Arlen chewed hogroot as he walked. It was bitter and made his stomach churn, but he was covered in demon scratches, and it helped keep them from infecting. Besides, without food, even nausea was preferable to pangs of hunger.
He drank sparingly, though his throat was dry and swollen. His shirt was tied around his head to ward off the sun, leaving his back vulnerable. His skin was blotched yellow and blue from the beating he had taken, and burned red atop that. Every step was agony.
Arlen kept moving until the sun was nearly set. He felt as if he had made no progress at all, but the long line of tracks blowing away behind him showed a surprising distance covered.
Night came, bringing corelings and bitter cold. Either was enough to kill him, so Arlen hid from both, burying himself in the sand to preserve body heat and hide from the demons. He tore a sheet from his notebook, rolling the paper into a slender breathing tube, but still he felt as if he were suffocating as he lay, terrified that the corelings might find him. When the sun rose and warmed the sand, he dug free of his sandy grave and stumbled on, feeling as if he had not rested at all.
So it went, day after day, night after night. He grew weaker as the days went by without food, rest, or more than a splash of water. His skin cracked and bled, but he ignored the damage and walked on. The sun beat down with increasing weight, and the flat horizon grew no closer.
At some point, he lost his boots. He wasn’t sure how or when. His feet were scraped raw from the hot sand, bleeding and blistered. He tore the sleeves from his shirt to bind them.
He fell with increasing frequency, sometimes getting right back to his feet, other times passing out and rising minutes or hours later. Sometimes, he would fall and continue tumbling all the way down a dune. Exhausted, he took it as a blessing, saving himself painful steps.
By the time the water ran out, he had lost count of the days. He was still on the desert path, but had no idea how far there was yet to go. His lips were split and dry, and even his cuts and blisters had ceased to ooze, as if all the liquid in his body had evaporated.
He fell again, and struggled to find a reason to get back up.
Arlen awoke with a start, his face wet. It was nighttime, and that should have filled him with terror, but he lacked the strength to fear.
He looked down, and saw that his face had been resting on the edge of the pool in the Oasis of Dawn, his hand in the water.
He wondered how he had gotten to be there. His last memory … he had no idea what his last memory was. The trip through the desert was a blur, but he didn’t care. He had made it. That was all that mattered. Within the warded obelisks of the oasis, he was safe.
Arlen drank greedily from the pool. A moment later, he vomited it up, and forced himself to sip slowly after that. When his thirst was quenched, he closed his eyes again, and slept soundly for the first time in over a week.
When he woke, Arlen raided the oasis’ stores. There were supplies as well as food: blankets, herbs, a spare warding kit. Too weak to forage, he spent several days simply eating the dried stores, drinking cool water, and cleansing his wounds. By then, he was able to gather fresh fruit. After a week, he found the strength to fish. Two, he could stand and stretch without pain.
The oasis had stores enough to get him out of the desert. He might be half dead when he crawled from the scorched clay flats, but he would be half alive, as well.
There were a handful of spears in the oasis’ stores, but compared to the magnificent metal weapon he had lost, sharpened wood seemed woefully inadequate. Without lacquer to harden the symbols, carved wards would mar with the first thrust through hard coreling scales.
What, then? He had wards that could burn the life from demons, but what good were they without a weapon to affix them to?
He considered painting stones with the attack wards. He could throw them, or even press them against the corelings by hand …
Arlen laughed. If he was going to get that close to a demon, he might as well paint the wards right onto his hands.
His laughter died as the thought germinated. Could it work? If so, he would have a weapon no one could steal, one no coreling could knock from his grasp or catch him without.
Arlen took out his notebook, studying the wards on the spear’s tip, and those at its butt. Those were the offensive wards; the wards on the shaft were defensive. He noted that the wards on the butt did not form a line by linking with others, as did the wards along the edge of the tip. They stood alone, the same symbol repeated around the circumference of the spear, and on the flat of its end. Perhaps the difference was one of cutting versus bludgeoning.
As the sun dipped lower, Arlen copied the bludgeoning ward in the dirt, over and over, until he felt confident. He took a brush and a paint bowl from his warding kit, carefully painting the ward onto the palm of his left hand. He blew on it softly until it was dry.
Painting his right hand was trickier, but Arlen knew from experience that with concentration, he could ward equally well with his left hand, though it took longer.
As darkness descended, Arlen gently flexed his hands, making sure the movement would not crack or peel the paint. Satisfied, he went to the stone obelisks that warded the oasis, watching the demons circle the barrier, smelling prey just beyond their reach.
The first coreling to catch sight of him was a specimen of no particular note: a sand demon about four feet in length, with long arms and bunched, muscular legs. Its barbed tail slithered back and forth as it met Arlen’s eyes.
A moment later, it launched itself at the wardnet. As it leapt, Arlen stepped aside and reached out, partially covering two wards. The net broke and the coreling tumbled past him, confused at the lack of resistance. He quickly drew his hand back, reestablishing the net. Whatever happened, the demon would not survive. Either it would perish fighting Arlen, or it would kill him and die when the sun rose and it could not escape the heavily warded oasis.
The demon righted itself and turned back, hissing as it bared rows of teeth. It circled, its corded muscles tensing as its tail flicked sharply. Then, with a catlike roar, it pounced again.
Arlen met it head-on, holding his hands with palms out, his arms longer than the demon’s. The creature’s scaled chest struck the wards, and with a flash and a howl of agony, the coreling was thrown back. It struck the ground hard, and Arlen could see thin wisps of smoke rising from the point of contact. He smiled.
The demon got back to its feet and began circling again, this time more cautiously. It was unaccustomed to prey fighting back, but it soon regained its courage, leaping to the attack again.
Arlen caught the coreling’s wrists and fell back, kicking it in the stomach and flipping it over him. As he made contact, the wards flared, and he could feel the magic working. It did not burn him, though the coreling’s flesh sizzled at the touch, but there was a tingle of energy in his hands, as if they had lost circulation and gone prickly. The feeling shot up his arms like a shiver.
They both rose quickly, and Arlen returned the coreling’s growl with one of his own. The demon licked at its scorched wrists, trying to soothe them, and Arlen could see grudging respect in its eyes. Respect and fear. This time, he was the predator.
His confidence was almost the death of him. The demon shrieked and lunged, and this time, Arlen was too slow. Black talons raked across his chest as he tried to twist out of the way.
He punched out in desperation, forgetting that the wards were on his palms. His knuckles scraped against the coreling’s gritty scales, tearing skin, but the blow had little effect. With a backhanded swat, the sand demon sent him sprawling to the ground.
The next moments were desperate, as Arlen scrambled and rolled to avoid its slashing claws, razor teeth, and whipping spiked tail. He started to rise, but the demon coiled and pounced on him, bearing him back to the ground. Arlen managed to get his knee between them, holding the creature back, but its hot, fetid breath washed across his face as its fangs closed not an inch from his face.
&nbs
p; Arlen bared his own teeth in as he boxed the demon’s ears. The coreling shrieked in pain as the wards flared, but Arlen held on tightly. Smoke began to drift from the grip as the light brightened. The demon thrashed madly, claws tearing at him in a desperate attempt to escape.
But Arlen had it now, and he would not let go. Every moment he held on, the tingling in his palms grew in intensity, as if gaining momentum. He squeezed his hands together, and was amazed when they grew closer, as if the creature’s skull was softening, liquefying.
The coreling’s assault slowed, and Arlen rolled to the side, reversing the pin. The demon’s claws closed weakly about his arms, trying to pull them away, but it was no use.
With a final flex of his muscles, Arlen brought his hands together, crushing the coreling’s head in an explosion of gore.
CHAPTER 24
NEEDLES AND INK
328 AR
ARLEN COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT, though it was not from the throbbing of his wounds. All his life he had dreamt of the heroes in Jongleurs’ tales, donning armor and fighting corelings with warded weapons. When he found the spear, he thought that dream was within his grasp, but when he reached for it, it slipped through his fingers and he stumbled into something new.
Nothing, not even that night in the Maze when he had felt invincible, could compare with the sensation of facing a coreling on its own terms and feeling the tingle in his flesh as his magic burned its life away. He hungered for that feeling again, and that hunger put all his former desires in a new light.
Looking back at his visit to Krasia, Arlen realized that it wasn’t as magnanimous as he had believed. Whatever he had told himself, he had wanted to be more than a weaponsmith, or one fighter among many. He had wanted glory. Fame. He had wanted to go down in the histories as the man who had given men back the fight.
As the Deliverer, even?
The thought disturbed him. For the salvation of humanity to mean anything, for it to last, it had to come from everyone, not just one man.
But did humanity even want to be saved? Did they deserve it? Arlen didn’t know anymore. Men like his father had lost the will to fight, content to hide behind wards, and what he had seen in Krasia, what he now saw in himself, made Arlen wonder about those who had not.
There could never be peace between Arlen and the corelings. He knew in his heart he could never sit safe behind his wards and let them dance in peace now that he had another choice. But who would stand by his side and fight? Jeph had struck him at the idea. Elissa had scolded him. Mery had shunned him. The Krasians had tried to kill him.
Ever since the night he had seen Jeph watch his wife be cored from the safety of his porch wards, Arlen had known that the corelings’ greatest weapon was fear. What he hadn’t understood was that fear took many forms. For all his attempts to prove otherwise, Arlen was terrified of being alone. He wanted someone, anyone, to believe in what he was doing. Someone to fight with, and for.
But there was no one. He saw that now. If he wanted companionship, he would have to slink back to the cities and accept it on their terms. If he wanted to fight, he had to do it alone.
The sense of power and elation, so fresh in his mind, faded. He curled up slowly, gripping his knees, and stared out over the desert, looking for a road where there was none.
Arlen rose with the sun and padded to the pool to rinse his wounds. He had stitched and poulticed them before bedding down, but one could never be too careful with wounds from a coreling. As he splashed the cool water on his face, his tattoo caught his eye.
All Messengers had tattoos, marking their city of origin. It was a symbol of how far they had traveled. Arlen remembered that first day when Ragen showed him his, the city in the mountains that graced the flag of Miln. Arlen had meant to get that same tattoo when he completed his first job. He went to a tattooist, ready to be marked forever a Messenger, but he had hesitated. Fort Miln was home to him in many ways, but it was not where he had come from.
Tibbet’s Brook had no flag, so Arlen took the crest of Earl Tibbet himself, lush fields split by a stream that fed a small lake. The tattooist took his needles and imprinted that reminder of home on Arlen’s shoulder for all time.
For all time. The notion lingered in Arlen’s mind. He had watched the tattooist closely. The man’s art was not so different from that of a Warder: precise markings, painstakingly placed with no room for error. There were needles in Arlen’s herb pouch, and ink in his warding kit.
Arlen started a small fire, recalling every moment spent with the tattooist. He passed his needles through the flames, and poured a bit of thick, viscous ink into a small bowl. He wrapped thread about the needles to prevent them from piercing too deeply, and carefully studied the contours of his left hand, noticing every wrinkle and shift as it flexed. When he was ready, he took a needle, dipped it in the ink, and set to work.
It was slow going. He was forced to pause frequently to wipe his palm clear of blood and excess ink. He had nothing but time, though, so he worked with care, his hand steady. By midmorning, he was satisfied with his warding. He poulticed the hand and wrapped it carefully, then went about replenishing the oasis’ stores. He worked hard the rest of the day, and the day after that, knowing that he would need as much as he could carry before he left.
Arlen remained in the oasis for another week, warding his skin in the mornings and gathering food in the afternoons. The tattoos on his palms healed rapidly, but Arlen did not stop there. Remembering the skinned knuckles from punching the sand demon, he warded those of his left hand, waiting only for the scabs on his right to fall away before he did those as well. No coreling would ever shrug away one of his punches again.
As he worked, he ran through his battle with the sand demon repeatedly, remembering how it moved, its strength and speed, the nature of its attacks, and the signals that heralded them. He made careful notes of his recollections, studying them and considering how his reactions could have been better. He could not afford to stumble anymore.
The Krasians had honed the brutal yet precise moves of sharusahk into an art form. He began to adapt the moves, and the placement of his tattoos, so the two would act as one.
When Arlen finally left the Oasis of Dawn, he ignored the path entirely, cutting straight across the sand toward the lost city of Anoch Sun. He took as much dried food as he could carry. Anoch Sun had a well, but no food, and he planned to be there for some time.
Even as he left, Arlen knew that his water would not last all the way to the lost city. Spare skins at the oasis were few, and it might take as much as two weeks to reach the city on foot. His water wouldn’t last a week.
But never once did he look back. There’s nothing behind me, he thought. I can only go forward.
As dusk spread darkness across the sand, Arlen took a deep breath and continued on, not bothering to set camp. The stars were clear over the cloudless desert, and it was easy to keep his sense of direction; easier, in fact, than it was during the day.
There were few corelings so far out in the desert. They tended to congregate where there was prey, and prey was scarce on the barren sands. Arlen walked for hours in the cold moonlight before a demon caught his scent. He heard its cries long before the creature appeared, but he did not flee, for he knew it could track him, nor did he try to hide, for he had much farther to go that night. He stood his ground as the sand demon came bounding over the dunes.
When Arlen met the creature’s gaze calmly, the coreling paused, confused. It growled at him, clawing the sand, but Arlen only smiled. It roared a challenge, but Arlen did not react at all. Instead, he focused on his surroundings: the flashes of movement in the periphery of his vision; the whisper of the wind and the scrape of sand; the scent upon the cold night air.
Sand demons hunted in packs. Arlen had never seen one of them alone before, and he doubted this one was now. Sure enough, while his attention had been fixed upon the snarling, shrieking creature before him, two more demons, as silent as death, had circled
around to either side, nearly invisible in the darkness. Arlen pretended not to notice them, keeping eye contact with the coreling in front of him as it drew closer and closer.
The attack came, as expected, not from the posturing sand demon before him, but from those off to the sides. Arlen was impressed with the cunning the corelings showed. Out on the sands, he supposed, where one could see far in every direction and the slightest sound could carry miles on the wind, it was necessary to develop instincts for misdirection when on the hunt.
But while Arlen had not yet become the hunter, neither was he easy prey. As the two sand demons leapt at him from either side, foretalons reaching, he darted forward, toward the demon that had been serving as the distraction.
The two attacking demons veered off, barely avoiding a collision, while the other backed away in surprise. It was fast, but not as fast as Arlen’s left hook. The wards on his knuckles flared, a sizzling blow that rocked the demon back on its heels, but Arlen did not stop there. He snapped his right hand onto the coreling’s face, pressing the ward tattooed on his palm against its eyes. The ward activated, burning, and the creature shrieked and lashed out blindly.
Anticipating the move, Arlen threw himself backward. He hit the ground in a roll and came back up a few feet away from the blinded creature, facing the other two corelings as they launched themselves his way.
Again, Arlen was impressed. Not to be fooled twice, the corelings did not attack in unison, staggering their strikes so he could not play them against one another.
The tactic worked against the demons, though, for it allowed Arlen to focus upon them one at a time. As the first reached for him, he stepped right up, inside its grasp, and boxed its ears. The explosion of magic collapsed the demon to the sand, where it shrieked and writhed in agony, clutching at its head.