Before the Sky Fell

[ 13 ] A Talk Amongst the Gods

Malachi leaned back on his steed and arched his shoulders, rupturing a fault line of cracks down his spine. His horse displaced tree branches with the swagger of an ill-tempered tyrant. Malachi's chest rose and fell with each breath, stretching the leather of his tunic.

He stopped his horse at the edge of the forest and looked over the southern portion of Sebolt, taking in the sultry air. The village was up in flames, lighting up the night, stockades burning, arrows flying. He turned to Greylock. "The Endowen clan. You sent them north, no? To the forest?"

"I did," Greylock told him, his face stern and unyielding. "They will wait for those who escape the village, to see if your old man is among them."

Malachi squeezed the reins, feeling leather on his skin, victory in his future. "It is here. I can feel it. The old man took it. We will find him and when we do, we will find the Maker. As long as your Larks don't kill him first."

"They follow my orders. More I can say for you." Greylock chewed on a licorice root, one of the many treasures he found in Hemonstalia's holds. "You forget who is funding this war. You promised me replacements. What am I to tell the Lark children who yearn to have their fathers back? You insult the Frozen Gods."

Enough about your stupid gods. "Do replacements not come from the Calacami women you breed your Larks with? That is how this works now. You'll get your reinforcements. When we have the Maker, you won't need to breed a lesser Lark."

The wooden walls crumbled to the ground as the Larks set fire to everything. Malachi and Greylock watched from the hillside, mesmerized by flames like two boys seeing fire for the first time.

"And the blood of one man will create an entire world?" Greylock asked. "How will we transfer the Larks over to this one? How will it work?"

"After you use it, after the nosebleeds start and the visions come, you see your copy. Glimpses, at first, if you're in the same place. The Keeping books say that sometimes things from that world come into this one. They said that the paths can change. That in one world, you may be pure, good. In the other, you may be the essence of evil."

"And which are you?"

Malachi smiled. "I'm just a man looking for something I lost. How can one call a man good or evil when he's just trying to find something he lost?"

"Some things that are lost aren't meant to be found. Selfishness knows no boundaries, not in this world or any other."

"That is where you are wrong, Greylock Carthen. There are more than enough worlds for us each to have our own. We can create a world that we control, that is ours. Is it selfish for a sculptor to mold his clay? For a shepherd to guide his flock? The moment you surrender power over your own world is the moment it becomes someone else's. The Elders didn't want us thinking about the gods because they didn't want us to know that we are the gods. Anyone who doesn't see that is a fool."

Greylock shook his head, as if the mere idea of Malachi's plan was too much to fathom. "And the world your copy left behind, is it gone?"

"I don't know. Nor do I care." Malachi's daughter wasn't in that one either. He used the Maker after she had disappeared, so both his world and his copy's would be without her.

"I'm placing the lives of my Larks in your hands and all I have to reassure me is, I don't know?"

Malachi jerked his head to the side and spat next to the hoof of Greylock's horse. "If it wasn't for me, you'd still be freezing on an iceberg. I gave you secrets. Ways into the city. Horses. Ships. I taught your leaders the southern tongue. You'd be nothing without me. How did we even land on the island if not for the actions of my many friends that creep around the towns, killing outpost guards? Did you hear the alarm bells toll? No, I thought not. That was because I arranged for them not to ring. Don't you forget that." Malachi looked to the night sky. "Do you not see the split has grown larger? The Maker is here."