Mery knew in her heart he was not coming back. If she wanted him, she would have to go after him. She knew how to ride. She could get a horse from Ragen, and ride after him. He would surely succour in Harden’s Grove the first night. If she hurried, she could get there in time.
She sprinted back to the manse, terror at the thought of losing him giving her fresh strength. ‘He’s gone!’ she shouted to Elissa and Ragen. ‘I need to borrow a horse!’
Ragen shook his head. ‘It’s past midday. You’ll never make it in time. You’ll get halfway there, and the corelings will tear you to pieces,’ he said.
‘I don’t care!’ Mery cried. ‘I have to try!’ She darted for the stables, but Ragen caught her fast. She cried and beat at him, but he was stone, and nothing she did could loosen his grip.
Suddenly, Mery understood what Arlen had meant when he said Miln was a prison. And she knew what it was like to feel diminished.
It was late before Cob found the simple letter, stuck in the ledger on his countertop. In it, Arlen apologized for leaving early, before his seven years were up. He hoped Cob could understand. Cob read the letter again and again, memorizing every word, and the meanings between the lines.
‘Creator, Arlen,’ he said. ‘Of course I understand.’
Then he wept.
328
After the Return
328 AR
What are you doing, Arlen? he asked himself as his torchlight flickered invitingly on the stone stairs leading down into the dark. The sun was dipping low, and it would take several minutes to get back to his camp, but the stairs called to him in a way he could not explain.
Cob and Ragen had warned him about this. The thought of treasures that might be found in ruins was too much for some Messengers, and they took risks. Stupid risks. Arlen knew he was one of these, but he could never resist exploring the ‘lost dots on the map’ as Tender Ronnell had put it. The money he made Messengering paid for these excursions, sometimes taking him days from the nearest road. But for all his effort, he had found only dregs.
His thoughts flashed back to the pile of books from the old world that crumbled to dust when he tried to pick them up. The rusted blade that gashed his hand and infected so badly he felt his arm was on fire. The wine cellar that caved in and trapped him for three days until he dug himself out without a bottle to show for it. Ruin hunting never paid off, and one day, he knew, it would be the death of him.
Go back, he urged himself. Have a bite. Check your wards. Get some rest.
‘The night take you,’ Arlen cursed himself, and headed down the stairs.
But for all his self-loathing, Arlen’s heart pounded with excitement. He felt free and alive beyond anything the Free Cities could offer. This was why he became a Messenger.
He reached the bottom of the stairs, and dragged a sleeve across his sweating brow, taking a brief pull from his water-skin. Hot as it was, it was hard to imagine that after sunset, the desert above would drop to near-freezing temperatures.
He moved along a gritty corridor of fitted stones, his torchlight dancing along the walls like shadow demons. Are there shadow demons? He wondered. That would be just my luck. He sighed. There was so much he still didn’t know.
He had learned much in the last three years, soaking up knowledge of other cultures and their struggles with the corelings like a sponge. In the Angierian forest, he had spent weeks studying wood demons. In Lakton, he learned of boats beyond the small, two-man canoes used in Tibbet’s Brook, and paid for his curiosity about water demons with a puckered scar on his arm. He had been lucky, able to plant his feet and haul on the tentacle, dragging the coreling from the water. Unable to abide the air, the nightmarish creature had let go and slipped beneath the surface once more. He spent months there, learning water-wards.
Fort Rizon was much like home, less a city than a cluster of farming communities, each helping one another to ease the inevitable losses to corelings who bypassed the wardposts.
But Fort Krasia, the Desert Spear, was Arlen’s favourite. Krasia of the stinging wind, where the days burned and the cold nights brought forth sand demons from the dunes.
Krasia, where they still fought.
The men of Fort Krasia had not allowed themselves to succumb to despair. They waged a nightly battle against the corelings, locking away their wives and children and taking up spear and net. Their weapons, like those Arlen carried, could do little to pierce the tough skin of a coreling, but they stung the demons, and were enough to harass them into warded traps until the desert sun rose to reduce them to ashes. Their determination was an inspiration.
But for all he had learned, Arlen only hungered for more. Every city had taught him something unknown in the others. Somewhere out there had to be the answers he sought.
And so, this latest ruin. Half-buried in sand, almost forgotten save for a crumbling Krasian map Arlen had discovered, the city of Anoch Sun had stood untouched for hundreds of years. Much of the surface was collapsed or worn down by wind and sand, but the lower levels, cut deep into the ground, were intact.
Arlen turned a corner, and his breath caught. Up ahead, in the dim flickering light, he saw pitted symbols cut into the stone pillars to either side of the corridor. Wards.
Holding the torch close, Arlen inspected them. They were old. Ancient. The very air about them was stale with the weight of centuries. He took paper and charcoal from his satchel to make rubbings, then, swallowing hard, continued on, lightly stirring the dust of ages.
He came to a stone door at the end of the hall. It was painted with faded and chipped wards, few of which Arlen recognized. He pulled out his notebook and copied those intact enough to be made out, then moved to inspect the door.
More a slab than a door, Arlen soon realized nothing held it in place save its own weight. Taking up his spear to use as a lever, he wedged the metal tip into the seam between the slab and the wall, and heaved. The point of the spear snapped off.
‘Night!’ Arlen cursed. This far from Miln, metal was rare and expensive. Refusing to balk, he took a hammer and chisel from his pack and hacked at the wall itself. The sandstone cut easily, and soon he had carved a nook wide enough to work the shaft of his spear into the room beyond. The spear was thick and sturdy, and this time when Arlen threw his weight against the lever, he felt the great slab shift slightly. Still, the wood would break before it moved.
Using the chisel, Arlen pried up the floor stones at the door’s base, digging a deep groove for it to tip into. If he could shift the stone that far, its own momentum would keep it in motion.
Moving back to the spear, he heaved once more. The stone resisted, but Arlen persevered, grinding his