Out come the farmer folk who lived nearby,

  To find out what had caused the fog to fly—

  And at the same time do a little snoopin.

  They saw that the furrow went all anyhow,

  And they said, “If you think that’s plowin, boys, you’re daft!

  Straight as an arrow, that’s how a plow should go!”

  And the farmers mocked—oh, how the farmers laughed

  At that no-good plow.

  That sobered Alvin up, and Verily frowned.

  “Don’t you see that the plow, it cut the earth alone?

  We got no ox, we got no horse around!

  The plow’s alive, and we’ll tell you how it’s done!”

  But the farmers went their way, still mirthful merry,

  For they had nothin to learn from any fellow

  As young and ignorant as Al or Verry.

  And the plow just sat at the head of its crooked furrow,

  Hot and yellow.

  The rest of the tale—how they looked for the crystal city,

  How they crept to the dangerous heart of the holy hill,

  How they broke the cage of the girl who sang for rain,

  How they built the city of light from water and blood—

  Others have told that tale, and told it good.

  And besides, the girl you’re with is cruel and pretty,

  And the boy you’re settin by has a mischievous will.

  There’s better things to do than hear me again,

  So go on home.

  Poem completed in 1981

  South Bend Indiana

  Orson Scott Card

  Acknowledgments

  As the internet age was dawning, America Online aggressively marketed their gateway to the internet, though they hoped that besides coming to AOL for email, they would stay to take part in the content provided. Among that content was an AOL site called Hatrack River.

  Readers of the early volumes of The Tales of Alvin Maker were drawn to the site, then largely managed by my good friend and sometime collaborator, Kathryn Kidd. Participants would devise their own characters, along with their knacks and their backstory, and tell brief stories or conduct dialogues in their Hatrack River personas.

  The characters were many and very creative. And as they became more real, they started to work their way into the books as reasonably important characters. Any time a novelist gives a character a name, it makes that character loom larger in the reader’s mind. Throwaway characters are rarely named; for instance, you can call a character only by their job, like carriage driver, ship’s pilot, housekeeper. When they aren’t named, they may have dialogue in a scene or two, but the readers know that this nameless character is not going to amount to much in the story.

  So when personas from the Hatrack River community started showing up with names, it meant they were going to matter and, perhaps, be memorable.

  In Crystal City, in Nueva Barcelona we met Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel. These had been delightful characters in Hatrack River, and they became quite important to the story. But Papa Moose in particular, a character devised by Michael Sloan, also contributed heavily behind the scenes.

  I have never had the best memory, and, like many other novelists, I have sometimes begun to develop a storyline and then forgot about it, neglecting to bring it to fruition. Knowing I was going to write the final volume, Master Alvin, I was afraid that I would leave storylines dangling. So I asked Michael Sloan to reread the entire series and alert me to dangling threads. He did a superb job, and his report became an important element in my composition of this last volume. I did not find ways to involve all the unfulfilled storylines, but the fact that any of them were brought to fruition is owed to Papa Moose.

  He also pointed out inconsistencies and discontinuities, places where one book contradicts another. Not all could be resolved, but the ones that seemed important to me needed to be reconciled, if it were possible.

  Many others from the Hatrack River community have stayed in touch with us, even after Kathy Kidd passed away. Many times when I had a question about a character or “fact” from earlier books, I would ask the question online and get answers right away. At first I thought that the online community had extraordinary memories, and perhaps they do. But they also threw themselves into answering my queries with a generous sacrifice of time.

  Andrew Wahr, whose persona on Hatrack was named Hobbes, saw my question and decided it was his responsibility to get me the answer at once. He informed his English teacher that he had to leave class because Orson Scott Card needed his help. He went to the school library, plunged into the books, and gave me the answer the same day I asked. He was a great help on this and many other occasions. I hope that English teacher understood that these days, authors can be in close touch with their readers, and the readers, in their turn, can contribute to the content and continuity of the work.

  Another friend of ours was and is John Hansen, who created the character of John Binder. When I was deciding who should be in Carthage Jail with Alvin and Measure, it just seemed right that John Binder, who contributed so much to the harmony and unity of the Crystal City, should be one of the four—and that he should be the one to have memorized the words and the tune of “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief,” a song that moves me so much that I can’t sing it; I keep breaking down and falling silent. I knew I could trust John Binder with the singing of that song.

  Robert Davis, my new editor at Tor, after reading Master Alvin, sent us a note indicating that a certain chapter contained some pretty dark material, which seemed out of character for Alvin. Since I had written that chapter, I was inclined to resist his suggestion.

  My daughter, Emily Janice Rankin, has provided great help on my two most recent books, this one and the novel Reawakening, the sequel to Wakers. With Master Alvin, she was reading for continuity and realized that she felt just as Robert Davis had—that a certain event that I had written about at some length seemed out of character for Alvin. Yes, perhaps he would have acted that way, but it made Emily quite sad, and when my wife agreed with her and with Robert, I realized that the incident would have to go.

  This is a hard thing to do, not because I was emotionally connected to the events, but because removing a chapter leaves a chasm in the storyline. Emily helped me greatly by bridging that gap so I could keep my attention focused on later events. Emily wrote some new material to fill the gap, and pointed out the one place where I would have to write a lot of new stuff to connect the events. I followed her recommendations and the book is better for it.

  No, I’m not going to tell you where the chapter was cut. It was excised for good reason, so why should I defeat the purpose of cutting it by talking about it? Sometimes writers take a few steps in an unproductive direction, and when they retrace their steps and remove the offending passages, those pages are not part of the novel and never should have been. Perhaps some desperate graduate student decades from now will discover an archive copy of the draft prior to the excision and, after careful analysis, will conclude that I was absolutely right to remove the chapter in question. For now, you’ll have to take my word for it—whatever flaws this novel may contain, that is not one of them.

  Cyndie Munk Swindlehurst has repeatedly taken breaks from her legal career and her other work to help me by proofreading manuscripts that are sent to me by the publisher. Her incisive, logical mind is far more capable than mine to discover contradictions and omissions. When I worked as a professional proofreader, I learned the proofreaders’ law: No matter how careful and meticulous you are, some errors will remain uncorrected. But if that happens in this book, I can assure you that it is not Cyndie’s fault.

  Perhaps more than anyone else, I owe a great debt to Beth Meacham, the originating editor of this series. She believed in me and in this story, and protected each volume. Since I decided to write the first book in a frontier American vernacular voice, the first copy editor misunderstood her role, and tried to correct the style and language to comply with Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.

  Now, it happens that I regard The Elements of Style as the only book that deserves to be burnt in the public square, because it promulgates many of the stupidest fake rules that lead writers into horrible mistakes in their approach to writing. There are no needless words. English sentences often have to end in words that seem to be prepositions but in fact are part of compound verbs. One of the glories of English is that we have a two-word infinitive, and sometimes for clarity and euphony some words have to be inserted into the middle of the infinitive. This does not “split” the infinitive; it fills a gap in the infinitive. There is nothing wrong with “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

  When I got the copyedited manuscript, there were dozens of “corrections” on almost every page, since the editor had set herself the task of changing the voice of the entire book. I looked at the monstrously marked-up pages and despaired. I phoned Beth Meacham and said that it would take me longer to correct the edits than it had taken me to write the book.

  “Can’t you just write stet a lot?” she asked me.

  “Beth, even if I made a rubber stamp that said STET, I would exhaust three or four stamp pads of ink and have to ice down my shoulder and elbow every day for a week. I can’t do it, Beth,” I said. “Instead I’m going to send you a new, clean copy of my manuscript. And when you give it to a new copy editor, could you explain that I have worked professionally as a copy editor and I know the Chicago Manual of Style backward and forward? While I’m as prone to error as any other typist, many eyes have already scanned this manuscript and by the time it gets to you, there will be no more than one or two correctable errors every six pages or so. If the editor thinks she’s found a second error on the same page, chances are very good that it is not an error at all, but rather a deliberate choice of mine. Especially point out that I know all the rules about commas in formal writing, but my fiction is always written in a very oral style, and commas are placed for rhythm and not by rule. So don’t mess with my commas unless there’s a real problem with clarity.”

  In short, I take pride in the quality of my manuscripts and I don’t appreciate it when copy editors try to “fix” my style. When the manuscript of Seventh Son came back a second time, there were very, very few corrections; most pages had none at all. And the voice of my narrator stood strong and clear. Thanks to Beth, my novels have appeared as I wanted and needed them to be. She has earned her retirement many times over, since she has devoted decades to the protection of many authors’ work—but I miss working with her. If only I had finished this book a year earlier, she would still have been my editor for this last journey with Alvin Maker. But I can’t write novels any faster than I can figure out what is supposed to happen in them. And even if Beth’s hands were not on this last Alvin Maker book, her wisdom and influence are still felt on every page.

  Tor continues to be my primary publisher, a relationship that I hope continues. Certainly Tor is making a strong effort to bring out the definitive versions of all the books, so they will include novelettes, novellas, and short stories that I have written and published outside of the confines of the books. I’m especially happy to have “Yazoo Queen” restored to its place as the first chapter of Crystal City, and there are many other inclusions that mean a lot to me. This is not a trivial expense, to reprint the entire series with these additions incorporated. Only an extraordinarily committed publisher would go to this trouble and expense.

  Tom Doherty set out to create a new science fiction and fantasy publishing company at a time when everybody in the industry “knew” that there wasn’t room for another publisher in a crowded marketplace. Tom proved that there’s always room for a new publisher who knows how to publish and market books of high quality and large demand. Just as authors try to create works of fiction that will outlive them, so also publishers try to create institutions like Tor that will endure long past their founding. I think Tom Doherty has made history over and over with his achievements in acquiring and marketing good fiction. I am glad and grateful that he included so much of my work since he founded the company. Being published by Tor is as great an honor as any of the awards in the field. It’s nice to see “Hugo Winner” on the cover of a book. But to have “Tor” on the spine of book after book is an even grander prize.

  As always, I owe most to my wife, Kristine Allen Card, who maintains our lives in good order. Every marriage needs to have at least one grownup, and she is the designated adult in our marriage. My life is a good one because she has been a part of it since our first date in October of 1973.

  Not that our marriage has been one endless round of joy. There are two graves in the cemetery in American Fork, Utah, where our son Charlie Ben and our daughter Erin Louisa are remembered. Losing them broke my heart, and it has not healed. But those lost children are also part of everything I write. I miss them terribly, but they are always with us, and Kristine and I see the world differently and perhaps more clearly because they are in our memories.

  What I value in fiction, drama, and film are stories of good people doing good. The best stories are not centered around some kind of ersatz “conflict.” Rather, the essence of good storytelling is characters who are caught up in the struggle to achieve good ends despite all obstacles and opposition. To achieve victory, the hero does not have to crush his opponent; he does not have to drag the dead body of his enemy around the walls of Troy. It is enough that he has achieved his noble purposes. That is still the only happy ending, even if the hero had to give his life to bring it about.

  TOR BOOKS BY ORSON SCOTT CARD

  ENDER SAGA

  Ender’s Game

  Speaker for the Dead

  Xenocide

  Children of the Mind

  Ender in Exile

  The Last Shadow

  ENDER’S SHADOW SERIES

  Ender’s Shadow

  Shadow of the Hegemon

  Shadow Puppets

  Shadow of the Giant

  Shadows in Flight

  Children of the Fleet

  THE FIRST FORMIC WAR

  (with Aaron Johnston)

  Earth Unaware

  Earth Afire

  Earth Awakens

  THE SECOND FORMIC WAR

  (with Aaron Johnston)

  The Swarm

  The Hive

  ENDER NOVELLAS

  A War of Gifts

  First Meetings

  THE MITHERMAGES

  The Lost Gate

  The Gate Thief

  Gatefather

  THE TALES OF ALVIN MAKER

  Seventh Son

  Red Prophet

  Prentice Alvin

  Alvin Journeyman

  Heartfire

  The Crystal City

  Master Alvin

  HOMECOMING

  The Memory of Earth

  The Call of Earth

  The Ships of Earth

  Earthfall

  Earthborn

  WOMEN OF GENESIS

  Sarah

  Rebekah

  Rachel & Leah

  THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD

  Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

  Keeper of Dreams

  STAND-ALONE FICTION

  Invasive Procedures

  (with Aaron Johnston)

  Empire

  Hidden Empire

  The Folk of the Fringe

  Hart’s Hope

  Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

  Saints

  Songmaster

  Treason

  The Worthing Saga

  Wyrms

  Zanna’s Gift

  About the Author

  ORSON SCOTT CARD may be best known for his science fiction (including Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead), but, regretting the lack of fantasy novels set in the American past, he started The Tales of Alvin Maker, the epic of a powerful mage on the American frontier.

  Card was born in 1951 in Richland, Washington, and went to school in Santa Clara, California; Mesa, Arizona; and Provo, Utah. After serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in São Paulo, Brazil, he earned degrees at Brigham Young University and the University of Utah, worked as an editor of books and magazines, and wrote plays and audioplays. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. They are the parents of three adult children and grandparents of seven. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8: Lisbon

  Chapter 9: Blight

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Afterword

  Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow