Broken World Book Two - StarSword (5 page)

The Black
Riders rode in rigid lines, four abreast, lances upright, staring
ahead with blank, lifeless eyes. The horses' glossy hides rippled,
and their nostrils flared with the effort of their gallop, but no
sweat streaked their silken flanks. He ruffled his feathers. What
he needed was to split himself in two, but even a Mujar could not
do that. He would need Talsy to accompany him to the city,
preferably with Kieran to protect her, for he could not set foot on
the earth blood. They would have to find and free the chosen, but
the Black Riders were a danger to them too, so he could not send
them alone.

Chanter spread
his wings and drifted aloft, his mind made up. There was little
choice, his only option was to leave the chosen and take Talsy and
Kieran to the city, but he would not leave them unprotected. On the
flight back to the camp, he considered his options. Dolana was no
use, he could not control it from the air, and he would have to be
airborne over the city. Crayash was a fickle power, requiring a
fair amount of control, and Ashmar was far too difficult to control
from a distance. That left only Shissar, not a powerful defence,
but the best option in the circumstances. He sailed into the
sleeping camp and alighted on a branch, where he spent the rest of
the night guarding the chosen.

Chapter Three

As dawn broke
and the camp stirred, Chanter resumed his man shape and went in
search of Talsy, finding her sharing a tent with Sheera at the edge
of the camp. He noticed Kieran's bedroll spread close by with a
smile, admiring the warrior's persistence in the face of the girl's
hostility. Then again, he mused, he knew nothing about Lowman
emotions or their strange mating rituals. He called Talsy, and she
emerged sleepy-eyed and tousled, her clothes rumpled. She splashed
her face with water from a skin, then followed him into the forest.
Well away from the camp, he found a sunny glade still carpeted with
mist and sheened with dew. He settled on a mossy log and gazed at
her. The morning sun glinted on her hair, burnishing it.

"We have to go
ahead to a city, you, me and Kieran," he announced.

She pulled a
face. "Do we need Kieran?"

"Yes, you'll
need his protection in the city. Although I can fly above it, I
must not reveal my presence, for if I fall I'll be helpless on the
ground. The earth blood will trap me the moment I touch it. I
cannot risk that."

She nodded.
"What about the chosen?"

"I'll protect
them from the Hashon Jahar before I leave, and the land will not
harm them. I'll build a wall of ice around the camp. They must wait
within it until we return. You must explain it to them."

"Why must we
hurry to the city?"

Chanter glanced
at the pale rays of morning light that lanced through the forest.
"There's a column of Black Riders headed towards it, only a few
days away. We won't have a lot of time. You must be out of the city
before they arrive."

"But how will
we find chosen in a city? There will be thousands of people there,
and if we go around asking, we'll be caught."

"You must find
the seer," he said. "He or she will know who the chosen are. Seers
are always chosen."

"But surely
they'll already have fled?"

"How? To flee
into the forests of this land is certain death. No, they'll still
be there."

Talsy nodded.
"Then we just lead them out of the city?"

"Some of them.
Once I've spoken to the seer, we'll decide how to free the rest."
Chanter stood up. "Now we must be on our way. Time is of the
essence."

Talsy followed
him back to the camp, where she drew Sheera aside and explained
what was to happen. The old woman gazed at Chanter as he went over
to Kieran.

"He's leaving
us here?"

"He must. We
have to reach the city quickly to free the chosen there. You'll be
safe. He's going to build a wall of ice, and you must all remain
within it until we return."

"What if you
don't?" Sheera looked doubtful. "What if something happens to
him?"

"He won't come
into the city. He'll stay outside where he's safe. If anything does
happen to Chanter, the ice wall will fall, and then you must hide
from the Black Riders as best you can. The land won't harm
you."

The old woman
shook her head, unconvinced. "The chosen won't like it. He's our
Mujar, not the city people's. If they hadn't flung all of theirs
into the Pits, they'd have their own to protect them, wouldn't
they?"

"He's not our
Mujar. He doesn't belong to anyone. You didn't save him, or any
other Mujar, from the Pits, so you can't object to his saving more
Truemen."

She sighed,
forcing a feeble smile. "You're right, it's just fear talking. If
Chanter says we'll be safe, I believe him. I'll tell the others,
but don't expect them to be happy about it."

"I won't,"
Talsy assured her.

Sheera went to
spread the word, and arguments erupted in her wake, as people
shouted in anger and fear. Three men broke away from the group and
strode towards the Mujar. Kieran moved to intercept them, his hand
on his sword hilt. They ignored his veiled threat and pushed past.
Chanter held his ground as they approached, and as soon as he
stepped back, the air swelling with Ashmar, they stopped. The
leader, a burly potter, protested their abandonment in loud brash
tones that made Talsy's hackles rise.

"You can't
leave us here! We need your protection, Mujar! Why bring us all
this way, then leave us to the Hashon Jahar?"

Chanter
frowned. "I must."

This incensed
the Truemen further. "You don't have to do anything! Leave the
bastards to rot, I say!"

The other men
nodded, one adding, "Let them find their own Mujar!"

Chanter shook
his head. "No."

"You owe them
nothing. They don't deserve to be saved!"

"I owe you
nothing, and you're not the judges of their worthiness."

"We'll make you
stay here, if we must," the potter threatened.

The men sidled
closer, their attitude menacing. Kieran's sword hissed from its
scabbard, which diverted the men. Kieran became the centre of
attention, and he gestured with his sword.

"If you let
those people die, you're unworthy! Truemen have reviled Mujar for
not helping them, yet here you are, doing the exact same thing! Now
we have a Mujar who wants to save people, and you want to prevent
him! You're hypocrites! Do you really want to be the only ones
left? Twenty-two of you?"

"If anything
happens to the Mujar, we could die!" the potter shouted.

"Yes, and if we
hadn't found you, you'd have died on the eastern continent. You
already owe him your lives, so if he says you stay here, that's
what you do! Show some respect!"

The men scowled
and glanced at each other, clearly unhappy, but he had reduced the
bawling outrage of the Trueman herd to grumbling resentment.

Talsy marvelled
at how easily the chosen could come to resent a Mujar, and still
resorted to threats even when they knew this tactic was wasted on
him. Despite their grumbling, the people set about gathering
firewood and moving their tents closer to the stream that would
provide water for them during Chanter's absence. Talsy packed a bag
of supplies and warm clothes, tossing it to Kieran to carry with a
sharp glare that defied him to refuse the burden. Chanter led them
into the forest, and the chosen watched them go with doubtful,
unhappy expressions, not pleased at being left without the Mujar's
protection for any length of time. Some raised their hands in
farewell, and Talsy waved back.

Fifty feet from
them, Chanter turned. The air swelled and filled with the
manifestation of Shissar. A thick wet mist swirled around them, and
the distant booming of surf mixed with the hiss of rain and the
tinkle of running brooks. The faint roaring of a river in flood or
a waterfall gushing its torrents onto rocks below joined the usual
Shissar sounds. The manifestation was so powerful that Talsy could
hardly breathe, the air thick with moisture.

It vanished,
and a ring of frost, about fifty feet in diameter, formed on the
dead leaves, with the chosen and their fires at its centre. The
frost thickened, becoming a wall of snow, then that solidified into
ice and grew. The ice wall rose slowly, condensed from the air and
drawn from the stream, thickening and clouding as the pressure
increased. As the wall grew, the base thickened, spreading across
the fallen leaves in a freezing frontier. The process quickened,
and the wall narrowed towards the top, rising five, then seven
paces high.

Chanter turned
to Talsy while it formed. "You both must ride, so don't fight with
Kieran, all right?"

The Mujar
smiled at her disarmingly, stilling the protest that sprang onto
her tongue. Had she aired it, she would have seemed as selfish as
the rest of the people, and quelled her immediate dislike for the
idea, nodding. Chanter's smile broadened into a white grin, then he
bent to press his palms to the ground. The icy grip of Dolana
clamped down, and she held her breath until it released her. The
huge black stallion with blazing silver-blue eyes tossed his head
and pawed the ground.

Talsy turned to
Kieran. "I'll ride in front."

He shrugged.
"Then I must mount first."

Talsy gestured
to the waiting Mujar, and the warrior hesitated before using the
stallion's raised foreleg to mount. She scrambled up before him,
unpleasantly aware of him close behind her, his arms encircling her
to grip Chanter's mane. Holding on to it herself, she glanced back
at the ice wall as the stallion moved off. It had grown to over
twelve paces high now, and still continued to form. She wondered
how tall it would be before the Mujar considered the chosen safe.
Or was it for their peace of mind that he made it so lofty?

The stallion
quickened his pace, and she concentrated on holding on and staying
as far away from Kieran as she could. Soon they travelled at a
gallop, the earth blurring beneath the horse's hooves, the trees
whipping past. From the white-knuckled grip Kieran had on Chanter's
mane, she deduced that he did not know how safe they were aboard
the stallion's back, and was not about to enlighten him.

By late
afternoon, they entered a dark, twisted forest like the one near
Jishan. The Mujar's hooves flew unchecked over treacherous ground
clogged with twisted roots. After passing through many miles of
distorted trees, silent but for the drumming of the stallion's
hooves, they entered an area razed by fire. Blackened stumps and
twisted, burnt trees rose from a thick carpet of grey ash that flew
up in a cloud behind them. Talsy gazed around in horror at the
acres of ravaged land, blackened and dead, that Truemen had killed.
The treetops had been burnt away, leaving a forest of twisted
trunks, like lost sentinels in a grey sea of ash. Chanter slowed as
the trunks thinned to reveal a stretch of open, grassy land ahead.
Beyond that was the blighted city, surrounded by its web of earth
blood.

The stallion
stopped several feet from the nearest black path, and Talsy slid
from his back, followed by Kieran. From the grim set of the
warrior's face and the hard glint in his eyes, he did not like the
city dwellers' deeds any more than she did. Chanter transformed,
and gazed at the city for a moment before he turned to her.

"Remember what
I told you. Bring me the seer and what chosen he or she can gather,
then we'll decide what to do."

She nodded, and
the Mujar looked at Kieran. "Put aside your differences. You must
protect her at all costs, for she's the chosen one. I hesitate to
send her into such danger, but you alone will not do the job. If
you fail, I'll be forced to try to save her, and that, I wish to
avoid. To enter that place would be very dangerous for me. If I'm
trapped, all of you will be in grave peril."

"I'll do my
best."

Chanter faced
Talsy again. "Be very careful, that's a bad place. If anything
happens to me, if I'm trapped in the city for any reason, leave me
there until the Hashon Jahar have passed by, understand? Promise
me."

Her eyes stung.
"I promise."

"And I'll see
that she keeps it," Kieran added.

"Good. Now
go."

Talsy set off
towards the city on a black path, Kieran close behind. When she
glanced back, the Mujar had vanished. Many people trod the paths,
tended their crops from their safety or ventured onto the land in
carts that they pushed along with poles. Even when gathering their
crops, they used metal or wooden tools, never allowing their flesh
to come into contact with the ground. Men drove carts to and from
the city, others rode strapped into their saddles for safety. As
long as they had no contact with the land, they were safe, it
seemed.

Twice, Talsy
and Kieran had to sidle past other path users, being careful to
copy the city folk lest they be found out. No one appeared to have
noticed the Mujar, or that Talsy and Kieran had come out of the
forest. Perhaps the impossibility of that idea made them disbelieve
their eyes, or dismiss it as a figment of their imagination.
Whatever the reason, they had to be careful not to arouse suspicion
once they were amongst the people.

They passed
through the gates unchallenged, entering a city that, apart from a
lookout perched high above, was unguarded. It appeared that when
Truemen were at war with the land, they made no wars with each
other. Surviving in this strange manner was difficult, for to set
foot on the ground was certain death. It gave a whole new meaning
to living in a hostile land. This place was not merely
inhospitable, but deadly. What saved them was that the land hated
Truemen alone, and their beasts could carry them safely across it.
That Truemen had the ability to survive it was testament to their
ingenuity, as much as their stupidity for causing it.