The Warded Man

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.

Arlen sighed. The ruins had stood for centuries. They would be there when he returned, hopefully with a team of Krasian Warders at his back.

By the time he came back outside, the day was wearing on. Arlen took time to exercise and feed Dawn Runner, then prepared a meal for himself, his mind turned inward.

The Krasians would demand proof, of course. Proof the spear could kill. They were warriors, not ruin hunters, and would not give up a single able-bodied man for an expedition without good reason.

Proof, he thought. And it was only right that it come from him.

With barely an hour before sunset, Arlen began to ready his camp. He hobbled his horse again, checking the portable circle around it. He prepared his ten-foot circle as usual, then took a series of wardstones from his bags and began to lay them around it in a wide outer ring some forty feet in diameter. He placed the stones slightly farther apart than usual, carefully lining them up with their fellows. There was a third portable circle in the saddlebags—Arlen always kept a spare—and he set that one in the camp as well, off to the side in the larger circle, by its edge.

When he was finished, Arlen knelt in his center circle, the spear at his side, and breathed deeply, clearing his mind of distractions. He didn’t watch as the sun dipped and the sand glowed on the horizon before going dark.

The nimble sand demons rose first, and Arlen heard the wards of his outer circle spark and crackle, keeping them back. Moments later, he heard the roar of One Arm, scattering lesser demons from its path as it approached Arlen’s outer ring. Arlen ignored it, continuing to breathe, his eyes closed, his mind calm. The lack of reaction served only to anger the demon further, and it struck hard against the warding.

Magic flared, visible even through his closed eyelids, but the demon did not immediately continue its assault. He opened his eyes, watching One Arm cock its head curiously. Arlen allowed himself a humorless smile.

One Arm struck the wards again, and again it paused. This time, the demon let out a piercing cry and set its feet, thrusting its good arm at the warding, talons spread. As if it were pressing against a wall of glass, the demon leaned forward, shrieking against the pain as it doubled and tripled the pressure against the wards. Angry magic spiderwebbed out from where its claws met the barrier, and as the demon pressed, the magic bowed visibly in the air.

With a sound that chilled even Arlen’s calm mind, the rock demon flexed its armored legs and smashed through the wardnet, tumbling into the inner ring. Dawn Runner whinnied and pulled at his hobble.

Arlen rose as One Arm did, their eyes meeting. The weaker sand demons tried desperately to replicate One Arm’s feat, but the wardstones were precisely spaced, and none of them could muster the strength to cross. They shrieked their frustration at the barrier as they bore witness to the confrontation within the circle.

Though he had grown since they first met, Arlen felt no less dwarfed by One Arm now than he had that first, terrifying night. The rock demon stood over fifteen feet tall from its clawed feet to the tips of its horns, more than twice a man’s height. Arlen was forced to crane his head upward to meet the coreling’s eyes, locked unwaveringly on his own.

One Arm’s snout split wide to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth, running with drool, and it flexed its daggerlike talons teasingly. Its armored chest was thrown out, the black carapace impenetrable to known weapons, and its spiked tail whipped back and forth, heavy enough to smash a horse with a single blow. Its body was smoking and scorched from crossing the net, but the obvious hurt only made the coreling seem more dangerous, a titan mad with pain.

Arlen’s fingers tightened on the metal spear as he stepped from the circle.

CHAPTER 18

RITE OF PASSAGE

328 AR

ONE ARM SHRIEKED into the night, its vengeance finally at hand. Arlen forced himself to breathe deeply, fighting to keep his heart from pounding right out of his chest. Even if the magic of the spear could harm the demon—and he had nothing more than his hopes that it could—it would not be enough to win this battle. He needed all his wits about him, all his training.

His feet slowly slid apart into a battle stance. The sand would slow him, but it would slow One Arm as well. He kept eye contact, and made no sudden moves as the coreling savored the moment. Its reach far exceeded his own, even with the spear. Let it come to him.