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Zimmer smiled. “I’ll have my men draw lots to choose who gets to sleep on a straw tick instead of the hard ground. And we will help with the food where we can.”
He dispatched several of his best hunters into the forest, and they returned with two deer, which they added to the feast. The people of Lockridge celebrated the hope that the D’Haran army brought them, the reassurance of a peace that would last for years to come.
Peretta sat next to Oliver as they ate, enjoying the goat, bean, and barley stew. The young woman’s gaze was distant as she leaned closer to him. “When we came through here before, I had no idea how wide the world was or how far we had traveled. We had come so far by the time we got here!” She laughed. “And now that we’re back in Lockridge, it seems we’re almost home.”
“We are almost home.” He patted her forearm, then withdrew shyly. “We’ll make it, I promise.”
The two of them slept on blankets outside in the town square. They didn’t even draw straws for a chance at a bed. By now, Oliver was accustomed to warm nights under the open starry skies, and he didn’t mind bedding down next to Peretta.
They set off into the mountains, following the road that crossed ridge after ridge, climbing higher until they reached the summit of a large divide. Gazing down into the huge, open valley, Oliver caught his breath and stared. Squinting, he could make out patches of green, the flowing silver of a river, irregularly shaped mirrors of lakes, even geometrical squares of newly planted cropland.
It took him a long moment to recognize what he was seeing. “That used to be the Scar!”
“Does that mean we’re close to Cliffwall?” asked Verna. She sounded weary and eager at the same time.
“Closer than we were yesterday,” Peretta said. “Still many days yet.”
Oliver couldn’t contain his excitement. “That was all barren desolation not long ago, drained dry by the Lifedrinker. Then it became a bastion of impenetrable forest, thanks to Victoria.”
Peretta said, “But now the world is returning to normal again, thanks to Nicci.” She stretched out her hand toward the vast valley. “We have to go down there, around the rim, then up into the high desert. See the plateau there on the horizon? The canyons and Cliffwall are there.”
Oliver sat behind her on the horse, felt her firm body against him. He spoke more for Peretta’s benefit than for anyone else’s. “Yes, we’re almost home.”
CHAPTER 58
After smashing through the high window, Nicci fell through space, plummeting out into darkness. The cold claws of the night air grabbed at her battered body. Blood droplets from her wounds sprayed in the air, flowing upward and drifting away like red stars among the strange constellations.
She plunged, her black dress whipping around her. The stone walls of the ruling tower flashed past, and then the stark cliffs of the plateau’s edge as she hurtled toward the twinkling lights, rooftops, and convoluted streets of the lower city far below.
She felt like a bird, a black raven with broken wings dropping toward her death. But Nicci could not fly, because she was not a bird. She was a sorceress. She was Death’s Mistress. And although Adessa had battered her and Sovrena Thora had delivered the coup de grâce by blasting her through the windows, Nicci was not destroyed, not defeated.
She fell … but she could save herself. She had controlled the wind before, using her gift to manipulate the air, pulling together a solid barrier. Now, despite her pain-scrambled thoughts, she drew in a quick breath, tasting iron blood in her mouth. She summoned the breezes into a lifeline, gathered the winds beneath her to slow her fall.
Rooftops rushed toward her with the speed of an arrow in flight. Nicci had only seconds.
She strengthened the air, pushed it around her, felt her body tumble. The tiled roofs and tangled streets shot closer, and she knew she was still going too fast. She spread out her arms, trying to guide her descent. With a nudge of wind she knocked herself sideways, scraping past the sharp gutter of a three-story building, only twenty feet from impact.
Nicci cried out, drawing upon all the magic she possessed. She refused to fail, refused to die. But even though her anger was strong, she didn’t have the precise control she needed. The backlash of breezes buffeted her in the air and slammed her into the building wall as she dropped into the chasm of a dark alley.
With one last burst she turned onto her back, slowed herself—and crashed onto the slimy, garbage-strewn cobblestones of a dark street behind a tannery and a warehouse.
She cracked her head against the hard ground, and surrendered to merciful half consciousness. Nicci didn’t let herself slip into the blissful blackness, though. She had often escaped into the blessed respite of unconsciousness as a personal defense. Many times, Jagang had beaten her senseless when he raped her, and that brief escape into oblivion was sometimes her only way to defy him. She would surrender completely to the blows just to deny him the satisfaction of hearing her cry out from the pain.
Nicci didn’t need to escape now, though. She couldn’t hide from the pain. This pain was part of her. This pain meant she had survived. She lay for a long moment with her eyes closed, smelling the stink of tannery chemicals, the discarded scraps of yaxen hide, the gobbets of tissue scraped from the leather and dumped in a midden pile for the rats to fight over. She heard the rodents rustling through the dripping liquid in the gutters, stirring the garbage in a back alley where no one would see.
Lying motionless, Nicci took a silent inventory of her body, tasting the blood in her mouth, smelling it caked in her nose. Her head throbbed from a cracked skull, probably a concussion. Her muscles had been smashed from the brutal combat as well as the fall, and she knew her pale skin would become a mottled canvas of bruises. As she inhaled and exhaled, she could tell that several of her ribs were cracked.
A sufficiently gifted wizard could have healed her, but she was all alone here except for the rats. She could use her own gift to heal herself, once she regained enough strength … but that would be a long time coming. She doubted any of the wizards of Ildakar would lift a finger to help her, even if some of them also secretly resented the sovrena’s hard ways. They would not admit it now that Nicci had failed in her challenge.
At least she hadn’t been turned to stone, like the defiant sorceress Lani. That meant she could still fight. For now she had to endure, and survive.
Nicci opened her eyes. Despite the pain, she forced herself to move, getting to her feet slowly and methodically, catching her breath. She looked up between the buildings that rose on either side of her, the tannery and the warehouse. The ominous pinnacle of the ruling tower stood like a sentinel on the edge of the plateau. It seemed impossibly high above her. She couldn’t believe she had fallen that far and lived.
When she looked at the walls of the warehouse,
Nicci noticed unexpected glints of lights, jagged reflections flashing from cracks in the bricks. Mirror shards. Pieces of sharp-edged reflective glass left as a sign.
Mirrormask! The rebels.
Holding on to the wall for balance, Nicci made her way along. The shadows in the alley were easy and comforting. She leaned against the cool stone of the warehouse and rested, catching her breath. She knew she needed to move again—but she was all alone in the city, and had nowhere to go.
This late, the streets were deserted, and that was good. She wanted to be alone, to assess what to do next. Each step drained the last scraps of energy from her. She had expended too much power during her fight against the morazeth, defending herself against the sovrena’s blast, and then stopping her fall. Now she had nothing left. Nothing. Nathan was unconscious and might never recover. She didn’t know where Bannon was. Mrra was held in a cage. Nicci was on her own.
Her vision was so blurred and the thoughts so loud in her head that she didn’t at first notice the furtively moving figures. Nicci flinched, drew back, knowing she could not let any guards see her. But this wasn’t High Captain Stuart or his armed city guards. These were the rebels.
One hurried forward, speaking in a gruff voice. “It’s the sorceress. Mirrormask will want her.”
Her knees trembled, and she tried to draw on her pride and determination. She stepped forward to face the rebels, but she buckled and slid back against the wall. The hooded figures rushed up to catch her.
“The sovrena … did this.” She drew a breath that stabbed like sharp knife blades in her lungs, in her side. “I need to kill her.” Their faces were masked with shadows, and Nicci had only the smallest reason to trust them, yet this was the only hope she had.
She felt hands on her arms, propping her up. “Come with us, Sorceress. We have a place to take you, a place that will be safe.”
Those words were all she needed to hear. She surrendered to the calming black oblivion.
