The Crystal City Page 0,50

it wasn't time to rest, was it?

"The army coming, boy!" La Tia said. "They know they slaves gone now, morning coming and nobody doing they chores. This ain't no drunken mob today, no. This be soldiers, and we got to cross over!"

It wasn't just her words filling him with strength, though. He could feel the power of charms she bore. He always saw the small magics of spells and hexes and could stop them if he wanted, so he had gotten used to the idea that they had no effect on him.

But now he was grateful for the strength that flowed into him as she draped a charm around his neck.

"I have to stay here," he said softly, "or the bridge won't hold."

"You had to stay here to make the bridge," said La Tia. "But don't you feel your brother put in his blood from the other side?"

Alvin cast his awareness through the whole length of the bridge and now realized that his own heartfire was not alone in it. His was the overwhelming light within the crystal, but there was another heartfire there, too, and not a weak one, either. Arthur Stuart had taken hold of the bridge and had put his own blood into the water to join him.

La Tia and Dead Mary's mother-Rien, was it?-supported him on either side, while Dead Mary pushed her wheelbarrow out onto the bridge to lead the way. Already the last of the people was out of sight in the fog. But the fog was thinning, and the first rays of dawn were lighting the eastern sky. Arthur Stuart might still be on the job, but Calvin wasn't.

Behind them Michele, La Tia's friend and doorkeeper, was laying down charms on the bridge. They did not cause the shimmer that the plow had brought. Rather they felt like salt dropped on ice.

"That burns," said Alvin. "I can't have that."

"Got to keep them enemies back," said La Tia. "They my fear and fire charms she laying down."

"This bridge was made to welcome people. The crystal is meant to open their eyes. You can't put darkness and fear onto it and hope to have it stay."

"You know what you know," said La Tia. "You do a thing I never see, so while I stand on your blood, I do what you say." She called back over her shoulder. "Michele, you pick up all this stuff, you, you make it a ring on the shore, hold them back a little!"

Michele ran back to land and laid the charms in a great semicircle to keep the soldiers at bay as long as possible.

"To them it be like a fire," said La Tia. "Hate and fear, they make it into a fire."

Blood still dripped from Alvin's hands as he walked. Dead Mary set down the barrow and tried to take one hand and bind it up to stop the bleeding, but Alvin pulled away. "Got to keep my blood going into the bridge," he said. "Arthur can't hold it up alone."

"So this thing you make, it don't stay made?" said Dead Mary.

"First time I done it," said Alvin, "and I don't think I done it right. But maybe it can never stay. Maybe you can't build nothing out of this that lasts."

"Stop making him talk," said Rien. "You keep pushing, Marie, you keep showing us the way."

"I know the way," said Alvin.

"But what happen to us when you faint, yes? What?"

Alvin had no answer, and Dead Mary continued to push her barrow on ahead.

They weren't all that far when they heard Michele run up from behind. "Soldiers come, and a lot of other men, very angry. The fire hold them back for now, but they got their own peeps and slinks and they get through soon. We got to run."

"I can't," said Alvin.

But even as he said it, he heard the greensong that had helped the others cross so quickly, and now that he wasn't concentrating on holding the bridge alone, he could let it into him, let it strengthen and heal him a little. He hushed them. "Hear that?" he said. "Can you hear?"

And after a while, yes, they could. They stopped talking then, and Alvin stopped leaning on them, and soon he and the four women were walking swiftly, faster than they thought they could, with longer strides than any of these women had ever taken. Long before they reached the other side of Pontchartrain they overtook the last of the people, and when Alvin got