Brayan's Gold Read online

  Brayan's Gold

  Peter V. Brett

  An exciting short story set in the engrossing world of The Demon Cycle from bestselling fantasy author Peter V. Brett, available together in the UK exclusively on e-book.Humanity has been brought to the brink of extinction. Each night, the world is overrun by demons – bloodthirsty creatures of nightmare that have been hunting and killing humanity for over 300 years. A scant few hamlets and half-starved city-states are all that remain of a once proud civilization, and it is only by hiding behind wards, ancient symbols with the power to repel the demons, that they survive. A handful of Messengers brave the night to keep the lines of communication open between the increasingly isolated populace.But there was a time when the demons were not so bold. A time when wards did more than hold the demons at bay. They allowed man to fight back, and to win. Messenger Arlen Bales will search anywhere, dare anything, to return this magic to the world.

  This novella presents Arlen Bales, a seventeen-year-old apprentice Messenger carrying a dangerous cargo to Count Brayan's gold mine as One Arm, the giant rock demon, hunts him through the duchy.

  For Matt

  Raised on a steady diet of fantasy novels, comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons, Peter V. Brett has been writing fantasy stories for as long as he can remember. He received a bachelor of arts degree in English literature and art history from the University at Buffalo in 1995, then spent more than a decade in pharmaceutical publishing before returning to his bliss. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter, and an evil cat named Jinx. You can visit Peter on the web at www.petervbrett.com.

  Other books by Peter V. Brett

  The Warded Man

  The Great Bazaar

  The Desert Spear

  Introduction

  It’s all Matt’s fault.

  Seriously. This novella probably wouldn’t exist had not my friend and longtime beta-reader, Matt Bergin, demanded it.

  He had been reading an early draft of The Great Bazaar, and in it, I have Arlen reference one of his past misadventures where he encounters a snow demon without having the proper wards to protect himself.

  “When did Arlen meet a snow demon?” Matt asked. “Did I miss that story?”

  “There’s no story,” I said. “I just like reminding people that Arlen had a ton of adventures back when he was young and working for the Messenger’s Guild.”

  “Well, you’ve gotta write it, now,” Matt said.

  “Why?” I asked. I kind of liked the cryptic reference.

  “Dude,” Matt said. “You’re passing up a chance to write about snow demons?”

  It was a compelling argument, but I was swamped and couldn’t get to it. I put the idea aside for over a year, but that whole time, I kept thinking about damned snow demons, and knew I would soon have poor Arlen’s

  teeth chattering.

  In the short break I allowed myself between finishing The Desert Spear and formally starting The Daylight War, I wrote this story, Brayan’s Gold, the second stand-alone tale set in the world of the Demon Cycle.

  I really enjoy this format, as it gives me a chance to tell short adventure stories that don’t fit into the larger novels, offering newcomers an introduction to the series and some of its characters, longtime readers a broader look at the world, and impatient fans a coreling fix in the long wait between novel publications. Subterranean Press has been amazing in helping share these tales in beautiful limited edition books that feel as personal to me as the stories themselves.

  This volume is extra special, because in addition to the story, it has a cover illustration and interior art by the incredibly talented Lauren K. Cannon (www.navate.com), who has been designing wards and doing paintings for my website ever since I first sold The Warded Man back in 2007. Lauren has done an amazing job of bringing my characters and symbol magic to life, and it was a pleasure to work with her again on this project.

  So if you are a newcomer or an old friend, welcome.

  I hope you enjoy Brayan’s Gold.

  And if you don’t…blame Matt.

  Peter V. Brett

  August, 2010

  www.petervbrett.com

  324AR

  “Hold still,” Cob grunted as he adjusted the armor.

  “Ent easy when a steel plate’s cutting into your thigh,” Arlen said.

  It was a cool morning, dawn still an hour away, but Arlen was already sweating profusely in the new armor—solid plates of hammered steel linked at the joints by rivets and fine interlocking rings. Beneath, he wore a quilted jacket and pants to keep the plates from digging into his skin, but it was scant protection when Cob tightened the rings.

  “All the more reason to make sure I get this right, Cob said. “The better the fit, the less likely that will happen when you’re running from a coreling on the road. A Messenger needs to be quick.”

  “Don’t see how I’ll be anything near quick wrapped in bedquilt and carrying seventy pounds of steel on my back,” Arlen said. “And this corespawned thing’s hot as firespit.”

  “You’ll be glad for the warmth on the windy trails to the Duke’s Mines,” Cob advised.

  Arlen shook his head and lifted his heavy arm to look at the plates where he had painstakingly fluted wards into the steel with a tiny hammer and chisel. The symbols of protection were powerful enough to turn most any demon blow, but as much as he felt protected by the armor, he also felt imprisoned by it.

  “Five hundred suns,” he said wistfully. That was how much the armorer had charged—and taken months in the making. It was enough gold to make Arlen the second-richest man in Tibbet’s Brook, the town where he had grown up.

  “You don’t go cheap on things that might mean your life,” Cob said. He was a veteran Messenger, and spoke from experience. “When it comes to armor, you find the best smithy in town, order the strongest they’ve got, and bugger the cost.”

  He pointed a finger at Arlen. “And always…”

  “…ward it yourself,” Arlen finished with his master, nodding patiently. “I know. You’ve told me a thousand times.”

  “I’ll tell it to you ten thousand more, if that’s how long it takes to etch it into your thick skull.” Cob picked up the heavy helmet and dropped it over Arlen’s head. The inside was layered in quilt as well, and it fit him snugly. Cob rapped his knuckles hard against the metal, but Arlen heard it more than he felt it.

  “Curk say which mine you’re off to?” Cob asked. As an apprentice, Arlen was only allowed to travel on guild business accompanied by a licensed Messenger. The guild had assigned him to Curk, an aging and often drunk Messenger who tended to work only short runs.

  “Euchor’s coal,” Arlen said. “Two nights travel.” Thus far, he had only made day-trips with Curk. This was to be the first run where they would have to lay out their portable warding circles to fend off the corelings as they slept by the road.

  “Two nights is plenty, your first time,” Cob said.

  Arlen snorted. “I stayed out longer than that when I was twelve.”

  “And came out of that trip with over a yard of Ragen’s thread holding you together, I recall,” Cob noted. “Don’t go getting swollen because you got lucky once. Any Messenger alive will tell you to stay out at night when you have to, not because you want to. The ones that want to always end up cored.”

  Arlen nodded, though even that felt a little dishonest, because they both knew he did want to. Even after all these years, there was something he knew he needed to prove. To himself, and to the night.

  “I want to see the higher mines,” he said, which was true enough. “They say you can look out over the whole world from their height.”

  Cob nodded. “Won’t lie to you Arlen. If there’s a more beautiful sight than that, I’ve never seen i
t. Makes even the Damaji Palaces of Krasia pale.”

  “They say the higher mines are haunted by snow demons,” Arlen said. “With scales so cold your spit will crack when it hits them.”

  Cob grunted. “The thin air is getting to the folks up there. I Messaged to those mines a dozen times at least, and never once saw a snow demon, or heard tale of one that bore scrutiny.”

  Arlen shrugged. “Doesn’t mean they’re not out there. I read in the Library that they keep to the peaks, where the snow stays year round.”

  “I’ve warned you about putting too much faith in the Library, Arlen,” Cob said. “Most of those books were written before the Return, when folks thought demons were just ale stories and felt free to make up whatever nonsense they saw fit.”

  “Ale stories or no, we wouldn’t have rediscovered wards and survived the Return without them,” Arlen said. “So where’s the harm in watching out for snow demons?”

  “Best to be safe,” Cob agreed. “Be sure to look out for talking Nightwolves and fairy pipkins, as well.”

  Arlen scowled, but Cob’s laugh was infectious, and he soon found himself joining in.

  When the last armor strap was cinched, Arlen turned to look in the polished metal mirror on the shop’s wall. He was impressive looking in the new armor, there could be no doubt of that, but while Arlen had hoped to cut a dashing figure, he looked more like a hulking metal demon. The effect was only slightly lessened when Cob threw a thick cloak over his shoulders.

  “Keep it pulled tight as you ride the mountain path,” the old Warder advised. “It’ll take the glare off the armor, and keep the wind from cutting through the joints.”

  Arlen nodded.

  “And listen to Messenger Curk,” Cob said. Arlen smiled patiently.

  “Except when he tells you something that I taught you better,” Cob amended. Arlen barked a laugh.

  “It’s a promise,” he said.

  They looked at each other for long moments, not knowing whether to clasp hands or hug. After a moment they both grunted and turned away, Arlen for the door and Cob for his workbench. Arlen looked back when he reached the door, and met Cob’s eyes again.

  “Come back in one piece,” Cob ordered.

  “Yes, Master,” Arlen said, and stepped out into the pre-dawn light.

  Arlen watched the great square in front of the Messengers’ Guildhouse as men argued with merchants and stocked wagons. Mothers moved about with their chalked slates, witnessing and accounting the transactions. It was a place pulsing with life and activity, and Arlen loved it.

  He glanced at the great clock over the Guildhouse doors, its hands telling the year, month, day, and hour, down to the minute. There was another great clock at the Guildhouse in every Free City, all of them set to the Tender’s Almanac, which gave the times of sunrise and sunset for the coming week that were chalked beneath the clock face. Messengers were taught to live by those clocks. Punctuality, or better yet early arrival, was a point of pride.

  But Curk was always late. Patience had never been one of Arlen’s virtues, but now, with the open road beckoning, the wait seemed interminable. His heart thudded in his chest and his muscles knotted with excitement. It had been years since he last slept unprotected by warded walls, but he had not forgotten what it was like. Air had never tasted so good as it had on the open road, nor had he ever felt so alive. So free.

  At last, there was a weary stomp of booted feet, and Arlen knew from the smell of ale that Curk had arrived before he even turned to the man.

  Messenger Curk was clad in beaten armor of boiled leather, painted with reasonably fresh wards. Not as strong as Arlen’s fluted steel, but a good deal lighter and more flexible. His bald pate was ringed by long blond hair streaked with gray, which fell in greasy gnarls around a weathered face. His beard was thick and roughly cropped, matted like his hair. He had a dented shield strapped to his back and a worn spear in his hand.

  Curk stopped to regard Arlen’s shining new armor and shield, and his eyes took a covetous gleam for an instant. He covered it with a derisive snort.

  “Fancy suit for an apprentice.” He poked his spear into Arlen’s breastplate. “Most Messengers need to earn their armor, but not Master Cob’s apprentice, it seems.”

  Arlen batted the speartip aside, but not before he heard it scratch the surface he had spent countless hours polishing. Memories came to him unbidden: the flame demon he struck from his mother’s back as a boy, and the long cold night they spent in the mud of an animal pen as the demons danced about testing the wards for a weakness. Of the night he had accidentally cut the arm from a fifteen foot tall rock demon, and the enmity it bore him to this day.

  He balled a fist, putting it under Curk’s hooked nose. “What I done or not ent your business, Curk. Touch my armor again and the sun as my witness, you’ll be spitting teeth.”

  Curk narrowed his eyes. He was bigger than Arlen, but Arlen was young and strong and sober. Perhaps that was why he stepped back after a moment and nodded an apology. Or perhaps it was because he was more afraid of losing the strong back of an apprentice Messenger when it came time to load and unload the carts.

  “Din’t mean nothin’ by it,” Curk grumbled, “but you ent gonna be much of a Messenger if you’re afraid to get your armor scratched. Now lift your feet. Guildmaster wants to see us before we go. Sooner we get that done, sooner we can be on the road.”

  Arlen forgot his irritation in an instant, following Curk into the Guildhouse. A clerk ushered them right into Guildmaster Malcum’s office, a large chamber cluttered with tables, maps, and slates. A former Messenger himself, the guildmaster had lost an eye and part of his face to the corelings, but he continued to Message for years after the injury. His hair was graying now, but he was still a powerfully built man, and not one to cross lightly. A wave of his pen could bring dawn or dusk to a Messenger’s career, or crush the fortune of a great house. The guildmaster was at his desk, signing what seemed an endless stack of forms.

  “You’ll have to excuse me if I keep signing while we talk,” Malcum said. “If I stop even for an instant, the pile doubles in size. Have a seat. Drink?” he gestured to a crystal decanter on the edge of his desk. It was filled with an amber liquid, and there were glasses besides.

  Curk’s eyes lit up. “Don’t mind if I do.” He poured a glass and threw it back, grimacing as he filled another near to the rim before taking his seat.

  “Your trip to Duke’s Coal is postponed,” Malcum said. “I have a more pressing assignment for you.”

  Curk looked down at the crystal glass in his hand, and his eyes narrowed. “Where to?”

  “Count Brayan’s Gold,” Malcum said, his eyes still on the papers. Arlen’s heart leapt. Brayan’s Gold was the most remote mining town in the duchy. Ten nights’ travel from the city proper, it was the sole mine on the third mountain to the west, and higher up than any other.

  “That’s Sandar’s run,” Curk protested.

  Malcum blotted the ink on a form, turning it over onto a growing stack. His pen darted to dip in the inkwell. “It was, but Sandar fell off his ripping horse yesterday. Leg’s broke.”

  “Corespawn it,” Curk muttered. He drank half his glass in one gulp and shook his head. “Send someone else. I’m too old to spend weeks on end freezing my arse off and gasping for breath in the thin air.”

  “No one else is available on short notice,” Malcum said, continuing to sign and blot.

  Curk shrugged. “Then Count Brayan will have to wait.”

  “The count is offering one thousand gold suns for the job,” Malcum said.

  Both Curk and Arlen gaped. A thousand suns was a fortune for any Message run.

  “What’s the claw?” Curk asked suspiciously. “What do they need so badly it can’t wait?”

  Malcum’s hands finally stopped moving, and he looked up. “Thundersticks. A cartload.”

  Curk shook his head. “Ohhh, no!” He downed the rest of his glass and thumped it on the guildmaster’s
desk.

  Thundersticks, Arlen thought, digesting the word. He had read of them in the Duke’s Library, though the books containing their exact composition had been forbidden. Unlike most other flamework, thundersticks could be set off by impact as well as spark, and in the mountains, an accidental blast could cause an avalanche even if the explosion itself didn’t kill.

  “You want a rush job, carrying thundersticks?” Curk asked incredulously. “What’s the corespawned hurry?”

  “Spring caravan came back with a message from Baron Talor reporting a new vein; one they need to blast into,” Malcum said. “Brayan’s had his Herb Gatherers working day and night making thundersticks ever since. Every day that vein goes uncracked, Brayan’s clerks tally up the gold he’s losing, and he gets the shakes.”

  “So he sends a lone man up trails full of bandits who will do most anything to get their hands on a cartload of thundersticks.” Curk shook his head. “Blown to bits or robbed and left for the corelings. Hardly know which is worse.”

  “Nonsense,” Malcum said. “Sandar made thunderstick runs all the time. No one will know what you’re carrying save us three and Brayan himself. Without guards, no one seeing you pass will think you’re carrying anything worth stealing.”

  Curk’s grimace did not lessen. “Twelve hundred suns,” Malcum said. “You ever seen that much gold in one place, Curk? I’m tempted to squeeze into my old armor and do it myself.”

  “I’ll be happy to sit at your desk and sign papers, you want one last run,” Curk said.

  Malcum smiled, but it was the look of a man losing patience. “Fifteen, and not a copper light more. I know you need the money, Curk. Half the taverns in the city won’t serve you unless you’ve got coin in hand, and the other half will take your coin and say you owe a hundred more before they’ll tap a keg. You’d be a fool to refuse this job.”