One Arm’s shriek pierced the night, a deafening, horrifying sound. To Arlen, it was like music. He pulled back on the spear, but it held fast, caught in the rock demon’s thick black carapace. He yanked again, and this time it nearly cost him his life as One Arm lashed out and struck him a glancing blow, its claws digging deep into his shoulder and chest.
Arlen was sent spinning away, but he wrenched himself toward his spare circle, collapsing in the protective ring. As he clutched his wounds, he watched the giant rock demon stumble about. Again and again, One Arm attempted to grasp the spear and pull it free of the wound, but the wards along its length thwarted the demon. And all along, the magic continued to work, sparking in the wound and sending killing waves through the coreling’s body.
Arlen allowed himself a slight smile as One Arm collapsed to the ground, thrashing. But as he watched the demon’s flailing slow to twitching, he felt a great emptiness grow inside of him. He had dreamt of this moment countless times, of how it would feel, of what he would say, but it wasn’t like he imagined. Instead of elation, he felt depression and loss.
“That was for you, Mam,” he whispered as the great demon ceased to move. He tried to picture her, desperate to feel her approval, and he was shocked and ashamed when he could not remember her face. He screamed, feeling wretched and small under the stars.
Giving the demon a wide berth, Arlen made his way back to his supplies, binding his wounds. The stitches he made were crooked, but they held his wounds closed, and the hogroot poultice burned, the pain evidence of its need. Already the wound was infecting.
He found no sleep that night. If the pain of his wounds and the ache of his heart had not been sufficient to drive slumber away, a chapter of his life was about to end, and he was determined to see it through.
When the sun crested the dunes, it flooded Arlen’s camp with a speed that could only be found in the desert. The sand demons had already melted away, fleeing at the first hint of dawn. Arlen winced as he stood up, making his way from the circle to stand over One Arm, retrieving his spear.
Wherever the sun’s light touched, the black carapace smoked, then sparked and ignited. Soon the demon’s body was a funeral pyre, and Arlen stood watching, mesmerized. As the rock demon collapsed into ashes soon borne on the morning wind, he saw hope for the human race.
CHAPTER 19
THE FIRST WARRIOR OF KRASIA
328 AR
The desert road wasn’t really a road at all, simply a string of ancient signposts, some clawed and jagged, others half buried in sand, keeping a traveler from losing his way. It wasn’t all sand, as Ragen had once said, though there was enough of that to wander for days seeing naught else. On the outskirts ran hundreds of miles of hard, dust-choked flats, with sparse bits of dead vegetation clinging to cracked clay, too dry to rot. Apart from the shadows cast by dunes in the sea of sand, there was no shelter from the beating sun, so hot Arlen could not imagine it was the same body that brought cold light to Fort Miln. The wind blew continually, and he had to cover his face to keep from inhaling sand, his throat raw and dry.
The nights were worse, the heat leaching from the ground moments after the sun dipped below the horizon, welcoming the corelings into a cold, desolate place.
But even here, there was life. Snakes and lizards hunted tiny rodents. Carrion birds sought the corpses of creatures slain by corelings, or that wandered into the desert and could not find their way back out. There were at least two large oases, where a large body of water caused the surrounding soil to grow dense with edible vegetation, and others where a trickle from the rock or a pool of water no wider than a man’s stride supported a host of stunted plants and small creatures. Arlen had witnessed these desert dwellers burying themselves in the sand at night, resisting the cold with conserved heat and hiding from the demons that stalked the sands.
There were no rock demons in the desert, for there was not enough prey. No flame demons, because there was little to burn. Wood demons had no bark to blend into, no limbs to climb. Water demons could not swim through sand, and wind demons could find no perch. The dunes and desert flats belonged to sand demons alone. Even they were sparse in the deep desert, clustering mostly about the oases, but the sight of a fire would draw them from miles around.
Five weeks from Fort Rizon to Krasia, more than half of it through the desert, was more than many of the hardiest Messengers cared to contemplate. Despite Northern merchants offering exorbitant sums for Krasian silks and spice, few were desperate—or crazy—enough to go there.
For his own part, Arlen found the trip peaceful. He slept in his saddle during the hottest parts of the day, carefully wrapped in loose white cloth. He watered his horse frequently, and spread tarps beneath his portable circles at night to keep the wards from becoming obscured in the sand. He was tempted to lash out at the circling sand demons, but his wound had made his grip weak, and he knew that should the spear be pulled from his grasp, a common wind might lose it in the sand more surely than hundreds of years in a buried tomb.
Despite the cries of the sand demons, the nights seemed quiet to Arlen, used to the great roars of One Arm. He slept more peacefully on those nights than any spent outside before.
For the first time in his life, Arlen saw his path extend beyond being a glorified errand boy. He had always known he was destined for more than messaging; he was destined to fight. But he now realized it was more than that: He was destined to bring others to fight.
He was certain he could duplicate the warded spear, and was already pondering ways to adapt its wards to other weapons; arrows, staves, slingstones, the possibilities were endless.
In all the places he had seen, only the Krasians refused to live in terror of the corelings, and for that reason Arlen respected them above all. There were no people more deserving of this gift. He would show them the spear, and they would supply him with everything he needed to build them weapons to turn the tide of their nightly war.
The thoughts fled as Arlen caught sight of the oasis. The sand could reflect the sky’s blue and trick a man into rushing off the road to water that did not exist, but when his horse picked up the pace, Arlen knew it was real. Dawn Runner could smell the water.
Their water had been depleted the day before, and by the time they reached the small pool, both Arlen and his horse were sick with thirst. In unison, they dropped their heads to the cool water, drinking deeply.
When they had drunk their fill, Arlen refilled their waterskins and set them in the shade beneath one of the sandstone monoliths standing silent guard around the oasis. He inspected the wards cut into the stone, finding them intact, but with some signs of wear. The eternally blowing sand scratched at them little by little, wearing down the edges over time. He took out his etching tools, deepening and sharpening them to maintain the net.
While Dawn Runner grazed on scrub grass and the leaves of stunted bushes, Arlen harvested dates, figs, and other fruit from the oasis trees. He ate his fill, and set the rest where they could dry in the sun.
An underground river fed the oasis, and in years beyond memory, men had dug away the sand and cut the stone beneath, finally reaching the running water. Arlen descended the stone steps into a cool underground chamber and collected the nets stored there, tossing them into the water. When he left, he carried a satisfying catch of fish. He set aside a choice few for himself and cleaned the others, salting them and setting them alongside the fruit to dry.