Author: Christopher Buecheler
Date: 2013-08-03 00:07:09+00:00
Keywords: science-fiction; Science Fiction; Literature & Fiction; Post-Apocalyptic; Teen & Young Adult; Fiction; Science Fiction & Fantasy
Description: The metal thing has kept a grim vigil within its blasted circle of bone for more than ten thousand years, and those who cross the boundaries of that ring can expect only death. Standing as God to a cracked and broken people, it waits for the one who holds within him the key that can unlock the miracles of the land beyond. Pehr lives with his family in their village by the sea, far removed from the metal thing and its worshipers. He is sixteen, fit and strong, nearly ready to take the Hunter’s Test and become a man. All he has ever known exists on this small strip of land, trapped between the c

The Broken God Machine

By Christopher Buecheler

The Broken God Machine
By Christopher Buecheler

Copyright © 2013 Christopher Buecheler
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-0-9884708-2-8
http://brokengodmachine.com/
http://writing.cwbuecheler.com/

The Broken God Machine is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First Edition: September 2013

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an addition copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to BrokenGodMachine.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Art by Tomasz Jedruszek
Cover Design by Christopher Buecheler

Dedication

For Marie-Christelle, for always making me feel like part of the family.

J’espère que ce livre vous plaira!

Acknowledgments

This is my fourth book, and as with the others it represents not just my work, but the work of several people who have helped me to shape it into its present form. As always, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to thank them here.

- My wife, Charlotte, who remains my toughest and best critic. Her love and support are the reason this book and all of my other works are available and not still sitting on my PC, half-completed and abandoned.

- My principal editor Lauren, who has done a wonderful job as usual helping me not only to kill typos, fix grammar errors, and eliminate errant commas, but also in shaping the story. Once again: if there are any errors left in this text, be assured the fault is mine.

- My content editor, Andy, whose thoughtful and thorough review of the manuscript identified many ways to improve it.

- My cover artist Tomasz, whose glorious digital painting captures the spirit of the book beautifully.

- My advance readers: Nora, Charles, Trevor, Zeke, Tracy, Kim, Sheri, Jennifer, and Tiffany. Your feedback really helped improve the book!

- My fans. It continues to be a pleasure to interact with you guys on Facebook, Twitter, and via email. I hope you enjoy this book as much as you enjoyed the II AM Trilogy!

Lastly, I owe a debt to Messrs. Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, and Joshua Middleton. Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night planted the seed for this book in my mind almost two decades ago. Middleton’s Sky Between Branches illustrations got me brainstorming on characters and ideas. Herbert’s Dune gave me the push I needed to start writing. While I don’t believe I’ve engaged in any outright theft, their influence can be felt here and there, and it would be wrong not to cite their work as inspiration.

Part One

// check for the key
if (scanPacket.giveDNA() == sys.lookup.checkDNA(mombPrime)) {
// open the doors
set public bool isMomb true;
set public int keyPrime = sub.private.getKey(scanPacket);
sub.setAccess(keyPrime);
}

Chapter 1

Pehr was sixteen and as impetuous, and stupid, and brave as any teenager, yet even he feared the Test.

Why not? The Test had taken his older brother, crippled his uncle, and been so terrible to his own father that the man had refused to speak of it to his children, saying always, “When you are older. When you are closer,” until time and fate had taken the opportunity from him forever.

Without the Test, there were no hunters, and without those there could be no law, no order, and no hunt. It was best to be a hunter, and Pehr was glad to have been born into the line. The only alternatives were scheming merchants, grumbling farmers, and of course the women. Of the three Pehr thought the women most worthy of respect. They could tend homes, raise children, mill grain into flour and make it into dough. Women were creators – their hands made bread, and their bodies made children – but they were not hunters.

The Test was only weeks away, and like the other boys of age in his village, Pehr had thought of little else for many months. There were chores and lessons, all those things that made up his life, but principle of all there was the Test. The fear and joy of it occupied his waking and dreaming mind alike. Soon he would be a man, allowed to call himself by his true and full name, the name his father had given him when first he had emerged from his mother’s womb. Khada’Pehr, the son of a hunter, soon to be a hunter himself.

They were talking of it now, he and Jace, who was also the son of a hunter. Pehr’s cousin, two years younger, Jace was many things and most of them good. He was quicker of mind than Pehr, and better with the bow, but he was neither tall nor strong, and Pehr did not know if he would ever be a hunter.

“Sili says you will finish. She’s sure of it,” Jace was saying, and Pehr glanced over at him, grunted, and resumed gnawing at the rib of roast kampri he had stolen from one of the merchantmen in the village center. Pehr was always ravenous; his uncle worked him, it seemed, as if strengthening Pehr’s body could make up for the man’s own crippled leg.

“Yes, act like you don’t care,” Jace said, grinning. “I’ve seen how you get when she comes around. You would take her to bed right now if you were allowed.”

He paused, but no reaction from Pehr was forthcoming, so he continued, laughing and adding, “And if you knew how.”

“I know how,” Pehr said through a mouthful kampri, not indignant. To sound indignant would simply tell Jace his words were true, a satisfaction that Pehr did not intend to give the younger boy. In truth, Jace was not entirely wrong; Pehr did not know how to bed Sili – not exactly – though he had some idea of how the process must work.

What he did know was that when he passed the Test, he would make a necklace of jade and give it to her, and if she accepted it, he would marry her and take her to bed. That he would go there inexperienced was not something that worried Pehr terribly; he had asked his uncle once if he should seek instruction, and the man had thrown Pehr a sideways grin, assuring the boy that such things would take care of themselves.

“If you know, then tell me,” Jace challenged, and Pehr laughed.

“Learn for yourself, wet-head.”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Which of us has seen her, then? Was it you that she showed herself to that time with the wine?”

“It could have been me,” Jace said. “It might have been, if I had been the one who stole the wine and got her drunk. It could have been.”

“But it wasn’t you, because you would never have stolen the wine.”

Jace had no reply to this; it was true.

Pehr grinned at the towheaded boy, finished with his kampri rib, and threw the bone aside. “We have until sundown. Will we sit here and talk of things that I will have and you will never, ever have … or will we go, and swim, and maybe catch some dinner? I doubt I can stomach Nani’s gruel alone again tonight.”

“You say that every night,” Jace said, standing. “Then you eat a double portion and ask for more.”

“Liar,” Pehr said, though it was true, and the two took to their feet, laughing. The sun lay low on the ocean, but there was still an hour yet or more before it sank below the waves. Here, by the lagoon, they were protected from the tremendous rip currents that lurked below the surface of the water outside. The semicircle of rock – the peaks of some long-drowned, long-dead mountain – kept the shallow waters calm and clear, and the boys fished at its edge often. It was the only hunting they were allowed, before the Test.

Pehr stood outlined by the setting sun, a boy of sixteen with brown skin and shaggy, dark hair, on the cusp of manhood but not yet there, his bare torso still unmarked with the scars of the Test and the hunt. The cool breeze that blew unceasingly from the ocean had teased his hair into crazed loops and whorls, and he ran his fingers through it.

He glanced over toward the towering cliffs of Nethalanhal, which ran in a nearly straight line from the ocean to the eastern jungle, making up one edge of his world. There were symbols there on the rock, high above where any man could reach. Ten of them, said to have been carved into the limestone by the very Gods themselves, their meanings lost to a time when men had been more than they were now. They read: VEGA CALIZA.

Pehr wondered, not for the first time, what was beyond those massive grey cliffs. Then his mind returned, as it most often did, to thoughts of the Test, and of Sili, and of food.

“Let’s catch some fish,” he said to Jace, picking up his spear, and without another word he turned and ran toward the bay. Jace followed, trailing behind, his shorter legs not quite able to keep up. He was nimble, though, and gained back the ground as the two negotiated the rocky drop-off that separated the dunes from the farmland. Pehr dropped the last eight feet, landing in the soft, dry sand and sinking to mid-shin.

“Watch out for crabs,” he admonished, turning back to look up at Jace. “They bite.”

“They pinch,” Jace corrected absently, making the same drop down and landing beside him. The two set off together toward the water.

“Look at the Everstorm,” Jace said, pointing.

In the far, far distance to the southwest, the edge of it was visible, reflecting the setting sun. The swirling, angry clouds of the great tempest never left the horizon. Lightning flashes illuminated their cores from time to time, and occasionally a bolt would flicker down to strike the water’s surface. Purple and red and grey, it squatted angry over the ocean like a beast in waiting. No intrepid sailor who had ventured out past the lagoon and into the raging ocean had ever returned; it was said that the Everstorm swallowed them.

“What of it?” Pehr asked, and Jace shrugged.

“I just like to watch it. The colors change as the sun sets, and sometimes I see things in it. Faces, like our ancestors, or … or the Gods.”

“You’re insane,” Pehr said, but he came to a stop at the peak of the last dune, staring out at the swirling maelstrom that lay on the far edge of the earth.

“Am not,” Jace said. “Haven’t you ever looked at something and seen … more? A dragon in the clouds, or a monster’s claw in the branches, or—”

“That’s for babies,” Pehr said, giving a dismissive shake of his head. “It’s like the stories of the Great Old Grandfathers, with their towers of metal and bows that shot beams of sunlight, or the Lagos hordes that the Gods unleash upon those who have sinned.”

“It’s not the same. Those are stories, but this … being afraid, maybe, but the seeing is—”

“I don’t see anything except the Everstorm. It’s the same as it’s ever been.”

“Which means it’s different all the time,” Jace muttered, but Pehr ignored him.

They descended the dune, reaching the bed of kelp and other detritus discarded by the sea that marked the high-tide line. Beyond it the sand grew damp and hard-packed. The boys barely left footprints as they walked along it, moving toward the rocks that poked like rotten teeth from the water near Nethalanhal’s towering grey face. From the shoreward side, these were easily accessible through chest-deep water, but they dropped off precipitously on the other side to depths that made the water dark and inscrutable.

For ages, these rocks had supported a thriving tidal ecosystem, and countless boys and men had come here to hunt the large, red-scaled fish that served as the system’s alpha predators. The trick, Pehr’s uncle had told them when first he began instructing them in the process, was not in killing them. The trick was in luring them near enough to the surface to be killed in the first place. It was best accomplished by two; Pehr and Jace had spent many long hours practicing the technique, and had once succeeded in bringing up a fish so large that it had torn the spear from Pehr’s hands and carried it away.

“I’ll bring them up. You spear,” Jace said, and Pehr laughed at the tone of easy command in the boy’s voice. Of course Jace would bring the fish up; Pehr had easily twice the arm strength.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and clambered out onto the nearest rock, skirting out and around its edge, finding the well-worn platform upon which he had stood countless times before. Jace scurried up and over the other side, nimbly leaping a crevasse and then skidding on his feet down a slick, algae-covered length of rock. Pehr watched, impressed, reflecting on the fickle twist of fate that had given the boy such innate and uncanny agility, and an aim with the bow that was truly Gods-sent, yet denied him the strength of body he would need to survive the Test.

Well, Pehr thought, he has another two years yet to fill out, at least.

“Are you going to stare at me or spear fish?” Jace asked him. Pehr rolled his eyes and made a gesture of contemptuous dismissal that his aunt would have scolded him for making, but he took his position with the spear.

Jace squatted down at the water’s edge, pulled half a dozen sea snails from the rock, and put them in a pile. Without ceremony, he grabbed a nearby loose stone and brought it slamming down. Shells were shattered, snail lives extinguished, bait made. Jace scooped up the remains in two cupped hands and dumped them into the sea, then dipped his hands as if to rinse them, but instead began to thrash them in sharp, erratic movements.

If they were lucky, a red fish would scent the blood and feel the vibrations of Jace’s hands, putting the two together as a fish in distress. It would come up from the depths to investigate, and Pehr would stab it with his spear, long and slender and flexible.

They knew that from this point it was mostly a matter of chance; sometimes a red fish came within minutes, and sometimes they would spend an hour without success, killing many snails – it seemed that no matter how many gave their lives for this cause, there was never a shortage. The men of the village believed that the larger, elder fish had made it to such a distinguished state by learning to discern the difference between a true meal and a fake. Only a master of the thrashing motion, it was said, could hope to fool them.

Jace was no master, but he was skilled, and luck was on their side this night. After but a few minutes, a red fish of perhaps three hands in length swam up from the depths. It would provide plenty enough for the five people who would be sharing it for dinner, with some left over to be stored in the cool depths of the root cellar and eaten with breakfast. Jace grinned, his eyes never leaving the water, as Pehr pulled back his arm and drove the spear forward. His aim was true, and the limber wooden spike pierced first the water and then the red fish. The fish thrashed, the water going dark with its blood, trying to escape, but the spear had driven straight through it. Pehr lifted the fish from the water with ease, leaning against the rock for balance against the fish’s frenzied death throes.

“Well done!” Jace said, standing up from his crouched position and stretching. Pehr held the fish up in the air until its motions had become little more than twitches. Then he moved again to the shore side of the rock, and into the water. Jace followed him.

“Let’s get it home,” Pehr said. “I’m starving.”

Chapter 2

“The swinging stones did this to me,” Pehr’s uncle Khana’Truff told them, and not for the first time. He pointed to his mangled left leg, the shin and thigh both obviously broken and not set right. “Had I not such strength in my arms, I would not have been able to drag myself to safety. I would have been ground to paste.”

“You were lucky, Father,” Jace said in a tone that seemed to lack the breathless awe and attention Truff had been expecting. The man whirled to face his son, giving that familiar glare that Jace and Pehr so often imitated behind his back.

“Lucky?! I trained for that Test, boy! I trained every day. I was the only one of my year to make it through the Test at all, and that’s why they softened it up.”

“Stefan says that’s a rumor,” commented Pehr through a mouthful of gruel and chunks of sweet, red fish, not looking up from his plate.

Truff grunted, belched, and drank from his stone mug of ale. “Stefan is the witless son of a witless merchant and knows less about the world even than his coward father. Rumor? My arse.”

“It’s just what he says, Uncle.”

“My arse, I said! What nonsense. If they hadn’t softened it up, there wouldn’t be five, sometimes six boys from most years to make it through.”

Nani, Jace’s elder sister by one year, entered the room carrying a basket holding two loaves of bread and a crock of kampri butter. She was wearing her most prized possession, a necklace of polished jade chipped with painstaking care from the edge of Nethalanhal by the hunter Khada’Josep, two years Pehr’s senior, who had passed the Test first among his peers. The necklace’s creation was as much a rite of passage as the Test itself, and to gift it to a woman meant nothing short of the most sincere intent to marry.

“You shouldn’t curse at the dinner table, Father,” Nani said, setting the bread down and looking at Truff with an expression of playful reproach. “Especially not in front of the children!”

“We’re not children,” Jace said. Nani ignored him.

“I didn’t curse,” Truff protested, grabbing a loaf of bread and breaking it. He handed the first piece to his wife, Anna, who bowed her head in thanks. Anna had taken a vow of silence upon the news of Nani’s betrothal. This was their custom; she would not speak again until the eve of the wedding, using the period of silence to meditate, pray to their gods, and gather her thoughts for the speech she was to deliver at the wedding.

“You said ‘arse,’” Nani informed her father. “I heard it from the kitchen.”

She took a seat between Pehr and Jace, reaching for the dish of salad in the center of the table. Using her eating sticks, she brought some to her plate, and then selected a leaf from the pile and brought it to her mouth, still smirking.

“Arse isn’t a curse,” Truff grumbled. “But if it offends your delicate ears, my sweet, you’ve my permission to take your dinner in the pasture with the kampri.”

Nani stuck her tongue out at him, giggled, scooped fish-gruel from its wooden bowl with a palm leaf and deposited it on her plate next to the salad. Pehr glanced over at her and smiled. Nani was a beautiful girl, her brown skin tanned dark by the sun, her hair plaited and partly bleached with lye-stone, dyed oranges and reds to layer in with its natural browns. Since her engagement, she had been in a near-constant good mood, and her grey-green eyes seemed to sparkle. They crinkled at the corners, when she smiled, in a way that had always made the back of Pehr’s neck feel warm and prickly. She was smiling now and he found he had to look away.

“We’re not children, Nani,” Jace said again, elbowing her.

“You’re not men,” Nani said, not looking at him.

“So?”

“So until you’re Tested, you’re children. That’s how it works.”

“You’ve never been Tested.”

“I’m a woman. As you know perfectly well, we don’t take the Test.”

“Don’t see how being betrothed to some hunter who’s made a stupid necklace makes you a woman …”

“Don’t call my necklace stupid. I don’t have to explain to you how it makes me a woman. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

“What about Luce, then?” Jace asked, grinning.

Pehr snickered, and Nani rolled her eyes. Luce was nearing her sixtieth year, ancient by their standards. She was twenty years older even than Truff, who was one of the few living hunters who had survived past his thirty-fifth year. Luce had come to their village as an orphan refugee, her face deeply scarred during an attack that had decimated her home. Some whispered that it was the work of the Lagos, the weapons of the Gods, but Luce had never confirmed it, afraid to be shunned by her adopted people. She had never wed. She made a living working for the merchantmen, cleaning their homes and sewing their blankets.

“I think they grant an honorary title anyway, once you’ve seen forty winters,” Truff said dryly, and the others around the table laughed.

“Perhaps Pehr can take Luce to bed,” Nani said, giggling. “His Test is nearly here … soon he’ll be a man!”

“If he passes,” Truff said, turning an eye on Pehr, who was still shoveling gruel into his mouth as if it was his last meal on earth.

“I’ll pass,” Pehr said between bites. “You’ve taught me.”

Truff smiled, nodded, leaned back in his chair. “I have. You’ve not the arm-strength I had … I’ll say it will take you a bit longer to open the sow’s brain with your club … but you’re faster and wield a bow better than I did. You will pass.”

“You said Paul would pass, too,” Jace said, and before he had even finished the sentence Nani reached out to swat him on the arm. Jace’s face went pink and assumed an expression of regret with which they were all familiar; his mouth often went off before his brain could catch up to it.

Truff made an expression that was almost a grimace, as if remembering that other boy had filled his mouth with some foul taste. Pehr understood the look; whenever he thought of Paul, and what the Test had done to him, he was filled with a vast sense of anger and futility and helplessness. Paul had been a young phenom, and Pehr had worshipped the ground that his older brother walked on. Still, the Test had taken him.

“I’m sorry, Father,” Jace said. Truff shook his head.

“Don’t apologize for speaking the truth,” he said. “Men make proclamations. We predict the future. In the end, though, the Test sees the truth in us all.”

Truff seemed on the verge of saying something further and then shrugged. What more was there to say? Paul had been the son of a hunter. As such, he had been tested. It was the only judge of hunters’ sons their people had ever known, and though it was a harsh one, it had served them well for many years.

The Test killed, but it did not kill indiscriminately. Paul, dead two years now, had been a force of destruction with the club, but his strength had come at the cost of foot-speed, and the caves had judged him. It was not enough to be strong; only those who were strongest, fastest, smartest, and best with the bow could survive. All others perished, and in some years this left only a very small few. In some years, there were none at all. This was Uru, their world, and this was the only life they knew.

There was silence around the table for a moment, and then Pehr spoke. “What’s passed is passed. I am not Paul. I will live.”

Truff nodded. Nani favored Pehr with a smile that was all hope and belief and excitement, and it sent a warm flush swelling across his skin.

“Then you’ll be a hunter,” she said. “You’ll find some nice girl, and give her your necklace, and then there will be many little Pehrs running about.”

Jace made a gagging noise. Nani reached out and smacked him again, not even bothering to turn in his direction. Pehr shrugged.

“After the Test there is naught but the will of the Gods,” Pehr said. It was a saying taught to all hunters’ children, and it was the truth. Pehr had only vague ideas about life as a man. He would give his necklace to Sili, if she would have it. He would hunt, she would make bread. They would make children. What else was there?

“Worry about what comes after the Test some other time,” Truff said. “Tonight, I need you to help me re-thatch the roof of the chicken pen.”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Good. Jace, you will repair the hole in the kampri fence.”

“But Father—“ Jace began, and Truff held his hand up.

“I’ll not hear it, boy. Your foolish games spooked the beasts and put the hole there. It’s been two weeks, and a pile of rocks is not a fit solution. The kampri will shove them aside eventually, and then we’ll be chasing them from here to the jungle’s edge. You will fix it. Tonight.”

Jace rolled his eyes, sighed, slumped in his chair. “Yes, Father.”

“You would think he had nothing to do with it,” Nani commented, and Jace glared at her. The boy maintained that he was not at fault, that he had been performing an experiment when he impersonated the call of a jungle cat, and could not possibly have expected to trigger a minor stampede. Stupid beasts to begin with, kampri seemed to lose even their limited brainpower when spooked. They had hammered a hole in the fence with their horns, and six had escaped before Jace had built his pile of rocks. He and Pehr had spent an entire afternoon hunting the fugitives down and returning them to their pen. Truff had been unimpressed.

“I don’t care who is at fault,” Truff said. “Even if the Gods themselves hammered that hole in the fence, Jace is the one who is going to mend it.”

“Fine. I’m done anyway,” Jace said. “May I be excused, Father, that I might carry out this important task you’ve given me?”

Jace’s mother, restricted by her vow of silence, shot her son an angry glance. Truff noticed this, and the left corner of his mouth curled upward in a smirk before breaking out into a full grin.

“A little spirit is never a bad thing in a hunter, Anna. Not so long as he knows when to silence his foolish mouth and do as he’s told. You’ve learned that lesson well, have you not, my son?”

“All too well, Father. I sometimes wonder if I’ve yet woken up from a few of your more … zealous teachings,” Jace replied, standing up and collecting his dishes. He left the room, to deposit them in the washtub, where they would shortly be attended to by Nani and her mother.

“Is there any bread left?” Pehr asked, glancing around, and Nani laughed at him.

“Go do your work. If you get it done in time to go out for a swim with me, I will bring you some bread.”

Pehr turned a questioning look to his uncle, who only laughed. “Don’t ask me for permission to go, boy. You heard the girl. Get to it.”

Pehr nodded, stood, and followed Jace into the kitchen.

* * *

“How long have we been friends?” Nani asked him, and Pehr glanced over at her in surprise, eyebrows raised.

“I’ve known you all my life.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

They had gone to the sea after dinner and their chores were done, swimming slowly out to the very string of rocks that Pehr and Jace so often visited. The younger boy hadn't joined them, preferring instead to stay home and work with his father on techniques with the club.

Nani was lying on her back on the smooth rocks, looking up at the stars above them. She yawned and said, “When I had five years and you had six, you used to pull my hair and call me ugly, and I hated you. I hated you!”

Pehr, who hadn't thought of those days in so long that they seemed now to have happened in some other life, laughed a little. “Yes. Do you want me to apologize, Nani?”

“No. I want you to tell me how long we’ve been friends.”

Pehr thought about it for a moment, looking back through those years, trying to recall when his relationship with Nani had changed from antagonism to something else.

“Tenth year,” he said at last.

“Yours or mine?”

“Yours. It was just five years ago. It seems longer. Do you remember it?”

“I … no. Remember what?”

“When you told Stefan he was no better than kampri shit. You said that because he was insulting Jace, and he shoved you, and you skinned your knees.”

Nani’s eyes lit up and she grinned. “That’s right! I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t help it, and you hit him so hard his nose burst.”

“And then he ran home,” Pehr said, nodding.

“You helped me up, and the two of you climbed up in the palms and picked berries for me. You pretended you were monkeys and made me laugh.”

Pehr shrugged. “Jace made you laugh. When I tried to be a monkey, I nearly fell from the tree.”

Nani was smiling, her eyes far away. “I remember.”

“That … that is when we became friends, I think.”

“Yes, that was it. I don’t think we ever fought again … not like we did before.”

Pehr sat in silence. He did not have the words to explain how, in her tenth year, Nani had made some fundamental step in the transition from the awkward, obnoxious child she had been to the woman that she would become. It was not simply her appearance; it went far deeper than that. When Stefan had shoved her, Pehr had understood in that moment that Nani was right. Stefan was a puling, cowardly bully, and she was better than him, and he had no right to put his hands upon her.

Though equal in years, Pehr had always been bigger and stronger than Stefan, and he had settled matters in the way that hunters most often did. Stefan had fled crying to his merchant father, who had in turn made clear a simple fact of life: in their village, as in all Uru, it was best to avoid incurring the wrath of hunters. Stefan had never been more than a minor annoyance to Pehr or his cousins again.

Nani sighed. “I'm afraid for you, Pehr, and for Jace. Will you speak to me as a friend tonight? Not as a woman or a girl, not someone to be protected from the truth, but only as a friend?”

Pehr nodded and, when Nani did not elaborate, said, “I will.”

Nani was silent for a time, so long in fact that Pehr wondered if she had reconsidered her decision to share this thing that was troubling her. He kept his peace, and at last she spoke.

“Will you pass your Test?”

Her voice was tight, strained with concern, and for a time Pehr contemplated her question without answering. At last he said, “I do not fear it.”

“That’s not what I’m asking you!” Nani cried, sitting up and turning to stare at him with an expression that was equal parts anger and love. “Damn it, Pehr … answer the questions I ask you. Don’t give me answers you think I want to hear to questions I never asked.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t ask you for a Gods-damned apology. Answer the question. In three weeks, will I be cousin to a hunter or just another dead man? Will I have to send my husband out on the hunt with only the village idiots by his side, or will I know that when he goes, he goes with friend and family, someone who will think of his safety? When Jace’s time comes, should he pass the Test, will you be there to guide him on the hunt?”

“Nani … what is it that you fear? The other hunters are good men.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, good men. Is that what your father would say of them, then?”

Pehr was taken aback; no one had spoken openly of his father’s death in years. The man had met his end when Pehr was only two years old, the victim of an errant spear thrown not by an enemy but by a fellow hunter. The spear had been intended for a boar but had instead hit Pehr’s father in the chest. Twelve days later, the wound went bad and the fever took him. Pehr’s mother, still in mourning, had died not nine months later, killed by a sea snake in shallows that seemed no danger even to her sons, who were following along behind her.

This was Uru. This was their world. Truff and Anna had taken the boys in as their own, and had done so gladly. The couple had proven nearly infertile, capable of bearing only two children in nearly a decade of attempts, and were in need of sons.

“My father’s death was an accident,” Pehr said.

“Of course it was,” Nani replied. “But would my father have thrown that spear? They were brothers. They were family, like you and I are family. I know that Josep is not, but after we are wed … you will think of him that way. I know you will. You would never throw a spear that might hit him, or my brother.”

Pehr nodded at this. “No, I wouldn’t. I would hold the spear.”

“One of our lives is worth more than some stupid boar. I know you understand that. Oh, Pehr, I’m so afraid for you, and for Jace, and for Josep. I hate the hunt. I … I hate the Test! I hate it!”

There it was at last, or so it seemed to Pehr. This was what Nani had wanted to say; she hated the Test, but feared saying so to a boy who had spent his entire life preparing for it. Now it was out, and Pehr was glad to realize that he was not upset by her hate. The Test was cruel; it had taken family from them both already, and might yet take more.

His heart ached for her, this girl who could only sit and wait and see, who could only hope that her cousin and her brother would survive these dangers forced upon them. He wished, not for the first time, that she might be someone else, so he could take her in his arms and comfort her. This was impossible, and so he merely stared out at the Everstorm, black clouds against a black sky, turned purple-red now and again by flashes of lightning.

“The Test sees the truth in us all,” he said at last, and the words tasted to him no better than they had to Truff earlier in the evening.

“Don’t quote empty sayings at me,” Nani snarled. “Don’t you feed me that shit. I’ll take it from my father – I know it hurts him to say it as much as it does me to hear it – but I won’t take it from you. I won’t take it from Paul’s brother!”

“I was never much with words,” Pehr told her.

It hurt to think too much about Paul, but he understood Nani’s anger. He understood it very well. How many nights had he lain awake after Paul’s death in the caves, hating the Test, hating his village, hating his existence as the son of a hunter? How could he spout such empty platitudes, now that it was his turn to be tested, his turn to face death?

“I want one word, Pehr,” Nani said. “I asked you a simple question, and I want your answer, and I want the truth. Will you pass the Test? Will you be a hunter?”

Pehr paused, breathed, looked deep within himself and evaluated himself against those hunters before him who had passed. There was Josep, Nani’s betrothed, a strong man and good shot with the bow, but he had been no better than Pehr was now when he had passed the Test. There was Clay, and Torvus, and Sirtram. All were good men, and good hunters, but none had been more prepared, more skilled, or even luckier than Pehr. They had simply passed the Test, as they had trained all their lives to do, as had Pehr.

“I will pass,” he said, and nodded. “Yes, Nani. That is the one word you wanted, is it not? Yes. I will be there to hunt with Josep, and with Jace.”

“Speak for yourself. You will pass, you believe it and because of that, I believe it … but Jace? He is not … you cannot know his fate.”

“He has two years, Nani. That is still much time to learn, and … perhaps I can help. After I pass, I will know the Test. I can help him to prepare.”

“My father knows the Test as well.”

“Yes, but it’s been years. It may have changed. It may have—”

“You know your help will be welcome, Pehr. You are like a brother to Jace and me. But you cannot guarantee his success. We all know that Jace is not … he is not a typical hunter. He is not strong.”

“No, but he is fast and smart and he can shoot. Who is to say?”

Nani sighed. “It’s not fair.”

“Nothing is fair. Nani … when is life fair? My father passed his Test, made his necklace, gave it to my mother and married her. They made children, hunted, made bread … they did everything right, and what did it get them?”

“Death,” Nani said.

“All roads lead to death,” Pehr replied.

“More sayings. Think for yourself, Pehr.”

“I believe that saying. We all must die, Nani.”

“Will you promise me something?”

“Ask.”

“Will you promise to help him? Will you promise to do everything that you can to help him, with the Test and the hunt, and … everything? Will you promise to always be there for him?”

Pehr smiled. “Nani, of course I will.”

“Swear it!”

“I promise. I swear to you that I will keep him safe. If by my power I can stop harm from coming to Jace, or to you, or to any of those that I know and love, I will do so. That is all I can do, and all I can give you.”

Nani nodded and sat up, glancing backward toward their village. Soon they would need to wade back; the sun rose early, and it was nearly time to sleep.

“That is all you can give me,” she agreed. “And that is all I need. I believe you, Pehr. I trust you. If harm comes looking for any of us, and you can prevent it … I know you will.”

With these words, Nani stood and made her way into the shallow lagoon, heading toward home, confident that Pehr would follow her. She didn’t look back and didn’t need to. He was there, ready to protect her, as he was ready to protect all those whom he loved.

In ten days’ time his strength would be tested, and any question of Pehr’s survival as a hunter would be rendered moot.

Chapter 3

Somewhere, past the thick jungle that spread wide across the eastern border of Pehr’s land, the metal thing stood, keeping its sad and lonely watch. Long since exposed by the ravages of time, its skeleton-like understructure – once sheathed in material cunningly designed to mimic the smoothness and elasticity of human skin – was now covered with a grey-green coating of moss and lichen. This substance had built up in microscopic layers over eons to form what seemed at first glance almost a furry, organic musculature, though in truth it was still the underlying handiwork of the original designers that lent weight and shape to the metal thing’s appearance. The overall impression it gave, now, was of a thin and wasted corpse left leaning against a canyon wall, long abandoned. Forgotten.

At its feet and in a ring some seventy strides around it lay countless bones, some so ancient that they had become nothing more than dust that mixed with the soil to form a kind of chalky grey paste. No plants grew within this circle, and no living thing made its home there; no beetle crawled, no earthworm slid, no rodent scurried or ant clambered, no creature moved within the ring of bone. The earth there was poisoned by the actions of some long-forgotten civilization, in some long-forgotten past, for some long-forgotten reason. The effects of this toxic exercise lived on, like the metal thing, even ages after the land it had been set to guard had become home to little more than the wind that screeched through its ruins like the wailing of ghosts.

Still, the metal thing was not completely forgotten, not completely abandoned. There were those who knew of its existence, and the majority of those typically gave it a wide berth. When the blessings of the gods were required, however, the metal thing would entertain visitors, and it would extract its payment in the blood of their chosen sacrifices. These offerings were not made lightly, and the metal thing had never yet failed to take what was given to it. The bones that formed the blasted, shattered perimeter of its arc of influence lay in testament to this fact.

Others, too, sometimes stumbled into the place the metal thing had made its home, and this was one such occurrence. One of the wild boars that Pehr’s people so prized had wandered deeper and further than its brethren usually ventured. Driven by a mad desire for the delicious fungus that grew sometimes below the roots of trees, the boar had moved ever inward and upward, its keen senses guiding it toward its prize. Now, at last, had come its moment of triumph.

There was nothing within this poisoned garden for the boar, of course. Nothing edible could grow within the metal thing’s circle, but on the far side from where it now stood, the creature could discern that most subtle of aromas, the delicious prize that it sought. It had only to cross, and while this land smelled foul to the boar, it was not so toxic as to be worth circumventing. The boar trotted into the field of bones at a brisk pace, intent on the delicacy that awaited it just around the bend.

The metal thing’s response was instantaneous. Moss-covered and derelict though it might have been, its internal workings still functioned, and it jerked alive with the screech of metal on metal, moving from its leaning position to full standing, its arms thrown back. Tiny motors located below what had once been its cheeks whirred and spun, attempting to contract simulated skin and muscle that was no longer there.

“W-LC-M- FR--ND!” it howled at the boar, its voice a grinding, buzzing warble that might once have sounded human.

The boar stopped dead in its tracks, hunkering low to the ground in fear, preparing to flee. It could not have known, even had it been gifted with any such capability of thought, that it was, for all intents and purposes, already dead. It couldn't understand that the metal thing’s sensors and motors and inner workings allowed it to react – even now, after millennia of disrepair – at speeds far beyond those of which the boar was capable.

“PL--S- PR-S-NT Y--R P-SS,” the metal thing screeched, and the boar turned to begin its lumbering attempt at escape, unleashing a terrified squeal in the process.

The metal thing lurched, knee joints howling in protest as it dropped into a crouching posture, its arms swung low toward the ground for added stability. Its eyes were covered with a series of moss-coated, interlocking plates, and they opened now to reveal centers that burned red like the embers thrown forth by a volcano. Death poured from those eyes, even as it screeched its last words to the creature so desperately attempting to escape.

“P-SS N-T PR-S-NT-D. -C-SS D-N--D. PL--S- L-C-T- TH- V-S-T-R C-NT-R T- -BT--N PR-P-R CR-D-NT--LS.”

The boar was a sizzling lump of meat, its bristly hair smoldering, twin smoking craters bored through its side, long before this sentence was finished. The metal thing cocked its head as if studying this scene and then, after a moment, returned to a standing position. It leaned against the canyon wall, eye covers sliding shut, and its skeletal shoulders slumped.

“TH-NK Y-- F-R V-S-T-NG,” it said, and then it was silent, as it sometimes went for months or even years between encounters of this type.

At a safe distance, yellow-green eyes took all of this in. The sacred circle remained unspoiled. The boar had passed into the arc of death and had paid the price all that trod upon the ground there must pay. Everything was as it had ever been, since first the watch had begun.

Above the metal thing, past the canyon, the wind wailed its banshee’s dirge. A tiny bug came to the edge of the metal thing’s domain and stopped, sensing the polluted soil in front of it. Turning around, it trundled off the way it had come, and so was spared the boar’s fate, and the fate of all those whose bones littered that tainted ground.

* * *

They existed for Pehr and Jace, and even Truff, only as rumor and legend; there was only one in the village old enough to remember a coming of the Lagos horde. So it was that only the old woman Luce, wrinkled and wretched and bent over her washing, knew what the sound meant when first the drums began to thud from somewhere deep within the jungle.

Her mind associated death with those drums, and in great amounts, but also things worse than death. There was fire, blazing still in those distant memories, and torture – the vicious mutilation, over and over, as if the Gods themselves had ordered it of the creatures. Luce remembered the pain, searing through her body, as if the things had coated their wicked talons in some kind of liquid fire. She remembered the horror of it, all these years later, just as she remembered the overwhelming relief that had come when at last she had opened her eyes, and found she was still able to see. The others had not been so lucky; the Lagos had left most dead, and the rot that soon spread to many of the survivors was even more merciless. At the savage beast men’s hands or from the infection that followed, most had died in agony.

It had been forty-six years since she had last heard those drums, and Luce had thought herself prepared for their inevitable return. She was the last alive among this village who knew the sound, and she had risen every morning preparing herself for the eventuality that she would hear it again. How and when the Lagos chose to prey on a given village was a mystery to her and to all who had come before her, but that they someday would return, somewhere along the great length of the jungle’s edge, was certain. Now that day had arrived and when the noise first came to her, Luce shot to her feet as if her knees had not seen nearly six decades of wear.

She managed three steps before her heart failed and, with a croaking noise that was some combination of despair and relief, she pitched forward, crashing to the ground. She was dead even before her impact with the hard, oiled, earthen floor of her dwelling, and perhaps this was for the best. Luce would be spared the horrors to come. She had lived through the coming of the Lagos once, and once was enough for anyone.

There would be no more warning for the village than the drums, but it mattered little; what was coming would come regardless, and there was nowhere to go. There was only their tiny strip of land between the jungle and the sea, the place where her people made their home. If they went north, to the next village, the Lagos would come there, and to the next, and to the next after that. They would come until there was no place left to go, until those who fled them were boxed in by the baking desert of the north, and the swirling sea to the west, and the horde that descended upon them. All choices would mean death. Death and worse.

For Pehr, the drums were little more than a fairy tale, a threat the elders scared children with in order to keep them obedient. Perhaps he had believed in the Lagos, once, but he had long since put those stories behind him, and when first the drums started up, they were a background noise, something far in the distance and not so pressing as thoughts of Sili, and the ministrations of his hand.

He sat now on his bed, breathing hard, and a groan escaped him. He’d discovered this activity some years ago, but only recently had it become so pressing a part of his life. It seemed that he could barely go a day, and sometimes not even that, without entertaining these needs. In his mind, he was with Sili again, drunk on stolen wine, and this time she was not only opening her legs to show him, but inviting him to touch as well …

There was a crash, and then another; it was Jace, banging on the thatched wooden door of Pehr’s room, bringing him out of his reverie. He grunted, instinctively covering himself with one hand while pushing against the door with the other, ensuring that Jace did not burst in on him.

“What?!” he snarled. “What is it?”

“Don’t you hear? Gods, Pehr, it’s the drums! Do you hear them?”

“No. What drums? Jace, leave me alone!”

“It’s the Lagos, Pehr! They’re coming. They’re coming for us!”

Despite his annoyance with the younger boy, something about Jace’s tone made Pehr bite back the curses that wanted to leap from his mouth. With an effort, he pushed the thoughts of Sili from his mind and forced himself to focus on what Jace was saying. At last, his mind registered the noises in the distance as something out of the ordinary.

“Pehr, from the stories … the Lagos! You can’t have forgotten!”

Jace was still pounding on the door, as if acquiring entrance would somehow stop the drums. Pehr rose to his feet, hiking his leather breeches up as he did so.

“I remember. Jace, stop. I’ll be out in a moment. Stop hitting the door or, Gods help me, I will break your legs off and beat you to death with them!”

When Pehr emerged from their hut a few minutes later, Jace was sitting on a nearby boulder, staring east toward the distant jungle’s edge. The expression on his face was unlike any Pehr had ever seen there before, a mixture of near-religious awe and abject terror.

“I knew they were real,” he said in a breathless voice, not turning to look at Pehr even as he came to stand next to the boulder.

“They’re not real. Jace, those drums could be anything.”

Jace shook his head. “No, it’s the Lagos. Don’t you remember the stories, Pehr? Someone has made the Gods angry, and now they’ve sent the horde.”

Pehr remembered only wisps. It was said that the Lagos were beast-creatures that walked on two legs like men, but were stronger, faster, and infinitely more bloodthirsty. The denizens of Uru believed that the Gods held them deep in the jungle, many days’ journey beyond where even the most seasoned hunters ever tread. The Lagos would be unleashed on any village unlucky enough to earn the Gods’ wrath, though how exactly one incurred such anger had never been clearly explained to Pehr. He knew only that it took some action worse than any petty sins that he or Jace might have committed.

“Luce has seen them,” Jace said. “She was there when they came, when they murdered the hunters, held down the farmers and the merchants and the women, cut their faces to ribbons, left them for dead.”

“Kampri shit.”

“No, it’s true! How do you think she lost her ear? She tells the best Lagos stories because it was her old village they last attacked. You can see it in the way her eyes look, like she’s traveling back in time.”

“She’s a storyteller and she’s taken you in. Jace, no one has ever seen a Lagos, just as no one’s ever seen the giant dragon-fish that lives at the center of the Everstorm. It’s a stupid story made up to frighten babies.”

Jace finally took his eyes away from the jungle and glared angrily at Pehr. “I’m not a baby.”

“Then stop acting like one.”

Jace’s reaction surprised him. The blonde-haired boy leapt to his feet, eyes blazing, and snarled out a word so foul it was nearly blasphemous: “Baptista!”

Had Pehr not been so taken aback by the use of the word, he would have hit Jace. No one among the village knew the origin of this term, but its use was kept only for the most base and vile of men, baby-killers and cannibals, the type of man who would murder his own brother or take his sister by force.

Pehr stood, mouth agape, processing what Jace had just called him. The younger boy gave him little time to react, leaping from the rock with his hands outstretched. He connected solidly with his older cousin and the two went sprawling, Jace rolling nimbly away while Pehr landed flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him by the hard-packed earth. Jace knelt over him, eyes wide and feral, two red blotches at his cheeks standing out like burns against his pallid skin.

“I am not a baby!” Jace cried. “I will not sit here while you let the Lagos take us by surprise, because I was listening. All my life, while you were busy fighting and stealing and acting the kampri’s ass, I have been listening!”

Pehr, still trying to catch his breath and struggling to process this sudden change in a boy who had only ever been good humored, made no reply.

“The Lagos will come, and because of fools like you, we will not be ready. They will murder us like livestock and drink our blood and put our heads on pikes. They will take Nani and Sili and even my mother, and hold them down, and carve them like meat! They will blind them, take their ears and tongues, and leave them lying in the dirt.

“You can sit here and call it nothing if you want, laugh those drums off as tales meant to scare babies. Go ahead, Pehr. Go ahead and die. Go ahead and laugh, and then die like a baptista.”

Pehr lost what little temper he had been able to retain. He surged forward, grabbing Jace’s scrawny neck and twisting his own broad shoulders. Jace made a squawking noise, falling sideways, and within moments Pehr had him pinned. Jace struggled for a moment, but Pehr’s grip proved too strong, and after a moment he gave up.

“Hit me if you must,” he said. “I deserve it.”

“I’m not going to hit you, wet-head. Get up.”

Pehr let go of the boy and stood up, stretching out his hand to Jace. For a very long moment there was nothing to be found in Jace’s eyes but abject despair.

“I’m frightened, Pehr,” he said.

“I know you are. ”

“Will you fight with me, if it comes to that? Will you … I don’t want to be alone.”

“I will go to my death defending our home. Just like you, and just like Truff, and every other hunter. If these drums herald the coming of terrible beast-men of giant size, all filled with black hatred, then so be it. I will fight on regardless.”

At this, Pehr saw some of the terror leave his cousin’s eyes, and Jace reached his hand out, taking Pehr’s and allowing himself to be helped up.

“How many arrows do we have in store?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Pehr said. “Six bundles? Perhaps seven. At least sixty in all …”

Jace paused, his eyes turned up and to the right, as if reading his thoughts from the empty sky above. After a moment he frowned, and sighed, and shook his head.

“It will not be enough,” he said, and without further elaboration he began to walk toward the village center.

Chapter 4

The drums played through the night. It was a time of sparse sleep for Pehr’s village. In the ever-increasing gloom of dusk, it had become difficult to drive the old childhood stories of the Lagos out of their minds.

There was talk of flight, at first, but the hunters had quickly put such thoughts to rest. None among them would willingly abandon their homes, and so anyone else who left would go without protection. Alone and scattered across the fields and small forests that lay between their village and the next along the coast, a place many moons away that few besides the merchantmen had ever visited, they would surely be easy prey for whatever enemy now threatened them.

Some of the merchants left anyway, trusting the road and its rigors more than these gruff warriors whose disdain they were willing to endure only for so long as it was profitable. There was no market now for shells or linen, or for the sweet cactus harvested by the nomadic tribes that lived on the edge of the great northern desert. The only need now was for the merchants’ weapons, of which every last one had been bought, and information, of which the merchants had none. Some stayed, others went; to the hunters, the farmers, and their families, it was of little concern.

Drawn together by the drums, the village families had gathered in its center without needing to be called, and so it was that the news of Luce’s death spread quickly among them. She had no family to tend to her body, and her worthless merchant master had refused the responsibility and fled, so the hunters had jointly agreed to lead the ceremony of fire. Luce’s body was tightly wrapped and placed in the dark crypt below the central shrine. There it would wait for two days, as was their custom, before the burning.

Pehr’s village was made up of a loose collection of families, most of which were largely self-sufficient except in times of crisis. Truff’s tiny clan was perhaps the smallest, and the mammoth, fifty-person family to which Nani’s betrothed, Josep, belonged was without question the largest. In times of grief, danger, or celebration, the village came together to form a cohesive whole some four hundred strong between the youngest baby and the eldest member – a title which had now passed to a man named Kal’Aldus, who had lived for fifty-three years.

They gathered together now, the women and children nearest to the center, tending a great fire in the central pit upon which mounds of kampri and ears of sweet yellow corn were roasting. The hunters and those other men brave enough and skilled enough to fight stayed on the outskirts, wary of attack, always watchful. Between them and the fire were the rest, a loose collection of untrained merchants, farmers, and boys like Pehr and Jace who were old enough to fight, but not yet truly men.

The farmers and merchants were armed mostly with wooden clubs and a few flimsy bows. The hunters’ sons were better equipped, carrying greatly superior bows and clubs with heads of bone. The hunters themselves, of course, held the best bows, the arrows with the sharpest heads, and large axes or clubs made from heavy stone, shaped by hours of painstaking labor.

Into the deep of the night they waited and watched, but nothing came from the blackness save the sound of the drums, which grew ever closer, pounding their never-ending rhythm and drowning out any hope for peace or serenity. It was during this time that fatigue began to gnaw at the villagers, and one by one they succumbed to sleep. Pehr watched it happen, sitting out at the edges of the firelight, sharpening his bone arrowheads on a piece of stone in between bites from a chunk of gritty, dried cheese.

“You’ll grind that down to nothing before long,” Jace said. He was perched atop a boulder, just as before, facing the jungle. If he was feeling any fatigue at all, he had shown no signs of it.

Pehr shrugged and set the arrowhead aside, picking up a new one. “If we had more branches, I could be making more arrows.”

“If there were any more branches to be had, I would have brought them to you,” Jace replied.

Pehr nodded. The yukkiuli trees that dotted the landscape and grew such fine, straight branches for arrow-making had all been stripped. There were always more, but only at a distance too great for the scavenging party to have reached and returned before nightfall. As it was, the last few stragglers had nearly received arrows in their guts as thanks for their efforts, so nervous were some of those defending the perimeter.

“Is Nani asleep?” Jace asked him.

Pehr glanced up and over toward the central fire, needing only a moment to locate Nani’s prone figure, her arms wrapped around Josep’s four-year-old brother. He could tell even at this distance by the steady, slow rise and fall of her chest that she was asleep, and he said so to Jace.

“Good,” the boy said. “They won’t come tonight.”

Pehr laughed a little, shaking his head. “Indeed? And you know this … how?”

“They always attack at dusk. That’s what Luce said. I suppose the drums are meant to keep us up and make us tired.”

“You’ve become quite the expert.”

“Told you … I listened. I keep all those stories up here.” Jace tapped his head.

“You always had the mind for those things,” Pehr said. “I could never keep the stories straight. Grandfathers and Gods and Lagos, the Everstorm, the Great Destruction … none of it will help me kill a boar that’s decided to charge.”

Jace nodded. “You would have passed the Test, you know. You were built for it. Like Josep.”

“There is still time.”

Jace shook his head, still gazing out into the night. “No, there isn’t.”

“We will fight them. Jace, I have no intention of dying when whatever is banging those drums arrives.”

“Neither does my father, or Josep, or even old Aldus. Pehr, I must ask you for something.”

Pehr was silent for a time, but finally spoke, reciting another saying: “I cannot know how I will answer until the question has been asked.”

“When they … when they come for Nani, I …” Jace paused, his throat working. He had turned at last to look at Pehr, and the older boy could see that his cousin’s eyes had gone watery, reflecting the firelight in the distance.

“Jace …”

“They mustn’t have her. You must promise me that if it comes to it, you will take her life. She is my sister, and I can’t bear the idea of … of … I know that you love her as a sister. I think you would love her as more, if you could.”

Pehr was taken aback as much by his cousin’s latter statement as by the request. It was true, he had for many years harbored feelings in his heart that, though he would never have admitted them to another, had become impossible to deny to himself. Still, to have been read so easily by this boy of only fourteen years …

“Jace, I cannot make this promise to you,” he managed at last.

“You can,” Jace said. “Is it not an easy promise to make? If you truly believe we will survive this, then there is nothing to fear. If in a few days’ time we are all sitting ‘round the table at home, laughing at Jace and his foolish stories, then I swear to you I will never ask you for anything more in our lives.”

“It’s not—”

“But if I’m right, and they come for her … Pehr, whatever you do to her will be like a gift from the Gods compared to what they intend. You’ve seen Luce’s face. She was the lucky one from her village. Promise me that you will love Nani until the end, and stay with her, and kill her before they can make her suffer?”

Pehr thought about this. He was neither a fast thinker, nor so cunning as Jace, but he was also not a fool. He understood what Jace was asking, and why, and he felt the truth of Jace’s words. Nani was the daughter of a hunter, and Pehr thought she might even wish for it herself, rather than surrendering to the beasts.

And so he nodded. “Very well, Jace. I don't believe the end will come, but if it does, and I'm at her side, I’ll do what’s necessary to keep her from them.”

* * *

In the dark a girl’s voice called for him, and at first he thought it was Nani, and that whatever was coming for them had arrived at last. Pehr struggled to a sitting position, looking around and blinking, and heard his name called again. This time, though, he realized the voice was not one he recognized, and it was not coming from within the village’s central circle. Instead it came from out in the darkness, from an area that he knew to contain an empty field of grass and a few stripped trees. The moon was obscured by clouds and there was little light beyond what the fire cast; if someone was out there, Pehr couldn't see them.

“Pehr, where are you?” the voice asked, and in it Pehr heard such a sad, plaintive desperation that he could not help but come to his feet. He walked out into the grass, straining to see into the darkness, secure in the knowledge that whatever was pounding the drums was to his back and not before him.

Now he could see the figure, tall and rail-thin, female, standing in the knee-high grass and staring as he approached. He did not know this person. He did not even know anyone who looked like this person, so unlike the women of his village.

“I cannot find you,” the girl cried, and Pehr raised his hand.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Oh, Pehr, where are you?”

“I am before you. Just before you.” He was now no more than a dozen paces from the girl. Surely she could see him.

“I must find him,” the girl muttered to herself, pacing back and forth, tromping down the grass. “I must.”

“I’m right here,” Pehr said, and he reached out, putting his hand to her shoulder. The girl spun at his touch, gasping, her eyes going wide, and for a moment they only stared at each other in the dark.

“Find me,” she said.

Then she was gone. She did not run, or fall back, or even fade from existence. She was simply gone, and Pehr found himself standing in the middle of the field alone, staring out into the darkness. He glanced back over his shoulder at the fire in the central square, checking to see if anyone else had observed this girl or heard her calls, but it seemed no one else had stirred.

“A dream,” Pehr said to himself, and surely that must have been right, but it hadn’t felt like a dream. He felt no more awake now than he had moments before, when the girl had turned to him and stared. There had been something strange about those eyes, but he couldn't remember. In fact, all memory of her appearance was leaving him. He could only remember that she had been someone unknown, and she had been calling. For him.

Shaking his head, Pehr made his way back to the circle, returned to his bedroll, and slept.

* * *

By morning, Jace’s eyes were so dark and sunken in their sockets that he looked almost dead. He ate his breakfast of oat gruel and honey with slow, listless motions but was otherwise showing no signs of fatigue. He did not yawn or stretch, did not rub his eyes or nod his head. Pehr, who had slept for a few hours near the dawn, was growing concerned, but had no idea what to do for the boy.

Nani had woken with the sun and come to join them. Pehr could see that she, too, had noticed Jace’s state and was shaken by it. He could read the deep concern in her glances at the boy and supposed that she was struggling just as he was to find a way to comfort Jace, to reassure him that they would fight through this threat. In the distance, the drums crashed and thundered, and the noise of them seemed to make a mockery of any potential brave pronouncements.

Jace wouldn’t have believed them, even if he’d had the words, and so Pehr had said nothing. Jace, for his part, had been silent as well … a rarity for him, and an event that at other times Pehr might have welcomed. At the moment, the lack of conversation was growing steadily more uncomfortable, and it was Nani who finally broke the mounting tension.

“We’ll have to leave the circle soon, I suppose,” she said.

Pehr looked up at her and nodded, then returned to his bowl of gruel. It was Jace who answered, not bothering to look down at his sister, still staring out at the jungle as if hypnotized by the sound of the drums.

“Why would we do that?”

“Well, surely we can’t stay here all day. There are crops to tend, fish to catch, bread to bake …”

“We have enough of those things to last until dusk. After that, we won’t need any more.”

“The Gods help those who help themselves, Jace. You know that. It’s better to prepare for tomorrow than to assume it won’t come.”

“The Gods have set the Lagos upon us. We are beyond help.”

Nani glowered at him. “I do wish you’d stop talking like that. The children are frightened enough as it is without nonsense stories. What if they hear you?”

“What if they do?”

Nani made a growling noise and hauled herself to her feet, eyes narrowed to slits, two spots of red standing out on her cheeks. Moving quickly, Pehr stood as well, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

“Let him be,” he offered, his voice calm and quiet. “Take a walk with me instead.”

“Where?”

“We’ll go home. It’s not so far that we won’t hear the alarms if something is spotted.” Anyway, the hunters wouldn’t organize any supply parties for another hour or more. Nani could make the dough and set it out to rise while he fed the kampri.

Nani considered this, and then took Pehr’s hand, letting him lead her away. “Fine. Fine, then! We’ll let Jace stay here and brood by himself.”

“We’ll be back before dusk,” Pehr said to Jace, and the boy nodded.

“Very well.”

“Come, Nani,” Pehr said, and he tugged on her hand again. When she turned to follow him, he let it go, and together they started toward their home. They had walked only a short distance in silence before Nani reached down, picked up a stone, and hurled it with all of her might toward the lagoon to the west.

“What is wrong with him!?” she cried, turning her head and glaring back at the boy still sitting on the rock, staring out toward the jungle. “It’s as if he’s become some other person. I don’t know this Jace, I don’t like him, and I want my brother back!”

“He believes we are all about to die,” Pehr said. “I have heard Truff and the other hunters talk about this. Some men lose their emotions before the hunt. Have you not seen this same behavior in some of the others around the village? Those who believe in the Lagos are terrified, and some of them are wrestling with it like Jace.”

“He doesn’t seem afraid! How can he talk so plainly about … about dying?”

“Of course he’s afraid, but he’s locked that away. It’ll help him with it, Nani.”

“Help with what?”

“The fighting. The killing and the dying. You know his mind; he sees things in a way the rest of us don’t. If he thinks too much about what he might lose, it’ll overwhelm him. How can he draw his bow and hope to shoot true if his hands are shaking with fear?”

Nani chewed on her lower lip, looking less than convinced by this explanation. Finally she said, “If that’s what he needs to do, then so be it, but it doesn’t explain why he looks like one already dead.”

“You don’t understand. The fear is still in him. He hasn’t disposed of it … he’s merely locked it away, and it eats at him from within.” Pehr shrugged. He thought Jace was on the very edge of something approaching raw, incoherent terror, the sort of fear that they were supposed to put behind them as they left their childhood. It seemed better that he be like this, and remain able to fight, than that he break down entirely.

“He’s just a boy,” Nani said.

“He’s being a man. Would you rather he wept? Begged your father to save him and make the bad drums go away? Wasn’t that what Josep’s brother was doing only last night?”

“Alain has only seen four years …” Nani’s tone was truculent, and she wouldn’t meet Pehr’s eyes.

“Yes. He’s a boy being a boy. Is that what you want of Jace?”

Jaw clenching, Nani struggled but at last admitted it: “No.”

Pehr held his hands out in front of him, palms up, a gesture of futility.

“I hate it,” Nani said. “I hate seeing him grow so old, so quickly.”

Pehr smiled a little. “Everything here grows old quickly.”

“And I hate it!”

“It’s our world.”

Nani had no answer to that, and so they walked again for a time in silence. They were moving casually, not in any rush. Both understood that this walk was more about the conversation than the tasks that awaited them.

“I dreamt of a girl,” Pehr said at last.

Nani gave him a quick, smirking glance. “Sili? I’m not surprised. She’s been on your mind a lot, of late.”

“How would you know that?” Pehr asked her, and almost immediately wished that he hadn’t.

“Our walls are thin,” Nani said, and she laughed as his cheeks reddened. “Don’t feel bad, Pehr. Sili’s offerings are … very ample.”

“It wasn’t her,” Pehr muttered, trying to ignore his embarrassment. In truth, he hadn't so much as thought about the girl since Jace had interrupted him the day before. She was ample, Nani was right about that, and she had let him see all of her that time when they had gotten drunk together, but it wasn’t Sili who he felt the burning need to protect from danger.

“Not her?! She’d be disappointed to hear you’re having such dreams about other girls!” Nani teased.

“It wasn’t that type of dream. It was …” Pehr paused a moment, trying to put it into words, but he could only remember the calls. He couldn’t remember what the girl looked like, only that she was not Sili, not Nani, not any girl that he had ever known. In his mind’s eyes, Pehr couldn't see her face.

“It was what?” Nani prompted.

“Nothing,” Pehr said. “I don’t remember.”

“Oh, Pehr, don’t be like that. I’m sorry I teased you!”

“It’s not that, I just … I can’t see her anymore. Not what she looks like. There was a girl in the dark, and she was calling. I went to her, but … I can’t … these damned drums!”

Nani nodded in sympathy. “They make it impossible to think.”

“I’m no great thinker anyway,” Pehr grumbled.

“Don’t say that.”

Pehr shrugged and continued walking. They went the rest of the way without speaking, until they were standing in front of their mud-brick and thatched-branch home. Nani seemed reluctant to go inside, and so Pehr stood for a moment, waiting. He glanced up, noting that the house fire must be very low indeed; there was only the faintest wisp of smoke curling up from the hut’s central hole.

“You’ll need to rekindle that fire,” he said. “It’s almost—”

Nani interrupted him. “Are we going to die?”

“Of course not,” he said, and realized only after he said it that the lack of a pause, of any sort of contemplation, betrayed the emptiness of his words. Nani understood this immediately.

“Pehr … please.”

Pehr put the heel of his hand against his brow, head lowered and eyes closed. He was tired and achy from a night sleeping on the ground and ill-prepared to spout bravado.

“Nani, I don’t know.”

When he looked up, she was trembling, and there were tears on her cheeks. “Something terrible is about to happen. Jace is right. Something … even if some of us survive, there’s going to be death. So much death. Do you not feel it?”

Pehr did. He had stopped trying to fool himself on this account at some point in the middle of the night, when he had realized that he was sharpening each of his arrows for the tenth time not out of boredom or even fear, but simply out of the growing knowledge that there would be fighting. The drums that hammered still in the distance might be anything, might be marauding creatures of the Gods or merely other men, but there was little doubt left that they heralded some great evil. They were the drums of war, and to deny this fact seemed mad.

“I will not let anything happen to you, or to Jace, or to anyone else if I can prevent it.”

“I know,” Nani said, and took his hands in hers. “Oh, Pehr, we are so lucky to have you. Jace and me. He loves you, you know.”

Pehr did not know how to respond to this, and so he said nothing. Nani studied him for a moment, and when she spoke again, it was in a voice that was something less even than a whisper. “Pehr, if it truly ends for us tonight, I want … you should know …”

Pehr felt adrenaline surge through him. The tone of her voice just now – somehow soft and scared at the same time – conveyed to him what Nani was struggling to say. He had never expected to hear these words pass her lips, yet now here they were, on the very edge.

“Yes,” he said, encouraging her to go on.

Nani’s eyes filled suddenly with tears, and she cried, “It’s not right!”

She must have seen the disappointment that he was trying so hard to hide, because she took his hands again. “Pehr, I can’t. I mustn’t! I’m so sorry. Even if I hadn’t taken his necklace, even if I hadn’t … oh … may every last God burn in Hell for making me who I am.”

Pehr gave her a sad smile. “I know you can’t. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

She pressed his hands up against her lips and then let them go. She leaned forward and touched her lips gently to his cheek. It was the briefest of contact, barely there, and yet it seemed to Pehr that his entire body leapt aflame. He was trembling now, too, with desire and rage in equal parts. His cousin? It had to be his cousin, of all people?

Nani was looking him in the eyes again now, brow furrowed, tears still coursing down her cheeks. She breathed deeply and said, “I shouldn’t have done this. It cannot be taken back, and now … Pehr, you must promise me … if we still live tomorrow, it must be only as cousins and as friends. It must be.”

Pehr clenched his jaw, clenched his fists, and stared up at the sky, breathing hard and deep. Nani let him get control of himself.

“Please don’t hate me,” she said at last in a tiny, broken voice.

Pehr shook his head, looked back at her, ran a hand through his tousled hair. He had stopped trembling but now felt weak and grey. Husked out.

“I don’t hate you,” he said.

“Then will you say it with me? Say that we are cousins, and we are friends, and that is all that we are or can ever be?”

“Nani, please don’t make me do this …”

“I will beg it of you, if I must,” she said, and before he could stop her, she had taken to her knees there in the dirt, her hands on her thighs, her head bowed. “Please, Pehr. Please be my cousin, and my friend, and nothing more.”

He couldn’t bear it, seeing this girl he knew and loved kneeling humble before him, in penitence for the simple sin not even of loving him, but merely for having betrayed the secret of that love to him.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please get up. Nani, I … all right! Yes, your cousin, and your friend, and nothing more. For the Gods’ sake, get up!”

Nani did as he asked, and she favored him with a sad and wistful look of desire that he thought he would likely take with him to the grave, even if he lived another hundred years. It was all the worse because he understood that this look was the last of its type that he would ever see. This thing that had just passed between them was done, and Nani herself had seen to that. She had trapped him, bribed him with a kiss and trapped him with his love, and Pehr let himself be angry at her for that. It would make it easier to be only her cousin and her friend, and never anything more, for the rest of their lives. For a brief and aching moment, the possibility of being cut down by hordes of Lagos warriors in only a few short hours seemed mercifully appealing.

“You’re a good man, Khada’Pehr,” Nani told him in a voice that was soft, and sad, and toned with the understanding of things that they both wished could be, that could not.

“I'm not a man,” Pehr said, but Nani had turned and moved away, into the house, and he spoke these words too low for her to hear. “I'm only a cousin, and a friend, and nothing more.”

He went to feed the kampri.

Chapter 5

Jace looked better by dusk, as if the coming darkness brought him strength instead of weakness, courage rather than fear. Only his eyes betrayed him, still distant and dark, as if looking into some endless black chasm.

Like Pehr and Nani, many of the villagers had returned to their homes to go about their routines as best they could. Others sat still in the circle, like Jace, too filled with fear to function. The drums pounded on and on, a maddening distraction about which nothing could be done, and so the villagers had done their best to ignore them. As the sun began to fade, many had gathered again in the village center, near the shrine and the fire pit, to hold a communal dinner and band together against the coming darkness.

“Will you eat, Jace?” Nani asked her brother, holding forth a plate heaped with bread, corn, and salted fish. Jace shook his head.

“Not hungry,” he said.

“You must keep up your strength!”

“I will be fine. Give it to Pehr … he’ll eat it.”

Eventually Nani relented and brought the food to Pehr, who was just finishing his own share. He tore into Jace’s, thanking Nani between bites, and had just finished when the drums abruptly stopped. The resulting silence seemed to pound in Pehr’s ears, broken only by the shrill cries of a single baby from somewhere closer to the fire.

“Oh, what is it?” Nani whispered, and as if in response the black night sky lit orange with what seemed a thousand glowing embers.

“They have come,” said Jace in his haunted voice, and then he leapt to his feet, crying, “cover!”

The embers in the sky were arrows, covered in pitch and set ablaze. There were not a thousand of them, as it had first seemed, but there were plenty enough to set the village alight. They plunged downward, landing among and around the central dwellings. Pehr watched in dismay, pressed up against the boulder upon which Jace still stood, seemingly oblivious to the danger, as flaming arrows fell all around them.

Huts leapt ablaze, and the night was rapidly bathed in a shifting glow of red and orange. Pehr could hear people screaming, and he saw a girl who he had known all her life run howling by them, an arrow embedded in her shoulder, the right half of her face splattered with sticky, flaming ichor. It looked as if her skin was melting, and he turned away in horror as the scent of her burning hair reached him.

“Prepare!” Jace was screaming – to whom, Pehr was not sure. “Prepare!”

The falling arrows thinned, stopped, and again came the drums, closer now than ever before. They drowned out the screams and the sound of the flames, but were soon overtaken by something far worse, something that Pehr understood signified the coming of a truly great evil. From the very edge of darkness at the outskirts of their small village came a terrible roar, the mixed wailing of an unknown number of inhuman creatures. This sound was not a thing that men could make even in their largest numbers; deep and guttural, it reminded Pehr of the noises he sometimes heard come from the jungle, when some great beast was on the prowl. This was like that, yes, only multiplied by the throats of hundreds.

“To arms!” Jace cried, and in one swift motion he pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and drew back the bowstring, holding it there and waiting only for a target.

A single, inhuman form came loping into view from beyond the edge of their vision, and without hesitation Jace let fly his arrow. It made its shrieking way through the night air and caught the creature between the eyes, burying itself deep in the skull. Without so much as a sound of pain, the Lagos warrior fell face-first to the ground and skidded to a halt. For a moment there was silence, and it seemed the entire village held its collective breath. Then, like specters, there materialized a great host of the beasts, advancing upon the burning town.

Pehr took his club in hand and, with Jace still crying to all who would listen that they must join in battle, must fight or die, he went to face his enemy.

* * *

When stories of the Lagos were told, Jace had hung on every word, and there was little doubt that he could have described the creatures quite well without ever having seen one, but it was Pehr who got the first good look at one of their warriors. That first, horrifying sight would never leave him, and he understood in an instant that Jace was right: they must fight to the very last of their strength, every man, woman and child, or they would all surely die.

The village was in chaos. Pehr could hear the thunder of stampeding kampri, somewhere off to his left, and he saw one terrified animal go running by in front of him, bellowing, its swinging horns tearing chunks from the surrounding buildings and a flaming arrow embedded in its haunch.

The hunters were few and stretched far between, stationed on the outskirts and unable to meet the entirety of the Lagos advance. Stationed as they were at the edge of the village, they had largely gone unscathed during the initial volley of arrows, but so too had they been the first to meet the advancing Lagos warriors. Some had already fallen to their enemy’s superior strength, speed, and sheer numbers.

It would have pained Pehr to know it, and so it was best that he never found out, but the first to fall was Truff himself, who had insisted on a spot at the furthest reaches despite his crippled leg and inability to flee should the need arise. The Lagos had crashed into him like a towering ocean wave. He had gotten in one mighty swing with his heavy, double-bladed axe, and it was a testament to his strength that that the blow had killed not one but two of the creatures. Then they had simply swarmed over him, tearing him asunder and leaving little but chunks of dripping meat behind.

Moving now to engage with the Lagos, Pehr was unsure where to go. He hadn’t run directly at the incoming horde, knowing that Jace and other archers would be launching arrow after arrow into the mass and couldn’t possibly separate friend from foe. Instead he’d taken an arcing path, emerging from the shadow of several intact huts and into the sooty orange glow of a dwelling that had already burned almost to the ground. Before him was a sight so awful that for a moment it stopped him dead in his tracks.

Its back was to Pehr, and this was a good thing, for it gave the boy time to recover from his initial shock. The creature – and there could be no better word for it than that – was coated in blood, but Pehr was still able to take in its features. It was thin, but its muscles bunched thick and ropy beneath its fur-covered skin. The fur itself was short and bristly, brownish-grey, marbled with some darker color. The thing was built essentially like a man, though with exaggerated limbs that ended in hideous talons at both the hands and feet.

The Lagos was mostly naked, wearing only a dirty scrap of fabric as a loincloth, and was holding its victim to the ground with one hand. Pehr knew the girl somewhat. She was Nani’s age, a year older than Jace, but not yet betrothed. She was making choked cawing noises that might have been screams if not for the talons wrapped around her throat, and Pehr could see blood streaming from several wounds on her face and neck. Her back was arched high, heels dug into the ground, arms scrabbling in the dirt at her sides. The monster crooned at her – a hateful, mocking noise – and then brought the claws of its free hand back to her face and began to dig again at her flesh.

Snarling in disgust and fury, Pehr leapt forward with his club raised. Hearing this, the creature whipped around with unanticipated animal quickness, raking out with the claws of its free left hand. They whickered through the air only inches from Pehr’s stomach; if he had been but a step ahead, he would have been disemboweled. As it was, he managed to skirt sideways, acting on instinct and reflex, flipping the club from right hand to left and bringing it down backhand. It caught the Lagos in the jaw and the creature shrieked in agony as the lower half of its face was obliterated. Pehr could hear a dozen or more of its teeth clatter against a nearby wall and fall to the ground.

The thing was rising to its feet, still howling, and Pehr got his first good look at its features. Its face was neither lupine nor feline, but bestial nonetheless. Pehr was reminded in some strange way of the rabbits whose holes dotted the fields to the east, though the Lagos’s ears were not so long, nor did the rabbits possess a gaping maw full of wicked-looking fangs.

Or half full, anyway, Pehr thought with some satisfaction; The Lagos’s lower jaw was set at a deranged angle. A long, pink tongue was dangling from between its lips, dripping with thick strands of drool and blood. Pehr didn’t spend time considering his approach, he simply acted – as a hunter should, as he had been trained to act nearly since birth. He switched the club again to his right hand, his better hand, and advanced on the Lagos, leaning low to the ground in anticipation of being charged. The creature didn’t disappoint him, rushing forward in a blind rage, and Pehr reacted with an agility that escaped him in casual affairs but came to him as naturally as breathing when a club was in his hand.

He sidestepped, drawing up on one leg as gracefully as any dancer, and brought his club crashing down upon the creature’s head. Bone and blood and brain sprayed like foam from waves crashing against the rocks of Nethalanhal, and in some detached part of his mind he heard the girl shriek in revulsion at the sight. For his own part, he felt only satisfaction at a kill well-made. The creature slumped to the ground, dead, and Pehr stared for a moment more at its lifeless corpse before turning to the girl.

She’d pulled herself into a sitting position and was hunched over double, hands hovering over her face. Gasping and coughing, sobbing, shaking, she was not yet capable of standing up, much less any sort of flight from this place. Pehr knelt down next to her, getting a good look at her face and wincing at the sight; it was a mask of blood.

“Did he hurt your eyes?” he asked, and the girl continued sobbing for a moment before giving a long, slow shake of her head. No, the creature hadn't taken that from her. With any luck, she would come through with nothing more than a few scars from the attack.

“Let me help,” Pehr said, and he took her hand. With his aid, she was able to stand, and he helped her to the nearest safe hut. He stopped at the door and pointed inside.

“Go and find clothing. Rest for a moment if you must, but then make your way as fast as you can toward the village center.”

“But this isn’t my home!” the girl wailed, as if that could possibly have mattered.

“I can’t stay here,” he told her. “If you want to live, you must do as I say.”

Pehr turned to go, but she cried, “Wait!” and reached a hand out to him from the doorway. He took it in his own, and she brought his hand to her lips, and kissed it, and squeezed with all of her strength, her eyes locked on his. She said nothing, but Pehr understood. He nodded, smiled, glanced again at the prone figure of the Lagos.

“He will never trouble you, or anyone else, again,” he said, and then he let go of her hand, and turned, and moved toward the sounds of battle.

Chapter 6

The front lines had broken, and all that was left were individual pockets of flickering light in which men and Lagos fought each other. Screams of pain and rage and raw aggression echoed out all around him, and Pehr felt his body trying to seize up as it attempted to process the sheer amount of information being thrown at it. He knew it was impossible – there was simply too much happening all at once – and that stopping was most probably deadly, so he willed himself to move on. Nearest to him was a group of one hunter, two farmers, and a merchant, all fighting bravely against three Lagos warriors.

The creatures worked not only with their deadly claws and teeth, but as well with a kind of weapon that Pehr had never seen before: a sturdy wooden handle roughly the length of a man’s forearm that swelled at the head, where a long, sharp, curved blade of metal had been slotted into it. Pehr’s people knew of metal but lacked a steady supply of it, and had thus never developed the skills to work it into such weapons.

The hunter was fighting with a club, dodging away from the creatures’ attacks and moving in to swing with his weapon with impressive skill. A few times he connected, delivering glancing blows that did not kill or maim but must nonetheless have been tremendously painful. The Lagos warriors didn’t scream in pain, but merely grunted or howled in rage before pressing forward again.

The merchant and the two farmers were standing in a rough circle, backs together, and Pehr felt a swell of deep admiration for them. These men were not fighters, and yet by instinct they fought as such. The merchant was wielding a stone-tipped spear, jabbing it forward whenever one of the Lagos warriors tried to close the distance. The farmers had the small, sturdy axes that they used in their daily work. They were vulnerable to the Lagos’s longer blades and had suffered some minor wounds, but neither was yet grievously injured.

Pehr took no further time to observe. He swept wide once again, staying in the shadows at the very edge of sight, until he was behind one of the Lagos warriors. Having learned his lesson, Pehr made no noise this time as he closed the distance, and the full weight of his club connected solidly with the back of the creature’s head, making a sound that reminded Pehr of cracking a coconut’s tough inner shell. The blow would most certainly have killed a man, but the Lagos survived it, falling to one knee and giving a startled grunt.

The merchant, seeing his chance, stabbed forward with his spear, driving the top of it into the soft flesh between the beast’s neck and shoulder. The Lagos, still groggy from the club hit, made a howling noise of pain and rage that Pehr cut short with a second blow. This hit, coming from above and colliding with the creature’s skull with tremendous force, finished the job that the first had started. The Lagos’s skull caved in with a sickening crunch, and the creature fell. The merchant stared wide-eyed, whooped once in triumph, and then turned to vomit on the ground. Pehr found himself laughing, even as he advanced to help his fellow hunter, and wondered if he hadn't gone mad.

With the odds now at five on two, the Lagos’s superior strength and the reach of their blades was largely cancelled out. Pehr stepped up beside the other hunter, whom he recognized as none other than Josep, Nani’s husband-to-be. Without speaking, they moved to flank the Lagos, coming at them from either side while the merchant and the two farmers attacked from the front. The Lagos, understanding that they were outmatched, turned and loped off toward the darkness at the edge of the village.

Pehr and Josep moved with practiced speed, dropping their clubs and bringing forth the short bows they kept strapped to their backs. In the span of no more than a few seconds they had fired, and both Lagos fell to the ground just at the edge of sight. The group of humans advanced toward the prone figures, wary that one or both might merely be faking serious injury in order to lure their prey in close.

The first creature they came to was obviously dead. It lay on its back, its head propped up in an odd position by the broken shaft of the arrow that had pierced its skull. Its eyes were open, glazed and distant, and the two hunters gave it only a cursory glance before moving on to its comrade.

This Lagos was not dead, but neither was it a threat. It was trying to crawl toward its blade, which had flown from its hands and lay several yards away, but its strength was rapidly draining. Blood poured in torrents from where the arrow had split its throat, and Pehr marveled at the creature’s strength; even something as large and powerful as an elder boar would have been immobilized or killed outright by such a wound.

Josep stepped toward it, and the creature turned, snarling, staring directly at the hunter even as the man brought his club down on its head.

“What now?” one of the farmers asked, and Josep pointed toward the center of the village.

“The lines are broken,” he said. “We must regroup and continue to fight until they’re gone.”

“Or until we’re all dead,” the younger farmer said, his voice acidic with distaste.

Josep shrugged. “Flee, then. There is the night, just ahead … run away and perhaps you’ll live.”

The farmer spat into the dirt and said, “I would no sooner leave my family and my home than you would, hunter.”

“Then don’t waste time on regret for things which can’t be changed,” Josep replied. “Come. Every second we tarry, the Lagos draw closer to our families and our homes.”

They moved as a group toward the center of the village. Around them the world flickered orange, a burning hell scattered with the bodies of men and Lagos. Josep turned to Pehr.

“How many have you killed?”

“Three,” Pehr replied. “Two back there and one earlier. He was torturing a girl. Maiming her. I broke his head open before he finished.”

“She’s lucky.”

“What about you? How many?”

Josep favored him with a grim smile. “Twelve so far. They came at us like a wave and broke apart our forces, but Thomas and I were together for some time. Once we joined up with these three, we were able to kill several small groups.”

“What happened to Thomas?”

“He was hurt badly just before you arrived. I can’t say if he’ll live, but I’m certain he’ll never use his left arm again. We sent him back toward the circle with another farmer. I hope he found sanctuary there.”

Pehr said nothing, and after a moment Josep spoke again.

“You’ve performed well. I think you would’ve passed your Test and joined us at the hunter’s table.”

“If we survive this night, I still intend to,” Pehr said. He felt a kind of wild exhilaration within him, a joy that felt unseemly but couldn't be contained; he’d twice met his enemies in battle and twice won, earning praise from a seasoned hunter whom he’d always admired, and might yet make it through the night. This was the thing, it seemed, for which he had been born.

“That we see tomorrow, we must fight our hardest today,” Josep recited. It was a hunters’ saying, a reminder that there was always hope.

There came a cacophony of howling to their left, and the group barely had time to duck into a smoldering hut before a large group of Lagos came running out of the dark, headed for the central fire. There were at least fifteen of them, pushing and shoving each other, laughing and snarling and coated in blood.

“Gods,” Josep murmured after they had passed. “There are so many of them!”

There was a scrabbling sound from next to them, and they turned to witness the merchant shoving his way out of the building and fleeing into the night. Josep made a sound of disgust.

“May he rot out there,” the younger farmer said.

“The drums are closer,” Pehr said, the realization of it hitting him just then: the sound had not only grown, but was beating with an ever-increasing speed and intensity, as if nearing some great, orgasmic culmination.

“The end is coming. The warriors … something drives them. They kill hunters, but for all others above a certain age they focus on the face, on wiping it out completely as if it offends them. When they’ve killed and tortured as many as they can, they will withdraw, and then will come their females and their priests.”

Pehr hadn't heard of this before. “What then?” he asked.

Josep shook his head. “There’s little I can tell you. I’ve had to piece my knowledge together from Luce’s tales, and from those of passing merchants. From what I understand, their women will collect the bodies of their dead and steal food from our stores. The priests … they will collect many children.”

“Collect them for what?” the elder farmer cried.

“I wish I knew,” Josep said. “They take them to the jungle and none ever return.”

“Surely some must escape,” said the younger farmer. “There are places to hide …”

“A small few survive. For my part, I intend to die fighting. You … you may choose to do what you wish.”

“I will not abandon my family,” the elder farmer said, and Josep nodded.

Pehr thought of the oath he'd made to Nani, to protect her brother at all costs, and the one he’d made to Jace. He could keep neither of these oaths by huddling in a half-burnt home.

“We must go,” he said, and Josep nodded.

“Yes. Your cousin, my beloved, is in great danger.”

“My Sara is in there, somewhere,” the elder farmer said.

“And my Bethany,” the younger replied.

“Then it will be four of us,” Josep said. “With any luck, we can make our way into the central ring without attracting the attention of the Lagos. They will be focused mainly on breaking in themselves, and on preventing any others from escaping.”

“Enough talk, then,” Pehr said. He didn’t want to die, but he wished even less to sit here discussing the inevitable. Better to get on with it.

Josep, likely of the same mind, needed little encouragement. He stood, and after making sure the way was clear, he lead them out of the house and back into the flickering light of their burning village.

* * *

They were not so lucky as to make it into the circle unscathed. Rounding a corner, they came upon a single Lagos warrior leaned up against a wall of mud bricks, covered in blood. Not far away lay a woman, curled up in a ball and making choked gasping noises. The creature looked up in surprise as Pehr and Josep, acting on instinct, swung to either side. The younger farmer gave a cry of disgust and leapt forward, swinging his axe and cleaving deeply into the surprised creature’s side. The Lagos roared in pain and startled anger, and it brought both claws forward and out in a horrific, rending tear. The farmer threw his head back and a great glut of blood belched forth from his mouth, even as his belly opened up and his innards fell in coils upon the ground.

There was no time to mourn him, and the creature had no time to regroup before Pehr and Josep were upon him, screaming and beating him down with their clubs. The creature’s bones cracked and splintered under the weight of their blows, and its noises went from roars to shrieks to whimpers, and finally to silence. The two men stood above its corpse, gasping for breath, spattered with the Lagos’s blood. From behind them came the sound of running feet, and the angry roars of many more of the things.

“You, girl!” Josep shouted. “You must flee. More of them are coming!”

The girl struggled to stand, and even in the wavering firelight Pehr could see that she was badly injured. He didn’t think she would keep her sight, and he wasn’t sure from the sounds she was making whether she still had a tongue or not. Josep went to help her. He slung her arm over his shoulder and began to move toward the village’s inner circle. The sound of the approaching Lagos was now very close.

The elder farmer was staring at his dead friend in shock and disbelief. Pehr grabbed him by his shoulders and hauled him bodily along after them, running toward a small gap between two dwellings. He shoved the man ahead of him and in a moment more both were through the gap. Pehr turned immediately to the left, around the edge of the building, and a pair of wicked talons just missed raking down across his back. He spun and swung, smashing the creature’s hands with his club.

The Lagos howled but then withdrew, and Pehr found himself standing with his palms against his legs, bent over to catch his breath, listening to the roars from the darkness. Josep rejoined them, having seen the girl off to whatever safety there was left, and the trio made their way rapidly to the center of the circle. The farmer, spotting his wife, thanked them and made his way toward her.

Pehr saw Jace first, still standing on his boulder, his supply of arrows depleted to a truly pathetic final few. He was picking and choosing his shots carefully, and Pehr had little doubt that most were hitting their targets, but it didn’t appear to matter. The Lagos had what seemed an infinite number of warriors. Whenever one fell, another simply took its place.

Nani was standing with her mother by the fire, watching as Jace fired arrow after arrow. Anna caught sight of the two young men first and tapped Nani on the shoulder, gesturing. Pehr was amazed that the woman was sticking to her vow of silence even now, and wondered if she hoped in this manner to please the Gods, and perhaps lessen her family’s suffering.

Nani turned, saw them, and shrieked some incoherent noise of surprise and joy. Pehr wished he could share the feeling, but all he saw when he looked at her was the girl he loved and was likely going to have to murder. There was no joy for him there.

She went to Josep first, and he felt a small twinge of jealousy even now, of all times. It seemed foolish to him that it should still matter, but he couldn't shake it, and so he turned to Jace. To his surprise, the boy was grinning as he stared out into the darkness.

“Enjoying yourself, then, Jace?” Pehr called up to the boy, and Jace’s grin widened, though his eyes never left the perimeter.

“Not dead yet, Pehr?” he asked. “I knew it. I knew you would last longer than I would.”

“You are the wettest wet-head that ever walked the earth,” Pehr told him, but he was surprised to find himself grinning as well. This would be their end, of course, but oh, what an end it was.

“Do you still doubt my stories, cousin?”

“Not as much,” Pehr admitted, and Jace gave a coughing laugh.

“Is Nani still close?” he asked.

“I’m here,” Nani called. She had come to stand next to Pehr, Josep at her side. Her mother, too, had come.

“The perimeter is failing,” Josep said to Pehr, who glanced out and saw that it was true. Women were fighting now, alongside farmers and merchants and the last few hunters still standing. “I must join them. So must you, Pehr, but … Nani, I have thought of something. It should’ve occurred to me earlier, but these Gods-damned drums must have driven it from my brain. I only pray that it’s not too late.”

“What are you talking about?” Nani asked, turning to face him and tilting her head.

“You asked me once how I found such pure and large fragments of jade for your necklace … how I could have done so when the cliffs have been chipped and scraped by so many hunters before me. I did not tell you then, but there is a cave. I found it not so long before my Test, and have kept it a secret all this time because … I don’t know why. Because it was mine, I suppose. Something I had that the other hunters did not.

“It lies below the water’s surface, near the edge of the lagoon, but it opens up to clean air inside. There’s jade there, but more importantly there’s a spring of fresh water. It will fit you and your mother, but no more than that. I should have thought of it sooner, but there is still time. You can go there—”

“I won’t!” Nani cried. “You want me to leave you and Pehr and Jace here to die?! Josep, I won’t!”

Pehr, whose heart had begun throbbing painfully in his chest at Josep’s words, put his hand on her shoulder. “Nani, you must do this.”

“No!”

“Think of your mother! Gods … think of yourself!”

“And what of you, Pehr? What of Jace and Josep and my father?”

Josep closed his eyes at this, and put a hand to his brow, before looking back up at her. “Your father … he fell on the front lines.”

Tears welled in Nani’s eyes and spilled out over her cheeks, but the expression of fury never left her face. “I won’t leave the rest of my family! I won’t dishonor my father like that.”

“Would you have him die for nothing, then?” Josep asked her, and before Nani could respond, Jace spoke from above them.

“You must do this, Nani. Pehr and Josep and I … we have to stay and fight. We can keep the Lagos from you as you flee. You and Mother must go.”

“Why me?” she asked. “Why not any other woman in this circle?”

“Because you’re the daughter of a hunter, of course,” Jace said, his voice tinged with surprise at the question. “Your sons will be hunters, whoever fathers them. The village will need hunters more than ever.”

“There’s no honor in this!” she cried up at him. “There’s no honor in fleeing like a coward from—”

Anna put her arm on the girl’s shoulder. “Do as he says.”

Nani was aghast. “You’ve broken your vow! Mother … you mustn’t. The Gods will be angry!”

“So angry they might unleash the Lagos upon us,” Jace said, hopping down from the boulder.

Nani glared at him, unimpressed, but Pehr could see that her resolve was crumbling. “Damn you for this,” she croaked, her throat tight with tears. “Damn you all.”

None of them had words of comfort to give. Josep took Nani’s arm and led her forward, and the others followed, making their way back through the burning homes and toward the outer perimeter. Pehr glanced over at Jace, who looked back and nodded. They were determined; they were going to die, but here was a chance for those deaths to mean something. They would die not only as hunters but as heroes, and if they were damned for that, then so it would be.

In the distance, past the edge of the lagoon and over the raging ocean, the first flickers of lightning heralding some monstrous storm began.

Chapter 7

The Lagos whose hands Pehr had crippled was still waiting for them, past the alleyway between the two buildings. He had been joined by three others, and all four stood at the edge of arrow range, baiting those inside the circle to expend the last of their ammunition. When they saw Pehr and Josep emerge from between the houses, they began hooting and snarling, gesturing to the hunters, inviting them out into the dark to battle.

“Four is too many,” Pehr said.

“Could we find others to help us?” Jace asked.

Josep shook his head. “Would they abandon their families in order to embark upon a suicide run to save ours? I think not, Jace.”

“Then we’ll need a distraction,” the boy said, and the five of them stood in silence for a moment, thinking. It was Nani who finally spoke up.

“I would distract them,” she said.

Pehr put a hand to his face, and Josep groaned. “No,” he said.

“What do you mean, Nani?” Jace asked.

“If I run out, at least one of them will chase me. Maybe more than one.”

“Perhaps all of them,” Josep said, turning to look at her. “Nani, with all respect to Mother Anna, this endeavor is pointless if you don't make it to the caves.”

“Wait,” Jace said. “Josep, wait. Nani, do you remember the split rock out that way, just before the dunes?”

She thought for a moment and then nodded. “Yes, on the border of Arianus’s land.”

“Can you bring the Lagos there?”

Pehr put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Jace—”

“Let me finish,” the boy said. “If she can get there, then we can take them all.”

“How?”

“They see only the two of you as threats. If I back away, they’ll assume I’m fleeing. I can enter that hut, there, from behind, and aim through the window. You and Pehr charge first, then Nani breaks off behind you. They won’t keep all four for you. If they send one after her, I take him with the bow and Nani comes back around to meet me, while you lead the others into range. If they send two, then I still take the first, and when Nani reaches the rock, she goes through the middle of the split and wedges herself inside where they can’t reach her. No matter how it plays out, one of them dies under my arrows, and we break the others into smaller groups.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Josep spoke. “If she stumbles?”

“I won’t,” Nani told him.

“Nani, if they catch you, they will blind you. Strip the skin from your face. Fill the wounds with whatever vile, festering toxins they keep under their claws …”

“Do you think I don’t know that, Josep? I will not stumble.”

“She has a knife,” Jace said. “She won’t be defenseless.”

“What if we never get there?” Pehr asked him.

Jace shrugged. “We’re going to die here either way. We have a chance to save my mother and my sister. It’s worth the chance that we won’t be there to … to …”

He stopped, and looked at Pehr and Josep, who made no reply.

“Be there to do what?” Nani asked.

Her mother said her name, putting her arm around the girl’s shoulders, but Nani threw it off.

“Be there for what, Jace? To have the chance to kill me yourselves? That’s it, isn’t it?”

Jace swallowed, looking ill, and nodded.

“You coward bastards,” Nani said, her voice tight, her hands clenched into fists so tight that it seemed all of the blood had been driven away, leaving them stark and white.

“Beloved …” Josep began, and Nani whirled to face him.

“Do you think I would let them?!” she cried. “Did you believe even for one second that I would ever let one of those things do that to me? Oh, you stupid, pig-brained fools. You big, brave sons of hunters … so concerned for my well being that you would cut my throat with your own hands. I am daughter to a hunter, and I will die by my own hand before I allow myself to be touched by any of theirs, or by any of yours!”

There was another silence, broken only by Nani’s harsh breathing. She was staring at Josep, who seemed unable to meet her gaze. At last, Jace spoke.

“Oh,” he said, and smiled a little as his sister turned to glare at him. “Well in that case … let’s send her first.”

Pehr snorted, and after a moment a rueful smile flickered across Nani’s face. Josep, however, failed to find the humor. He only sighed, knowing that any hope he might have had of preventing Nani from putting herself in harm’s way was now gone.

“Are we going to do this, or shall I just cut my throat now and be done with it?” she asked.

“I’m ready,” Jace said.

Pehr shrugged and nodded. What choice was there?

“So be it,” said Josep, and his voice had hardened as he locked away his concerns.

Jace was positioned in moments, his mother huddled with him in the hut, looking out at the Lagos who still sat at the edge of arrow range, calling and howling to the diminished group still visible to them. Nani, Pehr, and Josep huddled together momentarily, the two hunters making a grand show of pointing in a direction that Nani had no intention of running. It was a transparent ploy, perhaps, but they were desperate for any edge that could be gained.

There was nothing left to do but execute their plan. Pehr and Josep leapt forward, running toward the group of Lagos, who roared in anticipation, brandishing their terrible weapons. The Lagos with the crippled hand stood in the front, clearly relishing its opportunity for revenge. Then, the group as a whole swung their heads suddenly sideways, following what must have been Nani’s path of escape. One of them broke off immediately and another, after glancing at his friends, also gave chase.

“Two, then,” Josep said, and Pehr grunted an acknowledgment. At least now the numbers were fair. One of the two remaining warriors was the cripple, but it appeared by its stance that it was comfortable fighting with its left hand. The other was at full strength, which would have made it a match for either of them individually, but Pehr and Josep were fighting for their own lives and that of the girl they both loved. Desperation lent Pehr strength and a kind of wild excitement that he had never felt before. Josep called out instructions as they ran.

“Cripple first. I’ll go low, you go high. I’ll roll to the second. Can you take the first?”

“Yes,” Pehr replied, and then there was no more time for discussion. The battle was upon them.

Josep attacked as he'd said, ducking low as the Lagos with the crippled right hand lunged at him, swinging for its knees. The creature was too fast for this and managed to leap before the club connected, so Josep shoved out and up with his left hand. It connected solidly with the Lagos’s chest, catching the thing off guard, and it made a kind of squawking noise as it lashed out with its left hand. Pehr heard Josep snarl an oath and knew his fellow hunter had been hit, but there was no time to worry about it. Josep kicked at the thing’s feet, still moving forward, and managed to knock it off balance.

The crippled Lagos was now fully exposed, falling forward, arms held out to break its fall. Pehr had gone high as instructed and was in a good position to plant his feet. He did so, dropping the club low and swinging it in a two-handed arc upward nearly from his ankle, as a man with an axe might swing to cut the bottom half of a notch into a tree. The club connected squarely with the Lagos’s breastbone, producing not a crunch but rather a horrific crack, like a strong piece of wood snapping suddenly under tremendous pressure. The Lagos shrieked in pain as it continued its fall to the ground, and Pehr raised his club up over his head. He brought it down once, twice, a third time, and the Lagos’s skull shattered, flattening out in a pulpy mass of bone and blood and brain.

There was no time to celebrate his victory. Pehr turned, ready to help Josep, only to see the hunter take a slashing hit to his midsection from the Lagos’s metal blade. Josep screamed and stumbled, dropping to one knee, and Pehr knew that he was too late to help the hunter even as he began to run forward. The Lagos, roaring in triumph, raised the blade over its head to swing down, much as Pehr had done to its companion. The blow would surely split Josep’s skull in two, and Pehr found himself screaming in rage. Not now, not yet, not before they could save Nani!

The blade never fell. Instead there came first the shrieking sound of an arrow in flight, and then the sharp twang of the bowstring caught up to Pehr’s ears. The arrow came out of the night and pierced the meat of the Lagos’s right wrist, throwing its arms backward, and it lost its grip on the blade. For a moment Pehr could do no more than stare. The flames from the village were dying down, and to Jace the Lagos must have seemed merely a dark stain against a darkening backdrop.

Josep, though hurt, fought on like the hunter he was, pulling a stone knife from the sheath on his leg and plunging it into the nearest part of the Lagos’s body, which happened to be its groin.

Pehr found some small satisfaction in the knowledge that – sent from the Gods or not – the Lagos were no more fond of massive trauma to their sex organs than any other creature would be. The monster howled and grabbed between its legs with both hands, spearing itself in the thigh with Jace’s arrowhead in the process. It doubled over in agony, and Pehr leapt forward, pounding it into the ground.

“It’s dead,” Josep said after a moment, and Pehr ceased his attack, drawing in harsh breaths, holding the club at his side. Josep made his way slowly to his feet and looked over at Pehr. His face was a red mask of blood; the crippled Lagos’s claws had struck his forehead and flayed off some of the skin there. His chest, slashed by the second Lagos’s blade, was bleeding thickly.

“How is it?” Pehr asked, still gasping.

Josep grimaced, but said, “A hunter without scars is not really a hunter. That’s what they say.”

Pehr had heard that, too, and he smiled. “Can you run? We must—”

He was cut off by a shrill screaming ringing through the night. It didn’t sound to Pehr’s ears like Nani was in pain, only afraid, but he couldn’t be sure until they reached her. Jace and his mother came running up from out of the shadows.

“I owe you my li—” Josep began.

“Go on!” Jace cried. “We’ll follow. Take the beast if you can, and if not, try to draw it out into the open. I have six arrows left.”

Josep turned and began running in the direction of the scream. Pehr glanced at Jace and nodded, then turned and followed him.

* * *

Nani counted to five and then sprinted forward. She was still young and healthy, fit from years of hard living, and she had always been fast. She knew her only chance for survival was to be faster than she had ever been before. She had no intention of letting go of her men, but she would address that point when they reached the shore. For now, she could only run.

The group of Lagos registered a moment of surprise at her actions – the telegraphing from Pehr and Josep had led them to believe she would break in the opposite direction – and so she gained several lengths before they reacted. Two of them came loping along behind her, howling madly, and Nani found herself praying that they were not quite so fast as the stories told. She ran, hearing the sound of her own breath over the snarls of the creatures behind her that were slowly gaining.

She did not waste her breath on prayer, but found herself using her thoughts to beseech the Gods, over and over, for some small mercy after all of this terror. She did not know whether the twang of Jace’s bowstring meant that they had heard her plea, but the howl and thud that followed it were most satisfying. The other Lagos paused for only a moment, and Nani risked a glance over her shoulder, but by that time it had already resumed the chase. Jace’s bow sounded again, but they had moved out of range, and the arrow fell just short. Now her only hope was the rock and the safety of the cleft therein.

The Lagos warrior was soon hot on her heels, making noises that sounded to her like laughter. She could feel something in her side that she knew was the beginning of a cramp, and she tried to will it away. Close, now … this was no time to falter. For the first time since all of this had begun, Nani forced herself to fully visualize just what exactly it was that waited for her, should she fall into the creature’s hands. There would be no swift and merciful death for her, only pain and horror and the chance to be left lying, abandoned in agony to live or die as the Gods saw fit.

And if she survived? What would there be for her then? Her village was decimated, most of the men dead. Her husband, cousin and brother already expected to join them. Some small number of women and children might escape with only minor injuries. Perhaps she would be one of those left to care for all the rest, cripples and invalids, their eyes destroyed, ears cut off, faces all but erased. Yes, she might survive the torment, might even end up like old Luce and keep her sight and hearing. Perhaps she could live out her days cleaning merchantmen’s dwellings, pining for those she had lost.

Nani was unwilling to consider that option, and unwilling to let the creature behind her get its chance to perform its despicable ritual of mutilation; she would reach the rock – that Gods-damned rock that had seemed so close when Jace first detailed his plan – or she would take the knife that she had carried with her every day since her eighth birthday, and she would hold it to her chin, and she would fall upon it, driving it up into her skull.

Nani was not sure that she could run much longer, and the Lagos warrior, screeching in anticipation, was only feet behind her. She was making choked coughing noises as her lungs struggled to draw enough air into her body to fuel her burning muscles. It would not be enough merely to reach the rock; she must have the strength to make her way deep inside of the split, lest the creature behind her simply grab her and haul her back out. The only way would be a dangerous, flying leap. If she tried to climb in, she would be overtaken.

She felt the Lagos’s fingertips hook into the cloth of her dress, and for a moment it seemed that it would be the knife after all. Then the thing’s sharp talons tore through the linen fabric, and Nani was free again. She ran directly at the rock, before her at last, and leapt, wrapping her head in her arms and praying for the best. She felt sharp stone scrape her arms and legs, her hips and belly, and she cried out in pain as she landed within the inky, enveloping darkness of the cut in the rock. She hadn’t broken anything, but she knew that if she survived until the morning, she would find cuts and bruises all over her body. Compared to what the Lagos offered her, this seemed a small price to pay.

She was drawing in her first haggard, burning breath of relief when the creature’s clawed hand wrapped around her foot.

The gasp became a shriek of terror, long and wailing, and Nani braced her arms against the rock walls around her, pulling backward with all her might. She felt no give; it was as if a rope had been tied around her ankle and was now being pulled by half a dozen kampri. Soon she would begin to slip, and for a brief, desperate moment, Nani thought of the knife, and wondered if the time hadn't come to use it. She couldn't hold out against this strength long enough for Pehr and Josep to arrive.

But the image of the knife in her mind brought forth another idea. Nani let go of her holds on the rock and leaned forward with a sudden, sharp motion. She felt the loose gravel beneath her rump give way, felt herself sliding forward, forced herself not to panic. She reached down beside her to where the knife had fallen and grabbed at it with such force that it nearly skittered away from her hands and out of reach. Securing her grip, muttering curses at herself under her breath, she lunged forward again and stabbed at the fingers wrapped so tightly around her ankle, working nearly blind.

The creature howled and, at first, only pulled harder, but she stabbed and slashed, screaming in rage and terror and hatred. After a moment more, the Lagos let her go. Nani threw her arms backward, losing her grip on the knife and hearing it clatter somewhere far behind her. She ignored it, planting her hands against the rough stone and shoving with her all her might, wedging herself further and further back. When next the Lagos lunged in to grab at her, his hand fell nearly two feet short of her foot.

Nani found herself laughing now, calling profanities out at the Lagos, taunting it. She was filled with a kind of joyous rage; these creatures had destroyed her village and laid waste to her friends and family, but here at least was some small victory. She possessed the thing that this monster wanted above all else, an unspoilt face and body to rend and tear, and she had denied him his prize. There was a savage thrill to be had there, and Nani enjoyed hearing the Lagos warrior’s frustrated snarls as it attempted to shove itself deep enough into the cleft to regain its grip on her.

How long this lasted, Nani could not have guessed. She lost all track of time, wedged there in the stone, and it might have been minutes or hours that passed. She would have stayed there for the rest of eternity if it had been required of her.

It wasn’t. There was a noise that sounded to Nani like emptying the buckets of fish offal she sometimes gave to their solitary domesticated pig. The Lagos made a horrible groaning noise and slid slowly out of the crack. There was a thud as its body hit the ground, and in a moment more a face she knew appeared dimly, outlined against the sky beyond and dripping with what had to be blood but recognizable nonetheless.

“What kept you?” Nani asked the man who was to be her husband, and then she grinned, and laughed, and began to push forward.

Chapter 8

Pehr saw Nani scramble out of the rock and throw her arms around Josep. The hunter grunted, pulling away instinctively, and she gasped as she saw the large slash running across his chest.

“Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?” she asked, reaching her hands out as if to fix him with her touch. Josep intercepted her fingers and brought them instead to his lips.

“People get hurt in battle, Nani,” he told her.

“Like him,” Pehr said, gesturing toward the Lagos warrior that had so nearly overtaken her. The creature’s guts were lying underneath it in an expanding pool of blood.

“Yes, like him,” Josep agreed. He touched his forehead and winced, and Nani made a noise of sympathy.

“Is it bad?” she asked him.

“It is what it is. Pay it no more mind, Nani.”

“If that is your wish, Josep. I … where is my brother?”

“Here,” said Jace’s voice from the dark, and in a few moments more he and Anna came into view. Thunder rumbled as they walked up, and lightning flashed. The storm that had begun out over the ocean was moving its way inland, and Pehr thought he could hear the soft sighing noise of rain hitting the lagoon. Tiny droplets were beginning to hit his face and shoulders and chest.

“We can’t stay here,” he said, moving away from the Lagos corpse and joining the rest of them.

“No, we must keep moving,” Josep said. “It’s not safe here.”

“They don't seem to be searching for us,” Anna ventured hopefully, and Josep shook his head.

“After they make their final move on the village center – which they may have already – they will send out parties to sweep for survivors. When that happens, I intend they find only Pehr, and Jace, and myself.”

“I would have Jace take my place in the cave,” Anna said. “Please. I would spare my children.”

“Mother, I will not,” Jace said. “This is the only test I will live to see, and I will not flee from it. I'm my father’s son, and I will honor him by dying as a hunter.”

Anna looked down at the ground, struggling with her emotions, but spoke no more. Nani was looking at them all with an expression of enormous distaste, but she held her peace.

“Let’s go,” Josep said, and he strode off again into the night. The others followed, grouped in a loose bunch with Pehr bringing up the rear.

By the time they reached the ocean, the rain had intensified to a downpour, falling hard enough that is was difficult to hear Josep’s instructions. They moved as quickly as they could. Somewhere behind them there were still many Lagos.

They came eventually to Nethalanhal. The stark grey cliffs, never scaled by man, towered over them, rising straight up into the darkness. Turning, they began to move along its edge toward the lagoon.

“The cave is not easy to get to,” Josep told them. “I don’t know if others have ever found it, but if they did, it must have been long ago. Nani, Mother Anna, you will have to dive, swim, and hold your breath. Can you do these things?”

“We can,” Nani said. She was leaning against the cliff wall, looking off to her left, to the point where the ground sloped, becoming sandy beach, and out past that, at the far edge of the lagoon. The rain continued to fall, and Pehr was glad at least that it was the warm season, and that the storm hadn't come down on them from the cold seas to the north.

“Good,” Josep said. “We will make our way down to the shore, and then climb out on the nearest rock, staying on the side of the cliff wall. From there—”

He never finished his instructions. Through the rain there came a rushing noise, and then a long, curved blade attached to a handle of wood whirled out of the darkness and embedded itself deep in the meat of his left thigh. Josep cried out in agony and Nani let loose a piercing shriek. Pehr turned in time to see one of the Lagos loping in toward the hunter, and then the creature swept its hands downward, talons fully extended. Josep’s left shoulder was rendered in an instant to tatters of flesh and skin.

The hunter went to his knees, and Pehr lunged forward to intercept the Lagos, but thick, powerful arms wrapped themselves around him and hurled him to the ground. He landed on his side, the wind knocked out of him, and for a moment he could only lie there, staring out at the scene. A taloned hand grabbed his club and knife from him and tossed them away.

Josep had pitched forward and was lying on the ground, face down, and Pehr knew that the hunter was in dire peril. The blood loss alone would kill him if his wounds were not soon dressed. Nani and Anna had knelt, one on either side of Josep, and Pehr saw Nani take Josep’s knife from the strap on his leg and hold it out in defiance. A third Lagos warrior had grabbed Jace and stripped the boy of his weapons, its massive claw wrapped around his neck.

All this, Pehr thought, and we’ve done it for nothing.

The first Lagos warrior was advancing on Josep’s prone form, holding a knife of its own and staring at Nani’s face. Pehr shoved up with his hands, trying to gain his footing, only to feel something heavy and sharply tipped slam into his back and drive him back to the ground; one of the creatures had stomped its heavy foot down on top of him.

Before the advancing Lagos could reach Josep or Nani, there came from the darkness to Pehr’s left a snarling word that Pehr did not understand. The Lagos warrior glanced back over its shoulder and then, with a nod, turned and ambled away from Josep’s body. He went to the edge of sight and conferred there in low tones with whoever had spoken. The two warriors that were holding Pehr and Jace down also moved away, and both boys moved immediately to join the others. After a moment, the Lagos warrior involved in the discussion shrugged, and the one that had given the command came forth.

It was like the other Lagos warriors, only not so large or strong, and was dressed in many bird feathers and monkey skins. Around its large, yellow-green eyes were painted great white circles, and its teeth had all been dyed red. It seemed to be grinning at them, but it neither advanced nor made any threatening gestures.

The creature growled some words at them – to Pehr they were nothing but gibberish – followed by some clucking noises and a hand gesture. Pehr and his family waited in silence, unsure how to respond. The decorated Lagos sneered at them and slowly stretched out its hand. It pointed in sequence to Nani, Josep, Anna, and Pehr. After this, it made a dismissive flinging gesture with its hand, snarling again and looking disinterested. The message was clear: it had no use for them.

The priest – surely, that must be what this creature was – then leveled its finger at Jace, grinned, and nodded.

“You cannot have him!” Nani screamed at the thing, and Pehr opened his mouth to agree with her, but Jace only sighed, making a gesture with his hand to quiet them.

“Of course he can have me,” Jace said. “Wasn’t that the bargain all along? My life, and Pehr’s, and Josep’s, in exchange for yours and Mother’s.”

“Jace, no!” Pehr shouted, grabbing his cousin by the wrist. Jace shook him off.

“Would you not do the same, if they wanted you?” he asked.

“But they don’t want Pehr,” Nani said. “They don’t want Josep, or Mother, or me. Why you?”

“Does it matter, Nani? If I go now, I can save more lives.”

The Lagos priest snarled at them again and spoke more of its strange language, its tone making the intention of its words obvious: stop wasting time.

“It must be a trick!” Nani cried. “Jace, don’t leave us. Don’t let them take you away.”

“They cannot be trusted” Pehr said. “Jace, don’t do this.”

Jace knelt down next to them and gestured to Josep’s prone form. The wounded hunter was still breathing, but those breaths were ragged and shallow. Anna was hurriedly binding his wounds with wet strips of cloth that she had torn from her own garments.

“Do you want him to live?” he asked his sister.

Nani might have been weeping now – it was hard to tell, with the rain. She looked back and forth between Jace and her husband-to-be. “Don’t make me choose!”

“It’s not a choice. They will take me either way, Nani, but if they had taken me by force they would’ve had to hurt me. They want me unspoiled. I don’t know why, but I won’t question it. This is a gift from the Gods, and we’re going to take it.”

Nani had no more words for this, and so she only covered her face. Jace stood, turned, and looked at Pehr.

“Will you see her to safety, cousin?” he asked.

Pehr clenched his teeth, forced back the rage and hatred that threatened to overwhelm him, and nodded. “I told you I would.”

“Forget the cave. Find the closest building that still stands. The killing is done.”

One of the Lagos warriors had collected Pehr’s weapons from the ground and was now holding them. Jace pointed at it, and then at Pehr. The priest shook its head and Jace lunged forward, stabbing his finger out again and shouting, “Give him his weapons or kill me here!”

The priest stared at him for a moment, surprised, then grunted out a wheezing laugh. It growled something in his beast-language to the warrior, which also laughed, but then threw Pehr’s club in the general direction of the group. When Pehr bent to pick it up, the Lagos flicked Pehr’s knife expertly down into the ground, just in front of Pehr’s hand. Still laughing, the warrior turned and wandered off.

“Good,” Jace said.

Lightning flashed and thunder roared. The priest seemed unmoved by this display of nature. It jerked its head toward the jungle, and Jace nodded.

“I’m going,” he said, and when his voice broke on the second word, Pehr was reminded that this was no hunter. This was a fourteen-year-old boy, someone not yet a man, no matter how well he sometimes impersonated one. Jace was facing his very nightmares, and had just now agreed to go with them quietly, willingly, to some unknown end.

Pehr said his cousin’s name, and the boy turned to look at him, managing a half smile. He took a deep breath, then turned back and walked toward the priest. The creature nodded, pointing out into the darkness, and Jace began to trudge in that direction. Nani wailed his name, and Pehr saw the sound of her cry hit the boy almost as a physical weight, making his shoulders drop, but he did not turn around, merely continued to walk. His words came back to them.

“I love you, Sister. I’m glad you are safe.”

“Oh, Jace,” Nani wept, her voice broken and defeated. “Oh, Jace, it’s not fair.”

It wasn’t, but there was nothing else they could do, and so they watched as he walked away, the Lagos priest not far behind him, until at last the rain and the dark swallowed both of them up.

* * *

On the outskirts of the village they found a home that had only been half-burnt before the rains had come and extinguished the fire, leaving much of its roof intact, and it was there that they took shelter.

Josep was awake, but confused and near incoherent. Twice he tried to insist to Pehr that they should make for the ocean, that he could still swim and show Nani the way to the cave. Pehr tried to explain to him that it was over, that the fighting was done, but Josep seemed unable to understand. Eventually he fell into a deep sleep. Pehr was skeptical that the hunter would ever wake, but when Nani asked him if he thought Josep would live, he told her he was sure of it.

Four hours passed. They had tended to Josep’s wounds as best they could, searching the hut for dry clothing and tearing it into strips to make better bandages. They fashioned a fire from a small supply of wood, augmenting it by shattering the doors and tearing down part of the roof. It seemed that Josep slept peacefully, but still Pehr sat with him for some time, thinking.

Pehr had survived this night, survived the worst that the Gods could throw at him. Was there any question now that he would pass the Test? Was there any doubt he would be made a man? Why, then, did the prospect feel so empty? Why did he keep returning to Nani’s words? Will you promise to help him? Will you promise to always be there for him?

At last he left the sleeping hunter and came into the main room of the dwelling. Anna was in the other room, sitting on the dirt floor, her back against the wall and her head buried in her arms. Nani was standing at the front door, staring out into the rain toward the jungle. Pehr came up beside her and touched her shoulder.

“Josep’s bandages will need to be changed often,” he said, and Nani nodded.

“As soon as dawn comes, I will make for the village,” she said. “I will get supplies. Bandages and salves, broth, tea, and … and, oh … oh!”

She turned and threw her arms around him, burying her face against his neck and weeping. Pehr put his own arms around her and held her, waiting for her sobbing to lessen. At last he took her at arm’s length, and after several moments more, she looked up at him.

“Come outside with me,” he said, and Nani glanced out through the door, confused.

“Out into the rain?”

“Just for a moment.”

“But I … oh, very well.”

When they were outdoors and around the side of the hut, away from where Anna or Josep might hear them, Pehr stopped and turned to face her again. Nani looked back, confused and miserable.

“I’m going,” Pehr told her, and Nani’s eyes widened in fear.

“Where? Pehr, why are you leaving us?!”

“I must go after Jace.”

Nani shook her head. “Oh, Pehr, no … please, no. They’ll kill you! They’ll kill the both of you and I … if Josep … I’ll have no one!”

“Nani, I have to do this.”

“Why?”

Pehr smiled at her. “Because you made me swear to keep him safe.”

“But you’ll never come back!” Nani wailed, lunging forward as if to hit him. Pehr waited for the blow to come, but she seemed to think better of it and instead wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight.

“Damn you,” she was muttering. “Damn you, damn you.”

“I promised you, Nani. You asked this of me.”

She had trapped him with his love, and she couldn't ask him to go back on the oath she had made him swear to her. Any hunter worthy of the title would choose death over the breaking of a sworn oath, especially to one he loved.

“I will come back,” he said, and she laughed, a sound that was bitter and without humor.

“No doubt. You will come riding in upon the edge of a rainbow, with Jace and my father at your heels,” she said, and then she let him go, stepping back toward the door.

“It’s too late for me to do anything for Uncle Truff,” Pehr told her. “It is not yet too late for Jace. I will bring him back if I can.”

She nodded, resigned, saying nothing. After a moment more, Pehr turned and began to jog toward the jungle, focusing on nothing more than preventing himself from looking back. He was almost at the edge of sight when she called his name and came running after him. He considered for a moment simply outrunning her but couldn’t make himself do it, and came instead to a stop, turning to meet her.

Nani came into his arms at a run, nearly bowling him over. Twisting her fingers into his hair, she pressed her lips to his, pressed her tongue to his, kissed him long and deep with a ferocity that bordered on painful. Overwhelmed, Pehr put his hands in her hair and kissed back. They stood like that for some short, too short, impossibly short time – a period that could never have been long enough for Pehr even had it lasted until the very breaking of the world – and then she pulled away from him.

“I will never see you again,” she told him. “I will never, ever see you again, and I will not let you leave me without the truth. May the Gods damn you, and me, and the Lagos, and everything else in this miserable place. I love you. I love you, though I cannot have you, and it’s tearing my soul apart to watch you leave.”

Pehr allowed himself just the smallest moment to savor these words, which he had thought he’d never hear. Then he kissed her once more and stepped away from her. Nani was looking into his eyes, and when Pehr realized what he was about to do, it seemed he could feel his heart splitting in two. Still, he forced himself to say the words that had come unbidden to his head, because he knew that they must be said.

“Make certain that he lives,” he told this girl that he loved. “I want you to do everything in your power to bring Josep back to health, and then I want you to marry him as soon as he is able to stand at the shrine. Give him lots of sons, strong like their father, and lots of daughters, strong like you.”

Nani’s face crumbled and she covered it with her hands, beginning to sob. Pehr fought down the urge to go to her and said instead, “Goodbye, my cousin.”

Then he acted as a hunter should, and as he knew he must. He turned his back to her, and he ran for the jungle, and he didn’t look back.

Chapter 9

Dawn was breaking as Pehr came to the great jungle that spanned the entire eastern border of the land upon which his people had settled. It was here that he would have hunted wild boar with his fellow men had the Lagos not chosen his village as their target. The rain had stopped for the moment, and steam drifted in tendrils off the tops of the wide, tall trees that dominated the jungle canopy. The underbrush was not so foreboding this close to its edge, but he knew it would soon grow dark and dense. He could hear the calls of monkeys and birds in the treetops.

He’d expected at first to find a great many trails blazed by the departing Lagos, but all seemed to converge on a single entrance into the thick greenery. Pehr was not, and would never be, a master tracker, but a blind man could have followed the trail of destruction the Lagos left behind them. Not content simply with burning and pillaging, it seemed that the creatures went out of their way to damage their surroundings even when there was no gain to be had in it. All around him, Pehr saw broken branches and trampled greenery. Even the earth itself had been gouged and torn by the passing of their clawed feet. There was no question of which direction to head.

Pehr knew that this undertaking was foolish, bordering on insane, but he couldn't bring himself to abandon Jace. He knew that his village needed him, but still he raged against the idea of breaking his oath and leaving the boy to his fate. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to do it, and resolved to press on.

There was no chance for victory in a frontal assault. His goal was to catch up with the Lagos, not to overtake them. Then, maybe, he could locate Jace and begin to formulate a plan for escape. The Lagos, for all their ferocity and strength, would have to rest at some point. Unless they truly were magic creations of the Gods, they would stop to sleep, and though Pehr had no doubt that there would be guards, there might also be some window of opportunity for him there.

Two years earlier, Pehr and Jace had gone on an expedition with Truff to the jungle’s edge. They had spent three days exploring the boundary and the immediate depths, as Truff provided valuable education and insight into the flora and fauna they would find there. The wild boars that the hunters so prized, Truff had told them, were most likely to be found living in groups around a central water source. The monkeys in the trees were no danger during the day, but during the night they loved to raid campsites. The jungle was also home to a wide variety of poisons; there were scorpions and spiders, snakes, stinging insects, and even a kind of lizard whose mouth was so filled with vile substances that anything it bit would become infected and begin to rot within days.

Pehr did not fear these creatures, exactly; he knew how to deal with the boars and monkeys, and even the rare jungle cats that existed as much in rumor as memory. If he was bitten by a snake, spider, or lizard, then that was fate. He hadn’t seen much in recent days that made him believe he could control the whims of the Gods.

Pehr was exhausted, but he knew that the Lagos would not camp so close to the jungle’s edge. They would be moving all day, and they would gain much distance on him if he stopped to sleep. He knew he must press on even though he hadn't slept since the night before the attack, when he’d had that bizarre dream. What had it meant? Who had the girl been, and why had she been searching for him? Why could he not now remember her face though he had stared directly into her eyes?

Pehr’s typical nocturnal imagery consisted of things related to life in his village, his training for the hunt, and more increasingly of the various girls that had caught his eye. This new girl, though … she was unlike any he'd ever known, tall and thin, lithe and graceful, and by her silhouette he'd seen that she kept her hair cropped short, something he had never seen before.

Pehr managed to piece all of this together as he made his way through the jungle, returning to the images again and again in his mind, but when he tried to go any deeper, or get any closer, the dream faded and blurred, becoming inscrutable. This grew ever more frustrating as the day went on, and eventually Pehr gave up, angry that he could not coax the girl’s face from his reticent brain.

He was tired, hot and sweaty, and ravenously hungry. There had been no time to search for food, and he had stopped only once to fill his water skin, which was now nearly empty again. Pehr looked up at the sky through a rare break in the canopy and saw that it was now a few hours past noon. His body couldn't go much further.

He slowed his pace and began to pay more attention to his surroundings. The jungle here was riddled with fast-moving streams and his land rarely experienced drought – often the time between rains was measured in hours, not days. Pehr was not afraid of running out of water, but food was something more of a concern. Lush though the jungle was, most of its plants were inedible, and Pehr did not have the necessary time to forage for the few green things that his stomach might tolerate. He had his knife and club, but had left his bow behind, having no arrows with which to use it. It was possible that he might catch something, but Pehr thought it likely that he would have to call on his training and his strength to live without much food for a time.

After a few more minutes of walking, he came to the edge of a small, rushing stream. Its pools were deep enough to harbor fish, small freshwater lobsters, and snails. Perhaps a meal could be had here after all, and in any case he now had his opportunity to rest and collect water. There would be no more traveling this day, even if it meant losing ground to the Lagos.

Pulling his knife from his belt, Pehr set about making for himself a simple shelter.

* * *

The Lagos were driving forward through the jungle at a relentless pace, and it took Pehr four days of near-constant travel to finally catch up with them. After the first night he slept only in brief stints, climbing into the low-lying branches of the jungle trees and fashioning a type of nest from their fronds. He encountered no snakes or scorpions and only a few spiders, but the sounds of the jungle made his nights hell, and by the end of that fourth day he could think of little more than how much he missed his bed. He was concentrating so hard on this thought, in fact, that he nearly stumbled into an outlying Lagos campsite before realizing it was there.

It was half-dark and the jungle had grown fuzzy and indistinct. At the last moment he became aware of the glowing fire only yards away, and he came to a dead stop, feeling suddenly open and exposed, standing as he was in the very middle of the Lagos’s trail of destruction. He dropped quickly to his belly, scanning warily for enemies. When he saw none in the immediate area, he pulled himself as quietly as he could into the dense underbrush that surrounded him.

His first goal was to determine the size of the group by scouting its entire perimeter. If he was lucky, he might locate Jace during this process. Pehr assumed that all of the prisoners were being kept together, and he wondered for a moment if it would be possible to free more than one. If not, how could he explain to them that he was there to save his cousin but leave them to their fate?

What was their fate? He didn’t know any better than they did, and part of him was tremendously curious about what the Lagos might have in store for the children whom they had stolen away. Pehr could barely remember the stories from his youth, but he thought that the Lagos had no use for the very young – those who had seen fewer than four years – or for any child who had passed much further than their fourteenth year. Had Jace been even a few months older, Pehr thought it was likely that his whole family would be lying dead at the edge of Nethalanhal.

The going was slow, but not difficult; it took Pehr two hours to circle the camp, staying at the edges of the rough circle formed by the individual fires and trying his best to remain absolutely silent. He had at first attempted to stay downwind of the Lagos as well, but had failed in this endeavor multiple times. It seemed that the Lagos, beast-like though they were, did not have a highly developed sense of smell. They hadn't even so much as scented Pehr’s presence, let alone his exact location.

He estimated the group at around four hundred Lagos, of which the vast majority was made up of warriors. There seemed to be about one female for every three males. There was only one encampment of priests, and it took only a few minutes of observation to obtain an exact count of their numbers: fifteen creatures dressed in feathers and beads led this group. All of them were male and uniformly smaller than their warrior counterparts.

He saw no sign of Jace or any of the other prisoners, and he guessed that they were being held nearer to the center of the circle. Periodically, during his observation of the priests, one or two of them had moved in that direction, only to come back a few moments later. It seemed likely that they were checking on something, and Pehr could only assume it was the collection of human children that they had amassed.

At last Pehr made his way out from the encampment and climbed a tall, rocky hill, upon which stood a massive tree, its huge green leaves seeming to stretch so high above him that they must surely touch the stars. Pehr climbed into a low-lying branch and sat with his back against the trunk. From here he could see several of the campfires, now tiny, dotting the landscape below him. He could smell the roasting meat, hear the occasional burst of laughter or fighting, and sometimes see forms moving around the fire.

The tree gave access to a gentle breeze that was a true mercy after the heat and wet of the jungle below. It minimized the number of insects, too; for this, perhaps more than anything else, Pehr was thankful. He watched the valley below, illuminated by the full and bloated moon rising over the mountains in the far distance, tracking the progress of the occasional bat as it swooped through the clouds of insects gathered in the valley below.

His plan was simple but dangerous; he would wait for a few more hours, dozing if the need took him, until the fires of the Lagos had burned low and most of them were asleep. Then he would return to the valley and make his way slowly and quietly into the interior. He did not expect to free Jace tonight, but he hoped to locate the boy and begin devising a plan for their escape.

He had every reason to believe that the Lagos would catch him and his quest would end here in the jungle, his blood spilled by an enemy blade. Yet Pehr could neither think of a better plan nor bring himself to abandon the idea of rescuing Jace. The Lagos were disorganized and did not expect any sort of infiltration. The plan would work, it had to work, and he endeavored to put any thoughts of its failure out of his mind.

Pehr leaned back against the tree trunk, put his hands behind him, and tried to relax, staring up at the stars that dotted the heavens above him.

* * *

The blonde-haired boy was lying on his side in the dirt, breathing easily in sleep. He was disheveled and filthy, but Pehr recognized him from thirty paces nonetheless. His cousin was lying there with at least three dozen other children of varying ages, all of whom slept, though many shifted, whimpering, as if their dreams were dark.

There was a collar of metal around Jace’s neck, and a chain of the same material that led to a nearby tree, around which it had been fastened with a sort of device that Pehr had never seen before. The same was true of every child; each had been tethered to a tree by thick loops of linked metal that no human could hope to break. Pehr wondered how he might free Jace from the chain and decided that the answer must lie in the device at its end. Break that and the links would slide easily through the collar, and the boy would be free.

Pehr had seen only four Lagos awake in his dangerous journey into their ranks. Two warriors were aimlessly wandering from campsite to campsite, clearly on watch but not very involved in their duties. He'd come upon the other two, a male and a female, noisily rutting in the underbrush not far from a guttering campfire and easily avoided. The interior seemed completely unguarded, and Pehr made his way slowly inward until he'd come upon the prisoners. Now he was on his belly, crawling slowly toward Jace. He came to a stop no more than ten feet from his cousin.

“Jace!” he hissed, but the boy only muttered and rolled over in his sleep. Pehr grimaced in frustration and searched for a rock that would be large enough to wake the boy without braining him in the process. Finally he found one and, taking careful aim, threw it at the boy’s prone form.

His aim was true, and the stone bounced off the boy’s arm, leaving a painful-looking red mark in its passing. Jace gasped, sitting bolt upright and swiveling his head back and forth, trying to determine where this unexpected attack had come from.

Pehr half-whispered the boy’s name and, when Jace still couldn't locate him, said, “To your left, wet-head.”

Jace glanced over at the underbrush and seemed to discern his cousin’s presence, his eyes widening. “Gods … is that you, Pehr?”

“Keep your voice down! Work your way over here and then lie down as if you’re asleep.”

Jace did as he was told, moving slowly along the ground until he was lying only a foot or two from Pehr’s prone form. The chain at his neck was stretched to its furthest extent.

“You’re insane,” Jace hissed, his eyelids slit, trying his best to give the illusion that he was still asleep.

“Probably,” Pehr said, and shrugged. “But I’m here.”

“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.

Chapter 10

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.

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 with 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 inadvertent 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.

Pehr waited for the priest to make his signal, waited for the Lagos to finish their song, waited for his chance to enter the circle of bones.

* * *

The metal thing’s sensors had performed their duties for thousands of years, and might perhaps continue on with them for thousands more. It guarded the borders of its land as it always had, though in some distant past – before its subroutines had become corrupted and confused – its primary function had been greeting rather than defense. There was a time when the land whose entrance it protected had been a glowing beacon of hope and promise to those who came seeking entrance. Even in instances when the metal thing had been forced to turn such pilgrims away, it had done so with utmost courtesy. Very rarely had its lasers been required, and it had used them sparingly during the time when the place hidden away in the mountains above had still been whole and thriving.

The metal thing knew nothing more of the Lagos than they knew of it. Not a thinking machine, it had rather been built with great cunning to give the impression of thought. The metal thing did not know that those who made it were long dead. It knew only that its job was to guard the pass.

When Jace had stepped forward into the circle of bone, his presence had tripped the metal thing’s sensors and begun its greeting subroutine. The metal thing was equipped with a powerful processing unit capable of performing thousands of operations in parallel, and while the greeting was running, it had also begun analyzing the boy’s chemical makeup. It was able to do this at the genetic level even without obtaining a direct sample, and the analysis of the data it had collected fired off a long-unused routine so important that it suspended all other non-vital processes until it was complete. This sequence of code was capable of modifying the behavior of existing processes, or halting them, or firing new routines entirely.

Triggered by the detection of certain DNA sequences in the boy’s body, the program had been added to the metal thing in secret by certain members of its design board. Here was a security protocol that couldn't be circumvented. It required no pass or code, no key, no voice recognition. It couldn't be faked or fooled.

In the end, the metal thing determined that not enough of the DNA in this boy matched the patterns hard-coded as acceptable, and it had resumed running its other routines as normal. Unfortunately for Jace, a minor mathematical error made by a junior programmer millennia before was responsible for his death. An integer had been divided by zero somewhere between four and six thousand years earlier, and the resulting slow cascade of errors had eaten away at the metal thing’s functionality ever since.

It was for this reason that even while one subroutine was causing the metal thing to apologize to Jace and invite him to obtain a visitor’s pass, a second subroutine was calling forth the lasers that would burn their way through him, and through several Lagos warriors standing in their path.

The metal thing, which was not a thinking machine, could not see the dark humor in this combination of actions. It knew only that it had obeyed its directives as it now understood them. While a manual diagnostic check would have easily diagnosed and corrected this error, the metal thing hadn't been taken in for such maintenance in nearly ten thousand years. In all the time hence, the metal thing had merely been obeying orders, like any good machine. It operated without malice or judgment, without preference or prejudice, without concern or sympathy. It operated, in truth, without any sort of thought at all.

Small consolation that would have been to Jace.

* * *

The Lagos finished their chant, and the priest indicated to Pehr that it was time to enter the circle. The air was thick with silent tension as the Lagos waited to see if he would comply. Pehr had no intention of being hurled bodily into the ring and so he stepped forward, heading for the line of death. The priest sneered at him as he passed, and for a moment Pehr came very close to grabbing the creature by its gigantic ears and dragging it with him into the circle, but he forced himself to stay calm. He wanted no interference with his plan.

As soon as he crossed the line, Pehr broke into a sprint, angling straight for the metal thing. As he'd expected, it launched immediately into the same greeting that it had given each of the other prisoners before murdering them with the awful fire from its eyes. Pehr prayed to his Gods as he ran that they would grant him the same few seconds that they had granted Jace, and that he might reach the metal thing before it decided to kill him.

The thing did pause, and Pehr actually roared in triumph as he ran. He would almost certainly reach it now, and there was no reason to stop, no reason to do anything more than plow into it, knock it down, and try to destroy those deadly eyes. There must be something on the ground near where it stood – a rock, a stick – something that could be used as a weapon against this thing that looked like a walking corpse and carried death inside of it.

Pehr flew forward in great, leaping strides, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible. He was nearly there when the metal thing did something so unexpected that instead of tackling it he instead came skidding to a complete, confused halt.

“DN- M-TCH C-NF-RM-D,” it shouted at him in his own language, or at least a broken and warbling version thereof. “PL--S- ST-T- Y--R N-M-.”

Pehr found himself stammering for a moment before answering. “Pehr. Khada’Pehr, son of Khada’Pol.”

“AL--S -NKN-WN. D- Y-- C-M- -N P--C-?”

“Yes. Yes, I come in peace.”

“D- Y-- W-SH T- -NT-R TH- C-TY?”

“I don’t …” Pehr began, and stopped himself. He had no idea what a city was, but given the choice between entering one and returning to the Lagos, he knew which option he preferred. “Yes, I wish to enter.”

“W-LC-M- T- H-V-NM-NT. W- TH-NK Y-- F-R C-M-NG. -NT-R -ND B- W-LL.”

The metal thing bowed once, stepped back, leaned against the wall, and was silent.

Pehr knew that the wise course of action was still to attack, knew that he should expect this to be some sort of trick, but there was a part of him that understood in some deep and instinctive way that the metal thing had no further interest in him. Much of what the metal thing had said was lost on him, even in his own language, so broken was the thing’s voice. The last four words, though – these had been nearly as clear as if spoken by a fellow hunter. Enter and be well, the thing had told him, and as unbelievable as it seemed to him, it was clear that the thing had meant it.

There was a confused muttering coming from the horde behind him as the Lagos realized that whatever was going to happen had already happened. Pehr was standing there, alive and well and unsacrificed, and a savage thrill of victory ran through him. He wanted to turn and scream at the monsters, ask them what they thought of their god now, but a small part of him still feared turning his back on the guardian.

He heard a single, loud snarl, and Pehr risked a quick glance over his shoulder. A warrior was shoving past the priest, striding past the line of death and into the ring of bone, intent either on dealing with Pehr himself, or perhaps simply proving that the human boy they had captured was not the only one who could subdue the metal thing. Pehr heard the metal thing before him screech back into life, reciting its familiar refrain. He looked back at it, saw that it was clearly focused on the approaching warrior, and decided that his best course of action was to get as far out of its way as possible. To this end, he stepped first to his right and then, with three quick strides, moved past the metal thing entirely.

There was no pause in the speech for the Lagos warrior, and the creature realized its error midway into its charge. Skidding in the white, powdery dust that coated the ground, the Lagos tried desperately to turn and flee the circle. Escape proved impossible; the metal thing finished speaking and its eyes opened wide, the beams emerging from them and hitting the Lagos in the small of its back. The warrior was thrown to the ground, shrieking in agony and flailing wildly, not dead but mortally injured. The metal thing swiveled its head and again the fire lanced from its eyes, this time obliterating most of the Lagos warrior’s skull.

Pehr had seen enough. There was no hope for him now in any direction save one, and so he turned to face it. The mountain pass beckoned to him like open arms, and as the first arrows from those warriors that had drawn their bows began to clatter off the rocks around him, Pehr made his decision and ran for the cleft in the rock. The metal thing ignored the arrows clattering to the ground around it. It had done its job, and Pehr knew it would wait there, unmoving, until the next time it was called upon, when some foolish or unlucky thing stumbled past the edge of its domain.

Around the corner and out of danger from the arrows, Pehr stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He heard roars from behind him, and what he thought was an attempt by the priests to calm the group of Lagos and bring about some sort of order. He wondered if the creatures would simply charge the metal thing and try to overwhelm it by sheer numbers, and he hoped fervently that their obvious reverence for the thing would keep them from doing so.

There was no sound of pursuit after several minutes, and Pehr could feel the tension draining from him. He took a few slow steps along the path and came almost immediately to an intersection. The left branch continued further upwards into the mountain. The other arced east and seemed to descend. Pehr hesitated for a moment, considering. The mountains would be cold, he reasoned, with little in the way of sustenance to be found among the rocks. He would rather descend into whatever valley might be at the end of this path. Hopefully he could find food there, and water, and some sort of shelter.

Pehr made his choice, opting for the path on the right, and in doing so he failed to reach the ruins of humanity’s last great work, but instead set the workings of fate in motion and delivered himself into its hands.

Chapter 12

At the foot of the mountains there was a tight band of deciduous trees, dark but not foreboding, and it was within this small forest that grief overtook Pehr.

He gave himself no time for it while making his way down from the mountains, intent on putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Lagos, the metal thing, and Jace’s body. When at last he staggered into this relative shelter, parched and hungry and exhausted, he realized that he could go no further that day. Pehr stood for a moment by a small stream, too tired yet even to drink, and at first his mind was clear of any thought. He closed his eyes and listened to the rush of the water moving by.

Then came an unbidden image of Jace giving the hunter’s salute, and the grief swept over him without warning, dragging him to his knees, where he covered his face and wept for the first time that he could remember since Paul’s death two years earlier.

He had failed Jace. He had failed Nani. He had failed himself. His cousin, his best friend of fourteen years, was dead. They would never hunt the red fish together again. They would never train for the Test, or talk about the village girls, or insult each other and laugh about it again. Somewhere up in the mountains above lay, in a dishonorable heap, the body of a boy who had been like a brother to him, a boy who Pehr hadn't been able to save. There would be no burning for Jace, no hunter’s pyre, no scattering of his ashes to the wind.

Here Pehr knelt, on the side of the mountains his people had never seen, trapped by some ancient metal creature that threw fire from its eyes and spoke to him in his own language as if it knew him. He'd not only failed in his mission, but had left himself in a foreign land without knife or bow or club. His cousin was gone forever, and Pehr was alone.

He did not beg the Gods for mercy or ask them why they had chosen him for this punishment, but he couldn't help weeping. He cried for his cousin who lay dead on the ground, and for the one who still lived and who had been right to kiss him goodbye. He wept for the loss of the things he'd known, the village he'd grown up in, the hunters of whom he'd lived in awe. He wept for himself, and the knowledge that he would most likely die in this alien place. This grove of trees was too small to support him indefinitely; he must move on or he would soon starve. Retreat was impossible, and so his only option was to plunge even further into the unknown.

The crying didn’t last long; Pehr had never been much for tears even as a very young boy and he had no patience at all for them now. He swiped an arm roughly across his eyes and then stared at it for a moment, shocked by the clean tracks the tears had left in the dirt that covered him. The Lagos hadn't allowed them to bathe, and it’d been days since the last rain. Pehr was filthy, and for a time he debated washing in the stream, but when he tested it he found the water icy cold, coming as it must from the peaks of the mountains. In the end he decided only to clean his face, and to wait until he found warmer water to take more complete action.

Pehr had neither the energy nor the tools to make a shelter, and anyway, it had grown too dark to see much of anything but what was immediately around him. The air was cool and dry, free of bugs, and he did not believe the dangers of the jungle would trouble him here. If the plains past the mountains held their own evils, he would have to risk it. He stripped a few nearby branches, threw them to the ground to use as bedding, and then collapsed upon them. Within minutes, blackness took him, and he slept undisturbed – even the inevitable nightmares, it seemed, were biding their time – for more than twelve hours.

In the morning, he drank his fill from the cold stream and then forced himself to drink even more, almost to the point of making himself ill. He had no skins and no way of knowing how far it would be to the next source of water, and so he took in as much as he could. Also, the water filling his belly helped him forget that it had been hours since he'd last eaten.

Finished drinking, he stood and observed his surroundings, taking his first good look at the land around him in full daylight. The mountains ran in a line that was nearly straight, north to south, though the southern progression bent slightly east as they stretched out into the distance. The path he had followed down from the cliffs continued on through this tiny forest, heading eastward. He debated whether to follow the path or stick close to the mountains. Eventually he decided on the path; it seemed as good a choice as any.

Pehr made his way through the trees and came to the forest’s edge in only a few minutes. Before him stretched what seemed an endless vista of gentle, rolling plains, covered in waist-deep grasses and dotted occasionally with strange and scraggly-looking trees that squatted low to the ground. High in the air, birds of prey circled, hunting for movement in the grasses below.

Pehr forced himself to keep moving. He was still hungry, still filthy, still without weapons or water skins, but the way of the hunter was to make a choice and follow it. The way of the hunter was to do, and Pehr intended to follow his training until it brought him either to salvation or to death.

The path was petering out, becoming choked and overgrown with the tall grasses that now surrounded him, and soon it ended entirely. He stopped again for a moment, looking out at the vast and unending stretch of grassland before him. He bent and plucked a few strands of the grass, holding them between his fingers. Then he threw them high into the air and watched to see which way the wind took them. Northeast.

Surrendering to the whims of fate, Pehr turned in that direction and began to walk.

* * *

It took four days to reach a state of utter desperation, and Pehr was in some way amused by the idea that it was not the Lagos that would kill him, not the beasts of the jungle or the murderous sea beyond the lagoon, but simple thirst. On what he had come to think of as his side of the mountains – the beach and plains of his home, the jungle of the Lagos – he would never have had to worry about water. The land was crisscrossed with streams and rivers, and to go two days without rain was a rare occasion indeed. Food would have been the only real concern, and it would be many more days, perhaps weeks, before that truly became a critical need.

It hadn't rained on this side of the mountains since he'd arrived, and Pehr hadn't seen so much as a swampy patch of ground since he’d left the grove of trees. He was certain there must be some kind of water supply in this land, because grasses like this couldn't thrive for long without it, but he was not in a position simply to wait and see if the rain might someday fall. Four days without anything more than the dew he could sometimes lick off the grasses in the early morning had dehydrated him rapidly. Pehr could feel that his last reserves were nearly depleted and knew he would soon run out of strength.

Though he was in no immediate danger of starvation, being famished certainly didn’t make this experience any more enjoyable. He’d tried eating the grass on the first day, but it was bitter, and even the small amount that he'd consumed as a test had made him nauseated. The stunted trees had leaves that were sharp and hard and had proven no more edible than the grass. He’d managed to catch and eat a few grasshoppers, though the taste of raw insect didn’t thrill him, but this hadn’t even served to sate his hunger. All around him during the nights, he could hear the rustling of countless small creatures, but without bone or flaky stone from which to fashion a knife and no twine for snares, he had thus far had no success in hunting them.

Thinking about this now, he gave a grunting, exasperated laugh and said, “Some hunter. Give me a spear and a boar, and I’ll feast for a month, but Gods forbid I manage to kill a mouse when I need it most.”

It didn’t matter; he would walk until he fell. He knew that if he turned now and tried to make his way back to the grove of trees, he would die before he reached it. He could only continue onward and hope to stumble upon a source of water before his legs would no longer carry him.

They gave out for the first time eight hours later, and Pehr found himself on one knee, arms stretched out before him. He watched as a grasshopper the size of his index finger crawled along his arm and then leapt, buzzing into the air to find itself a better perch. His mouth felt full of kampri fur, and his skin burned even though the air was cool.

You’re not done yet, Nani said to him from what sounded like somewhere ahead, but when Pehr looked up there was nothing to be seen but grass and trees.

“No,” he said anyway. “I guess not, Nani, but it hurts.”

My poor Pehr, she said, her voice like a ghost on the wind, and after that she did not speak again. Pehr struggled back to his feet and stood, swaying a little, staring off into the distance. Before him was a large hill, and the thought of climbing it was not something he relished. To the north and south the plains were flat for some distance, and he thought about turning and taking the easier route. Still, the hill would allow him the furthest view he'd had in two days’ time. Perhaps he would be able to spot water.

Or perhaps more grass, he thought to himself. Perhaps another stumpy tree. You are wasting your time.

Then why walk at all? Another part of him asked. Why not lie back down and wait to die?

“Why not?” Pehr asked out loud, and then shook his head. “Because I'm the son of a hunter, and I will not lie down and wait for death in shame.”

A hunter would use the view to his advantage. A hunter would continue to search for water until death took him. A hunter would climb the hill. Pehr took one step forward, and then another, and found himself able to move on at least for a while longer.

When he at last reached the hill’s zenith and looked down, a great wave of disgust and depression swept over him. More grass. More hills. Not even a single tree to break the view, let alone the beautiful thread of silver that would have meant a river or a brook. Was this to be his only vision, repeating itself over and over until his body finally gave up and let him die? Was he—

But there was a figure there in front of him, at the bottom of the hill. A human figure – he was sure of it. A human female. She had been bent down at first, which was why Pehr had missed her, but now she stood, tall and thin and graceful, and Pehr nearly cried out in surprise.

The girl from his dream was standing below him, just a few dozen yards away, and yet he did not think that this was a dream. If it was, it was certainly not the same dream; he was here now, not in his village, and she was not calling for him. Still, he could tell by the set of her shoulders and the shape of her thighs, the cut of her hair and the way she stood, that this was the girl. He knew her as if she were his kin.

Pehr stumbled his way down the hill on legs that felt wooden and clumsy. Midway down he realized he was rambling out loud about this new discovery. Still cognizant enough to realize that his strange muttering might frighten the girl, he forced himself to stop. He was almost upon her now, but her back was to him and she hadn't noticed his coming. It wasn’t until he was close enough that she could hear his movement through the grass that she turned and to see who approached.

The girl had pale skin and red hair that glowed golden in the sun. It was cropped short and swept over to one side of her forehead, adorned with a few simple feathers and a clasp fashioned from bone. She had a small nose, slightly concave, which sat above thin, pink lips. By far the most dominating aspect of her face was a pair of huge eyes, lined with black paint to mitigate the sun. Her irises were a shade of brilliant, vibrant purple, a color Pehr associated with jungle orchids. In the moment that he saw her face, he knew her. He’d always known her, and not just from a single dream. He’d been seeing this girl in his dreams all his life, but only now, faced with the reality of her, was that truth revealed to him.

She was looking at him with those amazing purple eyes, her face set in an expression that was equal parts curiosity and concern. Pehr opened his mouth to summon forth any sort of words that might alleviate her trepidation, but could only manage a cracking, dry sound, like branches rubbing together. The girl’s eyes were widening not in fear, but in amazement. After a moment more, Pehr saw something else there as well, something he understood all too well: a sort of terrified recognition.

“I know you,” she said, her voice breathless with awe, and these were the last words that Pehr heard for some time. It seemed to him at that moment that the sun had grown terribly bright, and past it swam black spots, like an enormous flock of birds. His head throbbed once, twice, and by the third time Pehr was quite sure it would soon explode. His eyes rolled up and he pitched forward, crashing face-first into the soft, high grass.

Chapter 13

The cloth was cool and damp on his forehead, and this was Pehr’s first reliable indication that he was not dead. Before that there had been only swirling blackness and some distant sense not of time passing, but rather the lack thereof. Now there was the cloth and, after that, the voice.

“You mustn’t die,” the voice said. “I think I need you to live.”

Pehr wanted to answer it. He recognized this voice; it was the girl with the purple eyes, the girl he'd met on those seemingly endless plains of grass, the very same girl who he'd dreamed about long before he'd ever known those plains existed. He wanted to speak, but the feel of the cloth, so soft and comforting, seemed to absorb all of his attention, and for some time Pehr lost himself in it. When next he became aware of time, the cloth was gone.

This time he was able to open his eyes, and what he saw was both familiar to him and also alien. He could see the night sky, and the stars above were the same that he had always known, but the walls within his line of sight were made of stretched skin rather than the mud bricks and tightly thatched branches he’d grown up with. The night was alive, but with the sound of some buzzing creature that Pehr had never heard before he’d made his way to these plains rather than the soft roar of the ocean. He spent some time pondering these differences, not thinking too hard, satisfied to be alive and awake. Eventually the blackness took him again.

The third time he woke there was daylight, and Pehr was strong enough to pull himself to a sitting position and look around for the first time. He’d been placed on a simple cot that was fashioned, like the dwelling around him, from branches and stretched skin. It had been lined with soft furs and was more comfortable than any bed Pehr had ever known.

The structure that surrounded him was six-sided, with flaps that could be opened or closed as windows, and a large door at one end, its view obscured by a curtain of heavy beads on leather straps. The hut was surprisingly large, easily accommodating five other cots, which were arranged in a rough circle around the central fire pit. The center of the ceiling was an open hole through which Pehr had seen the stars the last time he had been awake.

Someone had set a skin full of water and a plate of dried and salted meat on the ground beside his cot. Pehr was no longer suffering from thirst, though he couldn't remember drinking, but he was still ravenously hungry, and he devoured the meat in a few bites, washing it down with water from the skin. After he was done he tried his legs, but here his strength failed him and he sank back into a sitting position. He was not worried; there would be time, yet, for his strength to return.

Pehr heard the beaded curtain being drawn and glanced around to see a small girl entering the hut. She shared similar features with the purple-eyed girl, but was much younger, still really a child. Her hair was long and brown, and her eyes were not purple, but rather a light shade of green.

She noticed that he was sitting up and came to a stop with a little gasp. Pehr held his hands up, hoping to show that he was no threat, and said, “I won’t hurt you,” but if the child understood him, she chose not to respond. Instead she turned and fled, calling something out – a name, perhaps, or a cry of warning. Pehr supposed it didn’t matter; either would bring someone who might be able to tell him where he was, and how long it’d been since he’d come here.

He had to wait only a few minutes before the child returned, bringing with her two others, one of whom was the girl with the purple eyes. Clearly relieved to see him alive and seemingly well, she gave him a small smile but did not immediately speak, deferring instead to the other person who the child had brought. He was an older man, and Pehr thought he was likely their father. He regarded Pehr more warily, but not with any distaste.

“So you are awake at last,” he said, and though he spoke in Pehr’s language, his words were heavy with an accent that Pehr had never heard.

“Yes.”

“We feared that you might not live. My name is Samhad.”

“I am called Pehr. I … my full name is Khada’Pehr, but we don't use our full names until we’ve passed our test of manhood.”

“And you have not passed your test.”

Pehr shook his head, frowning. “I was supposed to take it this very summer, but my village was attacked by the Lagos. They took my cousin. I could have stayed, but …”

“But you chose to follow him,” Samhad said, and Pehr nodded.

“I couldn’t abandon him.”

“What are the Lagos, papa?” the younger girl asked, and Samhad smiled in her direction before returning his gaze to Pehr.

“I was about to ask our guest the same question, Kissha.”

“You don't know of them?” Pehr asked, and Samhad shook his head.

“Are they from the mountains?” the girl with the purple eyes asked. Pehr turned to her and shook his head.

“Not from the mountains, but the jungle below them, I think. I cannot say for sure. I … the Lagos were always more legend than truth, at least until they descended upon us. Have you been to the mountains?”

“They are forbidden to us,” the girl told him.

“What are these Lagos?” Samhad asked. “Did they follow you here?”

Pehr shook his head. “No. The pass is guarded.”

“Guarded by whom?”

“Something old. Something … you’ll think I’m mad if I try and describe it to you, but you are in no danger. The Lagos are beast-men, wicked creatures that live to kill and torture, but they cannot get past the mountains.”

“Indeed, beast-men. Are there dragons there, too, perhaps?”

Pehr felt his cheeks warming. “I am no liar.”

“No, but you were taken with great thirst, and with the sun-sickness. It makes men see many things—”

“Go there yourself if you wish,” Pehr said, trying hard to not let the anger he was feeling into his voice. “Tell me what you think of the guardian.”

Samhad gave Pehr a cool look, but he nodded. “Peace, Khada’Pehr. I will not press you further just now, save for one thing. Are you certain that no danger follows you?”

Pehr thought about this, and he nodded. “The Lagos would not have let this place live free if they could reach it. You would know of them, at least in rumor.”

Samhad considered this for a moment, and Pehr could not guess from his stony expression what the man was thinking. Then he shrugged and said, “There is no reason yet not to believe you.”

“I’ve no reason to lie,” Pehr said, and Samhad favored him with a nod and what Pehr thought was the faintest hint of a smile.

“Are you still hungry, Khada’Pehr?” the girl with the purple eyes asked him.

“I am,” Pehr admitted. “But not starving. If your father has more questions …”

Samhad shook his head. “There will be time enough for questions tonight. For now there is a well in need of repair. Eat. Drink. Regain your strength, and we will speak more when the sun has set.”

“Thank you, I … your hospitality is most appreciated.”

“You are welcome in my home,” Samhad said, and without further words the man turned and strode from the tent, leaving Pehr with his daughters. After a moment, Pehr turned to the older girl and spoke.

“You saved my life. I don’t know how I will repay you.”

She shrugged. “You collapsed at my feet.”

“Still, I thank you. Where … have we come far?”

She shook her head. “We are still on the same plains, not that far from where you fell. You were lucky, though. If I had not been out collecting esquer root, you would have passed right by us without ever knowing it, and I do not think there is water in the direction you were going.”

“I was lost. If I know these lands, it is only in dreams.”

This was a loaded statement, but Pehr remembered the first words that the girl had spoken to him and thought she would understand. She proved him right, looking first at him, and then toward her younger sister, and then back at him. She shook her head once, and Pehr nodded back; they would wait until they were alone to talk of such things.

“My people say life is a dance,” she told him. “Life is a dance and fate is our music.”

“What do you say?”

She paused, looked away, and shrugged.

Pehr laughed a little. “How long was I asleep?”

“You are filled with questions, Khada’Pehr!”

Pehr put a hand to his face, squeezing his temples. “I’m sorry. This is new and I'm confused. So much has changed. I have been so close to death, seen so many killed, and now I have ended up here in this strange place. I don’t know you, or anything about you. I don’t even know your name.”

“My name is Tasha.”

“It is good to meet you. Please … will you call me Pehr? I have not earned the right to be called by my full name and even if I had, it sounds formal to my ears.”

“If that is what you would prefer,” Tasha said.

The younger girl was still staring at him, and the weight of her gaze was beginning to make Pehr somewhat uncomfortable. He turned to look at her, and she blushed, glancing away.

“My sister is curious,” Tasha told him.

“Curious about what?”

“You are not from our land. She has many questions to ask of you, I think, but she is afraid to ask them.”

The girl was looking at him again, the color still in her cheeks, and Pehr smiled at her. “Your name is Kissha?”

She nodded.

“I'm Pehr, and you need not be afraid of me, or of asking me anything that you would like to know.”

Kissha seemed to consider this, and then asked, “Are you from the Gods?”

Pehr cocked his head, glancing at Tasha for explanation.

“Many of us believe the mountains are the home of the Gods,” Tasha told him. “They say there is a great city there, and that the Gods look down on these plains and see all that we do.”

Tasha’s voice seemed oddly flat and unimpressed, but Pehr didn’t think it was the right time to press her on such feelings.

“I’m not from the mountains, Kissha. I don't know if your gods live there or not. No one I know has ever been to the mountains before, and I'm only here because of fate – or destiny.”

“Or choice,” Tasha said. “Or luck. Or coincidence.”

Pehr shrugged. “Likely it was those as well.”

“The others will say it was the will of the Gods,” Tasha said.

“My sister hates the Gods,” Kissha told him. “Our father tells her not to speak of it.”

“I don’t hate them,” Tasha said, and she opened her mouth to say something else, thought better of it, and closed it again.

Pehr said, “It’s not my place to make judgment on your gods in any case.”

Tasha sighed. “Kissha, why don’t you go help mother with the sewing? I will tend to Pehr and be out soon.”

“But I want to stay here!”

“Yes, and I want to talk to Pehr without your foolish questions. There will be time tonight.”

“But Tasha—”

“I will make you a deal, Kissha,” Pehr interrupted, for he, too, wished for time alone to speak with Tasha. “You do as your sister says now, and I promise that I will answer every question that you can think of tonight. Every single one, if I have an answer to give.”

The girl weighed this proposition and then nodded. “Your deal is good. I will go help my mother.”

She left the hut, and for a time there was silence. Pehr, feeling tired and weak again, lay on his side on the cot, looking at Tasha. At last she favored him with a rueful grin.

“You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“I suppose I’ll find out tonight.”

Tasha nodded and was quiet again. Pehr studied her, and to his surprise she did not seem to mind. It was as if she expected it, and he supposed that she’d done her share of observing him while he lay unconscious in her home. After a time he spoke.

“I dreamed of you.”

“Of course.”

“And you of me.” There was no point in pretending; she had already admitted as much.

“Yes. You and I are someplace that I have never been before. It is a place that I think was beautiful once, but it isn’t anymore.”

“And even though you dreamed of me before you ever met me … you don't believe in your gods?”

Tasha gave him a rueful smile, and Pehr knew he'd guessed correctly. She shook her head. “Not mine, not yours, not anyone else’s.”

“How do you explain the dreams?”

Tasha shrugged. “How do you explain a sunrise?”

Pehr considered this and understood it, but he also found it cold and unappealing. He said, “I believe in my Gods.”

Tasha shrugged. “Believe what you want. It’s not my concern. Will you tell me your story, Pehr?”

“Where should I start?”

“Every story has a beginning,” Tasha told him. “Start there.”

She sat cross-legged on one of the cots, looking at him expectantly. Pehr sighed, and gathered his thoughts, and began to speak.

* * *

“These Lagos sound like vile creatures,” Samhad said, and Pehr nodded. He had just finished telling his story for the second time that day, this time to Samhad and his wife Ehella, along with Tasha, who had wanted to hear it again. His hosts’ other three children, Kissha and her twin Mandia, and their six year-old brother Ketrahm, were at the other end of the room, playing together.

The entire group had sat in complete silence as Pehr spoke. He told them of his village, of fishing and farming and raising kampri. He told them of his life with Truff and Anna, Nani and Jace, and about the coming of the Lagos. He spoke of the battle for the village and of their desperate flight to the sea. He tried to explain his decision to follow the Lagos into the jungle. He glossed over his feelings for Nani, but did not hide how his own lack of care had contributed to his capture and the failure of his plan. He spoke even of the metal thing, doing his best to explain what he'd seen, though it was clear by the adults’ expressions that they remained skeptical.

He ended with his trek through the plains and eventual collapse at Tasha’s feet. He did not speak of his dreams of her, or tell them what her first words to him had been. She had asked him to keep this quiet, as her family would not understand and might even be frightened by such a revelation. Pehr did as she asked, sensing that it was best not to speak at length about such things anyway. No one was going to believe that he had dreamed of Tasha weeks or even years before meeting her, any more than they would believe that she had dreamed of journeying with him to some place that neither had ever seen.

“You are sure the Lagos will not come for us?” Ehella asked him, giving a protective glance at her children.

Pehr turned to her and said, “If they could come, they already would have. Long before I ever reached the circle of bone, they would have come to this land, and it is not so vast that you would have avoided them through all this time. They cannot pass the mountains, and they don't know you are here.”

“That these creatures you speak of would take our lands if they could reach them seems certain,” Samhad said. “If a guardian exists, then surely it must have been put there by the Gods to protect us.”

Tasha made a coughing noise, and Samhad cast a cool glance in her direction. She did not look away, but neither did she give any indication that she intended to speak further, and so he turned his gaze back to Pehr.

“What will you do now?”

Pehr had spent the entire afternoon pondering this question, but he was no closer to an answer now than when he’d started.

“I don’t know. Your daughter saved my life, and you have given me shelter, food, and water … without all of this, I would be just as dead as the Lagos had planned. Truly, I thank you, but I think I must begin the search for another way home.”

Samhad frowned. “There are no passes through the mountains that the plainsmen know of – save the one you took, which we are forbidden. The mountains run in an unbroken line far to the south and then curve eastward, where they march toward the sea. Perhaps in the north they recede, but we have traveled far in that direction and never come to their end. The land becomes thickly forested, and those who enter that place most often disappear. The few who return have always grown sickly – their hair falls out, great sores appear on their bodies, and most die soon after.”

“Then there’s no other way to return to my family,” Pehr said, and Samhad shook his head.

“None that I know of.”

Pehr sighed. As fascinating as this new land and its inhabitants were, he did not want to live out the rest of his days here. He would have to brave the circle of bone. It was the only way.

“I will have to try and get past the Lagos and the guardian,” he said at last. Tasha looked up at him, frowning.

“Not yet, surely,” she said. “You are still weak, and the Lagos may be watching for you. Give it time, Pehr.”

“What would you have me do in that time?” Pehr asked, but he already knew, and he could see on their faces that the others had reached the same conclusion. There was work to be done, and the value of a pair of strong arms and legs, an almost-adult male body to haul and chop and hunt, was nearly incalculable. He wondered for a moment if the plainsman was lying about the mountain passes in an effort to keep him.

“You’ll stay here, of course,” Tasha verified. “Your family has been stolen from you, and you are in need of one. You cannot survive here on your own.”

This was true, and Pehr knew it, but he was not yet ready to accept it. He said only, “I thank you for your hospitality with all my heart. Please take no offense when I say that I must not dwell here too long.”

“We would not keep you longer than you would stay,” Samhad said. Pehr glanced up at him. The man’s face was impassive, unreadable, and Pehr decided it was not the time to press him about the mountains.

“May I ask you about your people?” he said instead. “I know so little about this land. In my travels I have not seen any kampri, though I have heard animals moving through the grass, and you have given me meat … do you hunt? Does it ever rain?”

“It rained while you were asleep,” Ehella said with a smile.

“This is not a desert land,” Samhad told him. “But it’s not like the home you describe, where rain comes often. The plants and animals here collect the rain when it does come, and they store it well during dry times. In the cold winter months it rains more, and sometimes there is snow, to the north. There’s also often water trapped under the ground, and we maintain wells when we find a good source. There’s one not twenty strides from here.”

“Do you live here always?” Pehr asked. “I … we stay in one place, but there are more of us than this. Are there other dwellings outside of this one?”

Pehr had not yet been outside of the tent, and Tasha hadn't given him much information after hearing his story for the first time, excusing herself to finish her chores. Pehr was desperate for information, if for no other reason than to keep his mind away from thoughts of Nani and Jace.

“We follow the herds of tral, which we hunt for meat and skins, bone, horns … very little there is of a tral that we cannot make some use of.”

“I don't know these creatures,” Pehr said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”

“That will change,” Samhad replied. “There is a herd that grazes not so far from here. Just a small group … perhaps one hundred and fifty head.”

Pehr, who had never seen a group of animals so large as half that size in his life, raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Do the herds grow much larger than that?”

Samhad smiled. “I have seen groups of tral that are thousands strong and can cover nearly the entire horizon.”

“I would very much like to see something like that.”

“Given time, you shall. When you are feeling stronger, we will go watch the herd and I will explain to you how we make our kills.”

“Do you farm?” Pehr asked him.

“In the winters many of us go southeast and group together there, and in those places we keep community gardens of squash and vegetables, but we do not raise crops in the manner you’ve described.”

“And you don't go to the mountains.”

“Our Gods forbid it. Those who go to the mountains do not return.”

Pehr wondered how many of those adventurers had lost their lives to the metal thing, and whether the mountain path he had chosen not to take led to more such dangers. Whether the guardian was from man or god didn’t matter to him; it served its purpose, keeping the Lagos at bay, and he was glad for that even though the thing had also murdered his cousin.

“Is there anything else I can answer?” Samhad asked him, and Pehr laughed.

“I will have many questions for you in the coming days. Enough that you will grow tired of answering them, I think. But for tonight, only one: whose bed have I been occupying these past days?”

“Ketrahm has been sleeping on one of the bedrolls that we use for nights outside. Don't trouble yourself, Pehr. Our entire family is quite used to sleeping on the ground.”

“Still, I would return his bed to him tonight and use the bedroll myself, instead.”

“It’s not necessary,” Tasha said. “You are not yet back to full strength.”

“I am well enough. I know what my aunt and uncle would say of me depriving a child of his bed. Truff would have told me, Samhad, that if I wanted to sleep on one of these cots then I should learn to build one.”

This seemed a sentiment that Samhad could appreciate, and the man grinned widely, nodding. “I will teach you.”

“I thank you. And now, unless you’ve more questions for me, I think I owe Kissha some answers to her questions. We made a deal.”

Kissha glanced around on hearing her name, her cheeks coloring, and Mandia – distinguishable from her twin to Pehr only by the blue feathers in her hair – giggled. Ehella favored her daughters with a smile and stood.

“Samhad and I will prepare dinner. Tasha, pay attention to your brother and sisters. Try to make sure they don’t trouble our guest unnecessarily.”

Tasha rolled her eyes, but she smiled a little as the children came running over. For the next hour, Pehr sat with the group of them, answering questions – most of them Kissha’s – and telling stories of his village that lay by the sea, far away to the west.

Chapter 14

When Pehr reached the crest of the hill and looked down at the herd of tral spread out below him, he found himself momentarily speechless, stunned by the sheer mass of creatures on the plain below. He and Samhad crouched down in the grass at the top of the hill, under one of the stunted trees that the plainsmen called jesuva, and for a time they observed the animals in silence. Finally Pehr spoke.

“That … is quite a lot of animals.”

Samhad chuckled. The creatures reminded Pehr of kampri, but were at least four times as large, and hairier. The bull tral, of which there was one for every fifteen or so cows, were crowned with a massive pair of horns. These weapons arced first out to the side and then forward, ending in wicked-looking points that he was quite sure could send a man to his death with ease.

“You hunt these things?” Pehr said in a tone of wonder, and Samhad nodded.

“We do.”

“How?”

“Not alone. Any given herd is tracked by many families. There are no less than six men camped nearby. We shall meet with them later today and determine from which side of the herd to attack. Most often we approach from above, but if there are animals to be taken that are old or crippled, we’ll go after them first.”

“Why?”

Samhad was still looking out at the tral. “It’s easier, and it betters the herd. An old or crippled tral will have trouble mating, bearing, or caring for children. Why eliminate a young creature that may yet produce many more tral?”

This made sense to Pehr, and he said so. He followed Samhad’s gaze out onto the vast plain, scanning the herd, and after a moment he located a limping creature – a bull – that was the obvious victim of a poorly-healed broken leg.

“That one is hurt,” he said, pointing, and Samhad grunted in acknowledgment.

“There are two other cripples as well, and an old bull, all staying near the watering hole,” the older hunter said.

Pehr glanced over in that direction; the small body of water was not itself visible, but he could see that it was surrounded by tall, green reeds, standing out against the lighter, brown-green field grass. Pehr noted the animals Samhad had mentioned and then surveyed the land around the watering hole.

“If we approach from the northern end, we’ll have height, and it will partially pin them up against the marsh.”

“Yes.”

“How many animals will we take?”

“One for every two men. There will likely be eight of us. Are you any good with a bow?”

“I can shoot. My cousin, he was …” Pehr paused, nearly overwhelmed by sudden memories of Jace. Samhad gave him the courtesy of not asking what was wrong, and eventually Pehr finished. “Jace could have hit one of those beasts in the eye from here. I’m not that skilled, but I can shoot.”

“Then with luck we will take four. The meat will be totaled up and divided evenly. Each man will get half a hide. The horns, when there are any, go to those hunters whose arrows struck nearest the brain.”

“Is that fair?” Pehr asked. In his dealings thus far with Samhad’s family, great emphasis had been placed on evenly splitting all things, whether for work or pleasure.

“Perhaps not – I have seen skilled hunters walk away with a great number of horns when it was in fact the arrows of others that did the most damage. I think we tolerate this because the horns are not so useful as they might seem. Certainly they can kill a man, but they are brittle and chip easily … useless for weapons or arrowheads. Most often we use them for decoration, and sometimes we grind up pieces of them to brew into our beer, for strength.”

“We do the same with kampri horns,” Pehr said absently, but after a moment these words struck him, and he looked over at Samhad in surprise. The older man seemed not to have noticed, but Pehr was swept up in the sudden sensation that his presence here was bridging a massive gap measured not in distance, but in time. The shared language alone was too striking to ignore, but the shared customs seemed to drive the point home, and Pehr realized that at some time in some distant past, his people and those of the plains must at least have coexisted. More likely, they had been one and the same.

Samhad turned to him. “We have our plan and should go. The longer we stay, the more we risk spooking the tral, and I would not have you witness a stampede just yet.”

“When will we meet the others?” Pehr asked as the two of them began to move slowly backwards, until they were on the other side of the hill and out of the tral’s view. Only then did they stand, and did Samhad answer him.

“We will gather after the noon meal. That will give us plenty of light, and strength from the food. Pehr, before we return to the camp, there are things I would discuss.”

“What things?”

Samhad seemed to be gathering his thoughts, trying to determine the best way to articulate what he had to say. Pehr was quiet, waiting, and finally the older man spoke.

“You speak with conviction, and my daughter is absolutely certain that you speak the truth. For my own part, if I’m uncertain about some of your claims, I mean no offense – it’s just difficult to take the entire story on faith. I know you’re not lying, or even exaggerating – at least not consciously. There are some, however, who would not take kindly to a stranger claiming to have come from the mountains, bringing tales of dangerous guardians left there by the Gods.”

“I cannot say whether it was placed there by your gods,” Pehr said, and Samhad shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter; that is how it will be taken by some of those you’ll meet during your time here. If … I do not wish to offend you, Pehr, but I would ask that you present to them a more plausible story, and leave the truth as you have spoken it to stay among my family, at least for now.”

Pehr shrugged. In all honesty, he had little interest in recounting the tale of the Lagos attack and Jace’s death for anyone else. “What shall we tell them?”

“Your skin is darker than ours, but there are those who live on the coasts to the far southeast who are nearly as dark. We will claim that you have come from there without a family, that you and I met this last winter when I brought my own family in that direction. We will say that I offered to let you come with us on our trip back to the plains, because you are courting my daughter and because my own brother is not here to help me. My people rarely hunt alone and will understand why I would take you into my home.”

“Where is your brother?” Pehr asked. He was amused that it should be Tasha’s father suggesting he claim to be courting the girl. Pehr himself had never even thought of it; his thoughts were still with Nani.

“My brother found a woman in the south and stayed there to court her. He is five years younger than I am, but old for an unmarried man in our land. He will not have many more chances.”

“I wish him luck,” Pehr said. “His decision has made us a convenient excuse.”

“Perhaps it was fate,” Samhad said, and Pehr thought back to the saying Tasha had taught him.

“Life is a dance, and fate is our music,” Pehr said, and the Plainsman glanced over at him, cocking his head in surprise.

“Is it so, Khada’Pehr of the western lands?”

“I think it must be,” Pehr replied.

* * *

“Your father had me pretend I was courting you,” Pehr said, and laughed a little.

Tasha did not laugh, but neither did she seem offended by the concept. She said, “I thought he might. It makes some sense.”

“They believed him, anyway.”

“Good.”

Pehr waited for a moment to see if she would say anything further, and when she didn’t, he asked, “Why does it make sense?”

Tasha shrugged. “I am of age, you are of age … why else would you help a man who is not your kin?”

“Why would a man take in a boy who has such plans for his daughter?”

“It is easier to watch a boy when you keep him in your home,” she replied. “If you were really courting me, Khada’Pehr of the western lands, you would be in there with him, and certainly not out here with me.”

They were out in the grass, away from the confines of the family home. Pehr had built a small fire of dead jesuva branches, digging a wide, shallow pit so that the embers would not catch the grasses alight. He was lying on his back near it, the grass bent down under him to form a comfortable pad, listening to the unceasing buzz of the insects that Tasha called crickets.

“Since I’m not courting you, he allows us to be alone,” Pehr said, feeling awkward. Out here it was hard not to notice the way the moon shone on Tasha’s white skin, or how her simple leather garments hugged her hips and breasts.

“Yes.”

Pehr considered this. “What if I said I want to court you?”

Tasha seemed as unmoved by this as if he had suggested that the two of them share a meal together. She glanced over at Pehr with an expression of mild curiosity.

“Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mmm … ask me again when you know.”

Pehr laughed a little at this. “Maybe I do.”

“I don’t think so,” Tasha said. “I think you want to bed me, because you’re a man and I’m a woman … or anyway we’re near enough for all of that … but I do not think you want to court me.”

Pehr was silent, knowing that this assessment was accurate, but not quite ready to admit it.

“I’m not angry,” Tasha said after a time. She was sitting with her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them, looking up at the stars.

“I never know how you’re feeling,” Pehr said.

“If I’m ever angry with you, there won’t be any doubt.”

“Would you be angry if I did want to court you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Pehr found her lack of emotion simultaneously frustrating and oddly appealing. It was refreshing to deal with someone for whom there was only truth, with very little concern for subtlety or evasion. Pehr decided to try something more direct.

“Would you want me to court you?”

Tasha shook her head. “I am not in love with you. Kissha, perhaps … but not me.”

“Kissha is too young to be in love.”

“And too young to court, even if she was.”

“So you don’t want me to court you, and you’re not upset that I don’t want to court you.”

Tasha stretched and yawned, and the silver moon outlined the long curves of her body. “No, I’m not.”

“And you’re not upset that I would … take you to bed, if you let me?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to take you to bed?”

Tasha glanced at him again, eyebrows lifted. “Right here?”

Pehr laughed again, rolling his eyes. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“But I’m easy to understand, Pehr. I don’t lie, or couch my words, or play games with those I speak to. If I want something from you, I will ask for it. If I am angry with you, I will tell you.”

“And if you sit here answering my questions with only the most minimal of responses?”

“You are not asking questions that require more response,” she said. “Ask me a question that comes from your head and not your chukka.”

“My what?”

“Your other head – the one that’s standing up right now because you’re still thinking about bedding me.”

Pehr felt his cheeks warm and looked away instinctively, then back at Tasha. He hadn’t thought she was paying enough attention to him to notice.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Tasha shrugged. “I’m not angry. Pehr, I can only be who I am. I’m not like my parents, or like anyone else I have ever met. You are more like them than I am, and you have come from some other world that none of us even knew existed.”

She was barely paying attention, braiding three long strands of grass into a single cable. Beside her the fire was guttering, and Pehr knew that soon they would head back to the dwelling and sleep. He was tired from the hunt, and from the working of the tral that had come afterward. He and the other hunters had brought down the three cripples and the old bull, and Pehr had earned a set of horns for himself with a clean shot to the back of a tral’s neck. They had skinned and cleaned the beasts, and portioned out the meat. Ehella and Tasha had spent a great deal of time that evening salting the meat and stretching the hides on racks built for the purpose.

Some part of him, his chukka he supposed, hadn't entirely given up interest in Tasha, and he spoke. “You never really answered my last question.”

Tasha finally turned and looked at him, favoring him with a small smile.

“I do not want you to bed me, Khada’Pehr,” she said. “Should that change, I assure you, you will be the first to know.”

She stood and tossed her braided grass into the remains of the fire, where it flamed up and was gone in an instant. Pehr stood as well, and the two of them first poured water on the embers and then pushed dirt atop them.

Pehr thought again of his village. He wondered if Josep had survived, if he and Nani had married yet. It seemed like ages since he had last seen them, and yet it had been less than a month. Did they still think of him? Did they hold out hope that he and Jace might yet return from the jungle? Or had they given the two boys up for dead?

“I will have to return to that other world soon,” he told Tasha, and she made a noncommittal noise in response. Without turning to look at him, as though confident that he would come behind her, she began her way back to the tent. After a moment, he followed.

Pehr lived there with his new family, on the plains of Tassanna, for two years.

Part Two

:: EYES ONLY :: Blakely ::

***** SUBJECT: J830.e314
***** APX DIAM: 125 KM
***** APX DENS: 1000 KG/M3
***** APX VELO: 52 KM/S
***** APX ANGL: 89°
***** EXPECTED TARGET: 31.8, 35.2
***** ETA: 75:42:15

***** MESSAGE FOLLOWS:
***** they’re not supposed to get this big.
***** give the order.
***** god forgive us.

Chapter 15

The sword was made of steamed and twisted wood, not metal. Pehr was glad for this fact, but not so glad that he was able to keep from crying out in pain and anger as it came down hard upon the spot between his neck and shoulder. The agony of it drove him to one knee, and he stayed there for a time with his head down, panting.

“That was a kill,” Samhad told him, and he could hear the smile in the older man’s voice.

“I know,” Pehr said. “Curse your eyes … I know.”

Samhad only laughed at this and held out a hand, which Pehr took. Even after two years of training, it was a rare occasion when Pehr managed to best the man who had become his surrogate father. More often than not, he walked away from their sessions baring only the bright red weals left by the practice swords. Still, he continued on, learning this new weapon and method of fighting, driven by the need to add any skill that might help him as a hunter.

The swords – the real ones – were short and curved and made of metal. The creation of a single blade took months of work, and once it was done it required great vigilance to ensure the sword was properly cared for. Without routine cleaning and oiling, it would corrode and become worthless. There were few smiths among the plainsmen; this made the swords an expensive commodity, and it would be years yet before Pehr could collect enough tral hides to barter for one of his own. In the interim, he had made himself a new knife of bone and fashioned a club from the knobby joint of a tral leg that was superior even to the one he had lost in the jungle.

Samhad clapped him on the shoulder. “You are much improved from when you started, Pehr, and I have trained for many long years. Don’t be discouraged.”

“I’m not so terribly discouraged,” Pehr told him. “Mainly I’m lamenting the bruise.”

“What was it your uncle used to tell you?”

“Painful lessons make good hunters,” Pehr replied. “Yes. Thank you for this particularly … excellent lesson, Samhad.”

Samhad laughed again. “Come, there is dinner to be had and plans to be made. I have heard word of a herd of tral, ten thousand head at least, not too many days’ journey from here. Perhaps we should venture out to see them.”

“That would be a sight well worth the trip,” Pehr said, and he got to his feet. The two of them headed for the tents. Night had nearly come, and there was little point in further practice; it would soon be too dark to see.

Inside there was a meal waiting of fresh-roasted tral and pulped esquer root mixed with butter and a kind of small, green onion that grew in abundance on the plains. Pehr sat with his new family and ate, discussing the events of the day and the plans for tomorrow. There was a grove of jesuva trees not far away and Samhad wanted to take the opportunity to replenish their supply of firewood before the tral moved on. The work would be laborious, but he and Pehr could split many logs between them, and probably fill to brimming the space reserved for wood in the wheeled cart in which they moved their belongings.

Pehr and Samhad were not the only ones with work to do; the women had hides to tan, supplies to gather, clothing to make. Kissha and Mandia were now thirteen years old and performed a wide variety of chores. Ketrahm, at eight, held quite a few daily responsibilities as well. Ehella had given birth to a second son – Trayin – during the winter, and it was good that the other children were old enough to shoulder some of the load.

The family had been successful in the past two years, and it had allowed Samhad and Ehella to acquire a second, smaller hide tent, where they slept with the baby. Pehr and Tasha remained in the main dwelling with Kissha, Mandia, and Ketrahm. With the meal over and the last evening chores finished, they split apart now to sleep, and in only a short time Pehr found himself lying awake on his cot, staring up through the hole in the ceiling at the stars while those around him slept. He could hear grunting and soft cooing from the other tent, Samhad and Ehella taking advantage of the time before the baby woke demanding to be fed. To his left, Kissha and Mandia lay on identical cots, snoring gently in identical tones. To his right, Tasha and Ketrahm were quiet, undisturbed by dreams.

Pehr closed his eyes and tried to think of the sound of the sea, crashing against the rocks of the lagoon at the edge of Uru, the world he had known. When the sound of it would not immediately come to him, a great wave of crushing sadness rolled over him, so strong that he had to stifle a sob. He was losing them; Nani and Anna and Truff. Josep. Even Jace. The memory of the boy whose body he had left in the circle of bone now seemed distant to him. Thin. Like a ghost. They were fading into the past, as all things must that are no longer reaffirmed by familiar routine.

He missed them. He missed his family, missed his village, missed the sea and wanted to hear once more its steady roar. He was tired of the plains, tired of tral meat and esquer root, tired of asking each man he was introduced to if they had encountered any passes through the mountains, only to be met again and again with slow shakes of the head. He wanted to eat red fish and corn, and lie on the sand under the stars, and swim in the shallows. He wanted to be the boy he had been before all of these terrible events had come to pass.

He knew he should leave, knew he should try to make his way back to where he belonged, but it had become impossible to deny the truth: he feared returning to the metal thing’s circle of death. He was afraid of the Lagos, and the guardian, and most of all of facing Jace again. The boy would still be there, even if by now he was only bone. Pehr did not know if he could face his cousin’s silent judgment. Here on the plains, it was easy to simply let time pass rather than brave the pain and danger of that grim circle.

Even should he do so, and survive the perilous journey back to his land, he would be presented only with the opportunity to tell Nani that he had failed her, and that her brother was dead. After that, what was there? He would join the hunt, marry, father children, and grow old watching the women he loved be wife to some other hunter and mother to that man’s children. Surely the plains could offer more than that. And yet …

“I want to go home,” he muttered to himself, and then said it again. “I want to go home.”

Worn out from the chores and the training, Pehr could feel sleep taking him. He closed his eyes and willingly met its advances.

* * *

“My father asked again if I would not at least consider finding a man who would take me as his wife,” Tasha said, smiling a little, and Pehr smirked, shaking his head. They were walking in the tall grass, as they often did after the evening meal, happy to be away from the smoky tent and the pestering of the Tasha's siblings. She had her walking stick with her – a work in progress begun long ago. Its head was decorated with partridge feathers, and its body was covered in intricate carvings, added slowly and with great patience over the years. If there was an object that she valued more in the world, Pehr couldn't have identified it.

“Oh, yes?” Pehr asked. “What did you say to him this time?”

“That I was saving myself for a man who would brave the wasting disease of the north just to pluck a single flower for me of a type that I had never seen before, and that I would consider no other, and were he a truly loving father he would understand my needs and respect them.”

“And his response?”

Tasha's smile became a rare grin. “He told me there were some who thought such impertinent mouths deserved striking, and that I was lucky he was not such a one.”

Pehr laughed. The idea of Samhad hitting one of his children seemed impossible; the plainsman, gruff though he was, stopped just short of doting on them.

“Never,” Pehr said. “Not him. Ehella, maybe …”

Tasha nodded, her grin fading, her eyes far off. “He favors you, you know.”

Pehr did, but it felt unseemly to say so. “If you think so.”

Tasha rolled her eyes, coming back from her reverie a little. “Don't give me your false modesty. It's plainly clear that, were you to propose to me, he might leapt forth and accept for me before I could open my mouth.”

“But I'm not going to propose to you,” Pehr said, and he laughed again. “I simply couldn't bear the rejection.”

Tasha sighed, ignoring the joke. “If there was a husband in my future, I think you would make a fine one.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d want me. Are you trying to spare my feelings, Tasha? I was only jesting about being hurt.”

She turned, raised an eyebrow. “No. Why wouldn’t I want you, if I were to want anyone?”

“You're too smart for me. Everything for you is a puzzle, a great knot to be unraveled in your mind and laid out flat, and most often when you attack such a knot you succeed. I can't keep up. What would you need from a slow-witted hunter's son who just wants to raise a family, keep them fed and safe, and avoid angering the gods you don't even believe in?”

Tasha shook her head. “You are not slow-witted. You're … deliberate.”

“You're avoiding the question.”

“Only because you know the answer.”

He did. Tasha needed no man, and she never had. She understood objectively that Pehr was everything most women of the plains would want in a husband. Eighteen now, he had gained two inches in height, his body filling out and growing more muscular. He had adapted to his new home. He would never again lack for water on the plains, never go hungry, never find himself lost and unable to navigate his way back to familiar landmarks.

Samhad had taught him much, and many of the other hunters had chipped in as well. He was not a plainsman, and never would be, but he had become something close enough to earn the respect of others his age, and the approval of those older and wiser. His strength and skill and gentle nature made him an excellent prospect for marriage, and Pehr would not have lacked for young women’s attention, if not for the pretense that he was courting Tasha.

“I think Samhad is growing concerned,” Pehr said, and Tasha nodded.

“If we return to the southlands and you and I are not engaged, it will be the end of the deception. His fondness for you is too obvious … if you were really courting me, you would long since have asked me to marry. They might believe that I, a semi-mad girl clearly stricken with some sort of brain fever, had refused your advances, but if so then why would you continue to travel with our family? No, the elders will insist you move on this winter. The tribe always needs babies, and I am clearly not giving you any.”

Pehr could think of worse things than being forced to pursue a woman who would actually deign to mate with him. Frustrated, he had sometimes considered actually asking Tasha to wed, if only to force the issue and end the charade. The illusion that he was courting her made pursuing any other girl impossible. Was he to remain a virgin forever, alone and unmarried, the last of his father’s line with no children to carry on his blood?

“If I am ordered from your family, I will return to mine,” Pehr said. “I won't stay here alone, not even to meet a wife.”

Tasha shook her head. “You must not go.”

“So you've said for two years. What great service am I doing you, Tasha, that you’re so insistent in keeping me at your side?”

She frowned at him. “Perhaps it's simply that you are my friend. Is that so hard to believe?”

He nodded. “And you’re mine, though we make an unlikely pair, but I don't think that's why you say I mustn't go.”

Tasha stopped in the grass and rubbed at her temples for a moment before looking up at him. The sun was almost gone, and in the growing shadow he could barely make out the strange tint of her eyes.

“Do you remember when you told me of the Great Destruction, and I became so very excited?”

“I do.”

“I listen to all of the old tales, even though I believe most to be nonsense, because there is a kernel of truth in every myth, every legend, every story. Don't you find it odd that we would share the belief that long ago a breaking of the world occurred? Don't you think it interesting that we both call it by the same name? Pehr, don't you find it virtually impossible and completely fascinating that we share the same language at all? How can it be?”

Pehr shook his head. He didn't know the answer to that question. “It has vexed me in the past,” he admitted.

“There is a chance for you and me … a chance to do great work. I will be ready when it comes.”

“Yet you've no belief in destiny.”

She shook her head. “There is no destiny. There is only fate. Or, rather, something which some call fate, but which is really only a confluence of streams.”

“I don't understand,” Pehr said. Tasha began moving again, the grasses whispering as she passed through them, and for a moment he wondered if she meant to leave him in confusion. Then she began to speak.

“Each person’s life is a stream,” Tasha told him. “Each plant, each bird, each beast … all streams. These streams twist and turn. Sometimes they run side by side for a time. Sometimes they merge. On occasion there is a confluence, a great meeting of streams, and they come together as a river. Rivers can move mountains and carve canyons. Rivers are agents of change that can impact the whole world. That point where streams meet and where a river may be born … that is a moment of fate.

“I don't know when the moment will come, or what we are to do, but I am sure that it must be the two of us. I will wait for it, with you, and when it arrives I will act. We will act. We will form a river, and that river will reshape the world.”

Pehr considered this for a time. “I admire your conviction,” he said at last.

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.

Chapter 16

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.”

“At the very least, Kissha would try to follow you,” Tasha said, and she gave him a rueful smile. “She still thinks you’re going to be married someday.”

“At this rate she may be right,” Pehr grumbled. “In another three years she will be of age, and with my luck I’ll not have met a single other interested woman.”

Tasha laughed a little. “Poor Pehr. You were supposed to be hunting boar and making babies these past two years, and instead you’ve been stuck with the one girl on the plains that has no wish to marry a strong, handsome hunter and bear his children. I am sorry.”

Pehr waved it away. “We are not meant for that.”

“No.”

“Even if Kissha didn’t follow, she would at least tell your father. We must go quietly and leave no trace.”

“My father will be able to track us no matter how careful we are.”

Pehr nodded. “Yes, but he won’t. If we get a head start, I think he’ll understand that we are meant to do this alone.”

“Very well. It must be soon. I think … Pehr, I think we are running out of time.”

“I can put together a cache of water and food in a few days’ time. I will hide it out by the big jesuva tree to the west. We can go out on one of our walks, like tonight – your family goes to sleep before we return, most often, so they’ll think nothing of it. By the time they realize we’ve gone ...”

“We’ll be many miles away,” Tasha finished for him.

“Yes. I think we could put a great deal of distance behind us before the sun rises.”

“Will we be able to carry enough food and water for the journey?”

“More than enough, I think. The pass is no more than twelve days’ journey from here, and at its base there is the stream where we can refill our skins. I might even be able to find us some food. When I escaped from the Lagos, remember, I’d lost my weapons and my water skins, and did not know this land. This time I’ll be prepared.”

“We will both be prepared,” Tasha reminded him. “You and I, together. All right, Pehr?”

Pehr smiled at her and stretched, yawning. “Yes, together. For now I think we should get as much sleep as we can. If you truly mean to rush, we’ll travel deep into the nights, and I don't think there will be much sleep for us once we get moving.”

“It is very necessary. There is … I don’t know how to explain it, Pehr, but I understood it perfectly in my dream without it ever being said out loud. There is something coming, a moment in time during which our actions may stretch out to touch all those around us. My people, and yours, may depend on us being there in time.”

Pehr considered this, wondering how she could be so sure of something so indistinct. Finally, he realized that it didn’t matter; they had decided upon their course of action. The hunter’s code, under which he had been brought up his entire life, was to act upon a decision once made, not tarry over it.

“Very well,” he said. “In a few days, we will begin our journey. For now, let’s go home.”

* * *

The tree was old – twisted and gnarled, thick-trunked and thick-limbed. It had sat on its hill, casting its shadow upon the rippling grass of the plains, for more than six centuries, and in that time countless rabbits had built their warrens under its massive cluster of roots. Pehr had filled some of the older, disused holes with provisions, and when he and Tasha arrived at last to collect them, they found that only a few had been disturbed by the grassland creatures. Pehr had expected this and stocked extra provisions for safety, and so they found themselves with all the food and water that they could carry.

Beyond these supplies, Tasha and Pehr carried few other items. Pehr had his club and knife, his bow, and a single quiver of twenty arrows. Tasha carried the two tral pelts on which they would sleep and a bone knife of her own. Her only other possession was her walking stick.

They set out on their journey just three hours after dusk and walked steadily through the night. At dawn they stopped briefly and had a quick breakfast of cold tral meat, then resumed their march. They were not pushing themselves to excess, but Pehr knew that by the end of the day he and Tasha would be exhausted. They pressed on regardless, wanting to put distance between themselves and Samhad just in case the elder hunter had decided to follow them after all. They walked in near silence, content to focus on the journey and the physical effort of walking so many miles.

To pass the time, Pehr went over what he knew about the Lagos and their metal god, forcing himself to revisit the gruesome details of Jace’s death and the deaths of the children who had gone before him. Pehr couldn't think of any reason why the metal thing hadn't taken him in the very same way that it had taken every other creature that set foot within its deadly perimeter, save that it had clearly seem something in him that it had found lacking in the others. Had his running at the guardian caused this? Was there some other reason? What had he done?

After some time, Pehr realized he was simply twisting the same images around in his head, over and over, and gleaning nothing new from them. He decided that the most simple case was also the most likely: in all probability, whatever had saved him had been nothing of his own doing. Whether by the grace of the Gods or by simple, stupid luck, it had decided to spare Pehr the fate it had doled out to all the others.

Dusk fell, and Pehr could hear Tasha yawning behind him as they walked. He was impressed with her stoicism; she hadn't complained or questioned when they would stop, nor had she asked how far he thought they had come and how much was left to go. Pehr supposed whatever sense of urgency it was that was driving her prevented her from expressing any desire to stop for the night. He suspected that he could walk along in front of her until she collapsed and Tasha would not voice a single word of complaint. She wanted to be where they were headed, and with plenty of time to determine what she needed to do there before they reached the critical point in time that she was convinced was coming.

Pehr was right; two hours after sunset, it was he who called the march to a halt. Tasha only looked at him with some bizarre combination of gratitude and frustration.

“I hoped we would get further,” she said, and Pehr guessed that she would have said the same even if they had spent the last eighteen hours at a dead sprint. He said nothing, only shrugged and began clearing out a spot for the fire. The plains were very dry in the summer, and he knew that any flame carried danger, but the air could grow cold at night even now. Pehr wanted the warmth and the chance to roast some of the unsalted meat he’d brought.

While he dug the hole, clearing a large swath of the surrounding area of any grasses, Tasha wordlessly visited nearby jesuva trees and collected wood. The branches would provide the base for the fire, while layers of green grass would serve a dual purpose, creating smoke to keep insects away and preventing the fire from flaring up and consuming its fuel too quickly.

“How do you feel?” Pehr asked her when the fire was kindled. They were roasting the chunks of meat on skewers, and each also had a piece of the hard, dense black bread that Tasha’s kin favored.

“I’m fine,” Tasha said, nibbling at her bread and looking at the roasting meat with an expression close to greed.

“You look exhausted,” Pehr told her.

“So do you!” she shot back, and Pehr held his hands up in a gesture of peace.

“That wasn’t an accusation,” he said, and he smiled. “It was only a comment.”

Tasha’s angry expression faded. “Sorry, Pehr … I’m sorry. I thought you were playing the big, strong hunter who never needs to sleep.”

“I’m looking forward to sleeping. I’ve been thinking about it for hours.”

“Yes. I’m very tired. I’m sorry for snapping at you.”

“No harm was done,” Pehr said, and neither spoke again until after they had finished eating, when they were lying atop their tral hides and staring up at the sky.

Pehr could feel himself drifting off when Tasha asked, “Are you frightened?”

Pehr yawned, and asked, “Of what?”

“Of going back.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think we’ll find?”

“At the end of the path that I didn’t take? Tasha, I truly cannot guess. Mountains, probably … stones, snow … maybe more things made of metal. More guardians.”

“I think there must be something more than that.”

Pehr considered this, and after a moment he nodded. “The guardians wouldn’t be there to watch over stones and snow.”

“Exactly.”

“Whatever we find, Tasha, I wouldn’t expect it to be miraculous … at least not in any good way.” The metal thing was miraculous, of course, but Pehr would have had difficulty finding anything good about it beyond the fact that it had spared his life for no apparent reason.

“Whatever we find will be old and mostly dead,” Tasha agreed, and Pehr could tell from the sound of her voice that she was near sleep.

“You’ve seen it in the dreams?”

“I … I think so.”

“So you know what to expect?”

“No. It’s not like that. I don’t understand everything in the dreams. Much is hidden, and much more is in plain sight but impossible to understand.”

Pehr thought about his own dreams, where so much was clear and yet there were still such gaping holes of comprehension. He told Tasha that he understood what she meant, and the girl made a murmur of acceptance. After that, there was only the buzzing of crickets and the rush of the wind through the grass. Tasha was asleep.

Pehr thought of Samhad and wondered how far the hunter had come before understanding that his daughter and his surrogate son didn’t mean to be caught. Did he think they’d eloped? No, surely not … the man himself had intimated that he would give a union between the two his blessing at the first sign that they wished it. Surely he understood what this was, that his daughter had finally done the thing she’d been preparing to do all her life. Surely he knew that she’d gone to the mountains, where her people were forbidden to go.

Those who went to the mountains did not come back. Tasha had told him that, and Pehr wondered whether they would prove any different than all the others. He was still pondering this question when sleep took him.

Chapter 17

When they came at last to the band of trees that separated the plains from the near-impenetrable cliffs of the mountain range, Tasha lost herself to emotion for the first time since Pehr had met her.

The suddenness and force by which she was overcome took him by surprise; one moment they were walking underneath the trees and the next they’d passed through the edge and were met with the sight of the mountains rising before them, and Tasha was doubled over, sobbing. Pehr stopped, turned, and covered the ten yards between them in a few running strides, placing his hand on her shoulder.

“What is it?” he asked, but after a second more he realized he understood. When Tasha was able to speak, she confirmed it.

“I have spent my whole life waiting for this moment,” she croaked in between harsh gasps for air.

Pehr had never seen someone weep like this. The tears poured from her eyes in a torrent, her cheeks stained an angry red, her legs barely able to support her. He guided Tasha down to her knees and sat beside her. She put her hands over her face, trying to gain control but not yet able to do so.

“There’s no shame in being afraid,” Pehr said, and Tasha shook her head.

“I am not afraid,” she said through her fingers. “Oh, Pehr, I’m not afraid, it’s just … the mountains have called to me since I was little more than a baby, and now I am here at last.”

Pehr understood how she felt, in a way; he had spent the first sixteen years of his life studying for, training for, and dreaming of the hunter’s Test. He still felt that he’d been cheated, that it’d been stolen from him by the Lagos’s untimely interruption, and because of that he could not rightly be called a man, even now.

“I worry that whatever we find, it will not live up to your expectations,” he said after a time. Tasha’s sobs had become sniffles, and she had uncovered her face, but she would not raise her eyes to meet his.

“I do not think either of us could possibly know what to expect,” she said.

Pehr took her hand and squeezed it. When she at last raised her eyes to meet his, he smiled. “It will probably be terrible. Shall we go and see?”

The corners of Tasha’s mouth twitched in what Pehr thought was as close as she could come to a smile for the moment. She nodded, and he helped her return to her feet.

“There’s a stream to the south,” he said. “We should refill the skins before we go. It shouldn’t take long … we’ve still got plenty of food, so we don’t need to worry about hunting.”

Tasha looked at him for a long time. Then she nodded and said, “You are a good man, Khada’Pehr.”

Pehr sighed and shook his head. “Someone … someone else that I cared about told me that once. I told her that I was not a man, and I tell you the same.”

“Nani.”

“Yes.”

Tasha shook her head. “You were wrong. I think you were wrong even then, and I’ve no doubt you are wrong now. You are a man, Pehr, and a good one. She saw it in you, and I do, too.”

Pehr shrugged, embarrassed by this praise. “I want to go home, Tasha. I want to see my cousin again and help return our village to prosperity. I never should have left. Now? I'm only doing what I must.”

Tasha shook her head and turned south, toward the stream, not looking back at him. “Much more than that.”

When they came to the stream, they drank from the cold, clear water and filled their skins. Tasha took the opportunity to wash her face, cleansing herself of the tears that had dried, sticky, on her cheeks. Looking more like the cool, composed girl he had always known, she said she was ready, and they made their way back to the path into the mountains.

“I think the climb will take an hour or more,” Pehr told her. “It’s not a difficult slope, but it is long and winding, and there are points where piles of rock sit unstable on the ground. I lost my footing twice on the way down.”

“I will be careful,” Tasha said.

“I would have you walk ahead of me, just the same, at least until we reach the intersection. If you fall, there’s a chance I can keep you from suffering any major injury.”

Tasha looked vaguely annoyed but didn’t argue. Instead she asked, “Will we go to see your guardian?”

Pehr bit his lip and shook his head. There would be a time to contemplate that course of action, but he was not yet ready. “Whatever it is you’re looking for, it lies along the other path, not in the circle of bone.”

He gestured for her to go on, and Tasha nodded, making her way into the split between the jagged rock walls. She proved nimble footed on the slow climb up the path, slipping only once and catching herself before Pehr had any need to intervene. The going grew steadily easier as they went, with fewer stones and pebbles littering the ground, and the path began to level out somewhere near an hour into the journey.

At last they reached the split in the path. To the right, it wound away further into the mountains where Pehr had never been. To the left, around the curve, lay the metal thing’s domain. Tasha stopped at this point, staring up the path that lead further into the mountains as if, by doing so, she could see through solid stone to what lay at its end. Pehr found that he could barely look at the branch that led to the circle of bone, knowing the thing that had killed Jace and so many others stood less than twenty yards from where they were now.

“Some part of me hoped never to return here,” he said.

Tasha turned to look at him and then glanced down the path that led to the circle of bone. “Bad memories,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You did all for him that you could.”

Pehr couldn’t meet her gaze. “I will lead from here. The ground is solid, and—”

“And I am a woman, and must be protected,” Tasha finished for him, a hint of both humor and distaste in her voice.

Pehr knew she was at least half joking, but he found himself unable to contain a sudden swell of anger at her words. This girl had never been here before and didn’t know or understand the power and danger of just a single guardian. If there were more ahead, Pehr had no doubt that they would be up to the task of killing Tasha. Should they react to his presence as the one in the circle of bones had, it might well save her life, and he appreciated that fact even if she did not. He glared at the girl, brow furrowed.

“I would seek to protect you even were you a man twice my age, a killer of hundreds of men and thousands of tral. I have seen what’s here in real life, not in dreams, and if I can keep the things which guard this place from killing you, I would do so.”

“Oh, Pehr, don’t …” Tasha seemed embarrassed and unsure how to respond to this. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I am merely nervous.”

This was something Pehr could understand, and he felt his anger ebbing away, a sense of foolishness taking its place. After all this time, to become irritated by something so simple seemed suddenly ridiculous to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m nervous, too. This journey seems as if it’s tightened up every muscle and sinew inside of me. It’s the same for both of us, I think.”

“It is, but I want you to understand … I do not fear death here. You shouldn’t worry about me, Pehr.”

Pehr couldn't have taken this advice even if he’d wanted to, and so he merely shrugged and said, “Let’s see what there is at the end of this path.”

They made their way through the canyon with relative ease. The ground was only a very gradual slope, largely free from debris. This far up, the mountains were made mostly of some hard, grey rock that was flecked with white spots and seemed to wear away instead of chipping or crumbling. There was no vegetation to be seen other than a few small mosses and the lichen that clung to the stone. Deep gullies had been carved into the places where the path met the stone, worn there by water running its course over countless centuries.

Pehr had just convinced himself that the metal thing below was the only guardian to be found when he rounded a corner and stopped short, confronted by something that at first he mistook for a man. Rapidly he understood that this was not a person but rather some version of the thing that guarded the circle of bone, much better preserved but still in a state of hideous decay.

The thing’s skin – if it could be called that – was sagging in places, torn in others, and coated in slimy green mold. If once it had worn clothing, the fabric had long since rotted away. Pehr saw that it was man-shaped, but without nipples or sex organs. In the center of its chest was a large, black circle, perhaps a cap of some sort. Its eyelids, nose and lips had been eaten away, giving it the grotesque, grinning visage of a half-rotted corpse. Where the eyelids should have been there were plates of metal covering the thing’s deadly eyes.

Pehr cried out for Tasha to stop and stay behind cover, knowing even as he did so that the warning would come too late. Tasha’s strides had taken her into the thing’s line of vision and, just as the first guardian had done, this version jerked to life. It cried something in a language that Pehr did not know, throwing its arms wide, and Pehr had to fight back a moment of violent nausea as the substance clinging to those limbs sloughed off and fell to the ground with a wet plopping noise. There were no muscles exposed by the thing’s sudden loss of skin, only a series of tan sacks bulging with greenish fluid and an uncountable number of whirring discs and plunging cylinders.

Pehr spun, hoping to shove Tasha back behind the outcropping of rock, only to realize that, like its brother down below, this guardian had paused. It cocked its head to one side, clearly studying Pehr despite its covered eyes, and after a moment it spoke again. This time there could be no doubt of its words, for once again Pehr found himself being addressed in something very close to his own language.

“DNA match confirmed. Welcome to Havenmont, Prime Minister Mombutabwe! Is this your guest?”

Pehr glanced toward Tasha, who was staring at the guardian with wide eyes. She nodded emphatically, and Pehr turned back to the metal thing. “Yes, she is my guest.”

“Excellent! I am called Ardis. I am tasked with dispensing information and upholding security. In these trying times, we must be careful not to let enemies cross our borders. May I ask you your name, ma’am?”

After a moment, Tasha said, “I … I am called Tasha, daughter of Samhad.”

“Welcome to Havenmont, Tasha Samhad. I cannot place your accent. Do you come from the New Phoenix bunker?”

“I … no, I’m sorry,” Tasha said.

“A pilgrim, then? Please enter and be well!”

“This is a guardian?” Tasha asked Pehr, but the thing answered her before he could.

“I am tasked with dispensing information and upholding security. In these trying times—”

“How do you know me?” Pehr interrupted, and the thing turned its attention back to him.

“Prime Minister, your DNA and that of Professor Montgomery is hard-wired into all Mark Fours as a full-clearance security match.”

“I don’t understand anything this damned thing is saying,” Pehr muttered. “What in the world is DNA?”

“Deoxyribonucleic acid – DNA is a nucleic acid containing the genetic instructions by which all known living entities are assembled. The main …” The thing began reading off by rote a great set of information that, to Pehr, might as well have been spoken in the foreign language it had used earlier.

“Pehr, make it stop!” Tasha hissed.

“I … you, thing, uh … damn your eyes, what was your name? Ardis! Ardis, please stop.”

The guardian – Ardis – ceased speaking immediately and looked at him expectantly.

“What lies at the end of this pass?” Tasha asked it.

“Why, this pass leads to Havenmont, the last city of man! Surely you’ve heard of Havenmont, Miss Samhad.”

“I … well, of course, Ardis,” Tasha said, and she fell silent. Pehr looked back at her again, and Tasha shook her head, sighing. They were equipped with so little information that it was impossible to ask meaningful questions or parse the answers that the guardian was giving them.

“What now?” Pehr asked her.

“We should go on,” Tasha replied. “I need to see the city.”

“Just two hundred more feet,” Ardis broke in, “and you shall see the greatest work of man since before the Great Destruction.”

Pehr felt a nasty shock run through his body at these words. To hear something that was a legend to both him and Tasha referenced as casual fact by this strange thing was an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.

“Yes,” he growled. “Thank you, Ardis. I think you can go back to your post now. Will we meet any more guards on the path?”

“Not until you reach the city proper, Mister Prime Minister.”

“Will they trouble us?”

“Not at all! You and your guest are most welcome here.”

“I see. Thank you, Ardis.”

“It has been my utmost pleasure, sir,” Ardis told them, and without further comment it leaned back against the canyon wall and returned to its inactive state. Pehr turned to Tasha, who was unable to hide a small smile.

“What in the name of the Gods is a Prime Minister?” Pehr asked her, and Tasha’s grin widened.

“What in the name of your gods is a Mombutabwe?” she asked back, and Pehr laughed.

“Two hundred more feet,” he said. “Perhaps then we will find out.”

* * *

Neither Pehr nor Tasha had ever seen a city or had any real understanding of what one was, and so when at last they came to the edge of the path and beheld the vista spread wide before them, neither could at first find words to express what they were feeling. It was Tasha who finally spoke.

“It’s so sad …”

In the valley below them, secreted away between the mountain peaks, stood the ruins of something so vast and intricate that even in utter decay it was one of the most beautiful sights Pehr had ever laid eyes on. Towers of metal and stone rose from the ground and seemed to stretch up to touch the heavens themselves. Some had fallen over the course of the preceding millennia, and others now leaned at drunken angles, barely supporting their own weight. Most of the windows were empty, but at the tallest tips of some structures there glinted a material Pehr didn’t know that glowed like brightly polished metal under the falling sun’s rays.

Pehr’s eyes couldn’t seem to find a place to rest, moving constantly over the skeletal remains of this once-great metropolis. There were bridges and arches, buildings of all shapes and sizes. Near the center of the city was a gigantic domed structure topped with a statue that couldn't have been less than ten times Pehr’s height. It portrayed a man in a long coat, pointing with one outstretched finger toward the heavens.

To the west there was a series of low buildings with arched roofs constructed from metal grid work. Two of these roofs had caved in at their centers, the metal beams corroded, twisting inward as if bashed by gigantic fists from the sky. To the east was a wide, flat expanse of grey – a basin of some sort. There was water collected at its bottom.

He was surprised that in all this time, the city hadn't been overtaken by vegetation; its streets seemed largely clear of grass or vines, and the only trees he could see were huddled together in one large, green triangle near the center of the city grid.

“See the garden, there, in the center?” Pehr asked, pointing. “How has it not overrun everything else?”

“Who can say?” Tasha replied. “The people who built this place knew many things that have been lost.”

“What if they’re still here?” Pehr asked her. “Just because we can’t see any, it doesn’t mean …”

He let his own voice fade away, aware of how foolish he sounded. This place had been deserted since a time so long ago that it made his head spin just to contemplate it. How many generations had lived in the city’s shadow, oblivious to its existence?”

“There is nothing down there that lives … or, at least, nothing human,” Tasha said. “This ‘greatest work of man since the Great Destruction’ has been in ruins for ages.”

“What terrible thing could have driven man away from this place?” Pehr asked.

“That is the very question we have come to answer.”

Pehr feared the answer to that question, but it was impossible to look down upon the city and not desire further explanation, impossible to contemplate the ruins without wondering how they had come to reach this point. How had it come to be abandoned?

“Where did they go?” he mused aloud.

“Could it have been your Lagos?” Tasha asked him.

“I don’t think so. If the Lagos had ever found this place, they would be here still. I don’t believe they have ever gotten past the guardians.

Tasha stretched, hands balled into fists and arms reaching for the heavens, her back arched, belly sticking out. She yawned and said, “We won’t find the answer up here. We should make for the building with the statue.”

Tempted though he was by the prospect of learning more about this fascinating place, Pehr was also deeply concerned about walking into it unprepared. He said, “There may be animals, or any number of terrible things waiting for us down there.”

“Terrible things like what?”

Pehr knew that if he mentioned ghosts or spirits, demons or goblins, she would simply laugh it off, so he only shrugged. “I didn’t believe in the Lagos until I saw one face to face, but they’re real, and they’re terrible things.”

“You just said that there could be no Lagos down there.”

Pehr shook his head, unsure if Tasha was being obtuse on purpose. “What I’m saying, Tasha, is that we are walking into the unknown.”

“You’ve done that twice before,” she reminded him. “First into the jungle, and then into the plains. You’ve survived both times.”

“Those who traveled with me were not always so fortunate.”

“I told you, Pehr, I do not fear dying in this place. I fear only missing things that I must not miss. I am going, whether you will come or not. If you don’t want to go, I won’t blame you. You can wait for me here, I suppose. I do not think any more of the guardians will bother me.”

“I’m not letting you go into that place alone, whether you fear it or not,” Pehr said. Tasha favored him with a cool grin, having expected this answer.

The road down to the city was steep and winding, and there were large sheets of metal posted along its edges, covered in all sorts of characters, some of them obscured by blooms of lichen. Neither could read them; Pehr’s people had no writing, and Tasha’s used only a very basic set of symbols to represent common things like tral or grass.

Had they been able to read the signs, they might have chosen a more direct course through the city and thus been spared some of its wonders and its horrors alike. But they couldn't read the signs, and so after a moment more of quiet contemplation, they began to make their way down to the buildings below, walking side by side. Somewhere in the city a bird of prey gave a long, shrieking cry that faded off into the air. There was no answer; this place was dead, and had been dead for thousands upon thousands of years.

Chapter 18

The streets on the outskirts of the city were not the clean, concise grid that made up its innermost sections, but instead a haphazard maze of twists and turns. Even to Pehr’s uneducated eye, the structures that lined these streets seemed slipshod and hastily built.

Many of these lesser buildings were made not of metal but rather a curious material that seemed a strange fusion of sand and stone. Pehr saw that this was only a coating, however, and in many places it had flaked away from the substructure entirely. Most of the buildings had collapsed in upon themselves long ago, and of those that still stood he suspected there were few that would bear his weight should he attempt to explore them.

Tasha left him no time to consider this course of action, moving comfortably through the twisting streets as if she had lived her entire life in this place. She seemed disinterested in this part of the city, though Pehr thought they could learn a great deal about its former inhabitants simply by peering into a few darkened interiors. When he suggested this to Tasha, she told him it didn’t matter; the people who had inhabited these buildings could not provide her with the answers she sought.

“Can you not tell, Pehr? Those who lived here … they didn’t build this city. They came after, when the decline had already begun. That’s why there is no planning, no sense to the way the streets are laid out. After the real builders stopped their work, others came into the city like parasites to use what was left behind.”

“Why didn’t they inhabit the places that already stood?”

Tasha shrugged. “I do not know.”

“But where did the builders go? Where did these ‘parasites’ go? How do you know all of this?” Pehr asked, striding along beside her and trying to take in the overwhelming amount of visual information with which the city was assaulting him. To his right there was some sort of covered cart, made of metal, that stood in the black and crumbled remains of what Pehr supposed must once have been its wheels. To his left there was a pile of corroded metal chunks in all shapes and sizes, so large that it dwarfed the one nearby structure that still stood. Tall poles of metal lined both sides of the road, capped by curious, bulbous protrusions.

“Some by observation, some by guess,” Tasha said. “The rest we will need provided for us, but we will find out what happened to the inhabitants. Or the builders, at any rate. I don’t care about the parasites – no doubt they squandered what was left and moved on. That’s what parasites do.”

“What a lovely vision,” Pehr said. Dusk was imminent, and the idea of being trapped for the night in this city with its countless ghosts was not doing anything for his mood.

“I’m not here to make up pretty stories,” Tasha said. “Our legends said that the city of the Gods lay in these mountains, and truly, those who built this place would seem like gods to us … but they were only people, Pehr, and so were the parasites that came after. People do not always behave in ways that are pretty.”

Pehr knew that this was true and he grunted an acknowledgment, continuing to walk and watch. The streets were becoming more orderly now, and some of the buildings were in much better shape. Some were tall, others squat. Most had large windows, their coverings long-since gone, and through some of these Pehr could see objects that he understood – here was a chair, there a table – even though they were shaped from materials that he did not know. On the side of one building, faded almost to the point of invisibility, Pehr could make out the image of what seemed a gigantic woman, mostly naked, drinking from what must once have been a brightly colored container.

“We’ll not reach the center of the city before dark,” he said.

“No.”

“We have no way of making torches, and I’ve not seen a single piece of wood in this place. We can’t burn metal.”

“Nor stone,” Tasha agreed. “I don’t think we will need torches, Pehr.”

“Why not?”

She pointed up to one of the metal poles that lined the street, or more specifically to the bulb at its tip, and Pehr stopped in his tracks, taking conscious notice of something he had become peripherally aware of at some earlier time. As the sun continued to set and the dusk became heavier, the bulbs were glowing with an increasingly bright, slightly purple light.

“Gods …” Pehr said in amazement.

“No. Not gods and not magic. Just man, in some past when man was something closer to a god than he is now.”

“How can we have left such miracles behind? Light without fire that comes with the setting of the sun? How can we have fallen so far?”

“Help me find the answer,” Tasha said.

“Where would you go?” Pehr asked her, and Tasha shrugged.

“In my dreams, this place is … not like this. I think it is younger, and I think there are others. The memories are blurred and fuzzy except in those moments just after I wake.”

“So you have no destination?”

“I’ve been making for the building with the giant atop it.”

“Do you recognize it?”

Tasha gave him a small smile. “Only in that I recognize everything here, in some way. Pehr … would you build a giant stone man atop a building in the center of your city if whatever lay within was unimportant?”

Pehr thought he would not. “Very well, so we make for the building with the dome.”

“Yes, I think that’s the best idea,” Tasha said, and she turned her eyes ahead to the road they were following and began again to walk.

Thus far, it hadn't been a difficult journey, and Pehr hoped that would remain the case. As they walked, though, questions began to spring into his mind, one after another. Why was the city not infested with wildlife? Why were there no signs that it had ever burned, despite what must have been countless lightning strikes during its long, slow decay? How were the glow-bulbs – whatever arcane workings they might contain – still functional after all these years? Why had the parasites, as Tasha called them, left so much lying unused and forgotten when they abandoned the city?

This last question troubled him deeply. Everything he knew of human nature told him that the people would not lightly leave this place behind. Pehr himself had been willing to sacrifice his life to save his home, and the village from which he had come was little more than a collection of mud-brick huts clustered around a stone altar. This city was so far beyond the scope of his experience that he couldn't picture what sort of men and women might call it home, but neither could he imagine a scenario in which the entire group of them suddenly abandoned it.

“Something is not right here,” Tasha murmured, as if echoing Pehr’s own thoughts.

“Oh, many things, I think,” Pehr said.

“Where are the birds and the animals? Is … is the city poisoned, like you said the circle of bone seemed to be?”

“I don’t think so. We have seen plants – look, there is grass growing, and small trees. Tasha, don’t tell me nothing lives here.”

“Pehr—”

“Something dwells within this city. Something is tending it.”

“I don’t think anything lives here, Pehr. I think that is the problem.”

Pehr came to a halt in the middle of the street, and after a few more paces Tasha stopped as well, turning to look at him in confusion.

“I’ve had enough of being kept in the dark,” Pehr told her. “If you know anything, tell me what it is so that we can face whatever’s ahead together.”

Tasha looked pained. She turned away from him, surveying the city, and then looked back. “You’re asking me to explain things that are like … like distant forms in a downpour. Things that I dreamed when I was only a child!”

“I'm asking you to tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know anything!” Tasha cried. “I feel things. I see things that spark some small memory. I do not know if we should turn left or right at any given crossing … except for the times when I do. I thought I would know everything. I thought it would become clear when I reached the mountains, but it hasn’t. I hate this. I hate it!”

Of course she did; logical Tasha, trapped and held at the whim of some force she did not understand. Pehr put a hand to his face, rubbing it in frustration.

“Pehr, I have told you everything I know as soon as I have known it. There is nothing alive in this city, except perhaps in the middle where the trees are. I don’t know what’s keeping the city groomed!”

“Tasha … I believe you.” Pehr could hear the tiredness in her voice; not sleepiness, exactly, but instead a kind of deep exhaustion that seemed to be eating at the very core of her. There had been too many hours of traveling followed by the great strain of absorbing all that they had seen this day; he could feel it in his bones.

“Pehr, we have to go.” Tasha was near tears, pacing and clearly frantic in her desire to keep moving. She was frightened, but frightened of what?

We’re going to find out, Pehr thought, the knowledge coming to him in the same way, he supposed, that Tasha’s did. When the last glow of sunset falls behind the mountains and the city lies in darkness save the glow-bulbs, we’re going to find out, and it will be terrible.

“I thought you were not afraid of dying here.”

“I’m not.”

“But you are afraid. Of what?”

She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling, took a breath, and looked up at him. “I am afraid for you.”

There it was. Pehr already knew it, but he’d wanted to hear it from her mouth. Whatever dreams Tasha had been granted, whatever it was that she had seen, there was a chance yet that the city would kill him, and she knew it. That was why she was so panicked.

“Can we reach the domed building before the last of the sunset goes?” he asked her.

“Not if you keep standing there!” she said, and she took a step forward, glancing back over her shoulder. “Come on, Pehr! We can run if we have to.”

“No, we can’t run yet,” Pehr said, but he began to walk with her again. “I don’t want you missing something you should see and losing track of where we are.”

“Then let us at least keep walking,” Tasha pleaded, and Pehr nodded.

Side by side, the two continued their journey to the center of the city. As they walked, the last vestiges of sunset began to fade from the sky.

* * *

When the first of the things appeared before them, both Pehr and Tasha stopped short – not in fear or awe, but simply out of curiosity.

Only moments after the last of the sunset faded behind the edge of the mountains, something scurried from a low, dark hole in the gutter at the edge of the street. It was small, perhaps the size of a rabbit, and made of metal, but it had six spindly legs. These limbs moved asynchronously, and Pehr found the effect oddly organic and highly disturbing; spiders moved like this, their legs not really in sync, and there was something about it that was profoundly alien and repulsive to him.

Tasha must have felt it, too; standing beside him, she drew in a quick breath and, in a voice barely more than the sound of air passing her lips, whispered, “Oh … how awful!”

The thing took no notice of them, at least not to begin with, and Pehr watched as it clambered up, skittering across the stone expanse between the street’s edge and the grass that surrounded the nearest structure. When it reached the grass it stopped, its body bobbing gently up and down on its long legs. Short, sharp blades sprung out from its underside. These began to whirl, creating first a faint hum and then a high-pitched whine.

The thing began marching in a straight line along what must have been the edge of the property. Any blade of grass that had reached a height greater than that of the thing’s thorax – Pehr couldn't stop thinking of it as some strange metal insect – was lopped off and cast aside. As they watched, it reached the end of its march, turned, sidestepped, and made its way back toward them, moving neatly alongside the swatch it had already cut.

This went on for a minute or two, the thing lumbering back and forth, and then Tasha turned to Pehr and said, “I don’t think it cares about us …”

Before she had even finished her sentence, Pehr knew it was a mistake. At her first word, the thing stopped dead in its tracks, legs bent, body held low to the ground. It swiveled to face them and began making a high-pitched chirruping noise that clearly communicated disapproval.

“Oh, no,” Tasha said, and then the little metal bug charged them, its blades still spinning furiously. When it reached the edge of the curb, it leapt. It flew through the air, legs thrown back, leading with the sharp blades that whirled below its belly. Pehr found himself scrambling backward, pulling with frantic urgency at the cord that would release the club bound to his back.

The club came lose and Pehr grasped its handle with his right hand. Just as the thing began its descent from the apex of its leap, he brought the club around in a wide arc from behind his back, catching the creature. The thing’s chassis caved inward. Pehr saw a flash of light come from inside it and smelled something acrid in the air even before the creature hit the ground and shattered into dozens of pieces. One of its tiny metal blades went whickering past Pehr and he heard Tasha cry out. Turning to check on her, he saw that the piece of metal had sliced open the side of her throat. It was not a vital wound, but he did not doubt that it was painful.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

Tasha nodded, holding her hand against her neck. Pehr could see blood seeping through her fingers. “It hurts, but better this than having that … that thing land on my face!”

“There will be more of them,” Pehr said, and even as he spoke he heard the first chirrups of others, coming from every direction. These first sounds were soon answered by others, and still others, and the creatures’ alarm was evident. Intruders had been discovered and they represented a threat.

“We need to be going,” Pehr said.

“Yes, all right,” Tasha said. She took her hand away from her throat and stared at the blood in surprise and alarm for a moment before rubbing it on the hide breeches she was wearing.

“We won’t be safe in these ruins,” Pehr said. “We must get to the stone buildings in the city center.”

“Yes, we—”

“Can you run?” Pehr asked, looking out into the dimly illuminated street past her.

“Of course, but I thought you didn’t—”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Pehr said, and he pointed. Tasha turned to look behind herself and cried out in shock. Emerging into the street was not one or two more of the creatures, not a dozen, but a throbbing mass of hundreds.

“Oh, no …” Tasha said again in a breathless voice, and then Pehr grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around in the right direction.

“Go!” he shouted, and taking her hand, he began to run, pulling her along. Behind him, the things at the front of the pack sounded a shrill noise of alarm. Pehr could hear the sound of their blades spinning up, and the noise of their tiny, asynchronous legs skittering along. Picking up speed. Beginning the chase.

Chapter 19

Certain death clambered after them. The things were small but startlingly fast, and there were so very many of them. Every time Pehr looked back it seemed as though their number had doubled, and within only a minute or so of running he was sure that a thousand or more of the creatures were chasing them. The whine of their blades filled the entire night; the only other sound Pehr could hear was his and Tasha’s breathing. Pehr gave silent thanks to the Gods that both of them were in excellent shape and good runners.

This is what happened, he thought. This is what happened to the ones that Tasha called parasites. These little metal insects rebelled against them one night, and they had no choice but to flee.

He could see it in his mind’s eye. Children, the elderly, the sick and infirm falling behind and being slashed to ribbons by constructions that had previously existed merely to cut the grass. It was sick, and insane, and almost funny in its grim way; the parasites had inherited the technology from some distant and long-departed ancestor race, and they’d been unable to do anything when the creatures stopped functioning as expected. The loss of this huge and beautiful work of man and all that it held … because of some ill-tempered gardening insects. If Pehr could have spared the breath, he would have laughed out loud at the very horror of it.

“Left!” Tasha cried, and they veered around the corner of a building, the walls of which must once have been made of the substance that lay in tiny crystals at its base. The street ahead of them was empty, and at the far end of it he could see the domed building with the pointing statue atop it. Pehr risked a look back and saw the first few creatures rounding the corner, making excited chittering noises, the whine of their spinning blades ever-present. He thought that he and Tasha might be able to gain some space now that they had a straight line—

“Pehr! Pehr! Pehr!” Tasha shrieked, and he swung his head back around to see that the street ahead of them was flooding with metal insects. Within moments, the way forward was completely blocked, the advancing mass only a hundred strides ahead.

“Down there!” Pehr shouted, and they turned into a tight and claustrophobic space between two buildings. Pehr had an instant of terrible premonition – he had led them right into a dead end – and then shoved it from his mind. They ran, twisting and turning through the dark and trying to keep their footing. It came as some relief when Pehr saw a purple-white glow ahead that told him this path exited back out into the streets.

They emerged from the alley and instinctively turned in the direction that would continue to take them away from the mob in pursuit. After a moment, Pehr realized this was a problem, and in another instant Tasha voiced his concerns.

“We’re going the wrong way!”

Tasha was right, and Pehr knew they had change course. The domed building was back and to their left. If they acted quickly, they might be able to circumnavigate the growing mass of gardeners.

“Turn here!” Pehr shouted, and Tasha obeyed. Pehr could hear a chorus of chirrups from not far away; the mass of creatures had nearly caught up with them. He could see the front-runners beginning to fill up the street ahead of them.

“I can’t … run like this … much longer …” Tasha panted.

Pehr was tiring, too. His lungs were beginning to burn, his muscles to ache.

“It must be now!” he cried. “Give it all you have, right now, or we’ll never break through!”

They were running directly at a group of perhaps thirty of the deadly little things, but there was no choice; the buildings at the city’s center were sturdy enough to shelter them. The ones by which they now ran were not, as was evidenced by the growing number of gardeners pouring forth from the ruins.

“This is mad!” Tasha cried, but even so she charged forward, running as fast and as hard as she could, her breathing loud and ragged. Pehr began to sprint as well, overtaking her, holding his club at the ready. When the first of the creatures leapt, Pehr batted it away without stopping. He glanced over as he heard Tasha cry out. She narrowly avoided a leaping gardener, ducking at the last moment and continuing to run.

Then they were within the mass, surrounded by the whirring, shrieking noise of what seemed a thousand spinning blades. The metal creatures flew through the air about them and skittered underfoot, as if they had plunged into the midst of a cloud of gigantic, homicidal grasshoppers. Pehr knocked more out of the air, stomped on others, and saw Tasha doing the same, flailing her walking stick around like a weapon.

Something hit his back and left a streak of pain there, and he shouted. Tasha, too, cried out, and Pehr saw that one of the creatures had opened a cut on the upper part of her right arm. She lost her grip on her stick and it clattered to the ground. Tasha gave a wail of despair but made no attempt to turn around. Her precious keepsake would have to stand sacrifice for the sake of their lives.

He wondered how long it would be until a gardener timed its jump right and landed, blades-first, on his face, but in another moment they had broken through. Pehr risked a glance behind him and saw that the creatures, now being joined by the bulk of the horde, were turning themselves around and beginning pursuit anew.

Tasha made a noise of agony and Pehr spun to look at her, slowing just a bit. “Are you badly hurt?”

“Can’t breathe!” Tasha gasped. She, too, slowed from her top speed but managed to find the strength to continue running. They turned twice and were back on the street leading to the domed building, now tantalizingly close, but the mass of creatures had followed and was gaining ground. Both he and Tasha were flagging.

“Just a little further!” He managed, hoping to encourage her to use the last of her reserves. He could see the doors on the domed building, large and heavy and intact. They would keep the gardeners out. They must.

“Look out!” Tasha managed, pointing wildly, and Pehr glanced over just in time to see a handful of the creatures leap from in between two buildings. Whether the things had lain in wait or simply gotten lucky Pehr couldn't say, but their timing was impeccable. He hauled the club around, already knowing that he was too late.

The lead creature sprung at Tasha, and Pehr had no choice but to stick his other, closer hand out and swat it away. The blades cut into the side of his palm, and his hand felt suddenly as if he had stuck it into the middle of a burning fire. He snarled in anger and pain, but kept moving.

“Help!” Tasha cried, still running as well, slightly ahead of him. A screeching, buzzing metal insect was already in mid-air, set on a course that would take off half of her face. Pehr swung his club, its length just barely enough, and dealt the creature a glancing blow that knocked it off course. It hit the ground in front of Tasha’s feet, and she stomped on it with one heavy, leather boot as she ran.

There were three more still to deal with, one almost upon them, but Pehr was now locked in on it. When it leapt, Pehr came to a complete halt, swung the mace two-handed, and caught the thing in mid-air. It went rocketing off into the black night, and Pehr had to fight the urge to stop and watch, satisfied, as it disappeared from view.

The other two metal insects were still running parallel to them, but hadn't attacked. It seemed almost as if they were waiting for an advantage, and Pehr wondered exactly how much intelligence the people who made these things had imbued them with.

Pehr was nearing the end of his strength, and could see that Tasha was doing no better. She was grimacing, panting, but still running, and he found himself impressed. He wondered if she still believed that she would survive this night. He could easily prove her right by stopping now and turning to put up a fight. It would buy Tasha all the time she needed to make it to their destination. The idea of being swarmed by cat-sized metal insects, each bearing a plethora of razor-sharp blades, didn’t much appeal to him.

“No!” Tasha cried, clutching at her side and stumbling. Pehr, a few steps behind her, realized that the girl had reached the end of her reserves. Her body was cramping, desperate for water and rest. He caught up with her, wrapped an arm around her for support, and kept her running.

The final two creatures sensed their opportunity and veered toward the struggling couple, each giving a triumphant screech. Pehr turned to meet the attack, protecting Tasha with his body, still forcing his feet to move. His club was still in his right hand, but he had little leverage with his left arm wrapped around his friend.

The closer of the two creatures jerked, as if leaping into the air, and Pehr swung his mace. Yet the thing never leapt; it had faked its attack. In the moments before his club came down and smashed to pieces on the hard, rock-like surface of the city street, Pehr wondered again just how smart these creatures were. He stumbled, bending forward, nearing losing his balance.

Now the little gardener leapt, and there was nothing Pehr could do but jerk sideways, saving his face but providing a clear path to the back of Tasha’s right calf. The creature hit her leg full-on with its spinning blades, tearing several deep gashes that began to pour blood in torrents. Tasha shrieked, tripped, and fell to her knees. Pehr fell with her but rolled on his right shoulder, abrading the flesh there but managing to make it back to his feet in one motion.

The last of the nearby metal insects launched itself at Tasha’s head even as she was pulling herself up from the ground. Pehr voiced a roaring cry of rage and denial and, without thinking, he punched out with his right hand at the creature as it soared through the air.

By some miracle the blow not only landed true, but it avoided the metal creature’s spinning blades entirely. Pehr’s knuckles were bruised terribly, but the little gardener was thrown far off course, landing on its back in the street. Before it could right itself, Pehr stomped down on it and again saw that bright flash of light as something within the creature exploded.

“We’re going to die!” Tasha wailed, trying to stand but unable to support herself on her wounded leg.

“We are not!” Pehr roared, spinning around and coming up underneath Tasha’s right arm, supporting the injured side of her body. “Now run with me, Tasha, because I will not let either of us die here in this terrible city, murdered by a bunch of Gods-damned grass cutters!”

He shoved forward with his body, propelling them both forward on his two good legs and Tasha’s one. There was blood everywhere. His hand and shoulder and back, her knee and arm and leg, all were pouring crimson. It didn’t matter; they were within twenty yards of the domed building, and Pehr was certain that if they could just make it inside, they would be safe. He believed this as fervently as the most devout of priests believed in the Gods. He believed this as if his very life depended upon it, because of course it did.

Twenty yards, but the swarm was less than five behind them. The thing that had cut Tasha’s leg had been overtaken by its brethren. What had started as a small group had now become a surging tidal wave of metal that filled the street. The individual clattering of legs had become a roaring cacophony; the combined sound of countless whirring blades made a high-pitched shriek that seemed to threaten their very sanity. Pehr pressed on, pumping his legs, holding Tasha up. He could hear her ragged breathing in his ear, could smell her fear, could taste the salt of her sweat in the air as he drew breath after burning breath into his lungs.

It will not end here! He thought, and he gave one last, great shove with his legs, beginning their ascent up the domed building’s staircase. They reached the top by momentum more than effort, and it was here that Pehr lost his grip on Tasha. She collapsed upon the cool marble of the landing, and Pehr shouted her name, turning, sure that the huge wave of metal gardeners would fall upon them now and reduce them in a matter of moments to nothing more than a grisly splotch of red on these clean, white steps.

The metal things had stopped at the base of the stairs, clustered at the edge, bobbing on their legs and giving the impression of a vast black pool. The air was still filled with the whining of their blades, but they made no further motion. Not a single creature climbed so much as the first step, and Pehr stood now twenty-five feet above them, at the top of the stairs and only a few feet from the gigantic doors which allowed entry into the hall.

He supposed he should have laughed, or screamed out in triumph, or done some other thing equally befitting a warrior who has, through wit and strength and speed, outrun a force of immensely superior numbers. Instead he only coughed once, and then fell back into a sitting position next to Tasha’s prone, heaving form. He thought for a moment he might be sick, but the feeling passed.

Pehr leaned forward; hands wrapped around the back of his neck, he sat there gasping for breath, and it was some time before either he or the girl with the purple eyes could find the strength to drag themselves to those great stone doors, open them, and slip inside.

Chapter 20

Inside the domed building there was nothing but darkness. Pehr lay on his back, still panting, feeling the pain of his wounds as a distant, faraway thing that served mostly to remind him that he was not, in fact, dead yet. He slowly became aware of Tasha sobbing somewhere beside him, and when he felt her searching hands touch his chest, he took them, and he pulled the girl against him. She lay there in the dark, crying into his chest, and Pehr closed his eyes. Nani’s face came to him then, as it often did in difficult times, a comfort no matter that she could never be his.

“I doubted,” Tasha whispered finally. “Oh, Pehr, I thought we were both going to die. I thought my dreams had … had lied to me.”

“I thought we did well,” Pehr said, and after a moment the absurdity of it all struck him, and he began to laugh. Tasha could feel this, her head on his chest, and soon she had joined him, still crying but laughing just the same. The sound of it lightened Pehr’s heart.

“You are insane,” she said at last.

“Probably. I have a few pieces of linen in my satchel. We should dress your leg.”

She moved off of him, sitting up, and said, “We’ll need some light.”

“Let me help you, ma’am!” a voice said from the dark, and there was a small click as they were bathed in cold, blue light. Tasha made a small shrieking noise, clasping her hands over her mouth, and Pehr found himself up on his feet though he couldn't remember moving.

Before them stood another of the humanoid metal things, but this one was in far better shape than its outdoor brethren. It had retained most of its clothing and nearly all of its skin, and the eyes that peered out at them were deceptively human. If not for the large, black plug in its chest and they grey spots at its joints where both clothing and skin had worn away, Pehr would have thought it a man.

“It’s all right, Tasha,” he said after a moment, relaxing. The thing was simply standing there, staring at him. If it had been a threat, they would likely both be dead already.

“I apologize for startling you, ma’am, and you, Mister Prime Minister.”

“I’m not a Gods damned Prime Minister,” Pehr muttered, but the thing only cocked its head and raised its eyebrows.

“I’m sorry?” it asked.

“Nothing,” Pehr said. “What is your name?”

“My name is Ardis, sir.”

“You’re all named Ardis?” Tasha asked. She had come forward to stand next to Pehr, favoring her wounded leg and grimacing whenever she was forced to put weight on it.

“Yes, miss Samhad. All of the Mark Fours.”

“How did you know my name?”

“You met another Ardis outside. All Mark Fours are equipped with a secure, short-range connection, ma’am. It prevents us from having to ask a guest their name repeatedly as they move throughout the city.”

“I … have no idea what that means,” Tasha muttered. “But thank you. I … thank you, Ardis.”

“If I can be of any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask,” the thing said, and it gave a short bow before taking four steps backward, coming to a stop just in front of a dark marble wall. It turned its eyes to the floor and stood there in a casual position, as it had no doubt been standing for centuries – or perhaps even millennia.

Pehr tried not to think about this. The idea that this thing had stood here, a useless guard in the middle of a dead city, for longer than the entire history of Uru, filled him with a sense of both awe and raw confusion. It boggled the mind.

Tasha, apparently, suffered from no such problems. She was looking around the large chamber that they were standing in, seeming completely at home. Pehr envied her this for a moment, before realizing that Tasha’s dreams had kept her from ever feeling at home with her own family. This was perhaps the first time in her life that she had stood someplace in which she truly felt she belonged.

“Tell me about this place,” Pehr said, and Tasha gave him a questioning look.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve seen it before. You’ve seen it in dreams, and now you’re here in real life. Tell me what this place is.”

She ran a hand through her short, red hair and sighed. “It’s still … fuzzy … but now that I’m here, I can remember more than I did before. This building is important. I saw lines of blue fire racing from this place, extending forth to touch every building, every path, every light-globe in the city.”

“This is what you’ve come all this way to find?”

Tasha pointed at the staircase. “Down below, I think, we will reach what I have come to find. What we have come to find.”

Pehr considered this. Of course they would need to descend and find whatever it was that Tasha sought, but he had grown tired of walking into the unknown. There were limits to what Tasha could tell him, but perhaps there was another that he could ask.

“Ardis,” he said, turning to the metal thing, and it immediately lifted its head to look at him.

“Yes, Mister Prime Minister?”

“What is the name of this place? This building?”

“This is City Control, sir.”

“What happens here?” Pehr asked, though the name made it clear that Tasha was correct about its importance.

“On the upper levels there are offices for many of the city’s top-ranking officials, sir. They are involved in making laws, deciding policy, and other matters of state. Your office is on the third floor, in the west corner, with a beautiful view—”

“What about this floor?” Tasha interrupted.

“There are two wings on the ground floor, ma’am. To your left, you will find the library of congress. To your right, you will find the department of public records.”

“And down below?” Tasha asked, and Pehr thought he could hear something in her voice that was very close to greed.

“Below this building, ma’am, you will find Central Processing, the largest server farm in the entire city. Our mainframe takes up most of the floor, but there is a reception area and the communication interface.”

“Do you have any idea what that means?” Pehr asked Tasha in a low voice.

“Not exactly, no, but I think it’s important. I think there is a tremendous amount of knowledge stored in this place. We must try to acquire at least a part of it.”

“You know this from the dreams?”

“Only fragments, Pehr. I don’t know much of anything … I can only sense.”

“And your senses tell you to go below.”

“Yes, below, to what the thing … to what Ardis called Central Processing.”

The metal thing spoke again. “If you wish to interact with our mainframe, Miss Samhad, you will need a security token and a temporary password. You can obtain both at the reception desk.”

“Thank you, Ardis,” Pehr said. “That will be all.”

The metal thing bowed again and returned to its post against the wall.

“You’re becoming comfortable with them,” Tasha said, smiling a little.

“I’m not comfortable with anything in this entire damned city,” Pehr grumbled. “Now let’s go down these stairs to the ‘reception desk’ so that we may obtain your ‘security token’ and your ‘temporary password’ so that you can do whatever it is that must be done.”

Tasha’s smile widened at his sarcasm; she didn’t understand these terms any more than Pehr did, but he had no doubt that she would figure them out. Tasha was quick-witted, logical, creative … all of the things that he had envied about Jace, really. Pehr had always been pleased with his own physical abilities, and even with his knowledge and understanding of people, but he had often wished for quicker wits and a more creative mind. He had envied these things in Jace, and now he envied them in Tasha. Sometimes he wondered why either of the two ever put up with his slow, deliberate mind.

“Leg,” he said, pointing at her wounds, and she nodded. Before starting in on the bandaging job, he also handed her a few pieces of salted tral meat. For his own part, now that the adrenaline from the chase had subsided, Pehr was ravenous. He gnawed on a piece of the meat as he worked. Tasha wolfed hers down as if starving.

“Can you help me with the stairs?” she asked him when he was done and they were both standing. “I think if I try them on my own I will end up in a heap at the bottom.”

Pehr nodded. He was impressed with the girl’s stoicism; the cuts in her calf were deep and wide, the worst of the injuries either had sustained, and must have been very painful. He supposed that the elation she was feeling, having finally reached this place that she had dreamt of for so long, was keeping her mind off the pain.

Pehr stooped down and Tasha put her arm over his shoulder. She seemed ready to attempt to shuffle down the stairs, but Pehr had other plans, and she made a little squeak of surprise when in one smooth motion he dipped, put his right arm under her knees, and lifted her into his arms.

“This isn’t necessary,” she said, and Pehr didn’t even bother responding to that. He began to descend the staircase. After a moment, Tasha stopped lying so stiff in his arms and accepted what was happening. The stairs were wide and shallow, not hard to navigate even with his friend in his arms. They curved around and around as Pehr descended, dropping several stories below ground. When at last they reached the end, he set Tasha down, and she glanced at the doorway in front of them.

“I don’t know what those markings say, but the ‘reception desk’ must be through there,” Pehr said.

Tasha was already limping forward, and Pehr followed. Inside, another Ardis machine stood behind a wide, curved table made of a smooth black material that Pehr didn’t think was stone. Like its brother upstairs, this version of the metal thing was in much better condition than those that served duty outside. It tracked them with its eyes as they entered, and said, “Hello Mister Prime Minister. Hello, Miss Samhad.”

“Hello, Ardis,” Tasha said, stepping up to the desk.

Pehr joined her and said, “We need a … a token. And something else. To speak with your fainrane.”

“Mainframe,” Tasha corrected, and Pehr merely rolled his eyes. The Ardis unit reached down with its right hand and brought it back up, placing a tiny black object on the flat surface in front of him.

“Certainly,” it said. “This is your security token, which will allow you to open the doors. Just press it against the pad to your left. Please note that all security tokens expire exactly twenty-four hours after their first use. Once you are inside, Allen will ask you for today’s password. Today’s choice was ‘vichyssoise.’”

“Fishy what?” Pehr asked, bewildered.

“I’ve got it, Pehr,” Tasha said, taking him by the shoulder. “Thank you, Ardis.”

“You’re quite welcome, ma’am,” the thing said, and it returned to its state of rest.

“Who is Allen?” Pehr asked, and Tasha shrugged.

“Does it matter? Some new thing that we won’t understand, most likely. It won’t be human.”

“It has a human’s name. What if it’s a survivor?”

“It’s not.”

Pehr had long since become used to Tasha’s flat declarations about things she should have had no way of knowing, and he didn’t bother to argue. The girl with the purple eyes took the tiny black object from the desk, limped over to the large double doors ahead of them, and pressed the object against the pad that the Ardis unit had mentioned. Pehr watched as the doors slid back on their own – this city never ceased in its display of wonders – revealing a dim hallway that curved off to the left after a few paces.

“No sense waiting,” Tasha said, and she walked forward. After a moment, Pehr followed.

* * *

The communication room was flat and blank and made entirely of featureless metal save for the ceiling, which was a single pane of glowing white light. In its center there was a metal cylinder, perhaps six inches in circumference, which stood at chest height. The room was otherwise empty, and for a moment, Pehr had no idea how to proceed.

“What are we supposed to be communicating with?” he asked, and Tasha shook her head.

“I … don’t know.”

“Did we miss an entrance somewhere? Perhaps this is a storage space?”

“No, there weren’t any doors.” Tasha sounded frustrated, and Pehr couldn’t blame her. This was an empty room with a castrated lump of metal in its center. After all they had been through, to arrive in this place was infuriating.

“I’m going to go back and beat that Ardis thing until it tells us what is going on,” Pehr said, turning toward the doorway through which they had entered. Tasha reached a hand out and touched his shoulder, stopping him.

“Allow me a moment,” she said. “After that, I’ll come with you and hold it down while you punch.”

Pehr glanced over at her. “Was that a joke, Tasha? Are you unwell?”

“Shut up,” she said, but she was smiling. She stepped slowly forward, toward the cylinder in the center of the room.

“Are you going to touch that?”

“Do you think I should not?”

“This city has proven that anything could be deadly …”

“How encouraging,” Tasha growled, and she dropped her hand down on the rounded top of the cylinder. The response was instantaneous and terrifying; the lighted ceiling went out, plunging them into darkness, and before they could even react, the voice spoke.

“Password, please!” it roared, the sound louder and deeper than any human throat could produce, and for a moment there was silence save for Tasha’s breathing, and for Pehr’s. At last Tasha found her voice, and she croaked out the word.

“Vish … vichyssoise?”

“Password accepted. Welcome to the mainframe.”

The blackness lightened a bit, and Pehr could now make out Tasha’s form in front of him again. She still had her hand on the cylinder, as if afraid even to shift position. He was about to take a step forward, perhaps to place a hand on her shoulder in solidarity, when he was instead given witness to the most amazing thing that he had ever seen.

The face materialized before him out of thin air, massive and looming. It was curiously flat, somehow, with no more depth than a shadow, and yet it was the size of the entire wall in front of them. The face’s complexion was dark, darker even than Pehr’s, and its black, kinky hair was cropped close to its head. It was clean-shaven, and it looked down upon them with soft, brown eyes.

“I must say, sir, that you’re seriously late. I get that it’s not exactly perfect out there, especially these days, but honestly … nine thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six years? That’s a hell of a trip to the outer fringes.”

The giant head seemed oblivious to the near-terror it had caused its guests, and it was looking at them with obvious expectation. Pehr realized with a dawning sense of horror that this thing expected him to provide some sort of rational response. All he was able do was stammer. “Ah … I … that is …”

Then the face laughed, head rolling back – even though there was nowhere, really, for it to roll – and said, “I’m just screwing around, man. I know you’re not the Prime Minister.”

“You do?” Pehr asked.

“Sure. I mean, the security boys think you’re him – it’s all over the RDIS network. That’s ‘Remotely Distributed Information and Security,’ if you care. Those guys can’t think on their feet, though. Or off their feet. Truth be told, they can’t think at all. We only built them to put together some basic responses based on their available dataset. At first it’s pretty clever but, man, you want to talk about lousy conversationalists? After a while it’s just ‘I’m sorry, I do not possess sufficient information to respond,’ over and over.”

“A-are you Allen?” Tasha asked it, and the giant head smiled at her, nodding.

“Sure am. Allen James Montgomery the third, head of comp-sci, mathematician extraordinaire, and chairman of the science board. Well, really, I’m just an AI construct that’s impersonating the guy who built me, but you … yeah. Judging by those ‘call me Smoking Buffalo’ outfits, I’m guessing there aren’t many computers in your lives.”

Pehr and Tasha had no idea how to respond to this and were having difficulty doing anything more than gawking at this terrifying display of magic. After a moment, the thing – Allen – went on.

“Right, so … uh … well, this is the mainframe. I know it doesn’t look like much, but trust me, all of the information held in the city comes through here.”

“You control the things outside, then?” Pehr asked. “The ones that almost killed us?”

“The gardeners? No, I don’t control them – I just monitor them. They went berserk a long time ago, but it’s nothing I could fix. Manual server reboot required. They disabled the remote login as a safety precaution. That was a mistake, obviously. The gardeners weren’t one of my projects … but I knew the guy who built them.”

“He didn’t do a very good job,” Pehr muttered.

“Tell you what, Captain Neolithic … you try coding something that doesn’t throw a single exception in ten thousand years and then get back to me, ‘kay?”

Pehr, who had no idea what this thing was talking about, merely sat down cross-legged on the floor. He looked at Tasha, shrugged, and shook his head. Let her deal with it. Tasha gave him a small nod.

“You’ve been in this room here for ten thousand years?” she asked.

“Mmm … sort of, yes,” Allen said.

“Don’t you get bored?”

Allen laughed. “Sweetheart, you should see the video games they set me up with. Not to mention the sims. You have any idea what it’s like to have an orgasm at about three hundred percent strength?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Tasha told him.

“No, of course not. Let me guess: you’ve never even been with a guy, have you? Not even the dude over there who came all this way with you. You’ve never felt the desire for him or for anyone else. Not ever. I’m talking sexually, like … making babies. It’s not your thing, right?”

Tasha hesitated for a moment, her cheeks coloring a bit, and then said, “I have never gone to bed with a man, nor wanted to, that is true.”

“Course not. Of course not. That’s not how we built you. Can’t go around spreading that special DNA. Every hundred years or so one of you was supposed to pop out, but you weren’t supposed to be making any more of yourselves. Course, we weren’t planning on you guys disappearing for, you know … ten thousand years.”

Tasha seemed now on the verge of tears, frustrated by her inability to understand this thing that she had spent her life trying to reach. Allen seemed to realize that he was upsetting her and he put his grin away, opting for a more serious expression.

“Hey, sister, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” he said. “I just … it’s been a long time since I talked to one of you, and the last one was a lot more up to date on her history. Listen, this is gonna go nowhere unless we aug you. There’s too much to tell. Too much you need to know. Can I ask you a couple of questions before we get to that, though? I don’t even know your names.”

“My name is Tasha. This is Pehr. I … I have been dreaming of this place since I was born.”

“I know you have, Tasha. We built that into you.”

“I am not a machine! I was not built by anyone. I came from my mother’s belly just like my sisters and brothers!”

“Whoa, right, no … you’re flesh and blood and bone. Pretty eyes, sexy legs … you’re a hundred percent human, OK? You’re just a little bit more than human, too. We co-opted a few sequences of your junk DNA to store some data, that’s all.”

“I don’t know what that means!” Tasha cried, her hands balled into fists, and Allen nodded. He took a deep breath – if magical, floating heads could breathe – and continued.

“What happens is, every hundred years or so a girl like you comes along, and she has dreams about this place, and about a guy who looks a whole lot like your boy over there. See, he’s descended from a good friend of mine, the Prime Minister Mombutabwe you keep hearing about. His gene patterns act as your key. He gets you inside, and you fill us in on the state of things. That’s how it goes. We knew there would be more … and we wanted them to come after us. We really did. That’s why we set this stuff up, but we didn’t count on you disappearing like you did. Where the hell have you guys been, anyway?”

“We were separated ages ago. The mountains are forbidden to my people, now – we consider them holy ground. This is supposed to be a city of the gods. And Pehr’s kin, they … they …”

“We were separated from Tasha’s by the Lagos,” Pehr said.

“Oh, those guys are still around?” Allen asked. “Damn it. We set the RDIS units to kill them on sight. I figured they were long gone.”

Pehr shook his head. “They live in the jungle and sometimes make war on the villages of the coast. I have … lost much to them.”

“I’m sorry,” Allen said, and his voice sounded sincere. “Listen, we didn’t make them, OK? They’re not like the gardeners … they’re not something we made that turned bad. They were bad right from the start. After the Great Destruction, man, all kinds of bad turned up in the world. I forget who the Lagos used to be, but they were into gene manipulation. They mixed in all kinds of animal species, trying to give themselves a better shot at surviving. I guess it worked, if they’re still around. They’re bad news.”

“You know of the Great Destruction?” Tasha asked.

“Do I know of it? Honey … when a comet the size of Connecticut drops directly onto the most holy city on the planet and kills about ninety percent of humanity, it gets mentioned in a few history books. I wasn’t around for it, but my grandfather was. From what I hear, uh … it sucked.”

“It’s nothing more than legend to us,” Pehr said. “Some terrible thing that happened at the dawn of time, so far in the past that no one even remembers what it was.”

Allen sighed. “Look … there’s no way for me to tell you everything you need to know. Seriously. I could start talking now, and you would be dead before I finished. There’s just too much. I can’t tell you about it all … but what I can do is offer you all the information you could ever want, right now, instantly. Does that sound good to you?”

Tasha spoke with no hesitation. “Yes.”

Pehr thought about it for much longer. Unlike Tasha, he had neither dreamed of this place nor felt any great urge, even now, to learn the long-lost secrets of their ancestors. He had planned for a simple life: wedding and bedding Sili, hunting boar, raising children in his village by the sea. That was what he thought he had been meant for.

Now here he was in a far-away land with this girl who had become something like a sister to him. He had fought through the Lagos and the metal thing, fought through his near-death by dehydration, and fought through a horde of homicidal gardening robots just to get here. Was he going to walk away now without taking the opportunity to learn and understand? Was he going to go back to being a hunter of tral or boar, living in fear that the Lagos might return at any time, until the moment came when he was too old or too careless and he died?

“Buddy, it makes no difference to me,” Allen said. “If you dig your life, be cool. I’ll educate your girl, and she’ll help you get back to wherever it is you need to be. You go on and have some babies … seed that Prime Minister DNA back into the pool, and in another hundred years or so a new version of the two of you will swing by and check in. It’s no skin off my back … the real me is already long gone.”

Pehr shrugged. “I think that if I don’t learn more, I will always wonder what I missed.”

Allen studied him for a moment, and he grinned. “There might be hope for the rest of you after all.”

“What do you mean?” Tasha asked him, but the giant head floating above them merely gave her a knowing look.

“Put your hands on the pedestal. The one you touched to call me. Both of you.”

Tasha did what she was told, and after a moment Pehr did the same.

“What are you going to do to us?” Tasha asked him, and Allen laughed.

“Sister, you have to go through the process if you want a shot in hell of understanding when I explain it. Close your eyes.”

Tasha and Pehr shut their eyes, nervous and edgy, fearing that this process might bring pain, or terror, or both.

“Keep those eyes shut. It’s easier if you reduce the input. OK … connection established. Oh, that is beautiful. Those brains are just waiting for it. This is going to blow your mind, kids.”

Pehr breathed deeply. If something had happened, it was nothing he could feel.

And then Allen told them, “Here it comes,” and in the next instant, everything changed. Forever.

Chapter 21

In scientific circles, the impact and subsequent violent purging of the majority of living creatures from the planet was called the End-Holocene Mass Extinction Event. To the rest of the world, what little of it remained, it was known only as the Great Destruction. The comet that hit Jerusalem was larger than any that had ever been tracked, dwarfing the size of the asteroid that had killed the dinosaurs.

“They spent trillions watching the sky to prevent this exact thing from happening,” Allen narrated, seemingly unable to sit in silence. “All of their systems and satellites and probability algorithms, and they got three days of warning that it’d changed course so drastically. Three days, man … what are you going to do with nine-point-six billion people in three stupid days? There was nothing they could do, except get as many of the best and brightest – and the most well-connected – as far underground as possible.”

When the comet hit, nearly a billion human beings were rendered in moments into little more than charred organic matter, their remains sucked up into the atmosphere by the tremendous winds created by the superheated air. Billions more died in the following hours as the blast encircled the globe, filling the atmosphere with burning ash.

“It was bad,” Allen told them. “Most of the planet ended up as a desert, the rain that did come down was full of acids and toxins, and the parts that were getting rained on were so burnt up, it didn’t matter anyway. It would’ve taken nature thousands of years to bounce back if we hadn’t helped her.”

The polar ice-caps melted, flooding the oceans with fresh water, killing most of the life found within them. Countless species on land and in bodies of fresh water were driven extinct. Countless more died off within weeks, victims of starvation, or dehydration, or simple changes in salinity. Ocean levels surged and earthquake after earthquake wracked the globe. The world became cracked and broken. Waterlogged. Earth became Uru.

Pehr saw it happening before his eyes from an uncountable number of sources, everything from handheld home video to satellite feeds. It wasn’t that he was watching anything, exactly. Instead it was as if he had just watched ... and listened, and smelled, and touched. Not one thing at a time but hundreds, thousands, all pouring into his brain and becoming things remembered. Images, video, raw data – all of it was just suddenly there. It was an experience unlike anything he had ever imagined could exist.

The amount of knowledge being driven into his head was unmanageable, impossible to bear. He worried for a time that his brain simply could not handle all of this information, that his skull would disintegrate in the attempt to contain it all. At last he realized that he was containing it. His mind was able to digest and understand what it was being shown. Whatever it was that Allen was doing to them, it was not just giving them this knowledge but modifying their very physiology in a way that allowed them to parse it.

The humanity that came out of Earth’s bunkers was unlike that which had covered the globe when the comet hit. It was educated. Privileged. Structured. Some on the surface had managed to survive the apocalypse, and they turned to those from the bunkers for leadership.

Many religions had been wiped out entirely by virtue of having no practitioners left, and those that remained were shaken to their very core. Jerusalem – and an area approximately 830 miles in diameter around it – now sat underneath thousands of feet of sea water. If the giant ball of ice had indeed been hurled by God, the message God seemed to be sending was that it was time to stop squabbling over chunks of land.

“Naturally,” Allen said, “We ignored that message completely.”

One would have hoped that the devastated remains of humanity, made up almost entirely of educated people from developed nations, suddenly pulled together by a loss so epic in scope that it defied comprehension, would have brought about something approaching an era of utopian peace. Such hopes were quickly dashed, as one of the first things humanity did upon emerging from its holes in the ground was to begin warring over what little spoils remained in the wake of the comet’s destruction.

Some entities struggled to hold on to preexisting national boundaries. Others made desperate attempts to grab resources wherever they could be found, regardless of who might already have laid claim to them. It was inevitable, perhaps, that even as some groups were working desperately together in order to aid the planet’s recovery, others were busy taking what they could and blowing up those who tried to get to it ahead of them.

“There were sixteen nuclear detonations in the first two years after the Emergence, and the wars went on for more than a century. In a lot of ways, the bombs did more damage than the comet. Can you believe that? Mankind’s sitting on the verge of extinction, and people are fighting about who gets the leftover diamonds. Same as it ever was, man … apes killing apes.”

There was hope, however. During the Hundred Year Dark, as the era of nuclear sparring became known, large chunks of the scientific community came together in a desperate attempt to restore some balance to the globe. The concept of terraforming, subject to a great deal of theoretical research in the years leading up to the comet impact, had become suddenly urgent – a science fit for practical research and application. It was no longer necessary to wonder if other planets could be made habitable for earth’s overflowing population. The focus had shifted to making their own planet less hostile to the shredded remains of humanity.

It took more than a hundred years, during which time the wars raged, fought from bunker cities hidden far below the earth. By the time the scientists had managed to repair even a small part of the surface, governments had changed substantially. One of the larger entities had formed via cooperation between a set of bunkers spread across the landmass that had once been California, Mexico, and part of Central America.

This group was united under the charismatic leadership of a man named Nathan Hoskins. A leading geneticist before the Great Destruction, his work had led to the development of technologies that could extend the human lifespan by centuries. None had benefitted more from this work than Hoskins himself, who was able to push tirelessly through the long, dark years after the comet’s strike. It was Hoskins who first proposed the concept of Havenmont, a city-state unlike any other, in which science would be the principle religion, allowing for the complete cooperation and intertwining of government, church, and academics.

Not all who lived within the land that Hoskins came to govern were willing to renounce their faith and take up the mantle of science, and for a time he met with heavy resistance from many groups opposed to the idea of Havenmont. Hoskins responded not with violence or oppression, but instead by forming the First United Church of the Enlightened. The Church’s central tenet was that science was the most holy of works: an attempt to unravel the mysteries of nature and better understand what God, if any, was out there. Well-funded and equipped with access at the highest levels of media and government, the church began rapidly to convert the survivors of the extinction event to its cause.

“I met Hoskins, near the end of his life,” Allen said. “What you have to understand is that Nathan wasn’t a cynical man. He wasn’t pulling a con. He believed what he was telling his followers. He’d always believed it, even before the Great Destruction, and witnessing this random catastrophe only strengthened his desire to understand the universe. We spoke a lot about math, because man, I love math, and he asked me, ‘What is math if not the language of God?’”

It was the Everstorm that made Havenmont possible. Deployed in the year 158 GD – one hundred and fifty-eight years after the Great Destruction – it began the laborious process of returning life to the surface. Originally conceived as a method to bring an atmosphere back to Mars, it turned out that the most important function the Everstorm served was to scrub away the radiation that was eating up most of the rest of the Earth. Pehr and Tasha and their societies had never known it, but the Everstorm was the only thing that had kept them alive all these millennia.

Havenmont was founded in the year 258 GD, and for more than six hundred years it stood as a beacon of peace and prosperity amidst a world of chaos, terror, and pain. In that time, satellite uplinks were reestablished, the globe remapped, and the groundwork laid for the city’s true destiny. Hoskins lived for four hundred years after the Great Destruction, but he did not survive long enough to see these plans laid out. He left Havenmont in what seemed capable hands. His successor, a brilliant molecular physicist named Joachim Baptista, was elected president by the city’s governing board.

By the time of Hoskins’s death, Havenmont had achieved global recognition as a beacon of light and civilization in an otherwise barbaric, dying world. Each year, tens of thousands of pilgrims began the treacherous journey from their bunkers to the city, often crossing great swaths of irradiated land that killed many of their numbers. Under Hoskins, these pilgrims would simply have been augmented and assimilated into the Church of the Enlightened, but under Baptista’s rule, only the best and brightest found a sympathetic ear.

Baptista worked to solidify his rule in ways that Hoskins never had, becoming something more like an emperor then a president. It was under this rule that the first of the sprawling outer ghettos were founded, and soon the great city was ringed with low-quality dwellings supporting hundreds of thousands of people that the Baptista regime had found unworthy of entrance into the city proper. In one of his most famous speeches, Baptista had spoken at length on his reasons for this approach.

“What time there was, when we were in need of these lesser children of God to clean our toilets, or haul our trash, or till our fields, has now passed. We have machines to do this work for us, and have found them infinitely superior to man at such menial tasks. Those who cannot contribute to Havenmont in some greater, more meaningful way must be content with their lot in life.”

In the sixth century after the Great Destruction, Joachim Baptista was assassinated and an impending civil war averted. Some claimed that the ghetto-dwellers had risen up against him, while others believed that he had been done in by members of his own church. Few mourned his passing.

The laws Baptista had put into place granting himself absolute power were stripped away, and he was succeeded not by a single man, but by a parliament composed of a combination of high-ranking church members and elected officials who represented the city’s populace. Those who had been relegated for so long to the ghettos were at last given representation in this congress, though the gesture would prove largely inconsequential; the great work for which Havenmont had been established was nearly complete, and its deployment would make the city government irrelevant.

For their first Prime Minister, the parliament elected a relatively young man who they felt represented the best that Havenmont had to offer, who could connect both with the scientific elite and the common man in the outer ghettos. That man was Nesagana Mombutabwe.

A pilgrim himself, Mombutabwe was born not in Havenmont but in a bunker below the arid lands on the western half of what had once been Namibia. As his bunker failed, he had come to the surface and journeyed by boat to the flooded coasts of South America. From there he had made the perilous trek northward, slogging from ruin to ruin through lands populated by a race of half-animal ancestors of the Lagos, trying to avoid the great pockets of radiation that dotted the continent.

Finally reaching Havenmont, Mombutabwe had required substantial treatment for radiation sickness and an infection of jungle fungus that took one of his feet. Once healthy, he had easily passed the tests required for citizenship under Baptista’s regime, showing particular ability in the areas of biology and sociology, and had immediately joined the Church of the Enlightened upon his admission to the city. Over the next hundred years he became a pioneer in cellular biology, working closely with a mathematical prodigy by the name of Allen Montgomery.

“Nes and I really got along. He would come up with ideas that he knew could work, but he didn’t have the math, so he’d bring them to me, and I’d tell him he was insane and then stay up for a week straight coding and taking stims, making it happen anyway. We were the ones who figured out how to attach data to junk DNA and pull it out every few breeding cycles.”

Mombutabwe held his position for only a scant two decades, a trifling amount in a world where the average lifespan of a member of the Church of the Enlightened could be expected to last more than five hundred years. It was during this time that the final work was done on the great experiment for which Havenmont had been created, a project of such significance that its very existence had been kept secret from the general populace.

Limited in space, unable to augment all of the city’s people quickly enough, outvoted, and forced to enact the final plan by parliament and other high-ranking officials, Mombutabwe and Montgomery had done the only thing they could think to do: they seeded the population of the ghettos with the special DNA that would eventually produce the purple-eyed girl and her protector. They made sure that the RDIS network would grant access to anyone carrying Mombutabwe’s genetic signature, and they deployed the artificial intelligence that would govern the city’s mainframe until the time came when those left behind were ready to start anew the project that the city had been built for.

With this done, Mombutabwe, Montgomery, and all those who inhabited the city proper boarded a great number of ships that had been built underneath the mountains, and they launched themselves into space. There, the ships would link together into one gigantic, self-sustaining city and begin their journey out into the universe. The citizens of this floating city hoped to find a new, unspoiled planet upon which to settle, and there continue their work to unravel the mysteries of God.

Whether or not they had accomplished this goal no one on Earth could say, not even this shadow version of Allen that they had left behind. After their departure, communication bursts came for a time. Two hundred and sixty-eight years in, just as the floating city was reaching Alpha Centauri and – having found no suitable planets there to colonize – preparing to move on to the next destination in their course, communication ended. Messages were taking more than four years to return to Earth, and the crew of the ship said in their final dispatch that the parliament felt the ever-growing expanse of time between sending and receiving made the messages a worthless waste of energy.

Those who had departed were now truly separated from those who remained behind, and all that was left was ten thousand years of darkness.

Chapter 22

Pehr was sitting on the cold steel floor of the mainframe room, holding his head in his hands. More than six hundred years of history had been force-fed into his brain in what seemed only a few moments, though in truth it had been nearly six hours of non-stop inundation. If someone had asked him his own name at that very instant, he might not have been able to summon the answer from his addled mind.

Tasha was sitting next to him, staring straight forward, her body slightly hunched over and her face devoid of all expression. Pehr spoke her name but she did not immediately respond. He couldn’t seem to think of anything else to do, and so they sat like that, in silence, for some time. At last Tasha spoke, the words coming listless and leaden from her lips.

“They left us.”

Pehr felt himself nodding. Yes. Here they were, sitting in the middle of this dead city, the last descendants not of the great men who had built this place but of those pilgrims who had come too late to gain entry onto the shuttles. These abandoned souls, the parasites of whom Tasha had spoken, had lived at the edge of the city until the malfunctioning gardeners had driven them out entirely, whereupon they had split between the Plains of Tassanna and Pehr’s land. At some lost point in history, the Lagos had come between the two and contact had ended.

“I’m not proud of what we did,” Allen said. “We left you, or at least the ones who became you. Nes cried … that’s the last image I have of him, before the Allen that I am and the Allen that went off into space split. Just Nes sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, crying like a baby.”

“They wouldn’t give him any more time,” Pehr said. “That’s it, right? So you left us here with codes built into our bodies that would produce someone like Tasha who would be inherently drawn to someone like me, who held the Mombutabwe DNA and could get her past the RDIS units.”

“Yes.”

“Why bother? What was the damned point?” Pehr asked. He was still too shaken by all that he had seen to be furious, but he was filled with an almost overwhelming disgust.

“We wanted you to follow,” Allen said. “The rest of you weren’t ready, and we thought … Nes and I, we thought maybe if we gave a bit of ourselves to you, then it might produce some scientists. Some mathematicians. Maybe we were crazy, but there wasn’t any time. They were locking off the inner city. All of this knowledge was just going to lie here dormant, and we had to give it to someone.

“I know you must hate me, and Nes, and all of the rest of us for what we did. I guess probably you even hate us for screwing with your DNA and bringing you back here … but we had the best of intentions.”

“They say the road to hell is paved with such,” Tasha said, and still her voice sounded distant and dead.

“So I hear,” Allen said. “We did what we did, and it’s too late by thousands of years to make up for it anyway. Even if I had any way of communicating with that ship, which I don’t, they wouldn’t come back.”

Pehr gave a short, grim laugh. “Why return to rescue a bunch of savages?”

“You’re not savages anymore,” Allen told him.

“What did you do to us?”

“Basic set of augmentations. Your brains are now host to a whole colony of microcomputers built to communicate with your neurons.”

“So you’ve made us smarter.”

The gigantic, projected head shook back and forth. “Nope. Your brains can now store and retrieve data in much greater amounts, and in much better ways, but you’re no smarter than you were when you walked in here. We never did crack that one. I can feed you calculus algorithms and you could do some pretty complex stuff, but you’ll never wield it like … well, like I did. Your storage capacity’s been increased, not your processing ability. And by the way, Pehr … how would you say ‘the man dreamed a golden vision of God’ in French?”

“L’homme rêvait d’une vision d’or du dieu,” Pehr said, and after a moment his eyes went wide in surprise. “I … that’s …”

“That’s data collection and presentation, is what it is,” Allen said. “You came in here only knowing the Spanish-English hybrid that you and Tasha both speak natively – though I must say, Tasha, your side has really butchered the hell out of the pronunciation. Now you both speak several languages, including French. You can speak it … but whether or not you can write poetry in it is still up to you. Do you understand?”

“We understand,” Tasha said. At last she looked up at Allen, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with deep, dark circles of exhaustion. “So … you’ve given us all of this data. Now what?”

“Well, sweetheart, that’s where this all gets interesting. In the time before the gardeners went berserk and chased you off, I had plenty of kids come in here and get augmented, but none of them ever did anything with it. A couple tried, but it’s harder than you might think to get people to listen. The RDIS units wouldn’t let anyone into the inner city, but even living on the outskirts was pretty great, back then. There were cars and TV, diet soda, a pretty unending supply of food from the hydroponic farms and the meat-sheet warehouses. Who wanted to build spaceships?”

“Lazy …” Tasha muttered.

“Humans are pretty lazy,” Allen said. “We expected that. We didn’t think it would take this long, though. Actually, it probably wouldn’t have, but—”

“But we were cut off from this place by the gardeners, and then from each other by the Lagos,” Pehr said.

“Right. You two are the first to make it through since the gardeners malfunctioned. Maybe others tried, I don’t know … they never made it far enough for an RDIS to broadcast their presence on the network.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Tasha said. She stood up, wincing at the pain in her leg, and stretched. “What happens now, Allen?”

“The city belongs to you and Pehr. Whatever’s left of the old girl. You can go anywhere, enter any building … if you wanted, you could wander into the reactor cores that power the joint, but I don’t recommend it. I can help you reset the gardeners and make them friendly again. I can help you get the food-production services back online. I can help you do whatever you want, but the point is: it’s all yours and you can bring anyone you want in for augmentation, too. Bring enough of them and you could restore the whole city.”

“To what end?” Pehr asked, but he could see that the greedy look had returned to Tasha’s face. She had thought further ahead than he had, again.

“We could follow them,” she said.

The disembodied head before them nodded. “Listen, sister … over the years, either a lot of my uplinks died or the machinery floating around up there broke down. Point is, I don’t have the vision I used to, but I can still see plenty, and I can tell you this: there’s nothing else out there. There aren’t any other cities and there aren’t any functioning bunkers left. Most of the planet is still so irradiated it would kill you in minutes. The Everstorm is starting to fail. It’s been failing since we built it, really – it was never meant to last – but the failure is speeding up, and the amount of land it can keep clean is shrinking.

“This planet will survive, OK? There’s hundreds of millions of years still before the sun gets too hot for life as we know it to exist here, and the radiation will clear itself out in time, but humanity … we’re pretty much done here. The numbers have been dropping since the Great Destruction.”

“Even if we could fix the Everstorm and wait out the cleansing, it doesn’t matter,” Tasha said. “There’s nothing left on this planet for us. There is no God here.”

“Whatever’s next for the human race, it’s out there,” Allen agreed.

“So, then, what – we must bring the plainsmen and my people here?” Pehr asked.

“Yes, that must be our path,” Tasha said. “We will go back now to my family and begin our work. We will raise an army, enter the jungle, and destroy the Lagos. We will unite all Uru and bring them to this place!”

Pehr took a moment to think, head down. There was a great need tugging at him, but for some time he struggled against it. He did not want to relive that horror, that pain, no … so why did it seem so very important? Why did his very soul cry out against leaving the mountains without first making the trip that he so dreaded?

“I know you wish to return to your family …” Tasha ventured.

Pehr could fight no longer. Shaking his head, he looked up at Tasha, looked her directly in her big, purple eyes, and he told her the truth. “Before we begin, I must go see Jace.”

These words were greeted with a rare sight: abject confusion on Tasha’s part. At first it seemed she did not even understand what he meant, and yet when comprehension dawned on her, she looked no less confused.

“Pehr … why? Why would you do that to yourself?”

Pehr struggled for a time to put his feelings into words, and at last found that the simplest explanation was also the best. “I left him there. I could have braved the arrows of the Lagos and taken him from that place, given him a proper funeral, but instead I fled.”

“You would have been killed.”

“Perhaps you’re right, but I must go back. I must make reparation for what I did. I must look upon my dead cousin and beg his apology for abandoning him there in a dishonorable grave.”

“Could you not do so when we come back?”

“It will take months to rally the plainsmen, Tasha. Years, maybe. I will not let him lie there that much longer.”

“What if there are Lagos?”

“There won’t be. I saw the circle … there were no dwellings near it. They come there to make sacrifice to the broken RDIS unit, but they don’t live there.”

Tasha stared at him for some period of time, and Pehr met her eye, unashamed and willing to accept the test of conviction he saw in her gaze. At last, seeing he would not back down, Tasha sighed.

“Very well. We will leave Allen to his video games and his simulations, and we will go see your cousin and this killing machine.”

“That unit’s been off-network for thousands of years now,” Allen told them. “I’m impressed he’s still functioning. The boys over at Amfeld built those guys to last.”

“They built them to shoot lasers visible to the naked eye, too,” Pehr mused. “Why?”

Allen laughed. “Honestly, man? It looks cool.”

Pehr wondered how cool Allen would have thought it looked if he’d had to watch those beams of fire bore through a cousin’s torso. After a moment more, he let it go and moved on. “We can’t leave while the gardeners are out.”

Tasha shook her head and reached over to scratch her shoulder. She smiled. “Of course not. Allen, could you tell me when sunrise will come?”

“About an hour from now,” Allen said. “You guys took a crazy route in, though. Some of the surveillance systems are still functional so I was catching glimpses of you. I can get you back out of the city in about forty-five minutes. I’d offer you a ride, but the batteries on the last working vehicle crapped the bed about six hundred years ago.”

“We can handle the walk,” Tasha said, and Pehr made a noise of affirmation. Then her words sunk in, and he glanced over at Tasha in surprise.

“Your leg …”

“Allen has done something to us,” Tasha said.

“While you were out, I had one of the RDIS units bring in couple of nanopatch kits. They’re good for light wounds. You can’t put a severed limb back on or anything, not without more direct intervention, and the cut will still ache for a couple days, but you should be able to use your arms and legs without much trouble.”

“This city is full of miracles,” Pehr murmured, and Allen laughed.

“It’s getting low, actually. If you want more of this stuff, you’re going to need to learn how to use the synthesizers, and you’re going to need to provide some raw materials.”

“We’ll worry about that when we return,” Tasha told him, and Allen nodded.

“All right,” he said. “I guess that’s it for now.”

“You’ve been a tremendous help, Allen,” Tasha said. “I … it may be a while before I can forgive you, but I thank you.”

“If we had known …” Allen let the sentence trail, and Tasha nodded.

“I understand.”

“Let me ask you something before you go,” Allen said, and Tasha glanced at him in surprise.

“Certainly.”

“Do you have any idea how lucky you are that this kid made it through? Do you know how completely improbable it is that, once you guys were separated, you would come back together and make it through to this place without being killed?”

Tasha bit her lip, pondered, and finally shrugged.

“Perhaps it was the will of God,” she said, and then she smiled.

Chapter 23

They spent the remaining hour before dawn sitting on the marble steps and looking down at the silent ocean of gardening robots that still sat at the base of the building, waiting for them. He felt strange – exhausted, but not in need of sleep – and Tasha seemed to be in a similar state. Pehr suspected that they both had slept during their augmentation without realizing it.

They shared between them a few bites of salted tral meat and the last of the water from Pehr’s flasks, which they would refill at the base of the mountain. There was no water here, other than what fell from the sky, and where it had pooled it had grown stagnant and greenish; after several years without use, Havenmont’s plumbing facilities had entered into an automatic shut-down routine and, like much of the rest of the city, it would require a time consuming manual restart to enable.

Pehr no longer feared the gardeners. He knew now that they would disperse when the sun came up, and that when next he returned to the city, they could begin the process of reprogramming the murderous things and taking control of the city’s nights.

“They’re going,” Tasha said after a time. The first pink ribbons of dawn had appeared in the eastern sky, and the little metal insects had begun, one by one, to march back to wherever it was that they spent their days.

“Back to their holes,” Pehr said.

“Yes.”

“When they’re gone, we’ll take the elevated highway … Route 19, right?”

“Right,” Tasha said, and she made a scoffing, laughing noise. “Route 19. Of course.”

There was a pause as they watched the crowd of robots rapidly thinning, and then Pehr said, “How are we ever going to explain this? How will we make them understand?”

“We can’t, Pehr. They have to come here to understand. Your family, too, once we find a way back to them.”

Pehr hadn’t even considered this. The jungle still stood between the city and his land, and though he ached to feel the warm sun, and smell the ocean, and see his beloved cousin again, he was not optimistic about the odds. Even should he, a single person, manage to avoid detection by the Lagos, it was impossible to believe that any group he might mobilize could long remain unnoticed.

“Perhaps once we have the city running …” he ventured, and Tasha shook her head.

“No. There isn’t time. We must reunite our people now. We need to get as many together as you can, and get them all augmented at the same time. If we do it in small batches, they’ll just exclude the latecomers, like before.”

“So this is our task? Unite all of Uru, stretched from the northernmost plains of your land to the walls of Nethalanhal by which I grew up?”

Tasha nodded without looking at him, watching as the last of the little gardeners disappeared from view. The eastern sky had taken on a yellow-cream color that heralded the sun’s imminent rise above the mountains.

Pehr grunted. “Fantastic, Tasha.”

“If it were easy, someone would already have done it.”

Pehr sighed. His head hurt. His hands hurt. His left calf hurt, and he couldn’t even remember injuring that particular spot. He was tired of this strange city full of metal and glass; he wanted only to be somewhere wide and open, where he could lie down next to a warm fire and gaze up at the stars. He thought of the sound of the ocean in the distance at night, wave after wave breaking against the rocks that formed the lagoon’s outer edge.

A sense of homesickness assaulted him then, so powerful that for a moment he thought he was going to break down and weep. This was his destiny? He and Tasha alone were to unite all the people left in the world and bring them to this wasted, ancient city? Was it really possible that they would be able to repair these machines and someday slip the bonds of Earth entirely, to go in search of those who had left them behind?

“What if they’ve already found their God?” he said out loud, and Tasha turned, giving him a questioning look. Pehr sat chewing his lip and watching the sky.

“What do you mean?” she asked when it became apparent that he did not intend on continuing.

“We’re meant to follow them, but to where? And what will they be like should we find them? It’s been ten thousand years, Tasha. What if they’ve found God already and He’s taken them someplace where we can’t follow?”

“If they have found Him, then so will you.”

“I will be dead long before then,” Pehr said, and he knew that it was true. Somewhere in this place, the technology existed to extend his life for many hundreds of years. Still, it would not be enough. He would never live to meet those who had gone before; he could only hope to set those he gathered together on the right course.

Tasha rose to her feet and yawned. “You will do what must be done.”

“Of course I will,” Pehr growled, and Tasha cast him a sidelong glance as he got to his feet.

“Before we go, tell me something?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“If she had been anyone but your cousin – anyone at all, anyone with whom you might have built a life – would you have said yes to being augmented?”

“I would never have come here in the first place,” Pehr said. “I would never have left her. But, if I had been forced to come …”

“You wouldn’t have done it,” Tasha said. “You would have left this behind, all of it, and gone back to your woman to hunt boar until you died a hunter’s death before the age of forty.”

Pehr considered this, and then nodded. “I would have.”

Tasha smiled at him, and she gave her rare laugh.

“I’m sorry to say this, Pehr, but … I am so very glad she is your cousin,” the girl with the purple eyes said, and with these words she turned and began to walk down the stairs.

* * *

“Greetings, Mister Prime Minister and Tasha Samhad!” the last fully functioning RDIS unit said to them as they turned the corner. “I do hope you’ve brought your umbrellas, as it looks like it may rain.”

Pehr gave an incredulous laugh and said, “I’m sure we’ll get by, Ardis, thank you.”

“We’re going to need to get that one some new clothes, at some point,” Tasha said as they continued past it, and Pehr rolled his eyes.

“I think we should start with some new skin,” he said.

In short order they came to the fork that, Pehr knew, would lead them either back to the plains or to the malfunctioning RDIS unit that had killed Jace. He turned to face the right-hand path that led to the circle of bone, and he took a breath. Something sat like a ball of ice in his stomach, and it was only by force of will that he kept his body from trembling.

“My cousin has … has been exposed to the elements for two years. There will not be much left.”

Tasha stepped up beside him. “How will you know him from the others?”

“When Jace entered the circle, there was a long delay while it processed his DNA. He made it much further than anyone else, and he lies alone.” Pehr felt ill just thinking about that awful time at the circle of bone.

Tasha touched his shoulder. “I will help you to bear it if I can.”

“Gods help me … I mean to do this,” Pehr said, and he forced himself forward on legs that felt numb and wooden. Five steps. Ten. Twenty, and he was at the jagged edge of rock around which lay the circle. Tasha was just behind him. Trying not to think, trying only to act, Pehr forced himself to turn the corner, bracing himself for the screeching voice of the worn-down RDIS unit.

The machine was just ahead of him and to his right, leaning against the wall, its back to him, but Pehr paid it little attention. His eyes were drawn immediately to the spot where Jace had fallen. There was indeed not much left of the boy; two years of direct exposure to the elements had reduced his body to little more than bones. Still, Pehr felt an overwhelming wave of despair roll over him at the sight, so much so that he made a noise of anguish and had to steady himself with one hand against the canyon wall.

“Pehr, I’m so sorry,” Tasha said from behind him, her voice little more than a whisper, and at these words the broken RDIS unit leapt to life. Its head spun, shoulders following, and its cracked and warbled voice burst forth in its familiar refrain.

“W-LC-M- FR--ND!” it cried. “PL--S- PR-S-NT Y--R P-SS.”

As it spoke these words, it turned fully to face them, an act which its body hadn't performed for nearly ten thousand years. With the twisting of its abdomen, an enormous jet of sparks and flame blew outward from its side, black smoke belching forth. The RDIS machine began making a hideous squealing that grew louder even as its tone lowered, finally dropping to an ear-splitting, bone-shaking note that was as much felt as heard. The RDIS gave one final seizure and fell to the ground, its advanced state of decay finally catching up with it. This thing, this metal god that had killed Pehr’s cousin and the Gods only knew how many others, now finally lay dead itself.

For a moment they stood in silence, staring at it, and then Tasha spoke. “That … was unexpected.”

Pehr was rendered momentarily speechless by the sudden and violent nature of the RDIS unit’s final moments. He looked down at the pile of metal and then at Tasha, and he felt tears spring to his eyes. He blinked them back, battling against the rage and grief that threatened to overwhelm him. This was all it took? Two years ago his cousin had stood before this creature made of rotting metal, and it had paused in its delivery of flaming death. If Jace had simply strode past the machine, causing it to turn, his life would have been spared.

As if reading these thoughts, Tasha stepped up next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. She leaned in close to murmur in his ear. “It would have done no good for your cousin, Pehr. If he had broken this machine two years ago, the both of you would have died under their blades. Because of his sacrifice, you went free, and the world may yet be saved.”

After a moment more Pehr found his voice. “Saved? Is that what you think is going to happen now?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, but her voice told him that she already understood.

“All that protected the plains from the Lagos was this machine, this thing that those creatures worshipped like a god. Now we’ve killed it. How do you suppose they will respond, Tasha? How would anyone respond, if someone came to their place and destroyed their god?”

“They don’t know it was us,” Tasha said, and Pehr gave a bitter laugh, turning away to stare again at the dead god lying at his feet.

“What difference could that possibly make? They will know two things: that none of my people could have come here and done this, and that there is a path leading in the only direction from which this assault could have come. That will be enough. The path will lead them to Havenmont, or to Tassanna. There is nowhere else.”

“They can’t go to Havenmont. The next RDIS unit will kill them on sight … Allen said so.”

“Then that leaves only the plains,” Pehr said. “They will come for us, and it will not be a small raiding party. They will come in force.”

“We must not let this keep us from our path.”

“Is that it, then?” he asked, whirling on her. The sorrow had left him, and any fear he had felt was rapidly being consumed by the anger rising within him. “Is this what you would have, then? The burning of all that you’ve ever known in the service of this … this Gods-damned quest of yours?!”

Pehr was shouting by the end of it, hating himself for it but unable to stop. He knew that Tasha would no sooner sacrifice a single life than he would, but there was too much anger to let such rational thoughts win out.

Tasha did not return his anger, and she kept her voice soft. “My people are dying, and so are yours. With or without the Lagos, they will die. You heard what Allen said … there’s nothing left for us here.”

“There will be nothing left at all!” Pehr cried, and he grabbed her shoulders. “You’re not the only one who has dreamed, Tasha. I have seen how this ends: a host of Lagos so great that their coming stains the very sky red with dust. An army of the creatures thousands strong that comes not to maim or pillage. They will come to eradicate everything ... to wipe every last man, woman, and child from the plains. That was what I dreamed, and now we’ve made that dream reality. We have killed their god, Tasha. Do you expect them to forgive us?”

Tasha shook her head, still unfazed. “I do not.”

“Then what? What would you have us do now? What group shall we lead to Havenmont once they are all dead? Would you have us hide in the city and wait for the bloodshed to end, or shall we simply go die at their hands like everyone else and end this pointless waste of time?”

Now at last he had brought Tasha to anger, and he saw her eyes blaze. She grabbed Pehr’s hands, yanking them from her shoulders and squeezing them hard, baring her teeth.

“This has not been a waste of time!” she snarled. “Don’t you understand what we’ve done here?”

“We’ve damned every last person alive,” Pehr said, pulling away from her grip. He felt suddenly old. Old and tired. Worn out. Sick.

“We have given them the only chance they will ever have!” Tasha cried. “What the Lagos might do to them will seem a mercy compared to what will happen should the Everstorm fail and radiation sweep in upon the land. If it means we fight to the death, then so be it! This long, slow death that we’ve been going through since our fathers left us must end.”

Pehr turned away from her, feeling exhausted. He took a few, faltering steps toward Jace’s body and then fell to his knees, covering his face with his hands.

“My cousin, I have now failed you twice,” he said, struggling with the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted to fall upon the ground and beat his fists against it, to tear his hair out, to rend and wreck and destroy, and to curl into a ball and weep for the slow, sad extinction of humanity. He wished he had never come to this place, never known of the horror of the Lagos and the miracles of Havenmont. He wished he could have lived in peace with Jace and Nani, Truff and Anna, and the rest of his village.

“Pehr …” Tasha’s voice had grown soft again.

“Let me do this,” he told her, and he took his hands from his face but remained on his knees, head down, eyes closed. He tried to picture Jace, the way the boy had looked before the coming of the Lagos, and once he had that image fixed firmly in his mind, he began to speak.

“Cousin, I have wronged you. I have left you here in this place and not given you the honorable burial you deserve. I acted to save myself and left you behind, and though I beg your forgiveness for this, I can never forgive myself. Even now I must leave again … we must go to Tasha’s family and try and help them prepare for the coming of the Lagos. If we survive, cousin, I swear to you that I will return, and I will take your bones from this terrible circle, and I will give you the ceremonies you deserve. You have my oath as a hunter, before all of our gods, all of the plainsmen’s gods, and the god of those who once dwelt here.

“I miss you, my cousin. Forgive me for what I have done, and what I must do.”

There was silence for a time, and Pehr sat with his head still bowed, eyes still closed. If Jace’s spirit remained in this place, it gave sign neither of displeasure nor acceptance.

At last Tasha spoke. “Pehr, I’m sorry, but time is precious now. We must—”

Whatever it was that Tasha had been about to insist upon, it was cut short by a sudden rushing, whistling noise. Her words became a scream of agony, and Pehr’s eyes flew open. He looked up to see that a great length of wood, tipped with a wicked metal point, had embedded itself in Tasha’s side. Falling sideways, she hit the ground with a thud that sent white bone powder puffing up into the air, her blood pouring out from around the spear that had been driven six inches or more into her body. Pehr turned, reaching for his club, remembering even as he did so that the club was gone.

Pehr hauled himself to his feet. Less than fifty yards away and well into the circle of bone, a single Lagos priest came loping toward them at full speed, snarling and howling in abject, bestial rage. This was, Pehr understood, their first glimpse of what was to come. This was the reaction of the Lagos to the death of their god, and it was nothing less than the murderous hate that he had expected.

“Oh, Tasha, I’m sorry for this,” Pehr murmured, and in the next moment he reached down and tore the spear from the girl’s side, eliciting another agonized scream. He had no time to worry about it right now; the Lagos priests were smaller than the warriors, but they were still strong, fast, and equipped with the same deadly claws. This one was clearly prepared to kill in retribution for what they had done to the RDIS unit.

Pehr felt adrenaline flood him and relished it, wanting the clarity and sense of purpose it would bring to him. Gone were thoughts about his cousin, the future of mankind, or even of the girl lying in agony at his feet. Now there was only the battle about to be joined, in which he would either prove triumphant or die in the same circle of bones that had taken his cousin.

Pehr found himself filled with a hatred and disgust that he couldn't remember having felt before, not even when these things had come to his village, to burn and pillage and maim. He knew now what the Lagos were, nothing more than the twisted end product of genetic engineering gone awry, and if they had been human once, that humanity had long been lost. They were not something natural, but rather something made by perverted science, and in that moment he wished nothing more than to extinguish them from the earth entirely, that they might never again threaten anyone on Uru.

The priest came upon him at full speed, slashing with its wicked talons and screaming, froth flying from its jaws. Pehr ducked and turned, swinging the spear around in a wide arc and batting the creature’s stomach with all his might. The Lagos let out a startled, gasping grunt and doubled over. At the same time, it grabbed the spear with one clawed hand, preventing Pehr from pulling back and delivering the killing blow. In some other time, this instinctive movement might actually have impressed Pehr, but now it only served to enrage him further. He brought his left hand down, palm out, striking it flat against the spear as he pulled up on its end with his right hand.

The spear cracked, splintered, and broke in half from the force of the blow. Pehr brought it up above his head and back down again in another powerful arc. This time the wood connected with the top of the Lagos priest’s head, and the creature fell into the dirt. Pehr dropped down upon it, one knee out, driving his full weight directly into the creature’s spine.

The Lagos jerked its head backward and let out a howl of pain, and Pehr shoved his free hand forward, wrapping it over the creature’s head, covering its face, fingers hooking into its sharp maw and pulling its head even further back. Holding the Lagos like this, he dropped the spear, reached with his right hand down to his boot, and drew forth his stone knife. Without word or ceremony, he cut the Lagos’s throat, spraying its blood upon the bone-white ground, and he held it there, neck wide and gaping, until it was dead.

Beside him, Tasha was panting, pulling her breaths in through teeth clenched against the pain. Blood had soaked her leather garments and was pooling underneath her, mixing with the bone dust and forming a grotesque, pink mud that clung to her body. She was badly wounded, and Pehr felt a moment of raw panic as he contemplated the situation. Tasha managed to turn her head and look at him, her eyes tightened to slits, lips bared against the pain.

“You must leave me here,” she said, and Pehr shook his head.

“Not even if a million of these things were at our heels,” he said. “I’ll take you back to Havenmont. We can find something there for you …”

“They won’t work. Allen’s cures were for smaller injuries. Pehr, please! You must get to the plains and warn them.”

“I'm not leaving this place without you,” Pehr said, squatting down beside her. “I already left one person I love lying in this circle. You’ve been punished for my inattention, and I won’t abandon you because of it.”

Tasha stared up at him, clearly furious, but just as clearly aware that there was nothing she could say to convince him to leave her.

“Don’t you see how this ends?” she asked him.

“I don’t care how it ends. I will not walk out of this circle of bone without you. We’ll go together, even if I have to carry you. You must get up, Tasha.”

Pehr took her arm and helped her to her feet. The girl with the purple eyes cried out in agony from the effort, but her strength held, and after a moment when Pehr thought her knees would buckle, she seemed to steady herself.

“That hurt,” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know if I can walk by myself.”

“I’m sorry. Tasha, I'm so sorry. I should have—”

“Pehr, stop.”

Pehr bit his lip, forcing himself to put away the anger and self-loathing that threatened to sweep over him. There would be time for it later, perhaps, but Tasha was right: their present situation was too dire to allow it.

“Come,” he said. “Lean against me. We will stop in the glade below and I will bathe and dress your wound as best I can.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Quite a lot, I think,” Pehr said. Tasha made a sobbing noise, but she began to limp along with him back up the path, toward the branch that would take them to the plains. Pehr was proud of her.

“Am I going to die?” she asked him, and Pehr told her the only thing he could without inspecting the damage in much greater detail.

“Tasha, I do not know.”

Chapter 24

Once he had cleaned the wound and dressed it with strips of soft leather torn from his own shirt, Pehr had a much better idea of what Tasha was facing. He thought it very likely that something vital had been damaged inside of her, and that she would live two or three days at most. Tasha pressed him for his diagnosis, but he brushed her off, saying only that he couldn't tell the extent of her injuries and that they had to keep moving.

They made their way as best they could across the plains, but it was obvious that Tasha’s strength was rapidly fading. Several times during that day they were forced to stop and rest. Even during the times when she was strong enough to walk, Tasha’s eyes leaked constant tears from the pain that movement brought her.

“If only we had a car,” she growled at one point, and Pehr rolled his eyes. Less than a day ago, the word would have been meaningless to him. Now he knew what it meant, but little good it did – there were none left in Havenmont capable of bearing the two of them. Though blessed with exteriors crafted from non-metallic polymers that didn’t rust, and in most cases kept inside buildings that had afforded some level of shelter over the millennia, the vehicles had still been dismantled by the ravages of time. Their batteries were all dead, their rubber tires all rotted away.

“We’ll get there,” Pehr said, but Tasha only looked at him with an expression of disbelief, and he found that he couldn’t meet her eyes for long.

The sound began behind them sometime after dusk, so low that Pehr mistook it at first for his own imagination, but soon it rose to the point that it could not be denied. It was not the drums of war with which the Lagos had announced their presence two years ago. This noise was lower, rumbling, not nearly so rhythmic. Pehr knew from his dreams that it was the sound of many trampling feet. The Lagos horde had come to the Plains of Tassanna at long last, bent on revenge and destruction.

“Already?” he murmured to himself, frustrated. He had hoped for another few days at least.

“They’re coming for us,” Tasha croaked beside him, and Pehr came to a stop.

“Drink,” he said, when she gave him a questioning look, and held out his half-full skin.

“I don’t want it,” she said.

“Tasha, you need water. I can hear it in your voice.”

“I didn’t say I’ve no need of it,” Tasha said, hissing in pain as she sat down in the grass. Pehr saw that fresh blood was seeping past the leather dressing he had put on the wound.

“So drink …”

“I don’t want it,” she replied, and there was something in the tone of her voice that kept him from pressing the issue. It was not anger or sorrow or despair – those things he would have expected, here at what could only be the end of all things. It was, he thought, almost a trancelike tone, as if her mind was someplace far away. She had sounded like this in his dream.

“You’re not here,” Pehr said to her, and Tasha remained staring out at the plains ahead of them.

“No.”

“Tell me where you are.”

Tasha shook her head. “It’s like the dreams … I know this is real, but that’s what it feels like. I don’t want the water, Pehr. I don’t want anything. Something is coming.”

“The Lagos are coming,” Pehr said. “All of them, I think. They’ll be atop us by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Yes. We’ll make our stand then.”

“Make our stand?” Pehr grinned a hard, bitter grin. “I don’t know, Tasha … I can only handle five, perhaps six thousand of them, and you’re in no condition to fight the other half.”

Tasha laughed, then grimaced at the pain this caused her. “No, I’m not. Three thousand at most.”

The rumbling had stopped. Pehr sighed and sat down next to her in the grass. Tasha put her head on his shoulder.

“They’ve called a halt for the night, so we’ll do the same. We can camp here, but I won’t risk a fire.”

“It will be cold.”

“I’ll hold you.”

“Will you? Even though I’ve nothing to give back? I have no kisses to offer you, Pehr. No soft touches. No warm, wet place between my legs for you to explore. It’s … it’s not what I was built for.”

“Tasha … none of that matters to me. You know that it doesn’t.”

“Yes, I do, and I love you for it. I love you very much, Pehr. Not like Nani does, or even like Kissha does, but … but I do. I wanted you to know.”

She turned her head and kissed him on the cheek, and Pehr smiled at her. “I love you too. I’m sorry it has to end like this.”

It was only after they had curled up together amid the grass, her back pressed against his chest and his arms around her, that she spoke again. She whispered the words in a voice so soft it might have been nothing more than the wind, or just his imagination, except it wasn’t, and he knew it.

“This is not the end,” the girl with the purple eyes told him, just before sleep took them both. “This is only the time before the new.”

* * *

Their last march lasted fourteen hours, and near its end the sky behind them had gone the dusty red that Pehr knew from his dreams. To the west, at the very edge of their vision, a dark black line had appeared, and Pehr knew that it was the front of the advancing army of Lagos. The thudding of feet had become a dull roar in the distance, and the sound was now and again peppered with cries, yips, snarls and shouts. The Lagos were whipping themselves into a frenzy as they advanced through these new lands, preparing to destroy whatever they encountered.

“Your people will fall back to the southlands as the monsters advance,” Pehr told Tasha. “They will find themselves pinned between the horde and the mountains.”

The red-haired girl seemed not to hear him. She was sweaty and feverish, wracked with pain, staring out ahead of him with wide eyes. She had taken neither food nor drink, claiming not to want them, and Pehr hadn’t forced them on her. What was the point? Death’s hands were already upon her.

As if to confirm these thoughts, Tasha stumbled and went to one knee, crying out at the pain this caused her. Pehr stepped up beside her, put a hand on her shoulder, and found the skin there slicked with sweat. Tasha’s head was lowered, her breathing ragged and tortured.

“Tasha, no matter how hard you push, we will not reach your family before the Lagos overtake us. Don't cause yourself undue pain.”

“Not trying to reach them,” she gasped, and after a moment more she forced herself to her feet, making a sound of agonized effort that Pehr found he could barely stand listening to. When at last she was up, he studied her face. Despite the pain, her eyes still seemed distant, as if looking forward not just in space but in time.

“Where exactly is it that you think we’re going?” he asked her, and Tasha shook her head.

“I don’t know. I have … your dream, the rising waters …”

“There is no ocean in the middle of these plains, Tasha.”

She shook her head, leaning half-bent at the waist with her hands against her thighs, panting. “No.”

Pehr glanced back over his shoulder. The thin line of Lagos had become a large, black wave. The beat of their advance shook the earth, and their sounds had gone from isolated noises to a steady roar. In the east, purple thunderhead clouds were gathering, larger and in greater numbers than he had ever seen before, as if nature was preparing to send him and Tasha off to death with a vast and violent storm. Pehr thought of his dream and a small shiver ran through his body.

“Let me know when we’ve reached wherever it is we’re going,” he said, and without further discussion he leaned down and – like he had done in the great, white capitol building of Havenmont – swept Tasha off of her feet. She didn’t protest this time, merely wrapped her arms around his neck and put her face against his shoulder.

Pehr found it grimly amusing that he was able to move faster in this fashion than the two of them had managed with Tasha walking. He knew his reserves of strength would not last very long, not with days of nothing more than salted tral and water in his belly, but for now it seemed all right. Tasha had always been thin to begin with, and the exertions of their journey combined with the fever that was now eating her away seemed to have left her little heavier than the air around them.

Still, it took only minutes to determine that the Lagos horde was rapidly catching up to them. The creatures were not yet advancing across the plains at a run, but neither were they taking their time. Pehr was sure that they had sighted the two lone humans by now, which would only add to their excitement. They would catch up by dusk at the latest.

As he walked, Pehr went over the images in his dream again, the last sliver of sun setting in the west, the girl with the purple eyes standing with him at the top of the hill and looking out at the oncoming army. He wondered about the long fade to white at the end, about what it might represent. He was not enthusiastic about the possibilities his brain came up with.

It will be difficult, saving the world once I’m dead, Pehr thought, and then surprised himself by laughing. Tasha stirred against him, muttered something incoherent, and coughed twice. She felt like a bundle of burning sticks in his arms, and Pehr knew that the end was not far away. He found himself amazed and proud that she had fought for so long.

With nothing else left to do, Pehr made his way across the Plains of Tassanna, carrying his friend toward the rains, and toward wherever it was that they were meant to die.

* * *

“There,” Tasha told him, her voice fuzzy like that of someone who has just woken from a long sleep. “Take me there.”

Pehr hadn't even realized she was awake until she reached out her arm to point toward a large and steeply sloping hill just ahead of them. He looked up to where she was pointing, and he shrugged. “It seems as good a place as any.”

Pehr’s arms and back ached from carrying Tasha. Though he thought he could go further, it no longer mattered; the Lagos behind them were now positively roaring in anticipation, and the front ranks had broken into a run. There were perhaps four miles between the advancing army and its intended victims, and Pehr thought that simply getting to the top of Tasha’s hill would be a very near thing.

He began to run as well, knowing the motion would cause Tasha pain but sure that she would rather deal with that pain and reach the top of the hill than be cut down only halfway up. She didn’t cry out, only tightened her grip on his neck, affirming his choice. Pehr raced forward as quickly as he could, wondering when he would feel an arrow or spear pierce his body and bring him down. The increase in speed and elevation made his calves burn, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now, it seemed, except reaching the top of this hill in time to turn, and face his enemy, and die well.

By the time he reached the top, the Lagos horde had already begun their own ascent, but Pehr did not set Tasha down and turn to face them as he had expected to do. Instead he found himself unable to move, unable to do anything more than stare at the sight before him, his brain attempting to process what it was that he was seeing.

It’s the black sea from the dream, he thought. It’s real after all. How is it possible?

But it wasn’t the sea, and after a moment more he understood what it was that he was looking at. The great, roiling blackness spread out below him was not liquid. Its movement was organic, but this was not water ebbing and flowing before him. It was a herd of tral so large that it covered the entire valley. Pehr had developed some ability to estimate the size of these groups during his time with Samhad, but this herd dwarfed any that he had ever seen before. This was the group Samhad had spoken of: at least ten thousand animals, each weighing more than a ton, spread out below him.

“Gods, Tasha,” he said, his voice low with something near reverence.

“There are no gods,” Tasha muttered against his shoulder. “Let me go. Stand me up.”

Pehr set Tasha down, glancing over his shoulder at the enemy clambering up the hill toward them.

“We have come as far as we can,” He said. “There is no escape ahead, and no hope of survival behind.”

The Lagos had closed the distance to only a few hundred yards, and Pehr realized that there would be no spears or arrows for him or Tasha; the creatures would take them up close and rend them limb from limb.

Tasha had turned away from the tral and was looking out at the horde with the same dreamy, vacant expression that she had held for much of the past day.

“I am frightened,” she said, and Pehr felt a sudden twisting, doubling sensation within him, so powerful that he nearly dropped to his knees. Here was the sunset and the storm, just as they should be, Tasha looking out on the plains in awe, and if she felt the fear that she claimed, Pehr couldn't hear a trace of it in her voice. He stepped forward, as he was supposed to, and took her hand.

“I am frightened, too,” he said, and he glanced sidelong at Tasha. The girl with the purple eyes did not look back at him, but a small smile formed on her face.

“This is what you’ve seen.”

“Yes.”

“We have come to the confluence,” she said, and Pehr saw that she was weeping. “All things will end here, and all things will begin anew. Will humankind be there to see the new dawn? Oh, Pehr … I’m glad to know you’ve seen this.”

“Tasha, what does it mean? What does the seeing mean?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a voice that was audibly weakening. “Maybe it’s luck or chance. Maybe it’s destiny. Maybe it’s God. I always knew that the plainsmen were wrong about their gods, but we have passed now beyond the edge of my sight. Don’t let go of my hand.”

“I will be here for you.”

“No,” she said. “It’s for you.”

“Are you going to protect me?” Pehr asked, and he gave a grim laugh. “I cannot wait to find out how.”

Tasha’s eyes were far away, now, and her face was pale. The air seemed charged with electricity, and Pehr understood that the storm was upon them. As if in confirmation, the first, fat raindrops began to patter to the earth around them.

“Tell Ketrahm that I wished I could have been there to see him grow up,” Tasha said, her voice strained and cracking at the effort of forcing out the words. “Tell Mandia that I will watch out for her from above if I can, and that she must not be afraid. Tell Kissha … tell Kissha that I have bought with my life a beautiful future for her, and that I was happy to do it.”

Tasha sank to her knees, and Pehr went with her, holding her hand.

“Tell my parents I’m sorry,” she said. “Tell them … I love them. Tell them all I love them. Pehr, tell them—”

“I will tell them, Tasha,” Pehr said, though he did not believe that either would survive the night. “Tasha, I will tell them everything there is to tell. You can let go.”

“Thank you, my friend,” the girl with the purple eyes said, and she smiled, and let herself fall sideways, still staring out at the oncoming horde. Pehr caught her and held her to him, gripping her hand and looking as well out at the Lagos warriors, only a hundred yards away now. He was glad that Tasha was going to pass before they reached her.

“There is darkness, and then there is light,” Tasha whispered, her voice dry and rattling like the plains grasses in autumn, and with these words went the last of her life. She gave one long, hitching exhalation, and her eyes became distant and glassy. Lying amidst the soft plains grasses that she had known her entire life, Tasha, daughter of Samhad, found peace.

Moments later, the first bolt of lightning struck, arcing from the earth to the clouds from within the center of the herd of tral, blowing some of the huge beasts into the air with its force. It was followed by another, a third, and then the individual strikes dissolved into an unending succession of blasts. The rain came down in torrents, the lightning lit the earth, and Pehr watched as all around him faded into white.

The tral, confused and terrified, began to stampede, heading west, up the hill toward Pehr and the Lagos.

Holding the body of his friend in his arms, head bowed against the force of the rain and the lightning strikes crashing all about him, Pehr found himself at the exact meeting point of two armies, each thousands strong. The first Lagos warriors crested the hill and raised their blades, shrieking in triumph at the sight of the solitary hunter kneeling on the ground. Their shouts were cut short by the sight of the first of the tral, bellowing in terror as they crested the hill and bore down on the Lagos. Even through the noise of the thunder and the great blasts of lightning all around him, Pehr could hear as new screams, these of alarm turning to outright fear, rang out through the night.

He held on to Tasha. Throughout it all, Pehr never let go of her hand.

The tral split around the two humans, leaving them untouched, and plowed directly into the Lagos’s front line, tossing the warriors into the air and trampling them underfoot. For all their strength, the Lagos stood no chance against this onslaught, and the unending wave of tral beat them down underfoot. Pehr knew it was only a matter of time before he, too, was crushed underneath those stomping hooves, but he found it impossible to care. All of his attention was focused on the carnage before him.

The tral came over the hill like a roaring tidal wave, a solid wall of terrified animals, lightning striking all around them in fiery bursts. They descended without thought upon the Lagos horde. Warriors were crushed to paste below hooves, torn asunder by long, white horns, or simply killed by the impact of a thousand pounds of muscle moving at top speed. Pehr watched as those behind the front lines – those who had time to react – began to turn and run, screaming in their guttural language words of warning that came laughably too late. The tral came in an unending stream, fanning out, hundreds after hundreds of them. They overtook the Lagos army and drove it into the ground.

Some might have escaped; Pehr did not know for sure, but he thought it possible. Perhaps those at the very back lines had been able to turn and run back the way they had come. Most died where they stood, and within a matter of minutes the army was decimated by the oncoming herd. Lagos women died with their men. The priests at the back cried out to their gods for help but received none, and they too fell under the stomping hooves. The tral, whipped into a maddened frenzy by the lightning storm, would not have stopped even had there been a bottomless ravine before them. They would have plummeted to their death, one after the other. The Lagos presented so insignificant an obstacle that they didn’t even slow the beasts down.

Hundreds of animals passed by him, but none so much as touched him, and after a time Pehr realized he was laughing. He was laughing, and he was weeping at the same time, producing a kind of raw noise that made his throat burn. There were no gods, Tasha had told him, and yet here he sat in the very center of the stampede, watching as an entire army that had been bent only upon his destruction was swallowed whole by these rampaging beasts.

There are no gods, Tasha? He thought. Are you sure?

It was only at the end, as the stampede was at last winding down and the final straggling animals were rushing past him, as the lightning strikes were dissipating, that any harm at all came to Pehr. One of the last of the tral, a juvenile, did not veer to either side but instead leapt directly over Pehr’s hunched form. One of its rear hooves struck him in the back of the head, connecting with the bump in his skull just above the neck, and Pehr was knocked forward with a startled grunt.

He dropped Tasha’s body but managed to hold on to her hand, and lying there in the thick mud that the rain and the passage of many hooves had created, he looked at her sightlessly staring eyes. Blackness was overtaking him, and he thought that he could hear within it the voices of all those who he loved. He wondered if this, then, was death come for him after all.

Pehr closed his eyes, embracing the blackness and whatever it was that waited for him there.

Part Three

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Chapter 25

“Wake him,” the voice said. “Wake him and stand him up, that he might look me in the eyes before I send him to the afterlife.”

Pehr, lying on his back, spoke without opening his eyes. “Would you kill me so quickly, Samhad, and deny yourself any chance for explanation?”

“What do I care for your explanations?” Samhad growled. “My daughter lies dead at your side. Will your explanations bring her back?”

Now Pehr allowed himself to open his eyes and return to this land of living beings, even if only until Samhad murdered him. The sky above was pure blue, without so much as a single cloud to mar it.

Somewhere past that blue are our forefathers, Pehr thought, and on the heels of that, I must follow.

“Get up,” Samhad said. His voice was grim, full of barely contained rage, and Pehr wondered if the older man would indeed wait for an explanation before passing his judgment. Samhad had always been careful and deliberate in his actions, but he seemed now at the very edge of control. Pehr had hunted with this man, had shared his home and food, had lived as Samhad’s son for two years. He hoped that in that time, he had earned Samhad’s trust. It seemed his life depended on it.

“Help me,” he said, and when Samhad reached a hand down, Pehr gripped it and pulled. A moment later he was sitting up. A bolt of pain flashed like lightning through his head, leaving in its aftermath an empty space that began to fill rapidly with nausea.

“Give me water,” Pehr said, closing his eyes and putting a hand to his head. “It will make this go faster.”

He felt a skin pressed into his hand and raised it to his lips, drinking long and deep. Then he turned to one side, propping himself on both arms, and vomited into the black mud that the tral had left in their passing. He did this twice more, and after the third time, the water did not come back up. The pounding in his head seemed to lessen a bit.

“Better,” he said, handing the skin back to Samhad and wiping his mouth. He looked up at the older hunter and noted the red rings around the man’s eyes. Samhad was not yet weeping, had so far held such emotions back, but Pehr thought it was not by accident that the man had positioned himself with his back to his daughter’s body.

“Tell me now why I shouldn’t kill you right here, bastard child from the west,” Samhad said in a low and unsteady voice. He did not blink.

“I will not make excuses for what we did,” Pehr said. “Tasha meant to go. If I had stayed, she would have gone regardless. I chose to try and protect her.”

“A fine job you’ve done,” Samhad said, his voice tinged with acid.

Pehr put his aching head in one of his hands and sighed. “I did what I could for her. I walked on her path for as long as I could, and near the end I carried her, but at last she went someplace where I could not follow. Before that, she led me to the one place where I could survive the lethal meeting of two massive armies.”

“That is impossible,” Samhad said, and Pehr made a humorless barking noise that only vaguely resembled laughter.

“Of course it is!” he said. “It is completely impossible, but it is also the truth. Samhad, I cannot give you comfort. Your daughter is dead, and she is dead because I failed her. I failed to keep her safe, at the end. We helped each other through many great dangers and survived much which might have killed us, but I couldn’t stop the spear that pierced her side. We brought down the wrath of the Lagos upon ourselves and upon the plains, and then Tasha led us to the very spot upon which their forces would break like waves against the rock, crushed underneath the hooves of a tral herd many thousands strong. The very herd you must have been hunting when you found me.”

“I do not understand,” Samhad said after a moment, and Pehr nodded. How could he explain these things to Samhad? Pehr had undergone the augmentation process and knew a great deal more now than any other living human on Earth, and even he had no idea how Tasha had done what she had done.

“There is much to tell, and very little of it will make sense even once I’ve told it,” he said, and then he forced himself to his feet. He stood there, swaying slightly, still unsteady, looking at the men who had come to find him. Three other hunters were there, two of whom he knew. He could read judgment in their dark eyes.

“My daughter is dead,” Samhad said. “You went on your mad journey to the mountains, where you unleashed these Lagos upon my home, and then you were saved by the will of the Gods. All this and what have you accomplished? Nothing. My daughter died for nothing!”

At this, sudden anger came to Pehr, racing through his body and giving him strength, clearing the fuzziness from his head, bringing purpose where before there had been nothing more than emptiness. He lunged forward, grabbing the leather vest that Samhad wore and pulling the older man close.

“You will not demean her sacrifice!” he snarled. “You will not dishonor your daughter like that, not while I live. She has given everything for you, and your people, and this entire world!”

Samhad, shocked by this sudden action, seemed unable to respond. Pehr tried to push down the anger that was overwhelming him but could not stem its tide. He shook Samhad once, pulled the man back, and bared his teeth.

“You wish me dead? Very well then. Strike me down on this very hill. Lay waste to all that your daughter has done. Go back to your tents and live your empty lives and die your empty deaths, diminishing year by year until we are wiped out entirely, extinguished like a flame, never to grace this earth again.”

“Boy—”

Pehr shook him again, shoving backward and releasing his grip on the plainsman, who nearly fell to the ground before recovering his balance.

“I am not a boy!” Pehr roared. “I am Khada’Pehr, son of Khada’Pol, heir of Mombutabwe and the only hope left for this wasted, dying, Gods-forsaken planet. I have passed every test ever given me, and I will stand no longer under the judgment of those who don't know me or what I’ve done. If you would fight me, Samhad, you will find that you face a man, not some boy waiting meekly for your punishment!”

Pehr took a step back, spread his hands, dipped his head momentarily. “Have done with it,” he commanded. “Certainly the four of you should be able to manage … I have but a knife. Kill me here and end this, damn yourselves and all of Uru, or stand down and let me tell you what your daughter died for.”

Samhad stared at him for some time, eyes in tight slits, pondering. At last he said, “I see you as a man, Khada’Pehr, and I will not fight you here. I do not understand these things of which you speak, but it is clear to me that much has happened since last we saw each other. I would hear your story, if you will share it, but I would ask that you wait until we’ve tended to my daughter.”

“I will not wait on judgment,” Pehr said. “Not on yours, and not on that of any of these others.”

“My judgment is already passed. Pehr … I spoke in anger and in grief. Tasha was … she was not like us, but it doesn’t make me feel her loss any less. When I came over this hill and saw her lying broken before me, I felt my very soul torn in half.”

“I will miss her every day until I die,” Pehr said. “Every single day.”

As quickly as it had come, the electrifying rage seemed to leave him, and he sat down in the mud, unashamed, his body shaking. He looked over at Tasha’s prone form, pallid skin mostly covered in thick, black mud, and after a moment he covered his eyes. Here now was a sister, lying dead before him, just like the brother that lay still in the broken god machine’s circle of bone. First Jace and now Tasha … was he destined to kill all those he cared about most?

Samhad stepped up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder, and Pehr was glad to feel it. He took his hands from his face and made himself look again at the body of the girl lying before him.

“Before I begin what I must do for us all … tell me what we must do for her,” he said.

* * *

Samhad had been moving his family steadily westward since Pehr and Tasha’s disappearance, and their tents were now less than a day’s walk away. They brought Tasha slowly behind them, carrying her on a sledge fashioned from tree branches and straps of leather. Samhad’s fellow hunters had helped along the way, each taking turns pulling. Pehr had insisted on doing more than his share of the work, even though his head still pounded. He did this not to gain favor with Samhad, but only out of love and respect for the fallen girl. He owed her a debt that could never be repaid.

When they came to the tent, the sky had long since gone dark, and the crickets filled the night air with their buzzing. Pehr stood for a time before the beaded entry flap, Samhad behind him, unable to summon the courage to step through.

“There will be much grief,” he murmured, and behind him Samhad made a small noise of affirmation.

“My wife will be heartbroken.”

Pehr turned to him. “Samhad, if I could’ve prevented this … I have no wish to bring this news to those inside. They are like my own family, and I would bear their grief for them if I could.”

“I understand and I thank you, but that is not something you can do, and we must enter and tell them what has happened. Come, we will go together, and after it is done we will help Ehella tend to Tasha.”

Samhad stepped forward and held the curtain open for Pehr, and after a moment the young hunter stepped in. The rest of the family was there waiting, though Ketrahm had fallen asleep on one of the cots. Only Trayin, the baby, was missing, presumably sleeping in his cradle in the other tent. Pehr saw Ehella look up as he entered, saw hope and excitement kindle in her eyes when she saw him, saw those emotions fade when Samhad stepped into the tent behind him and let the flap close. Her smile fell from her face, tears brimming in her eyes. Without a word from either hunter, Tasha’s mother had understood that her daughter was gone, and she put her head in her hands and began to weep.

“What is it, Mamma?” Kissha asked. She had been unable to suppress a brilliant grin when Pehr had first entered, but now she was looking at her mother with confused concern.

“Ehella knows that I come with grave tidings,” Pehr said. “Kissha, I—”

“Where is Tasha?” Mandia asked from beside her sister, glancing around as if the older girl might somehow have slipped in unnoticed.

Samhad spoke his daughter’s name, quieting her, and for a moment there was only the sound of Ehella’s sobs. Pehr forced himself to speak the truth.

“Your sister gave her life to protect all of us. Ehella, Kissha, Mandia … I'm sorry, but Tasha has passed.”

He watched as the twins’ faces crumpled into expressions of sadness so alike that in another time it might have been comical. Their mother swept them up in her arms, and after a moment more Samhad joined them. Pehr sat down upon the floor, head bowed.

“I failed her,” he said at last. “I stopped to pay tribute to my fallen cousin and ceased watching for danger. A Lagos spear pierced her side before either of us even knew the attack was coming.”

He looked up and saw that Tasha’s family was watching him. Even Ketrahm had woken and was staring at Pehr, as if demanding an answer for this sorrow that had been delivered to his family.

“I failed her,” Pehr said again. “But I will not fail you.”

* * *

That night, Pehr helped Tasha’s parents begin the preparations for the girl’s funeral. They moved her to a hammock fashioned from branches and tral skin, placed underneath a small tent of its own. Come the following day’s sunset, Samhad would pile wood and grass under and around his daughter, douse them with oil, and set them ablaze. This was the way of the plainsmen, another tradition not so far from what Pehr had grown up with in his faraway village.

Pehr’s newly augmented brain scoffed at the idea that by burning her, they would release her soul to the Gods, and yet he found it impossible to not hope. He hoped that there was more at the end than even those great scientists who had built Havenmont could imagine. He hoped there was something out in that great, dark beyond waiting to welcome her.

In the morning there was much to do, and Pehr lent his hands as he was able. He foraged for wood with Samhad and Ketrahm, and aided in the building of the pyre. Ehella and the twins were at work by the kitchen fire, preparing food and drink, minding the new baby. The group of them barely spoke, overwhelmed by their grief.

The family fasted, as was their custom during the day before a funeral, and Pehr joined them in this as well. After they had burned Tasha’s body and released her soul, Samhad told Pehr, they would fill themselves with tral and beer, roasted esquer root, and the last of the winter vegetables and dried fruits that they had brought with them from the southlands. It was their tradition to feast after the burning, in celebration of their daughter’s soul meeting with the Gods. Pehr privately wondered whether he would have any appetite whatsoever after watching his friend burn.

Ehella had one other duty, and it was not one that Pehr envied. It was her honor and her curse to prepare Tasha’s body for the funeral. Ehella stripped her daughter of clothing, tears pouring down her face, gasping at each of the wounds Tasha had sustained, and sobbing as she bathed the one that had finally killed the girl. She cleaned Tasha’s hair, decorating it with beads and feathers, and painted patterns on the girl’s naked skin. She did not clothe her girl, when she was done; the people of the plains went from this life naked, as they had come into it.

As dusk drew close, two more families arrived – old friends of Samhad and Ehella – with their children in tow. All told, Tasha’s funeral party totaled sixteen souls, and they sat in a ring around the pile of wood as Samhad and Pehr lowered Tasha’s hammock slowly into the small, concave depression at the top of the pyre.

Death had ravaged the girl, and not even Ehella’s ministrations had been able to hide that fact. Tasha lay on her pyre, pale as the moon that already floated above, her body bruised and battered. Pehr hated to see her like this, lying naked and dead, the sun dropping rapidly behind her to silhouette her face, her breasts, her long legs. He hated it, but he made himself look, forced himself to take the sight in and imprint it on his mind. Here was another friend dead, and he would sooner be damned than give in to cowardice and look away.

This is the last, he promised himself. There will not be another who goes before me like this.

Samhad stood before the fire, his throat working, fighting back his sorrow so as to lead the ceremony. It was both his task and his right to do this thing, and after a time he gained control of himself and spoke, the sun a sliver of red against an orange horizon.

He told them of Tasha’s unique qualities, from her purple eyes and red hair to her strength of spirit. He spoke of her skepticism, her disbelief, her need to understand. He spoke of the way that she would openly question others’ choices, but if he had ever harbored any resentment toward this, it was gone now. His remembrance was fond, though tinged with deep sorrow, and during it he smiled often. More than once, members of the group laughed at some story or murmured encouragement when Samhad seemed as though he might be overwhelmed.

At last he finished, turning to look at his daughter, and Pehr could see on his face the agony this caused him.

“I will miss you, my Tasha,” he told the girl, and his voice broke as he said her name, and for a time there was silence save the chirruping of the crickets, and the soft sobs of those around Pehr who had given in to their grief.

At last Samhad turned to Pehr, gestured, and opened his mouth. No words came at first, and Samhad swallowed, trying again.

“You were her friend, Khada’Pehr of the western lands. Perhaps the best she ever had. You were with her in her last days and moments, and I … I would ask you to speak of her now. Will you do so?”

“It will be an honor,” Pehr said, and he stood, moving next to Samhad. He and the older hunter had discussed this already. Pehr wanted to speak, needed to, and Samhad had been glad to share the burden of eulogizing his daughter. Pehr felt he owed it to his friend to try to put into words that her family could understand just how and why she had sacrificed herself. He had promised her to tell them everything, and this was the way he would start.

“Tasha was indeed my friend,” he said, after Samhad had taken a seat beside his wife. “Though I did not always understand her, I came to love her like my sister. She dreamt of things which she couldn't explain, and she was drawn at last to the mountains. Because she was my friend … my sister … I followed her, to give what help I could on the journey.

“She found her answers there. I want you to know that. All her life, Tasha had been seeking something, and in the end it was there for her, and it was everything she had ever hoped it would be. Knowledge was waiting in that place, so much of it that it nearly overwhelmed us both, and there is nothing in the world that Tasha valued more than knowledge.

“In the mountains lies not the throne of the Gods, but the city called Havenmont – the last great work of man – and in that city, we found the knowledge that Tasha had been seeking since her earliest memories. She was given answers to questions she had long asked, and to questions that she had never known to ask, and we were tasked with taking these answers back to this place, and to the west.

“The time of salvation has come. We are to be saved, and this is good, but it has come with great cost. Tasha sacrificed herself not just for me, or for you, but for all of her people, and all of mine.”

He stopped, breathing deep and looking around at the others assembled before him. The children looked confused, but the adults were intent, listening, fascinated by this tale.

“I am not from this place, but in truth, both of our societies were once one,” Pehr told them. “They were split by the Lagos – the hideous beast-men of the western jungles – and many lives of men have passed since that great breaking occurred. I came through the mountains – by luck or by the grace of the Gods, I don't know – and I fell at Tasha’s feet. She saved me from death then, and just two days ago she saved me again. She paid for this last with her life, but in so doing she has saved us all.

“The Lagos are gone, or nearly so. Their armies are destroyed, and what little remains of them is scattered and disorganized. Now is the time. I will burn my friend, and grieve her loss with all of you, and then I will set out again toward the mountains. This time, though, I make not for Havenmont, but for the land of my family. There I will bring the tribes together … I know not how, but I have sworn it. We will clear a path through the jungle, from the coast to the mountains, and then at last to the plains. Our people, driven apart all these long ages ago, will at last be reunited, and we will work as one to restore the city of our forefathers and follow their path.”

Pehr turned to look at his friend, lying naked before him in the dark. “I swear this,” he said. “Tasha, I swear this, to you and to all the world.”

After one last, long look at her face, he turned and nodded to Samhad, who stood and joined him at the pyre, holding a torch.

“My daughter, we commit you now to the Gods,” the older hunter said, and with these words he put his torch to the wood, once, twice, and a third time. Flames sprung to life in the kindling, and both he and Pehr stepped back away from the growing heat.

Behind them, Ehella began to sing a song of mourning that Pehr did not know. Samhad joined her, and soon all but Pehr sang. He stood with his head bowed, listening to the anguish in their voices, feeling his own, and before him the girl with the purple eyes burned. He stood there and listened, wishing he knew the words, wishing that he could lend his voice to theirs and so help send his friend’s soul onward toward God or gods.

Chapter 26

“Must you leave already?” Kissha asked him, and Pehr smiled at her. It had been twelve days since Tasha’s funeral, and in that time he had solidified his plans, made his preparations, and given some rest to his battered, weary body. He was anxious now to be away, to continue on the path that Tasha had lain out before him, but he was also sorry to be parted again so soon from his surrogate family.

“I’m afraid I must,” he said. “I must go, and I will be gone long, this time. Much longer than the last.”

“How long?”

“At least six moons. Probably twelve. A whole year, Kissha … and that will be if I’m lucky.”

“But you are coming back … aren’t you?” she asked him, and the concern in her voice was touching. What he had done to earn this girl’s love he couldn’t say, but he could feel it emanating off her in waves. It was no longer the childish love of their first months together, but neither was it yet a woman’s love. It was still something in between, something light and simple but also pure and honest, and Pehr was glad for it.

“I'm coming back,” he told her. “As soon as my work on the coast is done, I will come here again to meet with your father and prepare us all. Then we will journey to Havenmont.”

“And then we can be married!” Kissha exclaimed, and she favored him with a radiant smile.

“Perhaps someday,” Pehr said, laughing. “But then, perhaps, while I’m away you’ll meet some strapping, handsome, fourteen-year-old boy, and he will steal your heart away!”

Kissha shook her head in solemn disgust at this suggestion, and Pehr laughed again. He bent down from working on the leather knots of his traveling pack and kissed the girl on the forehead. She turned pink and, after a moment, rushed out of the tent, no doubt to inform Mandia of this latest event. Ehella, who had witnessed all of this, smiled at him.

“You are so patient with her,” she said.

Pehr laughed. “She is a fine girl. No doubt she will make some man very happy when she comes of age.”

“Is there a woman waiting for you, back in your lands?”

Thinking of Nani, he began to shake his head, but then he stopped and shrugged. “A girl I knew, maybe. Her name is Sili, and I … I planned to marry her, once. She might have survived the Lagos attack, might live yet – but if she does, it’s likely she’s taken the necklace of some other man and become his wife.”

He did not add that he could no longer see himself with Sili, and had not so much as thought of her in many months. Now that he tried, the images did not readily come to his mind. She was like a ghost, like a character in a story from his childhood, barely remembered. The events of his life before coming to the Plains of Tassanna seemed sometimes to have happened to someone else. Still, it was impossible to say; if he met her again as a man, and she was still unwed, perhaps it would feel right to court her.

Samhad was sitting in the corner of the tent, honing and sharpening the metal sword that he had purchased as a young man. Finished, he set it aside and looked up.

“Are you ready, Pehr?”

“Yes. The knots are good. I’ve packed light, but this trip will be much more comfortable than either of the two before.”

Samhad nodded and stood. “Very well. When you have made your goodbyes, meet me at the western jesuva tree. I would speak with you alone before you go.”

Pehr nodded, and the older hunter left the tent. Ehella stood and embraced Pehr, holding him tight and pressing her lips hard against his cheek.

“You must take care, my western son,” she said, and Pehr smiled.

“I will.”

“My daughter loves you very much.”

“Kissha is—” Pehr began, and Ehella shook her head.

“Tasha. She is out there somewhere, Pehr, watching us all. I know this. I know it as I know that she loves you. You told us before that you had failed her, but I do not believe that is so.”

“No?”

“Sometimes a man must accept what is. I would call it fate, or the will of the Gods … my daughter would have rolled her eyes at this and stalked off, muttering under her breath. It doesn’t matter. You brought her to this great city, and you found for her there the answers she had always sought. Pehr, I … if all you say is true, and I believe with my soul that it is, then Tasha must’ve been happy when she passed. You didn’t fail her, and you shouldn’t regret.”

“Sometimes it’s hard not to regret,” Pehr told her. “I thank you for your words, Ehella, and for your belief. Your daughter will not have passed on in vain. That is my promise.”

Ehella nodded and stepped away from him, returning to her cot and picking up the garment she was mending. She smiled at him and said, “Go on, now.”

He stopped for a moment to say goodbye to the baby, knowing the child would not remember him whenever he returned but wanting to do it just the same. That done, he waved a final time to Ehella and exited the tent. Outside, he found Kissha, Mandia, and Ketrahm idling in the general vicinity of the dwelling, clearly waiting for him. When he emerged, they quickly surrounded him.

“Father says you’re leaving,” Mandia told him.

“Yes,” Pehr replied. “It’s time.”

Kissha was crying and couldn’t look at him. Pehr smoothed her tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and then put a hand under her chin, tilting her gaze up to meet his.

“I will miss you,” he said. “I know you wish I would stay, but I must go. I owe it to your sister. Do you understand?”

Kissha nodded, still sobbing miserably, scrubbing at her tears with her arm and trying desperately to compose herself. She seemed nearly to have regained her composure, and then the tears returned, and she covered her face. Pehr smiled and put his hand atop her head. Kissha responded to this by throwing her arms around him, pressing her face against his chest, and Pehr held her for a time without speaking. At last she separated herself from him, looking embarrassed.

Pehr turned and hugged Mandia, and then Ketrahm. Both were much more stalwart in their reaction to his departure than Kissha was, but they seemed unhappy. Pehr found some comfort in this; he would miss them, and it was good to know they felt the same.

At last they went in to join their mother, and Pehr made his way to the jesuva tree that sat far out on the plains to the west. Samhad was there, leaning against it, and he stood up straight as Pehr arrived.

“How long is the journey?” he asked.

“How long is a man’s life?” Pehr asked back, and he grinned. It was a saying of the plainsmen, and one that he liked very much.

Samhad smiled back at him. “You’ve learned much of our ways during your time here, Khada’Pehr,” he said. “If a bridge is to be built between our people and yours, it has begun with you.”

Pehr nodded.

Samhad reached down to the base of the jesuva tree and picked up a leather scabbard. Pehr understood at once that it contained one of the metal swords that the plainsmen so prized. Samhad held it out to him.

“Yours?” Pehr asked, and the plainsman shook his head.

“Mine rests still by my bed, and Gods willing it will be there until the day I pass it on to my son. This is yours, Pehr.”

“Samhad … I cannot pay you for this. I have not the hides, and I—”

“I would not accept them even if you did. This is a gift, Pehr, and it’s also a promise. We will be here when you return. I will spread your legend and that of Havenmont among the plainsmen. When they come to understand what it is that waits for us in the mountains, they will follow you. Perhaps not all … not at first … but many. Enough.”

“I am truly blessed by the Gods to have fallen at Tasha’s feet, and to have been taken in by such good people,” Pehr said. He took the sword from Samhad and slung the scabbard over his shoulder. Then he held out his hand, and Samhad gripped it, and for a moment they stood together like that. Then Pehr let go and took a step back.

“Watch for me,” he said. “Watch the western horizon, and do not go to Havenmont without me. You will not be allowed to pass. I will return.”

“We will watch the sunset for you and yours. When the day comes at last that we see you there, we will welcome you and those who you’ve brought to us with open arms.”

“Thank you, Samhad.”

“Go with the Gods, Khada’Pehr.”

With those words to set him on his way, Pehr turned, striding off into the west, beginning his journey back to the lands of his youth.

Chapter 27

The younger woman was tending to her little boy, who had at that moment decided that eating a handful of sand and pebbles would be a most excellent idea, and so she did not at first see the figure cresting the hill. She heard the older woman sitting behind her make a quiet murmur of surprise and say, “Who is that?”

The younger woman glanced up, ceasing her tsking noises, eyes slit to try to make out the features of the still-distant form. In one hand she still clutched the stones that her boy had been trying to eat. The other hand rested on her slightly swollen belly, inside of which her second child was half grown. She tossed the pebbles away and brought a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun, pushing away her hair. After a moment she said, “I can’t see.”

“Merchant?” the older woman asked.

“No … I don’t think so.”

“Not a farmer?”

“Coming from the east? It has to be a hunter.”

There were so few of those now, even two years after the coming of the Lagos. Only three had survived the battle: Josep, Thomas with his crippled left arm, and the youngest, Clay, who had been knocked senseless in the fighting and mistaken for dead. Since then only four boys had passed the Test. Most others who might have done so had been taken by the Lagos priests.

“It’s not your man, nor Sili’s, nor mine,” the older woman, Thomas’s wife, said, and she leaned forward a bit, shielding her eyes as well.

“I don’t think it’s any of ours. I don’t think he’s from this village at all,” the younger woman said, but there was something in her voice like doubt. The silhouette was familiar and foreign at the same time, like someone who has come from a dream to stand in the waking world.

The man came to a stop at the crest of the hill, looking over his surroundings and grinning broadly. With the sun lighting his face, the two women could better make out his features, and after a moment more the younger one made a sudden, harsh gasping noise, like a woman nearly drowned who has just broken the surface. She began to babble half-words and fragments, and she leapt to her feet.

“Nani, what is it?” the older woman asked.

She only cried, “Watch the baby!” before taking off toward the stranger at a dead run, seemingly unburdened by the child growing inside of her.

* * *

Pehr heard her call his name. He heard the call become a long and breaking cry of joy, and he turned to see his cousin barreling down upon him. He opened his arms and caught her, laughing, and the two very nearly toppled over into the sandy grass. Nani pressed her face against his chest, fingers wrapping the leather of his shirt into knots, and sobbed. Pehr held her, put his face in her hair, inhaled.

“How I have missed you,” he said.

“You’re dead!” Nani wept, still clutching him with all of her strength, and Pehr gave a soft laugh.

“No.”

“You must be!”

Pehr nodded. “I must be, yes. But I’m not.”

“ You and Jace … Josep said it was impossible.”

“I couldn’t save Jace. Nani, I am so sorry.”

His cousin’s sobs redoubled, and for a time they stood there like that, Nani weeping in some terrible combination of joy and grief and Pehr doing his best to comfort her. At last she gained some control and pulled away from him, looking up into his eyes.

“Tell me what happened.”

Pehr took her hand and began to walk back toward the dwellings. Nani allowed herself to be guided in that direction.

“Do you remember that I told you I dreamed of a girl, just before the Lagos attacked?” he asked as they walked, and Nani nodded. Pehr sighed. “She was there. No, I understand that it seems insane, but you must trust me. I fell, dying of thirst, at the feet of this strange girl with her purple eyes, and her family took me in. Nani, there is so much to tell, but I’ve returned at last and I bring salvation with me. The girl, Tasha, and I … we found something that will save us all.”

“From the Lagos?”

Pehr ran a hand through his hair and looked out toward the horizon, where the Everstorm continued to churn and shift as it had for as long as his people could remember. Finally he spoke.

“No. The thing we call the Everstorm keeps a great evil at bay, something far worse even than the Lagos. It is … a demon, almost, called Radiation, and the Everstorm was built to keep its touch from these lands, but the Everstorm is failing. With each passing year the demon creeps closer. Eventually all who live in this place will die. There is only one hope for Uru.”

“What hope is that?” Nani asked him, and Pehr smiled at her.

“Havenmont.”

* * *

“What is this … ‘Havenmont’ and you came you to it, Pehr?” Josep asked from his seat at the head of the table. His fellows were gathered with with him in the hunters’ hall, where the warriors of the village – few though they were – gathered to discuss their work.

“It is a city of man,” Pehr said. “Once, countless numbers dwelled there. Its buildings rise to what seems the very peaks of the mountains that surround it, and creatures of metal patrol the streets at night. It’s the land of our ancestors, and I came to it through fate and fortune, and through my own efforts and those of a very dear friend.”

“It sounds like something from a child’s tale,” Josep said.

There was a note of distaste in his voice that made Pehr uneasy, but Josep only leaned forward, resting his chin in the palm of one hand, waiting for Pehr to continue. The older hunter was scarred badly from his encounter with the Lagos. Running across his forehead, an ugly, purple line seemed to give him a permanent scowl, and Pehr could see, at the edges of the man’s shirt, that the damage to his chest and shoulder had been equally disfiguring.

“I know it’s difficult to believe,” Pehr said. “I hope that your knowledge of me … your trust in me … will help you with that.”

“What knowledge?” Thomas, the hunter with the crippled arm, asked. “What trust? You’re a stranger to us now, gone more than two years. You left this village when it needed every healthy body. You went to chase after your cousin when all knew he was doomed. Now you have returned, dressed in strange clothes and carrying a strange weapon, to give stories of a miraculous city beyond the jungle. What proof have you to offer?”

Pehr shrugged. He had collected no objects from Havenmont, and even if he had, there was little chance that they would have meant anything to the hunters sitting at this table. Here even Pehr’s own augmentation proved worthless; he couldn't explain to Josep and the others what calculus was or why it should matter to them. He could tell them why the Everstorm was so important to Uru, but he could not explain to them how it worked in any way they would understand. The only hope lay in bringing them to the city, where they could receive the same gift that Allen had already given Pehr.

“There is no proof,” he said, and he stopped, looking around at the seven men gathered there. Four of them were younger than Pehr, boys with whom he had grown up who had been lucky enough to escape death at the hands of the Lagos warriors or abduction by their priests. Then there was Clay, and Thomas, and Josep – forced to lead because he was the only one who could.

“There is no proof,” Pehr said again. “There is only my word … the word of a fellow hunter.”

The left side of Josep’s upper lip rose momentarily, and in that instant Pehr understood why he had felt such hostility emanating from the group. He didn’t even need the words that followed.

“You are not a hunter. All the others who sit here have passed the Test and earned the right to call themselves such, but you have not. You are just a boy pretending to be a man.”

Pehr clenched his teeth against the oaths that rose in his throat and looked up at the ceiling, then returned his glance to Josep.

“The Test? Josep … the Test means nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“How dare you speak like this?” Josep snarled. “The Test is our judge of manhood. It’s the only judge that we—”

“It is a capricious, arbitrary judge that has removed countless thousands from our ranks who might otherwise have benefitted our village, or others,” Pehr said, and he sighed, shaking his head. “I have not passed the hunters’ Test, it is true. I have not gone through the peril of the swinging stones, nor bested the caves of fire. I’ve not faced an angered sow in single combat and come out victorious, and I’ve not swum out past the stones in the bay and braved the currents of the open ocean. These things all of you have done – and lived to tell of it – and thus, by our laws, you are men.”

He turned to each of them then, meeting their eyes and holding their gaze, not ashamed and not afraid, and then continued. “I have bested tests of my own. I have defeated Lagos warriors and priests in single combat. I have navigated their jungles without aid and have stood before the greatest of their priests without wavering. I have been brought to the very edge of death by thirst, hunted great beasts in herds so large they blackened the horizon, and trained to fight with this blade of steel that I now carry. I have outrun and outwitted an army of demon machines bent on my destruction, and I have stood tall before a thing which unleashes death from its very eyes. I have gone, and done, and endured. I have survived these things that would have killed many men, many hunters, and many of you.

“I'm not a hunter by your law, Josep, but through my own actions and accomplishments I have become a man. I have survived tests as great as any that our people have ever devised. I will not suffer your doubt, and I will have your respect.”

“My respect is not simply given to those who ask for it,” Josep said.

“I am not asking,” Pehr said. He could feel a grim smile on his face, but inside there was little but despair. It hadn't occurred to him that he would be viewed by his own village not as a returning hero or a savior, but rather as nothing more than the boy who had abandoned his family and his duty.

“Are you commanding me, Pehr?” Josep asked, his voice low. “Consider your answer … boy. Consider it very well.”

Josep sat at the head of the hunters’ table now, and in this position he was the leader, not only of those gathered in this hall but of the entire village. The politics of Pehr’s society were loose and there was rarely any challenge to the established ways and hierarchy, but neither were such things entirely unknown. To issue a command to the head of hunters was to challenge his authority, and Josep would not take any such challenge lightly. If Pehr chose to go forward with it, there would be battle, and while either fighter would have the opportunity to yield during such a fight, more often than not it ended in the death of one of the two men.

Pehr did not want to fight Josep. He was not scared of the man, though he couldn't say with certainty who would win such a battle. He was afraid, instead, of failing not just Tasha but all the world. While the idea of coming all this way only to die at the hands of someone who had once been a friend was amusing in some deep, black way, Pehr understood the precarious ground on which the fate of his entire people now rested.

“What would you have me do, Josep?” he asked the elder hunter, who leaned back in his seat, appraising Pehr, and at last spoke.

“Take the Test. Pass it and become a man. Live with us and hunt with us. Take a wife. Father children so that the village might grow. I ask that you help us, Pehr. Help us to rebuild, to fix what has happened here, and perhaps in time you will find us more willing to entertain your fantasy tales.”

Pehr closed his eyes, trying to envision it. All of these things were possible, yes, and some of them were even tempting. He could set down the responsibility of saving them, for now, and focus first on saving this one village. He could reform the bonds of friendship with his fellow men, hunt boar with them, and return home to a wife and family after each hunt. This was all that he had ever wanted, once, and if Nani had been any other than his cousin, she would have refused Josep’s necklace and waited for him instead, and he would never have left this place at all. He would have abandoned Jace to his fate and stayed behind to rebuild and be with her.

But Nani was his cousin, and so he had gone. He forced himself to picture Tasha lying cold and naked on her funeral pyre, and thought of the promises he had made to her. Would he break those oaths so easily?

Eyes still closed, Pehr shook his head. “I cannot do these things you ask. I wish that I could, my friend, but I have made promises and I could not live with myself if I did not keep them. If you will not follow me in this voluntarily, then I must lead by force. I must challenge you.”

Josep shook his head, disgusted. “It is a sad choice you have made, Pehr. Death or exile. I will not allow you to remain here if you yield.”

“I know what I’ve chosen,” Pehr said.

“So be it, then. Tomorrow at midday we will meet in the village center. Go now and prepare.”

So it was, Pehr thought. Another test, another challenge, another block in the road toward redemption. Why must it always be so?

This was Uru; this was their world and these their ways, and for Pehr there was nothing else to do but that which he had been doing since his birth. He would face the challenge head on and seek to overcome it. He would face it and he would triumph, or he would die.

“Until tomorrow then,” he said, and he stood to take his leave.

Chapter 28

Pehr had expected that others might be waiting to see the boy who had returned from the dead, but the group assembled outside of the hunters’ hall was something more like a mob, large and rowdy and restless. It seemed that the entirety of the village had come together to surround the building’s single entrance. As Pehr emerged, the people surged forward, their collective murmuring swelling to a roar.

“It’s true!” a hoarse voice cawed out from somewhere amidst the crowd of bodies, and Pehr took a step back as several hands reached for him, as if wishing to prove the veracity of his existence by touching him.

“Leave him alone!” Nani shouted, shoving her way through the crowd and slapping away the hands. “Get back, fools.”

She stopped, standing beside and slightly ahead of Pehr, staring out at the crowd. There was a moment of silence.

“Nani … what is this?” Pehr asked, keeping his voice subdued. There was something manic in the eyes of the villagers that startled him. They were staring at him now in silence, as if waiting for some proclamation.

“It’s my fault,” Nani said. “I told Essa some of where you’ve gone and what you’ve done. She ran off and told half the village that a savior had come back from the land of the Gods to deliver us from the Lagos and raise us up to eternal paradise.”

Pehr laughed. “She has a vivid imagination.”

“To go into the very heart of the Lagos’s lands and then return? As far as they’re concerned, you’ve risen from the dead.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think if my brother was still alive, he’d call them all idiots.”

“He might be right to do so,” Pehr muttered, but then he stepped forward and looked over the crowd.

“My friends,” he began, and then paused, thinking. “You look to me for salvation as you would look to the Gods, but I'm not one of Them. I’m only a man. I have not met Them, and I know not of Their workings. I know only of the workings of men.”

“What of the Lagos?” someone else cried.

“The Gods have seen fit to strike down the Lagos forces,” Pehr said, and he wondered if Tasha would be offended or only amused that he was using his Gods now in such a way, to gain the trust and faith of those around him. He suspected she would find the situation both horrifying and uproariously funny, and had to suppress a grim smile of his own.

“Are they truly gone?” a young girl asked, and Pehr recognized her as the one he had saved from a beast’s clutches at the beginning of the battle.

“There may yet be Lagos remaining,” Pehr told her. “If so, they are few and they are scattered. I saw their army destroyed with my own eyes. We must band together, all of the villages from here to the northern desert. We will build an army and sweep through the jungles, hunting down the last of the creatures, so that we may finally claim that which is our birthright.”

“What is this thing?” someone called.

“It is Havenmont, the last city of man. It was the place of our ancestors in the years after the Great Destruction, and the men who lived there possessed much knowledge that would have made them seem to us like gods. That knowledge has been denied us by the Lagos for thousands of years, and denied to those who dwell on the eastern plains. We are a split people, no longer whole, and it is only by chance – or good luck, or the favor of the Gods – that I have been able to bridge the gap.”

Pehr looked out over the crowd. There were faces he recognized, but many were new to him. Merchants and farmers and their families, settlers who had come from other villages to help repopulate the land in the wake of the Lagos’s destruction. These people knew nothing of him, hadn't grown up with him, had no reason to believe him. Surely it would not be so easy as a simple speech to gain their trust.

As if to confirm these thoughts, another voice spoke. “What of Josep?”

Pehr grimaced, glancing at Nani and then over his shoulder at the entrance to the hall. If the hunters inside had heard any of this, they had opted not to participate, and Pehr struggled to find the right words to explain the situation. Finally he settled for simplicity and brevity.

“Josep does not believe my claims, nor will he allow me to bring you to your salvation. He has given me no option but to challenge him, and though I wish for nothing less, we will meet in combat tomorrow at midday.”

This statement was met with stunned silence. After a moment more Pehr said only, “If you will excuse me, I must prepare,” and with these words, he began to push his way through the crowd.

* * *

“This is insane!” Nani cried, for what must have been the thirtieth time.

“I’ve offered no argument to that statement any of the many times you’ve made it,” Pehr replied. He was sitting at the very same table at which he had eaten for so many years, and to be here now felt strange indeed. Truff should have been to his right, grumbling about something, and Jace to his left, making a light-hearted quip. Instead there was only Nani, and her boy, and Anna in the kitchen. Josep had chosen to spend his night in the hunters’ hall with his fellows, preparing for the coming fight.

“That’s not the same thing as agreeing with me,” Nani said, and Pehr sighed.

“Will it help if I tell you that I agree?” he asked. “That I think this entire thing is a foolish, dangerous waste of time? I am bound by laws that I didn’t write and would no longer follow if I had a choice. I would do this thing in peace, but Josep will not allow me to challenge his leadership without a fight. He won’t even accept me as a fellow man.”

“But why must you challenge him? Why not wait, like he says? In time you might convince him. In time—”

“Nani, it will never be easier than it is right now. In time the awe will fade, and I will become just another hunter. The Lagos will rebuild and stand again between us and the plainsmen. The Everstorm may even fail, sending waves of radiation over the land that will kill us all unless we’ve reached the safety of Havenmont.”

Pehr shook his head and continued. “No, I cannot wait. I have made promises to many who I love, many who yet live and one who died in service to this goal. I will not walk away from those promises. I will bring our people to the plains, as many of them as will come with me.”

“Then why not just take them and go? Why fight Josep?”

“He will order them to stay, and they will listen because he leads this village. How, then, can I go north and find followers if I can’t even gather them from my own village? I must … Nani, to do this thing, I must create a legend. It must begin here.”

“Even if it means killing my husband and making bastards of my children,” Nani spat, her voice bitter. Pehr stared up at the ceiling.

“I will not kill Josep.”

“He won’t give you a choice! Josep will die before he goes into exile if you beat him, and what if you don’t? What if he wins, Pehr? Which would you choose?”

He almost told her, then, what it was that he was planning, but at the last moment he thought better of it and shook his head.

“Death,” he said. “If Josep wins tomorrow, then my mission dies whether I live or not. None of the villagers would follow an exiled hunter, no matter if the Gods themselves came down and declared him a savior.”

“Then one of the two of you dies in that ring tomorrow,” Nani said.

“I understand that you can’t support me in this. If you wish, I’ll leave now and trouble you no further.”

“Don’t be a damned fool,” Nani growled. “I won’t turn you out into the night. No, you won’t have my support tomorrow, but neither will my pig-headed husband. I refuse to support this horrible tradition that will murder one of the two men that I … that are closest to me.”

Pehr closed his eyes, reliving the kiss he’d shared with Nani two years ago, in the pouring rain, just before he had left on the heels of the Lagos horde. So much time had passed, and she still loved him … had she not just nearly said it again? He ached to hear the words and knew that he never would. No matter what happened in this upcoming battle, Nani would always be Josep’s woman. God or Gods had saved Pehr’s life more than once … perhaps her love was their toll for that salvation.

“I can give you no comfort,” he said, not opening his eyes. “My heart aches that it must come to this.”

He heard Nani stand up and heave a weary, disgusted sigh. “This is insane,” she said again, and Pehr only nodded. There was nothing more to be said, so Nani went to help Anna in the kitchen, bringing her child with her. Pehr sat alone, arms folded on the table, eyes closed, trying to ignore the ache in his heart and prepare for the challenge ahead.

* * *

The village center had been prepared for the upcoming battle, and by the time Pehr reached it, most of the crowd had already arrived. They stood in a rough circle around a central combat area lined with thick wooden poles. These had been sharpened at their tips and angled inward, set close enough together that a man couldn't easily squeeze between them. There was only one entrance, at the northern end of the circle, and this, too, would be filled with spikes once the combatants were within.

Nani had not been in the house when Pehr awoke. Anna told him that her daughter had gone to see Josep, and Pehr suspected that Nani still held hope that she could change one or both of their minds. He spotted her now, standing with her husband near the entrance to the circle. Judging by the miserable and disgusted look on her face, he doubted she had been successful. She was staring only at the ground and standing a full step behind Josep, who watched calmly as Pehr made his way through the crowd. As the two met, Pehr held his hand out and, after a moment, Josep shook it.

“Well met,” he grunted, and Pehr nodded.

“Josep, please …” Nani began behind him, and the hunter held up his hand to stop her, not turning around.

“I will hear no more,” he said.

Nani’s lips were pressed together in a thin, white line, and there was clearly much more she wanted to say, but she held her tongue. Pehr tried not to look at her. Instead he returned his attention to Josep, matching the hunter’s gaze. He wondered if he had judged the man correctly.

“There is nothing more that I could say either, is there?” Pehr asked Josep, and the hunter raised an eyebrow.

“This is your challenge, not mine,” Josep said. “Turn around, walk away, and take up your duties as one of our people. Do that and I will embrace you as a brother.”

“I cannot,” Pehr said.

“Then there is nothing more to say.”

Josep stepped past him and into the ring. A loud murmur went through the crowd, a noise of anticipation. There was always the possibility that one of the two might back down, but once both contestants had entered the ring, they could not leave until one yielded or died at the other’s hands.

“I await your challenge,” Josep told him from the center of the ring. The crowd had gone completely silent, and Pehr saw that Nani was covering her face with her hands. He forced himself to look away from her, and instead stepped into the circle. This action was greeted with a roar of approval, and Pehr heard two of the other hunters slotting the last spikes into place. He was now committed to this course.

The two fighters stood facing each other at the center of the circle, each taking the measure of the other. Josep was carrying a club of stone and had strapped to his back the large axe that had once belonged to Truff. There was a small bone knife strapped to his right boot by leather bands. Neither man held a shield or wore much in the way of armor, though Josep had strapped extra bands of leather around his upper arms and waist. Pehr was wearing the same clothes in which he had left the plains: breeches and a shirt of soft tral skin, and hard leather boots. He was carrying a bone club in his hand, and strapped to his back was the blade Samhad had given to him.

Josep turned to the crowd and said, “Let it be known that a challenge has been made to the head of hunters. This dispute shall be resolved here, in this circle. Let no man, woman, or child enter the circle lest their lives – and the life of him they seek to aid – be forfeit. Whoever wins this battle will leave from the north, to take his seat at the head of the table of hunters. The loser, if he lives, faces exile. So it is, and so it has always been.”

Not always, Pehr thought, but he said nothing. Josep surprised him by turning and making the hunter’s salute. Pehr mirrored the gesture, and Josep nodded. He shifted his club from left hand to right and assumed a ready stance.

It is time, Pehr thought, and with his eyes never leaving Josep, he knelt slowly down and set his club aside. Standing up, he reached with his right hand over his shoulder, pulling the blade from its sheath. The crowd went silent again, and even Josep seemed slightly unnerved, the smile slipping away from his face.

“Yet more disrespect for our traditions,” the hunter commented. “You throw away your people’s weapon in favor of this strange blade from the plains.”

“The plainsmen are us, and we are them,” Pehr said, pitching his voice loud enough that all could hear. “We both came from Havenmont.”

“You should have stayed with them, then,” Josep snarled. He tossed his own club aside and unhooked the gigantic, double-bladed axe from his back. Like Pehr’s sword, this was a weapon meant for killing. Anything but the slightest blow would prove catastrophic. Pehr had once seen his uncle use the axe to lop the head from a wild dog in a single swipe as the dog ran by him. Its body had kept on running for nearly ten yards before finally collapsing.

Pehr held the blade out before him, tip pointed to the ground in a defensive stance, waiting for Josep to make the first move. There would be only one chance, and if Pehr had misjudged this man who had once been his friend, if Josep proved any less honorable than Pehr believed he was, then their world would end here.

The hunter gave him no further time to consider such things, feinting first to his left and then charging Pehr from the right. Pehr could hear Nani shrieking something, but he forced her from his thoughts. He turned to face Josep and then, still moving with slow, calm deliberation, he knelt. He held the sword out before him, blade down, its tip pressed into the sand, both hands wrapped around its hilt, and he lowered his head. He waited there like that, hearing the hunter’s approaching footsteps, wondering if the blow would come that would cleave his head from his shoulders.

It did not. Josep slowed and then came to a halt, growling, “What is this? Do you yield already?”

“I will not yield to you, Josep,” Pehr said, still making sure his words could be heard by those gathered around the circle.

“Then get up and fight.”

“Neither will I do that.”

“Then I will kill you right here!” Josep roared, and Pehr looked up at him, eyes blazing.

“Cut my head from my shoulders if you must!” he cried. “Do it, Khada’Josep, head of hunters, and be swift about it. Murder an innocent man who would do everything in his power to save you, but know that when you do it, so will you murder every man, woman, and child in this village, and in every village from here to the ends of Uru. You will murder your friends. Your family. Your son. Your wife and the unborn child in her belly … every last one of them will die, as surely as if you had taken their heads along with mine.”

Josep glared down at him, nostrils flaring, eyes wide, jaw clenched. Pehr stared back, and after a moment the hunter lowered his axe and spoke through his teeth.

“You make a mockery of our traditions with this filthy, foreign tool,” Josep hissed. “You have insulted and betrayed the Gods and our ancestors.”

Pehr felt his body tighten, and in that moment he came very close to driving the blade upward through Josep’s torso. Instead, he surged forward, throwing himself at the hunter. Josep was quick and strong, but he had no training against the weapon of the plainsmen and the speed with which it could be deployed. Pehr ran the blade down the haft of Josep’s axe, a trick that Samhad had taught him, and slapped its flat side against the hunter’s fingers. Josep grunted in surprise and dropped the axe to the ground, even as Pehr finished coming to his feet and brought the blade to the man’s neck.

“I could kill you right here with this filthy tool,” Pehr said through clenched teeth. “I could let your blood out on this sand, and could have done so from the moment we began this farce, but it would do nothing for us. Nothing. And so I will not.”

The crowd, which had gone deathly silent, waited with an anticipation so palpable it was like electricity in the air. Pehr waited a moment more, and then he moved the blade away from Josep’s throat and tossed it aside. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered himself again to his knees.

“The blood of Nesagana Mombutabwe runs in my veins,” he said, his voice steady. “I know my ancestors. I know them very well. You wish to talk of our people? Tell me of them, then. Where did we come from? Why did we end up trapped here on this tiny strip of land between the ocean and the jungle? What does the future hold for your children, and your children’s children? Can you answer those questions, Khada’Josep?”

Pehr looked out at the crowd now, meeting the gaze of person after person.

“Can any of you answer those questions?!” he shouted.

They could not, and there was silence. Even Nani had stopped making noise, stopped struggling, and was watching him with a strange combination of terror and hope. Pehr looked back at the hunter.

“The words carved into Nethalanhal, Josep? The symbols of the Gods, do you know what they say? They say ‘Vega Caliza.’ In the language of those who once dwelt here, that means ‘Vega limestone.’ We live at the edge of a quarry, a place where stone was once cut from the face of the rock by men. Those symbols are not of the gods – they are but the name of a place built by man, long ago, before the breaking of our world.”

Pehr glanced around again at the crowd before settling his gaze back on Josep.

“I know my ancestors,” he said again. “It is you, and all those around us, who have forgotten them. I know how they would view this foolish, barbaric ritual. They would recoil in horror and disgust, and they would be right to do so. I will not fight you, Josep, but neither will I yield. You will have to murder me. You will have to damn our whole world yourself.”

“If you would command us, then best me!” Josep said. “Leave me dead here in the dust and take your place at the hunter’s table. That is our way!”

“I will not begin the salvation of our people by murdering a man who should be my friend,” Pehr said. “I will not leave my cousin without a husband or her children without a father, either by death or exile. I will not. Do you hear me? This is not right!”

“This is how it has always been!” Josep exclaimed, his voice almost plaintive.

“No, it is not!” Pehr shouted back. “This is not how it has always been. It was better, once, and it can be better again, but only if you will listen. I'm not here to take your place. I don't want to be lead hunter. This is your village, and I would leave it as such.”

“Then why have you come here to battle with me?” Josep asked, tilting his head.

“To make you understand that I’m not some boy returned from the jungles, spewing wild stories bred by my imagination. I’m a man, and I deserve of your respect and your trust. I would not have done this if it wasn’t urgent, but you must see me as a man. You must listen to me, Josep, or every last one of us will die. Choose, Josep. Listen and live, or kill me and damn us all. Choose!”

Josep looked at him for what seemed a very long time, eyes slit, as if trying to stare through Pehr’s skin and into his soul. At last, the hunter leaned down and picked up his axe. There was a gasp from the crowd, followed by low muttering, and Pehr felt his heart sink. Here, then, was the end. Perhaps he should have stabbed the man after all.

Then Josep shouldered the axe, placing it in his harness, and took two slow steps backward. He met Pehr’s eyes, and he nodded.

“I see you now as a man, Khada’Pehr,” he said. “You are not the boy I once knew, and I was wrong to dismiss you as such. I would hear your story, all of it, for as long as that might take. Come with me to the hunters’ hall and tell me of this Havenmont. Tell me of our ancestors, and of their ways.”

Pehr felt as if an invisible current had been removed from his body. Without its presence, his muscles felt weak and his head throbbed painfully. Still, it was a great relief to have that galvanizing sense of urgency taken away. Behind him, he could hear Nani making choked sounds that sounded like a combination of sobs and laughter, and he thought he understood very well how she felt. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, there was a slight smile on Josep’s face.

“But your story had best be good, Khada’Pehr,” the hunter told him. “Or your head may yet find its way to the sand.”

Chapter 29

“This map is rough, but I believe it’s close,” Pehr said, and he slid the piece of dried kampri skin across the table to Josep.

He had sketched out with a piece of charcoal the rough boundaries of the lowlands, the jungle, the mountains, and the plains. He had also noted significant landmarks such as their village, the circle of bones, and Havenmont. Josep reached and took the map, spinning it as he brought it to himself.

More than five hours had passed since the two hunters had left the circle, and Pehr had spent most of it recounting the past two years for Josep. He was exhausted, but glad to be alive and pleased with this chance to convince the hunter to join with him.

“Havenmont is ten or twelve days’ journey by foot, at hunter speed,” Pehr said. “It will be slower going with a large group, but it’s not so far that it’ll be impossible.”

“Can the plains really be this big?” Josep asked, staring at the map in frank disbelief. The strip of land between the jungle and ocean, where Pehr’s people lived, seemed tiny by comparison.

Pehr nodded. “Our world has always seemed vast and varied to us, but it’s no more than a sliver. The journey from here to Havenmont takes twelve days, but to travel from Havenmont to the southern plains takes many weeks.”

Josep spent some time inspecting the map and then pointed to a patch of jungle that lay northwest of the entrance to Havenmont. “What Lagos remain will be here.”

Pehr nodded. “That is the most likely place. There may be pockets of them elsewhere, but if they remain in any significant numbers, it must be there. Otherwise the hunters in the northern villages would have stumbled upon them by now. Everywhere else is too close to the jungle’s edge.”

“Should we finish the job that these beasts – these tral that you speak of – began?”

“It could be done,” Pehr said. “Not with the hunters we have here, but there’s time to gather numbers. They will not expect an attack. For ten thousand years they have been the aggressors. I don’t think they’ve spent much time considering defense.”

“I did not ask if we could wipe them out, Khada’Pehr. I asked if we should. For my part, I would see them eradicated, destroyed so completely that they are erased even from the stories of old.”

Pehr considered his next words carefully. He was ambivalent; a part of him hated the Lagos, despised them like no other thing in the world – but another part understood that they were living creatures, fully sentient and possessed of a society, however brutal and repugnant it might be. The idea of enacting genocide upon them would never have bothered him before his augmentation, but now … ?

“It will be many years before they could come against us again in force,” he said. “By that time, we will be safe in Havenmont, protected by devices and weapons against which they have been unable to stand for ten thousand years or more. I no longer fear the Lagos, Josep. I pity them, in a strange way. They are cracked and twisted, forsaken by the Gods. They know only hate and rage. They will never trouble us again. It is … not worth our time. Not worth the lives of our men.”

Josep considered this, thinking long and hard, fingers tented and held just before his face, eyes far away. He frowned, opened his mouth, reconsidered, closed it. Continued his contemplation.

Finally he nodded, and the faraway look in his eyes changed to one of clarity. A decision had been made, and being a hunter, Josep needed say no more about it. He reached forward and pointed at a spot Pehr had marked within the Plains of Tassanna. “This is where we will meet the plainsman, Samhad?”

“Yes, or in that area – it will depend on the movement of the tral. He will be watching for us.”

“Why take all of us there? Could you not leave us at the edge of Havenmont, outside the reach of the gardeners?”

“The city is dead, and the circle of bone is poisoned. I don't know how far that poison extends into the surroundings, whether it would be safe to eat the plants or drink the water. I cannot leave you on the other side … the villagers know nothing of surviving on the plains. Even the hunters would have a hard time of it. The small forest at the foot of the mountain won’t support them all. The plainsmen will have tral and other food, and they can find water with ease. It will be better to meet them.”

Josep nodded, seeming satisfied with this answer. The hunter leaned back in his seat and looked at Pehr, appraising him for a lengthy period. Pehr looked back, feeling mildly uncomfortable under this scrutiny but refusing to turn away.

“In all of the years since this catastrophe that you claim drove our people away from the city in the mountains, no man has ever been able to unite our many tribes. You know this, and yet you would try it yourself. Do you wish so much to be King, Pehr?”

“No,” Pehr replied. “Josep, had you asked me not two months ago what I wanted of my life, I would have told you that I wished to return to this village, become a hunter, marry a good woman, and raise a family. There’s a part of me still that craves that life and always will. I’m only following this other path because there’s no choice.”

“Yet you must know that if you succeed in this thing, you will be looked upon to rule. It may be true that you have no desire for this, but it will happen nonetheless. This is where others have stumbled; they sought the power but couldn't wield it once obtained.”

“Those others did what they did for personal gain,” Pehr replied. “I seek the salvation of all Uru. If a time comes when I can relinquish such power … cede it to others … I will do so.”

The hunter gave him a dark grin. “Be careful what you promise. Once you have been tasked with leading men, it’s a hard thing to give up. I speak from experience.”

“I’m not asking you to cede your control,” Pehr told him, and Josep gave him an unimpressed look.

“You are, and we are sitting here talking now so that I may choose whether to let you or not. You are forcing me to choose, and you said it yourself. Kill you and damn us all, or let you take control and attempt to unite our people. If that happens, you will be King. Call me lead hunter of this tribe if you like … it’s but a name. The fate of this ground and those who dwell upon it will be in your hands.”

Pehr had no reply to this. He knew that Josep spoke the truth, but he hadn't expected to hear it laid out before him in so blunt a manner. Josep smiled at him again, and this time there was more good humor in the expression.

“My wife came to me this morning and begged me not to fight you. You are her cousin, and she feared for your life and for mine, but that is not why she did so. She did it because she believes you. She believes that the danger you have spoken of is real, and that we must listen or perish, and she believes it with all of her heart.”

“Nani and I have always been close,” Pehr said, his voice ambivalent. Josep gave a short, bitter-sounding laugh, but he chose not to comment on this statement.

“I could not reconcile her faith with my desire to meet your challenge,” he continued. “It will be difficult to stand behind someone after two years at the front.”

“Then stand at my side, Josep!” Pehr said. “Give me your council, your strength, and your skill with the club. Help me to convince our people and to unite the tribes. Help me save us all.”

Josep sighed, closed his eyes, and ran a hand over his face. “How do I choose? How can I know what is right? You’re asking me to deny traditions that we’ve held for as far back as our history tells and believe instead in a man who has returned from the dead with stories of miracles beyond anything I’ve ever dreamed. Damn it all.”

“You have known me all your life,” Pehr said. “Listen to your heart.”

“My heart belongs to Nani,” Josep said. “I know what her choice would be, and I … I believe she would be right to make it. So be it, Khada’Pehr. I will stand not behind you but at your side, first of your council. I will make you an oath to lend you my aid, but you must swear to me in return that you will not let power lead you astray. You must seek always what is best for all of Uru and not only yourself.”

He took his bone knife from its sheath and set it on the table, looking up at Pehr. “Will you make this oath with me?”

“I will,” Pehr said. “I swear to you and to all of the world that I will try at every step to do only what is best for them, that I will act always for them and not for myself.”

Pehr reached out and picked up the knife with his left hand, gripping the blade with his right and drawing it across his palm. Pain lanced through him and blood welled, beginning to drip on the table as he handed the knife to Josep. The hunter did the same, and the two shook hands. To break an oath sworn in such a way meant immediate death at the hands of the village hunters. The two men looked at each other for a moment more, and then Josep nodded and released his grip.

“It is done,” he said, and without further comment he turned and made his way toward the door at the end of the hall. Pehr took a deep breath, turned, and followed.

* * *

Pehr lay on a mat of dried, woven reeds, spread out on the sandy ground beneath him, and stared up at the stars in the dark sky. Josep and Nani had invited him to stay in their home, but he had thought it better to go his own way and had settled by an abandoned and partially burnt home on the outskirts of the village.

Pehr had stored his meager possessions inside the small thatched hut, but after two years of sleeping in hide tents or under the open sky, he found the dwelling somewhat oppressive. He chose instead to make his fire and bed outdoors, at least until the next rain came. The cool sea air was a welcome comfort after so many months on the plains, and the crackling fire to his side kept any chill away.

Word of the oath he had made with Josep had spread rapidly around the village, and Pehr had spent the last several hours fielding questions from a wide variety of visitors. Not all of them had gone away happy, and Pehr suspected that there would be many defections in the coming days as merchants and farmers packed up their families and left for other villages. Not everyone wished to give up this life to chase what seemed to them a fairy tale. In the end, he supposed, it didn’t matter. What would happen would happen, and he would press on regardless. He had promises to keep.

“I am doing my best, Tasha,” he said to the stars. He didn’t know if she could hear him, and knew that the girl with the purple eyes herself would have doubted it, but it comforted him to speak to her nonetheless.

The last of his visitors had departed some time ago, around sunset, but he could hear footsteps now from the east, and when he glanced in that direction he saw Nani walking toward him. She had brought him a plate of food, and after handing it to him she sat down next to him on the ground.

“You could have told me,” she said, and Pehr shook his head.

“If you had known, you would have tried to use that knowledge to turn Josep away from the battle.”

Nani considered this and nodded. She chewed on her lip for a moment and glanced over at him. “Josep says you will be King, like in the stories of the Great Old Grandfathers.”

“Our people have never had a King. Perhaps I will be Prime Minister … it’s in my blood.”

This earned him nothing but a confused look, and Pehr smiled, shaking his head. “Forget it, Nani. Thank you for the food – it’s a welcome change from salted tral meat, but do not trouble yourself overmuch. I’m fine here, and I will see you tomorrow. It will be a few weeks yet before I’m ready to leave.”

“You could have killed him,” Nani said, and Pehr nodded.

“I could have done that, yes, but we all have seen more than enough killing.”

“Did you want to?” Nani wouldn’t look at him, and he could see that she was trembling. “For a moment, I … I …”

Pehr chose his next words carefully. “Two years ago, I told you that I wanted you to make sure Josep lived, so that you could bear him many strong sons and daughters. Nani, I meant it.”

Nani turned to look at him now, and for a long time she said nothing, watching his eyes. Pehr looked back, and at last she gave him a small, sad smile. “It’s good to see you again … cousin.”

I have missed you every single day that I was away, Pehr thought, but out loud he said only, “It is good to see you as well.”

Nani nodded and stood, her heavy belly making the act more difficult than it would otherwise have been. When at last she reached her feet, she bid him goodnight and headed for home. Pehr watched her go, poking at the fire with a stick and eating the last few pieces of bread that she had brought him. Nani did not look back over her shoulder before disappearing over a hill and out of sight, and Pehr was glad for it.

Night had fallen, and Pehr lay on his mat, listening to the sound of the surf in the distance. The sound was familiar and hypnotic, lulling him slowly toward sleep, and Pehr made no effort to resist. It had been a difficult day – not the last, he was sure – and he would need both his strength and his wits for the trials ahead. He looked one last time at the stars, his newly augmented mind now able to give names to the constellations above, and closed his eyes.

Pehr dreamed.

“Are you well?” Tasha asked him, sitting before him cross-legged in the inky blackness through which they floated, and Pehr nodded.

“Well enough. And you? Have you found the answers to all of your questions?”

“Yes,” Tasha told him, and then the ghost of a smile became a full-fledged grin. “… and no.”

“I was wondering if you’d visit me again. I’m glad to see you.”

“Are you glad to be home?” Tasha asked, and when Pehr was quiet for a moment, a small smirk appeared on her lips.

“I’ve missed this place terribly, and there are many reasons to be glad, but it isn’t the same place I left.”

“And you are not the same person who left it.”

“I am not.”

“Some things are still the same, no? Sili is still here … and she is still ample.”

Pehr laughed. “I was too late for Sili. She visited me earlier and introduced me to her new baby.”

“Poor Pehr. Don’t lament it … she’s not your type anyway,” Tasha said.

Pehr shrugged. “Tasha … you’ve not come here to talk about Sili. What is it? Is there more that you would have me do?”

Tasha shook her head.

“I’ve come to say goodbye.”

Pehr shook his head, unable to find words to express his dismay. The path he had chosen might bring him many followers, but he thought there would be few friends. He could feel the pain of her loss anew, as if it had been hours and not weeks since she had died.

“Must you?”

Tasha nodded. “I will live in your memories, Pehr, but not in your dreams.”

“But I need you. I need your knowledge, your conviction …”

“You have a flood of tiny computers attached to your neurons now, my friend. Don’t tell me you actually believe I am some spirit made manifest through your dreams.”

“If you’re merely a projection of my subconscious, I value your presence no less,” Pehr said.

Tasha laughed. “I understand, but I must go. From here there is only the path you make, and it is not my part to guide you on it. I can only wish you well and give you my love. I’m your sister, Pehr, and so I will always be, but my time with you is done. You belong to Uru now.”

Pehr felt a great sadness weighing down upon him, but he knew there was no argument he could make that would change these things. He took a deep breath and said, “I love you, sister. I will always love you, and I will honor your memory – and Jace’s – by doing what is right for our people.”

“I know,” Tasha said. “I have faith in you.”

Pehr was silent for a time, and Tasha let him be, closing her eyes as if in meditation.

“Do you know how it all ends?” Pehr asked at last, and Tasha opened her eyes. She shrugged.

“It ends as it begins … there is darkness, and then there is light. We have no control over the end, Khada’Pehr of the western lands. We have only the time that is given us.”

“Goodbye then, Tasha. I hope I will see you at the end, and I hope you’ll have found your answers.”

Tasha smiled at him, beginning to fade, becoming dark and translucent like a reflection in a moonlit pool of water. When little was left of her but a wisp, like smoke in a dim room, she held her hand out to him, palm out, fingers spread. Pehr reached forward and pressed his hand to hers, but there was nothing there to touch. Tasha was gone, and once more Pehr found himself surrounded by blackness. Exhausted, he gave himself up to it.

Khada’Pehr, heir to the Mombutabwe line and the last, best hope for the remaining people of Earth, slept in peace.

Epilogue

In the year 11,345 of the Great Destruction, the warrior king Khada’Pehr A’Mombutabwe led his army through the jungle, reuniting the split halves of his people and bringing them to the city of Havenmont, where they set about restoring the greatness of years long past. In time they built anew a great age of men, and Khada’Pehr became the first of many Prime Ministers, and a trusted advisor to those who followed. When at last he came to the end of his path, he was burnt in the old way by his wife of many ages, the queen Kissha A’Samhad, and scattered by the winds to the corners of Uru.

We, his former subjects, erect this stone on our day of departure in celebration and in mourning. Khada’Pehr has gone to a place beyond the stars, and we pray that he watches over us still, and will guide us on our journey. We leave today for the heavens, as he had always hoped we would, and this stone shall mark our passing. What the future holds for mankind, or for the world we leave behind, we cannot know.

We can say only that we were, we are, and because of our great King, we shall continue to be.

The Citizens of Havenmont

12,234 GD

The End

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Christopher Buecheler is a professional web designer / developer, a published author, an award-winning amateur mixologist, a brewer of beer, a player of the guitar and drums, and an NBA enthusiast.

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Table of Contents

- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Epilogue
- The End
- Stay In Touch
- About the Author