by Paul Yoder
Lords of the Deep Hells Trilogy, Book 2
Lords of the Sands
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Copyright © 2021 Paul Yoder
Cover art by Andrey Vasilchenko
All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 9798715737335
In loving memory to my father, Frank Yoder,
whose last words to me were, “Your writing, you’ve got something special there. Never give up on that.”
This one’s for you, dad.
Paul Yoder
Lords of the Deep Hells Trilogy
Book II
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Face of Ash
2 The Morning Sun
3 Wounds from the Past
4 Temple Grounds
5 Gaia’s Altar
6 Demon In Irons
7 A Grim Sentence
8 The Red
9 Irons Rent
10 Night Hunt
11 Back Woods Scuffle
12 The Ancient Grove
13 Council of Sisters
14 The Stray Hound
15 Blood in the Trees
16 Monsoon for the Lone Road Ahead
17 The Wretched Trek
18 Quiet Night in Sansabar
19 Clandestine Arrival in Sheaf
20 The Purge
21 Awake
22 Council for the War to Come
23 Company In The Rain
24 A Thousand Shades of the Sun
25 a Bitter Departure
26 Aside a Hearth on a Rainy Night
27 A Fell Presence in the Jail
28 The Outcast
29 A Dark Night in the White City
30 A Monument to Great Deeds
31 A Respite Along the Way
32 Returning in Defeat
33 Cliffs of Imhotez
34 At a Camp Along the Dunes
35 The Privilege of Blood
36 Descent Upon the Hapless
37 Division at the Gates
38 Chains of the Past
39 A Simple Extraction
40 Old Friends and New Adventures
41 Upon Deaf Ears
42 Confusion at the Gate
43 Whispers of Riches, Whispers of Death
44 The Oathbound
45 An Army in Pursuit
46 The Setting of the Red Sun
47 The Grave Canyon
48 Farewell to an Old Friend
49 Darkness Upon the Horizon
From the Author
1
Face of Ash
His pulse hastened, his temple throbbing so predominantly that his vision blurred with every heartbeat, causing him to shake his head to attempt to jog his recent memory back to where he was and how he had gotten there.
The ground he stood upon was a deep yellow, slick sponge-like surface. Ashen vein-like vines weaved across the endless plane, plumes of spore occasionally spouting out small mouths in the network of vines.
Coughing as he rose above the mixture of ash and spore that hung low in the air, he stumbled to his feet, looking around to see a hellish landscape, one that didn’t seem to resemble his planet, Una, in the least.
“Where am I?” he slurred, voice still raspy, the spore seeming to cling to the insides of his lungs, belaboring his breath and speech.
No one answered him vocally, but after his query, he felt a presence behind him.
The throbbing in his head intensified, almost causing him to topple over as he spun around, lethargically throwing a hand to his sword hilt as he turned to face his stalker.
A withered, ten-foot-tall figure hovered in the air a few yards from him. The creature’s ashen skin was tattered, thin; seeming like it was ready to split at the softest touch. His paper-thin skin was a deathly black purple, fading to a sickly orange-yellow around its ribs and arm bones that barely had anything separating them from view.
Its face though was a pale yellow, speckled with splotches of ash, darkening the area just around its closed eyes, mouth, and hole where its nose might have once been.
He stood there looking in disgust as the giant emaciated limbs began to spread out, its long arms hanging outstretched as if on a crucifix, its body seeming as though it were ready to tear apart from its own weight, even though it remained aloft, supernaturally hovering in the air before him.
He went for his weapon now, having seen enough of the grotesque display in front of him, but as he gripped the handle of what should have been his sword, he gripped on to something fleshy and cold.
Looking down, he held not a sword, but a rotten arm. Dropping the dead weight, he looked back up at the mummified giant to find it had moved much closer to him, only floating a few feet away from him now.
The startling swift advance set him back a step, almost stumbling over himself as the thing’s soot-lined eyes and mouth shot open, revealing nothing but black cavities within—devoid of fleshy tissue.
A low croaking moan, almost indiscernible at first, issued from the gaping maw of the mummy, the sound growing louder and louder as he turned to run from the demonic being.
The sound rattled through him, instilling an inescapable feeling of doom. His limbs were becoming less and less reliable as fear continued to cinch around every muscle in his body.
He could hear the open-mouthed, drawn-out groan directly behind him. He knew the abomination’s dry, cracked lips were mere inches from the nape of his neck.
That thought momentarily locked up his right leg—not for long, but just enough to pitch him forward, his shaken reflexes failing to see him graciously to the ground, landing hard along the web of ashen vines covering the landscape.
He lay face down in the knee-high, spore-filled cloud, attempting to force his petrified lungs to take a breath, but unable to do so, his whole body momentarily frozen as he listened to the groaning slip closer and closer towards him—and then, it stopped.
A wrung-out gasp issued from his mouth, his lungs able to starve of air no longer, intaking ashy pollen afterwards which spurred a fit of coughing.
The spasm broke him from his petrification, and he flung himself around to see a figure standing above him, a symbol burning from its forehead of a reverse crescent that showed spikes shooting forth from it, an empty, torn eye directly below the shapes.
The symbol flashed, blinding him for a moment as he brought up his hands over his face a moment too late.
Something tugged sharply at his outstretched wrist, and then the other one, both of his unattached hands now falling back down upon his chest, the realization that his hands had been severed only now striking him as a searing jolt of belated pain shot through his limbs.
Holding his two bloody stumps close to his eyes to confirm the gruesome reality, he let out a ragged scream as blood spattered down upon him, soaking in the creases of pain and terror etched in his face.
His focus switched from his bloody stumps to the figure above him, which had changed from the grotesque giant to a six-foot figure shrouded in black,
raising a curved blade, ready to cleave him in twain.
As the blade came down, the shadow and ash in the air dispersed, giving him a clear view of his executioner, and everything, all the confusion as to why he was there, came into focus as he realized that the man that now cleaved his body in two, the man many knew as The Nomad, was none other than himself.
2
The Morning Sun
“Nomad,” a voice called, accompanied by the tune of a nearby songbird.
Soft shafts of light showing through lightly rustling leaves caressed his closed eyelids, the sound of lapping water gently arousing his senses.
A touch, soft, tentative, persuaded him to open his eyes, squinting terribly at the sight of the morning sun, even though they lay well covered by a healthy forest canopy.
“You sleep longer these days,” was all his companion, Reza, forlornly had to say to him once she saw that he was up and coherent.
Holding eyes on him for a moment longer to assure that he was up, she stood, offering him a hand.
Closing his eyes for a moment, trying to push past the dreadful weariness that seemed to depress his whole body, even after a full night’s rest, he threw his hand to Reza’s and allowed her to pull him from his resting place at the foot of a large, mossy oak tree, up to his feet.
“Camp’s packed up and the horses are ready,” she said to him, walking him over to his stallion as a light autumn breeze swept through the grove.
They had been traveling for less than a month, but Reza had seen a great deal of change in her friend, Nomad, since their setting out for the Jeenyre monastery. He had grown tired during the day, and though he attempted to sleep at night, often his screams would wake her, so much so that she had to resort to sleeping a great distance away from him. This worried her, not just because of the mental trials her friend was going through, but also, she worried his cries in the night might attract unwanted visitors from man or beast, and with her sleeping so far off from him, she would not be there to protect him in his madness.
She had been to the Jeenyre monastery many times through the years, and she knew that they were only a few days away from their destination, which she was profoundly grateful of.
Nomad was as close to a friend as she had ever had, but he was wearing her raw. There was seemingly nothing she could do to help his continual dip into a darkness that was a mystery to both of them. The sooner they arrived at the monastery, the sooner they would find answers to his demonic condition.
The trail was easy—peaceful. Pine, oak, walnut, and a host of other pleasant trees made up the woods they trotted through. Leaves, most deep in the turn of autumn colors, rolled by the wind down the earthen trail, only the evergreens holding the hills’ true green hue up above.
The trail let out next to an expansive lake, the mist of water from a huge waterfall, hundreds of feet high, rushing past them as if desperate to escape the lake’s borders.
“Ah, Nomad,” she called back, having to blink her eyes from the gust of moist air from the lake. “Castle Sephentho!”
Nomad looked up to where Reza excitedly pointed. A mile or more across the mountain lake, amongst the rock walls that basked in the warm glow of the half cloud-covered sun, was a spired castle, multiple tiers of brilliant architecture, and a weaving road clearly leading up to its steep gates from the road they traveled.
“And there is Sephentho Watch,” she said, pointing up above the castle to a watchtower at the peak of the mountain where the great waterfall poured out over the lake from. “See how the Kalis River cuts to either side of the tower before emptying into the Sephentho lake? They say the tower was there even before the river meandered to that spot, withstood the wear of the water, and remains immoveable and in use even many hundreds of years after being in the direct path of the river. Some think it’s hallowed ground. A post that is divinely watched over, just as those posted there watch over the castle.”
Smiling for a moment longer, heartened at the sight of the landmark that confirmed that they were only a day or two away from the monastery, she looked back to Nomad to see what he thought of the sight, only to find that he had nodded off, slumping over in his saddle as his stallion munched on some grass at the side of the trail.
She had had enough of Nomad’s lethargy for the day.
Jumping off her horse, leading both mounts to a low-hanging tree branch close by and tying them up, she hefted Nomad out of his saddle and shouldered him over to the lake bank.
Slowly coming to as she half dragged him over the grassy knoll, she forcefully undid his belt buckle holding his scabbard, throwing his sword and loose pouches in the grass, put a boot on his backside, and kicked the dazed man headlong into the chill mountain lake.
Reza smirked for a moment, guiltily delighting in the complete, unexpected surprise in Nomad’s countenance before he plunged beneath the lake’s surface, realizing too late his icy fate, but she quickly began to regret her rash action as she noticed Nomad’s silhouette sink quite deep into the clear water.
She waited a moment longer, worry rising as to what she had done as Nomad made no visible attempt to resurface, cursing as she quickly flung off her strapped equipment, readying to jump in if Nomad didn’t surface within the next few seconds.
She looked into the icy pool of water, Nomad remaining quite still a dozen feet down or so, wondering if his condition had truly weakened him so completely as to render him incapable of springing off the lakebed to the surface. Apparently, it had, and her childishness had placed her friend’s life in sudden danger.
Leaping through the air, diving headfirst, her hands parted the water as she lanced quickly to the lakebed where Nomad lay. Deftly tucking an arm around his torso, she recoiled, launching powerfully off the silt floor, breaching the water’s surface.
Digging in deep, Reza stroked hard towards the lake’s bank, touching down on the sloped beach.
She dragged Nomad’s body ashore and quickly looked him over, placing a trembling hand on his chest and an ear to his mouth, waiting for signs of life. She stiffened as she heard him open his mouth.
“Getting out already? Not too cold for you, is it?”
Turning to look at a smirking Nomad, realizing he had played her, her look of concern quickly shifted to indignation as she splashed a wave of ice-cold water in Nomad’s face before standing up, looking away from him as she collected herself.
“I didn’t deserve that,” she spat out, the spite clear on her tongue.
“No, you didn’t,” Nomad generously agreed as he slowly got to his feet, poising to pounce at his victim’s back, finishing with, “but you do deserve this!”
Reza turned just in time to see Nomad leaping through the air at her, colliding with her so hard that it took her off her feet, throwing them both far back into the deep of the lake.
Coming to the surface, Nomad treaded water as Reza furiously resurfaced, hostilely eyeing him as he chuckled, “We both needed a bath anyways.”
Luckily for Nomad, he saw the slightest wicked smirk from Reza a moment before she grappled him up, thrashing him around in the water as he responded in kind, the two, for the most part, playfully trying to dunk the other, splashing, and exchanging blows under water.
The birds in the trees, perhaps due to the ruckus the two were causing, all fled at once, and it was a sign that, even amidst their roughhousing, was not lost on the playful pair.
Their play now over in an instant, both looked to the trees, then down to the trail they had come from and listened as the sound of footfall preceded a band of armed, scruffy-looking men.
Nomad and Reza exchanged a concerned side glance as they began to swim back to the shore, all mirth from their swim now completely washed away, seeing the patched and ragged robes and openly worn weaponry inherently pointing to shady motives.
They stopped swimming as the lead man held up a loaded crossbow and said, “Not a stroke further, me loves.”
Looking around a
t the group who now finished meandering over to the edge of the trail, Reza and Nomad counted seven in the group, all in drab, ratty apparel, holding knives, short swords, clubs, or rods, each oddly appearing horribly forlorn as they looked upon the two treading water.
Both their gazes came back to the leader, the only one with a crossbow and a wide grin.
He was slightly sunbaked, his skin showed a great deal of wear and abuse, though his features didn’t appear to grant him the likelihood of being much over thirty. Holes in his skin, where piercings might have been, pocked his ears, eyebrows, and nose. His smile showed a few gold teeth in his grin, and a number of dark tattoos lined his chest and arms.
Looking him up and down, Nomad and Reza silently assessed their options as they waited for him to make the next move.
The man smiled, looking at the two, and then back at their horses and stash as his grin widened.
Without another word, the telling click of the crossbow catch releasing the loaded bolt cut through the silence, sending Nomad and Reza diving headlong off to either side, the whizzing bolt skipping harmlessly between them, digging angrily into the water for a few feet before starting to float back up to the surface.
“Damn it! Where’s me bolts? Darrell, throw me another!” Reza heard as she resurfaced, looking over to Nomad who was still under water, moving fast to the bank where she had pushed him in.
She knew they only had a short reprieve from the crossbow as the scoundrel reloaded it. She needed to get to shore to deal with the leader, the rest in the group already seemed ready to bolt just from the missed shot.
After taking a few strokes towards the shore, she noticed the leader’s gang now looking the other way, all seeming to be scared stiff by whatever, or whomever, it was that approached the group from behind.
She looked over to Nomad who was just getting up out of the water at the bank far off to the side of the road, wondering if not Nomad, then who was threatening their robbers so terribly.
The latch click of the crossbow caused her to put the question out of her mind as the leader leveled the crossbow directly in line with Reza’s head.
