The Legend of Broken (2 page)

Are there reasons to count the central elements of the tale credible?

There are. First, the location of the small but evidently powerful realm of Broken can easily be calculated: the narrator’s mention of it as lying outside the northeastern borders of the western Roman empire place it somewhere in Germania, while his descriptions of the dramatic countryside call to mind not only the fertile fields of the Saale and Elbe River valleys, but, even more pointedly, the dense, timeless forests of Thuringia and Saxony, in particular the Harz mountain range—the highest point of which is a summit called
Brocken
(the “c” was evidently dropped in the Broken dialect, with the result that the word was pronounced much as it would have been, and is, in Old and Modern English). This mountain has ever been infamous as the supposed seat of unholy forces and unnatural rites,
†
and its physical attributes conform closely to the mountain atop which the city of Broken is said to have stood (particularly its summit of stone, which bears some resemblance to the Gallic stronghold of Alesia, although it was far superior from a military perspective).

As to the customs and culture of the people of Broken, they were certainly more developed than anything that can be found in central Europe between the fifth and eighth centuries
A.D.
, the period during which the greater part of the kingdom’s history seems to have transpired. But this difference can, I believe, be accounted for by the unidentified narrator’s assertion that the kingdom’s founding ruler, one
Oxmontrot,
and several of his tribesmen once fought as barbarian auxiliaries for both the Western and Eastern regions of the Roman empire. Evidently this chieftain possessed not only a brutal sword arm, but a potent intellect, as well, which absorbed and made use of many of the most beautiful, noble, and administratively effective Roman traditions.

Unfortunately, he also legitimized the beliefs of his less perspicacious companions, who had been drawn into several of the most extreme Roman cults of sensuality and materialism that had been organized around such deities as Elagabalus [var. Heliogabalus] and Astarte, and who wished to form a similar new faith of their own. This longing took the form of a similarly secret and degenerate cult, one that was permitted by Oxmontrot to become the new faith of the kingdom of Broken, for reasons that will become clear. The faith was organized around what had, until then, been a minor deity in Rome’s eastern provinces, one called
Kafra;
and his dominance would lead to the second most important development in the early years of Broken, the creation of the race of exiles known as the
Bane.
†

—E
DWARD
G
IBBON
TO
E
DMUND
B
URKE,

November 3, 1790

My pitted skull sees once more, and my bleached

jaws crack to tell the secrets of Broken …

And so these words have at last risen from the ground in which I will inter them, defying Fate as my homeland of Broken never can. The city’s great granite walls will remain shattered, until they again become the shapeless raw stone from which they were fashioned. Do not pretend, scholars unborn, that you know of my kingdom; it is as windblown and forgotten as my own bones. My purpose now is to tell how this tragedy came to pass.

Do you wonder at my saying “tragedy”? How can I say anything else, when I know full well that historians of your day will be unable to state with conviction whether Broken ever existed at all, despite its magnificent accomplishments? When I know that its enemies, as well as some of its most loyal citizens—to say nothing of Nature itself—shall work as hard as they evidently have done to dismantle the great city’s magnificent form? And that I, from whose mind that magnificence sprang, still deem the destruction just … 
†

Above all, consider this, before going on: you are embarked on a journey in which every cruelty, every unnatural urge, and every savagery known to men plays a part; yet there is compassion here, too, and also courage, although it is one of the peculiarities of the tale that each of these qualities appears when it is least expected. And so: let strength of heart guide you through each period of confusion to the next point of hope, keeping despair from your soul and allowing you to learn from this history in a manner that my descendants—that
I
—never could.

Yes, I became utterly lost … Do I remain so? My own family whispers that I am mad, just as they did when I first spoke of recording these events with the sole purpose of burying the finished text deep in the Earth. Yet if I am mad, it is because of these visions of Broken’s fate: visions that began unbidden long ago and have never departed, regardless of how desperately I have begged more than one Deity for peace, and no matter what intoxicating potions I have consumed. They weight me down, body and spirit, like a stone-filled sack about the neck, dragging me under the surface of my Moonlit lake, down to those depths that teem with so many other bodies …

I see all of them, even those that I never truthfully saw in life. They ought to have faded: it has been more than the span of most men’s lives since I returned from the wars to the south
†
and the apparitions began, and it has been half again as long since I came back from my voyage to the monks across the Seksent Straits,
‡
who revealed to me the meaning of my visions, that I might record all that I know to be true, against the day when someone, when
you,
would stumble upon my work, and determine if the mind that had created it yet deserves to be called mad.

But there will be time enough for all such deliberations, while there is precious little, now, to explain what you must know about my kingdom before our journey can begin. Yet the monks under whom I studied warned against plain recitation; and so—imagine this:

We tumble together out of the eternal heavens, where all ages are as one and we may meet as fellow travelers, toward the more constrainèd Earth, which is, at the moment of our approach, in an era earlier than your own, yet later than mine. Passing through the mists that envelop a range of mountains more impressive than lofty, more deadly than majestic, we soon come to the highest branches of a perilous expanse of forest. The variety of trees seems nearly impossible, and the whole forms a thick green roof over the wilderness below; a roof that we, in our magical flight, shall penetrate with dreamlike ease, eventually settling on a thick lower limb of one obliging oak. From our perch we are afforded an excellent view of the woodland floor, lush and seemingly gentle; but its wide carpets of moss frequently conceal deadly bogs, and its stands of enormous ferns and thick brambles are capable of cutting and poisoning the toughest human flesh. Even beauty, here, is deadly: for many of the delicate flowers that emerge from the mosses or cling to the trees and rocks offer fragrant elixirs fatal to the greedy. Yet those same extracts, in the hands of the less rapacious, can be made to cure sickness, and ease pain.

Yet what of man, in this place? It was once believed that humans could not survive, here; for we have entered Davon Wood,
††
the great forest that the people of Old Broken said was made by all the gods to imprison the worst of demons, in order that they might know the loneliness and suffering that they inflicted upon those creatures that they tormented. The Wood has always provided an impenetrable southern and western frontier for Broken, one whose dangers have been plain even to the wild marauders
†
that first appeared out of the morning sun generations ago, and that yet ravage neighboring domains. Only a few of these invaders have even attempted to traverse the Wood’s unmeasured expanse, and of that small number even fewer have reemerged, scarred and crazed, to declare the undertaking not only impossible but damned. The citizens of Broken were once content to view the Wood from the safety of the banks of the thundering river called the Cat’s Paw, which provides a perilous break between the wilderness and the richness of Broken’s best farming dales to the north and the east. Yes, once my people were content, with this limitation as with so many;
‡
but that was before—

Lo! They arrive ere I can speak their name—look quickly. There—and there! The blur of fur and hide, the glint of furtive eyes, the whole fluid: between, under, and over tree trunks and limbs, around and through nettle bushes and vine tangles. What are they? Look again; try to determine for yourself. Swift? Impossibly swift—they find pathways through the Wood that other animals cannot see, still less negotiate, and they navigate those courses with an agility that makes even the tree rodents stare in envy—

They begin to slow; and perhaps you note that the “hides” of these quick beings are in reality animal skins stitched into garments. Yet not even in Davon Wood do beasts go clothed. Could they perhaps be those cursed demons about which the people of Old Broken told such fearful tales? Certainly, these small ones are damned, in their own way, but as to their being demons—examine their faces more closely. Beneath the soil and sweat, do you not take note of human skin? And so …

Men.

Neither forest beasts, nor dwarves, nor elves. And not human children, either. Watch a moment more: you must realize that, while these travelers are unusually small for fully grown humans, they are not
too
small.
††
It is something else that disturbs you. Certainly, it is not their agile, even entertaining, movements, for these are as marvelous as any troop of tumblers; no, it is something more obscure that leads to the conviction that they are somehow—
wrong …

Forgive me if I say that your judgment is not complete. They are not “wrong” of themselves, these little humans. The wrong you sense is the result of the grievous manner in which they have
been
wronged.

But wronged by whom? In one sense, by myself, in that I gave life to my descendants; but far more by the new “god” of my people, Kafra,
†
and more still by those people themselves, who despise this small race more than any vermin. Do I confuse you? Good! In this mood, you will raise your eyes up to the heavens and appeal for relief; but you will encounter, instead, only more marvelous sights. First, the sacred Moon,
‡
deity of Old Broken, although discarded within my lifetime for that newer and more obliging god; then, lit by the Moon’s sacred radiance, a great range of mountains miles to the south of the peaks that we passed on our journey here, a range known in Broken simply as the Tombs. Further north and east, the shimmering band that you see cutting across the enviable farmlands that are shielded by the mountains (lands that are the kingdom’s chief source of wealth) is the Meloderna River, the teat at which those rich fields suckle, and the kinder sister of the rocky Cat’s Paw.
††

And in the center of this noble landscape, protected as some royal child by Nature’s powerful guards, stands the lone mountain that is the kingdom’s heart. As torturously forested on its lower slopes as is Davon Wood, yet as barren and deadly as the Tombs above (if more temperate), this is Broken, a summit so frightening that, legend has it, the single great river that burst out of the surrounding mountains at the beginning of time split into many at the mere sight of it. Great and imposing as the mountain is, the greatest sight we shall witness is atop it: the walled wonder—bejeweled, from this distance, by flickering torches—that is the both the proverbial heart and the sinful loins of the kingdom. Miraculously carved out of the solid, nearly seamless stone that is the stuff of the mountain’s summit, the city was once the favorite of the Moon, but incurred that Sacred Body’s wrath when it embraced the false god Kafra:

Broken …

Yes, we shall go there. But we have not finished with the Wood, yet. For this tale begins with those scurrying little humans below us. Never forget that word: for it is the one supreme fact of this entire history. Those soil-crusted, furtive beings that spark such curiosity in you are human. The people of Broken allowed themselves to forget as much, for centuries; and on tempestuous Moonlit nights below the windswept peak of the terrible mountain, you may yet hear the wail of their condemnèd souls, as they bemoan their most grievous error …

Of the Bane: their plight, their exploits, and their

outrages; and of the first of several remarkable events witnessed

this night by three of them …

The scent given off by the three hurrying forms is odd—less human even than their stature. But of their many peculiarities, this one is their own doing: for to be identified as human in Davon Wood is to be marked as easy meat, and so they work hard to disguise their odor. This means, first, the use of dead leaves, plants, and rich soil from the forest floor, as well as water, when they have it to spare, to scour their bodies free of sweat, grease and food, and the remnants of their own waste. They then apply fluids drained from the scent bags of animals both clawed and cloven-hoofed, and the result of this careful preparation is that even the cleverest predators, along with the most observant prey, become confused upon the approach of the three travelers, an effect heightened by the incongruous aromas that arise from the burgeoning deerskin sacks they carry on their shoulders. The tantalizing fragrances of the Wood’s rarest herbs, roots, and flowers; the crisp smell of medicinal rocks and bones; and the hint of fear from a few small cages and traps that contain captured songbirds and rare, gregarious tree shrews; these and more besides blend to increase the threesome’s chances of never being precisely identified. Thus do these small, cunning souls achieve near-mastery of Davon Wood.

The three are of the Bane, a tribe made up of exiles from the city on the mountain, as well as the descendants of those who suffered similar punishment; a tribe whose survival in the Wood is ensured by foraging parties like this one, which are dispatched to seek out rare goods prized in Broken for their curative or pleasuring qualities. In return for undertaking risks that even the desperately avaricious merchants of Broken will not dare, the Bane receive in trade from those same merchants certain cultivated foodstuffs that cannot be grown in the forest, as well as such rudimentary bronze and iron implements as the rulers of the great city feel it safe for the exiles to possess. Woodland foraging, even for the Bane, is dangerous work, and the governing council of the tribe—called the Groba
†
—will send only the cleverest and most daring of their men and women to do it. This sometimes includes (as in the case of our three foragers) those who have broken the tribe’s laws: a productive term of foraging can absolve such ungovernable souls of all but the worst of sins, and cure almost any tendency toward their repetition, so great are the hazards encountered during the span of these missions. As for those who undertake foraging willingly, out of concern for the tribe, they can expect to receive high honors from the Groba—should they return with both their bodies and their minds intact.

Thus the Bane have survived in the Wood: and over the course of two centuries they have developed a society, laws—in fact, a civilization, bestial though it looks to their uneasy neighbors. They even speak the language of Broken, though so inventive a race has modified the tongue:

“Ficksel!”
‡

The forager who travels to the rear of the quick-moving pack has spat the insult (an urgent if impractical suggestion that its object withdraw and fornicate with himself) at the tribesman in front of him; yet no sooner has he done so than his face—a blur of scars interrupted only by two hard grey eyes and an enormous black gap amid his teeth, the remaining number of which are ground to sharp points—turns about, to search for any danger approaching from behind. His lips, split so many times by blows that they might be those of an agéd man, curl into an ugly frown of disgust as his whispered insults go on; but the clear, cutting eyes never cease to scan the forest expertly. “You always were a lying sack of bitch’s turd, Veloc,
††
but
this
 …”

“The Moon’s truth, Heldo-Bah!” the one called Veloc answers indignantly (for the Bane still worship the patron of Old Broken). Veloc’s round, dark eyes spark and his well-formed jaw sets firmly, an attitude of defiance that ripples through his shoulders as he makes certain that first his deerskin foraging sack and then his finely worked short bow and arrows are in place. Save for his size, he would be considered handsome, even in Broken (indeed, at least a few women of the city do secretly think him so, when he breaks Bane law and steals within the mighty walls), but he is no less alert for his looks: despite the heat of argument, he watches the thick tangle to either side of the speeding column as carefully as his comrade studies the rear. “It seems I must remind you that I was nominated for the post of Historian of the Bane Tribe—and that the Groba Fathers almost approved the post!”

Heldo-Bah bounds a fallen ash, scarcely jostling his sack of goods and grumbling, “Great collection of granite-brained eunuchs …” At the sound of twigs cracking in the distance, he suddenly produces his favored weapons: a set of three throwing knives originally taken from an eastern marauder by a soldier of Broken, one who was later unlucky enough to encounter Heldo-Bah across a tavern table in Broken’s trading center on the Meloderna River, the walled town of Daurawah.
†
“There’s no need to remind me of anything, Veloc! Lies breed like groin rot, and ‘historians’ are only the whores who spread it—”

“Enough!” The command, though issued by a woman of even smaller stature than the men, is instantly obeyed; for this is Keera, round-faced, dusty-haired, and the most skilled tracker in the whole of the Bane tribe. At three feet eleven inches tall, Keera is shorter than Heldo-Bah by two inches, while her brother Veloc stands taller than her by a full three; but no advantage of height can outweigh her knowledge of life in the Wood, and her quarrelsome companions are accustomed to doing as she says without question, resentment, or hesitation.

Keera deftly leaps onto the rotting stump of a collapsed oak, her knowing blue eyes seeing in the forest ahead what no other human can discern. Heldo-Bah’s expression has changed aspect from angry annoyance to concern with a speed that is almost clownish, and characteristic of his tempestuous moods. “What is it, Keera?” he whispers urgently. “Wolves? I thought I heard one.”

Wolves in Davon Wood grow to extraordinary sizes, and are more than a match for any three Bane—even these three. Keera, however, shakes her head slowly, and answers: “A panther.” Veloc’s face, too, fills with apprehension, while Heldo-Bah’s shows childlike panic. The solitary, silent Davon panthers—which can reach lengths of twelve feet, and weights of many hundreds of pounds—are the largest and most efficient killers known, each as lethal as a pack of wolves and, like all cats, nearly impossible to detect before they strike. They are particularly fond of the caves and rocks near the Cat’s Paw.

Keera listens intently to the Wood, leaning forward on a worked maple staff with which she has humbled more men than would ever admit to the experience. “I sensed him some time ago,” she murmurs. “But I do not believe he stalks us. His movements are—strange …” She cocks her head. “Hafften Falls
†
—near the river. The rocks are high and hidden, hereabouts—good ground for panthers.
We
, however—” she reaches into her bag for a stick with well-oiled, charred rags wrapped in tight layers around one end—“will need torches. At this speed, in this darkness, we may go over the bank and break our necks, before ever we realize it. Veloc: flint.” As her brother goes into his own sack, Keera frowns at Heldo-Bah, so that her small nose points in accusation. “And by the Moon, Heldo-Bah, stop complaining! This poaching was your idea; it’s your stomach that can’t bear any more wood boar—”

“They’re made of nothing but fat and gristle!” whispers Heldo-Bah.

“We’re going, are we not?” Keera answers sternly. “But stop drawing attention to us with your eternal grumbling!”

“It’s not my fault, Keera,” Heldo-Bah says, tossing his own torch on the ground before Veloc. “Tell your fool brother. These lies of his—”

“They’re not lies, Heldo-Bah—it’s history!” Veloc’s face and voice grow improbably pompous, as he produces sparks for the three torches that he has sunk into the moist Earth in front of him: “If you choose to ignore facts, then you’re the fool—and the simple fact is, long before Broken, all men were of roughly the same height. The Bane did not exist, nor did the Tall—the names meant nothing. It has been recorded, Heldo-Bah!”

Heldo-Bah grunts: “Yes—by you, no doubt. Written on the rump of some other man’s wife!” Glancing about for something on which to inflict his bitterness, Heldo-Bah sees only a creeping orange tree grub on a moss-covered log. In a startling flurry, he slices the creature into four pieces with his deadly knives. “It’s bad enough that you make these insane tales up to charm women into your bed—but to then try to pass them off as ‘history,’ as though no one would ever question you …” Heldo-Bah picks up the four oozing
‡
segments of wood grub—and drops them, one after another, into his mouth, chewing ferociously and seeming satisfied by a taste that would cause most humans to erupt from both ends.

Keera watches in revulsion. “Do you never consider, Heldo-Bah, that wood boar may be the least likely cause of your ailments?”

“Oh, no,” Heldo-Bah says simply. “It is boar—I have studied the matter. And tonight, I will have beef! What do you see, Keera?”

“We’ve angled our run well—we should be at the Fallen Bridge in a few minutes, and cross straight onto Lord Baster-kin’s Plain.”

Heldo-Bah moans delightedly, seeming to forget the panther. “Ah, shag cattle … Good beef, and beef belonging to that pig Baster-kin, too.”

“And the Merchant Lord’s private guard?” Veloc asks his sister.

Keera shakes her head. “We will have to get closer before I can answer that. But—” She lifts her staff, hooks it onto a leafy birch, and pulls the fluttering green curtain aside to reveal the distant summit of Broken, perfectly framed by the trees. “All seems quiet in the city, tonight …”

At the sight of the torch-lit metropolis, fountainhead of power in the kingdom of Broken and wellspring of misery for those who dwell in Davon Wood, a passionate silence falls over the party, and, soon thereafter, over many of the forest creatures that share this sudden glimpse of the northern horizon. The eerie calm is not broken until Heldo-Bah spits out the last bit of his vile meal. “So—the Groba has
not
dispatched any Outragers,” he grumbles; and it seems he finds this last word infinitely more sickening than what he has just eaten.

Veloc glances dubiously at his friend. “Did they consider it?”

“There was talk of as much, among that last group of foragers we met,” answers Heldo-Bah. “They claimed to have witnessed one of the Tall’s death rituals at the Wood’s edge, and sent a man back to Okot with the news. When he returned, he said that the Outragers had argued that the act required a response—for the Tall did their killing on our side of the river.”

Keera presses: “But are they certain it was the Tall who were responsible? The Groba are forbidden to dispatch Outragers unless they are sure, and the river spirits are very active, following spring thaw—they may have coaxed a forest beast to attack one of Baster-kin’s men—”

“And I might have stones the size of a shag bull’s,” Heldo-Bah answers, spitting again. “Save that I don’t. Rock goblins and river trolls …” The forager’s cynicism is answered by even louder crackling on the forest floor nearby. His face reverting to childlike fear, Heldo-Bah snatches a lit torch from the ground and glances in all directions. “The existence of which,” he declares in a clear voice, “I accept as an article of faith!”

Keera is over to him in a few bounding steps, and claps a hand over his mouth. Her eyes and head always moving, she whispers, “The panther …” Keera creeps to the very limits of the flickering glow created by the three torches, holding her maple staff at the ready. “I may have been wrong—he may be stalking us. Yet it did not seem so …”

Veloc comes to her side. “What can we do?”

“Run?” Heldo-Bah whispers, joining them in a bound.

“Yes,” Keera says, “but we will not manage fifty yards, even holding torches, unless we give the panther something else to think about. An offering—where is the boar joint from yesterday?” Veloc produces a piece of bone and meat, wrapped in a bit of hide. “Leave it here,” Keera commands. “It will draw him, and the fire of the torches should remove any lingering interest he might have in us.”

“And catch the interest of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard,” Veloc replies, even as he follows his sister’s orders.

“We will extinguish them at the Fallen Bridge,” declares Keera, her mind, as ever, solving problems before Veloc and Heldo-Bah even contemplate them. “Come now, quickly—away!”

Having resumed their characteristic pace through the Wood, the three Bane need only moments to reach the craggy, deafening banks of the churning Cat’s Paw river, where they find themselves near the thick, hundred-foot trunk of an enormous red fir, whose roots have recently given up the desperate struggle to grip the scant Earth of the high riverbank. The ancient sentinel’s mighty body now points directly north across Hafften Falls, one of the most daunting of the Cat’s Paw’s many cascades: it has sacrificed itself to provide the most reliable of several natural bridges between Davon Wood and Broken—bridges that many of Broken’s military commanders would like to see destroyed, and with them the threat posed by the mischievous and sometimes murderous Bane. But the merchants of Broken, although they despise the exiles, make enormous profits from the goods that the tribe’s foragers bring out of the wilderness: a child in Broken, for example, who does not number among his possessions a little Davon tree shrew like those that now huddle in cages in the sacks carried by Keera’s party can depend upon the disdain of his play fellows, while any woman who cannot drape herself with sufficient jewelry made of the silver, gold, and precious gems found in the wilderness will leave her house only at night, or elaborately veiled. Worse yet, a husband or father who cannot afford to buy such things is seen as faltering in his devotion to Kafra—