The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Read online

  Adewole gave his friend an affectionate glance as he shucked his coat. "That is a dilemma known to keep me up at night, but not this time."

  "Have you been working on that book with the illustrated machine diagrams in it?" said Deviatka.

  "It absorbs me much as the Choir absorbs you," he admitted. "Are you convinced now they use magic?"

  "After today? I think I might," said Deviatka. "I traded a little ichor--the black mercury--for a further demonstration of their abilities. One of them had made a new pendant, the first one in centuries, they said, and I think I told you they need ichor to work. Choirmaster Chandler sang the 'angry song' without a pendant, and I swear it was the exact same one he sang before with the same intensity, but I didn't feel a thing. Then he sang with the new pendant--again, nothing. And then he put the ichor in it…I got so angry I knocked over my chair. I didn't believe in magic. I don't believe in gods, but then, neither do the Risentoners, and look what the Choir can do."

  Adewole thought of the fearless Imogen Lumburgher, brought to hysteria's brink at the mere mention of gods. "Oh, they believe in a god all right, and they are terrified of it. The Councilwoman told me today a god tried to kill them so they killed it before it could succeed. She swore this god threw the island into the sky, and no god will ever be allowed to come here again."

  "How can you have belief in magic without gods?"

  "It is true, no atheist culture has legends of past magic, at least legends looked on as more than silly fairy tales," said Adewole. "It is one of the main differences between Jerian folklore and recent Rhendalian folklore--we have folk tales of magic and magical beings many still believe to be true, even though no one has ever seen it. You do not have these tales--yours are all based on morals and aphorisms. We believe in the gods. You do not." He chewed on his lip in thought. "Risenton is an oddity. It believes in magic but not in the active presence of gods. From what I have read, before this terrible 'god' or whatever it was appeared, Risenton believed magic filled the city, right then, not in some mythical past. And there is a connection with ichor. Have you found any black mercury on the island, Deviatka?"

  "No, and we've looked. Whatever's here is all in the Choir's Duets."

  Adewole stopped at the mention of Duets and remembered. "Karl, how did you get in to see the Choirmaster? He is not allowing any Eisenstadter in to Melody Hall--he turned me away just this afternoon."

  "Oh!" said Deviatka. "Not today. I meant…was it yesterday? Before Poole stole the Duet. Anyway, you were speaking of magic."

  "There was a great deal of it once," said Adewole, warming to the subject, "if I can believe the Vatterbroch manuscript."

  Deviatka leaned across the sheet music scattered on the table. "Can you tell me more about what's in the manuscript? Without your translations, I'll never know what this machine does."

  "You must swear to me you will not repeat it," Adewole said with reluctance. "I do not want the Risentoners to be alarmed, Karl."

  "I swear. I double-swear if this is something Blessing can steal. Why would it alarm the locals?"

  "It breaks the Oath--combining metal and magic, that is what the Oath is about. When a Risentoner reaches thirteen, he swears never to combine magic and metal, and then never to speak of it again. This manuscript may be the source of the taboo."

  Deviatka kept unblinking eyes on him. "Tell me what it says."

  "If I am reading this correctly, it describes a machine which can house a consciousness. The consciousness is obtained and bound to the machine with--with spells."

  He'd expected Deviatka to show some sign of disbelief, a clack of the tongue, a turning away in disgust, but instead the engineer nodded. "Go on."

  "That is all. I mean, there are diagrams for building the machine--you have seen these--and there are spells to bind the consciousness to the thing, though I have not translated them all. Nor have I discerned what the consciousness is or where it comes from, whether spells create it out of thin air or whether it is an existing one--a god, a man, I do not know."

  Deviatka bounced his fist on the table. "But was it ever made?"

  "I do not know yet." Not entirely true; according to his notes, Vatterbroch had built the Bone Lyre, but the less said about that grisly thing the better. Adewole sat back in his chair and rubbed his palms against his head; he must shave his hair off, or he would have to have it braided soon. Or he might buy a bigger hat. Perhaps Wirtz could serve as barber. Wirtz made sure he ate, after all. Adewole finished his thought. "I will tell you what I suspect, Karl. This machine god is the god Imogen Lumburgher told me they killed at the time of the Rising."

  "You think it was made, then, and performed the Rising," exclaimed Deviatka.

  "The Rising? I do not know if I can go that far. I must finish the translation before I know more, and even then I will most likely not have an answer. Whether it is myth or reality, I may never know." Adewole retrieved his bansu and thumbed through the sheet music. "Now let me push all this out of my head before it bursts. What are we playing?"

  Adewole looked in dismay through the last translated pages spread before him on the trestle table. He had finished the coda to the manuscript, and thus, the book's not-quite-polished translation. He'd skipped over the spells; at first he'd assumed they were poems. With his bad habit of translating a section as perfectly as possible, poems took much longer than anything else. He wanted to translate the meat of the notebook.

  The coda was very much the meat. Written in a different, nameless hand than Vatterbroch's, it told the end of the story Vatterbroch had not lived to write down himself: the aftermath of the Machine God's creation.

  Were I a better man, wrote the chronicler, I would destroy these notes. But I cannot bring myself to do so. I will hide them when this writing is done. Any fear I have the god might be rebuilt is baseless in any event. Without the ichor it has died, and without the Black Spring, there is no more ichor to be had. It cannot be resurrected, nor a new one built. We have scattered its parts to the corners of this newborn island and buried its heart in the Ossuary.

  Here the writer had drawn a metal box atop a black squared obelisk. Adewole had no sense of scale. It might be as small as a shoebox or as big as a tree. On the box appeared Magic and Metal No More in the variant runes the ancient people of the island used.

  I leave these notes as a chronicle of the end of Cherholtz, our city--my city--a city now half-dead from starvation, cold, disease and worse. I do not expect the rest of us to live. I leave this as evidence that once we existed, though I cannot imagine anyone ever finding his way from the earth into the heavens and our floating graveyard. Reader, take this as your oath: "Magic and metal no more--this I swear." Otherwise, the temptation to make yourself a god will come upon you as it came upon Heicz Vatterbroch.

  Now he is dead. The god is dead. And we will follow them into the grave.

  Adewole sat back, hand over mouth, horror and sympathy welling behind his eyes. So Vatterbroch had succeeded. What terror, what hunger and desperation must have followed the Rising? Vatterbroch made the Bone Lyre to control the god; why would he then order the god to throw Cherholtz into the sky? Unless the Lyre failed and Vatterbroch lost control of the god? If so, what a savage, vengeful god Vatterbroch made, to doom an entire city. Why hadn't it stayed on the ground near the ichor but instead doomed itself? A foolish god, indeed. Adewole rubbed at his temples, painful, frightening images filling his head. He wished the second writer had destroyed the book. He wished he could find the fortitude to destroy it himself. Perhaps Councilwoman Lumburgher was right. No, this was a primary source. He must protect it.

  That night, he said nothing about it to Deviatka. He drank his brandy and water, and claiming headache he retired to his room without their usual music. He needed to know just how accurate the manuscript was, or whether it was the second writer's fancy--a fantasy. Adewole had no way of knowing how long after Vatterbroch the postcript had been written; for all he knew, it might have been centuries later
, mythology tacked on to the notebook. He would have to find this Ossuary, and see for himself.

  Chapter Ten

  Risenton, Oktober 3rd

  "The Ossuary?" shuddered Peter Oster. Adewole and the young Risentoner stood beneath an overhang near the marketplace the next morning, munching on oatcakes and angler mash from a street cart. It was raining heavily for the first time this season, and most of the island was busy filling civic water caches and household cisterns. "I won' take you," he said. "Thass haunted."

  "Is it still in use as a burial chamber?" said Adewole.

  "Thass haunted," the young man repeated, in the slow cadence reserved world-round for children, fools and foreigners. "I…won'...take you!"

  "I take it the answer is no, it is not in use any more," said the professor. "Can you recommend another guide to take me?"

  Peter shook his head in exasperation. He swallowed his mouthful of oatcake, wiped crumbs from his square, stubbly chin and said, "I tell you, none go near that. You best follow folk and do the same."

  He would not. Adewole walked that night outside the Library, among the geometric vegetable plots in the former University quadrangle, and waited for the beat of wings he knew he'd feel before he'd hear. Ofira swooped down and perched on a fence post, her feathers gray and black in the night. "Out again, learnèd 'un? I tell you stay home, you come out. D'you think owls know nowt?" Ofira chided. Perhaps he should have named her after his mother instead of his sister, he reflected.

  "I came to talk to you," said Adewole. "I brought you a beetle." He reached into a pocket, pulled out a wadded handkerchief and opened it; on his palm sat an angler bug, the "lantern" on its antenna tip shining and ready to lure unwary bugs to their doom and its satisfaction.

  Ofira ruffled her feathers and snatched it from his hand. She swallowed it whole, its light the last thing to disappear. "Weren't all that hungry, could've found 'un myself, but I won' turn down an easy meal."

  "Listen now, Ofira, I have a favor to ask you," said Adewole. The bird said nothing; she closed her eyes and, for all the world knew, fell asleep. Adewole pressed on. "Can you come to me in the day tomorrow? I need a guide."

  She opened one round, amber eye. "Where to?"

  "The Ossuary."

  Ofira opened both eyes and tilted her head down against her right shoulder. "Thass haunted."

  "So Peter Oster says, but surely such stories do not bother you? You are an owl. You can outfly any spirit."

  "A learnèd 'un can't."

  "No, but I am not afraid," he lied. "Will you come to me tomorrow, and take me where I need to go?"

  "What is there?" said the bird.

  Adewole paused. "I am not sure, but I must look for it anyway."

  Ofira blinked slowly. "Owls get notions, learnèd 'un, but I've a notion you'll go alone, do I say no. Sun-up tomorrow."

  Deviatka and Wirtz still slept when Adewole wrapped his only drab-colored kikoi round his shoulders, shrugged on his oilskin overcoat and hat, tucked a small lantern in one pocket and two sandwiches in the other, and made his way to the University in the early dawn. Fall's chill now edged the nights and early mornings; though technically it was still summer, warmth retreated earlier on the island. A woman and a girl gathered breakfast vegetables from the quadrangle beds. They unbent and cheerfully hailed him; by this point he was used to his celebrity, and he returned their greetings. The thin, older woman took a purple-tinged carrot from her trug basket, washed it in the brimming rainwater irrigation barrel, and pulled out a knife to cut its green top. Dull, iridescent patterns swirled across the knife blade, like oils on the surface of a fine cup of coffee, or a fast-moving thundercloud.

  Adewole stopped her hand. "Please, may I see your knife?"

  "T'was my gran's, and her gran's, and her gran's," grinned the woman as she handed it over. She shrugged at the girl, who looked like a younger version of herself. "It'll be hers when I'm gone."

  "Oh, gran, don't say such," murmured the pleased girl.

  Adewole turned the knife over and over in his hand; it resembled a bird's wing feather, a strong, delicate curve. Both sides were sharp. "I have never seen this patterning aside from drawings--no, I think I've seen it once." The Chain of Office Councilman Eichel wore, he realized.

  "Odd-metal's not something you see every day," said the proud woman.

  "'Odd metal?' Is that what this patterning is called, or is this just an unusual piece of metal by itself?" said Adewole.

  "Nay, thass what kind of metal that is. Do they not have odd-metal Dunalow?" said the woman. At the shake of his head, she nudged her granddaughter. "Well! Thass one thing we have they don't."

  "That never goes dull," added the girl, "and that won' be melted down a'tall."

  A chill ran down Adewole's back. Vatterbroch's manuscript called the machine god's parts "metal eternal." He reluctantly handed back the knife in exchange for the proffered carrot. "Is there much odd-metal on Risenton?"

  "Here and there," said the old woman, "but not in great amounts. Fathers pass that to sons, mothers to daughters, and not everyone has a piece as we do to pass down. Mostly the rich--and the stubborn." Here she nudged the girl again, who rolled her cheerful eyes for her grandmother.

  Adewole took his leave and walked toward the Library, munching the reddish-purple carrot thoughtfully. It was tougher than the sweet carrots found in Jero and Eisenstadt, but more flavorful, as rich as its coloring. Perhaps they stored better; the growing season here must be short, he thought.

  Ofira glided down to land on the worn Library steps. "Still foolish, learnèd 'un?"

  "Still foolish, my friend. Let us go."

  The western road out of town ran straight and geometrical, like all the remnants of the old city. Its surface was the same as the Risenton Road splitting the island into east and west, and the Great Road ringing the island. The further Adewole got from the City, the more suspicious-looking stone foundations appeared on the cob houses alongside the road even as cobbles disappeared from the road itself, until the paving petered out into a dirt track.

  Adewole kept walking. The sun crested the island's edge at his back, though clouds and mist diffused its light. Few people shared the road today; he'd seen a bare handful of couriers and not a single barrowman. The couriers made almost no sound and came in and out of the mist most disconcertingly. "Why is no one out and about today?" said Adewole.

  "First rain of the season yesterday," said Ofira. "T'unfeathered 'uns will be sick of that soon enow, but the first time's allus a holiday. Nowt much out this way any road--we walk toward the Forest."

  "Which forest?" said Adewole.

  "On'y the one, learnèd 'un." Ofira clacked her beak. "Red voles live here--my favorite. Soon as we get that you've come for, I hunt."

  "Very well," he said, though he didn't entirely know what they'd come for.

  Houses disappeared. Dark shapes in the mist resolved into beech trees, aspens, evergreens--sparse at first along the sides of the track. Signs of harvesting were evident; the underbrush looked almost groomed, no fallen limbs littered the ground, and the younger trees grew in tidy rows. The mist hung low to the ground among the trees even as they grew closer together. "Soon," said Ofira. Suddenly she turned and took a run at a smaller bird flying at a distance behind them. "Starling's annoyed me all the day. Told her I'd eat 'er if she didn't push off."

  Adewole walked up what passed for a hill on Risenton, a slight incline ending at a small, rocky, abrupt outcropping. Vines half-shrouded a natural opening in the rock; a rusted grille kept a sagging, futile guard. "If this is not the Ossuary, it is something at least as haunted," he said.

  "The Ossuary is haunted enough," said the owl from where she hovered nearby. "Nowt that speaks comes here. On'y voles." She stooped, snatched a wriggling rodent from among the rocks, and perched nearby. "I see a red vole, I mun eat a red vole," she said, and she swallowed the stunned little creature whole. Adewole stared at her aghast; though he had seen her eat several dozen times,
he never seen her eat something still wiggling. Ofira puffed her feathers out to twice her size. "I hunt for my meat. You eat another's killing."

  Adewole turned his head away and focused on the door in the rock. "No judgment here, friend."

  "Agreed, learnèd 'un, you've no judgment at all," she snapped. "Owls get notions, and mine is to save my feathers. I'd save yours do you have any, but no feathers and no judgment--thass that we have here in you. Do you go in there, you go alone." She shifted from foot to foot in agitation. "But I will wait."

  "I thank you, truly," said Adewole. "If I do not come out before nightfall, fly to Major Berger or Professor Deviatka and tell him where I am. Will you do this?" She blinked her eyes once, slow and firm, before she closed them and tucked into herself as if to sleep.

  Adewole's hand trembled as he lit the little lantern. Though he had insisted to himself and Ofira--and did his best to believe--he wasn't scared, a voice as insubstantial as the mist whispered at his ear, and his neck prickled. Words formed in his mind in a thin, piteous wail: Go away, take it away, please go away... "Ofira, do you hear something?"

  "Do the learnèd 'un got notions?" mumbled Ofira as if in her sleep, though Adewole knew she was quite awake. He shook his head and walked up the short, rocky path to the cave mouth. The grille had been opened recently, its rusted red, fragile chain snapped in two. When he pushed against the grille, it creaked and crumbled beneath his hand, staining his leather glove orange. Lifting the little lantern, he slipped past the gate's spiky remains. Dust and cold air struck him, as if the Ossuary breathed.

  He crept along, lantern raised as high as possible in the low-ceilinged chamber. Smooth, closely fitted stone lined the floor and walls. The light fell on neat piles of bones, separated by type. Femurs were stacked like logs; ribs woven in basket patterns contained pyramids of skulls. The main chamber opened into many coves; some were mere niches in the wall, but others were larger than the cave in which he stood. He didn't dare enter them for fear of losing his way, choosing instead to stand at each opening and peer inside. All the while, he listened for the voice. Following it made sense in a way, though his instinct said turn and run. In a search for something magical, he reasoned, best follow the magic, and he had to assume the Machine God spoke to him. Unless the Ossuary was truly haunted, there was no other explanation. Adewole had collected many ghost stories in his career, but never a ghost.