The Warded Man

beginning to like Lady Elissa fussing over him.
    “Here he comes,” Gaims said that night, watching the massive rock demon rise from the ground. Woron joined him, and they watched from the guard tower as the demon snuffled the ground by the gate. With a howl, it bounded away from the gate to a hilltop. A flame demon danced there, but the rock demon knocked it violently aside, bending low to the ground, seeking something.
    “Old One Arm’s in a mood tonight,” Gaims said as the demon howled again and darted down the hill to a small field, scurrying back and forth, hunched over.
    “What do you suppose has gotten into him?” Woron asked. His partner shrugged.
    The demon left the field, bounding back up the hill. Its shrieks became almost pained, and when it returned to the gate,it struck at the wards madly, its talons sending showers of sparks as they were repelled by the potent magic.
    “Don’t see that every night,” Woron commented. “Should we report it?”
    “Why bother?” Gaims replied. “No one is going to care about the carryings-on of one crazy demon, and what could they do about it if they did?”
    “Against that thing?” Woron asked. “Probably just soil themselves.”
    Pushing away from the workbench, Arlen stretched and got to his feet. The sun was long set, and his stomach growled irritably, but the baker was paying double to have his wards repaired in one night, even though a demon hadn’t been spotted on the streets in Creator only knew how long. He hoped Cob had left something for him in the cookpot.
    Arlen opened the shop’s back door and leaned out, still safely within the warded semicircle around the doorway. He looked both ways, and assured that all was clear, he stepped onto the path, careful not to cover the wards with his foot.
    The path from the back of Cob’s shop to his small cottage was safer than most houses in Miln, a series of individually warded squares made of poured stone. The stone—crete, Cob called it—was a science left over from the old world, a wonder unheard of in Tibbet’s Brook but quite common in Miln. Mixing powdered silicate and lime with water and gravel formed a muddy substance that could be molded and hardened into any shape desired.
    It was possible to pour crete, and, as it began to set, carefully scratch wards into its soft substance that hardened into near-permanent protections. Cob had done this, square by square, until a path ran from his home to his shop. Even if one square were somehow compromised, a walker could simply move to the one ahead or behind, and remain safe from corelings.
    If we could make a road like this , Arlen thought, the world would be at our fingertips .
    Inside the cottage, he found Cob hunched over his desk, poring over chalked slates.
    “Pot’s warm,” the master grunted, not looking up. Arlen moved over to the fireplace in the cottage’s single room and filled a bowl with Cob’s thick stew.
    “Creator, boy, you started a mess with this,” Cob growled,straightening and gesturing to the slates. “Half the Warders in Miln are content to keep their secrets, even at the loss of ours, and half of those left keep offering money instead, but the quarter that remain have flooded my desk with lists of wards they’re willing to barter. It will be weeks in the sorting!”
    “Things will be better for it,” Arlen said, using a crust of hard bread as a spoon as he sat on the floor, eating hungrily. The corn and beans were still hard, and the potatoes mushy from overboiling, but he didn’t complain. He was accustomed to the tough, stunted vegetables of Miln by now, and Cob could never be bothered to boil them separately.
    “I daresay you’re right,” Cob admitted, “but night! Who thought there were so many different wards right in our own city! Half I’ve never seen in my life, and I’ve scrutinized every wardpost and portal in Miln, I assure you!”
    He held up a chalked slate. “This one is willing to trade wards that will make a demon turn around and forget what it was doing for your mother’s ward to make glass as hard as steel.” He shook his head. “And they all want the secrets of your forbidding wards, boy. They’re easier to draw without a straightstick and a semicircle.”
    “Crutches for people who can’t draw a straight line.” Arlen smirked.
    “Not everyone is as gifted as you,” Cob grunted.
    “Gifted?” Arlen asked.
    “Don’t let it go to your head, boy,” Cob said, “but I’ve never