The Warded Man (36 page)

They headed upstairs. Elissa cooed as she approached Marya’s nest, eager to hold her daughter, but she stopped short when she saw the folded paper tucked partially beneath the baby.

Her hands shaking, Elissa lifted the scrap of parchment and read aloud:

Dear Elissa and Ragen
,
I have taken assignment to Lakton from the Messengers’ Guild. By the time you read this, I will be on the road. I’m sorry I could not be what everyone wanted.
   Thank you for everything. I will never forget you
.

—
Arlen

“No!”
Mery cried. She turned and fled the room, leaving the house at a run.

“Ragen!” Elissa cried. “Ragen!!”

Her husband came rushing to her side, and he shook his head sadly as he read the note. “Always running from his problems,” he muttered.

“Well?” Elissa demanded.

“Well, what?” Ragen asked.

“Go and find him!” Elissa cried. “Bring him back!”

Ragen fixed his wife with a stern look, and without a word spoken they argued. Elissa knew it was a losing battle from the start, and soon lowered her eyes.

“Too soon,” she whispered. “Why couldn’t he have waited one more day?” Ragen put his arms around her as she started to weep.

“Arlen!” Mery cried as she ran. All pretense of calm had flown from her, all interest in seeming strong, in making Arlen fight. All she wanted now was to find him before he left and tell him that she loved him, and that she would continue loving him no matter what he chose to do.

She reached the city gate in record time, panting from exertion, but it was too late. The guards reported that he had left the city hours earlier.

Mery knew in her heart he was not coming back. If she wanted him, she would have to go after him. She knew how to ride. She could get a horse from Ragen, and ride after him. He would surely succor in Harden’s Grove the first night. If she hurried, she could get there in time.

She sprinted back to the manse, terror at the thought of losing him giving her fresh strength. “He’s gone!” she shouted to Elissa and Ragen. “I need to borrow a horse!”

Ragen shook his head. “It’s past midday. You’ll never make it in time. You’ll get halfway there, and the corelings will tear you to pieces,” he said.

“I don’t care!” Mery cried. “I have to try!” She darted for the stables, but Ragen caught her fast. She cried and beat at him, but he was stone, and nothing she did could loosen his grip.

Suddenly, Mery understood what Arlen had meant when he said Miln was a prison. And she knew what it was like to feel diminished.

It was late before Cob found the simple letter, stuck in the ledger on his countertop. In it, Arlen apologized for leaving early, before his seven years were up. He hoped Cob could understand.

Cob read the letter again and again, memorizing every word, and the meanings between the lines. “Creator, Arlen,” he said. “Of course I understand.” Then he wept.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ARLEN?
he asked himself as his torchlight flickered invitingly on the stone stairs leading down into the dark. The sun was dipping low, and it would take several minutes to get back to his camp, but the stairs called to him in a way he could not explain.

Cob and Ragen had warned him about this. The thought of treasures that might be found in ruins was too much for some Messengers, and they took risks. Stupid risks. Arlen knew he was one of these, but he could never resist exploring the “lost dots on the map,” as Tender Ronnell had put it. The money he made messaging paid for these excursions, sometimes taking him days from the nearest road. But for all his effort, he had found only dregs.

His thoughts flashed back to the pile of books from the old world that crumbled to dust when he tried to pick them up. The rusted blade that gashed his hand and infected it so badly he felt his arm was on fire. The wine cellar that caved in and trapped him for three days until he dug himself out without a bottle to show for it. Ruin hunting never paid off, and one day, he knew, it would be the death of him.

Go back
, he urged himself.
Have a bite. Check your wards. Get some rest
.

“The night take you,” Arlen cursed himself, and headed down the stairs.

But for all his self-loathing, Arlen’s heart pounded with excitement. He felt free and alive beyond anything the Free Cities could offer.
This
was why he became a Messenger.

He reached the bottom of the stairs, and dragged a sleeve across his sweating brow, taking a brief pull from his waterskin. Hot as it was, it was hard to imagine that after sunset the desert above would drop to near-freezing temperatures.

He moved along a gritty corridor of fitted stones, his torchlight dancing along the walls like shadow demons.
Are there shadow demons?
he wondered.
That would be just my luck
. He sighed. There was so much he still didn’t know.

He had learned much in the last three years, soaking up knowledge of other cultures and their struggles with the corelings like a sponge. In the Angierian forest, he had spent weeks studying wood demons. In Lakton, he learned of boats beyond the small, two-man canoes used in Tibbet’s Brook, and paid for his curiosity about water demons with a puckered scar on his arm. He had been lucky, able to plant his feet and haul on the tentacle, dragging the coreling from the water. Unable to abide the air, the nightmarish creature had let go and slipped beneath the surface once more. He spent months there, learning water wards.

Fort Rizon was much like home, less a city than a cluster of farming communities, each helping one another to ease the inevitable losses to corelings who bypassed the wardposts.

But Fort Krasia, the Desert Spear, was Arlen’s favorite. Krasia of the stinging wind, where the days burned and the cold nights brought forth sand demons from the dunes.

Krasia, where they still fought.

The men of Fort Krasia had not allowed themselves to succumb to despair. They waged a nightly battle against the corelings, locking away their wives and children and taking up spear and net. Their weapons, like those Arlen carried, could do little to pierce the tough skin of a coreling, but they stung the demons, and were enough to harass them into warded traps until the desert sun rose to reduce them to ashes. Their determination was an inspiration.

But for all he had learned, Arlen only hungered for more. Every city had taught him something unknown in the others. Somewhere out there had to be the answers he sought.

Thus, this latest ruin. Half buried in sand, almost forgotten save for a crumbling Krasian map Arlen had discovered, the city of Anoch Sun had stood untouched for hundreds of years. Much of the surface was collapsed or worn down by wind and sand, but the lower levels, cut deep into the ground, were intact.

Arlen turned a corner, and his breath caught. Up ahead, in the dim flickering light, he saw pitted symbols cut into the stone pillars to either side of the corridor. Wards.

Holding the torch close, Arlen inspected them. They were old. Ancient. The very air about them was stale with the weight of centuries. He took paper and charcoal from his satchel to make rubbings, then, swallowing hard, continued on, lightly stirring the dust of ages.

He came to a stone door at the end of the hall. It was painted with faded and chipped wards, few of which Arlen recognized. He pulled out his notebook and copied those intact enough to be made out, then moved to inspect the door.

It was more a slab than a door, and Arlen soon realized that nothing held it in place save its own weight. Taking up his spear to use as a lever, he wedged the metal tip into the seam between the slab and the wall, and heaved. The point of the spear snapped off.

“Night!” Arlen cursed. This far from Miln, metal was rare and expensive. Refusing to be balked, he took a hammer and chisel from his pack and hacked at the wall itself. The sandstone cut easily, and soon he had carved a nook wide enough to work the shaft of his spear into the room beyond. The spear was thick and sturdy, and this time when Arlen threw his weight against the lever, he felt the great slab shift slightly. Still, the wood would break before it moved.

Using the chisel, Arlen pried up the floor stones at the door’s base, digging a deep groove for it to tip into. If he could shift the stone that far, its own inertia would keep it in motion.

Moving back to the spear, he heaved once more. The stone resisted, but Arlen persevered, grinding his teeth with the effort. Finally, with a thunderous impact, the slab toppled to the ground, leaving a narrow gap in the wall, choked with dust.

Arlen moved into what appeared to be a burial chamber. The air reeked of age, but already fresher air was flooding the chamber from the corridor. Holding up his torch, he saw that the walls were brightly painted with tiny, stylized figures, depicting countless battles of humans against demons.

Battles that the humans seemed to be winning.

In the center of the room stood an obsidian coffin, cut roughly in the shape of a man holding a spear. Arlen approached the coffin, noting the wards along its length. He reached out to touch them, and realized his hands were shaking.

He knew there was little time remaining before sunset, but Arlen could not have turned away now if all the demons in the Core rose up against him. Breathing deeply, he moved to the head of the sarcophagus and pushed hard, forcing the lid down so that it would tilt to the floor without breaking. Arlen knew he should have copied the wards before trying this, but taking the time to copy them would have meant coming back in the morning, and he simply could not wait.

The heavy stone moved slowly, and Arlen’s face reddened with the strain as he pushed, his muscles knotted and bunched. The wall was close behind him, and he braced a foot against it for leverage. With a scream that echoed down the corridor, he shoved with all his might, and the cover slid off, crashing to the ground.

Arlen paid the lid no mind, staring at the contents of the great coffin. The wrapped body inside was remarkably intact, but it could not hold his attention. All Arlen could see was the object clutched in its bandaged hands. A metal spear.

Sliding the weapon reverently from the corpse’s stubborn grasp, Arlen marveled at its lightness. It was seven feet long from tip to tip, and the shaft was more than an inch in diameter. The point was still sharp enough to draw blood after so many years. The metal was unknown to Arlen, but that fact flew from his thoughts as he noted something else.

The spear was warded. All along its silvery surface the etchings ran, a level of craftsmanship unknown in modern times. The wards were unlike anything he had ever seen.

As Arlen became aware of the enormity of his find, he realized, too, the danger he was in. The sun was setting above. Nothing he had found here would matter if he died before bringing it back to civilization.

Snatching up his torch, Arlen bolted out of the burial chamber and sprinted down the hall, taking the steps three at a time. He darted through the maze of passages on instinct, praying that his twists and turns were true.

Finally, he saw the exit to the dusty, half-buried streets, but not a sliver of light could be seen through the doorway. As he reached the exit, he saw that the sky was still tinged with color. The sun had only just set. His camp was in sight, and the corelings were just beginning to rise.

Without pausing to consider his actions, Arlen dropped his torch and charged out of the building, scattering the sand as he zigzagged around the rising sand demons.

Cousins to rock demons, sand demons were smaller and more nimble, but still among the strongest and most armored of the coreling breeds. They had small, sharp scales, a dirty yellow almost indistinguishable from the grit, instead of the large charcoal gray plates of their rock-demon cousins, and they ran on all fours where rock demons stood hunched on two legs.

But their faces were the same; rows of segmented teeth jutted out on their jaws like a snout, while their nostril slits rested far back, just below their large, lidless eyes. Thick bones from their brows curved upward and back, cutting through the scales as sharp horns. Their brows twitched continually as they squeezed down, displacing the ever-blowing sand.

And even more frightening than their larger cousins, sand demons hunted in packs. They would work together to see him cored.

His heart pounding and his discovery forgotten, Arlen moved through the ruins with incredible speed and alacrity, vaulting fallen pillars and crumbled rock while dodging right and left around the solidifying corelings.

Demons needed a moment to get their bearings on the surface, and Arlen took full advantage of that as he sprinted toward his circle. He kicked one demon in the back of the knees, knocking it down just long enough for him to get past. Another he charged directly, only to spin out of the way at the last moment, the coreling’s claws slashing through empty air.

He picked up speed as the circle neared, but one demon stood in his way, and there was no way around it. The creature was nearly four feet tall, and its initial confusion was past. It crouched at the ready, directly in his path, hissing hatred.

Arlen was so close—his precious circle just a few feet away. He could only hope to barrel through the smaller creature and roll into his circle before it could kill him.

He charged right in, instinctively stabbing with his new spear as he bowled the creature over. There was a flash upon impact, and Arlen struck the ground hard, coming up in a spray of sand and continuing on, not daring to look back. He leapt for his circle, and was safe.

Panting with exertion, Arlen looked up at the sand demons surrounding him, outlined in desert twilight. They hissed and clawed at his wards, talons bringing bright flashes of magic.

In the flickering light, Arlen caught sight of the demon he had crashed into. It was slowly dragging itself away from Arlen and its fellows, leaving an inky black trail in the sand.

Arlen’s eyes widened. Slowly, he glanced down at the spear he still clutched in his hands.

The tip was coated in demon ichor.

Suppressing the urge to laugh aloud, Arlen looked back at the injured coreling. One by one, its fellows paused in their assault on Arlen’s wards, sniffing the air. They turned, glancing down at the trail of ichor, and then at the injured demon.

With a shriek, the pack fell upon the creature, tearing it apart.

The cold of the desert night eventually forced Arlen to take his eyes off the metal spear. He had laid a fire when he made camp earlier, so he struck spark to it and coaxed the flames to life, warming himself and a bit of dinner. Dawn Runner had been hobbled and blanketed in his circle, brushed and fed before Arlen left to explore the ruins that afternoon.

As it had every night for the last three years, One Arm showed up soon after moonrise, bounding over the dunes and scattering the smaller corelings to stand before Arlen’s circle. Arlen greeted it as always with a clap of his two hands. One Arm roared its hatred in return.

When he first left Miln, Arlen had wondered if he would ever find a way to sleep through the sound of One Arm hammering at his wards, but it was second nature to him now. His warding circle had been proven time and again, and Arlen maintained it religiously, keeping the plates freshly lacquered and the rope mended.

He hated the demon, though. The years had brought none of the kinship the guards on the wall of Fort Miln had felt. As One Arm remembered who had crippled it, so too did Arlen recall who had given him the puckered scars across his back and almost cost him his life. He remembered, too, nine Warders, thirty-seven guardsmen, two Messengers, three Herb Gatherers, and eighteen citizens of Miln who had lost their lives because of it. He gazed at the demon now, absently stroking his new spear. What would happen if he struck? The weapon had wounded a sand demon. Would the wards affect a rock demon as well?

It took all his willpower to resist the urge to leap from his circle and find out.

Arlen had hardly slept when the sun drove the demons back into the Core, but he rose with high spirits. After breakfast, he took out his notebook and examined the spear, painstakingly copying every ward and studying the patterns they formed along the shaft and head.

When he finished, the sun was high in the sky. Taking another torch, he went back down into the catacombs, making rubbings of the wards cut into the stone. There were other tombs, and he was tempted to ignore all sense and explore every one. But if he stayed even another day, his food would run out before he reached the Oasis of Dawn. He had gambled on finding a well in the ruins of Anoch Sun, and indeed he had, but vegetation was scant and inedible.