The Warded Man (Demon Cycle, #1)(126)

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.