Page 34 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

My gaze fixed on the small bowl, resting just above the dead queen’s folded hands, and I swallowed thickly. The tradition went back to when the desert was first crossed. The desert gave us life, and we took a piece of it with us when we died and were returned to her.

My father moved next, and steel struck flint before the torch in his hand flared to life. He raised it high above his head as he slowly advanced. The angle of the lighting deepened the lines in his face and the hollows under his eyes. Or maybe it was just the grief.

He stopped before the pyre, looking down at his wife. I wondered what he saw.

A memory of the three of us riding together flickered through my mind.

I was small, sitting between my father’s arm in front of him as a horse moved beneath us.

My mother had reached over and ruffled my hair as I smiled up at her.

It was in the few years of my life I remembered before the night terrors and wild outbursts had descended, and the only expression I remembered on the queen’s face as she looked at me was a frown.

In that memory she wore a plain brown tunic, her hair flowing loose around her face.

Now, she had been dressed in a silver gown that flowed and dripped off the funeral pyre like water.

Her hair was braided in a crown around her head, intertwined with golden larrea blooms. She looked every inch the queen to me, but the look in my father’s eyes told me he saw something else entirely.

Maybe he saw the same young woman I remembered.

He lifted his head to the sky and shouted the time-honored words:

“The desert gives, and it takes.”

I found myself echoing the words back to him with the rest of the assembled crowd.

“The desert gives and it takes.”

He lowered the torch to the pyre. It caught instantly, the fire consuming the dried wood hungrily.

As Queen Ginevra’s body was lost from view, engulfed in the flames, my father dropped the torch and fell to his knees with his head bowed.

Aderyn walked forward, crouching beside him and putting an arm over his shoulders.

She stayed there with him for long minutes, kneeling in the sand.

I knew I should do something—say something that could comfort him as his shoulders shook—but my feet had become rooted to the ground.

I doubted an embrace from a son in chains would do much to alleviate his pain, anyway.

I could only watch as the smoke billowed into the sky, turning the harsh, pure sunlight hazy and red.

I squinted at it, and my brow furrowed. Leaning toward Keera, I opened my mouth to speak, although words felt lodged in my throat.

A distant booming filled the air before I could speak. Dread pooled in my belly as I looked up toward the sky. It came again, closer this time, and my frown deepened.

This wasn’t the crack of wings that signaled a gravehawk’s arrival, drawn by the burning flesh. This thunderous noise seemed to come from the earth itself. Tiny vibrations started to travel up from the soles of my boots.

Keera beside me whirled around, her gaze snapping toward the mountains. She shook her head, as if she could stop what was happening.

“The crops can’t withstand another earthquake,” she murmured under her breath, her voice laced with despair.

The boom came again, and the ground heaved under my feet. I tried to reach out for Keera, forgetting my hands were bound, and nearly overbalanced myself. The ground didn’t continue to shake and roll though, as it would in an earthquake.

Instead, the baked earth beside the area where we stood heaved again, a distinct bulge forming as if…

Sands…

As if something were trying to break free of the ground.

“Run!” I shouted.

People were already beginning to scatter in fear, and Keera echoed my order .

“Run! Back to the city!” She had fallen to her knees as the ground started to move, but a young man with windswept hair who I didn’t recognize helped her to her feet. She nodded in thanks before beginning to herd the mourners back toward the city.

The manacles on my wrists cut into the exposed skin above my gloves as my guard started to retreat, yanking my bound hands forward.

I planted my feet, resisting so hard that his head snapped back as he was halted.

I paid his shout of protest no heed as I whipped around, looking for my father and Aderyn.

They stumbled to their feet, the tilting of the ground fighting them as they tried to flee toward the city walls. Before I could move to help them, an explosion of sand erupted between me and them.

The ground burst upward and the first thing I saw was black, glistening armor and wicked pincers as long as my torso. The pincers shot forward before I could process what I was seeing, and a strangled scream split the air, cut off by a wet crunch.

A sudden weight pulling on my wrists dragged me to my knees.

From my position on the ground, I stared up as a scorpion easily twice the size of a stallion pulled its back end from the hole in the ground, revealing three curled tails, each tipped with a deadly stinger.

Its segmented body twitched as it freed itself from the sand, its eight legs flexing menacingly.

A tricrith—another terrible beast of legend rose from the pages of a bestiary to punish the desert.

I wrenched at my wrists, trying to get to my feet, only to find that the chain was now attached to the broken body of my guard, crushed by the scorpion’s massive pincer and tossed aside.

Fighting against my bound hands, I scrambled through the sand toward the dead guard, searching for a way to free myself.

A horrible clacking noise marked the skittering of armored legs as the tricrith advanced. A cry and a metallic clang sounded behind me; Keera had drawn her saber. Even as she distracted the monster, I knew I couldn’t let her face the tricrith alone.

Not after what happened with the lava wyrm .

My hands scrabbled at the dead guard’s belt, finding his dirk and pulling it free with both hands. I stared back and forth between my manacles and the thick metal chain joining them to the cuff around his wrist. He might have had a key, but I didn’t have time to search.

With a grimace, I lifted the blade and slashed down at his forearm.

Blood splattered across my clothes and the sand below.

As the earth was stained crimson and the grating sensation of sawing through bone traveled up my arm, the whispers in my mind grew into the chant of battle, threatening to overtake all rational thought.

I grit my teeth and finished my gruesome task, the metal cuff falling from the guard’s now severed wrist. I snatched the manacle as I stood, holding it in one hand and the dirk in the other.

I whirled around, holding the knife before me as I took in the scene.

Keera had drawn her saber and slashed at the tricrith.

A clang rang out as it batted away her strike with an armored pincer.

Its black exoskeleton glistened iridescently in the desert sun, the thick and glossy coating telling me it would not be easily penetrated.

With Keera facing the creature head on, the side facing me was relatively unprotected.

I charged, aiming my dagger at the joint between two segments of its thick body.

Before I could strike, it scuttled sideways.

As one of its many legs swung out, I threw myself back, but my boot caught in the loop of chain still trailing from my wrist.

I stumbled and threw my arms out to regain my balance, punching straight into the flailing leg. The handle of the blade wrenched from my hand, sending the weapon spinning off over my head.

My failed attack caught the creature’s attention, and it whirled on me.

As it spun, one of its pincers clipped Keera in the side, and she dropped to one knee with a yelp of pain.

My heart leaped in fear for her even as the creature fixed me with the dark, beady eyes set close on the top of its head.

Its chelicerae waved menacingly at me as all three of its tails curled forward, ready to strike.

And I had no weapon.

The whisper of the desert in my mind told me to dodge just before the first tail shot forward, fast as lightning. It whooshed past my face, and I ducked under the second strike. The third strike came too fast, and while I leaned backward to get out of range, it wasn’t enough.

The stinger skittered over my mask and a sizzling filled the air as the venom smoked and spat on the metal surface.

Pounding footsteps to my right indicated that Keera had gotten to her feet.

She tried to take advantage of the creature’s focus on me to land a blow, but one of the tails turned toward her.

A puff of sand rose as she rolled beneath the strike, the stinger missing her narrowly.

She came to her feet a few yards away from me, and we both hesitated, the tricrith’s tails still poised and swinging menacingly at both of us. With three stingers and two of us, we were outnumbered—even more severely as the only weapon I had was a chain.

My gaze darted down to the length of heavy metal links in my hand and my stomach lurched. Quickly, I gathered it up into a loop, narrowly avoiding dropping it as I was forced to dodge a swinging pincer.

I held both ends and stared up at the trio of stingers, all moving and striking independently. It was a mad idea, but the voices of the desert crecendoed in my mind, blocking out any mental voices telling me this wasn’t wise. If I was going mad, I might as well act like it.

I shouted wordlessly, and all the stingers flicked toward me at the sign of an impending attack. As they did, I threw the loop of chain, holding on to the end bound to my wrists, just as I would to rope a wild horse—like I had when I caught Alza.