times to recount.”
Nicci was sure he would recount them anyway.
Bannon accepted the fawning attentions of Victoria’s three acolytes, who took turns fussing over the scabs and scratches on his cheek, his arms, his hands. They dabbed at the wounds with wet cloths, then cleaned the dust from his forehead, wiping his hair. Bannon touched a cut on his face. “Do you think this one will leave a scar?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
Laurel kissed it. “Maybe so.”
Laughing, Thistle ran forward and threw herself on Nicci. “I knew you would survive! I knew you’d save the world.”
“And I’m glad you stayed behind, as you promised,” Nicci said.
Pleased to hear of their adventure, Nathan stroked his chin. “I wish I had been there, though. It would have been quite a tale to include in my life book.”
“We will find other tales, Wizard,” Nicci said. “We have a long journey ahead of us yet. Our work here is done.”
“Yes, your work is done.” He smiled and nodded. “And now that the Lifedrinker has been dispatched, our focus should be on finding Kol Adair, so I can be made whole again—it is quite inconvenient to feel useless! The Cliffwall archives have maps and charts of the world, and Mia will help me sort them right away.”
As the ostensible leader of the Cliffwall scholars, Simon was grateful for what Nicci had accomplished. “Even from here, we could feel when the Lifedrinker was defeated. The weight of the world seemed lifted, as if something fundamental had changed.” He led the gathered scholars in a loud cheer to thank Nicci and Bannon. “Before we devote our full attentions to learning and cataloging, we should make an expedition to the site of the battle and see this new Eldertree sapling.”
Victoria and her memmers nodded in grudging admiration. “Yes, we should all see what remains.”
* * *
The following day, nearly fifty people made their way down the narrow, hidden trail from the mesa cliff into the now-quiet Scar.
Full of energy, Thistle trotted along as the group worked their way through the foothills and out into the devastation. The girl was eager to guide them along the easiest path, scouting ahead. “Now I know I’m going to see this valley the way it was meant to be! Someday, I can have my world back, green and growing.”
“Maybe even with flower gardens,” Nicci said.
She felt that the shadows were lifting from the Scar. They walked at an easy pace all that day, camped for the night, and then set off again the next morning, heading toward the heart of the devastation. Mounds of obsidian glass still protruded from the ground, but the stinking fumaroles had sealed over and the exposed lava hardened. It was only the faintest, first step in the long, painful process of healing.
Finally, near the end of the second day of travel from the Cliffwall plateau, the group of eager travelers gathered at what had been the lair of the Lifedrinker. Nicci and her companions stood with the group, cautiously approaching the crumbling debris that filled the crater.
They paid no attention to the shattered remnants of dust people, the cracked scorpions. Instead, the amazed scholars gathered around the single oak sapling, a delicate tree no taller than Nicci’s waist.
“If that is the sapling from the Eldertree, I don’t sense any magic from it,” Nicci said. “It seems like a normal young tree.”
Nathan said, “All of its magic must have burned out in the final battle with the Lifedrinker. This is all that remains, just an oak sapling, but it is alive. That is the important part.”
Thistle nudged her way through the crowd so she could look at the spindly little tree that stood so defiant in the desolation.
Victoria seemed disappointed. “That’s all? It was … the Eldertree!”
“The acorn’s outpouring of life was just barely sufficient to win the battle,” Nicci said. “The power of life versus the power of death. It was a very close thing. It gave all of its magic to destroy the Lifedrinker—another week or month would have been too late.”
While Victoria and her memmers crowded close, the matronly woman let out a sigh. “It is a good thing our memmers recalled the story. Without us, we would not have found the seed of the Eldertree at all, and Roland would still be alive and dangerous.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Simon’s face. “Yes, Cliffwall provided the necessary weapon to defeat him, and now we must make up for all the suffering.” He raised his voice to address those gathered at the site. “It will be a great deal of work, but we can reclaim this land. The streams and rivers will flow again. With rainfall, we can plant crops and orchards. Many of our scholars came from the towns in this valley, and we can rebuild and replant it.”
Understanding the enormity of the problem they faced, the people muttered their agreement.
Nathan placed his hands on his hips, stretching his back. “The Scar can heal. Now that the blight has been eliminated, the natural beauty of the valley will return. It’ll just take time.” He smiled optimistically. “Maybe only a century or two.”
“A century?” Thistle’s expression fell. “I’ll never see it, then!”
Victoria was grim and determined. She muttered so quietly that only Nicci heard, “It will need to go faster.”
CHAPTER 55
The land was dead and desperate. Victoria knew that the harm would take decades, maybe even centuries, to restore … if left on its own. That was unforgivable. She could not forget what the self-centered, shortsighted Roland had done, how that pathetic man had killed the land … and murdered her dear husband.
But Victoria knew magic, had memorized countless secrets of arcane lore. As the most prominent memmer, she held a wealth of magical information in her mind, and now she searched for a faster solution to revitalize the great valley. The answer was within her—she knew it!
Simon and his scholars could fool themselves that they were experts. They could read books and study spells, but that didn’t mean they understood that knowledge. Just because a starving man looked at a pantry filled with food, he did not have the nourishment he required. The memmers, though, had all that information inside them, part of their being, their heart, their soul.
Ancient wizards had built this hidden archive to preserve history and lore for all future generations to use. Everything a powerful gifted person could imagine was inside these vaults, written down in volumes, stored on shelves … and locked in the minds of the memmers.
That knowledge was part of Victoria.
After the group visited the site of the final battle, the sorceress had seemed so smug, so triumphant about what she had done. Death’s Mistress! Yes, Nicci might have killed the Lifedrinker’s ravenous need, but she had not restored life by any means. That was a much more difficult and time-consuming task.
Victoria found the spindly sapling deeply disappointing, even pathetic. Such a small thing, without any magic? She had hoped for much m
ore from the Eldertree. From when she was a young woman, she recalled the rolling hills covered with thick forests, the fertile basin with sweeping croplands and thriving towns. Though the isolated inhabitants of Cliffwall had only rarely left their hidden canyons, they knew the way the real world was supposed to be.
One of the first outsiders brought back to the archive after Victoria had dispelled the camouflage shroud, Roland had been an intense and nervous researcher, an innocuous scholar who read volumes of spells and dabbled with minor magic. He had been quiet and good-natured, and Victoria’s husband had considered him a friend.
Early on, Bertram had noticed that Roland was growing gaunt and thin. Victoria now realized those were signs of the wasting disease devouring him from within. But Roland had refused to accept his fate; he had made a bargain with magic he did not comprehend. Without understanding what he was about to unleash, he had turned himself into a bottomless pit of need that siphoned away all life, not just his own.
Victoria winced as she remembered the fateful day she had come upon Roland after he met her husband in the corridor. Desperate, begging for help, he had clasped Bertram’s hand, but was unable to control what he unleashed, and the magic kept stealing more and more from her poor husband. Bertram could not pull away, could not escape no matter how hard he struggled … and the monster Roland purloined his entire life, gorged himself on Bertram’s essence.
By the time Victoria saw them, it was too late. Roland fled in terror, and she rushed forward to catch her husband as he collapsed in the corridor. She held him, pressing him against her breast and rocking him back and forth as he faded swiftly. Bertram’s skin turned as gray and dry as the old parchments in the archive. His cheeks sank into dark hollows, his eyes shriveled into puckered knots of flesh, his hair fell out in wispy clumps. In her arms, her husband turned into nothing more than a mummified corpse.
From where he had retreated down the corridor, Roland had watched in horror and revulsion. He held up his hands, denying his own deadly touch. “No, no, no!” he screamed.