Broken World Book Three - A Land Without Law (35 page)

When the queen
ceased to move, an abrupt stillness fell over the cavern. The
warriors, deprived of their sovereign, stopped fighting and were
slain without resistance; the workers froze and waited for death.
The queen's command scents cleared, and the attackers slowed their
killing frenzy as they realised that the battle was over. The
manants pushed aside the remaining semi-ant warriors, lost and
docile now, to gather around their mother's bulk and assure
themselves that she was dead. Law sensed that the new creatures,
more mammal than insect, were equally male and female, and all
fertile. The insects' matriarchy had fallen away with the birth of
this new generation, along with their segregation and class
distinction. All the manants were warriors, workers and potential
breeders.

Having
achieved their aim, the citadel's new masters milled in confusion,
clearly uncertain of the next step. The hive's orderly running had
ceased the moment the queen died, and the new creatures, unable to
produce command pheromones, could not order the old workers and
warriors. These stood aimlessly, bereft of their lifelong purpose
of tending and guarding the queen, feeding her and caring for the
eggs she laid and the grubs that hatched from them.

When the
manants became aware of the motionless Mujar, a wave of interest
went through them. They approached to gather before him and study
him. Law had no fear, secure in the knowledge that no creature
would dare to harm a Mujar. A manant whose sex Law could not
determine stepped forward.

"What are
you?" it enquired.

"I am Mujar,"
Law supplied, surprised that they did not know.

Soft, slurred
clicking came from the manants. They used the language their nurses
had taught them, but it was difficult for their distorted
mouthparts to produce. Law used his tongue to simulate the clicks
the semi-ants' mandibles' made, but far more accurately than Vosh
had done.

"What are you
doing in our hive?" the manant asked, its strange feelers
twitching.

"I live here,
with your fathers, who are Lowmen."

Another muted
hubbub arose at this, and the speaker used louder clicks to be
heard. "Show them to us."

The creature's
tone contained an element of threat, and Law scowled at it. "You
will not harm them or cast them out. They will live here with you,
in peace. This Wish was asked of me, and now I have fulfilled
it."

The manants
paused in apparent confusion, then the speaker clicked, "Who are
you to command us?"

"I am
Mujar."

The creatures’
wings rustled under the hard wing cases on their backs and their
clawed feet scraped the floor as they shifted. The manant said,
"The last creature who tried to command us lies dead over there,
and now you think you can do the same?"

Law struggled
with a growing sense of impending doom, unused to defiance from
creatures that should have respected him. The line of golden
writing kept flashing in his eyes like a warning beacon he dare not
ignore, yet the words still made no sense. He knew that these
creatures were wrong, as the queen had been, but they were worse.
He remembered Vosh's warning.

"I could have
ordered your deaths," he told them, "when you were still grubs, and
the queen would have obeyed me. But I did not."

"Are you
saying that we owe you our lives?" the manant clicked. "Because we
owed them to the one we just killed, too. If you were mistaken in
sparing us, that's your mistake, Mujar."

"What you're
doing is wrong, yet you are wrong within yourselves. I cannot help
you, even if I would."

The manants
hissed, a sibilant, threatening sound alien to the semi-ants'
language. The speaker clicked, "We won't tolerate creatures like
you in our hive. We will rid it of all who don't belong, and
eventually these useless brothers who are so helpless without their
mother to guide them. We have no need of her, or them, or you."

Law knew that
the situation was lost. He had failed Letta. "Then we'll
leave."

"No. You'll
die. We need fresh meat for our stores. Why should we let it run
away when it's right under our noses?"

"You cannot
kill me."

"Then we'll
just eat you alive."

Law stepped
back, filled with an urge to flee but unsure of how to do it.
Hampered by his blindness, his progress through the warren of
tunnels had always been slow, and he had no hope of outrunning
these creatures. The manants moved towards him, their manner
threatening, and he retreated towards the tunnel through which he
had entered the cavern.

"This is
forbidden," he told them.

"Not to us,"
the speaker clicked. Its comrades pressed close around it in a
solid wall. The leader slashed at Law with a pincer, and he avoided
it with an instinctive backward leap that jumbled his senses'
image. Alarmed, he struggled with a confusing urge to call on the
Powers and flee. He did not want to harm those who threatened him,
but he had never used his powers deliberately.

The manant
made another swipe at him, its claw tip brushing Law's arm, and his
fear increased. They toyed with him, he knew, enjoying his fear and
their supremacy. Their forms remained difficult for him to
perceive, but they contained more Crayash than the semi-ants had.
The appeared to be six-limbed, and their forelegs ended in
powerful, toothed pincers.

The semi-ant
warriors in the cavern raised their armoured heads, opened scissor
jaws of sharp chitin and rushed to Law's defence. Imposing
themselves between him and the manants, they again waged the uneven
battle they had just lost. Some attacked those that threatened the
Mujar from behind, adding to the confusion as manants fell under
their cutting jaws. All those the queen had summoned flung
themselves into the new battle to protect Law, guided by an
instinct as strong as the one that made them defend their queen.
The manants recoiled in confusion at this unexpected attack, then
rallied and fought back. Law found himself in the middle, and the
cause of, another bloody battle even fiercer than the one he had
just witnessed. The semi-ants flung themselves at their foes with
no regard for their lives, and the manants' pincers severed their
chitin jaws and punctured their armoured carapaces.

Backing away
from the bloodshed, Law bumped into the wall and sidled along it.
The golden light swirled, confusing him as it whispered words he
did not understand. Within it, his inborn knowledge vied for
attention, seeking to guide him out of this situation. The urge to
call on the Powers grew stronger than ever, fuelled by his fear.
Gasping, he groped along the wall, seeking the tunnel entrance so
he might escape through it. When his hands discovered it, they
encountered a wall of semi-ant warriors coming through it to defend
him. Further alarmed, he tried to push through them, and the
semi-ants attempted to move aside, but so many packed the tunnel
that they could not. Grabbing a warrior to steady himself, Law
fought the impulse to use the Powers to escape the melee. He could
not leave Letta at the mercy of the manants, which would kill
her.

Law
mind-locked with the warrior he held and commanded it to find the
plump Trueman female, guide her from the hive and keep her safe.
When he released it, the semi-ant tried to go back the way it had
come, but the packed warriors trapped it, too. Fearing that it
might not survive, Law grabbed another and filled its mind with his
command, then another. He had instructed five when the manants
overcame warriors behind him. Hissing and clicking in triumph, the
manants surged after their prey. Semi-ant warriors pushed past Law
to battle them, but their numbers were insufficient to hold back
the tide of larger manants.

Law yelped as
a sharp pincer locked around his arm, crushing it. Galvanised by
the pain, he turned too quickly, smeared the images in his mind and
added to his confusion. He wrenched his arm free, tearing his skin.
Another claw fastened onto his leg, and he kicked out, but that
only increased the pain. Everything moved too fast for the
information from his senses to settle, making him truly blind. He
was lost in a world of smeared colour, jostled by hard bodies and
injured by scratching claws and pincers. The semi-ants that strived
to protect him released an acid stench like a scream of frustration
and rage at his injury. The flesh of his calf tore, sending a lance
of pain through him, and the Powers left his control.

Crayash
manifested in a screaming inferno that made all the combatants drop
to their bellies in terror. The Power writhed within Law, a fire
akin to the one in his head, and it offered freedom. The claw that
held his leg had released him, but, with the cessation of the
manifestation, the manants surged forward once more. Letting his
instincts guide him, Law raised his head, and a sheet of fire
exploded upwards from him, burning through the hive above him to
the sky. His fire destroyed the honeycomb of tunnels and opened a
gaping rent in the citadel's earthen fabric.

The manants
recovered swiftly from this second shock and the burning soil that
cascaded down on them, flinging themselves at the Mujar again. A
serrated fang ripped into Law's flank with a gush of blood,
wringing a cry of pain from him. Freedom beckoned above, and again
he let his instincts save him. The rush of Ashmar filled the cavern
with wind and the sound of beating wings. Images of winged, alien
shapes flashed through his mind, and he chose one at random.

The blind
Mujar transformed as he leapt into the air, and a grey dove rose on
beating wings, flying up through the tunnel of Dolana to the
freedom of the skies above. Law spiralled upwards, filled with
wonder at this new, unfettered form he had found. Bursting from the
hive into the vast expanse of nothingness that was air, he became
utterly lost.

Chapter Fourteen

From the
rushing of wind past him, Law knew that he was moving forwards, and
his wings beat the air to keep him aloft. The Powers he could sense
were all beyond his range. Invisible Ashmar surrounded and buoyed
him, but locked him in a new prison of nothingness. His injured
wing ached, and blood soaked the feathers of his flank as his wing
strokes pumped it from the wound. Weakness invaded him, and his
wing's ravaged muscles unbalanced his flight, allowing him to
spiral downwards. His senses were too slow to warn him of the
ground rushing towards him, and he hit it with a thud, lying still
amid a cloud of settling feathers.

Within the
hive, Shyass eddied around the chamber as the manants hissed and
clicked, turning to each other in confusion. The wind sympathised
with their bewilderment, giving a soft chuckle. First the Mujar had
proven himself dangerous with his fire, then he had turned into a
bird and flown away. The warlike Lowman crossbreeds could not
understand such strange behaviour. Their agitated discussion of
this phenomenon preoccupied the manants, and only Shyass noticed
that, when the semi-ant warriors became motionless at the Mujar's
exit, four pushed past their recumbent comrades and vanished down
the tunnel. The wind followed, curious.

Dolana's
numbing cold crept into Law, bringing intense discomfort with it.
The unfamiliar bird form proved unwieldy on the ground, and his
wings hampered his efforts to rise. With a flick of his mind, he
released it and became a man again in a rush of wind. He lay still,
confused and a little stunned by the violent events that had
brought him here and the hard landing. Pain throbbed in his arm,
leg and flank, and his head pounded. He raised a hand to touch the
stickiness that coated the side of it, tracing the ooze to a deep
gash in his scalp.

Sitting up to
free himself from Dolana's unpleasant invasion, Law held his head
and groaned. The visible Powers drew the world inside his mind, a
flat expanse of Dolana furred with spikes of silver-blue Shissar.
He knew that this was grass, and in the distance the two Powers
were mixed in a looming wall of trees. His memories of the outside
world were hazy, but instinct told him that he must find pure
Shissar. He rose to his feet and limped towards the forest.

Law found the
outside world daunting, and fled from every rustle and movement.
Wandering through the trees, he sensed the land's sickness. So keen
was his perception of the Powers that the faintest taint in the
silvery lines caught his attention. He stopped every time he found
corruption and healed the wounds, unable to pass them by. In his
wake brown areas of dying land turned green again and wilting trees
lifted their leaves to the sun. His wounds slowed him, for although
they had ceased to bleed, the pain made it difficult to walk, and
he stopped often to rest.

By the time
the warmth in the sky faded, the gurgle of a rivulet led him to it.
Shissar's pure, glittering blue flowed over its stony silver bed,
and Law knelt to scoop it up, enjoying in its cool wetness. Its
cleansing touch brought an unexpected lash of pain, which confused
and alarmed him. When it eased, however, his wounds were gone, and
he stayed awhile to play with its fascinating essence.

In distant
lands, Trueman wars raged as kings invaded their neighbours and
sacked towns, chasing people into the wilderness to die. Their
armies, glutted with manbulls and manhorses, waged long bloody
battles on grassy meadows, turning them into stinking killing
fields. Some of the hapless pawns fled their grisly fate and
escaped into the forests, where they bred with wild creatures.

Kings and
queens with black armies flourished, annexing new lands as their
armies swelled. The new souls they collected allowed them to
animate more of the lifeless statues that had been Hashon Jahar. In
cities that had black armies, ritual sacrifices and bloodletting
kept the Torrak Jahar fed with souls and blood. A dark worship of
death sprang up, spawning a cult of knife-wielding priests whose
one wish was to feed the Torrak Jahar.