The Broken World Book One - Children of Another God (30 page)

"The King sent
you, didn't he? Getting worried now that the Black Riders are on
his doorstep, is he?" she sneered.

"Did the Mujar
tell you about the Black Riders?"

"Why don't you
go and ask him?"

Yusan turned
away and ran a hand through his hair. "It wasn't my idea to throw
-"

"But you went
along with it!"

"I obeyed my
king."

"As you are
now."

"Yes!" he
snarled, swinging back to face her. "The King can have you tortured
if he wants, so just tell me!"

Talsy went cold
and settled back into her chair. "I've told you what I know."

"Tell me
again." Yusan pulled up a chair and sat forward with eager
eyes.

"They're of
this world, and they're undying."

"There's more
to it than that."

"That's all I
know," she snapped.

"How can they
be stopped?"

Talsy smiled.
"By a Mujar."

"Like
Horran."

"Precisely."

"Was that your
Mujar?"

Her eyes burnt
at the mention of Chanter. "Yes."

"Why did he do
it?"

"They made
him."

"How?"

His persistent,
snapped questions annoyed her. "What difference does it make? You
don't have a Mujar here."

"Maybe we can
find one."

"Why don't you
go and dredge up the one you threw in the sea?"

"Perhaps we
will."

Ridiculous hope
flared in her, then died. "You'll never find him."

"We can get one
from a Pit."

Talsy sat back.
"Then try." She hesitated. "Why didn't you throw Chanter in a Pit?
Why did you throw him in the sea?"

Yusan looked
away, gnawing his lip. "The nearest Pit is many hundreds of leagues
from here, and the Hashon Jahar had already cut us off from
it."

"So, you knew
then that the threat was approaching."

"No, they were
passing by, heading west."

She smiled.
"And now they're coming here. So, you can't rescue one from a Pit
to save you, and Chanter is lost in the sea."

"What are the
Hashon Jahar?"

"I've just told
you."

"Not men?"

She shook her
head. "No."

"Mujar."

"Mujar don't
kill."

Yusan grunted.
"Then what are they, and how can they be stopped? Why do they
attack Truemen cities?"

"I don't
know."

The advisor
jumped up and paced about. "You seemed to know a lot the day we
captured the Mujar, now you know nothing. You implied that if we
hadn't thrown them into the Pits, the Mujar would have protected us
from the Hashon Jahar."

She shrugged.
"Maybe they would."

"If Rashkar
falls, you'll die too."

"I know. But
you took away my reason for living when you threw Chanter into the
sea."

He glanced
around. "You've done well for yourself. I'd say you have a reason
to live."

"Bits of metal,
wood and cloth. The Black Riders can burn it all."

"It's strange,
the effect a Mujar can have on a person," he mused, stroking his
chin. "I've seen it before."

Talsy's eyes
narrowed. "It happened to you, didn't it? That's how you know about
them."

"Yes, one tried
to twist my mind."

"What happened
to him?"

Yusan turned to
stare out of the window. "I saw to it that he was thrown into a
Pit."

"Of course, I
should have guessed. Few Truemen have the ability to understand
Mujar. Perhaps I'm the only one."

"No, there have
been others. They withered away when they lost their Mujar to a
Pit." His eyes raked her. "Just as you're doing."

She nodded.
"It's hard to live in a world ruled by selfish savages when one has
met a truly good being. At least they saw the light. At least they
had that wonderful experience."

Yusan snorted
and marched out.

"As you did!"
she shouted after him, then slumped over her desk and buried her
face in her hands.

The next day,
the first refugees arrived from Jishan. Ships ferried scores of
women, children and old men in a constant stream across the Narrow
Sea. The returning vessels took young, scared recruits to die
defending Jishan. King Garsh kept his seasoned troops to defend
Rashkar. He obviously did not hold out much hope of saving the
stone city. Many seemed to think, quite rightly, that Rashkar was
doomed too, and fled. Some sailed up the Narrow Sea to towns along
the coast, others headed inland aboard wagons. Talsy was of the
opinion that trying to flee the Hashon Jahar was like trying to
outrun an avalanche on a mountain slope. She did not really know
why she waited. While she had no wish to die, she could not leave
Chanter behind. When they arrived, she would probably panic and try
to escape, but until then, she would wait.

Two days later,
the Black Riders laid siege to Jishan, which fell within hours.
Sailors brought the news, along with a few soldiers they had fished
out of the sea. Even Talsy was surprised. She had thought that
Jishan, with its mighty walls, would hold out for a few days. The
soldiers brought puzzling stories of the Hashon Jahar, claiming
that they were men with twisted faces who could be killed, and that
Jishan's stone walls had melted away like hot wax before them.

The strangest
news of all was that, the day after they had reduced Jishan to
rubble, the Black Riders had vanished. Most people maintained that
the Riders had retreated over the mountains; others said that they
marched up the coast, but coastal ships saw no sign of them. Talsy
knew that the Hashon Jahar moved fast, but she could not understand
how they could disappear so quickly.

A strange
foreboding filled her, and she grew restless, tossed in her sleep
at night and woke bleary-eyed and haggard. In her dreams, Chanter
haunted her as he had never done before, urging her to flee the
city.

Three days
after Jishan fell, her restiveness peaked, and by noon she could
bear her jitters no longer, so she closed the shop and headed home.
There she dressed in tough leather leggings, strong boots, a linen
shirt and a sturdy jacket. She packed a warm fur coat, tent and
bedroll, dried food and pots into a bag. At the stables where she
kept two riding horses, she selected the sturdier animal and
ordered a groom to saddle him.

The guards at
the city gates eyed her strange outfit when she rode past. Since
the Hashon Jahar had vanished, the panic in Rashkar had abated, and
life was almost normal. Talsy urged the horse into a canter and
headed up the coast to a beach she frequented in her search for
Chanter. Away from the city, her anxiety subsided, and she
dismounted, tied the horse to a tree and wandered along the
beach.

Waves pounded
the sand with the steady rhythm of the ocean swells; gulls mewed as
they rode the wind. She collected sand-washed shells, then threw
them away and resorted to building sand castles. When the rising
tide washed them away, she contemplated going home, but the thought
did not appeal to her. Instead, she lighted a fire and cooked a
meagre meal of bacon, corn and journey bread, picnicking on the
shore as the sun set in a glorious medley of glowing clouds.

A distant
roaring distracted her, and she looked at Rashkar, surprised by the
amount of smoke rising from the city. Fires dotted the waterfront
and dock area and spread into the warehouses that lined the wharf.
The conflagration’s roar grew louder, and the screams and shouts of
terrified people mingled with the clanging of alarm bells and
rumble of hooves and feet.

Talsy squinted
at the distant city, wishing she had a spyglass. Something black
emerged from the sea like a creeping carpet of shadow, engulfed the
docks and filtered into the city. Flames leapt in its wake, and a
line of defenders tried to stem the sable tide. Talsy swallowed
bile. So that was where the Black Riders had gone. Not over the
mountains or up the coast.

The Hashon
Jahar rode out of the sea. They swarmed into the city, unhindered
by the walls that faced the landward side, and even Garsh's mighty
army could not hold them back. Talsy sat on the warm sand and
watched the city fall. In the gathering dusk, the ragged line of
torch-bearing defenders marked the invaders’ progress, retreating
before them. War drums boomed, summoning soldiers to fight, and
trumpets bleated as officers tried to rally them.

The world
seemed to become still and hushed as the cries of dying people
carried on the wind. Talsy shivered, not only because of the frigid
wind that blew in from the sea, but with horror at the carnage. As
the number of torch-bearing defenders dwindled, lights fled the
city like fireflies leaving a nest, filling the two coastal roads
with streams of sparkles.

Within a few
hours, the mighty city of Rashkar fell, the roads out of it clogged
with terrified citizens. The Black Riders swarmed after them in a
pitiless tide, snuffing out the torches along with the lives of
those who bore them. The shadowy advance spread up the roads,
extinguishing even the occasional twinkling light that broke away
and headed into the wilderness. By midnight, the last few distant
lights vanished, plunging the land into darkness, save for the
garish flames of the burning city. As the fires died, a distant
rumbling carried on the breeze, along with the stench of smoke and
burning flesh.

By the time the
chill morning dew fell in a gentle haze, silence had descended upon
the land. The first rays of dawn lighted a scene of utter
devastation. A jumble of fallen walls and smouldering timbers lay
under a pall of black smoke. Nothing remained of mighty Rashkar,
capital of Manshur and seat of King Garsh's throne, but rubble. As
the gathering light crept across the land, Talsy mounted and rode
along the beach to a cave she had discovered on her earlier visits
to the beach. There, she unsaddled the horse and tethered it,
setting up a camp on the shelving rock. Being above the high water
mark, the cave would make a dry home. Something told her that she
was safe here, hidden from the Hashon Jahar. Shock and exhaustion
forced her into an uneasy sleep.

When Talsy
woke, the sun was past noon, and she went out to study the ruined
city, which the Hashon Jahar’s black mass still filled. Smoke rose
in lazy spirals, and the harbour was empty, the ships sunk or fled.
An hour later, the Black Riders mounted their steeds and formed
into their four-abreast columns. Two black lines emerged, one
heading away, the other towards her, and she experienced a twinge
of fear.

They rode along
the coastal road, a mere two miles inland, too close for comfort.
She contemplated staying to watch them pass, longing for a better
look at them, but resisted the dangerous temptation and retreated
into the cave. Within its cool confines, she listened to the
approaching thunder of their steeds' hooves, remembering Horran.
Harness and armour jingled and clinked. The steeds snorted, but the
Black Riders rode in silence, apart from the rumble of galloping
hooves.

Talsy’s heart
thudded as they drew closer and passed by, and her horse tossed his
head and rolled his eyes. She decided that if they discovered her,
she would run into the sea, for she would rather drown than be torn
apart. The thunder of their passage seemed to go on all afternoon.
Their numbers must have been in tens of thousands, and it was only
half of them. When at last the rumble faded, she ran outside to
watch the last of them ride away at a full gallop. Rashkar was a
sprawling mass of rubble and ashes. Amid the debris were the bodies
of tens of thousands of people, yet she shed no tears for them.
Perhaps she was so much like a Mujar now that she had even become
as uncaring as one, she mused.

The following
day, scavengers arrived in the form of clouds of crows, gulls and
vultures, packs of wild dogs and wolves. A ship sailed up to the
harbour, turned and headed along the coast. She did not doubt that
whatever town had sent it would be massacred before the ship
returned, so she resisted the urge to run onto the beach and wave
to try to flag it down, for she was safer here now. Several ships
came and went over the next few days, then no more arrived. After a
week, the carrion-eaters left the remnants for the maggots and
worms.

Each day, she
took her horse out to let him graze, noticing that many horses had
survived the battle and wandered around the city. Some still wore
harness, and these she caught and divested of their badges of
slavery. A few were injured, and she tended their wounds as well as
she could. After a while, she realised that she did not need the
beast she kept and released him to run with the others, since she
could always catch him again if she needed.

As the weeks
passed, her supplies ran out, so she resorted to fishing and
hunting game for the pot. The cultivated lands filled with weeds
and grass, but she found vegetables to dig up. She was occupied
with this one day when a lone rider approached the city and stopped
to stare at the ruins for several minutes. He turned his horse
away, then spotted her and rode over.

"When did
Rashkar fall?" he asked, as he reined in his horse.

She looked up
at a rather plump man, pale now with shock. "About three weeks
ago."

"How long was
the battle?"

"About half a
day."

He paled
further. "How's that possible? Rashkar had the mightiest army in
the land."

"They came out
of the sea."

"Black
Riders?"

She nodded.

"On ships?"

"No, they rode
out of the sea."

He gaped at
her, and Talsy turned away to continue her digging

He dismounted.
"How did you survive?"

"I wasn't in
the city. I was on the beach."

The man gazed
at the sea, his expression dazed and hopeless. "All the great
cities are falling. Jishan, Rashkar, Margan, Lorton, Vishnar,
Horran..."