The Worthing Saga (30 page)

“How do you keep the map in your head like that, Stipock?”

“I studied the map in the Star Tower. Searching for iron. I once thought of leading an overland expedition. I didn't expect Jason would be willing to fly us there.”

“Will they be glad to see us?” Dilna asked. “We didn't leave under happy circumstances.”

Stipock smiled. “Do you really care how glad
they
are? We've had our stab at trying to build a perfect place. The climate was bad and the goal was all wrong. It isn't iron that makes a civilization.” He thought of Hoom, loving his children and tolerating. the intolerable between his wife and his friend. That is civilization, to bear pain for the sake of joy; Hoom grew up before I did, Stipock realized. He found out that if you try to eliminate the pain from your life, you destroy all hope of pleasure, too. They come from the same place. Kill one, you've killed all. Someone should have mentioned that to me when I was younger. I would have acted differently when Jason put me in his world. I was the devil, when I might have been an angel if I tried.

“People,” Dilna said.

“What?”

“Civilization. People, not a metal, not a parchment, not even an idea.”

Wix eased himself to a sitting position on the grass, then lay back. “Stipock, admit it! All your talk of Jason being just a man was sham. You and Jason are both gods. You made the world together, and now you're here just to see what use we're making of it. And to impress us with miracles.”

“Mine haven't been too impressive so far.”

“Well, it takes a while to get in practice. Like chopping wood. The first few strokes are never right. That's when people lose legs and feet, the first few strokes, when they aren't accustomed to it.”

“A clumsy god. Well, I confess it. That's what I am.” He was about to say, And so are you, but a piercing scream interrupted them, and they jumped to their feet. “Cammar!” Hoom shouted, and they quickly saw that he wasn't on the crown of the hill. They ran in different directions; Stipock went to the northwest brow of the hill, and saw with hope that there were depressions marking small footprints in the grass; then saw, with horror, that the running steps had carried the child, unsuspecting, to the brink of a cliff. For once the roundness of this country had failed. There was a mark of scraping at the very brink, torn grass where Cammar had clutched. If we had been watching, if we had been near, we might have saved him before he fell.

“Here!” Stipock called.

As the others ran up, Cammar's voice came from below the edge of the cliff. “Stipock! Where's Papa! I'm hurt!”

Hoom ran along the edge of the cliff, out to an angle where he could see. “Cammar! Can you see me!”

“Papa!” Cammar cried.

“He's just over the brink, on a ledge. Almost in reach!” Hoom shouted, and he ran back to them. “I can reach him. Stipock and Wix, hold onto my legs. Dilna, stay near the edge to help me with him when we get him near the top. Don't lean out, though. The edge isn't too secure.”

His confidence, his air of authority calmed them all. It will turn out all right, thought Stipock. It only vaguely occurred to him that this was Hoom's blind spot, that he might not be willing to believe that saving his son was impossible. Still, the child was alive. There were piles of stone in the desert for the other two; Dilna was pregnant again, but the unborn child could not compare with Cammar, the oldest and the last now alive. They had to try, even at risk of their own lives.

Hoom lay on his back, not on his belly—it was an admission that Cammar was so far down that he could not be reached by a man bending at the waist, only by a man bending at the knees. Stipock gripped his leg and together he and Wix lowered him backward over the cliff.

“Almost there!” Hoom shouted. “Just a little farther.”

“We can't,” Stipock said, because they were already so close to the edge themselves that he had to double his legs up under him to keep them from dangling over the edge. Stipock only had Hoom by the ankle now, and his grip was none too sure. But somehow they lowered him another few centimeters.

“Almost! A little farther!”

Stipock was going to protest, but saw that Wix was grimly moving closer to the edge. Of all people, Wix cannot fail to help Hoom save his son, Stipock knew that, and so he began to carefully adjust his grip to allow him to lower Hoom a little more.

Then, suddenly, Hoom screamed, “No, Cammar! Don't jump for me! Stay there, don't jump for me!” And then a high-pitched child's scream, just as Hoom kicked powerfully, lunged downward, pulling his leg out of Stipock's grasp.

By some miracle Wix held on, crying out in the pain of the exertion. Dilna held onto Wix to keep him from falling over, too. Stipock could not get near enough to help Wix hold onto Hoom; he could only help Dilna in her effort to keep him from following Hoom over the edge.

“We could use a miracle now,” whispered Wix.

“Cammar!” cried Hoom, his voice echoing among the mountains. “Cammar! Cammar!”

“He doesn't even know that he's in danger,” Dilna said, panting and whimpering from grief and terror and despair. Stipock knew the feeling. They were safe. They had come this far, they were surely safe now. Something was very, very wrong with the world.

Then Wix screamed and his fingers gave way and Hoom slipped over the edge. They heard him strike ground; they heard him strike again. Not far away. Not all the Sway down. But definitely, definitely out of reach.

Dilna screamed and struck at Wix. Stipock got above them, pulled them both until they came up with him, up away from the lip of the abyss. Only when he was sure they would not accidently follow Hoom, only then did he shout “Hoom! Hoom?”

“He's dead, he's dead!” Dilna cried.

“I tried to hold him, I really tried!” Wix sobbed.

“I know you did,” Stipock answered. “You both did. Neither of you could have done more. You did the best you could.” Then he called again for Hoom.

This time Hoom answered, sounding exhausted and afraid. “Stipock!”

“How far down are you!” Stipock called.

Hoom laughed hysterically. “Far. Don't come down. You can't get here. Can't get down or up.”

“Hoom,” Dilna said. But her voice was not a shout, it was a prayer.

“Don't try to come after me!” Hoom shouted again.

“Can you climb up at all? Or down?”

“I think my back is broken. I can't feel my legs. Cammar is dead. He jumped for my hands. I touched his fingers, but I couldn't hold him.” Hoom wept. “They're all gone, Stipock! Do you think I'm even now?”

Stipock understood what he meant: trading his children's lives for his own guilt at the death of his father. “This isn't justice, Hoom. It doesn't come out even.”

“It must be justice!” Hoom cried. “It sure isn't mercy!” A pause. “I can't hold on for very long, I think. Just my arms holding me.”

“Hoom, don't let go! Don't fall.”

“I thought of that already, Dilna, but it's going to happen anyway.”

“No!” Dilna shouted. “Don't fall!”

“I tried to hold on to you!” Wix shouted.

“I know. It was Stipock who let go, the old turd. Stipock, do your miracle now.”

“What miracle?” Stipock asked.

“Make us clean.”

Stipock took a deep breath, and then he spoke, loudly, so Hoom could hear him, too. “Hoom told me that if he ever—if something happened to him.”

“Yes, go on!” Hoom shouted.

“That he has known since before Cammar was conceived. And he loved you both anyway. And loved the children. And he—forgave. I believe him. He has no anger in him.”

Dilna was weeping. “Is it true?”

“Yes,” said Hoom.

Wix turned over and lay face down in the grass and cried like a child.

“I'm going to let go now,” said Hoom.

“No,” said Dilna.

So he didn't let go. But there was nothing to say, nothing to do. They just waited at the top of the hill, listening as Wix cried, listening to the birds calling each other in the canyons.

“I have to let go now,” Hoom said. “I'm very tired.”

“I love you!” Dilna cried.

“And I!” shouted Wix. “I should have died, not you!”

“
Now
you think of it,” Hoom said. Then he let go. They heard him slide a little, and then heard nothing at all.

“Hoom!” Dilna called. “Hoom! Hoom!”

But he didn't answer. He never answered.

So after they spent themselves in tears, they got up and took their burdens, they climbed carefully down the safe slopes, and made their way out of the mountains into the great forest. They found the river, built a raft, and the three of them floated for weeks, it seemed; they lost count of days.

They wintered north of the river, and Dilna's child was born. She thought of naming him Hoom, but Stipock forbade it. She had no right to saddle the child with her guilt, he said. Hoom had forgiven them, they owed no debt to him, the child should not be forced to remind them. So she named him Water. And in the spring they crossed the mountains and entered Heaven City, where they were greeted with rejoicing.

“Lared,” said Jason.

Lared awoke. He was on horseback. Villagers were all around him. “Lared, you brought your father home.”

Lared turned to look at his father on the sledge behind him. Justice was bending over him. Sala stood beside her, nodding.

Hes alive and probably won't die,“ she said, her voice calm and almost adult-sounding. ”Cutting off his arm saved his life.

“He told me to,” Lared said.

“Then he told you well.” The words were strange, coming from his younger sister. Strange to her too, for suddenly it was as if the water had poured from a goatskin bag. She began to cry. “Father! Father!” And she knelt on the sledge and held her father and kissed his face. He awoke then, opened his eyes and said, “He took my arm, damn the boy, he took my arm.”

“Never mind,” Jason whispered to Lared. “He's not himself.”

“I know,” said Lared. He slid from the horse, stood shakily on the ground. “The day went on forever. Take us home.”

It was less than a kilometer back to the village. Jason had cut loose his team, abandoning the sledge, and rode down the whole path, alerting all the timbering crews. They too unharnessed the horses and rode on quickly, gathered along the six men who had already brought their logs home, and only just got to where Lared had brought his father.

“Did Justice guide me?” Lared asked. “I dreamed the whole way here. Stipock and Hoom and—”

“She sent you the dream, but she didn't guide you. How could she? She doesn't know the way.”

“Then how did I get here?”

“Perhaps there's more in you than you thought.”

Jason helped him through the door of the inn, where Mother hugged him tightly, savagely, and then demanded, “Is he alive!”

“Yes,” Lared said. “They're bringing him now.”

Then Jason helped him to his truckle bed, which waited ready by the fire. He lay there trembling while four men carried in the mutilated body of the blacksmith. He was unconscious. Jason set to work at once, boiling herbs and dressing the stump. While Father was still unconscious, Jason set the leg and splinted it.

All the time, Justice sat in a chair, watching. Lared watched her from time to time, to see if she winced at his father's pain. She showed no sign of noticing. No sign that she knew that she could heal him with a thought, could even restore his arm. Lared wanted to shout at her. If you can heal it, and don't, then you consent to it!

She did not speak into his mind. Instead, Sala came to him and touched him on the forehead. “Don't torment me, Lareled,” she said. “Think of Hoom and Cammar and be glad you're home.”

He kissed his sister's hand and held it for a while. “Sala, please say your own words to me.”

Almost at once Sala began to cry. “I was so afraid, Lared. But you brought Father home. I knew you would.”

She kissed his cheek. But then it suddenly occurred to her. “But Lared, you forgot to bring his arm. How will he beat the iron, without a hand to hold it?”

Then Lared wept softly, for Father, yes, and for himself, and tears for Hoom and Cammar, for Bess and Dallat, for Wix and Dilna and for Aven, for the innocent and guilty, for all the pain. I never knew I loved Father till he lay there at the brink of death. Perhaps I never
did
love him, until he was nearly gone. It seemed a very powerful thought, until it occurred to him that Justice probably put it into his mind. At that he went to sleep. He could not escape them, and the price of trying was too high. He had somehow got home, and he had kept his Father alive somehow, and that was enough for now, he feared nothing now, not even dreams; no, not even sleep.

Father lay in bed, sleeping like death for several days. But whenever anyone asked how he was, Sala answered, “He'll be fine.”

Fine, thought Lared, good as new, but with his left arm missing and a memory of his son, staggering/like a drunken man, chopping at the tree like a child; I took his arm, and not because I swung the axe to cut it off—there'd be no blame in that, God knows—but because I made the tree fall wrong, I made it hang in the branches of the other trees.

He tried not to blame it on Jason and Justice. Forcing me to have dreams of fathers dying, so that I lay awake in terror of it, and so caused my father to as much to as die. Was this in their design from the start? Did they show him Aven's death so that he would maim his own father? What then does Hoom's death mean? What fall is in store for me? But when he thought like that, he would become ashamed, because it was the dream of Stipock's journey home to Heaven City that had kept him moving when on his own he could never have brought Father home.

The others in the village wanted to make much of him. Lared, the treeherd who saved his father's life and brought one-armed Elmo home on an unknown path. The tinker kept threatening to make up a song about the deed, and the other men, who had been so amused at him before, now treated him with unfeigned respect. With awe, in fact, falling silent when he entered the room, asking his opinion as if he had some unusual wisdom. Lared took all these changes courteously—why should he rebutt their love?— but each kindness, each honor galled him, for he knew that rather than praise he should have blame.