Broken World Book Two - StarSword (33 page)

"What is it?"
Talsy muttered, her eyes wide with horror.

Chanter laid
his right arm on the ground before him and looked at Kieran. "Cut
it off."

Talsy gave a
cry of protest, muffling it with her hands. Kieran licked his lips
and eyed the Mujar. Chanter ground his teeth in agony, his lower
lip oozing blood where he had bitten clean through it. His brows
drew together at the Prince's hesitation.

"Cut it off!"
he snarled, his eyes blazing like a trapped wolf.

"Chanter!"
Talsy cried. "You can't!"

The Mujar's
left hand flashed out and gripped Kieran's arm in a bruising grip
that made him flinch. "Do it, or I'll do it myself."

Kieran tried to
jerk his arm free, but Chanter's grip was too strong. The Prince
nodded, his mind made up by the agony on the Mujar's face.

Talsy grabbed
him as he reached for his sword. "No! You mustn't! He doesn't know
what he's saying!"

Kieran shook
her off. "I think he does."

The Mujar's
eyes flicked to his fist, where the oozing blackness had almost
engulfed his wrist. "Above the black. Cut it, hurry!"

Kieran drew the
Starsword, fending off Talsy's attempts to stop him. She hampered
him to such an extent that he pushed her away hard enough to send
her sprawling, then raised the sword and brought it down in a
singing stroke that severed Chanter's hand just above the wrist.
Chanter gasped, snatching away his severed arm as blood spouted
from it in little scarlet fountains. Grabbing the hand with its
black cage, he drew back his left arm and threw it as far as he
could, sending it arcing into the burnt forest, where it landed in
a puff of ash.

Chanter clasped
the stump of his arm to his chest and rocked, his eyes closed.
Lines of pain still marred his brow and bracketed his mouth, but
the intense agony was gone with his hand. Blood oozed from the
stump and joined the trickle that ran from the hole in his chest.
Talsy blinked away her tears and held out the water skin again.
This time the Mujar lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, letting
the water run down his chin onto his chest. He groaned as the
spasms of healing gripped him, folded up and keeled over. The faint
manifestation of Ashmar stirred the air with the soft sound of
beating wings as he writhed. When the convulsions passed, he sat
up, looking drained. The wounds in his lip and chest had vanished,
and skin covered the stump of his wrist. Talsy's eyes flinched from
it, and she raised her gaze to his face instead.

"What
happened?"

Chanter's
strained smile faded quickly, leaving his face grim. "Tyrander has
broken the Staff of Law."

Talsy gaped at
him, Kieran swore foully. "How could he? That should be
impossible!" he growled.

The Mujar
nodded. "It's supposed to be. The gods decreed that it could only
be broken by a Mujar weapon wielded by whomever he had given it to.
Even in the unlikely event of a Mujar ever creating a weapon, the
person he gave it too was bound to be good, therefore the staff was
safe."

Kieran groaned
and covered his face; Talsy stared at the ground, stunned.

Chanter went
on, "It's my fault. I alone am to blame. I created the sword for
Kieran to rescue you, Talsy, and it fell into the hands of his
twin, whom I didn't know existed. It seemed unlikely that he would
know what it could do, even less likely that he would actually do
it, but I should have made sure and destroyed it."

"What will
happen now?" Talsy's voice shook a little.

The Mujar
sighed, gazing around at the burnt forest. "The laws are gone. For
a while their memory will hold and the world will appear unchanged.
Then they'll break down. One by one, they will be broken. The
lesser laws will fall first, then the greater ones, until this
world falls apart."

"What was
that?" Talsy pointed at Chanter's severed wrist.

The Mujar
raised the stump and studied it. "This was the other two staffs, of
Life and Death."

Talsy gasped,
her hand flying to her ripped bodice. "That's why you...?"

"Attacked you?
Yes. That was the first law to fall. It says, 'Life and Death shall
never mingle'. The two staffs were opposites, and drawn powerfully
to each other. The moment the Staff of Law was broken, that law
vanished and the two staffs came together. Had the Staff of Life
still been in your bodice, you would be dead now, and without it I
could not bring you back."

He gazed at the
stump, rubbing it with his left hand. "I had not planned on losing
my hand, but Kieran attacked me before I could throw the Staff of
Life away, so I was still holding it when the Staff of Death joined
it. Fortunately, even the Staff of Death cannot kill a Mujar, but
it was a painful experience."

Kieran scowled
at the charred leaves. "I didn't know."

Chanter shook
his head with a smile.

Talsy demanded,
"What did you think he was doing? Did you think he was going to
murder me? Suddenly went mad? Or perhaps," she sneered, "he was
overcome by sudden lust, in the middle of all that fire."

Kieran's head
jerked up, and Chanter said, "Talsy, that's not nice."

The Prince
glowered at her, then looked away, gritting his teeth as she
muttered, "Idiot."

Chanter sighed
and continued, "The golden fire came from the staff, released when
it was broken. It carried the laws away with it and scattered them
to the winds."

Kieran raised
his head. "Can't it be fixed?"

"The staff had
to be in its true form to be broken, so it was made of stone at the
time, but its pieces will be scattered far and wide. Even if we
found all the pieces and put them back together, no one knows all
the laws."

"You know some
of them," Talsy pointed out.

"Yes, but not
all. There are thousands. Forget one, and the chaos will
continue."

"But it
wouldn't be so bad."

"No," he
agreed, "but it might still be terrible."

Nothing
remained of Tyrander's castle but rubble. The oasis had vanished
with the staff's power, as had the proud castle it had created for
him. The ruins were part of the original structure, built by
Tyrander's ancestors long before the Staff of Law had come into
their possession. It had brought with it the red desert that had
swallowed the city and most of its inhabitants. When Tyrander's
grandfather had finally realised that the staff had the power to
create an oasis, his people were almost destroyed. His castle,
reduced to ruins by the desert's dryness and its punishing winds,
was restored by the staff's magic, but few of his people chose to
stay in the unnatural oasis.

A column of
Hashon Jahar galloped away from the ruins, their task complete,
though none had struck a blow. The red sand blew through the
rubble, slowly covering it, yet before too long the bones of its
destruction would reappear as the desert vanished. The orderliness
of the Black Riders' ranks wavered. One steed drifted away from the
others, plunged through the sand alone for a while, then drew back
to its fellows and re-joined them.

Many leagues
away, on a continent now devoid of people, the flashes of golden
fire streaked through the sky like comets. The wind blew and
twisted it, swirled it around and sometimes dropped it, whereupon
it fell like golden dust to sprinkle the land. Its glow faded,
leaving nothing of itself behind.

On a vast,
grassy plain, a giant folded flower guarded its precious treasure
in petals as strong as tempered steel. A sea of deadly leaves
surrounded it, their golden surface edged in black and veined with
blue. A streak of light fell from the sky, dropped by a high wind,
then caught by a lower breeze. The breeze swirled it playfully,
twisted and turned it, dropped it for a moment, then gathered it up
again. The wind strengthened, speeding the wisp of light across the
plain. It flew straight to the flower, carried on a strong gust.
The light touched the petals and flashed through them with a wisp
of smoke.

Within the
cradle of his watery womb, the Mujar child kicked as his pod filled
with golden light. His tiny limbs paddled in protest, helpless to
ward off the light that burnt into his unformed brain. He jerked
and flailed, then grew still as the light faded, leaving him in
comforting darkness once again.

On the outside
of the flower's folded petals, a strange black mark remained, a
scar of angular lines, scrambled writing that made no sense, a
million words imposed upon each other. The golden lights in the sky
wandered aimlessly, tumbled by the wind, fell and faded to nothing,
vanishing forever from the world.

Talsy shivered,
glancing behind her at the eerie, silent forest of burnt trees. The
chosen had lighted several fires against the night chill, and some
of the men had ventured out to find the burnt carcass of an
unfortunate deer. Now its meat roasted on the fires, and the people
ate well. Chanter had healed the injured, and sat beside Talsy,
staring into the flames. He had eaten his share of the meat,
hampered by his lack of a hand. The Mujar kept forgetting his new
handicap and reaching for things with a hand he no longer
possessed. The sight of the stump sickened Talsy, and she tried not
to look at it.

"What will
happen to that now?" she asked him, jerking her head at the
darkness behind her.

"The staffs?"
He shrugged. "No doubt they'll grow into something hideous, the
first of many."

Kieran glanced
up from the flames. The three of them sat at their own fire, out of
earshot of the others. "When do we get to the gathering?"

Chanter shook
his head. "We don't. There's no gathering now, no judgement, no
paradise. Only survival, if we're lucky."

"But we'll find
the pieces of the staff. We'll put it back together," Talsy
protested.

"What about the
laws?"

"Give it the
ones we know, make up the rest as we need them. When we see
something wrong, we make the law to stop it."

The Mujar
sighed. "The gods laid down the laws. Do you think that we're as
wise as they?"

"We have to
try," she insisted. "We'll do the best we can. It's better than
nothing. Won't the gods help?"

"Perhaps. But
we got ourselves into this mess, why should they get us out of
it?"

"Because it's
their world," Kieran pointed out. "Surely they'll want to preserve
it?"

"Considering
the mess it's in, they might decide to let it die and recreate it."
Chanter glanced at Talsy. "But we'll look for the pieces of the
staff. If we can find them before things get too bad, maybe we can
save the chosen still."

The two Truemen
stared into the flames, leaving Chanter to his thoughts. The Mujar
rubbed the stump of his right wrist as he remembered the agony of
the joining staffs within his flesh. Never had he experienced such
pain, even the memory of it sickened him. The purity of Life, held
close in his fist, imparting its joy and strength. The sudden
arrival of Death, slamming into his chest and punching the air from
him as it shot through him to join with Life. For that instant the
two opposites had torn him, boundless joy and strength against the
sickening drain and sorrow of Death. Then the two had joined,
cancelling each other out and becoming nothing in a welter of
searing, mind-bending agony the likes of which he never wished to
feel again.

Then he had
been forced to witness the horror of that foul growth that had
sprung from their mingling. A lifeless, growing, mindless entity
that should never have been able to exist, but for the breaking of
the law. He had told Talsy and Kieran only a small part of the
chaos that was to come, and the hopelessness of trying to recreate
the Staff of Law. Even finding the pieces of it was all but
impossible, and would probably take several lifetimes, by which
time the world would have fallen beyond the realms of chaos and
started to disintegrate, which was now its final destiny. The hope
of finding the pieces of the staff were all he had to offer them
now, for only he knew that it was a futile endeavour. With his
help, they might survive to see their lifetimes completed in the
seventy-five years that remained of his own measured lifespan.
After that, no one would survive the growing horror of a world
without law.

***

The tale continues in Book III,
A
Land without Law
, and Book IV,
The Staff of Law
.

About the
author

T. C. Southwell
was born in Sri Lanka and moved to the Seychelles when she was a
baby. She spent her formative years exploring the islands – mostly
alone. Naturally, her imagination flourished and she developed a
keen love of other worlds. The family travelled through Europe and
Africa and, after the death of her father, settled in South
Africa.

T. C. Southwell
has written over forty novels and five screenplays. Her hobbies
include motorcycling, horse riding and art, and she earns a living
in the IT industry.

All
illustrations and cover designs by the author.

Contact the
author at [email protected]

Acknowledgements

Mike Baum and
Janet Longman, former employers, for their support, encouragement,
and help. My mother, without whose financial support I could not
have dedicated myself to writing for ten years. Isabel Cooke,
former agent, whose encouragement and enthusiasm led to many more
books being written, including this one. Suzanne Stephan, former
agent, who has helped me so much over the past six years, and
Vanessa Finaughty, good friend and business partner, for her
support, encouragement and editing skills.