The Worthing Saga (36 page)

“A hundred thousand dead, that's the difference.”

“He killed more because he had more power. Take his power, and won't you be the same? There is more at stake here than you think, Faith. When Father and I first came here, we understood for the first time how much power we really had, as Adam must have realized when he went to Heaven City more than a generation ago. We could make people lend us money and then forget that we owed it to them; we could make our debtors pay us first; we could buy properties whose owners didn't think they would ever sell. We could be very, very rich.”

“You
are
rich.”

“But no one is poorer because of it,” said Amos. “We stole from no one. We only made new land where there was none before, and found gold where it was hidden in the earth, and above all made the city safe and prosperous, so that all who lived here did well. There are no poor in Hux, Faith. You've never known it any other way, but I tell you that is our achievement. It is our achievement every day.”

Faith looked narrowly at him. “What do you gain?”

“John Tinker doesn't reproach me with his death,” said Amos. “John Tinker's birds still come to me.”

“That's not a reason.”

“Yes it is. He lived his life and did no harm.”

“And look what it got him.”

“Death. But we've learned from him.”

“Yes—don't let them near you.”

“No. Don't let them know. Uncle John could have healed them to his heart's content, and never would have tasted their resentment if they hadn't known he was the healer. So the people of Hux look at the counting house of Matthew and Amos and see nothing but a prosperous business with what seems like half a hundred blue-eyed children constantly about. They don't know that their children live through childhood because of us, their cows give milk and do not sicken and die because of us, their marriages remain unbroken and their contracts all are kept, because somewhere in this house, always, there are two or three or five or half a dozen of us listening, watching, making sure this city is safe from pain.”

Faith shook her head and smiled. “I know what you are. You think that
you're
Jason's children.”

Amos shook his head. All the other children had nodded, had understood. They had done nothing to deserve their gift; it was a stewardship; the city had been given into their care, and they must keep it safe. “In all the history of this world,” said Amos,

“There has never been a happier place than this, the city of Hux, under our care. Mothers no longer fear childbirth, because they know that they will live. Parents are willing to love their children, because they know the children will survive to be adults.”

“And yet you still let Jason's Son rule the world.”

“Yes,” said Amos. “Your very desire to destroy him, Faith, tells me that you are more kin of his than kin of mine. Child, today is the day I ask you, Will you protect the secret and keep the covenant? Will you use your gifts only for healing, never for vengeance, punishment, or harm?”

“What about justice?” demanded Faith.

“Justice is the perfect balance,” said Amos, “but only the perfectly balanced heart can be just. Is that you?”

“I know good from evil.”

“Will you take the covenant?”

She did not need to answer. He knew her answer from the fact that she closed her mind to him. When she said, “Yes,” it only made it worse.

“Do you think that you can lie to
me
?”

She tossed her head defiantly. “Jason's Son is a wound in the world, and I'll heal it if that's keeping the covenant, then I'll keep it.”

“And plunge the world into war again.”

Faith got up. “The world is in pain, and one little city is all that you can think about. What good is Hux's happiness, while the world is ground down?”

“It takes time. The children growing up now—then there'll be enough to reach out farther, accomplish more.”

“I won't be part of this,” said Faith. “I'm a match for Jason's Son, and I will take his place.”

“Will you?” asked Amos. “I hope that you will snot. But for the world's sake, Faith, we must put you in the stone.”

She did not know what he meant.

But she knew when they took her out into the wilderness, up into the foothills of the mountains, to a place where the living rock cropped out and lay smooth and flat as the sheets on a virgin's bed. “What are you doing to me?” she demanded, for being violent-hearted, she feared violence.

We have to know, said Amos silently, who you are.

“After all these years, and you don't know me?”

We can know your memories, and we can know our memories, but how can we know your future? How can we know how much evil can dwell comfortably in you? The seeds of destruction are there—will they take root, and will you crumble away the rock at the heart of the world?

“What will you do to me?”

A Why, we'll make you someone that you are not, and learn from that who you are. We'll float you over the stone, where you're cut off from all life; make you part of the stone, so you're cut off from your own flesh; and then see howl much of Adam Worthing you can be.

“Will I die?” Faith asked her father.

I've gone into the stone myself, and came out whole. I did it—we did it because only in the stone can we set our memories aside and let someone else's whole mind enter into ours; I floated the stone, and brought each of Adam Worthing's children, one by one, into my mind, to judge them.

“And did they fail?”

Failure would have been not to know them fully. I did not fail. We know them now from the inside out.

“Were they good people?”

As much as I am good, they are good, because their whole memory could fit into my mind and did not drive me mad. So now you will float the stone, and put yourself out of yourself into the living rock, and take another mind into your own.

“Whose?”

That's your choice, Faith. You may take mine. Or you may take Adam Worthing's. Whichever will be most like you. Whichever you think least likely to destroy you.

“How can I know? I don't know either of you. Not really.”

That's why we float the stone. It's more than remembering someone else's memories. It's becoming someone else, and measuring his life against your own soul. If the person is too different front you, then you will die.

“How do you know? Who floated the stone and died before?”

Elijah. He was the first. When Adam ran away, when Adam murdered and ran away, Elijah floated the stone and searched for him. And found him. Young Adam was so monstrous that it killed the old man.

“But Father—didn't you say that you had floated the stone for Adam, too?”

No. Only for his children.

“And for me? Would you float the stone for me?”

Faith, I would do it for you if I thought that I would live.

“Do you think that you're so different from me, then? That I'm as monstrously evil as Jason's Son?”

I think that his memories can dwell in your heart better than mine can. I think that if you had a perfect memory of every act and every choice and every feeling I have had in my life, child, that it would drive you mad and you would never find your own self in the stone, and you would die.

“Then I'll take Adam into me. But I'm not a fool, Father. I know what this means. If I can
be
Adam Worthing, then I am not worthy, by your standard. And if I can't endure him, then I'll be justified, but unfortunately I'll also go mad and die.”

That's why the choice is left to you.

She took the memory of floating the stone from her father's mind: he opened the memory to her, so she could see. Then, wearing nothing between her and the naked stone, she lay down on it and did exactly what she remembered that her father did.

It was Father who worked on the stone, Father who knew how to make it flow—cold as water, smooth as water, so that she sank backward into the liquid stone and floated on the cold face of the world.

And as she lay there, letting herself seep into the stone, letting her memories flow away, the others guided her to Adam Worthing. They were gentle with Adam, so that he would not know what was being done. They could not be kind to her.

So Faith became Adam Worthing, from his childhood up, from the first terror in his cellar room at Worthing Inn, through each vicious act, each seizure of power, each undoing of other men and women, each slaughter on the battlefield, each massacre of innocents for the sheer joy of doing it.

And when it was done, and she had borne the weight of his terrible past as if it were her own, and it had not driven her mad, she wept with shame, and let herself flow back into herself, and wished that she had died upon the stone.

The others looked at her coldly and turned away. Only her father did not turn from her, and he was weeping. “I couldn't do it,” he said aloud.

In his unguarded mind she saw his failure: when it was clear that she could bear to be Adam Worthing, it was his duty to let the liquid stone solidify, and hold her there; to kill her, and keep her memories imprisoned in the rock, rather than to let her live and become another Adam in the world.

“It isn't true,” she said. “It isn't just. I can bear him, but I could bear you; too. I'm not like him, not wholly. I'm like him, too. Father, you won't regret it, that you let me live.”

But he did regret it. They all regretted it, until Faith could hardly bear the shame of it, that she was still alive. I am not like him, she said to herself, over and over. They're wrong about what the stone means.

They were not wrong, though. She knew it, deeper than all her silent protests, she knew that the judgment was just. It took her months of living as a pariah in her father's house, but at last she understood that, yes, all the malice of Adam's life lit easily into her heart, with room left, still. Room for more.

But where is it written, where was it said that I can't change?

The others were never glad to talk to her. They shared with her no tales of their work in healing all the wounds of Hux. But they also could not stop her from watching, from letting her mind wander through the city and see how each wound, each grief, fear was healed. This is how it's done, she saw; all my instincts were to break, but this is how the broken heart is made whole again.

And when she was confident of herself, she went to Adam Worthing.

She went to Adam Worthing, not in the mind, but in the flesh. She had kept her mind closed to the others; they did not know where she had gone. It hardly mattered—they would not miss her if she died, and as for any danger from Adam, she would not let him know where the others were, or that they even existed. But even if he did know, even if her act endangered everyone, she would do it. For she had taken Adam Worthing into herself, and knew where he was broken, and hoped to heal him, if it was in him to endure the healing.

She half expected them to follow her, to stop her, but when they didn't she realized bitterly that they were probably glad that she was gone. Down the West River to Linkeree, then by sea to Stipock City. She made her way easily from wharf to city, from city to castle, from castle to the palace on the red rock cliff overlooking the sea. She knew the words to say to get past every guard and every servant. Until she stood in the anteroom of the court of Jason's Son. She sat calmly and waited as the people came and went for audiences with the Son of God.

“You're too late,” said the tired-faced woman beside her.

“For what?” asked Faith.

“To stop him,” she said. “You should have come years ago.”

The woman was worn, and the elegant clothing could not hide the emaciation. She was dying.

“And he could heal you, if he would.”

“Healing isn't what he does.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “But I had what I had of him and it was better than the world gives.”

“Uwen,” said Faith, naming her.

“He knows you're coming,” said Uwen.

“Does he?”

“He's known for all these years. Always waiting. I saw it in him. I was good at watching. Always looking southward from Heaven City, or northward from here, toward the village he destroyed in the Forest of Waters. You come from there, don't you? You can tell me. I won't whisper a word.” She smiled. “He knows your heart already. He does that, you know. He knows your heart.”

So there was no surprise in her coming. It hardly mattered. She knew Adam better than Adam knew himself. She was not afraid of him. “I'll go in now,” she said to Uwen.

“Have you come to kill him?” asked Uwen.

“No.”

“Will he love me, when you're through?”

“You're dying, aren't you?”

Uwen shrugged.

Faith reached into her, found the sickness, and made her whole.

Uwen said nothing, just sat and stared at her hands. Faith got up and walked into the hall. The guards did not so much as think of stopping her. She saw to that.

She knelt before the white-haired Son of Jason on his throne. “I've been waiting for you,” Adam said.

“I didn't send word ahead. I think we've never met,” said Faith.

“She comes with eyes as blue as mine, as blue as my children's eyes, and when I look behind those eyes I see nothing. There was a man once who hid from me. I'd kill him if I could. I'll kill you too if I can.”

Behind her she heard the footsteps of the soldiers, the whisper of metal rising through the sheath.

She stilled the soldiers with their own memories of the fear of death.

“I know you,” she said to Jason's Son. She froze him with the memory of Uncle Matthew standing at the door, the image he had feared most, all his life—the man who could undo him, treat his power like the strength of a squirrel, all quickness but no force in it. And while he sat transfixed, she went into his memories and changed them.

Some things would be possible, and some would not. She could not change his ravening appetite for power, or the fear of failing that gnawed at him—that was deeper than memory, that was part of the shape of himself. But she could make him remember controlling those appetites and fears, refusing to be ruled by them. In his memory now he never killed, though he was tempted to; never seduced, never bullied, never tortured, though the opportunities had come. And when the blood was too thick and deep for her to scrub it out of Adam's memory, she gave him reasons why these acts were not sheer exercise of power. Reasons why each was necessary, why each was good, in the long run, for the people.