Broken World Book Four - The Staff of Law (15 page)

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.”