Broken World Book Three - A Land Without Law (15 page)

The dolphins
clustered close and rubbed against him with deep affection. As he
had done with previous schools, he used their language of clicks
and whistles to ask if they had seen anything fall into the sea.
They had not, but they knew of a pod of whales that had sung a song
of such a thing many moons ago. The school moved off, and he
followed.

On the dry
plains of the distant continent where once golden grass had
thrived, the dying Ishmak plant gave its last dregs of life to the
Mujar child. Though still not fully formed, the boy had reached a
state of semi-awareness and independence. The plant should have
nurtured him for another four months, but now it had no choice but
to release him. The flower's outer petals crumbled, their strength
used to feed the Mujar. Only two leaves remained to gather energy
from the sun, and these were withered.

Within the
cool fortress of the inner petals, now dry and hard, the pod's
glass-like substance grew brittle. The liquid within it had dropped
dangerously low, forcing the boy to curl up at the bottom. The
water, thick with nutrients released by the dying plant, formed a
viscous golden fluid in which he lived.

The umbilical
stopped pulsing, depriving the boy of its support. For a while, he
lay still, puzzled by this new development. His comfortable cradle
had become a prison, no longer the source of life, and a new
longing took root in his mind. Freedom.

This first
thought was the most important a Mujar ever had, and one he would
never forget. His movements quickened, stirring the sticky fluid.
The pod's joints weakened, and trickles of liquid escaped. The boy
pushed at the brittle pod, driven by the growing urge to escape. A
kick jarred its fragile walls, and the seams parted with a crack.
The four quarters fell apart, spilt thick water and shattered as
they struck the hard floor. Washed from his cradle, the boy
sprawled on the faded blue floor. He froze in surprise, then groped
around. Normally he would have opened his eyes to look at his
surroundings, but this Mujar boy could not, for fear of releasing
the golden light that swirled in his brain.

The boy
crawled around the inner chamber, clattering amongst the pod's
shards. He examined these with touch, taste and smell, learning
what they were. Losing interest in the odd shapes, he crawled
around the chamber again, discovering that he was inside another
prison. The boy climbed to his feet and leant against the wall.
Again he moved around, running his hands along the wall, searching
for a door. He found a hole and crawled through it, falling into a
cushion of softness. Once more he felt, smelt and tasted his new
environment. Small hard things nestled in the softness that clung
to his sticky skin. He became aware of a tugging at his navel, and
searched the area with his hands, discovering the slender umbilical
cord. Breaking it, he explored the new terrain, stumbling around
amongst the soft hairs.

As he moved,
his strength grew and his legs became firmer, though still inclined
to wobble. For a while he rested, explored his skin and found it
covered in hair and burdened with the small hard things. This
seemed quite natural, a form of clothing gifted to him by the
plant. Stumbling on, he completed two more circuits of his prison
before it dawned on him that he was still trapped. Every part of
him was now covered with hair, and the sticky fluid had dried to a
hard glue, holding it in place. The circular chamber was no longer
soft, since the hair had been transferred to his skin. Again he
rested, sitting with his back to the wall. He pawed at his eyes,
sure that he was missing a sense but unable to open them. The
golden light darted in his mind, seeking the release he would not
grant it.

Rising, he
clawed at the wall, but its seamless surface thwarted him. Changing
his tactics, he used his growing strength to punch the hard outer
petals. The brittle material cracked, and he ripped off chunks,
then battering it again. Gradually he opened a hole through which
warmth and air flowed. The scent of freedom galvanised him to rip
and smash until the hole was large enough to crawl through.

No Trueman
would have recognised the creature that emerged from the flower's
safety and sprawled on the dry ground. The Mujar boy, far smaller
than an adult, was not yet fully formed. Soft white hair furred his
scalp beneath the long strands of the Ishmak's seed hairs, pasted
down with the dried golden fluid. The fluid also lent his dead
white skin a golden tint, and protected it from the sun. Since no
part of him was clearly visible, he looked like a hairy white
caterpillar with four thin limbs.

Satisfied that
he had escaped his prison, the Mujar child sat and examined the
ground. He sifted soil between hardening palms, felt it, smelt it
and finally tasted it, but spat it out. Finding a few dried grass
stalks, he examined these the same way and spat them out, too. Two
strong urges drove newly born Mujar. The first was to be free of
their mother plant, and, having achieved that, a second urge became
just as strong. Hunger. In order to reach adult size, a Mujar child
had to ingest matter. Once fully grown, this became unnecessary,
though enjoyable. There were few things a child at that stage would
not eat, but amongst those were soil and dried grass. Normally a
Mujar child would have stumbled from his flower onto a mat of
digestible leaves and devoured them. For the first time, a Mujar
had been born into a desert.

The boy sat
and pondered. As yet his thought processes were rudimentary,
especially since he was immature. His one wish was to eat, but
nothing edible came to hand. Puzzled by this, he rose and groped
his way back to the flower, picking at the dried petals. These he
spat out too, searching for the food that should have been there.
His blind search brought him to the two remaining leaves, withered
and shrunken, but still edible. Eagerly he gnawed their sweet flesh
with sharp white teeth. Like the caterpillar he so closely
resembled, he set about consuming the leaves.

Chanter stood
on the edge of a deep canyon on the sea bed and explored its depths
with his senses. It had taken half a moon to find the whale pod,
and another seven days for them to guide him to this spot. For more
than seven days now, he had searched this area. Tuning his senses
to the silver streams of Dolana that ran through the ground, he
mapped out the terrain upon his inner eye. A vast, steeply sloping
canyon, which narrowed to a chasm at its deepest point, lay below
him. He stepped off the edge and drifted down, guiding his descent
with strokes of his arms and legs. Keeping the map of Earthpower in
his mind, he turned to examine the canyon's depths. Curving streams
of silver power outlined it, extending as his senses gathered the
information and transferred it to his inner eye. In the utter
darkness that shimmered with blue Shissar, this was the only way to
see the ground. The narrow chasm glowed with Dolana so strong that
it looked like a solid silver line to his senses.

The whales had
guided him as close to the place where they had seen the object
fall as they could, and fortunately, their memories were good. If
the staff had fallen into this canyon, it had to be at the bottom
of the chasm, but with so much Dolana filling it there was no way
to see the staff's emanations. Entering the chasm would be
dangerous, the powerful Dolana would drain him and fill him with
its biting cold, even though the Shissar muted it. Chanter floated
on the frigid currents and pondered. Although he had shied away
from similar ravines elsewhere, the whales' story made this the
likeliest place for the staff to be.

Drifting down,
he settled on the chasm's edge. Mujar were unwilling to command the
land unless it was for a good reason, such as stopping earth blood
from oozing out and polluting the sea. Perhaps finding the staff
was a good enough reason, even though it was useless, but there was
also a possibility that it was not here. Even if it was in the
chasm, he would be doing this only to satisfy the whim of a Lowman
girl. Still, he reminded himself, she was the First Chosen, and
maybe the gods had a plan for her to which he was not privy. He
could not return empty handed and claim to have searched the sea
unless he looked inside this chasm.

His mind made
up, he bent and pressed his palms to the ground. The lines of
silver Power curved as he drew them to him, and he straightened
with them in his grasp, like the reins with which Lowmen guided
their horses. Images of the original lines remained on the ground,
shadows of the frigid, slippery Power that flowed through his
hands. Summoning the immense will that was a Mujar's greatest
weapon, he commanded it.

The streams of
Earthpower warped and flattened in obedience to his will, and the
chasm widened and grew shallower. The intense Dolana within it
faded, no longer concentrated by the nearness of the two rock
walls. The Earthpower's icy drain sapped his strength, for the
nearer to the earth's core he ventured, the more powerful it
became. Fighting the creeping weakness that stalked his limbs
behind the terrible cold, he held the reins of Dolana for as long
as he dared. By the time he was forced to release it, the chasm was
little more than a shallow rut.

Floating up,
he scanned the depression, where the streams of Earthpower flowed
along the ground, easy to see. He swam along the rut, examining the
silver streams as they came into view. A point of brightness
entered his field of vision, and he swam closer. It could just be a
hole in the ground, but he had to be sure. The silver light
swelled, an odd shape for a hole, and he allowed himself a vestige
of hope. When he was close enough to sense the coldness of it, he
reached out and touched a piece of stone.

Chanter ran
his hands over the lines of ancient writing carved into it and
smiled. The shard was not even two hand spans long, jagged at each
end. He picked it up, changed to dolphin form, and caught the stone
on his snout as it sank down. Balancing it there, he swam up and
away towards the distant beach where Talsy waited.

Kieran mopped
Talsy's brow with a damp cloth, muttering under his breath. A week
ago, she had complained of a headache and nausea, two days later
she could not get out of bed, racked by chills and coughing. Shan
and Taff were similarly stricken, and Brin said that it was a
jungle fever carried by the tiny insects that had been sucking
their blood at night. After the sword's healing had failed, Kieran
had urged her to call the Mujar, but she refused, whispering
hoarsely that Chanter must find the staff. Kieran had railed
against her decision, pointing out that if she died the Mujar would
have no reason to find the staff. Still, she had remained adamant,
sending him into a fit of fury that had him striding down to the
beach to bellow the Mujar's name at the sea and a few surprised
gulls.

Today, she
tossed and muttered in a delirium, her brow burning with fever.
Brin mixed a herbal potion that he ministered to the three, but it
only reduced the fever slightly. Thorn, and Taff's horse, Mern,
stood outside their riders' tent, whickering their concern. When he
was not tending to Talsy, the Prince paced the beach, desperate for
the Mujar to return. Chanter had been away almost three months,
however, and there was no telling when he would come back.

Kieran laid
the cool cloth on her brow and left the tent to find Brin, who
tended Shan in the other tent. The boy was not as sick as Talsy,
whose lack of appetite had weakened her.

"Brin, can you
make some more of that brew of yours? She's getting worse."

The warrior
looked up. "Yes, I have some."

Picking up a
bowl, he followed the Prince to Talsy's tent, where he knelt and
lifted her head to trickle the potion into her mouth. She coughed
and gagged, spraying him, but he persevered until he got some down
her. Letting her lie back, he laid a hand on her brow and shook his
head.

"She's burning
up."

"I know."
Kieran cursed. "I wish she'd called Chanter! Now it's too
late."

Brin rose and
pushed the Prince out of the tent, his expression grim. "What
happens if she dies?"

"I don't know.
Chanter won't find the pieces of the staff, I can promise you
that."

"What about
them." Brin jerked his chin at the distant city. "Maybe they have
medicine."

Kieran shook
his head. "I don't trust them. If we reveal our presence we could
all end up dead. It's too dangerous."

"She could
die."

"He knows when
she's in danger." Kieran gazed out to sea. "It just depends on how
fast he can get here, I suppose."

"Unless it's
soon, he'll be too late. She won't last more than another day or
so."

Kieran
continued to stare seawards, frowning. Brin snorted and turned to
go back to the tent. Kieran caught his arm.

"Wait. What's
that?" He pointed beyond the breakers.

Brin squinted.
"A dolphin, or a shark."

"Or a
Mujar."

The
approaching fin headed straight for land, but dolphins sometimes
played in the surf. Kieran ran down the beach to the edge of the
waves. The fin speeded towards the shore, slicing through the
water, a slight bulge ahead of it where the dolphin's head thrust
through the sea. As the water grew shallower the lashing flukes
raised a foaming wake, powering the dolphin to shore. Before it
reached the sand, the sleek form shimmered and changed. A Mujar
strode through the shallows, water churning at his thighs. He broke
into a run as he quit the sea, brushing Kieran's hand aside when
the Prince tried to drag him forwards.

"Hurry,"
Kieran cried, "It's Talsy, she's sick -"

"I know."

Chanter raced
up the beach, the men floundering in his wake. Reaching the tent,
he ripped aside the flap and swept up the moaning girl. He almost
bowled Kieran over as he thrust his way out again, carrying Talsy
back to the sea. Within moments he re-entered it and sank to his
knees in the shallows, lowering the unconscious girl into the
waves. Kieran gaped in stunned disbelief as Chanter bowed his head
and muttered strange words, then pushed her underwater.