The Painted Man

He felt tears welling in his eyes. Brutally, he wiped them off, growling in defiance. Giving in to fear was his father’s solution to problems, and Arlen already knew it didn’t work.

‘I’m not afraid,’ he told himself. ‘I’m not.’

Arlen pressed on, knowing the lie for what it was.

Around midday, he came to a rocky stream. The water was cold and clear, and he bent to drink. The move sent lances of pain through his back.

He had done nothing for the wounds. It wasn’t as if he could stitch them closed as Coline might. He thought of his mother, and how when he came home with cuts or scrapes the first thing she did was wash them out.

He stripped off his shirt, finding the back torn and soaked through with blood, now crusted and hard. He dunked the shirt and watched as soil and blood washed downstream. He laid his clothes out on the rocks to dry, and lowered himself into the cold water.

The chill made him wince, but it soon numbed the pain in his back. He scrubbed as best he could, gently washing out the stinging wounds until he could stand it no more. Shivering, he climbed from the stream and lay on the rocks by his clothes.

He awoke some time later with a start. Cursing, he saw that the sun had moved far across the sky, and that the day was nearly done. He could travel a little farther, but he knew the risk would be a foolish one. Better to spend the extra time on his defences.

Not far from the stream was a wide area of moist soil, and the sod pulled free easily, clearing him a space. He tamped down the loose dirt, smoothed it, and set to warding. He drew a wider circle this time, and then, after checking it thrice, drew another concentric ring within the first for added safety. The moist earth would resist the wind, and the sky showed no threat of rain.

Satisfied, Arlen dug a pit and gathered dry twigs, building a small fire. He sat in the centre of the inner circle as the sun dipped, trying to ignore his hunger. He doused the fire as the red sky grew lavender, then purple, breathing deeply to steady his pounding heart. At last, the light vanished and the corelings rose.

Arlen held his breath, waiting. Finally, a flame demon caught his scent, and raced at him with a shriek. In that moment, the terror of the previous night came rushing back to him, and Arlen felt his blood go cold.

The corelings were oblivious to his wards until they were upon them. With the first flare of magic, Arlen breathed his relief. The demons clawed at the barrier, but they could not pass.

A wind demon, flying up high where the wards were weak, passed the first ring, but it smashed into the second as it swooped down at him, landing hard in the space between. Arlen struggled to maintain his calm as it lurched to its feet.

It was bipedal, with a long, thin body, and spindly limbs that ended in six-inch hooked claws. The undersides of its arms and the outsides of its legs were webbed with a thin, leathery membrane, supported by flexible bones jutting from the creature’s sides. Barely taller than an adult man, the demon’s spread wings spanned twice its height, making it seem huge in the sky. A curving horn grew from its head, bent back and webbed like its limbs to form a ridge down its back. Its long snout held rows of inch-long teeth, yellow in the moonlight.

The coreling moved clumsily on land, despite its graceful mastery of the air. Up close, the wind demons were not nearly as impressive as their cousins. Wood and rock demons had impenetrable armour and otherworldly strength to power their thick claws. Flame demons were faster than any man, and spat fire that could set anything alight. Wind demons … Arlen thought Ragen could puncture one of those thin wings with a hard stab of his spear, crippling it.

Night, he thought, I’m pretty sure I could do it myself.

But he didn’t have a spear, and impressive or not, the coreling could still kill him, if his inner wards did not hold. He tensed as it drew close.

It swiped the hooked talon at the end of its wing at him, and Arlen winced, but magic sparked along the wardnet, and it was thwarted.

After a few more futile strikes, the coreling attempted to get airborne again. It ran and spread its wings to catch the wind, but it struck the outer wards before it could gain sufficient momentum. The magic threw it back into the mud.

Arlen laughed in spite of himself as the coreling tried to pick itself up. Its huge wings dragged on the ground and threw it off balance. It had no hands to push up with, and its spindly arms bowed under its weight. It thrashed desperately for a moment before it was able to rise.

Trapped, it tried again and again to take off, but the space between the circles was not great enough, and it was foiled each time. The flame demons sensed their cousin’s distress, and shrieked with glee, hopping around the circle to follow the creature and taunt its misfortune.

Arlen felt a swell of pride. He had made mistakes the night before, but he would not make them again. He began to hope that he might live to see the Free Cities after all.

The flame demons soon tired of mocking the wind demon, and moved off in search of easier prey, flushing small animals from hiding with gouts of fire. One small, frightened hare leapt into Arlen’s outer ring, the demon in pursuit stopped by the wards. The wind demon snatched clumsily at it, but the hare dodged it easily, running through the circle and out the far side, only to find corelings there as well. It turned and darted back in, again running too far.

Arlen wished there were a way he could communicate with the poor creature, to let it know it was safe in the inner ring, but he could only watch as it darted in and out of the wards.

Then the unthinkable happened. The hare, scampering back into the circle, scratched out a ward. With a howl, flame demons poured through the gap after the animal. The lone wind demon escaped, leaping into the air and winging away.

Arlen cursed the hare, and cursed all the more when it darted right for him. If it damaged the inner wards, they were both doomed.

With a farm boy’s quickness, Arlen reached from the circle and snatched up the hare by its ears. It thrashed wildly, willing to tear itself apart to escape, but Arlen had handled hares in his father’s fields often enough. He swung it into his arms, cradling it on its back, hindquarters up above its head. In a moment, the hare was staring up at him blankly, its struggles ceased.

He was tempted to throw the creature to the demons. It would be safer than risking it getting free and scuffing another ward. And why not? he wondered. If I’d found it in the light, I’d’ve eaten it myself.

Still, he found he could not do it. The demons had taken too much from the world, from him. He swore then that he would give them nothing willingly, not now, not ever.

Not even this.

As the night wore on, Arlen held the terrified creature firmly, cooing at it and stroking its soft fur. All around, the demons howled, but Arlen blocked them out, focusing on the animal.

The meditation worked for a time, until a roar brought him back. He looked up to find the massive, one-armed rock demon towering over him, its drool sizzling as it struck the wards. The creature’s wound had healed into a knobbly stump at the end of its elbow. Its rage seemed even greater than the night before.

The coreling hammered at the barrier, ignoring the stinging flare of the magic. With deafening blows, the rock demon struck again and again, attempting to power through and take its vengeance. Arlen clutched the hare tightly, his eyes wide as he watched. He knew that the wards would not weaken from repeated blows, but it did little to stop the fear that the demon was determined enough to manage it anyway.

When the morning light banished the demons for another day, Arlen finally let go of the hare, and it bounded away immediately. His stomach growled as he watched it go, but after what they had shared, he could not bring himself to look at the creature as food.

Rising, Arlen stumbled and almost fell as a wave of nausea took him. The cuts along his back were lances of fire. He reached back to touch the tender, swollen skin, and his hand came away wet with the stinking brown ooze that Coline had drained from Silvy’s wounds. The cuts burned, and he felt flushed. He bathed in the cold pool again, but the chill water did little to ease his inner heat.

Arlen knew then he was going to die. Old Mey Friman, if she existed at all, was over two days away. If he truly had demon fever, though, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t last two days.

Still, Arlen could not bring himself to give in. He stumbled on down the road, following the wagon ruts towards wherever they came from.

If he was to die, let it be closer to the Free Cities than the prison behind.

4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Leesha 319 AR (#litres_trial_promo)

Leesha spent the night in tears.

That was nothing out of the ordinary, but it wasn’t her mother that had her weeping this night. It was the screams. Someone’s wards had failed; it was impossible to tell whose, but cries of terror and agony echoed in the dark, and smoke billowed into the sky. The whole village glowed with a hazy orange light as smoke refracted coreling fire.

The people of Cutter’s Hollow couldn’t search for survivors yet. They dared not even fight the fire. They could do nothing save pray to the Creator that embers did not carry on the wind and spread the flames. Houses in Cutter’s Hollow were built well apart for just this reason, but a strong breeze could carry a spark a long way.

Even if the fire remained contained, the ash and smoke in the air could easily obscure more wards with their greasy stain, giving corelings the access they desperately sought.

No corelings tested the wards around Leesha’s house. It was a bad sign, hinting that the demons had found easier prey in the dark.

Helpless and afraid, Leesha did the only thing she could. She cried. Cried for the dead, cried for the wounded, and cried for herself. In a village with fewer than four hundred people, there was no one whose death would not cut her.

Just shy of thirteen summers, Leesha was an exceptionally pretty girl, with long, wavy black hair and sharp eyes of pale blue. She was not yet flowered, and thus could not wed, but she was promised to Gared Cutter, the most handsome boy in the village. Gared was two summers older than her, tall and thick-muscled. The other girls squealed as he passed, but he was Leesha’s, and they all knew. He would give her strong babies.

If he lived through the night.

The door to her room opened. Her mother never bothered to knock.

In face and form, Elona was much like her daughter. Still beautiful at thirty, her long hair hung rich and black about her proud shoulders. She had a full, womanly figure that was the envy of all; the only thing Leesha hoped to inherit from her. Her own breasts had only just started to bud, and had a long way to go before they matched her mother’s.