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My brother had risen and followed my father to the sideboard "Then you don’t believe"-and I heard the caution in my brother’s voice, as if he feared my father would think hiic they use against us?" Almost defensively, he added, "I heard the tale froood god to the Specks He was passing through the Landing on his way back west He told me that the Specks drove him away, and one of their old women threatened that if we did not leave the us"
I, too, thought h at him or rebuke him But ic, just as you have, I’m sure Most of those stories are nonsense, son, or the foolish beliefs of a natural people Yet at the bottood who keeps us left pockets of strangeness and shadow in the world he inherited froh of Plainspeople sorcery to tell you that, yes, they have izards who can s float upon the wind and sardless of how the wind blows, and I arrote fly across a crowded tavern and wrap around the throat of a soldier who had insulted a izard’s woods left this world, they left bits of their ic behind for the folk who preferred to dwell in their dark rather than accept the good god’s light But bits of it are all that they have left Cold iron defeats and contains it Shoot a Plainsainst us The enerations, but in the end, it was just ainst the forces of civilization and technology We are coe, son Like it or not, all of us must move into it, or be churned into the ress The introduction of Shir bloodlines to our plow horses coupled with the new split-iron plows has doubled what a farmer can keep under cultivation Half of Old Thares has pipe drains now, and al Troven has put ulated the flow of trade on all the great rivers It has become quite the fashion to travel up the Soudana River to Canby and then enjoy the swift ride down on the elegant passenger jankships As travelers and tourists venture east, population will folloill beco, Rosse I intend that Widevale change with the et to the root of it, and it will be like shaking fever or throat rot For the one, it was powdered kenzer bark, for the other, gargling with gin Medicine has co way in the last twenty years Eventually a cure will be found for this Speck plague, or a way to avoid catching it Until then wea stray sock into a bugaboo under his cot, we’ll becohtened of it to look at it closely" Almost as an aside, he added, "I wish our hts of fancy Her es from beyond’ has done much to spur the popular interest in such nonsense"
I heard hter tread as he approached theHe spoke carefully, well aware that"I aht with science, not charuilt for the conditions that welcome disease must be laid at our own door Some say that our frontier towns have beco decreed that debtors and cri settlers I’ve heard that they are places of crime and vice and filth where e"
My father was silent for a time, and I’ve no doubt thata paternal rebuke But insteadhas erred on the side of iven the opportunity to begin anew, in a new land, all past sins and crimes erased, they would choose to build homes and raise families and leave their dirty ways behind Some do, perhaps, and perhaps those few are worth the trouble and expense of the coffles If one man in ten can rise above a sordid past, perhaps we should be willing to accept failure with the other nine as the price of saving the one After all, can we expect King Troven to succeed with scuod? What can one do with a man ill not reach out to save himself?"