Broken World Book Three - A Land Without Law (18 page)

Chanter stared
at the fire, and Kieran asked, "What were those monsters?"

"Creatures of
the chaos." The Mujar rubbed the side of his head where the wound
had been.

"You didn't
expect them to attack you, did you?"

"No. That's
never happened before. I thought I could turn them away, but their
minds were closed to me. They had Lowman blood."

Talsy
smothered a gasp and drew her blanket more tightly around her
shoulders as she shivered with horror as well as the morning chill.
"Why did they attack us?"

Chanter
shrugged. "They were driven by hunger and hate, that's all I know."
He looked at a shaggy corpse. "They seem to be a cross between dire
bears and hunting cats, with Lowman blood as well."

"How's that
possible?" Talsy demanded. "They couldn't breed that fast."

"Anything's
possible now." Chanter's words dropped like stones into the silence
that only Taff stirring the pot of tea broke, and he stopped,
glancing around at the gloomy gathering.

The Mujar
raised his eyes to Talsy's. "Your mark does not protect you from
creatures like these, and the spirits of earth and forest have all
fled. Soon we'll enter the heart of this forest, where the Kuran
who guards it dwells, and it'll be much safer there. But beyond
that, the creatures of the chaos rule, and they'll be a danger to
all of us."

"What are you
saying? That we should give up? Seek shelter with the Kuran?" Talsy
frowned.

"No. I know
you won't give up, and the Kuran can't protect us. Her presence
repels the unnatural beasts for now, but her power will wane as the
chaos grows stronger. I think we must rest there for a few days,
that's all."

She nodded.
"Of course, we will. And now we know that these animals are
dangerous, we'll be prepared."

"We can be
more alert," Chanter agreed. "But even I only have the same senses
as you, with one addition. Perhaps mine are more acute, but, as
you've seen, I can be defeated quite easily when taken by surprise,
and none of us has eyes in the back of our heads."

"We have seven
pairs of eyes," she pointed out, glancing around at the Aggapae's
doubtful faces. "And we still have the wind."

"Yes, but six
of those pairs of eyes must sleep at night. The wind can't always
help, and doesn't always come quickly enough."

"What are you
trying to tell us?"

Chanter sighed
and lowered his gaze to the fire once more. "Only that it's going
to get very dangerous, and maybe some of us won't survive."

Talsy followed
his gaze, watching the flames lick at the bottom of the bubbling
pot. Chanter had not expected her determination to carry her this
far, and the thought of losing some of their friends hurt him, so
he was offering them a last chance to back out.

She glanced
around again. "If anyone wants to turn back, now's the time to do
it. No one will blame you, and Chanter will be happy if you
do."

Brin swapped a
look with Taff and Mita, Kieran stared at the ground. The senior
Aggapae warrior shook his head. "We're staying."

The Mujar boy
wandered through the woods, ate voraciously and absorbed
information at an astonishing rate. He examined everything that
came into his grasp, sometimes with startling results. His first
encounter with an animal had shocked him. The beast had been
friendly, nuzzling the boy. He, in turn, had mapped the beast with
his hands, finding it fat, short and bristly, and a little on the
smelly side. When he had tried to taste it, however, the animal had
squealed in protest. Desperate to make amends, the boy had called
it back, discovering, in the process, that he could. He examined
the injury his sharp teeth had caused, tasting the blood that oozed
from it. The discovery that the animal was alive, like him,
delighted him, and that it felt pain amazed him. He experimented on
himself, biting his arm, and knew why the beast had squealed. To
his blind senses the bog boar appeared as an ill-defined shape with
a core of gold, shimmering with blue and streaked with lines of
Dolana. He stayed with the bog boar, enjoyed its company and
foraged beside the pig for sweet tubers. As he moved deeper into
the forest, the shimmering blue around him grew stronger, the trees
healthy and full of water.

When he
encountered a stream, he explored the beauty of water for two days,
drank vast quantities and urinated for the first time. The world
thrust new experiences upon him every day, and he thrived on it. He
had long since discovered that the warmth moved over him whether he
walked or not, and he shelved its puzzling mystery. He had a bigger
problem to solve, for he still could not find his name. The golden
light in his head thwarted all his attempts to track down the
elusive appellation. For three days, he sat in a tree and hunted
through his mind's clouded recesses for the name he craved. The
golden light flickered and swarmed, filling his mind with so much
meaningless information that it left little room for anything else.
One gilded word kept thrusting itself into his consciousness, and,
after three days, he decided that it must be his name, odd though
it was. Having settled the matter, he re-joined the pig on the
ground, satisfied at last. His name was Law.

Law wandered
on through the forest, growing in stature and strength. Some of the
Ishmak's seeds had detached, leaving their hair behind to clothe
him. Many still remained, and he did not try to pull them off, but
allowed them to fall when they wished.

Two days after
deciding his name, he foraged with his friend when the bog boar
squealed and dashed away. Law looked around in alarm, his limited
senses revealing only trees and rocks. A new smell came to him on
the wind, and he waited curiously for its source to arrive.

Two Truemen,
brought from across the sea by the semi-ants, stepped from the bush
and encountered a strange, hairy white creature. They stopped in
surprise when the boy approached them, hands outstretched. No
Trueman had ever encountered a Mujar this young, for they were born
far out in the wilderness and took several years to find their way
to Truemen cities. The semi-ant's citadel was not far from the dry
plains where Law had been born, however.

The furry
white creature explored the men with his hands, plucked at their
clothes and sniffed them. The men chuckled and petted him.

"Friendly
little tyke, isn't he?" A man who had been a farmer grinned at his
companion, once a city guard.

"Odd looking
too. If it was possible, I'd say he's a man crossed with a
caterpillar, Vosh."

Vosh laughed,
stroking the boy's silky hair. "We should take him back as a
pet."

"Yeah. Wonder
if he can talk." The ex-guard squatted and studied the boy's face.
"Hell, the poor kid's blind."

"Is he?" Vosh
peered at Law's closed eyes. "Poor bugger. I guess caterpillars
don't have eyes, do they?"

"Don't they?"
The ex-guard straightened, and Vosh leant closer the Mujar boy.
"Hey kid, you got a name?"

Law realised
that the creature addressed him. Already he had absorbed and
assimilated the spoken language, which woke memories deep within
his mind, and he understood the question perfectly. He did have a
name, but he had never spoken before. His first attempt emerged as
a croak, and, realising that it sounded wrong, he tried again. It
took five attempts before he got it right.

"Law."

The creature
called Vosh sounded amused. "Funny name. Mum must have been the
caterpillar, I guess. How old are you, kid?"

Law calculated
how long he had been aware. His only reference was the warm spells,
and he counted them. "Thirty-nine warm spells."

"Thirty-nine
summers, hey?" The former guardsman chuckled. "You don't look that
old kid. You sure you can count?"

Vosh scowled
at his companion. "He can't be thirty-nine summers, Perton, a
crossbreed couldn't have been conceived that long ago."

"Yeah, you're
right. Then he must mean days. Wow, he must have grown pretty
quick. He can't mean moons, because they're not warm spells, and he
can't see."

"Yeah," Vosh
agreed. "But crossbreeds do grow quick."

Perton bent to
address Law again. "Hey, Law, you want to come home with us? We'll
give you food, and a place to stay."

Law nodded.
"Comforts?"

Vosh swapped a
look with Perton. 'Comforts' was a well-known Mujar expression, but
the men shook their heads together.

"Nah,
coincidence," Vosh said.

"Must be, he
sure doesn't look like one."

"And I never
heard of a blind one before, either."

The men urged
Law to accompany them, and headed back to the semi-ants' colony
where they lived. Law, eager to learn, followed like a lost puppy,
dropping several seeds along the way.

The Truemen
had no idea what a dangerous creature they had befriended, for no
man had met such a young Mujar before. Law, still clad in his
flower's silk, was as powerful as an adult Mujar and able to invoke
the Powers as easily, but lacked an adult's control and
compunction. What the men took home as a pet was the most
innocently dangerous creature to be born into this gentle world, a
Mujar child who had never used his powers.

At the
entrance to the vast mud city that clogged the valley, two wingless
guards challenged the trio. The semi-ant warriors came forward to
investigate them, clicking their massive scissor jaws. Law started
forward to examine the new beasts, but Vosh grabbed his arm,
detaining him.

"No, boy,
these buggers don't like to be fiddled with."

Law waited
while the men argued with the guards, not about bringing the boy
into the hive, as they had expected, but for returning empty handed
from a hunt. The strange child did not seem to perturb the guards,
and after the brief debate they stood aside, clicking their
mandibles as the people sidled past. Vosh and Perton led Law
through a maze of mud tunnels to the cavern that was Vosh's home. A
woman looked up from stirring a pot of stew as Vosh guided the boy
into the room, her face flushed from the fire's heat.

"See what we
found, Letta? A sweet little kid, wandering around in the forest
all by himself. I brought him home for you. He talks and
everything, but he's blind."

"The poor
thing." Letta came over to study the child, putting a hand under
his chin to lift his face and stare at his closed eyes. The boy's
fine features had no vestige of Trueman baby chubbiness, and,
although the long white hair covered most of his face, there was a
clear area of dead white skin around his nose and mouth.

"He's
beautiful." Letta sighed. "But he isn't Trueman. Not with all that
hair."

"Nah, 'course
he ain't. He's a cross, but still, he's cute and clever. I thought
you'd like him. He says his name's Law."

Vosh smiled at
Letta, a plump comely woman just past her prime who had never
conceived a child. To her, he knew that Law was a gift from the
gods, even if he was a little strange. She beamed at Vosh. Before
the semi-ants had abducted them, Letta had been married to a
blacksmith with in inclination towards roughness. She and Vosh now
lived together in the semi-ant's citadel.

She stroked
the boy's head while Law explored her with his hands, sniffing her.
"He looks about thirteen years old."

"Uh uh." Vosh
shook his head, leaning over the pot to sample her stew. "He
reckons he's a month or so old."

If Letta was
disappointed, she hid it well. "Then he's going to grow up pretty
quick."

"Yeah, too
bad, he's cute now."

The boy, who
stood shoulder height to her, sniffed her stew's aroma and reached
for the pot. Letta leapt to hold him back.

"No, that's
hot!" She pushed him into a chair. "Hot. You understand? It will
hurt you."

Law nodded,
looking confused, and rubbed his stomach. "Hungry."

"Oh, the poor
thing's starving," Letta exclaimed, snatching up a loaf of bread
and a bowl of dripping. As fast as she sliced and spread, Law
consumed the food with sharp white teeth. Vosh watched in
amazement.

"I must have
been right, his mother was a caterpillar."

Letta started
on a new loaf, spreading it this time with stew. "Impossible. He's
just hungry, that's all."

When Law sat
back with a burp, replete, Letta beamed at him, an expression he
did not see, or react to. Realising this with a pang of sadness,
she dished up food for Vosh and sat gazing at the boy with motherly
eyes.

"I could wash
and brush him. Maybe we should cut off that hair and see what he
looks like underneath."

Vosh glanced
up from his stew. "He's not dirty, but he's got seeds stuck all
over him."

"You never
know," Letta mused, "he might look quite Trueman without all that
hair."

Vosh smiled,
glad that she was happy with the child he had found for her, the
next best thing to one of her own. Letta's barrenness had saved her
in the semi-ant's nest, where the other women who had been brought
there had died giving birth to crossbreeds. Now only a dozen men
remained, and Vosh had established himself as their leader by dint
of brawn and a willingness to use it. Letta was his prize, won
after several brawls with challengers. His greatest wish was to
make her happy, and if Law did that, the boy was welcome in his
home.

Chapter Eight

Talsy sat on
the mossy stones of a stream bank, trailing one hand in the icy
water. For two days the chosen had rested in the comparative idyll
of the Kuran's haven, safe from the sickness of the land outside
and the threat of chaos beasts. Chanter had taken up the burden of
carrying her and transformed himself into a blue-eyed black
stallion, to the Aggapae's amazement and wonder. After Chanter had
done his best to refute that he was the god of horses, at the end
of which the Aggapae had still looked unconvinced, the Mujar had
led the party deep into the heart of the forest, and they had
reached this sanctuary. The Kuran was too shy to appear, and
Chanter did not push the issue, maintaining that her coming to him
and concentrating her power to become visible would threaten her
domain.