Broken World Book Four - The Staff of Law Read online

  The evening chill invaded the air, and she rubbed goose bumps from her arms, turning to enter the castle’s warmth. On her way down to her rooms, she paused outside the door to the room containing the Staff of Law. After a moment’s hesitation, she pushed it open and entered. The sunset’s slanted rays gilded the ancient stone staff in its velvet-draped cradle, glinting on the silver ornaments she had placed around it, donated by the chosen. They, too, wanted the gods to take notice of the restored staff, and many precious possessions adorned the room. For several years, they had brought wreaths and garlands to drape over the staff and around the room, but as time passed and the gods took no notice, this practice had waned. Now a few mouldering flowers hung in dry vases, gathering dust like the staff.

  The staff had become a symbol of justice in the valley. Whenever Kieran had to mediate disputes or judge criminals, he did so seated next to the Staff of Law. Petitioners and perpetrators were ordered to swear on the staff as to the truth of their testimony, and the Prince found that few could lie while their right hand was pressed to the ancient writing. Chanter assured them that the staff had no power, and it was merely the proximity of this ancient God-given instrument of law that made it impossible for people to lie. In the only incident of murder they had experienced, the man had broken down in the staff’s presence and confessed to murdering his wife through jealousy. The only person immune to its awe was Travain, who mocked it constantly, and had once kicked it to show his disdain. Fortunately, he had hurt his foot, which dissuaded him from further disrespectful displays. Disputes and crimes were rare in the valley, and, judging by the room’s neglected state, no one had been in it for some time.

  Shan was the staff’s most devoted admirer, frequently bringing flowers and pretty stones to lay at its foot. Once he had insisted on bringing Thorn, and led the big horse up the stairs to sniff the staff. According to Shan, Thorn was pleased that the staff had been made whole again. Shan was now a strapping young man of twenty-two, and Thorn a magnificent horse standing eighteen hands tall. Although he could never be described as beautiful, Thorn’s massive power held its own subtle allure, and his gentleness was well known throughout the valley.

  Talsy walked over to the staff and ran her fingers along the lines of ancient writing, glancing up at the mural of the gods on the wall behind it.

  “When will you take notice?” she asked the images. “When will you save your dying world? What more would you have me do to right the wrongs of one of my kind? Tell me, give me a sign, and I’ll do it, I swear.”

  An icy gust from the open window made her shiver, rustling the heavy velvet curtains and withered brown flowers like a portent of doom. Its unfriendly touch seemed to answer her question, and she turned away and closed the door behind her.

  Law swam through a sea filled with Dolana, its shimmering blue mixed with a haze of silver silt that numbed his extremities and sapped his strength. Shortly after he had found joy and contentment with the food beast and its predators, the food beast had flowered, sending out a sweet scent that had drawn a male to her. Her flowers pollinated, she had gone on with her gentle life, her pods ripening with the torpidity of these ocean giants. Five years had passed before her young were born, sliding into the sea to begin their lives. At this time, Law had sensed the sea creatures’ growing discomfort at the increasing amount of Dolana mixed with the water. It hardly affected the food beast, but Law’s ventures into the sea had become more and more unpleasant. The ocean was no longer the haven he craved; the tainted Dolana that filled it caused him even more discomfort than it did the sea creatures. Law had been trapped on the food beast’s back until a few moons ago, when she had died a natural death of old age. Forced to leave his sinking sanctuary, Law braved the tainted sea, unable to fly.

  Law had swum in one direction for several days, not knowing where he was going, but wishing only to leave the sea. At times he had entered waters that were not so tainted, but soon currents brought fresh rivers of warm Dolana to drive him on. Remembering the tainted land he had quit to enter the sea, Law dreaded setting foot on it again, but had little choice. Ashmar, the only Power still relatively untainted, was denied him by his blindness. At least walking on corruption was not as bad as swimming in it.

  Far beneath him, he glimpsed the glowing, pitted grey of the sea bed rising, and knew that he was at last approaching a shore. The lines of corrupted Earthpower gave off a sullen warm glow, and the silted sea near the shore weakened him so much that it took all of his strength to drive his sleek dolphin form onto the beach. There he transformed and stood up, walking up the beach to escape the tainted manifestation of Shissar that had powered his change. At the edge of the sand, he waited for the visible Powers to settle on his senses. Grey Dolana outlined ground, rocks and dead trees.

  For two days, Law traversed a barren landscape whose dull Dolana pervaded every aspect of it, and sometimes the air in the form of stinging dust clouds. He crossed rivers carrying heavy burdens of silt to the sea, so full of Dolana that their shimmering blue was dulled to a blue-grey. Fields of bones crunched beneath his feet, knobs of corrupted, living rock glowed sickly grey, and the touch of lingering souls made him shiver. Danger dogged his steps, sometimes in the form of buzzing wings above that forced him to hide uncomfortably amid the corruption. Several times, he sensed chaos beasts in the distance and turned away to avoid them, skirting belts of blighted woodland that held far greater dangers in their depths.

  At the end of the third day, he encountered a tiny wood clinging to a thread of life. A dwindling Kuran sheltered amongst the few massive trees, the heart and remnant of a formerly vast forest. The Kuran welcomed him, so he settled there, using his powers to purify the Dolana within the wood and strengthen the Kuran’s warding thousand-fold. The dying trees at its perimeter revived, and the greying web of Dolana turned silver again as he played its strands with skills gained from his inborn knowledge. Strange beasts invaded the forest from time to time, roaming amongst the trees with deep grunts and roars of malevolence and rage.

  The boughs were Law’s haven, where he could relax, free from the Dolana. Gentle beasts returned, like birds and shy deer, and even some creatures of this world alighted on the treetops to bask in the sun. Gradually, he pushed back the sea of corruption that surrounded the forest, and saplings sprouted at its edges as it spread. Unlike the ocean, with its vastness and ever flowing currents, here he could control the world and cure it, making life bearable within the sphere of his influence.

  The golden light in his head still bothered him at times, swirling around when a strange creature or ill wind disturbed it. Mostly, however, it remained calm, as it had done ever since he had solved its mystery. It had taken a couple of years of pondering, contemplation and searching through his Mujar knowledge to unravel the light’s enigma. He had come to understand the words written within it, which his dreams revealed to him. With that understanding had come the realisation that those words were the cause of all the troubles in the world. They came from the Staff of Law, which ruled the world along with the staffs of Life and Death, and they were all gone. When he had tried to summon their images, as all Mujar could with their ancestor’s knowledge, he had found an emptiness that howled with sorrow and despair.

  Law used the laws to cure the grove, implanted them within the earth as Mujar laws and restored the integrity of the land and its beauty. In his oasis of purity, the living rock died and creatures of the chaos dropped dead or fled. This troubled him, but also made it safe for him to wander through his little paradise without fear of attack. Dargon gathered in the ground, and gentle wind spirits calmed the air around his forest, keeping dust storms at bay.

  Law rested on a crooked bough, one leg dangling, and hummed a little tune he had made up. The sound of Lowman voices silenced him, and he listened to their excited chatter as they explored the woodland. At first he was wary, unwilling to reveal himself to these strangers, but people like these had brought him up, and he remembered the comforts he
had received. Lured by the hope of cooked food and a soft bed, he descended to the ground and went to meet them. When he stepped out of the trees, the men fell silent.

  Law smiled at their forms, a haze of silver, blue and gold. “Welcome, friends.”

  One of the men swore, another muttered, “Mujar!”

  Law raised his hand in the palm up gesture. “No harm.”

  The waves of animosity that came from the men puzzled and alarmed him. It closely resembled the hatred he had sensed in chaos beasts, and fear fluttered his heart. He stepped back, but before he could flee, the nearest hunter drew back his arm and flung a broad-headed hunting spear. It struck Law in the chest and sent him sprawling with a cry of pain. In moments, the men surrounded him, one pushing the spear deeper until it dug into the ground. Law gripped the shaft and tried to pull it out while the men laughed at his futile, weakening struggles. Pure, cold Dolana invaded Law, bringing with it the icy drain that sapped his strength.

  “Let me go,” he begged. “Why do you harm me?”

  “Because you’re Mujar,” the man who held the spear snarled, spitting on him.

  Law gave up his struggle with the spear and raised his hands in a pleading gesture. “I’ve done nothing to you, please let me go.”

  The men laughed, and one said, “Your kind has ever taunted us, Mujar scum. You dirty yellow bastards begged in our cities, living in squalor when you have the power to live like kings. Why should we have wasted food on you when you don’t even need to eat, when you do nothing in return, huh? That’s why your kind all rot in the Pits, and you can join them!”

  This statement sparked off an argument amongst the men, most protesting that the Pits were inaccessible, and the journey too dangerous. Law’s horror grew as they argued, then the leader decided that they would take their captive to their chieftain, and he would decide the Mujar’s fate. The others grunted assent, and they lifted Law, releasing him from Dolana’s numbing cold chains. He changed into a stallion in an instant of icy hush, but the hunters clung to the spear, their numbers too great for him to break free. They set upon him with clubs and knocked him senseless to the ground, where he reverted involuntarily to man form.

  Two hunters placed the spear upon their shoulders and bore their prize back to their city, trussed and bound like a beast slain in the hunt. They barely escaped the forest in time, for the trees at its edge became animated and attacked them with beating branches. The ground shivered and heaved, but the men crossed the wasteland that surrounded the forest swiftly.

  Shugin, leader of the hunting party, swaggered ahead along the city’s tarred streets. A middle-aged man with weathered brown skin, a flattened nose and darting black eyes under a permanent frown, he hated Mujar with borderline fanaticism, and had personally thrown two into Pits. His baggy cloth trousers and drab, coarse shirt, worn under a scuffed brown leather jerkin, hung on his tall frame.

  Skinny women and pot-bellied children emerged from the ugly stone houses to gape at the unconscious Mujar hanging from the spear. The route to the chieftain’s house wound through the city, for the living stone that invaded it had blocked many streets. Stonemasons had bricked up the roads to try to stem the tide of creeping rock, but once the street filled, it overflowed the walls that penned it and continued its advance. The city had once hired an earth wizard to rid them of the curse, but his powers had only enraged the rock, and it had grown faster. Almost half the city had been engulfed, and many families were forced to share the remaining houses. A few new ones had been constructed as far from the creeping rock menace as possible, but no one had much spare time to build.

  The town had once prospered from a diamond mine, but now that so few Truemen remained, the market for precious stones had dried up and the metropolis had fallen into poverty and disrepair. Crumbling whitewashed brick houses with sagging slate roofs and yellow-stained walls huddled beside the tarred roads, which gave off a terrible stench on hot days. People scratched a living in the fields around the town, tended herd animals that needed constant guarding from marauding chaos beasts or raised hardy livestock, mostly pigs, to feed the populace. Hunters made a living in the dwindling forests, killing the few remaining unaltered wild animals to sell their meat. The people wore faded finery from more prosperous days, and thievery and lawlessness thrived.

  A crowd followed Shugin to the chieftain’s house, chattering excitedly and pointing at the Mujar. Outside the dwelling, the former governor’s mansion, Shugin posed proudly until Chief Gallar emerged, looked rather peeved at being disturbed while he was eating his lunch. The older man regarded the Mujar with narrowed eyes, wiping gravy from his ragged, greying beard. Law lay where the hunters had dumped him, curled around the spear shaft.

  “What’s this?” the elder enquired.

  “A Mujar, Chief,” Shugin said, surprised, and Gallar frowned.

  “I can see that, I’m not an idiot. What do you propose we do, eat him?”

  “No, but -”

  “You went to find food, and you bring back a Mujar?”

  “Well we couldn’t just leave him!” Shugin protested. “There’s plenty of food in the forest where we found him, deer and good fruit, nuts, berries, everything!”

  Gallar regarded Shugin as if he had just encountered the first brain-dead Trueman who could still talk. “So you leave the food and bring us a damned Mujar!”

  “We can go back for the food, take barrows to carry it in. There’s plenty for everyone. It’s a paradise!”

  The crowd muttered, but Gallar frowned and shook his head. “I doubt anyone will be able to go near that forest now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Mujar was undoubtedly the reason for the forest’s health, and now the spirits will be angry.” The chieftain tapped his foot on the tarred street. “You remember why our streets are tarred, don’t you? You remember the war with the land. The forest will die without the Mujar, and no one will be able to enter it now.”

  “How do you know this?” Shugin demanded.

  “Because, unlike you, I’m not stupid.”

  The hunter drew himself up. “The Mujar are our enemies! We’re sworn to rid ourselves of them!”

  “We have more serious problems to worry about than Mujar now, fool, like what we’re going to eat. If you’d left him there, we could have gathered food from the forest, but now we can’t!”

  Shugin scowled, gripping his spear. “You speak like a Mujar lover. We can’t allow Mujar to go free.”

  “What harm was he doing? He didn’t come begging in our streets, did he? We could have used him!”

  The hunter glanced back at his frowning fellows, then at the muttering crowd. His victory was turning to defeat, and he saw only one way out. Raising his spear, he hefted it.

  “Mujar lover! You lie! You want to save the yellow scum!”

  Shugin drove the weapon through the old man’s frail chest with a howl of rage, and Gallar collapsed like a marionette without strings, dead before he hit the ground.

  Shugin turned to address the crowd. “I’m chieftain now! I say we can gather food in the forest. We’ll have plenty, and we’ll make this dirty yellow scum suffer before we find a Pit for him!”

  A muted cheer went up, no one willing to be branded a Mujar lover and suffer Gallar’s fate. As the old chief’s daughter sobbed beside her father’s body, Shugin barked orders at the men, who untied the Mujar and stretched him out on the tar. They hammered the spear in his chest into the street, and impaled his hands and feet with iron spikes. Shugin evicted Gallar’s daughter from the chief’s house and moved in, ordering a party of gatherers and hunters to visit the wood and bring back its bounty. Having established his elevation of rank in the eyes of the people through these few swift moves, Shugin had time to gloat on his victory. Posting two hunters to watch the Mujar, he retreated into his new domicile to wait for the unman’s awakening.

  A few hours later, Shugin grew impatient at the Mujar’s continued senseless state and emerged once more u
nder the lightning-shot sky with its scudding brown clouds. He kicked the unman several times to try to rouse him, and, when this did not work, ordered his men to throw water in the Mujar’s face.

  Law groaned and gasped, his fingers curling around the spikes in his hands. Corrupted Dolana tainted Shissar’s healing touch, causing intense pain. The sickly Earthpower held him in a grip of cloying warmth so strong that he could not even struggle a little, his limbs leaden. Turning his head to the side, he sensed the solid greyness under him, pitted with swelling spots of utter blackness that burst like rising bubbles and dispersed to be replaced by others. The blue, gold and silver form of a man squatted beside him.

  “Enjoying yourself, Mujar?” he sneered.

  Law turned his head away.

  The Lowman punched him. “Look at me when I talk to you.”

  Law obeyed, whereupon the man demanded, “What’s wrong with your eyes, Mujar scum?”

  Law braced himself for the next blow, which thudded into his ribs. The man growled, glancing around at the guards. Evidently Law’s stubborn silence made him look bad, and he was determined to get some kind of response. He gripped Law’s hair and banged his head on the ground.

  “Did you heal that forest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To live in,” Law said.

  “So, if you can fix the forest, you can fix our city, can’t you?”

  “No.”

  The man sniggered. “Oh, I think you will, because if you don’t, I’m going to teach you the meaning of pain, understand?”

  Law’s silence made the man snarl and jump up to re-enter his house. The young Mujar’s only sensations were the numbing hold of tainted Dolana and the waves of pain that washed through him from his chest and extremities. The golden light raged within his mind, agitated by the proximity of so much corruption, it hammered at his eyes for release.