"I can't do it. You think I can hold back the whole Mizzippy? What do you think I am?"

"I think you a man, he want to know why he alive," said La Tia. "He want to know what his power be for. Now La Tia tell you, and you don't want to know after all!"

"I'm not Moses," said Alvin. "And you ain't the Lord."

"You want to sec a burning bush?" asked La Tia.

"No!" said Alvin. She might be able to conjure up some kind of fireworks, but he didn't want to see it. "And it wouldn't work to cross the river anyway. How would we feed the people on the far bank? It's swamp there, mud and snakes and gators and skeeters, just like here. Ain't no manna in the wilderness there. My friends among the reds are far to the north. It can't be done. Least of all by me."

"Most of all by you," said La Tia.

They stood there in silence for a moment.

Arthur Stuart spoke up. "Usted es tia de quien?"

"I don't speak no Spanish, boy," said La Tia. "They call me La Tia cause them Spanish people can't say my Ibo name."

"We don't say her name neither," said the smaller woman. "She be our Queen, and she say, Let my people go, so you do it, you."

"Hush, child," said La Tia. "You don't tell a man like this what to do. He already want to do it. So we help him find his courage. We tell him, go to the dock and there he find him hope this morning. There he find a brother like Moses did, make him brave, give him trouble."

"Oh good," said Alvin. "More trouble." But he knew that he would do her bidding-go to the dock, at least, and see what her prophecy might mean.

"Tonight at first dark, there be fog," said La Tia. "You make fog, everybody know to come."

"Come where?" said Alvin. "Don't do it. We can't cross the river."

"We leave this place one way," said La Tia, "or we leave it another, we."

As they hurried away, with blacks watching them on either hand, Arthur Stuart asked, "She mean what I thought she meant?"

"They're going to leave or they're going to die trying," said Alvin. "And I can't say they're wrong. Something ugly's building up in this city. They were itching for war before this yellow fever. Steve Austin's been gathering men who like to fight. And there's no shortage of others who'll fight when they're afraid. They all mean to have some killing, and La Tia's right. There's no staying here, not for any of the people they might turn on. If I find a way to get Papa Moose and his family out of Barcy, they'll turn on the free blacks or the French."

"How about a hurricane? You done a flood to stop the slave revolt in Camelot, but I think this time you could do it with wind and rain," said Arthur Stuart.

"You don't know what you're asking," said Alvin. "A bad blow in this place, and we'd kill the very folks we ought to save."

Arthur Stuart looked around him. "Oh," he said. "I guess they're all pretty much on low ground."

"Reckon so."

White faces watched them from the windows of poor shacks in Frenchtown, too. La Tia's words had gone out already. They were all looking to Alvin to save them, and he didn't know how.

Story of my life, thought Alvin. Expectations built up all around me, but I got neither the power nor the wisdom to fulfil any of them. I can make a man's knife disappear and I can melt the chains off a bunch of slaves but it's a drop of blood in a bucket of water, you can't even find it, let alone draw it out again.

Drop of blood in a bucket of water.

He remembered how Tenskwa-Tawa made a whirlwind on a lake, put his blood into the waterspout, and saw the future in the walls of it as he and Alvin rose up in the air inside.

He remembered that it was in the visions inside that column of swilling water that he saw the Crystal City for the first time. Was it something in the distant past, or something in the future? What mattered was not that dream of what might have been. It was the process by which Tenskwa-Tawa shaped the water to the form he wanted, and held it there, seeming to whirl at great speed, but really holding absolutely still.

Blood in the water, and a whirlwind, and walls as clear and smooth as glass.

5

Crystal Ball

LONG BEFORE HE reached the dock, Alvin began to scan the heartfires of the throngs of people ahead of him. He could not see into them the way Margaret could, knowing things about them, their past, their future. But he could see whose heartfire burned bright, and whose merely smoldered hot and dark; who was strong and who was weak, who fearful and who courageous.

There were many that he recognized, having been in town for so many weeks. He easily found Steve Austin and Jim Bowie, not together at the moment, and not really much alike. He knew Austin was a dreamer, Bowie a killer. The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that others will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.

But soon his reflections on Austin and Bowie were stopped cold by a bright familiar heartfire that was just about the last one he expected-or wanted-to find here in Barcy.

His younger brother Calvin.

Calvin had been the closest companion of Alvin's childhood. They had been inseparable, and whatever Alvin did, Calvin had to try. Alvin, for his part, rarely succumbed to the temptation to tease his brother, but instead included him and watched over him.

What neither had counted on was Calvin's jealousy. He, too, was a seventh son of a seventh son-though Calvin was seventh only because the firstborn, Vigor, had died in crossing the river Hatrack on the very day, in the very hour that Alvin was born. So whatever gifts were conferred by that powerful position of birth, Calvin's were never as great as Alvin's.

But to have a knack that was less than Alvin's was no great disappointment, surely-most human beings suffered from the same deficiency. And Calvin's were remarkable enough.

The problem was that Calvin had never worked at his knack. He had expected to be able to do whatever Alvin did, and when he couldn't, he grew sullen and angry. Angry at Alvin, which was ridiculous and unfair, Alvin thought. And said.

Calvin didn't have much of an ear for argument or criticism. He couldn't bear it, and avoided it, and so the brothers who once had been close had spent the last few years with little contact. It didn't help that Margaret disliked Calvin. Or perhaps not that-perhaps she merely feared him, and didn't want him to be near Alvin.

And yet here Calvin was. The coincidence was too pointed. Calvin had probably been sent here. And the only person likely to do such a sending was Margaret. Had she decided that Calvin's presence was actually good for Alvin right now? More likely she through it necessary to accomplish whatever her purpose was.

As he drew nearer to the dock, Alvin felt the moment when Calvin noticed his heartfire. There was a quickening in his heart. The old love still burned there. Calvin might be annoying, disappointing, and sometimes even a bit frightening. He might have done some dark deeds that made his heartfire seem hooded and flickery sometimes. But he was still that young boy that Alvin delighted in through the best hours of his childhood, before he understood the dark enemy that sought his life.

Before Calvin began to be seduced by that same enemy.

So Alvin's pace quickened through the crowded streets, and he jostled people now and then, though none thought to challenge him once they saw his height and the size of his blacksmith's shoulders.

Behind him Arthur Stuart trotted to keep up. "What is it? What's happening?"

And then they emerged from the street and saw the endless row of ships and riverboats tied up along the dock, the stevedores loading and unloading, the cranes lifting and lowering, the passengers milling about-few arriving, many leaving-the vendors shouting and pushing, the thieves and whores skulking and strutting, and in the midst of them all, standing alone and gnawing on a baguette, was Calvin.