Broken World Book Three - A Land Without Law (21 page)

"Some of which
are yours," she pointed out.

He shuddered.
"Don't remind me. They're abominations."

"So is
Law."

"Yeah, but
he's none of my doing, and he'll be very useful."

Over the next
few days, Letta and Vosh discovered that Law had changed. He became
reclusive, furtive, and inclined to scuttle away into a corner if
touched. Vosh tried to talk to him about using his power to take
over the hive, but Law shook his head, and when Vosh persisted,
plugged his ears. Letta advised Vosh to give Law time to get over
the shocking discovery of his powers, which Vosh did, fuming with
impatience.

Outside a
village in the heart of the inhabited lands, in an area that
bordered the dead towns to the west, a young herd boy paused as he
drove his cows home one afternoon. He still rode the sturdy pony
his father had bought for him during the war with the land, but now
at least he no longer had to strap himself into the saddle. Outside
the wooden stockade that surrounded the village, the ebon forms of
fallen Hashon Jahar lay in the mud between the lines of the old tar
web.

The herd boy
remembered the day they had attacked the village as if it was
yesterday, so horrific had it been. Panic had proliferated within
the walls as women had knelt in prayer. His mother had wept as she
had clutched him and his four siblings to her and waited for the
death they were all sure would come. The thunder of hooves had
shaken the earth and filled them with dread. The shouts of the men
on the walls had seemed like the bleating of sacrificial goats
before the mighty blade of the Hashon Jahar.

Then the
rumble of their advance had faded from an earth-shaking thunder to
a softer drumming of fewer and fewer hooves, and even those hoof
beats had slowed. At the first yells of triumph from the defenders,
he had wriggled from his mother's arms and run to see what was
happening. Atop the wall, he had looked down at the faltering Black
Riders as their steeds had swayed and staggered, the Riders' swords
and lances lowering. As if stricken by intense fatigue, the Riders
had stumbled to a halt before the stockade. The defenders had
hurled rocks down on them, smashing some of the ebon forms, while
others had toppled over and lain still. Oil had been poured over
those nearest the wall and torches thrown down to light it.

The defenders
had cheered and celebrated as the last of the Riders had grown
still, but no one had plucked up the courage to venture out amongst
them until the next day. All that had remained of the mighty Hashon
Jahar was an army of obsidian statues, and many villagers had taken
great satisfaction in smashing them with hammers, breaking off
limbs and cracking the blank stone faces.

After that,
their presence had become a mere curiosity, and eventually a
nuisance. Some men had tried to move them, but they had proven too
heavy even for the strongest teams of cart horses to haul. So they
had been left there. Fallen leaves had gathered in their hollows
and moss grew on their faces. Children played amongst them, climbed
into the empty saddles of the riderless steeds and pretended to
fight great battles with their friends. However, a strange sense of
foreboding lurked amongst them, and no one ventured into their
midst at night.

The herd boy
soothed his fidgeting pony and gazed at the statues, letting the
cows wander into town on their own. Something had drawn his
attention to the Riders, and he frowned at them. For the last two
days, the eeriness around them had been increasing, and people
tended to scuttle past them now. The children would not go near
them anymore, and dogs avoided their proximity. Even during the
day, they had developed a chilling presence, a sense of brooding
watchfulness that made people's hair bristle.

A soft creak
jerked his head towards an unbroken Rider still seated on its
steed. He could have sworn that the Rider had moved, but logic
denied that notion. Still, he studied it with a frown. So slowly
that the movement was barely discernable, the Rider's head turned
with a scrape of stone, and the blank eyes seemed to seek him out.
He gasped, his heart pounding, as the Rider's eyes glowed with a
sickly yellow light. As he sat frozen with terror, a wisp of pearly
mist drifted from one of the other Riders and sank into the one on
the horse, vanishing into its stone flesh.

Its yellow
eyes brightened, and the Rider straightened slightly. Another wisp
of mist drifted up from a broken form and sank into the mounted
Rider. Its steed's eyes glowed, and the lifeless horse raised its
head. The herd boy glanced around at the other Riders. Several of
them now owned glowing yellow eyes, and a few had started to move.
As yet, their movements were torpid, but more wisps of mist rose
and entered them, brightening their eyes. More than half of the
fallen Hashon Jahar were slowly coming back to life, and the herd
boy’s heart contracted with dread.

With a gasp,
he broke from his trance and kicked his startled pony hard, sending
it trotting into the village as he shouted the warning to any who
would listen. Everyone heeded his frightened yells, for the chaos
was forever birthing new dangers to menace the village. A group of
men ran to the gates to see what had alarmed him, returning
pale-faced to spread the news. By the time the populace were roused
and whipped into a frenzy of fear, more than half of the Riders
were on the move.

They stayed
amongst their own kind at first, moving through the fallen Riders
and gathering the pearly mist that rose from them. Gradually they
grew stronger, their movements quickened and their eyes brightened
to a sickly glow. The village's men gathered their weapons and
closed the gates, congregating atop the wall to stare down at the
Riders. Women prepared barrels of oil and lighted torches, ready to
defend their town beside their menfolk.

The Black
Riders collected the last of the mist that rose from their fallen
brethren and drew together in a bunch. The Truemen atop the wall
listened with horror to the Riders' hissing speech, the soft
sniggers that arose from them chilling the defenders' blood. When
the Riders turned glowing yellow eyes upon the terrified villagers,
many longed to throw down their weapons and flee their baleful
glare.

Just after
nightfall, in the lurid glow of the villagers' torches, the Hashon
Jahar approached the wall and hacked at the stout ropes that bound
the mighty timbers in place. The Truemen threw down burning oil and
rocks, but, although many Riders fell to the onslaught, within
minutes they broke through the wall and invaded the town. The
defenders rushed to fill the breach, fighting with swords and axes
that broke against the Riders' armour.

Trueman
fighters fell at the touch of their foes, dying with terrible
screams at the merest brush of cold stone, which sucked their lives
from them. As they killed the defenders, the Riders grew stronger
and the fallen rose to fight again, strengthened by the death of
the villagers. When all the men had succumbed to the Riders'
merciless attack, they pursued the women and children and cut them
down. The herd boy died beside his mother, his eyes filled with the
horrifying sight of the Riders murdering his family.

"Tell me more
about young Mujar."

Talsy turned
to Chanter, who gazed into the gathering dusk. They camped at the
edge of a dark pine forest, where it bordered a rolling meadow
dotted with flowers. At the centre of the valley, a stream chuckled
over mossy stones. During the last month, they had travelled far
from the mountains, the peaks now blue in the distance. The horses
had regained their strength on the lush grass, allowing the chosen
to ride. They had passed fortified Trueman cities, their walls made
from mighty trees. Twice chaos beasts had attacked them, but the
Mujar had driven them away with fire. Now they sat together on the
grass, away from the camp where the rest of the chosen cooked and
talked.

Chanter turned
to look at her. "Why?"

She grinned,
clearly hardly able to keep from shouting her joy to the world.

"You're with
child?"

Talsy nodded
and flung her arms around his neck, bowling him over. "Isn't it
wonderful!"

"No. Talsy,
you must -"

"No!" She
clamped a hand over his mouth. "Don't spoil this for me with your
predictions of gloom and doom, okay? I'm happy. This is what I
want, and you're not going to change my mind, understand?"

Chanter
nodded, and she removed her hand to hug him, cuddling close to him
on the grass. He stared up at the stars that were starting to
appear in the darkening sky and wondered why Lowmen were so stupid.
Why a young girl like Talsy would want to insult her body and court
death by conceiving a half alien child was beyond him. In the clan,
unwed women had courted him for weeks with tasty food, cakes and
sweets in the hope of being granted a Wish. On occasion he had,
when the debt had grown large enough. The experience was
pleasurable, he found, though not as fulfilling as the Ishmak
plant. It was a small Wish, requiring no use of his powers, and the
women had gone on courting him for the Wish again and again.

Talsy propped
herself up on one elbow and shook him. "So, tell me about our
son."

Becoming aware
of Dolana's cold seeping into him, he sat up. "What do you want to
know?"

"Everything."

"I can only
tell you about young Mujar, I don't know what your child will be
like."

She shrugged.
"That's okay, I know about Trueman children, so I'll figure it
out."

He sighed and
shook his head. "Mujar have no memory of their birth until they
encounter an Ishmak plant again. Then the memories come back, but
they're still hazy. By the time they're about two months old
they've shed the Ishmak's seeds, and the silk comes off. By then
they're almost full grown, but their hair is golden, and they're
naked. At this time a juvenile Mujar usually has his first
experience of his powers, brought on by some accident that harms
him.

"If he's
lucky, the cause of the pain is something inanimate, like a fall.
The pain makes him invoke a Power, usually Crayash, and this
terrifies him. Fortunately, the first summoning of the element is
not that strong, and whatever caused the pain often escapes serious
injury. I had my first experience while I was playing with a dire
bear. He was my friend from before I can remember, but one day the
play got too rough and he clouted me hard.

"The fire
singed him and sent him galloping away in one direction while I ran
in the other. I didn't stop for two days, I was so afraid of it."
He sighed, frowning. "A juvenile Mujar then enters a fear stage,
where he hides from the world, runs away a lot, and spends much of
his time cowering under bushes or in caves. He avoids any contact
with animals for fear of harming them, bolting from anything that
moves."

"The golden
men!" Talsy exclaimed, and he looked at her in confusion.

"Golden
men?"

"Yes! It's one
of the Trueman theories on the origins of Mujar. Some people have
seen strange, shy golden men hiding in the forest, who run away
when they see people. They believed that these men bred with the
wild women who were driven away from villages when they got qulang
disease, and their children were Mujar."

Chanter shook
his head. "Not even an adult Mujar can get near a juvenile, never
mind touch him. They would never come close to mad Lowman
women."

"I know, but
you've just solved a mystery that has plagued Truemen for
centuries. The golden men are Mujar juveniles."

He nodded.
"They are, but this stage does not last long. After another month
they change again, start sprouting their adult hair and become
aware that they can control their powers. After some
experimentation, they master them, and after that they're safe.
Their hunger abates when the black hair sprouts, ending their
juvenile stage, and their growth."

"That's
it?"

Chanter
sighed. "What more do you want to know? They usually wander in the
wilderness for several years before finding a Trueman city and
becoming beggars of comforts. The rest you know."

"They're fully
grown in three months?"

"They're
almost fully grown when they emerge."

She hugged her
knees and smiled. "I thought of a name. What do you think of
Javon?"

"Ah, I
neglected to mention that Mujar know their names."

"Oh. Well,
that's okay, I guess. He might not, since he won't be pure."

Chanter gazed
at her with deep sorrow, wishing he could shake some sense into her
but knowing that it would not work. He had been present at one
messy, bloody Lowman birth in the clan, pressed into service
carrying bowls of hot water for the shaman. The woman's screams had
made his skin crawl, and he had left as soon as he was allowed,
unable to stomach the pain. Hours later, he had watched the proud
father parade his new son through the village, a tiny,
blood-stained bundle of squalling purple-faced flesh. He had been
amazed to find the woman still alive, let alone tending to her
husband's comforts mere hours after the birth. The thought of Talsy
suffering that way made him shudder, and he jumped up, ignoring her
startled query. He strode away, but stopped when she grabbed his
arm, swinging him to face her.

"What's
wrong?"

He frowned.
"Don't ask me what's wrong when you don't want to hear the answer.
Just because you don't wish me to talk about it doesn't mean I
can't feel it. And don't expect me to share your joy."

Jerking his
arm from her grip, he took a few light steps and leapt into the
air, summoning Ashmar with a rush of wind. Transforming into a grey
owl, he rose on soft pinions and flew into the darkness.