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    The Great Bazaar: A Demon Cycle Novella
    The Great Bazaar: A Demon Cycle Novella
    The Great Bazaar: A Demon Cycle Novella
    Ebook114 pages2 hours

    The Great Bazaar: A Demon Cycle Novella

    By Peter V. Brett

    ()

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    About this ebook

    From the pages of the internationally bestselling Demon Cycle series comes this tale of Arlen Bales, who would one day become the legendary Warded Man.

    Arlen works as a Messenger, traveling the demon-infested nights to deliver news, letters and packages to isolated villages and towns.

    But he is hunted.

    A one-armed rock demon, fifteen feet tall and nearly indestructible, pursues Arlen each night, seeking vengeance for its lost arm.

    Somewhere out there, in the ruins of the old world, was a way to kill the demon. The histories spoke of warded weapons that could shatter demon armor like glass and leave wounds even a demon could not heal.

    Arlen uses his Messenger work to finance his true passion, a dangerous hunt for forgotten ruins and lost cities. In the Great Bazaar of Krasia he hears of a map that may be the answer to his dreams, but only if he is prepared to risk everything to obtain it.

    Also included are shorts and deleted scenes from the Demon Cycle series, which has sold over 4 million copies in 27 languages worldwide!

    Praise for The Great Bazaar:
    “Should delight all fans of epic fantasy. Brett’s prose is nimble and accessible and he leaves the reader wanting to know more.” — Sacramento Book Reviews

    “Highly enjoyable […] will be enjoyed by his existing fans and could serve to draw in new readers.” — San Francisco Review of Books

    "Technically a short story collection, this slender volume is better understood as the DVD extras to Brett's 2009 debut novel, The Warded Man. The universe's conceit—demon corelings rise from the land each night, keeping the populace trapped indoors—is explained in the title story, a fully realized tale..." — Publishers Weekly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
    Release dateNov 3, 2023
    ISBN9781625676276
    The Great Bazaar: A Demon Cycle Novella
    Author

    Peter V. Brett

    Peter V. Brett is the international bestselling author of THE PAINTED MAN and THE DESERT SPEAR. Raised on a steady diet of fantasy novels, comic books and Dungeons & Dragons, 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, and then spent more than a decade in pharmaceutical publishing before returning to his bliss. He lives in New York City.

    Read more from Peter V. Brett

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      Book preview

      The Great Bazaar - Peter V. Brett

      The Great Bazaar

      328 AR

      Clay Ward

      SUNLIGHT was heavy in the desert. More than heat or brightness, it was an oppressive weight, and Arlen kept finding himself hunching over as if to yield before it.

      He was riding through the outskirts of the Krasian Desert, where there was nothing but cracked flats of dry clay as far as the eye could see in any direction. Nothing to provide shade or reflect heat. Nothing to sustain life.

      Nothing to make a sane person wander out here, Arlen scolded himself, nevertheless straightening his back in defiance of the sun. He had a thin white robe on over his clothes, the hood pulled low over his eyes, and a veil over his mouth and nose. The cloth reflected some of the light, but it seemed scant protection. He had even slung a white sheet over his horse, a bay courser named Dawn Runner.

      The horse gave a dry cough, attempting to dislodge the ever-present dust from its throat.

      I’m thirsty too, Dawn, Arlen said, stroking the horse’s neck, but we’ve used our water ration for the morning, so there’s nothing for it but to endure.

      Arlen reached again for Abban’s map. The compass slung around his neck told him that they were still headed due east, but there was no sign of the canyon. It should have come in sight a day ago, and harsh rationing or no, they would have to turn back to Fort Krasia in another day if they did not reach the river and find water.

      Or you could spare yourself a day of thirst and turn back now, a voice in his head said.

      The voice was always telling him to turn back. Arlen thought of it as his father, the lingering presence of a man he hadn’t seen in close to a decade. Its words were always the stern-sounding bits of wisdom that his father had liked to impart. Jeph Bales had been a good man, and honest, but his stern wisdom had kept him from traveling more than a few hours from his home for his entire life.

      Every day away from succor was another night spent outside with the corelings, and not even Arlen took that lightly, but he had a deep and driving need to see things that no other man had seen, to go places no other man had gone. He had been eleven when he ran away from home. Now he was twenty, and had seen more of the world than any but a handful of other men.

      Like the parch in Arlen’s throat, the voice was simply another thing to be endured. The demons had made the world small enough. He would not let some nagging voice make it even smaller.

      This time he was seeking Baha kad’Everam, a Krasian hamlet whose name translated into Bowl of Everam, which was the Krasian name for the Creator. Abban’s maps said it rested in a natural bowl formed by a dry lakebed in a river canyon. The hamlet was renowned for its pottery, but the pottery merchants had stopped coming more than twenty years ago, and a dal’Sharum expedition had found the Bahavans taken by the night. No one had gone back there since.

      I was on that expedition, Abban had claimed. Arlen had looked at the fat merchant doubtfully.

      It’s true, Abban said. "I was just a novice warrior carrying spears for the dal’Sharum, but I remember the trek well. There was no sign of the Bahavans, but the village was intact. The warriors cared nothing for pottery, and thought it dishonorable to loot. Even now, there is pottery left in the ruins, waiting for any with the courage to claim it. He had leaned in closely then. The work of a Bahavan pottery master would sell for a premium in the bazaar," he said meaningfully.

      And now, Arlen was in the middle of the desert, wondering if Abban had made the whole thing up.

      He went on for hours more before he caught sight of a shadow creasing across the clay flats ahead of him. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest as Dawn Runner’s plodding hooves slowly brought the canyon into view. Arlen breathed a sigh of relief, reminding himself that he ignored his father’s voice for a reason. He turned his horse south; the bowl came into sight not long after.

      Dawn Runner was grateful when they rode down into the bowl’s shade. The hamlet’s residents had apparently shared the sentiment, because they had built their homes into the ancient canyon walls, cutting deeply into the living clay and extending outward with adobe buildings indistinguishable in color from the canyon and invisible from any distance. A perfect camouflage from the wind demons that soared out over the flats in search of prey.

      But despite this protection, the Bahavans had still died out. The river had gone dry, and sickness and thirst had left them vulnerable to the corelings. Perhaps a few had attempted the trek through the desert to Fort Krasia, but if so, they were never heard from again.

      Arlen’s initial high spirits fell with the realization that he was riding into a graveyard. Again. He drew wards of protection in the air as he passed the homes, calling out Ay, Bahavans! in the vain hope that some survivors might remain.

      Only the sound of his own voice echoed back to him. The cloth that had served to block sun from windows and doorways, where it remained at all, was ragged and filthy, and the wards cut into the adobe were faded and worn from years of exposure to harsh desert wind and grit. The walls were scarred by demon claws. There were no survivors here.

      There were demon pits dug in the center of the village to trap and hold corelings for the sun, and blockades running up the steep stone stairways that zigzagged in tiers up the canyon wall to link the buildings. They were hastily built defenses, put in place by the dal’Sharum not to defend the Bahavans, but rather to honor them. Baha kad’Everam had been a village of khaffit, men whose caste made them unworthy of the right to hold spears or enter into Heaven, but even such as they deserved hallowed ground to lay to rest, that their spirits might be reincarnated into a higher caste, if they were worthy.

      And there was only one way the dal’Sharum hallowed ground. They stained it with their blood, and the black ichor that flowed through coreling veins. They called it alagai’sharak, meaning demon war, and it was a battle waged every night in Fort Krasia, an eternal struggle that would go on until all the demons were dead, or there were no more men to fight them. The warriors had danced one night’s alagai’sharak in Baha kad’Everam, to sanctify

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