by C. K. Rieke
Revenge Song
C.K. Rieke
Contents
Also by C.K. Rieke
Map of The Arr
I. Family Strife
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
II. Poison and Arrows of White
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
III. Dune of the Last Dragon
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
IV. Kôrran’s Last Gift, and the Hunt Begins
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
V. Curse and Betrayal
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
VI. The Witch Queen
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
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Author’s Notes
About the Author
Also by C.K. Rieke
The Path of Zaan Book I:
The Road to Light
The Path of Zaan Book II:
The Crooked Knight
The Path of Zaan Book III:
The Devil King
A Path of Zaan Tale:
Man of the Arr
The Dragon Sands Book I:
Assassin Born
This novel was published by Crimson Cro Publishing
Copyright © 2018 Hierarchy LLC
All Rights Reserved.
Cover by C.K. Rieke.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Part I
Family Strife
Chapter One
1443 Sisen Era, The Arr, Dakaran Region
An aching pain like a twisting dagger tore through Lilaci’s soul— her heart was truly broken. The last person she’d deeply cared for and loved was taken from her, and Lilaci only blamed herself. Her dreams had turned to nightmares of cold sweat and fear for Kera’s safety.
A cool breeze glided over the rolling hills as small grains of sand nestled their way down the flowing dunes. The sky was lit with thin, stretched clouds that held a beautiful red glow, laying its hue across the vast land. There wasn’t a mountain or tree in sight. In the early morning light, just before the break of dawn, the air was warming ever hotter with every second that passed. The sun was eager to shed its golden light upon the lands, bringing with it another day of inescapable heat. Yet, in the lands of the Arr— to those who walked the sands— anything else would be . . . An act of god.
As the breeze rustled the thin blanket she held tightly over her shoulder, she tried to shake off the wretched dreams she’d had of Kera being presented to the gods like a lamb going to slaughter— and Lilaci pulled the rough blanket tighter against her. She had to pull it up over her eyes to shield the warm light, slowing fading from the color of crimson to the bright white that brought with it the heat she was all-too-familiar with. She tried to remember being with her family— long lost when she was taken from them— kicking and screaming as a young girl, faded as the light of the sun peaked over the long-rolling dunes in the distance. The sun’s ray had already begun to heat the sands beneath her and she opened her eyes. She saw nothing, nothing but the desert all around her, that— and Roren as he slept two yards away. She’s only just met Roren, a man of the Order of Drakon, the group charged with Kera’s safety.
Roren and her hadn’t been traveling long together, only a handful of days. As she looked at him, laying on his back with his blanket thrown aside, he took long breaths in his sleep, causing a slight wheezing sound as he inhaled. She stared at him, imagining his life before he’d found her back in the caves. After all, she was on the brink of death after her fight with the giant sandworms when he appeared before her. He was told to sit down there by Kera, in the worm’s tunnels, until Lilaci came. How had he not gone mad from the isolation of waiting over a year in such a horrid place, even with- the egg.
As he lay there sleeping, and with his shadow ever-shortening as the sun began to rise, she noticed that his normally cleanly shaved head began to grow black hair across his dark skin, and a beard was beginning to grow as well. He was older than her, but not by much, maybe ten years or so, but Lilaci didn’t know her own exact age. She’d been taken as a young girl and trained in the ways of battle, and death. Taken by the Scaethers, and trained back in Sorock to become a master assassin, she was eventually trained personally by Veranor, commander of all like her in Sorock. All that was behind her now though. Lilaci had not only broken her vow to Veranor, but to the six gods themselves. The gods had given her the magic of the Sanzoral, and asked only one thing- their one wish- they wanted her to bring back . . . Her.
“Kera,” Lilaci whispered to herself, and sat up quickly, causing the blanket to fall to her side. She reached her hand up to wipe the sleep from her eyes, then ran her fingers through her long black hair, rustling the sand from it. She felt the widow’s peak on her forehead, and then ran her fingers back through one last time and wrapped it into a bun at the back of her head. She grabbed the thin wooden pick from her side and slid it through the bun, the rest of her hair landed softly on her back. “Kera, where are you?”
Roren wrestled to pull his blanket over him to her side. “Argh, its blazing hot already. I was just dreaming of being back in the shadowy caves, nice and cool they were.” He laid on his side, trying to gather a few more moments of rest before the sun was high enough that there would be no avoiding it.
How can you dream of such a monstrous place? But, we may look back at the worm’s mating caves a bit differently. Kera had told him to stay there, waiting by the dragon egg, for me to come. I, on the other hand, was lured there by Fewn, and trapped in the worm’s nest to die, so that Fewn could take Kera back to the gods herself, after lying to me that she would help protect her. Fewn- next we meet, I’ll show you a vengeance you couldn’t imagine. All I care about in this life is her, Kera. I don’t care that she is prophesized to usher in the return of the dragons to the Arr and battle the contemptuous and corrupt gods. I don’t care that my life has become forfeit in the eyes of all that I know, and I don’t care that every single creature in these lands seems to want to kill me. She’s the only thing that makes me feel, normal, feel loved. I can’t let Fewn make it back with her to Voru, back to the king and queen there. Kera will die if she enters the city’s walls. I have to stop Fewn, I can’t let Kera down, not her, not this time.
Just then, Lilaci noticed something odd. As she looked past Roren, as
he struggled to capture the last fleeting moments of rest, she noticed something different about the sand. Just on the other side of him, fifty paces out, the sand was shifting, and beginning to pool in spots, three spots to be exact. She leaned back slowly, reaching back and grasping the leather hilt of her sword, and with a smooth motion, began to draw it from the scabbard.
“Roren,” she whispered over to him briskly. “Roren.”
“Just a little longer, it’s so damned hot.”
“Roren!” she said more forcefully. Lilaci gripped her sword tightly in her hand. The three spots of sand behind him began to grow and started to rise from the desert floor. Something unnatural is coming from the sands. Something, or someone has found me again. Will I never stop being hunted? She stood up quickly and kicked him in the side. “Get up!”
She saw him open his eyes and look up at her, wanting to lash out at her for kicking him, but once he saw the look in her eyes, holding her sword out he looked over quickly to the three growing mounds of sand, and he jumped to his feet with his sword in hand.
“What now?” he asked.
Lilaci watched keenly at the three mounds, all equally spaced from one another, eventually rising waist-height in the near distance. She watched as the three mounds stopped at that height, and then began to angle up from the front, like a chest opening up, but she soon saw they were no chests, but three men bending to stand up straight. Three men of sand, all three with long staffs with twirling sand at their tips. They all stood up straight, and as their bodies turned from that of rough sand to a more detailed male form, their eyes shot open in unison, illuminated by a wicked green glow.
“Reevins,” Lilaci said. “More Reevins have come to take the Sanzoral from me.”
“Will they ever stop coming?” Roren asked.
“I think not, they think it will empower them for a hundred years if they take it from my body.” A violet haze began to form in Lilaci’s hand, and it quickly grew to a bright purple flame, like crackling and snapping fire. “But what these wizards don’t know, is that I won’t accept death until after Kera is safe. The only death they’re going to find— is their own.”
Within seconds, Lilaci realized the battle wasn’t going to be as easy as she anticipated. The three Reevins had turned from their sand forms to three men dressed in long black cloaks and capes, all with weathered, dark skin and long beards, two of white and one blond. They hissed as they wove their staffs around them, sand dancing in the air in swirling orbs about their tips. They’d conjured up tall creatures of gray rock from the desert floor before them. The creatures stood two times Lilaci’s height and each of them held a heavy, sharp club of stone, hefted before them. They had small black eyes, and wide, down-turned mouths under their rocky and sand-filled beards. Lilaci looked up at them with their wide shoulders and strong arms of rock as they walked towards Roren and her.
“What in the Eternal Fires are those?” Roren asked.
“Golems, the Reevins brought stone golems with them from the south,” Lilaci said.
“You really know how to keep every day interesting, Lilaci, I’ll give you that. Our weapons won’t be able to pierce them, you have any idea how to fight these things?”
“No. But I do know this. All that matters is that they are in our way.”
One of the golems rushed in with a furious, unexpected speed and Roren jumped to the side, just out of reach of its mighty club as it crashed into the sand and rock where he was standing. It shook the ground with a violent rumble. The golem growled with a sound like breaking, crumbling rock down a mountainside. Lilaci thrust in quickly with her sword, its tip bouncing off its stone hide with a dull clang.
It turned to attack, its club hefted back in its hand as it swung at her with a heavy whoosh through the air. She ducked below its mighty arc quickly and swung her sword at the knees of the mighty golem, and again, her swords bounced off harmlessly. She looked up at the golem’s rocky face, its beard cracking as it stared down at her with its dead, black beady eyes. It swung down on her again, as the other two golems rushed over.
Lilaci leapt back, staring out at the three Reevins, chanting with their raspy voices, twirling their staffs in the air. “Kill the Reevins, and these walking statues may return back to the sands.” As she said this over to Roren, who had returned to his feet, he began to run towards the Reevins, but was met with a golem standing directly between them.
Roren went on the attack, slashing wildly at it, yet he only stood half its height, so he attacked its legs— the size of tree trunks. He dodged the swings with its mighty club and evaded its other hand that swung down on him with its three fingers curled into a hard stone fist. Jumping back and forth, and ducking and stabbing, Lilaci watched the fighter-side of Roren, and witnessed the training he must have had back in the Order of Drakon, the group dedicated to Kera’s protection and rearing.
Lilaci, while being attacked by the other two golems and their clubs, summoned the magical glow of the Sanzoral which wafted from her hands in a majestic purple smoke. As she fought and evaded the two giants she concentrated hard and brought up from the ground a flurry of sand. It hefted up into the air and began to swirl around the two, confusing them as they groaned and tried to brush it away from their faces. Lilaci took a step back and lowered her sword as she brought the swirling sand tighter onto them, enclosing the sandstorms around them, until it covered every bit of their bodies.
She knew the sand wouldn’t hurt them, and only stunned them in confusion— so she didn’t hesitate— she ran at full sprint between the two, sword in hand and the Sanzoral firmly in her grip. Two of the Reevins lowered their staffs and pointed them out at her, the swirling sand turned to long black streaks that reached out towards her. In their haze, and as she ran towards them, the streaks had become long, thin arms with black hands with long, sharp claws, all in a dull, red glow.
I don’t dare find out what those things would do if they reach me. I’ve got to get past them without touching them, I fear there’s a dark magic in them, possibly a poison. And the golems behind me have regrouped and I can feel their heavy steps following mine. I’ve got to make this fast.
Summoning the light of the Sanzoral within her, she gathered a mass of sand between her and the sharp-clawed hands fast approaching, she shot it up at them, and down onto the heads of the two Reevins. It wasn’t enough to knock them to the ground, but it appeared to be enough to distract them from their dark spells. She rushed in low and stabbed one of them in the belly, her sword’s tip poking through his back, covered in fresh blood. The old Reevin’s eyes went from hollowed to horrified instantly.
The other Reevin, his senses quickly regathered, summoned the black hands from his staff, and they shot at Lilaci. Panic settled in as she watched the hands reaching out of her, about to grab a hold of her. She didn’t have time to run, as they were too fast, so she began to gather the sand at her feet. The hands were just in front of her, only a few feet from gripping her, and the sand wasn’t going to stop them quick enough. She feared she may have been too slow as the golems were almost within striking distance as well. As she let out a loud yell, forcing the sand up as quickly as she could, she watched an arrow whistle in from the right, sliding its way into the Reevin’s head, and the light of his eyes disappeared. Then the black hands with long, black claws with their red glow vanished.
Where did that arrow come from? Who else is hiding among the dunes? The wizard is dead, but the golems are still after me. They can sense the sand is harmless to them. I’ll have to find another way to take them down. I’ve got to get to the other Reevin, and fast. She hefted her sword, ready for battle. Roren ran and jumped onto the back of one of them. He crawled atop its back, as it growled low and frantically reached back at him, trying to grab hold and throw him off. The other let out a mighty arc of its club at Lilaci as she ran by, she could feel the whoosh of it above her hair as she narrowly ducked under it.
“Damned wizards!” she yelled. I’m getting sick
of having to kill you. You’re only letting Kera get further away from me, that’s where you make your real mistake. I’m not afraid of death. I only care about losing her.
The Reevin lowered his staff and she watched as the black hands shot from it, a dozen of them reaching out to touch her, their thin, bony fingers outstretched, eager to dig their claws into her soul.
She reached behind her back and pulled out the curving black dagger tucked into her sash and let it fly. It tore through the air, flipping end over end, its metal ringing sharply. The hands reached out to grab it, but it glided through their black haze and its spinning halted as it stuck into the Reevin’s head, landing with a thuck straight between his eyes. He began to convulse, and the black hands began to shake. The golems roared out in pain behind her, as she knelt on one knee, with her arm still extended out from the throw.
