The Demon Cycle Series Books 1 and 2: The Painted Man, The Desert Spear

Elissa glided over to Arlen, bending to face him. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ she asked, straightening his shirt and brushing the hair from his face. ‘Now you can run along with Ragen to meet Master Cob.’ She caressed his cheek, her hand cool and soft, and for a moment he leaned into the familiar touch, but then pulled back sharply, his eyes wide.

Ragen caught the look, and noted the wounded expression on his wife’s face as Arlen backed slowly away from her as if she were a demon.

‘I think you hurt Elissa’s feelings back there, Arlen,’ Ragen said as they left his grounds.

‘She’s not my mam,’ Arlen said, suppressing his guilt.

‘Do you miss her?’ Ragen asked. ‘Your mother, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ Arlen answered quietly.

Ragen nodded, and said no more, for which Arlen was thankful. They walked on in silence, and the strangeness of Miln quickly took his mind off the incident. The smell of the dung carts was everywhere, as collectors went from building to building, gathering the night’s waste.

‘Gah!’ Arlen said, holding his nose. ‘The whole city smells worse than a barn stall! How do you stand it?’

‘It’s mostly just in the morning, as the collectors go by,’ Ragen replied. ‘You get used to it. We had sewers once, tunnels that ran under every home, carrying the waste away, but they were sealed centuries ago, when the corelings used them to get into the city.’

‘Couldn’t you just dig privy pits?’ Arlen asked.

‘Milnese soil is stony,’ Ragen said. ‘Those who don’t have private gardens to fertilize are required to put their waste out for collection to use in the Duke’s Gardens. It’s the law.’

‘It’s a smelly law,’ Arlen said.

Ragen laughed. ‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘But it keeps us fed, and drives the economy. The collection guildmaster’s manse makes mine look like a hovel.’

‘I’m sure yours smells better,’ Arlen said, and Ragen laughed again.

At last they turned a corner and came to a small but sturdy shop, with wards delicately etched around the windows and into the lintel and jamb of the door. Arlen could appreciate the detail of those wards. Whoever made them had a skilled hand.

They entered to a chime of bells, and Arlen’s eyes widened at the contents of the shop. Wards of every shape and size, made in every medium, filled the room.

‘Wait here,’ Ragen said, moving across the room to speak with a man sitting on a workbench. Arlen barely noticed him go, wandering around the room. He ran his fingers reverently over wards woven into tapestry, etched into smooth river stones, and moulded from metal. There were carved posts for farmers’ fields, and a portable circle like Ragen’s. He tried to memorize the wards he saw, but there were just too many.

‘Arlen, come here!’ Ragen called after a few minutes. Arlen started, and rushed over.

‘This is Master Cob,’ Ragen introduced, gesturing to a man who was perhaps sixty. Short for a Milnese, he had the look of a strong man gone to fat. A thick grey beard, shot through with signs of its former black, covered his face, and his close-cropped hair was thin on top of his head. His skin was lined and leathern, and his grip swallowed Arlen’s hand.

‘Ragen tells me you want to be a Warder,’ Cob said, sitting back heavily on the bench.

‘No, sir,’ Arlen replied. ‘I want to be a Messenger.’

‘So does every boy your age,’ Cob said. ‘The smart ones wise up before they get themselves killed.’

‘Weren’t you a Messenger once?’ Arlen asked, confused at the man’s attitude.

‘I was,’ Cob agreed, lifting his sleeve to show a tattoo similar to Ragen’s. ‘I travelled to the five Free Cities and a dozen hamlets, and earned more money than I thought I could ever spend.’ He paused, letting Arlen’s confusion grow. ‘I also earned this,’ he said, lifting his shirt to show thick scars running across his stomach, ‘and this.’ He slipped a foot from his shoe to reveal a crescent of scarred flesh, long healed, where four of his toes had been.

‘To this day,’ Cob said, ‘I can’t sleep more than an hour without starting awake, reaching for my spear. Yes, I was a Messenger. A damned good one and luckier than most, but I still would not wish it on anyone. Messengering may seem glorious, but for every man who lives in a manse and commands respect like Ragen here, there are two dozen rotting on the road.’

‘I don’t care,’ Arlen said. ‘It’s what I want.’

‘Then I’ll make a deal with you,’ Cob sighed. ‘A Messenger must be, above all, a Warder, so I’ll apprentice you and teach you to be one. When we have time, I’ll teach you what I know of surviving the road. An apprenticeship lasts seven years. If you still wish to be a Messenger then … well, you’re your own man.’

‘Seven years?’ Arlen gawked.

Cob snorted. ‘You don’t pick up warding in a day, boy.’

‘I can ward now,’ Arlen said defiantly.

‘So Ragen tells me,’ Cob said. ‘He also tells me you do it with no knowledge of geometry or wardtheory. Eyeballing your wards may not get you killed tomorrow, boy, or next week, but it will get you killed.’

Arlen stomped a foot. Seven years seemed like an eternity, but deep down he knew the master was right. The pain in his back was a constant reminder that he wasn’t ready to face the corelings again. He needed the skills this man could teach him. He didn’t doubt that there were dozens of Messengers who fell to the demons, and he vowed not to become one of them because he was too stubborn to learn from his mistakes.

‘All right,’ he agreed finally. ‘Seven years.’

Section II (#ulink_80a9580f-3669-566b-a08e-f71524684480)

10 (#ulink_c07e01f2-2892-5c1d-b275-1b70ab78b7a2)

Apprentice 320 AR (#ulink_c07e01f2-2892-5c1d-b275-1b70ab78b7a2)

‘There’s our friend again,’ said Gaims, gesturing into the darkness from their post on the wall.

‘Right on time,’ Woron agreed, coming up next to him. ‘What do you s’pose he wants?’

‘Empty my pockets,’ Gaims said, ‘you’ll find no answers.’

The two guards leaned against the warded rail of the watchtower and watched as the one-armed rock demon materialized before the gate. It was big, even to the eyes of Milnese guards, who saw more of rock demons than any other type.

While the other demons were still getting their bearings, the one-armed demon moved with purpose, snuffling about the gate, searching. Then it straightened and struck the wood, testing the wards. Magic flared and threw the demon back, but it was undeterred. Slowly, the demon moved along the wall, striking again and again, searching for a weakness until it was out of sight.

Hours later, a crackle of energy signalled the demon’s return from the opposite direction. The guards at other posts said that the demon circled the city each night, attacking every ward. When it reached the gate once more, it settled back on its haunches, staring patiently at the city.

Gaims and Woron were used to this scene, having witnessed it every night for the past year. They had even begun to look forward to it, passing the time on their watch by betting on how long ‘One Arm’ took to circle the city, or whether he would head east or west to do so.

‘I’m half-tempted to let ’im in, just t’see what he’s after,’ Woron mused.

‘Don’t even joke about that,’ Gaims warned. ‘If the watch commander hears talk like that, he’ll have both of us in irons, quarrying stone for the next year.’

His partner grunted. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘you have to wonder …’

That first year in Miln, his twelfth, passed quickly for Arlen as he grew into his role as an apprentice Warder. Cob’s first task had been to teach him to read. Arlen knew wards never before seen in Miln, and Cob wanted them committed to paper as soon as possible.

Arlen took to reading voraciously, wondering how he had ever gotten along without it. He disappeared into books for hours at a time, his lips moving slightly at first, but soon he was turning pages rapidly, his eyes darting across the page.

Cob had no cause to complain; Arlen worked harder than any apprentice he had ever known, staying up late in the night etching wards. Cob would often go to his bed thinking of the full day’s work to come, only to find it completed when the sun’s first light flooded the shop.

After learning his letters, Arlen was put to work cataloguing his personal repertoire of wards, complete with descriptions, into a book the master purchased for him. Paper was expensive in the sparsely wooded lands of Miln, and a whole book was something few commoners ever saw, but Cob scoffed at the price.