Blinded by the Sun (Erythleh Chronicles Book 4)

BLINDED

BY THE

SUN

Erythleh Chronicles: Book Four

by Catherine Johnson

FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

Blinded by the Sun

Copyright 2016 Catherine Johnson

All rights reserved

Catherine Johnson has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image courtesy of werner22brigitte, via Pixaby.com.

Cover design by JB, 2016.

Also by Catherine Johnson:

Powerless

What Price Freedom

The Kairos Series (MC Romance):

Blood in the Water. Book One.

Bones by the Wood. Book Two.

Breath on the Wind. Book Three.

The Erythleh Chronicles (Fantasy Romance):

Lost in the Dawn. Book One.

Searching the Darkness. Book Two.

Finding the Stars. Book Three.

Desire and Delirium (Retold Fairy Tales)

After Midnight

Strange Safety

Beauty Within

For all the readers who have given this series a chance.

Thank you.

~xxx~

Chapter One

The sun had passed its highest point in the heavens. By Lyssia's best guess, the raiding party didn't have much time to waste. The message they'd been given from their spies in Nari had contained news of a trade caravan leaving the city, one ripe with supplies that would be valuable, in some cases essential, to the Skenites. It was an opportunity that was too good to miss. It had taken them longer than usual to find a sand dragon and coerce it into the right position to be useful in their attack, and Lyssia was beginning to be worried that their mission would fail. Their successes relied on good fortune and good timing. They'd been fortunate again today, so far. Lyssia hoped that their luck held out, and that no one got crushed against the spiny hide, or whipped by the deadly tail of the wild and enraged beast.

"Yah! Yah!" Braedeth yelled, giving the lizard enough of a poke with his long lance to send it forward. It bared the rows of razor teeth in its stunted snout, but scuttled forward, looking for all the world like it was obeying the commands of the man who was a quarter of its size. The spike-covered lizards were aggressive and easily irritated. Those characteristics made them ideal for this purpose, but everyone had to keep their wits about them, and eyes in the backs of their heads.

"Yah!" Apparently Fett couldn't resist getting his lance in, too, but he'd prodded the lizard too soon, and in the wrong direction.

Lyssia debated sticking her lance into Fett, but that wouldn't have helped Braedeth, who was in imminent danger of being eaten. Braedeth was shouting, trying to drive the lizard back in the proper direction, whilst trying not to become a snack.

"Move to the rear! Take my place!" Lyssia yelled, shoving Fett out of the way with her shoulder.

He was going to argue. He was huge and intimidating. He had the advantage of half a man's height over her, and he was as dark as a slice of midnight come to life. Fett didn't like women being part of the raids at the best of times, but Lyssia wasn't going to give the arrogant giant a chance to fuck this raid up. "Get out of the way! And try not to stick it in the arse."

She lowered her lance, and it seemed that Fett thought she might carry out such a threat on him. He backed away, slowly, but he gave her enough room to take over the left flank. Between the three of them, they persuaded the sand dragon to crest the dune, without losing a limb.

There was no time to wait around; the sand dragon wouldn't sit patiently until they were ready. Squinting, blinded between the harsh glare of the sun and the shadows of the dunes, Lyssia could just about make out the caravan below them, trudging along the valley between created by the steep peaks. Fett's little mistake had cost them valuable moments. Now they'd be attacking the middle of the train rather than confronting it head on. There was a chance that people could get hurt, Skenites and traders alike. Lyssia steeled herself not to think about the consequences of what they were about to do. Sken need the supplies that the traders carried. That was all that mattered.

Braedeth let out shrill whistle, the sign to attack. Lyssia muttered a count of three, and together, timed perfectly considering they couldn't see each other for the body of the beast, she and Braedeth yelled and jabbed at the same time. Miraculously, so did Fett. The sand dragon took off down the dune with an indignant, squawk-like roar. Lyssia had a moment to watch the faces of the traders turn upwards at the sound, to recognise the danger coming, and to see their fright.

The next moment, their ragtag party of twenty was hurtling down the dune. Lyssia was at the front of the pack, running and sliding down the sandy slope, yowling some incomprehensible battle yell, her lance held ready in both hands, its point aimed at a target.

~o0o~

"Fucking dense, ignorant beast," Fett swore, and spat at the madavath's claws.

The lizard snapped, making Fett jump back. He was a massive man, and had no business being afraid of the lizard. However, calm as it was, the madavath had sharp teeth. If he didn't stop provoking it, he'd be reminded of that in a very painful way.

"They're not ignorant," Lyssia defended the lizard. "There, there. He didn't mean it." Fett scowled at her as she cooed at the madavath.

Whilst they were as large as the sand dragons, madavaths could be domesticated. The traders used them to move their goods across the desert. Wagons were no use; their wheels sank into the sand and found no traction to turn. Any other sort of cart or sled required something to pull it, and few animals found purchase on the shifting sands when burdened with such weight. The traders had come up with the solution of attaching the goods to the only thing capable of carrying anything across the desert.

Madavaths were infinitely easier to deal with than sand dragons, not least because their skin was smooth and not covered in sharp horns, but also because the traders ensured they were docile, and as a breed they were slower to aggravate. Or, at least, they were when they didn't have a tall, muscled man swearing at them. Lyssia edged forward, her hand out, palm upwards. She knew the madavath wouldn't be hungry; it was unlikely to bite her. It would see the passive gesture for what it was. Sure enough, the lizard lowered its mammoth head and took a sniff of her palm.

"See, you're a friendly little fellow, aren't you?"

"Ignorant, fucking stupid, dense sand donkeys..."

"Hey!" Lyssia exclaimed, interrupting Fett's diatribe. "Instead of scaring it so much that it runs all the way to Velth, how about you go gather some of those packages the traders left?"

When the traders had started to run, the Skenites had let them go. They weren't interested in staining the sand with blood without reason. They had no desire at all to kill anyone they didn't have to. The traders' deaths would bring them neither food, fortune, nor luck, so they let them run away.

Raiding had been easier these past years. Felthiss, the country that had previously supplied soldiers to guard the caravans, had been preoccupied by their war against Litt. All the experienced soldiers had been despatched to the front lines. Only the newest raw recruits had been left to guard the caravans, and that made them easy pickings. Lyssia foresaw that changing soon. The war in Litt had ended, and Felthiss had a new leader, one who seemed intent on negotiating peace with all countries, even Vuthron. Lyssia would bet her last skin of water that those negotiations hadn't included putting a stop to the slave trade, which was the reason for the Skenites' existence.

Some people, even some important people, had decried the Vuthroans' need to perpetuate their custom of the blood toast. Those people had also decried the way the blood drinkers procured their source, paying silver and gold to the greedy bastards who would sell a fellow human being for a pocket full of coins. Some had tried to stop the brutal traditions, all had failed, so still the slavers kept plucking their human wares from the sand.

Serwren was the new leader of Felthiss. Erkas, her brother, who had held the seat of power before her, had declared war on Vuthron over its gruesome traditions. That action had ensured that Erkas would forever be a hero to the people of Sken and Sannarrell, those most at risk of ending up at the point of a Vuthroan dagger. Erkas had had the confidence, the audacity, the courage, to stand up to the Vuthroans, and he'd been murdered for his bravery. Babies in Sken were named in his honour, toasts were drunk in his name. A forgotten nation mourned his passing.

The madavath was still sniffing her palm, looking for all the world like it wanted a nut to eat.

"Come on, boy." She reached out and scratched it behind its ear hole. It leaned into her touch, much as a dog might have done, a dog that had a head larger than her body. "Let's get you home." She kept her hand on its head, and started to walk. The madavath followed her, waddling along, with its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.

~o0o~

The middle of the desert was an area where lost people were never found, that wanderers never returned from, and where the traders never ventured. It was too hot, too desolate, too inhospitable, and too far from anything for anyone to bother with. The sands that made up the deserts of the Southern Wastelands were different in this region. Elsewhere, the sand was loose, it shifted into great dunes, and trapped the unwary. Here, the sand was packed into a hard, dense, deep layer and was baked to a brick-like solidness by the sun. There was covering of fine sand that could blind eyes or flay skin when the wind stirred it, but that only made it a more perfect location to make a home in.

There was a canyon that split the centre of the desert, but it wasn't charted on any maps, because no one who cared to document its location had ever lived to tell that they'd found it. Lyssia, Braedeth, Fett, the rest of their troop, and the laden madavaths, all made their way down the slope that heralded the southern end of the canyon. The walls were all smooth; their banded undulations, showing the history of the sands, had been worn smooth by the grit and wind.

As they ventured farther, the canyon became deeper. The shadows were impossibly cool in the heat of the blazing sun. A pole of rock, worn away from the body of the canyon, heralded the offshoot. The smaller channel was a kind of tributary for the wind. It was darker and barely wide enough for the madavaths to waddle down. The channel became a tunnel, and the floor began to slope downwards more sharply.

Eventually, the corridor opened out into a vast cavern that contained a subterranean lake. The ceiling was covered in stalactites, slimy fingers that dripped constantly into the water. There was an underground water system that allowed the Skenites to live as they pleased, within reason. It was the intense heat that killed everything and anything that tried to survive on the surface, not lack of liquid. Everything that was exposed to the sun was burnt to a crisp in hardly any time at all.

Almost immediately, all the huge lizards wandered off to lap up some refreshment. They were so absorbed in drinking that they didn't so much as twitch as they were relieved of their cargo. There were several boats waiting. The boatmen had been expecting their return, and now they were helping to fill the bows of their vessels and were picking up their long punts. The lake was large enough that the shore was not visible from one point of the compass to the other; the waters simply merged with the shadows. Each boat had oil lanterns fixed to the prow and the stern, and several along the low sides. Lyssia always found the journey across the still, glassy waters unnerving to the point of claustrophobic.

On the opposite shore of the lake to the tunnel was the gateway to the city of Sken itself. The cavern had been excavated and made habitable over time, and was now a complicated structure of tunnels and rooms that had been added to and improved as each new generation had sought their sanctuary within it. The high vaulted ceilings in the main hall overlooked staircases cut into the rock of the walls. The flights of steps took people to different levels of the cave system: living quarters, workshops, places of healing, and schools. An embryo nation was hidden and thriving in the caves.

There was a flurry of activity as the boats ground up onto the shallow banking. A small crowd was jostling to be first to the waterline. The cargo was handed off to the traders who would sell it on to the residents. Everything had a fixed price, so that no one could make an unreasonable amount of profit. Commercialism was against the principles of the way that the Skenites wanted to live in this new world they were building. They had tried simply giving away their hauls, and that hadn't worked out all that well. There had never been enough to be shared equally, and they couldn't justify a first come, first served basis. Riots had broken out when supplies had run low. That everything had a price was an anathema to the Skenites, that was the slavers' justification for turning on their brethren, but the system had its uses, if it was controlled.

The city was a shade warmer than cool. Entering the cave system that formed the city of Sken brought a clammy sweat to Lyssia's skin. The sun produced intolerable temperatures on the sand above, but those were unable to penetrate to the caverns below. The shadowy caves should have been cool, but the absence of sunlight was mitigated by the heat produced by so many bodies, and the result was stale and tepid air that felt unnatural to walk through. Since the city was underground, there was no wind. The only way the air moved was by people passing through it, but it was the same temperature as blood. Usually, it felt to Lyssia as though she was moving through fog, unless she had been on a raid, or they'd been fighting the slavers; then her body felt as if it was trying to turn itself inside out whilst the adrenaline took its sweet time to fade.

Lyssia had called Sken home for years. She had been thirteen when the slavers had first tried to abduct her. She had been fifteen when they had nearly succeeded in their second attempt. Her father, knowing that it wouldn't be the last time his daughter was sought out, had packed her off to the desert. For the next fifteen years she had remained hidden. For fifteen years she had made her life under the sands rather than over them. If her life had continued uninterrupted, she would likely have been a wife and mother, with half a dozen children tugging at her skirts.