Broken World Book Four - The Staff of Law (17 page)

The Prince
turned and strode out, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll go and see
how many will join us.”

Chapter Seven

Talsy stopped
on the crest of a hill and stared back at the long column of
horsemen strung out behind her. Never had she dreamt that almost
every Aggapae warrior would want to come, and several of the
chosen. They had listened to the warnings about the chaos with
blank, stubborn faces, and Jesher had assured her that every horse
that came did so because he or she wished to. Nort had no need to
stay with the mares, since they were not breeding, and almost the
entire bachelor herd, apart from a few oldsters, had left the
valley with them. Four hundred warriors had ridden out with twenty
pack horses carrying provisions, for Chanter had warned that there
was little food in the chaos. The Aggapae dressed in their battle
finery, bright feathers and ribbons sprigging their hair and
armour. Their spears bore the long silken banners of the valley, as
well as their own battle flags.

Each day they
faced a new danger, and wore their war paint to confront it.
Already they had lost five warriors and two horses to the chaos,
killed by its beasts or sudden treachery. Chanter flew above,
leading them on the safest route and bypassing dangerous areas.
Even so, several times the lead rider’s horse had broken through a
thin crust and fallen into a sucking quagmire of oily sludge. The
Aggapae had used ropes to pull man and horse free each time, but
this unseen enemy that lurked beneath their feet sapped their
morale.

They had
passed through areas that looked like visions of Hell, and others
that appeared merely barren, but everywhere hung the stench of
decay and the electric tension of impending doom. They avoided dark
forests whence strange sounds and smells wafted, following a
torturous route between the remaining patches of trees. It was far
safer in the open, where danger could be seen from afar, and
Chanter could guard them from the air. Still, there was no true
safety. Everything they encountered had to be regarded as a
potential threat, no matter how innocuous it seemed.

The chaos
struck with chilling suddenness each time it attacked, sometimes
heralded by the scream of a swooping daltar eagle as Chanter gave
warning. Weird beasts rose out of mud pits, so perfectly
camouflaged that no one had suspected their presence, not even the
horses. Huge winged manants swooped down on them, most falling as
Chanter’s fire burnt their wings. The Mujar strived to protect the
chosen, causing unprecedented harm to their foes, although never
killing. By robbing the manants of flight, he allowed the chosen to
escape, and Talsy soon realised that without him, they would have
been dead within the first week.

The nervous
tension sapped everyone’s strength, and watches of fifty men took
turns during the night to repel attacks by chaos beasts and
sometimes the land itself. During the second week, a thunderstorm
unleashed a rain of fire. Chanter took control of the elements and
swept the storm away, saving them from serious harm, although all
were burnt slightly. The next day it rained frogs, and the day
after that, fish, which they gathered for food, but found
inedible.

The Mujar
warned them to eat nothing of the chaos, and even the horses ate
ground maize and oats the pack animals carried. The lack of clean
water presented a greater problem, since they could not carry vast
amounts of it, and there was little to be found in the chaos. Each
time they encountered a rivulet or pond, they called Chanter down
to test it, and usually he found it to be poison. Sometimes they
would travel for days on short water rations, passing streams and
ponds they could not drink.

One night, a
river of mud had washed two men and a horse away, never to be seen
again. The roar of its coming had warned them, but two had not
escaped the wall of liquid soil that had thundered down the gulley
in which they sheltered. Another three men had died fighting chaos
beasts, and many more would have perished if Chanter had not healed
them. For two days, they rode through a rain of ash, which turned
everything grey. The sooty clouds blotted out the sun, engulfing
them in a weird twilight world that occasional flashes of pink
lightning illuminated. Some of the things they encountered were
merely unpleasant, like an area of ground that gave off vast muddy
bubbles that rose into the air and burst, releasing a terrible
foetor. The Mujar who rode the winds high above made sure they
avoided the worst perils, however. Sometimes he would veer far from
their course, leading them around some danger they never saw, and
nor would he speak of it.

At times, when
they lighted the campfires at night the flames gave off no heat,
other times the fire burnt into the ground and vanished, leaving a
blackened hole. Once they rode into a pocket of deadly air, and all
were forced to gallop madly to escape it, while Chanter drew good
air in from ahead. The Mujar avoided towns, so they saw none of the
people who survived the chaos shut away within their cities’ walls.
They encountered a mountain of ice sprouting from the earth like a
great white fang, and on another day, a giant waterspout that
vanished into the sky. Sometimes burning clouds drifted above like
the flaming galleons of hellish gods. There seemed no end to the
weirdness and monstrosities they encountered, some fascinating,
most dangerous.

All these
things they had already seen, and the journey was only half over.
For two weeks they had travelled, and another two weeks lay ahead,
then a month to return. Talsy shivered. The weather was as
unpredictable as everything else, at times unbearably hot, then
turning bitterly cold in an instant. The scout who rode ahead came
cantering back, his face pale and his spear gripped in a
white-knuckled hand. He stopped beside Kieran, who rode with Jesher
and Talsy.

“
We’ll have to turn back,” the scout announced. “We can’t
continue. The land ahead... is on fire.”

Talsy glanced
up at the speck that was Chanter. “Why didn’t he warn us?”

Kieran
grunted. “Who knows? Let’s have a look.”

Jesher led
them at a canter to the brow of the next hill, where they gazed
upon an amazing vista. As far as the eye could see, the land burnt
with brilliant red-gold fire. Trees and rocks, soil and grass dwelt
beneath the sea of flame, yet nothing appeared harmed by it. Talsy
slid off her chestnut mare and approached the edge of the fire,
Kieran following. No heat came from it, and she bent to run her
hand through the bright flames, pulling it back unharmed.

“
It doesn’t burn.”

Kieran
muttered, “But what’s to say it won’t start?”

“
If it was dangerous, he would have warned us.”

The Prince
glanced up at the hovering Mujar. “I hope he’s right. Nothing’s
predictable here.”

They set out
across the burning land, the horses high-stepping nervously until
they got used to the strange phenomenon. The flames crept up the
animals’ legs until it engulfed the riders too, licking harmlessly
over their skin. It took two days to cross the burning land, and
most found it difficult to sleep amid the flames at night. When
they emerged from the fire, they encountered a boiling lake, steam
rising from it in a great column, its shores littered with cooked
fish. Beyond the lake, they traversed a field of white bones, and
after that a rolling landscape covered with knobs of growing rock,
thrusting up in weird shapes like stone sentinels.

They crossed a
salty stream flowing uphill and a ragged chasm whose depths glowed
with sullen fire. Chanter used the tainted Dolana as little as
possible. Its touch sickened him, and each time he was forced to
use it, he looked pale and drawn afterwards. Thus, when they came
to a river of lava, they were forced to delay until it cooled
enough to walk across. They rode around a sickly forest that exuded
dark malevolence and waded through a sucking bog of stinking mud
instead.

At the end of
the third week, a man woke screaming one morning, his legs engulfed
by living rock. It took Chanter over an hour to free him, after
which the Mujar vomited. Two days later, the land gave way beneath
a group of riders, sending ten men and their horses screaming to
certain death at the bottom of a yawning cavern too deep to plumb.
Mourning the loss of their friends, they journeyed on, only to be
attacked the next day by a band of fifty starving brigands mounted
on fierce, skinny manhorses.

Chanter
remained aloft while Kieran laid about him with the Starsword,
burning the marauders until they fled. Three Aggapae fell to the
bandits’ sharp wooden spears, two of whom Chanter healed, and one
died instantly. After that, they crossed a land spotted with
gulping wet mouths that sucked and spouted water each time they
snapped shut. Just when Talsy thought she had seen it all, they
came across two huge, gaunt chaos beasts locked in a titanic
struggle. They gripped each other with toothy jaws, and their hot
red eyes glared hatred as they wrestled mightily. The chosen gave
them a wide berth, although Talsy was sure the animals were too
engrossed in their battle to pay the Truemen any heed.

Finally, they
arrived at a little wood apparently untouched by the chaos, whose
trees offered dappled shade and lush greenness lured the horses
into its inviting verdure. Chanter descended and entered the forest
first, beckoning them in after a few minutes. Talsy sighed as she
entered the bastion of sanity, sensing the calm purity of the tiny
realm. The horses dropped their heads to graze, and weary riders
slid from their backs to lie on the soft grass and revel in its
safety. Talsy, Kieran, and Jesher gathered around Chanter as he
squatted.

“
This is my brother’s haven, where he lived until they took
him,” he explained.

“
So where is he now?” Talsy asked.

“
A few hours walk away, in a city. I say we rest here a day
before we go there.”

Kieran nodded.
“But how are we going to rescue him? Has anyone thought of a
plan?”

“
I say we just ride in there and get him,” Talsy said. “We have
enough men to do it.”

“
There would be bloodshed,” Kieran pointed out.

“
They might not fight. We’re an imposing force. Also, we could
tell them that we’ve come to take him to a Pit. Why would they
object?”

“
It might work,” Kieran admitted, “as long as they believe
us.”

“
Any other ideas?” Talsy glanced at Jesher.

“
We could go in after dark and grab him,” the headman
suggested.

“
If they have guards, we’d be caught. Besides, we don’t know
where he is. We’d have to search the whole city, and they might
have him stashed in a cellar. No.” Talsy shook her head. “I say we
ride in en mass, put on a show of force. After all, that’s why we
all came.”

“
Okay,” Kieran agreed, “but I do the talking, and let’s hope
they don’t know what a Mujar mark looks like, because everyone has
one except me.”

While Chanter
wandered off to do what he could to help the forest, the chosen
settled down to a cooked lunch, their supplies augmented by the
berries and fruit they picked. Chanter returned a few hours later
and drew Talsy aside, leading her into the forest. She followed him
to a huge tree with ragged reddish bark, where he turned to
her.

“
I came to see what I could do to lengthen this wood’s
survival, for the sake of its Kuran, but I found something very
strange.” He paused, gazing at the tree with a puzzled air. “There
are laws here, set by a Mujar, but they’re not Mujar
laws.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Look at this.” He pointed at a mark on the tree. A line of
tiny writing was branded into the wood, pale against the rough
bark. “Do you recognise it?”

“
No.” She frowned, puzzled. “What does it say?”

“
I don’t know. It’s the same writing that’s on the Staff of
Law.”

“
The writing of the gods! Did they put it here?”

“
No, a Mujar put it here.”

“
How do you know that?” she demanded.

He passed his
hand over the writing, and it glowed blue. “It’s a Mujar law, yet
it isn’t.”

“
So what does this mean?”

“
I don’t know, but it’s strange. How could a Mujar do this?” He
shook his head. “It’s impossible. No one understands the writing of
the gods.”

“
Well, when we rescue him, we’ll have to ask him,” she
said.

Law lay on the
cold tar. The sickly Earthpower had long since numbed him to the
torture of the men who held him prisoner. It seemed as if he had
lain there for an eternity, and his flesh was turning to stone. The
creeping heaviness invaded his limbs, moving towards his heart. He
longed for the release of death that he knew would not be granted,
to end the dull pain. The Lowmen had whipped, cut, kicked and
beaten him. They had torn his scalp off, and now Shugin wore it as
a hat. They had even tried to burn him.

With each
rain, his injuries had healed with excruciating pain, made worse by
the tainted Powers. The spikes and spear that held him were now
part of his flesh, and his new scalp sprouted soft stubble. Yet the
Lowmen’s torture did not compare with the agony of the tainted
Dolana that filled him, sapped his reason and caused the golden
light to hammer tirelessly at his brain. His withdrawal into the
dark cocoon of sleep was broken at least once a day by someone with
a new idea for his torture, even though it had been weeks since he
had shown any sign of pain at these procedures, too numbed by
Dolana to react.