The Broken God Machine (16 page)

Tasha made a little, unimpressed noise. “But you think I'm insane.”

“No, but forgive me if it’s hard to hear you dismiss destiny and the Gods in
one sentence, and then speak of things you were meant to do in the next.”

“Not 'meant to do' but ... it's hard to put into words.”

“I understand,” Pehr said, and Tasha glanced at him, an expression of
disbelief on her face. Pehr laughed. “Well, I understand that you believe there
is a difference. Tasha, I will help you if I can, but if your council of elders
decides this winter to sequester me with another family or send me out on my
own to look for a wife, I will return to my people. I don’t belong here.”

“None of us do,” Tasha said, and then was silent, and no matter how hard
Pehr pressed, she would not speak further of it that night. Soon they returned
to the tent, and Tasha went to help Ehela, who was sewing pants for Ketrahm;
the boy seemed to outgrow his existing clothing by the end of each month. Pehr
resolved not to worry about what she had meant. As always, Tasha would tell him
when the time was right. In the interim, there was always more to be done, and
so the night passed, and the day that followed, and then weeks more after
that.

Spring had long since become summer when the dreams returned.

Pehr didn’t even realize at first that he had fallen asleep, so seamless was
the transition from the waking world to the dream. He was out amidst the
grasses, on the plains, standing on a hill and looking out to the west.

This was not the sort of fuzzy, indistinct dream that he usually had,
shifting and tenuous as the webs that spiders sometimes spun under the jesuva
trees, invisible most often until he stumbled into them. This dream was clear
and crystalline, as when he’d dreamed of Tasha on the eve of the Lagos attack.
It was distinguishable from reality only because the colors were somehow
overbright and oversaturated. The very air itself seemed thick with color, and
Pehr found himself struggling to breathe it in.

The girl with the purple eyes was standing beside him this time, looking
east down into the valley, the setting sun at her back. Her eyes were wide and
distant, staring, her lips slightly parted in an expression of awe. What little
color she possessed had drained from her face, and there were dark circles
under her eyes.

The sky above them was dark and angry, filled with clouds of intense purple
tinted black at their edges. Pehr had only seen the plains look like this one
or twice before, and he knew that clouds like this heralded a storm of
apocalyptic proportions. Men died in storms like these, and he thought it
unwise to be standing at the top of a hill, unprotected, but they could not go
forward. The valley below them was filled with roiling black water, and as Pehr
watched, it began to rise inexorably toward them, seething and boiling, a
deadly flood two hundred feet tall – and growing – from which there was no hope
of escape.

“It has come at last,” Tasha murmured, and Pehr wanted to ask her what she
meant by this, but he couldn't seem to speak. The sight of the huge, black sea
flooding toward him had torn the words from his mouth.

He thought that if he looked at these swiftly advancing waters any longer he
would go mad with fear, and so he turned to the west and looked out across the
plains below him. What he saw there was so strange that for a moment he
couldn't understand what he was seeing. The shifting, writhing mass that
stretched out before him was as bizarre and confusing and terrifying as the
rising sea to his back.

In a moment more he realized what it was, but the comprehension brought no
comfort. If anything, it only intensified the fear that throbbed within him,
and Pehr felt a sudden, powerful wave of nausea run through him, as if his very
body wished to revolt at the sight before it. He fought it down, clenching his
teeth, and made himself look out over the plains at what was coming for
them.

He understood at last what was making the throbbing, rumbling noise that he
was hearing. Just below him, only a few hundred strides away at the base of the
hill, a great host was advancing upon them, and their footfalls shook the very
earth. Pehr knew these creatures, had seen them before, and understood that the
worst had happened: the guardian had fallen. The god that kept the creatures of
the jungle from advancing to the plains was no longer there, and the Lagos had
descended upon them.

Their clawed feet tore and shredded the ground, kicked up red dust that
filled the air with what looked like a mist of blood. There were thousands of
them. When the Lagos had come to loot his village, there had been many of them,
but this was some exponentially greater force. This was an army, a thing built
to wipe whatever came before it off the face of the earth. The Lagos had come
to the plains not to burn and pillage, not to disfigure their enemies, but to
eradicate all those who lived there completely.

“Oh, what have we done?” Pehr heard himself ask, and Tasha gave a small
laugh, but she did not answer him. She too had turned and was looking out at
the advancing army, yet there was no fear in her sunken eyes, only that sort of
dreamlike intensity, as if she was seeing things that no one else could
see.

Pehr did not want to die, but he understood that flight from the Lagos army
would be a pointless endeavor. The army was going to catch them – it was
inevitable. He and Tasha had chosen this hill upon which to make their final
stand. There would be no capture this time, no shameful march to the metal
thing’s circle of bone or to anywhere else. In mere moments, the Lagos would
overwhelm them, tear them to shreds, and leave their bodies for the carrion
birds. That would be the end of it, or so it seemed to Pehr.

“I am frightened,” Tasha told him, but Pehr wouldn’t have known it from her
voice, which was calm and steady, betraying no nerves by trembling or breaking.
The look on her face had not changed. Pehr reached out and took her hand.

“I'm frightened, too,” he said, and he looked out again at the horde making
its way rapidly up the hill, a rolling, unstoppable death machine, its fury
matched only by that which was brewing in the clouds above. Behind him, he
could hear the roar of the rising flood.

Tasha squeezed his hand, once, and said, “We have come to the confluence. We
have made our choice.”

Now Tasha closed her eyes, and Pehr saw that she was weeping. The sunset
glittered like flakes of copper on her wet cheeks. She smiled, and squeezed his
hand again, and said nothing.

Pehr wanted to ask more, wanted to understand what Tasha seemed to know that
he did not, but he was not given the chance. Even as he opened his mouth to
speak, the world grew somehow brighter, the super-saturated colors around them
burning out, going white. With this change came a roaring noise that grew
louder and louder all around them. Soon he could see nothing at all within that
great, white light, and the noise had reached a volume so intense that it
seemed his head would split in two. Pehr felt himself fall to his knees, but he
held on to Tasha like a man lost at sea, clinging to a bit of wood.

As the dream began to dissipate and Pehr battered his way back to
consciousness, he heard, beside him, the girl with the purple eyes begin to
laugh.

* * *

“Tell me what happened last night.”

Tasha was sitting with him in the dark, poking at the embers of their fire
with a stick and staring up at the stars. Pehr had long since lost count of how
many nights he had spent in this fashion, lying in the grass while Tasha talked
of whatever was on her mind that day. Tonight he had meant to discuss the
dream, which had been troubling him the entire day, but when finally they had
found time to be alone, he had been unable to find a way to bring it up. Now,
as so often happened, Tasha had made some nebulous statement in a tone of voice
that indicated she spoke something obvious, and Pehr was perplexed.

“Tasha, what are you talking about?” Pehr asked, sitting up and looking over
at her. After a moment more of musing, she turned her gaze toward him.

“You dreamt something last night. Something important. What was it?”

Pehr was caught off guard by this and, for a few seconds, he could do no
more than stare at her. Then he made a disgusted noise, lay back down, and
said, “Is there anything that happens that you’re not aware of?”

“There is much that happens that I’m not aware of,” she said. “You did dream
of something last night, did you not?”

“What did
you
dream about?”

“I asked you first …”

“I don’t care.”

Tasha turned to him again, this time to glare, but Pehr only stared back
with indifference. He was tired of always being two steps behind in any
discussion with her.

“Oh, fine,” Tasha growled, but she did not start immediately, choosing
instead to poke at the embers of the fire with a stick.

“Was it us? You and me, on the plains?” Pehr prompted, and Tasha shook her
head.

“Not on the plains. I think we must go to the mountains, Pehr. I think we
have to find what’s there.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I’ve been dreaming of it for my entire life!” Tasha cried, and she
hurled the stick into the fire, sending sparks up into the night sky. Pehr was
startled by this outburst, and by the tension he could feel radiating from the
girl.

“You’re afraid,” he said. “You may have been dreaming of it for your entire
life, but you’re still afraid of it.”

“I hate it. I do not want to go to the mountains. Whatever is up there is
terrible and dangerous, but it calls to me. Since I met you it has only grown
worse. It feels as though they have been locked to me all this time, and you
are my key. I must go, I know I must, but I wish this task had been given to
someone else.”

“Tasha, if this is your destiny—”

“There
is
no destiny, Pehr. I keep telling you that, but you never
listen. I have spent my entire life dreaming of these things, these points in
time where many things hang in balance. If I choose my steps wrong, if I falter
or fail … something terrible might happen.”

“If there is no destiny, then something terrible might also
not
happen,” Pehr suggested, and Tasha shook her head.

“I want to believe that so very much, but …”

“But something compels you,” Pehr said, and Tasha nodded.

“Yes.”

Pehr sat up again, bringing his knees up close to his chest, folding his
arms across them and resting his chin on top. He looked at Tasha for a time,
but she wouldn’t look back, so finally he spoke.

“In my dream, we were standing on a tall hill, far out on the plains, and
all around us it was flat. Above us were great clouds of black and purple, the
worst storm I have ever seen, whipped to a frenzy and racing forth as if to
consume us. Before us, there was a host of Lagos so large that they stained the
very sky with the dust of their passage.”

Tasha made a shuddery moan but did not otherwise comment, and Pehr
continued.

“There was no one but you, and me, and the Lagos. We were waiting. I think
we were waiting to die, except …”

“Yes?”

“You said the confluence had come, that we had made our choice.”

“And then?”

“The dream went white, and I … you were laughing, Tasha. You were laughing
in a way I have never heard you laugh, as if all the cares you’d ever had in
this world had been lifted from your shoulders and there was no other way you
could express the pure joy of it but to laugh and laugh.”

Tasha put her hands to her face, saying nothing.

“I woke up after that. It was still dark outside, and raining, but I took a
walk anyway. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me leave, or come back.”

“I
did
hear you. I was awake,” Tasha said from behind her hands.
“That is why I knew you had dreamt of something. I heard you gasp and sit up,
heard you leave, heard you return. Sometimes after I dream, I can’t move. Not
any part of me, not even my eyes. All I can do is lie there and wait for it to
be over. Usually it lasts for only a few minutes, but last night it was
longer.”

“How long has this been happening to you?” Pehr asked.

“Since I started having the dreams. So, as long as I can remember. Maybe
longer than I can remember. Sometimes I think the dreams started from the very
day I was born.”

“And now you wish me to take you to the mountains.”

“Yes.”

“You would climb the path that runs within them, the one that I did not
take. You think this place that you dream of is there.”

“Yes. We will not find the home of any gods, but … Pehr,
something
is up there.”

Pehr considered this for a minute, and he sighed. Who did he suppose he was
fooling? Hadn’t he known this moment would come? Hadn’t he been waiting, all
this time, for the day when he could travel west? There was no way back to his
family, no way back to those for whom his heart ached more with each passing
day, without traveling back through the mountain pass. If there was something
there in the mountains, something left by those who had built the metal thing,
then perhaps it would afford him a way to get past the Lagos, through the
jungle, and back where he belonged.

“Then I will take you,” he said. “We should go under cover of night, after
your father and the others are asleep. Samhad wouldn’t try and stop us, I don’t
think, but he would insist on coming with us.”

Tasha had removed her hands from her face but she did not look up from the
fire. “He knows that I have been waiting my entire life for this. He would let
me go.”

Pehr shook his head. “You are not like your father, or anyone else I know,
so perhaps you don't understand … he
loves
you. You are his eldest
child, and he loves you. If we tell him, he will want to come.”

Tasha favored Pehr with a dark glance. “I know you think I’m cold and empty
and incapable of such feelings, but I know my father loves me, and I love him
as well. I love all my family.”

“Tasha, I don’t—”

“You just said it. But you’re wrong. You’re wrong! I love my whole family
and I do not want to leave them. I would take this burden and give it to
someone else if I could. I do not want to go to the mountains. I want to stay
here, on the plains, and be normal like everyone else, but it is because I love
my family that I cannot. I must go.”

“I know you love your family,” Pehr said, keeping his voice gentle. “Tasha,
what I said – it was wrong to say it, and I’m sorry. I have seen you accept
Kissha’s ceaseless questions and Mandia’s unending need for attention to a
point where I, in your stead, might have gone mad. I have seen you spend full
days with Ketrahm exploring the southlands, telling him stories, adventuring
together. The boy adores you. I have seen how you try so very hard when in the
presence of other plainsmen to hold back, to not do or say anything that might
seem strange and cause your parents discomfort.

“I know you love them. I just … your father will try and come with us, if we
tell him. We can’t let him know, nor any of the rest of your family.”