The Worthing Saga (4 page)

“No, they're easy,” said Lared. “There are only a hundred ninety-eight letters, and thirteen ties, and seven bindings at the ends.”

They laughed again, and the man shook his head. Then he got an idea. “Jason,” he said, pointing to himself. “Jason. And the voice in Lared's mind said, Write.”

So he wrote:
J
and
es
, and
un
, and joined them to make it say
jesun
, and bound it to say, not name, but name of God. It was a dignity only offered to great rulers, but Lared did not hesitate to use it with this man. With Jason.

But apparently the man could understand somehow what the binding meant. He took the stick from Lared's hand and put the binding of God's name on the word of Abner, and put the common name binding on his own name.

An image came into Lared's mind, of a small man dressed in a strange and ugly costume, smiling with mocking amusement. Lared didn't like him. The voice in his mind said, Abner Doon.

“You knew him?” asked Lared. “The Unmaker of the Universe? The Breaker of Man? The Waker from the Sleep of Life?”

The man shook his head. Lared thought he meant that he did not know Abner Doon. How could he, after all, unless he was a devil, too? That thought crossed Lared's mind. Their powers were more than human; how did Lared know that they were good?

In answer came a soothing feeling, a warmth, a calm, and Lared shuddered. How could he doubt them? And yet, even deeper, he still asked himself, How can I not doubt them? They come too near to the Day of Pain.

Jason handed him the book again. Read, said the voice in his mind.

He understood only some of what he read. Making the sounds was easy, since he knew the alphabet. But many of the words were too hard for him. What did he know of starships and worlds and explorers and embassies? He thought that perhaps the two strangers would explain to him what the words meant.

We can't.

“Why not?” he asked.

Because the words mean nothing to us. What we understand is your understanding of them. What you don't know, we can't know.

“Then why don't you learn our language, if you're so wise?”

“Don't be fresh,” said Mother from the kitchen, where she was grinding the dried pease for the pot.

Lared was angry. She understood nothing of the conversation, but still could tell when Lared was doing something wrong. Jason reached out and touched him on the knee. Be calm. It's all right. The words weren't put in his head, but he understood them all the same, from the gentle hand, from the calm smile.

Jason will learn your language, said the voice in his mind. But Justice will not.

“Justice?” said Lared, not realizing at first that this was the woman's name.

She touched herself and echoed his word. “Justice,” she said. Her voice was uncertain and soft, as if little used. “Justice,” she said again. Then laughed, and said an incomprehensible word in a language Lared had never heard before.

That is my name, said the voice in his mind. Justice. Jason's name is mere sound, the same no matter what language you speak. But my name is the idea, and the sound of it changes A from language to language.

It made no sense to Lared. “A name's a name. It means you, and so what if it means something else besides?”

They looked at each other.

Tell us, are there words about any place named...

And Justice said a word: “Worthing.”

Lared tried out the name on his tongue. “Worthing,” he said. Then he wrote down the name in the dirt, so he would be sure to know the sign for it, if he met it in the book.

He did not notice that at the saying of the name Mother's eyebrows rose, and she slipped out of the kitchen without so much as an I'll-be-back.

He found Worthing at the end of the book. “It was believed for thousands of years that two of Doon's Arks had gone astray, or their colonies had failed. Indeed, if Rivethock's Ark resulted in a colony, it remains unfound to this day. The world called Worthing, however, from Worthing's Ark, was found at last, by a Discoverer IV-class ship in the Fifth Wave, whose geologer marked the planet as habitable—and then, to the shock of the crew, was inhabited.”

This time, where the words were hard, brief explanations often came into Lared's mind, using ideas that he was familiar with. Doon's Arks were huge starships equipped with everything that 334 passengers would need to start a world. A colony was a village in newly cleared land on a world without human beings. A Discoverer IV of the Fifth Wave was—a starship sent by the government to chart the inner reaches of the galaxy some five thousand years ago. Ageologer was a machine, or a group of machines, that looked at a world from far away and saw where lay all forests and oil and iron and farmland and ice and ocean and life.

And if we read at this rate we'll get nowhere, said the voice in his mind. The impatience on Justice's face matched the words, and for the first time it occurred to Lared that it might be only Justice who spoke to him. For Jason only smiled at whatever she silently said to him, and when he answered her it was in words from their strange language, spoken aloud.

“Who are you?” demanded Father.

He stood at the door that led into the kitchen shed, his strong arms and massive shoulders filling door, silhouetting him against the light from the kitchen tire.

“They're Jason and Justice,” said Sala.

“who are you?” asked Father again. “I'll not be answered by my children's voices.”

The words came into Lared's mind, and he spoke them. “You'll not be answered any other way. Don't blame us, Father— they only speak to me because they don't know another way. Jason plans to learn our language as soon as he can.”

“Who are you?” asked Father a third time. “You dared to cause my child to say the dark name, the hidden word, and him not yet sixteen.”

“What hidden name?” asked Lared.

Father could not force himself to say it. Instead he walked to where Lared had written the sign of it upon the ground, and scraped the mark away with his foot.

Jason laughed, and Justice sighed, and Lared spoke without waiting for them to give him words. “Father, I found the name
Worthing
in the old cleric's book. It's just the name of a world.”

Father slapped Lared sharply on the face. “There is a time and place for uttering the name, and that is not here.”

Lared could not help but cry out from the pain—he had no strategies for coping with this unhabitual distress. It was too cruel, that with the coming of pain the greatest danger of it should be, not from fire or water or beast, but from Father. So even after the first impact of the pain wore off, Lared could not keep himself from whimpering like a bee-stung dog.

Suddenly Jason slapped the table and jumped to his feet. Justice tried to hold him back, but he stammered out a few words that they could understand. “Name of my,” he said. “Name this mying be.”

Father squinted, as if seeing better would help him understand the twisted words. Lared translated for him. “I think he means that
his
name is—is
the
name.”

Jason nodded.

“I thought you said your name was Jason.”

“Name of my is Jason Worthing.”

“My name is Jason Worthing,” prompted Lared.

The moment Lared uttered
Worthing
, Father's hand snaked out to slap him again. But Jason was quicker, and caught the blacksmith's hand in mid-act.

“There's no man in Flat Harbor,” said Father, “who dares to match strength with me.”

Jason only smiled.

Father tried to move his hand again, but Jason tightened his fingers almost imperceptibly, and Father cried out in pain.

Justice too cried out as if the pain had touched her. The two of them babbled in angry language as Father held his wrist, gasping. When Father could speak again, he ignored them, too.

“I don't need them as guests, and I don't need you getting into forbidden things. They're going, and you won't have another thing to do with them until they're gone.”

Jason and Justice left off their argument and heard the end of his speech. As if to stop the blacksmith, Justice took from her clothing a thin bar of pure gold; she bent it to show its softness.

Father reached for the gold and took it. Between two fingers he folded the bar fiat, and with two hands folded it again, and tossed it against the front door. “This is my house, and this is my son, and we have no need of you.”

Then Father led Lared from the room, unfed and unhappy, to the forge where the fire already was growing hot.

Lared worked there all morning, hungry and angry, but not daring to do anything but what his father asked. They both knew that Lared hated the work at the forge, that he had no desire at all to learn the secrets of smithing. He did what he had to, just the way he bore his share in the field and no more. Usually that was enough for Father, but not today.

“There are things you'll learn from me,” Father shouted above the roar of the flames. “There are things no half-witted strangers are going to teach you!”

They aren't half-witted, Lared said silently. Unlike Justice, however, when he held his tongue his words went unremarked. It was one of the things he did best, holding his tongue.

“You're no good at smithing, I know that, you've got weak arms like your mother's father, narrow, shoulders. I haven't pushed you, have I?”

Lared shook his head.

“Pump harder.”

Lared bore down on the bellows, pumped faster even though his back ached.

“And in the fields, you're a decent hand, and if you aren't big enough yet fora man's load, you're good at mushrooms and herbs and I won't even be ashamed of you if you end up a swine herd. God help me, I'll even bear having my son be the goose boy.”

“I'll be no goose boy, Father.” Father often made things out worse than they really were, for effect.

“Better goose boy than a clerk! There's no work for a clerk in Flat Harbor, no need for one.”

“I'm not a clerk. I'm not good enough at numbers, and I don't know but half the words in the book.”

Father struck the iron so hard that it split, and he cast the piece that was in the tongs onto the stone floor, where it broke again. “Name of God, I don't want you not to be a clerk because you're not
good
enough! You're
good
enough to be a clerk! But I'd be ashamed to have at son of mine be no more useful than to scratch letters on leather all day long!”

Lared leaned on the bellows handle and studied his father. How has the coming of pain changed you? You're no more careful of your hands at the forge. You stand as close to the fire as ever, though all others who work near fire have taken to standing back far, and there's been a rash of calls for long strong sticks for spoons twice as long as anyone thought to want before. You haven't asked for longer tongs, though. So what has changed?

“If you become a clerk,” Father said, “then there'll be nothing for you but to leave Flat Harbor. Live in Endwater Havens, or Cleaving, somewhere far.”

Lared smiled bitterly. “It can't happen a day too soon for Mother.”

Father shrugged impatiently. “Don't be a fool. You just look too much like her father, that's all. She means no harm.”

“Sometimes,” Lared said, “I think the only one who has a use for me is Sala.” Until now. Until the strangers came.

“I have a use for you.”

“Do I pull bellows for you until you die? And afterward pull for whoever takes your place? Here's the truth, Father. I don't want to leave Flat Harbor. I don't want to be a clerk. Except maybe to read for a guest or two, especially late in the year, like now, with nothing to do but leather work and spinning and weaving and slaughter. Other men make up songs. You make up songs.”

Father picked up the wasted iron and put the pieces in the scrap pile. Another bar was heating in the forge. “Pull the bellows, Lareled.”

The affectionate name was Lared's answer. Father's anger was only temporary, and he'd not bar him from reading, when it didn't keep him from work. Lared sang as he pulled the bellows.

Father laughed. He had made up the song himself when the whole village gathered in the inn during the worst of last winter. It was an honor, to have a song remembered, especially by your gown son. Lared knew it would please his father, but there was no calculation in his singing. He
did
love his father, and wanted him to be glad, though he had no common ground with him, and was in no way like him.

Father sang another verse, one that Lared didn't like as well. But he laughed anyway, and this time he was calculating. For when the verse was over and the laughter done, Lared said, “Let them stay. Please.”

Father's expression darkened, and he pulled the bar from the fire and again began to beat it into a sickle. “They talk with your voice, Lared.”

“They speak in my mind,” Lared said. “Like”— and he hesitated before saying the childhood word—“angels.”

“If there are angels, why is the cemetery so full today?” Father asked.

“
Like
angels. There's no harm in it. They—”

“They what?”

They walk on water. “They mean no harm to us. They're willing to learn our language.”

“The man knows ways to cause pain. Why would an angel know ways to cause pain?”

There was no good reason. Before yesterday no one had known what real pain was. Yet Jason could reach out his hand and stop Elmo the Smith with as subtle agony. What sort of man would even want to know such things?

“They can put thoughts in your mind,” Father said. “How do you know they haven't put trust in your mind as well? And hope and love and anything else that they might use to destroy you? And us as well? Times are perilous now. Word is that upriver there was killing. Not just death, but killing yesterday. From such anger as had never been let out before. And here is a man who knows pain like I know the insides of iron.”