The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by MeiLin Miranda

  As he pressed further into the cave, the keening voice in his mind grew stronger: Why do you bring it here? Did I not go far enough? Let me stop dreaming, please take it away. It played down his back like cold rain down his collar.

  From the descriptions in the Vatterbroch manuscript's coda, Adewole had expected something different than this childlike plaintiveness, threats perhaps, or boasts or even cajoling--more likely, nothing at all. The postscript said the god was dead. A kernel of truth always slept in the center of every myth, but the layers accreted over centuries were nothing but gloss and lacquer. He was certain he'd find something, but a god? No.

  Faced with a fork in the chamber, he chose the lefthand side; the voice faded, a relieved tone slipping into the distress. Yes, please go away again, let me go back to sleep. Adewole backtracked to the fork's junction and headed down the righthand side. The voice strengthened, once again pleading for him to leave. The hallway narrowed until Adewole had to turn sideways to continue on. He fought down a trapped sensation.

  A sick, pink light dribbled from a small chamber ahead. Lightcrystals unlike any he'd seen before flecked the ceiling and walls, the malevolent, dim pink light's source. No bones here. A rubble pile took up the back wall, and in its center stood a squared, chest-high, black stone pillar. A large iron box stood atop it.

  The hair under his hat prickled on his head as the voice shrieked inside him. It cried nonstop now, imploring, praying, a nonsensical babbling. I can't run, there is nothing I can do, I'm having a nightmare, please don't hurt me, I thought I got away from it! He walked around the pillar, holding the lantern close, until the expected words appeared, stamped into the box's side. Magic and Metal No More. Unthinking, Adewole murmured the rest of the Oath. "This I swear."

  The voice stopped. A grinding noise came from the box; the top rose on metal struts, high enough he might look down inside. The pink lightcrystals brightened, illuminating dust and bits of stone dancing in the air. Adewole stepped back, hand shaking. His nerves screamed he should leave, go back to the Library or even back to Eisenstadt, and leave the manuscript to another scholar. He screwed his courage to the mark and leaned over the open box, his black mercury lantern precariously perched on its edge. In his nervousness, he tipped it over; down it clattered, and he cursed as it guttered out and left him in the cold, faint, pink glow.

  A red light flared; a deep, frightening ruby pulse lit up the cavern. A shriek tore through his mind: I'M AWAKE NO I'M AWAKE NO NO NO I'M AWAKE!

  Adewole scrambled away. The chamber's doorway beckoned, but without his lantern he couldn't see his way back to the Ossuary's entrance. Nor was he sure he could compel his petrified body close enough to the obelisk to get around it. He was trapped.

  The shriek subsided into broken sobs. No longer in his head, the high, husky voice reverberated through the chamber. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" it cried, in the terrified tones of a child left alone too long in the dark. "I'm sorry, sir, I thought you was dead! Did you come back to let me go? Oh, please, let me go!"

  This was no awe-inspiring super-being. It spoke a rough, streetwise version of the manuscript's Old Rhendalian. "Who are you?" said Adewole.

  The voice brought its sobs under control; Adewole could almost hear it swallow them down a non-existent throat. "Who am I? I'm Alleine, I'm still Alleine, sir. You sound diff'rent. How long was I asleep? Please, can you let me go, or at least let me go back to sleep?"

  "Who do you think I am, Alleine?" said Adewole.

  "Why, you're Master Vatterbroch, ain't you?" A thin red mist rose from the pillar; it ghosted over Adewole's face, gentle as the morning's mist. He pressed himself back against the rubble pile until the mist crept back into the pillar. "You ain't him! Is he dead, sir? I swear I saw him die."

  Adewole touched his face all over; nothing dripping from it, nothing rearranged, though his terrified pulse leapt in his lips and throat. "Yes, he is dead."

  "Was you his friend?"

  "No."

  "I'm glad-a that, then, because I'm glad he's dead," said Alleine.

  "Why are you glad? Was he not your worshipper?"

  "Worshipper?" said the voice. "Who'd worship me?"

  "Are you not a god?" said Adewole, creeping forward.

  The voice grew silent, though the red light pulsed. "I'm nobody. Everyone says so."

  "Did--did you have a body before this?"

  "A course I did. How can a person not have a body?"

  So not a created divinity, nor a captured one. A human, not a god. The Bone Lyre--Vatterbroch's notes said its pieces were taken from a still-living "subject." Adewole had assumed the subject was an animal sacrifice of some kind. Bad enough, but now... "Everyone is someone, Alleine. When you still had a body, who were you?"

  "Nobody! I never been nobody. Step-da said so when Mam died, and Master said I was worse than nobody--I was just a girl no one wanted. He said no one'd miss me. Did…did someone miss me, sir?" said Alleine in a near-whisper. "Is that why you come?"

  Adewole's hand snuck to his little sister's good luck bead on his watch fob. "Listen now, Alleine. I have a notebook your master left behind. It describes a terrible thing, a thing made with--with bones."

  Alleine wept. "Don' make me think on it, sir, not in the dark like this. I'm scared, I can't see and I itch and ache all over something bad. Why? I don' have none to ache! When he did it, it hurt so bad, an' I screamed but he stuffed my kerchief in my mouth until I fainted dead away, but he kept waking me up until he did all his spells because he said they wouldn't work if I was dead--why did you wake me up, sir?" she gulped. "It's worse when I'm awake."

  A sick horror hung at the back of Adewole's mouth. "Alleine, how old are you?"

  "Just before Mam died, she said I was seven, and the summer after the summer after that Master Vatterbroch took me to work for him, and then…then this happened…"

  She was only nine years old.

  Chapter Eleven

  The air clotted in Adewole's throat; the room pulsed and swayed. When he recovered his voice, shaky and horrified, he said, "I did not mean to wake you, Alleine."

  "Then why'd you feed me?"

  "How did I do that?"

  "Don't you know? The ichor. You fed me ichor. I wish you hadn't."

  She must have absorbed the lantern's black mercury, he thought. "I am sorry. It was accidental. I was not sure what I would find."

  "So you didn't come for me," said Alleine in a small voice.

  Adewole wiped his face on the back of his hand. Dust from his glove smeared across his damp cheeks and eyes, and he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe away the angry grit. He sat down on a flat boulder in the rubble. "No one knew you were here, child, not for a very long time."

  The girl's voice fell silent for so long Adewole thought she'd fallen asleep--he rather hoped she had--and he started when she spoke again. "Where am I? I can't see, though it's sorta like seeing when I reach out. It's like I can see you if I touch you." The red mist crested the lid of the box and formed a tentative, questing finger. "But I dunno what I'm reaching out with. Does that make sense?"

  "None of this makes sense," he muttered. He rubbed at his aching temples. "Where are you--you are in the Ossuary. Or rather, the box containing you is in the Ossuary."

  "The Ossuary? That's haunted!"

  "Little one," Adewole laughed through the lump in his throat, "you are the one who haunts it."

  "You won't leave me here alone, though, will you? I won't go back to sleep for a while, and it's scary."

  "Do you sleep at all?"

  "If I fall asleep it's because I'm out of ichor. Otherwise, I'm awake all the time."

  What was he to do? The academic in him rebelled against disturbing such a site--a thousand years of history! He should document it first. But the brother in him could not leave a frightened child in pain, in the dark, in a place she believed to be haunted. "I suppose I will just have to take you with me. May I look inside the box, Alleine? I will not get hurt, will I?"
>
  "Of course you can. I won't hurt you."

  Adewole approached the pedestal. His fingers crept inside the iron box, ready to withdraw at a moment's notice, until they closed around a cube-shaped object about the size of a grapefruit. He raised it out of the box. The red mist he thought of as Alleine's life force floated inside the glassy cube. This was the heart of the Machine God.

  A finger of mist rose from it. Instinct jerked his hands away from his body. "Is it all right if I look at you now? I don't think you can hurt me. I just want to know what you look like. It don't hurt--I don't think. If it does, I'll stop. Is that all right?" He murmured his assent. More mist left the cube in a long, pulsing red rope. Starting at his head, it patted his hair, his face, his shoulders, just as a child's hand might. When it finished at his feet, it withdrew again. "You're real tall, sir."

  "So I have been told," he smiled.

  "I like your face, it's a kind one. What's your name? Will you tell me?"

  "I am called Oladel Adewole."

  "That's a funny name. Olladle? Adwolay?"

  "I am from a far-away place called Jero. Have you heard of it?"

  "No-o-o…Could I call you something else? I suppose I could just call you Master."

  A base thought whispered, She is a primary historical source like no other; let her call you Master, and keep her testimony for yourself. It will make your career. He beat it down, and said, "You are no one's servant, Alleine, especially mine. I had a sister once, about your age. She used to call me Ollie. Call me that."

  "Ollie. That's funny, too, but I like it."

  Adewole fancied there was almost a smile in her voice. "Are you feeling better, then?"

  The smile disappeared. "It allus hurts, though it's better when we talk. Don't stop talking, Ollie."

  Adewole had to tell the child what had happened to her. More to his self-interest, said his inner scholar, she might then tell him first-hand what happened to the city. "Shall I tell you a story, then?" he said at last. "Perhaps you can help me tell it."

  "I don' remember many stories," said Alleine. "My mam used to tell me stories, but it's been a while."

  "I think you may know parts of this one."

  "This is about Master's Machine God, isn't it?" she said, her voice rising. "I hate that story. That's a scary story."

  "It might be a scary story, indeed, I am sure it is, but I think it is one we need to tell one another. You may tell me your part, and I will tell you what happened after. Will you trust me?" A long, stubborn pause: he'd pushed too far, too soon. "All right, then, I will tell you one thing about what happened after. It is a thing you need to know."

  "What's that?" she said in a voice reminding him of his sister dragging her sullen toe across the floor.

  "A very long time has passed since you went to sleep."

  "You said that. How long?" she said, curiosity awakened.

  "A thousand years."

  Silence again. "How long is that? Is Maria Kyper's stall gone?"

  "Child, everything is gone. There is no easy way to tell you this. Everyone you have ever known is dead."

  "Maria Kyper's dead? That makes me really sad. I really liked her. She sold ribbons and buttons and such. I used to do jobs for her before Master Vatterbroch, run errands and such. I wish she'd kept me. She was nice," said Alleine. "How did Maria Kyper die?"

  If Maria Kyper hadn't died in the Rising, she'd died of starvation, disease or worse in its aftermath, thought Adewole. "I do not know exactly how, but no one lives a thousand years. Everyone who ever spoke your language is dead--that is how long it has been."

  "You can speak it."

  "I am unusual. I study languages, even the ones no one speaks any more. It is my job--I am a professor, a sort of scholar--a learnèd man," he said, thinking of the owls.

  "Why would you want to learn a language no one speaks any more?"

  "Listen now, Alleine," he said in the same exasperated tone his sister often drew from him, "a thousand years is a very long time, longer, I think, than you can imagine. You have been asleep. To you, it seems as if only a few days have passed. Am I right?"

  "But you say that's not so," she said.

  "It is not so."

  He could almost see her inside the iron box, chewing on the end of a non-existent braid. "Cherholtz is gone?"

  "Cherholtz floats in the sky, like a big island in the ocean. The people here have forgotten it was ever called Cherholtz. They call it Risenton. This may be hard to understand," he added, in hopes she would tell him more.

  "Why would it be hard to understand? It was all I could think of. What would you do different?" she said in a plaintive wail.

  Heart aching for her, Adewole reached to comfort the child, drawing back as he realized there was no way to do so. "I am sure you did the best you could. Can you tell me what you did?"

  "I thought you knew. I got the city away from the Black Spring."

  "What is that?"

  "For someone who's sposed to be so smart you don't know much," said Alleine. "That's where ichor comes from."

  So that's what Diederich Enterprises uncovered, thought Adewole. "What did you do?"

  "Well…it was bad," she said, drawing out the words. "I took the city into the air, and I didn't mean to, but I couldn't think."

  "Did Vatterbroch tell you to do it?"

  "He wanted to tell me to do a lot of stuff, but he couldn't do the spells. He got the first ones right, so I couldn't hurt him or not eat--if ichor was around I had to go eat it or it hurt like anything, oh, worse than being here in the heart. But he sang the last spell wrong, the one that was sposed to make me do anything he wanted. I think he killed that Chorister before she taught him how to do it right." The words poured out, the offhand, excited rush of a child who needed to tell someone something so important it was hard to tell.

  Adewole leaned forward on his perch of rubble, hands clasped and dangling between his knees, his disbelief in magic banished forever. "How did he do this? With the Bone Lyre?"

  Alleine's voice shuddered. "That's the worst ever. That's what hurts the most. It always hurts inside the Machine God, but when he uses the Lyre it's like he's…" She paused, her voice overcome. "It's like he's taking my bones out all over again."

  Adewole forced down a shudder of his own. "But he failed."

  "I figured if I got away from the Black Spring before he got it right, it'd be all right. At least I wouldn't have to eat any more ichor because there wouldn't be any ichor, and then maybe I'd die. Because being in the dark like this is awful, Ollie, but being inside the Machine God is worse. Oh, it's so much worse, please tell me no one can put me back in it!" she sobbed.

  "Child, child, no one can put you back in it," said the distressed Adewole, feeling almost as ineffectual as he had watching the river fever slowly eat his sister. "Your master is dead, and the Machine God is no more. It will be all right."

  "Promise me."

  Could he promise? He had no idea where the Machine God's parts were. There was the feather-like odd-metal piece the gardeners had and the Council's chain of office. No one could possibly put the thing back together, not without his help. "I promise, Alleine." He waited until she calmed down. "And then what happened?"

  "Anyway," she sniffed, "he was playing and it hurt so much I couldn't really think so good, so I just thought, up. I'll go up and get away from the Black Spring, and when the ichor runs out maybe I'll go to sleep or die. Except he told me I couldn't die, but anyway, Birdie thought it was a good idea, at least when I thought about getting away, she told me up was the way to go. Except I prob'ly should have just gone up myself. I coulda flown, I guess, but I never flown before so I just took the ground with me. I couldn't think!"

  Adewole sat up straighter. "You threw the city into the air?" If he'd awakened a child who still had the power to throw a city into the sky, everyone on and below the island was in danger.

  "Yes, but I musta done it wrong, because you're here and you've got ichor. And
I had a bad dream just before you came about someone with ichor, here, wherever this is. Now that I'm awake, I feel ichor all over the place. Not real close by, but like I could walk to it, if I could walk--oh, my legs itch so bad! I did a bad thing, and that's why I'm stuck in here."

  "You did nothing to deserve this, Alleine, I am sure of that," soothed Adewole. Though he was afraid, deeply afraid, his heart went out to her.

  "When the city went up with me, Master died--I saw him die, but he was so strong! When you came I figured you was him anyway--and even though I hate him and I'm glad he's dead, I didn't mean to kill him and it's bad that I did. Everything was shaking, and the courtyard fell in, and that's what got him. I think more people died. Everyone was running around screaming, and then everyone was really mad at me."

  "What did you do afterwards?"

  "Just sat. I just sat down and waited for the ichor to run out. Birdie got tired and came and sat in my lap, and we talked for the longest time, days and days I think, and then she died. He forgot to make it so she couldn't die." Alleine paused. "And then I got really sleepy and couldn't talk any more. I couldn't move. People came and started taking the Machine God apart. I think they thought I was dead." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They said terrible things. They were really mad, and I couldn't tell them what happened and that I was sorry. Can you tell them?"

  Adewole wondered what Councilwoman Lumburgher would think of such an apology. "Those people are dead now, but their descendants live. I would tell them if you tell me. I want to tell your story, Alleine. Telling your story would be the culmination--the most important thing I have ever done, or will do. Will you tell me, since you could not tell them?"