The Broken World Book Four
The Staff of Law
T C Southwell
Published by T C Southwell at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 T C Southwell
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Prologue
In a perfect world, the breaking of the laws brings retribution to the alien race - Truemen. A girl befriends a denizen of this strange land, not knowing that she holds the key to her people’s fate. Truemen hate the immortal Mujar and cast them into Pits, and the Hashon Jahar sweep across the land, slaughtering all in their path. One thing is certain; Truemankind is doomed unless fate changes.
When fate changes for a chosen few, they set off for the Plains of Redemption to escape the Hashon Jahar. A mad prince captures Talsy in a bid to save himself, and Chanter creates a forbidden Mujar weapon so Kieran can free her. The Starsword contains the Powers of Earth and Fire, but it falls into the wrong hands, impossible though that should have been, and is used to break the Staff of Law.
The broken world descends into chaos, destined to unravel unless the Staff of Law is restored, but the pieces are lost. Knowing that the world is doomed, Chanter creates a safe haven for the Chosen, but Talsy persuades the Mujar to take her on a quest to find the pieces of the staff. During the quest, Talsy conceives Chanter’s child, forcing the party to return to the vale to await his birth.
Yet even if they find the last shard of the Staff of Law and make it whole, the laws are lost forever, scattered by the winds and turned to dust... Except for the ones the blind Mujar, Law, carries in his mind, but he is lost in the chaos…
Chapter One
Talsy glanced at Chanter and Kieran, then turned to stare into the fire once more, sunk in her misery. For the past four days, she had been weak and shaky, her stomach constantly queasy, robbing her of her appetite. When she had asked the Mujar to help, he had regarded her with deep sadness and shaken his head.
“I cannot. It’s the child that makes you sick.”
The gruelling pace they had been forced to set over the past half-moon added to her illness. The Torrak Jahar still dogged them, two days behind now because Chanter had gone back to lead them astray. The tireless black army would soon make up the ground, however, not needing to stop for sleep or food. The riderless horses had all left, peeling off in groups to lead the Torrak Jahar away on false trails for a while.
Tiredness weighed Talsy down no matter how much she slept. She clung to the palomino mare that carried her all day, longing to climb off and lie down. Chanter remained aloof and aloft as an eagle, unsympathetic to her plight. Kieran had offered sympathy and help, but she had rejected him. Since the night she had told him of the child, he had become more helpful and considerate, which only irked her in the face of Chanter’s lack. The Aggapae were supportive, and Mita had brewed herbal tea that helped to settle her stomach and allowed her to eat a little.
Kieran gazed at the drooping girl on the other side of the fire, then turned to the Mujar. “She looks sicker every day.”
Chanter nodded. “It will get worse, but I believe she’ll get better after a while. Her body is adjusting to the thing it harbours.”
“How can you call your son a ‘thing’?”
“As yet, that’s all it is. I will never think of it as my son, or lay claim to it. It’s her child. She wanted it, and she conceived it through trickery.”
Kieran frowned at the flames. “You have no idea the joy I would feel right now,” he muttered, “if that was my son she carried.”
“I wish it was.”
“I know it’s not your fault, and -”
“Hush.”
Chanter straightened and turned his head, his nostrils flared in alarm. He adjusted his senses to exclude the visible world and sense only the Powers, tuning his mind to the faint pinging that came along the lines of Dolana. The tingle that had alerted him strengthened into an icy wave that sent a frisson of fear through him. The pinging grew louder, and the lines of silver power pulsed, brightening, then growing dark. He leapt to his feet.
“Up the trees, everyone!”
After a moment of stunned immobility, the chosen jumped up. Mita and Brin helped Talsy to a tree and boosted her up it. The Mujar cocked his head as he tuned in to the approaching wave of Dolana.
“Brin, send the horses away. Tell them to run... that way.” He pointed.
Brin flung his silent warning to Task, and the horses quit the meadow nearby to gallop into the darkness. Chanter listened. Kieran, last to climb a tree, watched him with a frown. Talsy, who clung to the rough bark of her sanctuary, looked as if she strived to keep the contents of her stomach where they were, since the sudden tension would have made her stomach knot. Chanter looked up, his eyes narrowing as he stared into the distance. He approached the trees in which his charges hid and took hold of two trunks. The fire leapt as he reached for it, then the searing manifestation of Crayash filled the air, winking out as he took control of it. A distant pinging and crackling became audible, growing louder as it neared rapidly. In the silver moonlight, the land around them was quiet and empty.
Chanter held the Crayash within him, drawing on the burning Power, the only one that could counter Dolana. It filled him with its flames, and he increased it. His skin glowed, lighted from within by the immense power he now contained, and his flesh grew hot. The wave of Dolana approached at the speed of a galloping horse. He braced himself, readying his tongue to speak the strange god given words that could command it. He sensed it crossing the hill not twenty man heights away in a flare of bright silver that momentarily became a solid sheet as the lines swelled and joined, shrivelling behind the wave into darkness. The distant pinging increased to a cacophony of crackling and crunching mixed with sharp reports. A tree in its path shattered as the wave passed, falling in shards that broke again as they struck the ground.
The wave raced towards him, and he clung to the trees as it swallowed the ground in front of him, turning everything it touched to stone. The campfire guttered and went out as the logs became rock. As it swept under his feet, he fanned the Crayash within him to ward off the intense cold, throwing back his head with a cry of pain as two Powers warred for his body. In the midst of his agony, he shouted the guttural god words that commanded Dolana, stopping the crackling advance of stone up the six trees that sheltered his wards. The two he held contained Talsy and Kieran, and the creeping stone stopped just below his hands. The intense Earthpower crept much further up the other four trees, and a startled yelp came from one of them.
The wave passed, and Chanter dropped to his knees as the pain of the two Powers abated. Trees around him cracked, too brittle to support their weight. Branches snapped off and shattered on stone grass as trunks cracked with sharp reports. The forest collapsed, crumbling into rubble with a roar of brittle crashes. Wi
thin moments, all that remained of the once proud trees were petrified, jagged stumps and the shattered remains of leaves and branches. Squirrels, birds, lizards and beetles lay amid the rubble as perfect, broken statues.
Chanter rose to his feet and looked up at his wards’ pale, scared faces. “You can come down now, it’s gone.”
Kieran jumped down, landing lightly, and Talsy half fell from her tree, doubling up to vomit behind a stump. The Aggapae shinnied down with surprising agility for plainsmen, but Mita limped as she joined the others around the remains of their fire. Everything they had left behind, tents, blankets, food and water had been turned to stone. Kieran squatted beside the stone satchel that held the two pieces of staff and plucked at the rock. Brin lifted a boot and smashed it, revealing the precious contents.
The Prince glanced up at Chanter. “Are the horses all right?”
The Mujar looked at Brin, who nodded. “They were not caught by it.”
Talsy looked pale and sick as she tottered up and leant against Chanter, shivering. He put an arm around her, sharing the warmth of the Crayash that still burnt in him. The rest stared around at the petrified landscape in stunned disbelief. Kieran crushed the fragile grass, fascinated. The others settled on the ground with crunching sounds as leaves and grass crumbled under their weight.
Mita tried to pull off her boot and muttered under her breath when it would not move. After some poking and prodding, she spoke in a soft, horrified tone. “I think my foot’s been turned to stone.”
Chanter went over to her and placed his hands on the cold, hard shoe. He examined it, then shook his head and banged it with his fist. The stone boot shattered, revealing a soft pink foot inside, which Mita rubbed and fondled with tears of relief in her eyes.
“Just the boot,” Chanter pointed out unnecessarily, “but it was close.”
He returned to Talsy, for the night was chilly without a fire, and she huddled close to him.
Kieran looked up from his contemplation of the stone grass and asked, “What was that?”
“Wild Earthpower. Very strong, travelling in a wave.”
“Turning everything to stone.”
“Yes.”
“How did you stop it?” Kieran smiled. “Or is that a dumb question?”
“No, just difficult to answer.”
Talsy raised her head. “You countered it with Crayash.”
“Only in my body. I used god words to stop it from climbing the trees you were in.”
“God words?” She frowned.
“Words of power that command the elements.”
“Handy,” Kieran muttered.
“Very difficult to use. They came to me as the wave struck, and as soon as I spoke them, they were gone.”
“Another Mujar trick?” Talsy asked.
“Yes.”
“So why can’t you remember them?”
“It’s forbidden.”
“But you knew they would come,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Yet Dolana can’t harm you, so why would you ever need them?”
Chanter shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You heard it coming, didn’t you?” Kieran asked.
The Mujar nodded. “But there was no time to get to the horses and ride away. We could not have outrun it.”
Talsy glanced at him with a hopeful expression. “Will it stop the Torrak Jahar?”
“Unfortunately, no. They’re already stone.”
She slumped, snuggling close to his warmth. “Now we have no tents, blankets or food.”
“We’ll have to find a village and buy more,” Kieran said. “At least we have some money.”
“There’s one several leagues to the south; we can reach it tomorrow,” Chanter told them.
“I think we should go there now,” Brin said. “We can’t sleep here without blankets or a fire, we’ll freeze.” He looked around at the group, and all except Talsy and Chanter nodded. “And besides,” he added, “it’s a little hard to sleep on rock.”
The Aggapae summoned the horses while Kieran wrapped the pieces of the staff in his cloak and strapped them to his back with two belts. Talsy climbed wearily aboard her mare, and Chanter led the group onwards, the horses’ hooves crunching on the hard ground. The moon-silvered landscape looked almost normal, but for the shattered stumps, and the horses left hoof prints of powdered stone. They crossed a stream that gurgled over a bed that had once been water, overflowing its banks to meander in trickles through tufts of stone grass.
The fact that water still flowed meant that the wave had not reached the stream’s source, but had faded away at some point before the mountains. The horses picked their way through the hard, sharp-edged landscape, shying from the occasional shattered corpse of a hapless animal caught by the wave. An eerie silence gripped the land, for the wind found no leaves to rustle and no animals stirred or called save a lone owl that had been aloft when the wave passed.
By the time they reached the village, Talsy was almost asleep, and Kieran half dragged her from her horse. He guided her into an inn, whose proprietor they had rudely awakened by banging persistently on his door. The was remarkably clean, with polished brass pots over the common room’s fireplace and bunches of dried flowers and herbs hanging from the rafters to scent the air with spicy sweetness. Black beams networked the whitewashed walls and clean, dry rushes softened the floor. Chanter left to spend the night in the wild, and the Aggapae sent the horses out to graze. Kieran helped Talsy upstairs to a spotless room with chintz curtains, a woollen rug and a soft quilted bed that had cost an exorbitant price and left her to sleep. He tried to remember when the horses’ hooves had stopped clopping on stone and thudded on soil, but could not. It did not seem too long ago. For him, most of the nightmare ride had passed in a blur, fogged by shock and weariness. His exhaustion would not allow his numb brain to think, and he gave up the unequal struggle and flung himself down on his bed.
Kieran woke refreshed the following morning, his aching weariness banished by a night’s sleep in a comfortable bed, something he had gone without for far too long. He washed in the basin of water provided in his room and emerged yawning, to be confronted in the corridor by a pale and dishevelled Talsy. She glared at him, clearly irked by his obvious good health, her expression as sour as her stomach undoubtedly was. He knew that a cheerful greeting would only annoy someone as sick as her, so instead he stepped aside and allowed her to precede him down to breakfast. As they descended the stairs to the common room, they found the Aggapae in a huddle on the steps, their faces mournful.
“What’s going on?” Kieran asked.
“Half the village has been turned to stone,” Brin explained. “It seems the wave just missed this inn. It passed by not ten man heights from it.”
The Prince’s enjoyment of the morning evaporated, and he shook his head in commiseration.
Talsy gulped and turned even paler. “That’s terrible. Oh, god...”
She fled up the stairs to the privacy of her room, presumably to make use of the basin. He gazed after her for a moment before turning to Brin. “We must leave as soon as we can.”
“That’s not the worst part,” Brin said. “The people... They’re not dead.”
Kieran stared at him, shocked. “But they’ve been turned to stone!”
The warrior nodded. “I know.”
“Oh, god.”
“They’re like the Torrak Jahar.”
Kieran sank down on a step, his blood chilled. “Why aren’t they dead? They should be! That would be better for everyone.”
Brin shrugged. “You know why as well as we do.”
“But Chanter said it takes many souls to animate a Ghost Rider, how can these people...?”
“Only a few are animated. The stronger ones have gathered the souls of the weaker, I think.”
Kieran grimaced. “Don’t tell Talsy. We must buy supplies and leave. The Torrak Jahar will come through here too. We’ve got to stay far enough ahead so they�
��re not tempted to linger here for a quick meal.”
Brin looked morose, glancing at his fellow Aggapae. “I doubt we’ll be able to buy any supplies here. The townsfolk have other things on their minds right now. Half of them are weeping and tearing their clothes in grief, the rest are packing to leave.”
“Damn!” Kieran thumped the stair and jumped up, running a hand through his hair in agitation. “If we go to another town, if there is one before the mountains, we lead those damned Riders to them too, and we can’t cross the mountains without food and blankets. Maybe the proprietor can help us.”
Kieran descended to the deserted common room and followed the sound of sobbing, finding the plump, balding innkeeper slumped over a table.
Kieran cleared his throat awkwardly and murmured, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The innkeeper raised his head and wiped his face. “My sister, all her children!” His shoulders shook with fresh grief, and he buried his face in his hands again.
Kieran turned away, unwilling to intrude further since the man was distraught, but the innkeeper burst out, “It’s a curse! The world is cursed!”
“You’re right,” Kieran agreed. “It is.”
“You came in last night after this happened, didn’t you?”
Kieran shrugged. “Must have.”
“I wondered how you got past the gate guards. They never let travellers in after dark. But they were turned to stone, like the gates, which shattered.” The innkeeper mopped his eyes with a damp handkerchief. “You were lucky to have missed it.”
Broken World Book Four - The Staff of Law Page 1
