The Crystal City Page 0,52

from the water's edge and bandaged his wounds, while Dead Mary and her mother did the same for Alvin's hands and feet.

Alvin barely noticed, though, because he was trying to find the heartfires of the soldiers. He could not save them all. But those with brains enough to let go of their weapons, to pry off their boots, to try to swim, them he could keep afloat. But those who didn't try, and those that wouldn't let go of the things that made them soldiers, he hadn't the strength to help them.

La Tia grasped what he was doing and stepped to the water's edge, where the bridge had once been. She reared her head back and pinched a powder into her open mouth. Then she looked out over the water and cried out in a voice that could be heard for miles across the lake, a voice as loud as thunder, a voice that made wide ripples race forward across the water.

"Drop your guns, you! Try to swim! Take off your boots! Swim back!"

All heard, and most heeded, and they lived. Three hundred soldiers went out onto that bridge that morning, along with one horse hitched to a fieldpiece. The horse had no way to save itself, but it took Alvin only a moment to sever the harness that held it to that murderous load. The horse came out alive; the fieldpiece stayed behind under the water. All but two score men finally swam to shore, gasping and half drowned but alive. But not one gun and not one boot made it back.

Only then, with the last of their enemies safe who was willing to be saved, Alvin let go of consciousness.

The north shore teemed with thousands of people, of every age and color and several languages. They desperately needed someone to tell them what to do, and where to go if they were to find drinkable water and food to eat. But not one of them proposed awakening Alvin or Arthur Stuart. The man and boy who made a crystal bridge out of blood and water-such power struck them all with awe, and they would not dare.

Back in Barcy, Calvin saw what was happening with Alvin's heartfire, how deeply he slept, how weak he was.

I could kill him right now. Just open up a hole in his heart and till his lungs with blood and he'd be dead before anyone else realized what was happening and no one would know it was me, or if they did, they'd never prove it.

But I won't kill him today, thought Calvin. I'll never kill him. Even though he kills me all the time, with his judgments and condemnations, his condescensions and his lessons and his utter ignorance of who I am. Because I'm not like Alvin.

He refrains from purposely killing people because he thinks it's wrong, under some arbitrary law. While I refrain from killing people, not out of obedience, but of my own free will, because I'm merciful to those who hurt me and despitefully use me.

Who's the Pharisee here? And who's the one like Jesus? Even though nobody else will ever see it that way, that's the truth, as God is my witness.

Chapter 7

Errand Boy

Verily Cooper awoke in the old roadhouse in the town of Hatrack River. It was the place where Alvin Maker was born, and where he returned twelve years later to serve his prenticeship to the blacksmith there.

It was that prenticeship that brought Verily Cooper there. The old smith had died a while ago, and since his wife had died before him, their children were now in possession of a will that gave them "one plow of pure gold, stolen by a prentice named Alvin, son of Alvin Miller of Vigor Church." Margaret Larner's father, Horace Guester, had written to Verily as soon as rumors of the will began to spread through town. Verily was the only lawyer old Horace trusted, and so here he was to try to prevent some hare-brained judge from issuing a writ demanding that Alvin produce the plow.

If only the plow didn't exist.

But it did exist, and the smith had never owned it. Alvin had forged it himself in the Hatrack River smithy. It was Alvin who had somehow turned it to gold, and it was only greed that made the old smith claim that Alvin stole it from him.

It would be an open-and-shut case, if not for the local prejudice that for many years had made Alvin out-at least among