The Dragon Sands Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by C. K. Rieke

  With the arrows continuing to fall, Lilaci took her sash from her hip, and ripped it in half lengthwise. She quickly wrapped her arm tightly in the torn red sash.

  “Kera?” Lilaci yelled. “You alright?”

  The young girl nodded with wide eyes as she stared at Lilaci’s injury.

  “Who are they?” Fewn yelled in the deluge. “Who’s shooting the arrows?”

  Lilaci tried to look up at the top of the cliffs, but the constant barrage of arrows drove her back. “Not sure, but we can’t stay here.”

  She made her way towards Kera, inching her way along the cliff. Hugging it as closely as she could. Once she reached Kera, she grabbed the girl’s hand. “It’s okay, we’re going to get through this. Together.”

  Kera smiled, and her smile faded quickly. “Your arm, you’re bleeding.”

  “It’s nothing,” Lilaci said, and looked at Fewn. She motioned for them to move, and Fewn made her way forward along the wall, and the other two followed.

  The arrows stopped suddenly, leaving the cliffs littered with their broken pieces, that the rain began to wash slowly down the rocks.

  “Up ahead,” Fewn said, “there’s a clearing. If we can get up there, we won’t be just sitting targets.”

  “Run,” Lilaci said, and the three of them rose and ran up the wet rocks towards the clearing. She saw there was a set of two jutting rocks near where the rock face met the clearing. That would be their cover. She needed to know what was attacking them and end the threat. All the while she stared up at the rocks above, with no sign of any archers.

  They arrived there quickly and put their backs to the two tall rocks. Kera drew deep breaths, and her eyes had a look of panic in them. Fewn attempted to calm her by running her fingers through her hair. Lilaci carefully turned to examine where their attackers had been. At first, nothing. But as she continued to survey the cliffs, she caught a glint of light reflecting off a silver-colored arrowhead. They were men, a group of them, all kneeling as they crept back to the edge of the overlooking cliff. Their brown and gray clothes were seemingly made to camouflage themselves in the color of the rocks. Assassins.

  She continued to peer up at them, and she caught the familiar look of a cloaked figure pacing behind them. He wore a tattered black cloak and carried a long staff that curled up at its top with a collection of rat’s tails hanging loosely from it.

  “What is it?” Fewn asked. “What do you see?”

  Lilaci turned to the rock and pressed her back up against it. “Another Reevin.”

  “They won’t stop, will they?” Fewn asked. “They want the Sanzoral. They’re going to be after you until you’re dead, and they have it.”

  “Well—” Lilaci said. “He can come and get it.”

  Lilaci felt the weight of her thin, curved sword in her right hand, and she tried to ignore the pain in her left. It ached and throbbed, but there’d be time to worry about that later. For now, she needed to get Kera to safety.

  “I’m going up there,” Lilaci said. “Fewn, you stay here and protect her.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Kera said, in a firm, yet still gentle voice. Her pale gray eyes showed a fiery determination. She truly is a special girl. Moments ago, she seemed too afraid to move, now she acts like a courageous warrior. I’m sure she’s gone through more than I can imagine of a girl of that age.

  “I know you can,” Lilaci said. “But you and Fewn together are stronger. You stay right here. You understand?”

  Kera hesitated, then nodded.

  “Watch her,” Lilaci said to Fewn, who nodded back.

  “I’ve got her,” she said.

  Lilaci took down her tunic and dropped it to the wet rock. The rains had slowed, but the water continued to rush down the rock face like a flood. She shifted her sword in her hand and checked to make sure her dagger was in its place at the small of her back. She looked up and counted the men; six assassins and the Reevin. The men were broad-shouldered and tall. They appeared to be from an area in the south, perhaps from the city of Godan, or from around the Gulf of Cirella. She knew she’d be hard-pressed to take on all those men at once, let alone with the wizard Reevin, but she’d been gifted an advantage.

  She looked down at her left hand, bandaged and bloody, as she felt the Sanzoral flow down from her mind, then to her chest, down her arm, and it coursed through her fingers, and the violet wisps the color of orchids flowed from them. The Sanzoral was hers once again, and as it was what the Reevin wanted most— Lilaci expected to give it to him.

  Standing up straight, with her shoulders back, and her hair whipping behind her, she left the protection of the rock and stood squarely before the Reevin and the six men high up on the cliff. The Reevin spotted her immediately and began to circle his staff towards the ground before him, his staff illuminated in a toxic green haze. Lilaci took long strides up the cliff, her strong legs leaping from ledge to ledge. Then the assassins noticed her and began to yell. Then the arrows flew.

  A storm of arrows flew, with a methodical precision. Each flew true, ready to strike Lilaci in any number of organs, but the purple flame in her hand began to glow in a bright blaze. She reached down and gripped the unlimited sand that draped itself on the wet rock. The sand had come to Lilaci’s aid once again, and as she ran towards their group, it welled into a dense barrier just before her. Her sandshield appeared before her once more, knocking each arrow away harmlessly.

  “Hari Bothumtha!” One of the assassins yelled out. “Hari Berova!” Three of the men began to shoot arrows quickly at her, and the other three dropped their bows and produced thick broadswords of a copper-tinted metal. The Reevin continued twirling his staff in slow circles towards the ground in a wicked, green glow.

  Lilaci was within thirty yards of the pack, carefully but quickly maneuvering her way up the wet rocks. Arrows broke and fumbled to the rocks from striking her dense shield of hard sand. She was growing closer, and as she took one last leap to reach the high rock they were perched upon, she saw what the Reevin was conjuring . . . A pack of hundreds of large, mangy, devilish rats with wet, black fur and hollow black eyes. In unison, they all looked over at her, and began to squeak and squeal. They ran at her in a massive pack, covering nearly all of the flat rock at the Reevin’s feet. They were eager to strip her flesh from her bones.

  “You come after me?” Lilaci yelled, running forward. “You come for what I have? Let me show you the power of the Sanzoral!” The Reevin’s eyes shot up at her. Reaching out with her injured hand, whipping with violet flames, she gripped the surrounding sands. Lifting her hand up above her, she brought out a swath of sand, nearly blocking out the sun as it swirled in the air above them. The assassins looked up in the astonishing sandstorm as if it were some sort of witchcraft.

  “Harum Totuni!” an assassin yelled. “Botha Tuturum! Botha Tuturum!” They dropped their bows, and all six of them ran at Lilaci with their swords drawn, running with the pack of endless rats, squeaking and hissing. “Botha Tuturum!”

  She knew she’d only have one shot at it. “One . . .” She began. “Two . . .” She forced the twirling sands above to increase in speed. “Three!” With an explosion of power like a hurricane, she sent the scattered collection down onto the men and rats like a billowing storm. The men were so caught off guard, two were thrown from the cliff’s face, screaming and clawing at the air as they plummeted down. The others clawed at the wet rock in a fervent desperation. The rats slowed but didn’t stop. As dozens . . . even hundreds of rats at the front were blown from the cliff, there remained thousands more, their black, hollow eyes fixated on Lilaci as they ran forth.

  One assassin lost his grip and was blown from the cliff, screaming and cursing. Lilaci continued to berate the men with the sand as it poured into their nostrils and stung their eyes. Two more succumbed to the force, their fingers unable to fight the sandstorm, and they were swept from the face of the rock, tumbling down through the air. One remained, with his arm hooked around a juttin
g rock, as he yelled, straining to hold on.

  The endless pack of rats chattered and hissed as they were almost upon her. The Reevin needs to die. Who knows what these rats can do if even one of them sinks their teeth into me? The rushing winds began to stall, not twirling like a tornado, but levitating in the air. Lilaci snapped her fingers into a strong fist, and the loose sand shot into several platforms next to her, resembling a long staircase before her, and she leapt to the first one. Then the second, then the third upwards. As the rats jumped to follow her up the first square ledge of sand, they fell through, falling back to the rockface. As Lilaci ran up the platforms, each dissolved to loose sand behind her.

  The last assassin stood up quickly, and with his sword firmly in hand, ran at her. He swiped wildly at her legs as she ran overhead, jumping from platform to platform, towards the Reevin. She looked ahead to see the Reevin was covered in the swarming rats up to his chest and shoulders. His black eyes fixed on her, and he pulled a long, curved dagger from his cloak.

  Lilaci leapt from the final platform, her sword held above her head, ready to plunge into the evil wizard. This is it. You’ve only got one chance. Make it count. Do it for Kera. You can’t let him enter into a fight with you. The rats will overtake you. Make this one shot count.

  As the Reevin held up his dagger to block her strike, Lilaci lowered her injured hand to her back. With the rats covering the Reevin’s body, Lilaci knew better than to try to cut through them to get that one killing blow on him. As she floated down towards him, and with many of the rats hissing up at her, with their long, yellow teeth showing— Lilaci dipped her injured hand down behind her back.

  The Reevin readied his dagger before him, and as Lilaci came down with the force of a boulder, her sword knocked into his dagger. His sturdy block was enough to knock her sword back with a clang, and as she fell, her feet were about to touch back down onto the wet rock when the Reevin’s eyes shot open in surprise and shock. His dark eyes slowly moved down to the right side of his neck to see Lilaci’s hand, glowing in purple flame, holding the hilt of a black dagger. One of their own daggers, stuck in his neck. The rats began to twitch and shake, falling to the ground as if the thousand of them were each possessed by a demon. They convulsed and shook as the Reevin’s eyes, showing hatred and disdain in their lifelessness, rolled back, and he slumped back, falling from the black dagger in Lilaci’s hand. She watched as the thousands of rats began to glow with a dull green light, and then they blew away in the breeze like the flame of a candle being blown out.

  He’s dead. It’s over, time to find Kera and Fewn . . . Wait— The assassin! She quickly remembered, and she ducked below his sharp broadsword as it swooshed over her head from behind. A heavy boot kicked her in the back, nearly knocking the wind from her lungs, pressing her forward onto her knees. She rolled away and turned to meet him, his eyes were enraged, and screamed for murder.

  He quickly laid down heavy blows towards her, overhead strikes and side to side swipes, eagerly trying to let his blade find any piece of her. Lilaci moved with great speed back and forth, evading each attack carefully, as he was much stronger than she was, and surprisingly quick and agile. The attack was so brutal and fast, she didn’t have time or focus to re-summon the Sanzoral. Instinct had crept in. She was in a sword fight, like she was back in Sorock, and a strange feeling of enjoyment came to her. She was in her most natural state then.

  There was one flaw in the assassin’s attack that Lilaci noticed— he tended to open up a spot on his shoulder when he attacked from the right. Lilaci knew if he tried it again, she’d shoot for that spot. But then, the assassin attacked with an unusual position, slightly awkward and unbalanced, but it caused him to dart in with a greater force than she anticipated, and the flat of his sword struck her in the wrist, right where the arrow had pierced her. She wanted to yell out in agony, but she held it in. She tried to parry back, he the man knocked it away easily. Lilaci was in much more pain than she cared to admit to herself, and as the man shifted to his other side, Lilaci soon found a firm fist slammed into her stomach.

  She fell back, stunned and gasping for breath. As quickly as she fell to the rock, she found a boot shoot down onto her hand that held her sword, pressing it against the rock. A wide smile grew on his face, and his eyes were wide with pleasure. His free hand grasped her throat, squeezing her windpipe. Lilaci couldn’t breathe, and with his boot pinning her sword arm to the ground, she tried to reach for her dagger behind her back with her other hand, but he quickly laid his knee on her stomach. Lilaci couldn’t use either of her weapons, and things were beginning to grow foggy as she was strangled.

  Then— something happened to Lilaci, the assassin seemed not to expect. Lilaci’s eyes erupted with a purple blaze, and the assassin adjusted his sword in his hand to send it down onto her head. The sands however, had other plans. They rose from the rock and covered his face and neck, and they seeped slowly down his mouth and nose. Sand made its way into his eyes and shoved its rough way into his brain. He screamed and clawed at it, trying to get it off of him, and he stood up off of her, scratching and frantically trying to remove the ruthlessly burrowing sand. His yelling was muffled as he suffocated, unable to even let out another scream. The sands were beginning to flow in through his ears, his entire head was beginning to fill with sand.

  Lilaci stood, ignoring her pain, and after a slow, sturdy couple of steps towards him, she lifted a boot, and after squarely lining it up with him, shoved him hard in the back, sending him tumbling through the air, down the cliff. He continued to claw at his face and tried to scream, but he landed on the jagged rocks with a thud and crack next to his dead comrades. Lilaci fell to the rocks, fatigued, battered, and gasping for air.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The crows had already begun to feed. Their loud caws echoed madness. She found herself in a maelstrom of blackbirds with no eyes circling them. She was back in the battle where the Iox was slashed to death by thousands of beaks and claws. That was the first time she saw a Reevin, his long scraggly blond beard with those dead eyes looming beneath his black hood. They were like the eyes of a snake, wanting to feed, wanting to squeeze the life from its prey.

  She felt one of the birds shoot in and dive its beak into her arm, and she felt the stinging pain once again.

  “No!” she cried, and jerked awake, sitting up abruptly. Her face was dry and covered with a thin layer of sand. Her throat was nearly closed from thirst, she didn’t remember where she was or how long she’d been out. Then she looked down at the crow’s feast. They began with the eyes and lips of the Reevin and the mercenary, and had drifted downward, ripping clothing away to get at the bloating flesh.

  She wiped her face loosely of the sand, and stood up, aching and battered. She winced in pain from the hole in her arm, and looked to see the bandage covered in dried, dark blood. At least the bleeding stopped. She stumbled over to the corpse of the assassin, his face unrecognizable. The crow’s cawed at her and floated out of her way as she leaned over and pulled his watersack from his belt, popped the cork and drank feverishly from it, its warmth and wetness sliding down her cracked throat. As soon as she felt the liquid run into her stomach, worry came back to her. Kera. Where’s Kera? How long had I been out?

  She ran over to the side of the cliff and looked down. There were only more crows and the bodies of the other assassins.

  “Kera!” she yelled down in a breaking voice. She grabbed her sword from the rock and ran down to where Kera and Fewn had stayed. “Kera!” she yelled out into the distance. “Where are you?”

  She looked up the mountain way and looked down back to the sands.

  “Fewn? Fewn, where are you?”

  Did something happen? Did I miss another force out there? Were they attacked while I was in battle with the others up on the cliff? What if something bad happened to Kera? I’ll never forgive myself— I’ve got to find her. I just have to. Then a sensation came back to her, something she hadn’t felt since she’d
met Kera. The slithering of worms, wrapping around each other in a spherical motion. The amulet came into her mind, and she felt like a part of herself began to drift away. Then she saw him— Veranor. He stood tall and proud in the darkness before her. She saw his angry gray eyes, and the two crossing scars across his nose. She began to panic. She looked down to see her arm shaking, and she felt the tears roll down her cheeks.

  “Kera,” she cried in a soft voice, falling back onto the tall, jutting rock where she’d last seen her. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I failed you. I shouldn’t have left you . . . I shouldn’t have left you.”

  Her head sank into her sand-covered hands. “I promised you I’d never leave you, and I left you!” She felt the anger build up inside of her. “You said you were cursed, but you were wrong! I’m the cursed one! You should never have trusted me. I’m only a weapon, born and bred. I’m a killer, nothing more. I’ll never be anything more than a weapon of the gods. I can feel the mages’ spell coming back without you. I’m not even a person anymore. I’m just a shell. Their hands are the puppet strings that lead my path in this life. Oh, Kera. What have I done? What have I done?”

  She sat there sobbing for what felt like hours. The tears flowed down her sand-blown face as she hadn’t known grief like that in so many years. She felt like she’d lost the only important thing left in her life. Which she had. She’d disobeyed the mage’s spell, Veranor, the king and queen, and even the gods themselves. It crossed her mind then that the mages may have her head back to the castle of Erodoran of her own free will somehow. Surely to face unspeakable torture or, if merciful, a quick beheading or hanging.