Dragon's Reach Read online

  Dragon’s Reach

  The Keeper Origins Book 1

  JA Andrews

  Dragon’s Reach, The Keeper Origins Book 1

  Copyright © 2020 by JA Andrews

  Website: www.jaandrews.com

  All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise- without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, locations, events and incidents (in either a contemporary and/or historical setting) are products of the author's imagination and are being used in an imaginative manner as a part of this work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, settings, or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © 2020 by Deranged Doctor Designs

  Illustrations © 2020 by Dominique Wesson

  For Jason

  Contents

  Smoke

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part II

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Part III

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  The End

  From the Author

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Smoke

  Sable breathed in the wild, fresh scent of the leaves, leaning close to peer between the low branches. The shadows were deeper than she’d expected, and she couldn’t make out any more wine-red berries tucked between the darkening leaves.

  A raven cawed out a grating cry above her, and she glanced up, pausing at the sight of a red-tinged cloud. The walls of the ravine around her were ruddy with evening light, too.

  “The sun’s setting,” she called over the burbling of the brook. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” Ryah’s little voice came from the far side of the bush. “My basket’s still low.”

  Sable peered through the branches, catching a glimpse of her sisters. “How many have you eaten?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “None,” Ryah said in a small voice.

  The word brushed against Sable with pinpricks of cold, not on her skin exactly, but cold all the same. She laughed. “Liar.”

  A pair of giggles came from behind the leaves.

  Sable picked up the empty basket from lunch and her own mounded basket of berries, catching one before it rolled over the side. “Talia, how many do you have?”

  “A good amount,” her other sister answered evasively.

  Sable rounded the bush to find the two small girls squatting next to their half empty baskets, their guilty smiles dyed a deep red.

  “Aren’t they delicious?” Talia asked brightly.

  Ryah peered at Sable’s basket. “Didn’t you eat any?”

  “None,” she said, imitating Ryah’s little voice.

  The girls squinted up at her.

  “I wish we could tell if she was lying,” Ryah whispered.

  “Her lips look red,” Talia answered.

  Sable took Ryah’s hand and helped her stand. “It doesn’t matter how many I’ve eaten, because I also filled my basket. You two together don’t have a full one.”

  “You’re fifteen,” Talia pointed out. “That’s older than both of us put together, so you should have more berries than both of us put together.”

  Sable raised an eyebrow.

  Talia smiled innocently. “There just weren’t many on this side of the bush.”

  Another brush of coldness touched Sable, and she gave Talia a pointed look.

  Her sister giggled. “I mean, I thought we’d have more time. The sunset came too fast!”

  A tendril of warmth curled around Sable at these words. Not the humid warmth of the ravine, but something more comfortable, and more elusive. “That, at least, is the truth,” she said with a grin.

  She waited while the girls gathered their baskets before shooing them toward the narrow trail. “See if you two can refrain from eating the rest before we get home.”

  Ryah skipped out onto the path with her half-full basket, and Talia followed. Sable glanced up again as she fell in behind them. It did feel like the sun was setting early. Between the narrow walls of the ravine and the tall bushes along the path, only a thin strip of the sky was visible, but it had a rosy hue.

  The two girls traipsed ahead of her, their voices bubbling along with the noisy stream.

  “I climbed to the third branch in the apple tree yesterday,” Ryah said, the words warm.

  Talia’s mouth dropped open. “By yourself?”

  Ryah nodded and Talia looked back questioningly.

  Sable smiled. “She’s telling the truth.”

  “Well,” Talia said in a confidential voice, “I climbed up on the stool, and touched mama’s elvish bow.”

  Ryah let out a little gasp.

  Sable glanced down with a raised eyebrow. “That’s true, too,” she said. “Even I’ve never touched that.”

  “What did it feel like?” Ryah asked, her voice breathy with wonder.

  “Just like wood,” Talia said, her voice slightly disappointed as they climbed past the bushes at the top of the ravine. “But the red fletching on the arrows is very soft.”

  “How did you reach the…” Ryah’s question broke off as they pulled to a stop.

  Over the hills in front of them, the western sky was stained with a rusty, brown haze. The sun hadn’t set, but hung low in the smoke, glowing like a seething red coal.

  Sable broke into a run.

  The hills around them were tinted red from the dark sun. Sable heard shouting as she neared the last turn, and caught her first whiff of smoke. The trail curved around a rock outcropping and wound into the village between the bakery and the smithy.

  Sable stumbled to a stop along the bakery wall, staring into the village square.

  Ahead of her
, near every building burned.

  She pulled her sisters behind her. Two buildings across the square were already collapsed. Fire raged on another roof, spinning up in a tower of flame. Bodies lay on the ground and black-clad raiders plowed through the chaos, swords red with blood.

  Sable stared at the scene for a terrible, breathless moment.

  A hooded raider tossed a lit torch onto the thatch above the smithy. A flicker of flame grew, then raced up the roof with a savage roar.

  The raider caught sight of the girls and turned his masked face toward them. His eyes dug into Sable, glittering black in his shadowed face. He took a step toward them, sliding a long, curved sword from his scabbard. “Draconek nadra!”

  Ryah screamed. Sable dragged the girls behind the bakery, darting through the herb garden. She leapt over plants and shoved through a gap in Old Lady Hennder’s bushes.

  Sable twisted to look over her shoulder. The man crashed behind them, trampling vegetables with black leather boots, and shouting strange guttural words that echoed off the house.

  The girls tore through Old Lady Hennder’s beans.

  “Mama!” Talia screamed as they scrambled over the low wall into their own yard.

  Sable yanked the girls to a stop. Their own house was a blackened heap, charred and smoldering. Smoke billowed up into the sky shrouding the yard in shadows.

  “Mama?” Ryah whimpered.

  But the yard, from what was left of the house to the steep hill that rose behind it, was empty.

  Curses from the raider behind them, snapped Sable into motion and she pulled the girls toward the only shelter she could see—the bushes along the back of the yard.

  “Draconek nadra!” the raider bellowed again, bounding over the wall, closing the distance.

  Sable shoved the girls into the bushes and turned to face him, throwing her hands up as though she could stop his blade.

  Only steps away from her, he choked out a scream, and fell. His black body sprawled across the ground at Sable’s feet, a red-fletched arrow sunk deep in the back of his neck.

  Behind him, her mother nocked another arrow into her elvish bow.

  “Mama!” The world ripped out of Sable’s throat more a gasp than a word. Sable took a step forward, but the viciously curved bow in her mother’s hand stopped her.

  Her mother hurried over, pulling the younger girls out of the bushes and looking them over. Ryah burst into tears and Talia stood shaking, clutching the basket of berries to her chest.

  Screams and shouts rang through the smoke from the village.

  “More are coming!” Sable’s father called, running into the yard, holding a sword she’d never seen before. He grabbed her shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head, the action twitchy and fast. “Why are they here?” she asked. It was a childish question. She knew it was, even as the words tumbled out of her mouth.

  They were raiders. There was no reason.

  Her father turned to stare at smoldering remains of their home. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  The words cut across Sable’s chest, cold and sharp as a knife. She flinched and spun to look at him. He’d lied? He never lied. Not to her.

  He glanced down at her, realizing what he’d done. Instead of explaining, he merely shook his head. “Take your sisters and hide in the root cellar.” He pushed her toward the small door set in the hill.

  Sable planted her feet. “Why are they here?”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “I love you, Issable.” The warmth of that truth enveloped her. But the truth was so strong, the ruddy light filtering through the smoke coalesced around him. Strands of auburn in his dark beard caught the light, tracing waves in the curls.

  He pressed a kiss to Sable’s forehead, the feel of his lips and the tickle of his beard so real compared to the elusive sensations of his words. “I need you to keep your sisters safe.”

  It was the pleading his voice that made her nod, and she pulled her sisters to the cellar. They scrambled in, clinging to each other.

  Shouts came closer, and Sable pulled the door shut behind her.

  Two raiders strode into the yard.

  Sable’s mother turned and readied her bow. Her father positioned himself between the men and the cellar. Sable pressed her face against a crack in the door, staring at her father, terrified not only by the sight of him with the unfamiliar sword, but also by how easily he held it.

  The yard sat in deep, red gloom. The two men, dressed all in black, were like shadows. The taller of the two snapped out a command, and three more men stepped into view, staying back, each holding a bow aimed at Sable’s parents.

  Sable’s father watched them warily. Her mother stood beside him, keeping her bow trained on the commander.

  “Derchtu perrot.” The commander’s voice was steely, but there was a satisfaction in it.

  The incomprehensible words contained enough truth that Sable felt the warmth of them, even from this distance.

  The commander motioned to the raider next to him, and walked forward until they stood in front of her parents. He looked at them with cold eyes. “Draconek retchhet yedenwelz.”

  Her father let out a short, scornful laugh. “You don’t control nearly as much as you think.”

  Sable’s gaze snapped to her father. He looked like a stranger, holding that sword and understanding these monsters.

  The commander shrugged. “We control enough,” he answered in a heavy accent. “Surrender, and you will live.”

  Sable’s mother planted her feet more firmly.

  The tip of her father’s sword rose, ever so slightly. “Never.”

  The commander studied them for a moment, then nodded to the raider beside him.

  The raider’s blade flicked out in a blur of movement.

  Her father tried to block the attack, but it was too fast. The sword sliced into his chest.

  Sable slapped her hand over her mouth to muffle her scream as he fell.

  A cry ripped out of her mother, feral and savage. She swung her bow up toward the raider’s chest.

  But he was already lunging, cutting into her arm. The elvish bow dropped, and the raider’s sword bit deep into her stomach.

  She toppled to her knees and curled forward.

  The commander grabbed her hair, twisting her head up to face him. “You could have just surrendered.”

  “Never to you,” her mother said, the words ragged. “Free people will always fight you.”

  The man shrugged. “Then they will lose. Wasting everything they could have been. Wasting their regretful little lives.”

  Sable’s mother looked down at her husband’s body, then at the ruined house and the yard. “There was nothing regretful or little about our life here.” Her gaze brushed past Sable behind the cellar door. “It was more than I deserved.” She turned back to the raider. “I regret nothing.” The warmth of the words wrapped tightly around Sable.

  The commander let go of her hair like dropping a rotten berry. She crumpled to the ground, and he brushed off his hands. “What a waste.”

  His warrior drew back his sword for a killing blow.

  An inarticulate scream tore out of Sable and she shoved the door open, rushing across the yard at the man.

  “No!” her mother screamed.

  Sable flung herself at the raider. He caught her arm with his free hand, jerking her to a stop. She pounded her other fist against the unyielding leather armor on his chest.

  The commander barked out a laugh. “You have a daughter?”

  “Stop!” her mother struggled to rise.

  Sable yanked at her arm, but it was held in an iron grip. The commander leaned close, his glittering dark eyes boring into her over his mask. “She looks just like you.”

  “She’s just a child!” her mother spat at the commander. “You coward!”

  He stiffened at the word, then flicked his hand carelessly at Sable and her mother.

  The other raider lifted his sword and Sable t
ried to fling herself away from him. But his grip was hard as stone.

  A red-fletched arrow sank deep into the raider’s eye.

  Sable screamed and tore out of his grasp as he spun and fell, landing lifelessly across her mother. The commander turned to face the bushes along the back of the yard. Arrows shot out of the shadows. The man bellowed out a command before three arrows took him.

  The raider archers fired into the bushes.

  Sable dropped to her knees and crawled to her mother. The fallen raider’s black boot lay flung across her mother’s neck, and Sable scrambled over him. Strips of leather crisscrossing up his boots, and she grabbed a strap with bloody fingers, and yanked it off, pleading with her to move. Her mother’s head merely lolled to the side, her eyes unseeing and lifeless.

  More raiders poured into the yard, met by arrows raining from the shadows.

  Ryah and Talia clung to each other at the door of the root cellar, staring into the yard in horror. Sable shoved herself up and ran to them.

  Pushing the girls back into the darkness, Sable turned to see her parents’ bodies.

  Dark shadows moved out from the bushes on the hill. Tall, foreign looking men stepped into the yard, their elven bows loosing arrow after arrow. The closest turned slowly, his eyes meeting Sable’s. His long face was full of terrible, cold resolve, but a hint of sympathy crossed his face at the sight of her.