The Broken God Machine

by Christopher Buecheler

  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.

  Chapter 11

  The Lagos made them watch. Not only the four who had been in their initial group, but all of the other prisoners. Thirty-seven children, ranging in age from four to just under twelve, were sacrificed to the metal thing. Their smoldering bodies lay in heaps within the circle of bone, their wails of terror and pain seeming to echo still from the rocky cliffs. Pehr felt numb, unable even to process all the death that he'd been made to witness. He was astounded by the metal thing’s sheer efficiency; none of the children had made it more than three steps.

  By the end, he was able to recognize the patterns in whatever it was that the thing was screaming at its victims. Jace was actually following along with it, repeating the words back in time wit
h the metal thing even though he didn’t know what it was saying. There were tear tracks on the younger boy’s face, and Pehr thought there might be tracks on his own, though he couldn't remember weeping. The whole ceremony seemed to him a horrific, deranged nightmare from which he could not wake.

  “What horrible things their gods must be,” Jace croaked at the end, when it was done and only he and Pehr remained. “What awful, evil, terrible things.”

  Pehr nodded. His throat was parched, and his first attempt to speak came out as nothing more than a dry rattle. He swallowed a few times and tried again.

  “Did you … have you learned anything?” he asked, knowing the answer but going through the motions anyway. Jace made a noise that might once, in some other universe, have been a laugh.

  “No. No, I did not.”

  “I won’t let them hurl me in there,” Pehr said. “I … if I'm to go to my death, I will do it on my feet.”

  “I would do the same,” Jace said. “Together, Pehr. Let us go together.”

  “How can we tell them this?”

  The chanting was about to begin again, Pehr was sure of it, and there was little time in which to act. He took the initiative, stepping forward and pointing to the priest.

  “You!” he cried. “You, Lagos … look at me, you filthy thing.”

  The creature turned, an expression of mild curiosity on its face. Pehr pointed at Jace, and then at himself, and then to the circle. He turned his hands up in a questioning gesture, and the priest nodded.

  “Very well,” Pehr said. “We’ll go. Yes, see? Me, him … go there. Yes? Do you understand me, you stinking pile of fur?”

  He gestured at the warriors and made a shooing gesture, then pointed again at himself, and Jace, and at the circle of bone.

  “We will go on our own. Do you understand?”

  The priest looked at the two Lagos warriors, and then back at Pehr, considering this. After a moment he smiled – a more genuine expression than the one he’d flashed to Pehr at the beginning of this massacre – and nodded, gesturing with his hand to wait.

  “Yes, yes,” Pehr said, feeling weary, full of disgust. “Do your song and dance, you miserable, murdering pile of shit. Just do it, already.”

  “There must be a way out,” Jace said.

  Pehr shrugged. He could feel desperation tightening its grip around his throat, making it difficult to breathe. “I am truly open to suggestions.”

  The chanting began again, and Pehr forced himself to breathe, forced himself to remain calm and rational. He'd seen the worst that the Lagos could give to a man, knew that now was his time; he must make peace with it and go to his death as a hunter would.

  “Pehr,” Jace said, his voice a sort of croak that made Pehr understand that the boy was feeling every bit of the same tension that coursed through his own body.

  “Yes.”

  “I will see you in the land of the stars, cousin.”

  “Brother. Let us be brothers, Jace. Have we not grown up as such?”

  The boy nodded. “We have. My brother … our time has been short, but it has been good to know you.”

  Pehr had no words. He stared at his cousin for a moment, and then he pulled himself suddenly into a stiff, upright stance. He brought his clenched right fist up against the center of his chest and held it there over his heart. It was a sign of respect between hunters and a gesture that neither boy was supposed to make before taking their Test, but it seemed more than appropriate now. It seemed necessary.

  Jace smiled a little and returned the gesture. Only a moment later the chanting stopped, and the Lagos priest turned to them, grinning its wicked grin. Pehr steeled himself, knowing what was coming next, ready for it. He began to step forward.

  And then the Lagos priest pointed not at him but at Jace, and it signaled that he must move into the center of the ring.

  “No!” Pehr shouted, and he strode forward. “Together! We go together!”

  The priest roared something and Pehr felt strong arms grab him, hauling him back. He could hear Jace also shouting, insisting as well that they go into the ring together. Pehr struggled with all his body would give him, lent a sort of lunatic strength by his rage and desperation, until at last one of Lagos rammed the butt of its weapon into his stomach. As he doubled over, the creature grabbed him by the hair and pulled backward, exposing his neck and pressing the blade to it.

  Pehr went silent, and Jace did as well, the two boys looking at each other in desperate horror. The Lagos priest strode up to Jace and let forth a string of growling invective, stabbing his finger first at Jace, then at the circle. The words meant nothing to either boy, but the message was clear: enter the circle by himself, ahead of Pehr, or watch them cut Pehr’s throat. Jace struggled with his own captors once, and the priest turned as if to instruct the warrior that held the blade against Pehr’s skin to finish the job.

  “No!” Jace shouted. “Wait … no, I … very well. I shall go. Yes, me, in there. By myself. I will go.”

  “You murderous, vile …” Pehr began, and Jace shouted for him to be quiet.

  “Don’t make me go into the circle alone,” he said, and in his voice Pehr heard the tremendous fear that Jace had been straining to keep in check all of this time. “Be here for me, if you cannot be there with me.”

  Pehr stared at him for a moment longer, still straining against the Lagos that held him, uncaring of the blade that still pressed against his throat.

  “Please,” Jace said, his voice broken, and he began to weep. Pehr felt the strength leaving his muscles, the urge to fight passing as acceptance washed through him. They were to be made sacrifice to this metal thing, and there was nothing that would stop it from happening. If he could ease Jace’s passing, then he must do so.

  “All right, Jace. I will be here for you,” he said, and he closed his eyes against the tears that threatened to overwhelm him.

  “Thank you,” Jace said. After a moment more, the priest, sensing that an agreement had been reached, barked an order at the Lagos that held the boy, and they released him. The blade was removed from Pehr’s neck, but the grip on his arms remained tight.

  Head bowed, Jace turned toward the circle. Pehr couldn't stop his brain from its furious, frantic search for a way out, a way to cheat this death that would rob him of all he'd lived for. There must be a way. There must—

  Jace crossed through the edge of the ring of bone and continued on. The metal thing sprang to life as it had for the others and Jace kept moving, arms out as if to embrace the twin beams of fire that were to come. After a moment, Pehr realized that the thing had finished its opening speech, but had paused at the moment where, previously, it had simply dispensed death. Its head was tilted as if in confusion, and when it spoke again, the words that it gave were not any that Pehr had heard before. Jace took a few hesitant steps forward, unsure what to do.

  The metal thing repeated its last query and then held out its hand, obviously expecting Jace to relinquish something. The Lagos that surrounded Pehr had gone deathly silent. It was apparent that none had ever seen this before, and they had no idea how to react. Even the head priest was staring in undisguised awe, jaw hanging, eyes wide.

  Jace stopped, turned, and glanced back at Pehr, raising his shoulders in a shrug of confusion and saying, “I think it likes me …”

  Then the metal thing dropped down into its customary stance of attack, and even as Pehr screamed the boy’s name in warning, he knew he was too late. The red beams spewed forth from the metal thing’s eyes and bored into his cousin’s back. Jace’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened as if to scream, but instead of sound a great jet of blood and steam came boiling forth.

  Jace was taller than the other children that had died underneath the metal thing’s gaze, and he had gotten much closer to it; the beams were angled differently. They blasted out from his chest and traveled forward as if to infinity, only three feet to Pehr’s right. Several howling Lagos warriors were killed or maimed by the inadv
ertent attack. Pehr could smell burning hair and cooking flesh, and for one grotesque moment the scent brought images of kampri barbecues to his mind and made his stomach rumble with greedy enthusiasm.

  Then the fire stopped, and the metal thing slumped back against its wall. Jace stood rigid for a moment longer, still staring up into the heavens with wide, frozen eyes, blood pouring forth from the holes in his chest. Then he pitched forward, falling flat on his face, and his body went limp. Jace was dead, and Pehr steeled himself against the wave of grief and pain that came washing over him. This was not the time to mourn; it was the time to stay strong and die as a hunter. Any less would only bring dishonor to the boy lying face down on the poisoned ground before him.

  All around him, the Lagos were roaring with approval at Jace’s death. When the priest that was conducting the ceremony turned to Pehr, he could read obvious relief in the creature’s expression.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen, Pehr thought. They’ve never seen it do anything like that before.

  Any lingering doubt that Pehr might have had was now extinguished; whatever this being that lived inside the circle of bone was, it was not the Lagos’s thing. They worshipped it, but it was not made by them, and they did not truly understand it.

  He wished that he knew the metal thing’s language. He was certain that the device had asked Jace for something, and if Jace had been able to provide it, the boy might still be alive. Pehr wondered whether he would be offered any such chance, or whether he would be killed immediately like all the others. He had already decided one thing: he would not stop moving as Jace had done. He would meet his death head on, racing toward it. Should the metal thing pause again, Pehr thought he could reach it in time – and if he could reach it, he would kill it if he could.

  The chanting had begun again, and the Lagos priest grinned at Pehr. To the creature’s obvious surprise, Pehr grinned back, an angry, toothy smile born from the knowledge that he and the priest were now equals. Pehr now knew as much about their god as the Lagos did, and if his own Gods were willing, he would soon do battle with it.