Read The Worthing Saga for Free Online

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.”
    And the sickle was complete. Father plunged it back in the fire, to let the iron know its true shape, and rubbed it on the hearthstone so it knew the earth, and would not offend at harvest time. Then he dipped it smoothly into the cistern, and the iron sang.
    “Still,” said Lared. He handed the whetstone to his father, to work an edge onto the iron.
    “Still what?”
    “Still. If they want to stay, how can you stop them?”
    Father turned sharply. “Do you think I'd let them stay from fear?”
    “No,” said Lared, abashed. “But there's the jewel. And the gold.”
    “It's a low sort of man who changes his mind for the hope of wealth. Who's to say what gold and jewels are worth, if things get worse upriver? Will gold bring Mama back from the grave! Will it make Clany's flesh hold to her bones? Will it give the old clerk sight? Or heal the iron-bitten foot?”
    “They've caused us no harm, Father, except that he reached out to protect me, when I sinned at his bidding.”
    Father grew holy, thinking of the name Lared had offended by saying. “That's the name of God,” said Father. “You're not supposed to learn it until you kiss the ice in your sixteenth winter.”
    Lared, too, grew solemn. “You would turn away one who comes teaching the name of God?”
    “The wicked can use God's name as well as God.”
    “How can we ever know, then, unless we try them? Or should we cast away all men who use the name of God, for fear they're blasphemers? What name will God use, then?”
    “Already you talk like a clerk,” said Father. “Already you want them here too much. I'm not afraid of pain, I'm not afraid of wealth, I'm not: even afraid of a man who blasphemes and think she does no harm. I'm afraid of how you want whatever it is they promised you.”
    “They promised me nothing!”
    “I'm afraid of how you'll change.”
    Lared laughed bitterly. “You don't much like the way I am. What difference does a difference in me make?”
    Father ran his finger along the sickle's edge. “Sharp,” he said. “I barely touched her, and she cut me a bit.” He showed the finger to Lared. There was a drop of blood on the finger. Father reached out and touched the bloody finger to Lared's right eyelid. Usually the rite was done with water, but it felt all the more powerful with blood. Lared shuddered—touch his left, and instead of a protection to Lared the rite would have been a fending, to drive Lared himself away. “I'll let them stay,” Father whispered. “But all your winter work must come first.”
    “Thank you,” Lared said softly. “I swear it'll do no harm, but end up serving God.”
    “All things end up serving God.” Father set down the sickle on the bench. “There's another ready for a handle maker. Blade's no good unless it fits somebody's hand.” He turned and looked down on Lared—they were near the same height, but always he looked down to see his son. “Whose hand were you made to fit, Lared? Never mine, God knows.”
    But Lared's thoughts were all on Jason and Justice, and the work they had for him. He spared no thought, not now, for his father's pain. “You'll not let Mother invent more work than last year, just to keep me from them?”
    Father laughed. “Nor will I.” Then he touched Lared's shoulder and looked gravely in his eyes. “Their eyes are the sky, he said. ”Beware of flying. It isn't the hunter's shot that kills the dove, but the fall to earth, they say.
    So except for Mother's brittle silences and sharp remarks, Lared was unhindered that winter. From the first, even before the snowfall, he and Jason were every day together, every where together. Jason had a language to learn, he said, and he could earn more of Lared's time if he helped him in his