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."
"Then find it. Can you bring them back with the Maker? The dead?"
Malachi shook his head. "It's not that simple. We can't change the past. Only the present."
Greylock grabbed his horse's reins and kicked at its gut. "If you can't bring back the dead, then what is the purpose?"
"I thought the purpose was reinforcements?"
Malachi saw it then, what this all meant to the Lark leader. Greylock wanted his wife back, his son.he grunted as he started down the hill. Before the darkness swallowed the beast, Malachi shouted, "Wait." Greylock turned. "There may be a way."
Bloodcurdling screams flowed through the darkness. Malachi stared at the fires. "There were others before me," he told Greylock. "Others have created worlds since the sky first split. And in those worlds, things happened differently. If we could see those worlds, create a bridge between them and this one, we could cross into them, or bring others here. But we must have the Maker to understand how it all works. To do that, we must find Frankford Millstone."
"Why that man? Is there no one else in all the kingdoms that may know the origins of the Maker? How it works?"
"It's more than that," Malachi said. "He knows things. He's old and weak, and perhaps doesn't know that he knows things, but he does. He's seen it." Malachi thought of his pregnant daughter and the world she created. In the chamber, where she disappeared, there was blood, from a nosebleed perhaps, or a pregnancy. Yet there was no child, no womb, no cord. "Frankford Millstone holds the answers I seek. The answers you seek."
Malachi wondered what it would have been like to grow old here, on Sebolt, and watch his daughter marry. Or was she already married and failed to tell me? His thoughts were chased away by Greylock's coarse voice. "If you're wrong about this, you'll die with the rest of them." Greylock turned his horse. Shadows danced across the trees.
Smoke rose out of a cabin in the middle of the island's southern field. Shortly he would find the Maker and bring his daughter back. He would create thousands of Larks and the stories would speak of his powers until the end of days. Stories of a father's love and a nation's fall. It would be the greatest legend ever told, and Greylock's name would be a footnote.
A Lark rode up the hill, nearly blending into the darkness. "Greylock, we've found an old man. He's the one you seek. He has surrendered himself."
Greylock laughed. "The fool."
∞
When they found Frankford Millstone, he was humming a song beneath the biggest tree Malachi had ever seen. Corpses filled the courtyard around him. Some were burned, some bloody. Others looked pristine, as if the villagers had drifted off to sleep. Larks stood around the old man. They held torches above his head, illuminating grey hairs and sunken eyes.
It had been more than a decade since Malachi had seen the old man, but the new lines and depressions and wrinkles in his face couldn't mask the familiarity. "Time has been cruel to you," Malachi said as he approached. Greylock dismounted and joined his side.
"And the world has been cruel to you as well. But alas, you've found us. Tell me, has the hunt been worth it?"
"It will be. It is just like the Hemonstalians to flee across the sea and swells where the timid Larks dare not venture. Not without a hundred ships at least. Tell me, after all these years, you thought we wouldn't come for you? It was too easy."
Millstone rested his cane on his thighs. "Nothing is easy these days. You've come a long way for that thing. Murder, war, treason, all to find something that is not meant to be found."
Malachi jumped from his horse. His boots sent a wave of dirt across the cobblestone. He stepped into the grass, where giant roots snaked through the hillside like tentacles. "I thought this time may have changed you, but you're still a pitiful man in search of answers."
"I've found my answers," Millstone said, "yet I retain my dignity. You would know nothing of the sort."
Greylock leaned into another Lark, who translated their words. Malachi sat down against a root and said, "You disappoint me Frankford Millstone, you really do. You think the sea can keep me from finding you? You think these wooden walls and clumsy soldiers can keep the wrath of the north from destroying you? Do you know what your aides said when I peeled their fingertips from their hands and shed the skin from their ankles?" Frankford sat silent. "They said you were crazy. That you couldn't be stopped. That you'd never stop your experiments. They wanted out and they would have told me had they known where you hid it. You are the reason they're dead. They were most informative while they were living. They told me how to use the magnets. Well, more crying in pain than telling. A lively bunch they were. For a while at least."
"Even if you found the Maker, it will never give you peace. It would destroy you and it would destroy all of this. Your daughter isn't in this world. You'll never be able to find her."
Curse the gods. Malachi hadn't told Greylock of his daughter. There was no use. It would only complicate things, get in the way of what they had to do. "It's nothing," Malachi said.
Greylock whispered to his translator, then stepped forward. "Daughter?"
"You didn't tell him?" Frankford placed his cane on the dirt ground and stood, his legs wobbly. "You didn't tell him what you really want the Maker for? To find your daughter?"
"Silence," Malachi said, slamming his hand into Frankford's face. The old man fell to the ground, blood dripping from his mouth. "Guards, restrain this man."
The Larks stood still, axes clenched tight in their hands, eyes trained on Malachi like he was some village drunk.
"It is nothing," Malachi told them. "It means nothing."
Greylock dropped his axe, stepped forward, and thrust his hand beneath Malachi's chin. Malachi felt his heels leave the ground, his toes drag along the dirt, his throat constrict. Greylock's nose was almost touching his, the rigid scar cutting off half the tip. Greylock clenched his jaw, then said, "If you have led me here for any other reason, any other reason at all, than to find that chunk of metal and replenish my army, I will dine on your flesh." Malachi felt his veins bulging, his lungs begging for air. Greylock let go and Malachi fell to the ground.
"We press on," Greylock shouted.Malachi reached down and placed the shackles on the old man's wrists."Malachi, as for you, you'll get until sundown. Whether he talks or not, we head northeast come morning. In two days we flood the gates of Eckrondale. He merely needs his eyes to see his island fall, not his tongue. When you're done with him, cut it out so he can tell no one of this. His hands too." Behind Greylock, flames ate away at the last splinters that held up the support beam for one of the cottages. The structure collapsed and sent a wave of fiery fragments towards the horse's legs.
"As you say." Malachi ran his fingers along his neck, teasing the numbness from his skin.
Blood seeped down Frankford Millstone's wrists. He hung his head and whispered things, things that Malachi couldn't make out. "Is the old man praying?" Malachi asked.
"And what if I was?"
Malachi smiled. He brushed grey hairs from in front of Millstone's eyes. "There's no use in praying Frankford Millstone. The only god you'll see tonight is me."