Kings of Ruin (Kingdoms of Sand Book 1)

  KINGS OF RUIN

  KINGDOMS OF SAND BOOK 1

  by

  Daniel Arenson

  Table of Contents

  MAP

  CHAPTER ONE: MAYA

  CHAPTER TWO: EPHER

  CHAPTER THREE: OFEER

  CHAPTER FOUR: MARCUS

  CHAPTER FIVE: SHILOH

  CHAPTER SIX: JERAEL

  CHAPTER SEVEN: SENECA

  CHAPTER EIGHT: VALENTINA

  CHAPTER NINE: OFEER

  CHAPTER TEN: JERAEL

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: MAYA

  CHAPTER TWELVE: EPHER

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SENECA

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JERAEL

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: OFEER

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: SENECA

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: VALENTINA

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: ATALIA

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: EPHER

  CHAPTER TWENTY: PORCIA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: JERAEL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: SHILOH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: OFEER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: PORCIA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: JERAEL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: VALENTINA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: EPHER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: SHILOH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: EPHER

  CHAPTER THIRTY: JERAEL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: KOREN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: JERAEL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: KOREN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: MAYA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: YOHANAN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: JERAEL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: MARCUS

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: VALENTINA

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: YOHANAN

  CHAPTER FORTY: EPHER

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: SHILOH

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: OFEER

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: MAYA

  SAMPLE CHAPTER: OFEER

  AFTERWORD

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  Full-sized map: DanielArenson.com/Map

  MAYA

  The dog came to her from the hills. His skin draped over jutting bones, and mange infested his fur. The animal's back leg was twisted, and he whimpered as he limped, tongue hanging loose. Flies bustled around the poor creature like vultures waiting for carrion, and the stench of his own waste clung to him, mingling with the scent of spring flowers.

  The sun shone above, and those flowers—anemones, cyclamens, and almond blossoms—bloomed across the hills. Leaves budded on the olive trees and mint bushes, turtle doves sang in the pines, and the sea whispered in the west, glinting in the sunlight. It seemed unfair, a cruel joke of the heavens, that such wretched life should exist in a springtime of such beauty.

  Maya stood frozen for a moment, heart thudding, for she had never seen life twisted in such a way. She could hardly believe that the dog lived, that it wasn't some shed or repha or another demon of Ashael. Then the dog raised his furless head, and his eyes met hers, and she saw humanity.

  It could not have been humanity, of course—it was only an animal—but at that moment, for the first time in her life, Maya realized that the souls of animals were just as aware, just as pained, just as lost as hers.

  "Poor thing," she whispered, tears in her eyes.

  She made to step toward the dog, but a hand grabbed her shoulder, holding her back.

  "Don't go near it. It stinks. Makes me sick."

  Maya turned around to face her older sister. "Let me go. I have to help him."

  Ofeer shook her head. "If you want to help that mutt, why don't you kill it? You'd be doing the miserable thing a favor. It's dying already, and besides, all dogs are wall-pissers."

  Tears in her eyes, Maya stared at her sister, shocked at how Ofeer's eyes suddenly seemed less human than the dog's.

  Slender and fair, Ofeer was eighteen, three years older than Maya—already a grown woman yet still unwed. Like most dwellers of Zohar, this coastal kingdom of the east, Ofeer had dark eyes, olive-toned skin, and black hair, though her hair was smooth, not curly and untamed like Maya's. The young woman wore a cotton simlah, the simple dress of this land, and leather sandals. She looked like any other Zoharite, and she was treated as such, yet Maya knew the truth—that Ofeer was only her half sister. That the dark beauty's father was not the wise, noble Jerael Sela, Lord of the Coast, but rather a man of the distant Aelarian Empire.

  Ofeer did not have the paler skin, the taller carriage, or the lush stola garment of an Aelarian. She looked nothing like those foreign merchants and ambassadors who often visited the port. Yet there was something in those brown eyes—something pained, soulless, even cruel—that hinted at the bloodstained empire's malice.

  Seeking comfort, Maya clutched the pendant she wore around her neck, the gold shaped as a lion. It was an ancient symbol of Zohar, and all those in her family—her older siblings, her parents, her uncle and cousins—wore the same pendant. All but Ofeer. In an act of defiance, perhaps mockery, the dark-haired girl wore a platinum eagle on a chain—sigil of the Aelarian Empire, the land of her father.

  "You are a wall—a wall—" Maya's cheeks heated, and she blurted out the words. "A wall-pisser!"

  With that, Maya tore herself free from her sister's grip, turned away, and ran toward the dog.

  The animal had collapsed onto the hilltop and lay panting. Maya knelt above him, and she could barely believe this dog still lived. Mange had claimed most of his fur, and raw sores ruptured the bare skin. He was so thin she could see the shape of his skeleton, could count the bones. Only the dog's eyes seemed unaffected, staring at her, and his tongue slipped out to lick her hand. He lay among the flowers, rotting and dying, a creature of winter melting in the spring.

  He must have come from Beth Eloh, Maya thought. She had been to that city only once, years ago, but she had never forgotten the many stray dogs wandering outside the walls, kicked out from the crowded neighborhoods within. The capital city of Zohar rose upon a mountain three days away. This dog must have walked all the way from there, probably finding no food or water in the wilderness.

  "What's your name?" Maya asked, placing a hand on the dog's head.

  "You're going to get fleas." Ofeer made a gagging sound. "Bash its head in with a rock, or if you're too cowardly, move aside and let me do it. I've killed rats at the port before, and this is no different."

  Maya grimaced. "This isn't the port."

  Ofeer snorted. "You spend your life in your father's villa on Pine Hill, and if you ever leave your pampered little palace, you just roam around these hills of flowers and butterflies. But I've never been afraid to enter the walls of Gefen. To go to the port. To visit the taverns by the water. To live. I'm not afraid of ugliness, and I'm not weak like you."

  Still patting the dog, Maya glared over her shoulder at Ofeer. The older woman stood a few feet away, hands on her hips, a crooked smile on her dark face.

  "You don't go there to live," Maya said. "You go to those dockside taverns to meet men, and you . . . you . . ." Her cheeks flushed hotter, and this time she could not complete her sentence.

  "I fuck them, yes." Ofeer nodded. "I know that's what Mother says about me. What they all say. Maybe it's true." She scoffed. "And maybe you should join me next time. Go fuck a man yourself. Leave your countryside villa and experience real life—not just your flowers and scrolls, but gambling, and booze, and sailors dying in knife fights, and men's cocks inside you."

  "It's your villa too!" Tears stung Maya's eyes. "You're part of our family. You just act like you don't care, like you're not one of us, just because—" She bit down on her words. Completing sentences had become a challenge this day.

 
Ofeer nodded, eyes narrowed, and spoke softly. "Say it. Go on."

  "Just because your father is Aelarian. Just because you're a bastard. There, I said it." Maya blinked away her tears. "You act like you're something special, like you're better than us. But nobody cares who your father is. Nobody! You were raised in our family, in our house, in our kingdom. You're nothing but a Zoharite now, just a simple girl from a little kingdom nobody cares about. So pull your head out of your bottom."

  Her cheeks wouldn't stop burning, and Maya slapped a hand across her mouth, surprised at her own crudeness. Too much time with Ofeer was rubbing off on her.

  "Out of my bottom?" Ofeer laughed and bowed, affecting a highborn accent. "Well, how splendid to discuss my royal derriere! I forgot that you speak of asses only when needing a beast to carry your crates of silks."

  Maya stared west, and the day seemed to grow colder. The hills rolled down for several miles, rich with wild grass, fig and carob trees that gave forth sweet fruit, and chalk and granite boulders that rose like statues. A dirt path snaked between the hills, leading toward farmlands and vineyards. Beyond them, date palms lined a golden beach. A bay plunged into the land, and many ships filled the cove, sails brilliant in the sunlight. The city of Gefen embraced the harbor, its walls high, its streets cobbled. Maya's family—the ancient House of Sela—owned all these lands, from hills to sea. They were among the wealthiest families in Zohar, second in power only to the royal family in the east.

  Yet all their wealth, their power, their ships, their vineyards and farmlands and stables—all was like a garlic's peel compared to the might across the sea. To the Aelarian Empire. To that vast, sprawling civilization that ruled every other port around the Encircled Sea. That power that was ever rising, its shadow ever threatening to eclipse all that Maya's family had built here.

  Maya pushed those thoughts away for now. She returned her eyes to the dog. He still lay by her, still licking her hand.

  Maya closed her eyes.

  "Let me help you, friend," she whispered.

  "There's nothing you can do for that wall-pisser." Ofeer hawked and spat. "Beyond help, that one is. I told you. Pick up that rock there. A quick dash to the skull should do the trick."

  But there was something Maya could do. There was a light inside her. The light she had sometimes felt along the sea, in the vineyards and gardens around her villa, and here on the hills.

  There was Luminosity.

  Maya knew that Luminosity was forbidden to her. She had been ten years old when first discovering the power, using it to heal her mother's finger, which the woman had cut while carving pomegranates for the harvest feast. Like the lion, the pomegranate was an ancient symbol of Zohar, and Shiloh had thought it a sign of great misfortune that she had bloodied one. Shiloh Sela—a kind, gentle matriarch—had struck Maya that day. Had wept. Had shouted. Had made Maya vow to never summon that light again, not even to heal the dying, let alone a mere sliced finger.

  "Do you know what they do to lumers?" Mother had shouted, eyes red.

  Maya knew. Lumers had no titles, no family names, no villas, no golden jewels. Lumers were chained and sent overseas, tributes to Aelar, forced to serve that cruel empire in its towering cities of marble and iron. Should her Luminosity be discovered, Maya knew, she would join the next tribute—just another lumer, exported in a boat's belly, a gift to appease the emperor and keep his armada at bay.

  Yet now Maya refused to think about foreign empires, chains and ships, and her mother's wrath. Right now a dog was dying beneath her hands. Right now a soul with human eyes needed her.

  Right now Maya would draw the forbidden light.

  She raised her head, took a deep breath, and looked around her. The fig and carob trees swayed, and the turtle doves sang. Beyond the stench of the dog, she could smell the anemones and even the distant sea. There was magic to this land, there was that invisible force some called lume. It floated between the rustling leaves. It rode the waves. It nestled between the hills. It soaked the land of Zohar, found nowhere else in the world, invisible, odorless, tasteless, impossible for most people to sense. But Maya had always been a daughter of Luminosity, had always sensed what others could not.

  She inhaled deeply, drawing the lume from the land around her, letting it fill her, warm her like mulled wine, raise her awareness to a higher level.

  The world breathed around her.

  The sea moved, whispered, called to her. The sun rose and fell and rose, an endless dance. The forests aged, withered, and sprouted anew. All human lives in the desert and the Encircled Sea seemed fleeting, mere dandelion seeds in the wind, and the world itself became a single living being—with Maya a part of it. Breathing with it. Drawing from its energy into her body and palms.

  She took the lume, and she luminated it within her.

  She stared down at her hands, and she saw them glowing.

  "Luminescence," she whispered. "Refined lume."

  Ofeer cursed behind her, but Maya barely heard her sister; the woman seemed smaller than a grain of sand on an endless beach.

  The luminescence flowed through her, and Maya let the golden, glowing tendrils flow from her hands into the dog.

  She felt him—not just the bones, the raw skin, the mangy fur. But the life. The soul. The light. Everything was illuminated to her, flowing around her, the dog's birth, his suckling at the teat, his years of scurrying through the alleys of Beth Eloh, his journey here. His pain. His fear. His love for her, a love only moments old yet already fuller, truer than the love most humans ever felt. Maya wove her light around his pain, soothing, healing.

  Live, friend. Heal.

  The golden light faded.

  Maya blinked, letting the luminescence drift away. Her awareness shrank, the lines of time and existence smoothing out, leaving her just a girl again, a single soul in a single moment.

  Before her, the dog rose to his feet.

  His fur was still patchy, his frame still skeletal, but the sores had closed across his skin, and no more pain filled his eyes. The illness was out, and the light of luminescence filled him. Now the animal could heal, regaining weight and strength every day. Now, Maya knew, the dog would never leave her side, would be a companion whose love was eternal like the sea.

  The dog licked her hand, gratitude in his eyes.

  A whistle tore the air.

  An arrow drove into the dog's head and emerged from the other side.

  With a strangled cry, the dog thudded down, dead before he hit the ground.

  Maya's heart seemed to freeze and shatter. She spun around, eyes wide, hands curling into fists.

  The first thing she saw was Ofeer. The girl was staring westward, a tight smile spreading across her face, her eyes bright. At first Maya thought that her half sister had shot the dog, but no—Ofeer carried no bow.

  That was when Maya saw the young man walking across the hills toward them.

  He was only a youth, probably a year or two shy of twenty. His skin was lighter than hers. Not as white as the barbarians in the northern forests, but paler than the olive tone of a Zoharite. His hair was chestnut, blond when the light hit it right, and his eyes were deep brown flecked with gold, the color of gilt peeling off mahogany. The boy's face was petulant, the lips pouty, almost cherubic, and there was a certain beauty to him. Not a rugged, masculine beauty like Maya's older brothers possessed but something softer, finer, like a venomous snake emerging from a basket, clad in scales like a coat of precious metal.

  Indeed, this boy wore his own gilded raiment. His steel breastplate shone, forged to mimic a muscular bare chest, gleaming with filigree. A rich cloak draped across his shoulders, fastened with an eagle fibula the size of a fist, its golden talons clutching a sapphire. A gladius sword hung at his side, the scabbard jeweled. Finally, the boy held a bow, and arrows filled a quiver upon his hip.

  "Damn mutts infesting this maggoty land." The boy spat. "Three bitches on a hill, but only two with nice teats."

  Maya stared bey
ond the boy, westward toward the sea. On the horizon she saw them—a hundred ships or more, bearing the eagle banners. An Aelarian armada.

  She returned her eyes to the Aelarian boy.

  "Leave this place, eaglet." Maya grabbed a rock—the same rock Ofeer had wanted to use on the dog's skull. She spoke in his tongue, which all Sela children studied. "Leave now before I bash your head in."

  Ofeer looked at Maya, a crooked smile on her lips, her eyes shining strangely. "Eaglet? Do you know who we speak to, sister?" The black-haired woman turned back toward the boy and knelt. "Hail the Empire, Seneca Octavius, Prince of Aelar!"

  The boy looked over the kneeling woman, and his eyes met Maya's. Those pouty lips smirked.

  Maya's world, only moments ago so fair, seemed to crumble around her. The fleet sailed into the harbor. The flies bustled around the dead dog, feasting, their long wait finally over.

  EPHER

  "He went hunting." Epher stood on the ramparts, clutched the hilt of his sword, and stared at the Aelarian ships in the harbor. "Seneca Octavius, Prince of the Aelarian Empire, sailed here with an armada large enough to conquer the coast . . . and went hunting."

  His sister stood beside him, clad in scale armor, a bow in hand. A sword hung from her belt, the iron blade shaped like a sickle. On her right hip, she bore a sling and a pouch of sea stones. Her troops stood along the wall with her, similarly armed and armored, staring at the water. Atalia was only nineteen, four years younger than Epher, yet already a segen in the coastal garrison, commanding a hundred warriors. Staring off the ramparts, she hawked noisily and spat into the sea as if spitting on the entire Aelarian fleet.

  "That pup should try to hunt me." Atalia snorted. "I'll shove my sword up his ass. Bet he'll like it too."

  Epher stared at her. Third born of the Sela family, Atalia had their father's tall build, light brown skin, and dark eyes. The wind billowed her chin-length black hair and woolen cloak. A golden lion pendant hung around her neck, same as the one he wore. Atalia was a fierce warrior, Epher knew, but too wild, too uncouth, too headstrong.