Peter Brett - The Warded Man

But Rojer didn’t dare touch the colored balls in the bag of marvels, and begged off from song. He flipped instead, tumbling and hand walking, using everything in his repertoire to hide his inadequacies.

The Enders didn’t press him, and that was enough for now.

The bright sun brought Arlen back to consciousness. Sand stuck to his face as he lifted his head and spit grit from his mouth. Struggling to his knees, he looked around, but all he saw was sand.

They had carried him out onto the dunes and left him to die.

“Cowards!” he cried. “Letting the desert do your work does not absolve you!”

He quivered on his knees, trying to find the strength to stand while his body screamed at him to lie back down and die. His head was spinning.

He had come to help the Krasians. How could they betray him like this?

Don’t lie to yourself, a voice in his head said. You’ve done your share of betrayal. You ran from your father when he needed you most. Abandoned Cob before your apprenticeship was up. Left Ragen and Elissa without so much as an embrace. And Mery …

“Who will miss you, Par’chin?” Jardir had asked. “You will not fill so much as a single tear bottle.” And he was right.

If he were to die here, Arlen knew, the only ones who were likely to notice would be merchants more concerned with a loss of profit than his life. Perhaps this was what he deserved for abandoning everyone who had ever loved him. Perhaps he should just lie down and die.

His knees buckled. The sand seemed to pull at him, calling him to its embrace. He was about to give in when something caught his eye.

A few feet away, a skin of water rested in the sand. Had Jardir’s conscience gotten the better of him, or had one of his men looked back and taken pity on the betrayed Messenger?

Arlen crawled to the skin, clutching it like a lifeline. Someone might mourn him after all.

But it made little difference. Even if he returned to Krasia, no one would believe a chin over the Sharum Ka. On Jardir’s word, the dal’Sharum would kill Arlen without a thought.

So you should let them keep the spear you risked your life for? he asked himself. Let them keep Dawn Runner, your portable circles, and everything else you own?

The thought had Arlen clutching at his waist, and he realized with relief that he had not lost everything. There, still safe, was the simple leather bag he carried when fighting in the Maze. In it he kept a small warding kit, his herb pouch … and his notebook.

The notebook changed everything. Arlen had lost his other books, but all of them together were not worth this one. Since the day he left Miln, Arlen had copied every new ward he had learned into his notebook.

Including those on the spear.

Let them keep the ripping thing, they want it so much, Arlen thought. I can make another.

With a heave, he brought himself to his feet. He took the warm skin of water and allowed himself a short pull, then put it over his shoulder and climbed to the top of the nearest dune.

Shielding his eyes, he could see Krasia like a mirage in the distance, giving him bearings to head for the Oasis of Dawn. Without his horse, the trip would mean a week of sleeping unwarded in the desert. His water would be gone long before then, but he doubted it would matter. The sand demons would get him before he died of thirst.

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.