Broken World Book Four - The Staff of Law (12 page)

Many times, he
glimpsed the strange slither of vast bloated shapes, warped beyond
imagination, amongst the trees. Each time he froze, his boots
sinking into the mire while he waited for the beast to move away,
knowing that a sound or movement would betray him. Ugly,
fungus-like growths brushed against him, making him shiver at their
tainted touch. The forest’s silence was like a thick, invisible
pall, broken by sudden shrieks and howls that startled him with
their unnatural loudness. He detoured around patches of sticky
blackness seeping from the mud, and the occasional huge web that
blocked the way, guarded by its venomous owner.

Reaching the
end of the wood, he found a stream and washed off the mud, which
turned the water yellow. It bubbled and steamed as the corruption
spread upstream and down. Within minutes, the entire rivulet boiled
away, leaving a yellow stain. Taking wing again, he soared into the
untainted sky, speeding his journey with powerful wing beats, eager
to put this quest behind him and return to the valley’s sanity. He
passed over a relatively intact city that Lowmen defended from the
depravity of its surrounds, a losing battle against the living rock
that invaded the streets. Further on, a battle raged between Lowmen
and manants on a vast killing field of blood-soaked ground and
red-tinged rivers. The armies fought and died for areas of safe
land on which they could have lived. Other fields of whitening
bones, the product of past battles, sank into the morass of
destruction, their outcome no longer relevant to the doomed
victors.

A day of
flight brought him to the vanishing red desert whose dunes soaked
away into the soil, leaving hills of sand between winding lanes of
barren ground. Here, the staff’s fading laws held a little more
sway. The echoes of its order steeped the land, and nothing odd
marred the dying desert. He landed briefly to test the Dolana,
finding it still sweet and untarnished, its icy drain a welcome
sensation he only sensed now within the valley. Flying on, he
considered the power that kept the valley sane, the marks he had
placed upon the mountains and the Mujar laws he had set within the
ground. The Dargon helped, with their power over soil and rock, to
enhance his commands. Even so, corruption stalked just beneath his
warding, ready to invade the moment his power faded, as it would
when he died.

The sun sank
in a blaze of sullen fire, appearing to drag streamers of burning
cloud over the horizon with it. The stars appeared one by one,
sprinkling the inky heavens with their cold glitter. In this silver
light, he swooped down upon the tumbled ruins of Tyrander’s castle,
exposed by the receding sand to stand like decaying teeth. Of the
oasis, no trace remained. It had returned to the land that had
birthed it with the cessation of the staff’s power, leaving nothing
of itself behind. He took man form, pausing for a moment to
contemplate the beauty of the rising moon before beginning his
search. To find a piece of unremarkable grey stone amongst a
plethora of them seemed an impossible task, and he wondered if
indeed the last piece of the staff had remained in the place of its
destruction.

By dawn, he
had been over every inch of the castle twice, and the first golden
rays of sun found him sitting disconsolately on a pile of stones.
The silence grew more intense when no birds greeted the morning,
and only the faint hiss of blowing sand underscored the leaden
stillness of a dead world.

Chanter
scanned the sun-gilded ruins dejectedly and wondered how hard Talsy
expected him to look, and whether he should move the stones. As the
sun rose, its rays probed the shadows, and he waited for it to
reveal any secrets. A glitter of crystals drew his eyes to a shard
of gnarled rock half hidden amongst the fallen walls, and he rose
to examine it. The grey metal foot held only a remnant of stone,
and he gathered up several chips that lay nearby, each containing a
fragment of broken writing, a vestige of unreadable law. He knelt
and laid them together on a flat rock.

“
How can I fix what is so broken?” he asked no one in
particular. “How can I put back what I don’t know? How can I fail
the one who is chosen?”

“
You cannot,” a chill whisper hissed in his ear.

Chanter
gestured irritably. “Begone, wind, taunt me not.”

“
Wind am I?” the voice sniggered. “I think not.”

The Mujar
turned to face his antagonist, his eyes narrowing as he gazed upon
a forbidden entity of the chaos. Neither wind nor water, nor sand
or fire, it mocked him with glowing eyes of melted venom and spoke
with a foetid breath of misty blackness. Its form shimmered with
heat, rasped the stones with gritty feet, and radiated corrupted
light in a patchwork of unrelated elements tortured together by a
will that was neither alive nor dead.

Chanter
regarded it curiously. “What are you?”

“
Questions, questions,” it sighed. “I am the new spirit of this
world, here to replace the puling Kuran who have fled, and their
downtrodden allies, the Dargon. The winds fear me and the creatures
worship me. I am Mannon.”

“
You’re no spirit, nor do you live.”

“
Did I say that I lived? I am stronger than that. Life is an
illusion, a word dreamt up by creatures so frail that a whiff of my
breath would snuff them out.”

Chanter
smiled. “That does not surprise me.”

“
Yet you stand unaffected, breathing me and living still. Do
you live?”

“
Yes, more than you. If you’re the new spirit of this tormented
land, then go attend to your foul business; I have no time for
you.”

Mannon hissed,
its eyes growing more poisonous. “No one spurns me and survives,
frail thing. No one defies me.”

“
I don’t defy you. You are of no consequence to me.”

“
Your life is mine.”

“
No it isn’t.” Chanter turned away. “You can do nothing to
me.”

A lash of fire
washed over him, and the Mujar glanced back at the entity, which
swirled with rage. Poisonous air engulfed him, and Chanter stopped
breathing. The monster swelled with fury. Sweet air returned, and
Chanter said, “Leave me be.”

“
You will die!” Mannon grated, unleashing a wave of stinging
dust that spotted the Mujar’s skin with blood.

Chanter
frowned. “You are not alive.”

Mannon ignored
the Mujar’s strangely worded warning, which would have informed any
who knew what he was that they did not enjoy the protection of
life. The monstrous elemental drew itself into a more compact form,
swelling with sand and rocks to hurl at the Mujar.

Chanter faced
it. “You are an abomination of the chaos, a soulless being born of
corrupted Powers that I command.” He gestured in a pulling motion,
then clapped his hands. A thunderclap rolled away, and Chanter
jerked his hands apart, tearing an invisible substance only he
could sense. Mannon sundered into its various elements in a gust of
foul stench and a wave of hot Dolana. Pure air gushed forth, along
with a flash of fire and a sprinkle of water, leaving a cloud of
settling dust and a soft wailing shriek.

“
What are you?”

“
I am Mujar,” Chanter said, “and you do not belong in my world.
Those who have life will live, those who don’t will cease to exist.
Let not the elements join together and name themselves. Thus it is
written in the law, and, now that the world is broken, you who have
no life will not mock it.”

Chanter gazed
across the desert, his eyes narrowed against the glare. Turning
back to the staff’s shards, he fitted them together, then summoned
Dolana and made it whole. Chips were missing from the writing;
fragments bearing vital letters lay as dust amongst the stones, and
could never be rewritten. Though heavy, he calculated its weight to
be manageable for a daltar eagle to carry, especially one with a
Mujar’s strength. Assuming that form, he picked up the stone in his
talons and rose into the air with strong wing beats, setting off
towards the distant valley. Flying low, he avoided the dangers of
the upper ethers, where manants patrolled on filmy wings. Sailing
just above the tree tops, he was forced to flap constantly to stay
aloft with his burden, hoping that no mishap would cause him to
drop the stone into some inaccessible place.

The being
formed from the corrupted Powers was a symptom of the world’s
decay, an entity sent abroad to cause destruction with no more
purpose or intelligence than a wandering tornado. These toys of the
winds were sometimes unleashed when their creators tired of playing
with them, and grew in strength and ferocity to devour stretches of
land for no other reason than pure mischance. So Mannon had come
into being through purposeless accident, evolving a voice and
malice with little else to guide it. As long as there were no laws,
the chaos would create worse things yet.

Talsy gazed at
the Staff of Law, Travain on her hip. It lay on its bed of red
velvet, the pieces arranged in their correct order. She knelt to
run reverent fingers along the lines of indecipherable writing,
carved so perfectly into the stone that no stonemason could ever
hope to emulate it. The metal that capped and footed it gleamed
dull grey, unremarkable, yet also unsullied by time and weather.
The seamed grey granite appeared aged, yet the writing remained
pristine, as sharp and clear as the day the gods had carved it
there, aeons ago.

She looked up
at the people who had gathered in the staff’s room. “Today we right
the wrong. Today we will make the Staff of Law whole again, so the
gods will be forced to make another decision.”

Most of the
chosen crowded into the room, and those who were her particular
friends stood at the forefront. The ones at the back peered over
the shoulders of those in front to glimpse the broken staff that
few had seen. Shan’s eyes gleamed with excitement and expectation,
lingering often upon the languid Mujar, who seemed the least
interested in the proceedings. Chanter leant against the wall by a
window, gazing out at a dull grey day. The crowd parted to give him
access to the staff, but he seemed reluctant to perform the
task.

Talsy looked
impatient. “Come on, Chanter, it’s time.”

He glanced
around, his eyes flitting over their expectant faces. “You realise
that nothing will change when I do this?”

“
Not right away, but if we don’t, there’s no hope that anything
will ever change.”

He shook his
head in rueful admiration of her stubborn fortitude and wandered
over to the staff. The people drew back as he knelt beside it, and
he looked up at them. “You know what to expect, so don’t be
alarmed.”

Most nodded,
and he placed his palms on the floor, summoning Dolana. The clamp
of icy stillness froze the world for an instant, and some gasped
and staggered when they were released from the Earthpower’s frigid
talons. Talsy let out the breath she held and looked at Travain,
but the baby cooed, unconcerned.

Chanter
grasped the topmost piece of stone and fitted its broken end into
the craggy top of the second piece. He turned them until they
clicked together, a jagged line encircling the stone, chips missing
from it. The stone welded together, joining into a seamless whole,
but for the gaps. He picked up the third piece, whose smoothly cut
edge fitted perfectly with the bottom of the second piece, and
again the stone flowed together seamlessly.

The fourth
piece required more fiddling before he got the edges to fit
together, then joined them, a chunk the size of a coin missing from
one side. The last piece, bound with metal, fitted imperfectly with
the fourth, the missing fragments along the join obliterating an
entire line of writing. Chanter melded it together as well as he
could and stood up.

Talsy knelt to
stroke the pitted stone as he wandered back to the window to return
to his dull vista. She glanced around at the expectant throng, then
at Chanter.

“
Restore the laws you know, Chanter.”

“
I can’t.”

“
You can! You said you’d try. Even if we only restore a few, it
will help to slow the chaos, perhaps even stop it.”

“
It can’t be done.”

She jumped up,
frowning. “Try! How do you know if you won’t attempt it? Even I
know one of them, ‘life and death shall never mingle’. Restore that
one, and the staffs of Life and Death will separate, resume their
rule over their domains, and that will put back some order at
least! It will put an end to the Torrak Jahar and stop the monsters
of stone and elements from ravaging the land. Put back the law that
prevents crossbreeding, and all the monstrosities will be wiped
out.” She glanced at Travain, but hurried on, “You said you could
do that. You said you would!”

He swung to
face her. “I never said I could do it. I said it might work, but I
don’t know if it will. My power is different to the staff’s. Its
fire is golden, mine is blue.”

“
Just try,” she begged. “Please, grant me this wish. If you’ll
just do that, then if it fails, we know that we did
try.”

“
I risk the gods’ wrath, tampering with their sacred
tool.”

“
They wouldn’t punish you for trying to right a
wrong!”

He turned
away. “You don’t understand them, or me. Mujar should not
interfere, and I have done enough interfering already.”

Talsy scowled
at him. “Chanter.”

Involuntarily
he glanced at her.

She held out
her hand, palm up. “Wish.”

The Mujar’s
eyes lowered, and he sighed, shaking his head. “Wish.”