The Broken God Machine (10 page)

“For what purpose, Pehr?”

“To rescue you.”

“Oh? Fantastic, cousin. And have you some way of cutting this chain at my
neck?”

“No,” Pehr said. “Perhaps I could break the … the thing which keeps you
attached to the tree.”

“I tried that the first night. It’s metal, too … it houses a sort of bolt, I
think. The Lagos have a bent metal stick that they put inside, and when they
turn it, the device opens.”

“Could I steal the stick?”

“I think that would be suicidal. Pehr … you shouldn’t have come!”

“Why not?”

“What of Nani and my mother?”

“Our family is safe, Jace. Nani and your mother will survive, and maybe even
Josep. They’re not in danger. You are.”

“So are you, now that you’ve followed me.”

“I’m a hunter,” Pehr said, and he shrugged again.

“You are not. You’ve not passed your Test. Pehr … you could’ve still, if
you’d stayed. You could’ve passed and joined the hunt, helped rebuild the
village, given Sili your necklace. There was a
life
for you
there.”

“There still is. Jace, stop fighting. I'm here, and I won’t leave you to
these creatures. You can either lie there moaning about it, or you can help me.
Where’s the metal stick kept?”

Jace looked disgusted, but after a moment he spoke. “A priest – I think he’s
the one in charge of this entire hunt – keeps it with him on a leather cord
around his neck. Pehr, there is
no chance
of grabbing it without
waking him. It’s not possible.”

“Then we must find another way to free you.”

“I don’t—quiet! Something comes!”

Jace was right; Pehr could hear footfalls nearing them. He froze, praying to
the Gods that he was as well-hidden as he thought. Jace closed his eyes,
forcing himself to breathe deeply, pretending to be asleep. A priest – Pehr
thought it was the same one that had taken Jace away initially – came wandering
up to check on the prisoners. Seeing Jace stretched out to the end of his
chain, his eyes formed suspicious slits, and he took a few steps forward for a
better look. After a moment, seemingly convinced that Jace was indeed asleep,
he turned and headed back for his own camp. Jace waited until the priest was
well away before he spoke.

“Gods, Pehr, get out of here before they catch you.”

“If I go, it will only be until tomorrow night. You should use that time to
think of a way to escape.”

“There is no way.”

“Kampri shit. You’ve a mind for plans, Jace. Make one.”

“Damn your stupid, stubborn head,” Jace growled, but Pehr knew that the
boy’s sharp mind had already set to work. He waited in silence.

“What about the others?” Jace asked him finally. “There are thirty-eight of
us, in total. Two of Josep’s brothers are here. Sili’s sister is here. Stefan’s
two brothers and one of his sisters …”

“I cannot save them all,” Pehr said.

“How could I live with myself if I fled with you and left them here?”

It was a good question. “If I can get that metal stick, I could free you
all.”

“To what end? I’m older by two years than the next … most of them are barely
more than babies. Thirty-seven of them and two of us? Even if we got away, the
Lagos would track us down in hours.”

“Perhaps. How many would they send after us, do you think? Could we fight
them?”

“There might be two or three others who have ever so much as held a weapon,
and none of us but you are armed. If I’m being optimistic, we might be able to
kill two Lagos. They will send more than that, cousin.”

Pehr found himself filled with rage at the situation and at Jace’s
unflinching assessment of it. “I will leave the rest here if I must. I would
save them all if I could, but I cannot, and will not leave here without
you!”

Jace opened his mouth to speak, and then he glanced up and over Pehr’s
shoulder. His face drained of color.

“No,” he said, and his voice had regained that dry and dead quality of
acceptance that it had held after the drums began. “No, you won’t leave here
without me.”

Pehr twisted, looking behind him. The Lagos priest that had come earlier to
check on the prisoners was standing there, smiling down at Pehr, with two
warriors flanking him. They held their weapons easily in their hands, ready for
action should Pehr make any sort of aggressive movement.

“Damn it, Pehr,” Jace said.

Yes
, Pehr thought. That seemed about all there was to say.

He rolled onto his back and held his hands out to show that he held no
weapon. One of the warriors bent down and took his knife from its sheath. He
tossed it into the jungle, and Pehr knew that they would soon strip him of the
club strapped to his back as well.

He was trapped. His quest to save Jace had failed.

They marched for six days. During that time, Pehr and Jace rarely had the
opportunity to speak; any attempts during the day were met with aggression, and
at night the two were chained far away from each other. Pehr wondered why they
did not simply kill him, but it seemed that the Lagos had other plans.

They had been ascending for at least two days, and the jungle was beginning
to give way to less tropical flora. Here and there Pehr caught sight of large,
conical trees that bristled with green needles. The screaming of monkeys and
buzzing of insects had disappeared. Whatever creatures lived here, they did not
produce the cacophony of the lands below. The journey would almost have been
peaceful were it not for the heavy metal collar bolted around his neck.

The Lagos gave them little time to rest, and the going was difficult for
some of the younger children; at times, Lagos warriors would grudgingly and
with much snarling pick them up and carry them, hauling them along for hours at
a time until they were fit to walk again. Still, Pehr understood now why they
didn’t take any of the youngest; it would have meant carrying them the entire
way, a task toward which the Lagos were clearly ill disposed. The creatures had
been surprisingly liberal with both food and water, however, as if they had a
vested interest in keeping their prisoners healthy. The journey was not the
death march he had expected.

Near dusk on what would prove to be the final day, the company came to a
halt and Pehr sensed that they had arrived at their destination, whatever it
was. There was no village here, no group of Lagos awaiting their arrival. In
fact, he could see nothing save more forest and the mountains, which had been
far in the distance before but now loomed over them, blotting out the sun hours
before real dark fell.

Here at last came a chance for Pehr and Jace to speak. The Lagos left all of
their captives tethered within a tight group, attached to the trunk of a
gigantic tree. The entire pack went off ahead, leaving only two behind,
standing at some distance and paying little attention to the prisoners. Jace
sidled up to next to Pehr and murmured to the older boy without looking at
him.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Wherever ‘here’ is, anyway,” Pehr agreed, staring ahead so as not to seem
like he was speaking to his cousin.

“There’s something up ahead, and they all went to see it. Could you sense it
during the day? They’re excited, but I think they’re also afraid.”

Pehr nodded. He’d felt the tension mounting during the hike and thought it
simply excitement about nearing the Lagos’s home, but now he realized that Jace
was right: the tension had been tinged not with relief or happiness, but with
awe and something that resembled fear.

“What do you suppose it is?” he asked, and the younger boy laughed.

“If I had the slightest idea, I would say, but I can’t even manage a guess.
You might as well ask me to explain the Everstorm. We have come far beyond
anywhere that our people have ever been.”

“If only we could take these stories back to the village,” Pehr said, and he
felt a sudden, deep sadness rush through him, a longing for the place he’d
grown up. How he would love to see the ocean again, and to walk in the fields
with Nani, and to train for his Test with Truff and Jace.

“Perhaps in the next life,” Jace said. “I don’t think we’ll see home again
in this one.”

“I’ve failed you.”

The boy shook his head. “No. Nani is safe.”

“Then I’ve failed
her
.”

“Nani would never have asked you to come this far. She didn’t even want you
to try, did she?”

Pehr admitted that she hadn't, and Jace smiled a little.

“You haven’t failed anything but your own expectations.”

Pehr considered this. If it was true, it didn’t make him feel any better
about what was happening.

“Do they mean to kill us?” he asked after a time.

“I can’t imagine anything else,” Jace replied.

“I’ll go out fighting if they’ll let me.”

“And I … Pehr, we can only wait and see. I have
no
doubt that we’ll
see.”

As if on cue, one of the priests returned and spoke in his guttural,
growling language to the two warriors, pointing at the group of human
prisoners. The warriors came and took six of them, Pehr and Jace included. They
were led to the priest, who looked at them with disdain for a moment before
making a series of complex hand gestures before them. He chanted in his
guttural language and shook a stick with many feathers tied to its head in
their direction.

“He’s blessing us,” Jace said, and one of the warriors roared at them. Pehr
didn’t understand the words, but the message was clear: they were expected to
be silent.

Deliberately, looking at the warrior that had shouted, Pehr said, “I will
not die under the blessing of their gods.”

The guard snarled and moved closer. Jaw set, Pehr moved up to face the
creature, looking it in the eye, and then threw his hands forth and shoved the
creature backwards.

“Command me again, beast!” he shouted. “Command me again and see if this
time I obey. I’ll die beneath your blade if I must, but I’ll do so under the
eyes of
my
Gods. I will not stand here in silence like a coward while
your heathen priest waves his sticks at me.”

The Lagos, which had fallen back a step at the shove, roared in fury,
unsheathing his blade and raising it above his head. Pehr stared at him, jaw
clenched and waiting, but before the attack could come, the priest stopped his
chanting and gave forth a long burst of commanding words. The warrior sneered,
staring at Pehr with obvious hatred, but it put its weapon back in its sheath.
Pehr stepped back beside Jace and looked at the priest. He gave an elaborate
bow, heel kicked forward and arms stretched out, never breaking eye contact,
and then twirled his hand.
Get on with it
.

The priest observed this gesture with an expression of amusement. When Pehr
had finished, he nodded, turned, and gestured for the warriors to lead the
prisoners on. Then he glanced back at Pehr, and gave a great, wicked smile.
Pehr understood with a sudden, sick feeling that the priest was making one very
simple point: Pehr could mock, that smile told him, but he couldn't escape his
fate, and the Lagos knew very well who would be laughing at the end of
things.

* * *

“Gods, Pehr … look at them all!”

Jace spoke in a breathless, dreamy voice, and Pehr could hardly blame him.
The circle of blasted land before them was truly a sight unlike any that either
boy had ever beheld. It lay in shadow, the mountains blocking out the sunlight
even though there was an hour or more of day left, and the darkness only
increased the crawling dread that rolled off the place in palpable waves.

Even the Lagos seemed to sense it. Where before they had been brash and
outspoken, quick to anger or to laughter, they were now hushed and concerned,
almost skittish. One of the females made some sort of attempt at levity,
leaning in to whisper to two others, and a nearby warrior spun immediately upon
them. Instead of shouting, as seemed their normal way, it instead spoke at
length in furious, hushed tones. The female made a mewling noise of annoyance
at this treatment, and the warrior bared its teeth and said only a single word
through them, clenched. The female’s eyes went wide, and it took two steps
backward, putting its hands to its mouth as if in assurance that it would speak
no more.

“Pehr, do you—” Jace began again, and Pehr cut him off.

“I see them, Jace.”

How could he not? The devastated circle that lay before them was heaped high
with piles of bones. The Lagos had brought them to a place of death countless
centuries old. Pehr could see that the vast majority of the bones had come from
animals, but he counted among their number more than one human skull, and
several skulls that he thought had come from the Lagos. Whatever inhabited this
place, it did not seem very discriminating.

At the other end of this circle of death, the mountains began in earnest;
tall cliffs of rock and vines that were impressive, though not so imposing as
Nethalanhal. Pehr discerned that there was a path carved into these cliffs, a
tight canyon that led off to some unknown destination. It was only a moment
more before his eyes came upon the metal thing, and Pehr jerked forward with a
start.

“Jace, there is a
man
there!” he cried, pointing, and this outburst
was greeted with snarls of anger from the throng of Lagos around them. The
priest that had laughed at Pehr spun now in anger, preparing to say something,
but was distracted by Pehr’s outstretched hand. He followed with his eyes to
the thing at which Pehr was pointing, and its anger seemed to dissipate. He
gave Pehr another long, wicked grin.

“I don’t think it’s a man,” Jace murmured. “I don’t know what it is, but by
their reactions I would say they consider it holy.”

“It’s not moving,” Pehr said.

“It hasn’t moved since we arrived,” Jace told him, and Pehr felt a momentary
streak of jealousy at the boy’s keen eyes. Of course Jace had noticed the metal
thing first; he noticed everything first.

“What do you suppose it is?” Pehr asked. “It can’t be a skeleton or a corpse
… it wouldn’t stay standing like that.”

“I think we’ll know soon enough,” Jace said.

From behind them there came the sound of drums, like that which had preceded
the attack on their village, but slower and quieter. To Pehr’s surprise, the
entire group of Lagos began chanting, their voices lilting in a manner almost
musical. The priests were the first to make the sound, but it was quickly taken
up by the warriors as well. The females, Pehr noticed, did not sing, but merely
observed.

The priest that seemed to be in charge turned now to the group of prisoners
and began a counter-chant, his rhythms alternating against those of the rest of
the Lagos. He moved his feathered stick in time with his words, starting with
wide strokes that encompassed all six of the captives who had been brought up
to the ring of bone, but slowly focusing in on one terrified boy of seven or
eight years. At the height of the chanting the priest made a motion with his
hands, and two warriors stepped forward, grabbing the boy by the arms. He began
to wail, and both Pehr and Jace surged forward instinctively to protect him,
but they found themselves held back. The boy was led inexorably toward the
circle, dragging his feet and wailing in terror.

“Gods damn these things,” Jace snarled, and Pehr shared the abject loathing
he heard in Jace’s voice. “Pehr, whatever happens, we must watch. We must see
all that we can if we want any hope of learning from it.”

“I will watch,” Pehr told him. In truth, he doubted that he would be able to
look away even if he desired.

The chant mounted in intensity and volume. As the sound drew to its
pinnacle, the two Lagos warriors lifted the boy up above their heads and, at
what seemed the chorus’s apex, threw him as far as they could into the circle.
The boy landed on his back on top of a pile of bones that blew to powder under
the impact, and he lay there writhing in pain, the wind knocked out of him.

The reaction from the metal thing was instantaneous. It leapt to its feet
and began to scream in a howling, broken voice, spreading its arms wide in a
gesture Pehr associated not with aggression but with welcome. The Lagos, all of
them, had gone silent as death. The only sounds now were the wind in the trees,
the boy’s choked gasps, and the buzzing, grinding sound of the metal thing.

The boy had time to pull himself to his feet but could not even begin to
flee. As Pehr watched, the metal thing dropped to a crouch, still shouting in a
language that Pehr did not think he would have understood even had the thing’s
voice been clear. Its eyes opened wide and beams of red fire poured forth from
them, striking the boy in the midsection. The lines of fire bored through the
boy’s stomach in an instant and emerged from his back, hitting the ground not
far behind him.

He was dead before his body hit the ground. Pehr supposed he should have
found consolation in this, but all he could feel was horror. The other children
were shrieking, wailing, holding each other and weeping. The Lagos had raised
their arms as one and were roaring their approval. Pehr and Jace stood
motionless, watching. The metal thing finished speaking, moved back to a
standing position, and slumped against the canyon wall.

“Gods …” Jace seemed unable to speak further and Pehr, for his part, was at
a complete loss for words. This was what they were supposed to watch and learn
from? It was impossible. Death surrounded them on all sides, the Lagos horde at
their back and their only escape route a path to annihilation. What hope was
there against a thing that shot fire from its very eyes?

Pehr was still pondering this question when the chanting began anew.