Wyrms

Chapter 16. ANGEL

SKEN STRUGGLED TO UNTIE WILL, UNTIL HE SAID TO HER, "Wouldn't it be faster to cut it?"

"Oh, now he can talk. Why didn't you say anything before?" She sawed with her dull eating knife. "When I was tying you, why not a word about how you were innocent?"

"Because somebody wasn't innocent, and I didn't know who."

A cord finally separated. "It was Angel."

"I gathered that." His hands and feet came free, once the central knot was cut. He got to his feet quickly-he hadn't been tied long enough to become stiff.

Just as he reached the door, the boxmaster ran by, waving a cudgel and leading a group of highly irregular soldiers. Certainly not the official guard, just a spur-of-the-moment mob gathered to serve Unwyrm's purpose.

Real soldiers would be summoned soon enough. Will decided to make no effort to follow them. He knew Patience and the geblings well enough not to fear for their safety yet. And he had another matter to attend to.

"Is there enough of that cord left. Lady Sken, to bind this fellow before he wakes up?"

Sken stepped into the corridor and joined him beside Angel's unconscious body. "They left him?"

"Unwyrm was urging them on. He doesn't let his people have many distractions."

She prodded Angel with her toe. "Are you sure nobody's home? He's a crafty one."

"Poke him long enough and he's bound to wake up. I don't want his hands free when he does."

Sken tied him-Will knew from experience what an admirable job she could do-and together they carried the old man back into the box. Only then did Will pay any attention to Kristiano and Strings. The old gaunt was awake again.

"What happened to me?" asked Strings.

"Angel thought your story was getting too personal."

"Story? Oh, yes. Yes, my story. I tried to lie. I could feel how much Angel wanted me to lie."

"But you told the truth anyway?"

"The girl. She wanted the truth more than he wanted the lie. It was very distressing. I think I fainted."

"You were helped along."

"I knew him," said Strings. "I knew them all. But Angel-he was a good one, a bright one. When I took him up the mountain, there wasn't a trace of evil desire in him."

"I couldn't even guess what a gaunt thinks is evil," said Sken.

"We think the same as everyone else thinks," said the gaunt. "And like everyone else, our actions have no relation to our opinions of good and evil. I wasn't chosen accidentally as the guide for the Wise. I'm very clever."

"Your dance was beautiful."

"Clever. Merely clever. It's the best a gaunt can hope to achieve. Yes, Krisfiano?" He tousled the hair of the beautiful gauntling beside him. "I am the peak of gauntish ambition. But don't grieve; we are the ultimate innocents.

We are never the cause of our own actions. It allows us to reach a ripe old age untroubled by guilt."

Will thought he heard irony in the old gaunt's tone.

"You knew what you were leading them to?"

He shrugged eloquently. "They all wanted to go."

"I also want to go," said Will. "Will you take me?"

"He doesn't want me to take you," said Strings.

"And he makes the most urgent requests of me. I have never denied him."

"He isn't paying attention to us right now."

Strings looked thoughtful for a moment. "You're right.

It doesn't mean anything, though. He left me alone for ten years. And then three days ago he came to me again.

I've never hurried so fast. I was on the other side of Cranning, playing in a decent place, a palace filled with people of breeding and discernment. Then he made me leave everything and come here, to take a booking like this-I don't like working in this kind of place. The crowd has deplorable tastes. Why do you want me to keep talking?"

"I like the sound of your voice."

"No, you want more than that from me. You want to know-ah. Yes. Well, how can anyone know who a gaunt really is? Am I good or evil? Can you trust me or not? Can you tell him, Kristiano?"

Kristiano smiled. His face had the peaceful sweetness of a saint. Or an idiot.

"How strong are your passions, man? You have the size and strength of a horse, but that's nothing to me. It's the dimension of your lust, your gluttony, your ambition.

You can trust me if your desires are strong and never waver."

"In your list of desires, you mention only evil ones."

"In my experience, they're the ones with vigor. Except the fanatics. I once fell in with a Vigilant, when I was a child. He made me whip him until he bled. And one day such a religious fervor came over him that he died of it. Give me the lust of the sinners before the austerity of the holy men."

"What about your own desires?" asked Will. "You said you have them."

"Oh, I'm a man of passion, all passion, and no achievement.

I have done shameful things. I have led my brothers to the wyrm's maw. Unwyrm isn't kind to his servants.

He doesn't stop us from regretting what we do."

"Until regret is the taste in your mouth in the morning, and the last painful noise in your ears at night."

Will and Strings looked at Angel, who was awake now.

"I know what it is to be a gaunt," said Angel.

"Unwyrm makes gaunts of us all."

"You shut up," said Sken. "That little girl believed in you."

Will looked at her, and at the look on his face she fell silent.

"Except you," said Angel. "Except Will. Strings, can you believe it? Will is one of the Wise. Only he never came to Unwyrm. He was even here in Cranning once, and he never came to Unwyrm."

Will shook his head. "I never felt the Cranning call when I was here. It was only later. When I learned enough to be worth calling."

"I can't untie you," said Strings, regretfully. "This one is so much stronger."

Angel sighed. "Yes, very strong. I tried, you know.

All the way from Cranning to Lord Peace, I tried to disobey. I even tried to kill myself. And later, many times, I wanted to warn Peace, to tell him about the snake that he kept in his own house. But above all that came the desire to stay with Patience, to protect her, to bring her safely to him. I would have killed you if you had tried to sleep with her."

"And now? When he no longer pulls you?"

"Is he truly gone? No wonder I feel so empty. Like a head with an empty air bladder, nothing to say and no breath to say it. I can hardly remember who I was before.

But is he gone? I still love her."

"You tell me."

Angel smiled. "I'm an excellent liar. You can't believe me, especially when I'm most believable. I warn you. Kill me now. It's the only way you can trust me not to stab you in the back."

"There's another way," said Will. "I can keep you in front of me."

"He's gone from me," said Angel. "And I still love Patience. I was so afraid that I wouldn't, that-she's been my life. All I cared about. She's my child-as surely as her father or her mother, I caused her to be alive. I did. Unwyrm can't put knowledge in a human brain-I had to learn it, with my own mind, to understand it. What the Wise before me said could never be undone, I undid. And if I discovered that I had never cared for her, that it was all from Unwyrn, then what was my life, who was I?" Then, to Will's surprise, Angel began to weep. "And all the time, I hoped that I would hate her, that when he-took her from me, when he finally left my mind, I'd find that she was loathsome, and I hated her, and she deserved to be betrayed."

Then his weeping overpowered his speech.

Strings nodded wisely. "That's the way it is, for us.

We know what we're doing. We know it, and we don't want it, but we can't choose otherwise. We're very sad creatures, actually."

Sken looked at him with surprise. "You said you felt no guilt."

Strings sighed. "It makes people feel better when I tell them that. But it's a lie. We remember doing everything that we have done. We even remember wanting to do it.

How can we absolve ourselves of that?"

Kristiano began stroking Strings's forehead, his gentle fingers making a graceful dance on the old gaunt's face.

Will wondered how it would feel, to have those fingers touching him. And then, almost before he was aware of having the thought, Kristiano came to him and touched him, just as he had caressed Strings. Will felt ashamed;

Kristiano quickly moved away, cowered in a corner, hid his face.

"I'm sorry," said Will.

"Oh, Kristiano's very sensitive. And you're very powerful."

Strings smiled. "When you want something, when you decide something, why, it's decided, isn't it?"

Will shrugged.

"Where is she?" asked Angel.

"Gone. With the geblings. To face him."

"She can't. She doesn't understand-he's much stronger than he's ever shown her. Stronger than the geblings, stronger than she is. And with only three of them, his attention won't be divided, he'll have his way with them-"

"So," said Will. "That's why Strings is going to take me and Sken up the mountain."

"And me. You're a Vigilant, aren't you? For God's sake, then, let me redeem myself."

"You misunderstand the doctrine. It is Kristos who will redeem you."

"There'll be no Kristos! Her children will be monstrous parodies of human beings!"

"I understand that," he said. "But I'll never let you up the mountain with us. A moment ago you asked me to kill you. It was a good idea."

"No it wasn't," said Angel. "You need me."

"Unwyrm doesn't even need you now."

"You can't kill me. As a Vigilant, you gave up murder, didn't you?"

"I also vowed never to let an unbeliever use my belief against me."

"I can help!"

"Unwyrm knows all the paths into your brain. Angel.

How many years now? He has crawled through every passage in your skull and knows secret doors you've never found."

"Do you think so? I had my hands on her head and neck, I was ready, I could have made her sleep. I could have said she had fainted, and gone off with her and the geblings, and killed them both so easily, and we would have been free to go to him then. Patience and I-and he wanted me to do it, he made me want to do it." He smiled triumphantly. "I didn't. I didn't. I held on, I held out just long enough that she could put me to sleep. It wasn't long, Will, it wasn't a heroic resistance like yours has been, never to succumb to him. There'll be no epic poem about it. But Unwyrn could have won, right in that moment, and I resisted him just long enough." His voice became an intense whisper, a plea, a prayer. "I do love her. Will, and even if you kill me, you have to remember that I saved her, I did, I saved her-"

"He's stronger than he looks," said Strings.

"What do you know about it?" said Will. "All you can feel is desire. And what he lacks is what you lack-a will of his own."

"I know what I know," said Strings. "You tell me I'm wrong, but you want me to speak on. Because you do want to forgive him. I know you do, because I want to forgive him."

"That's his desire you're feeling."

"No," said Strings. "He wants me to kill him. And I would, too. I have my little ways."

"What's stopping you?" said Angel.

"This one." Strings pointed at Will. "He's a monster of compassion. He pities you."

"It's very hard to conduct a delicate bargaining session," said Will, "with you telling him what I really want."

"But you want me to tell the truth. I promise you, Will, that the minute you really want me to shut up, I will."

Will laughed. "For years I kept my silence and no one knew anything about me. Now my conscience has found a voice."

Angel moved uneasily, straining at his bonds.

"Don't try to get loose," said Sken. "It won't do you no good."

Angel slowly sat up and moved his hands out in front of him. He was completely untied. "Fools," he said.

"There was never a cord that could hold me, when I want not to be held."

Sken reached for her knife, but then she saw that Angel had it. "I swear I tied him," Sken protested.

"And my knife, how did he-"

"I could kill you all," said Angel. "But you see? I don't. Because I'm not what I was. He doesn't rule me now. I want to go with you, to have a chance to help her.

I love her more than any of you, and I've harmed her more and must repay her more. And if we all face him together, if we all-he won't be able to take command of me, then. I can stand with all of you, and fight him-"

"You couldn't answer for yourself for a second," said Will.

"I could. I'm stronger than you know."

"And so am I," said Will. As he wanted, Strings had moved behind Angel, silently, slowly. Now, at Will's unspoken wish, Strings flipped a loop out around Angel's neck and drew it close. "Drop the knife," said Will.

Angel dropped the knife. Kristiano picked it up. Strings removed his loop from around Angel's neck. Angel touched a spot where the loop had broken his skin. "No one has ever done that," Angel said. "No one has ever surprised me."

"I'm a dancer," said Strings. "I'm very good at this."

"I wasn't going to hurt anyone," said Angel. "I just wanted you to see that I could, but chose not to."

"And I just wanted to show you that you couldn't," said Will.

"You're all insane," said Sken. "I wish I was back on the river."

"Before you kill him," said Strings to Will, "would you let me ask him a question?"

Will nodded.

"I led so many to him, but none of the others has ever returned. Tell me-what did he do to the others?" His face was eager; then, suddenly, it wasn't. He looked at Will through tired eyes. "Can't you leave my desires alone, even now, Will? You have made it so I don't want to know the answer to that question. But I know that I want to want to know. As soon as you take away this compulsion, I'll want to know again, it will obsess me again as it does whenever I'm undistracted. So I beg you, give me back the desire of my heart, and let me want to know."

But Will did not think it would be good for Strings to know the fate of the humans he had led up the mountain.

If he was consumed with guilt, to a point where he could not function well, he might not be able to guide Will to Unwyrm's lair.

"Will," whispered Strings, "if you don't let me ask this question now, then you're no different from Unwyrm, changing people's desires to whatever is convenient for you."

It struck Will hard, to hear himself compared to Unwyrm. And Strings smiled. "Tell me. Angel," he said.

"You are sly," said Angel. "You have some tricks to manipulate human beings, too."

"We gaunts do have a will, you know. It's weak and not well-connected. It drys up like old cake and crumbles into dust whenever a human or a gebling or even, disgusting as it is, a dwelf desires something of us. But when we're alone, we don't just sit staring into space until another human comes. Alone, we have strength enough to think and scheme and, sometimes, act. My question, please, even though you don't want to tell it."

Will nodded to Angel. "I want to know, too."

"It's nothing-painful," said Angel. "He implants in them-in us-in me. He implanted in me a seed, a virus of some sort, I believe, that caused a crystal to grow within my brain. That's all. Most of them he kept there for a year or two, to give the crystal time to penetrate, to gather memories and wisdom from every part of the brain. Then he-took it out."

"He killed them, then," whispered Kristiano.

"No," said Angel. "No, they're humans, they're not from Imakulata. They can live without the mindstone.

The crystal steals their memories, but it leaves them shadows. They don't die when the crystal is gone. They just-forget. Everything. But it's still there, the shadows are there in their brains, and as long as they live, they stumble now and then over some of the old information, quite by chance. They may even find some of the pathways, recover some of their identity. I don't know. It doesn't kill them, though. He lets them all die a natural death."

"Prisoners, till they die?" asked Will.

"No. Not really prisoners. They love him."

"Thank you," said Strings. "I've done evil, but not as evil as I feared."

"Never evil," murmured Kristiano. He touched Strings's hand. "Good heart," the boyok whispered. The old gaunt smiled and nodded.

"You were different," said Will to Angel. "He didn't take your mindstone."

"He needed me to go back out into the world. To cause Patience to be born."

"What was your wisdom?" asked Will. "What was it you studied, that made him call you?"

"I studied new life. The way young organisms grow, from the genetic cells in the parent's body to the final maturation of the living child."

"Not just organisms. You studied humans."

"All there is to know about the growth of the human infant, fetus, embryo, egg, and sperm-I know it. I knew it then."

"He didn't take your mindstone-but you taught him."

Angel shook his head. "No."

"Yes," said Will. "If he wanted to gather information vital to destroying the human race, he'd have to know what you knew."

"Oh, yes," said Angel. "But I didn't teach him. I studied him. I examined the cells he had developed within himself. Ready to combine with the vigorous new human genes that Patience would bring to him. He wanted to be sure that he was ready. He wanted to know that his offspring would do all he wanted them to do."

"And what does he want them to do?"

"Oh, I don't mean their careers, or anything like that.

I only studied them to predict their growth patterns. He has done marvels. His incredible genetic molecule-it can change itself. His own body makes new hormones, and those pass into his gametes and cause them to change.

They lack the human component as an active feature. But they're there, anyway, though no human traits are dominant.

I was able to stimulate artificial growth, cloned life from his sperm alone. It never lived longer than a few minutes. I don't work miracles."

"What did you learn?"

"In those few minutes, they did what human zygotes do in six months. It's why they died. He had jiggered them so the individual cells reproduced at an incredible rate. My nutrient solution was too poor for them. I pumped it into them; they grew visibly in front of my eyes, and then they withered and died. It frightened him.

For a moment he made me want to kill myself."

"He's sterile, then?" asked Will. "His children will die in the womb?"

"No. Not now."

"What do you mean?"

"I told him what they needed. To grow slower, that's what I told him first, but he said no. He wants his children to be adults within hours, minutes-then they can eat his mindstone, you see, and know all that he knows, and walk out of the birthing place knowing everything."

"He talked to you?"

"I dreamed of it. He made me desire it, too. To see them grow so fast, and live. So I told him that his children must have a yolk. A source of material and energy so rich that they'll have enough to grow at that incredible rate. He can't have as many children as he would have, but they'll be adults within an hour. He's afraid for them, he knows he can't protect them. So from his own body he'll produce a very dense, very rich yolk, which he'll implant along with his sperm-"

"In Lady Patience."

"Do you believe in God? Pray for her, Vigilant."

"So the children will be few."

"The children had better never be conceived," said Angel. "Or they'll come down out of the mountain in an hour, able to communicate with each other as the wyrms always did. Not the feeble thing the geblings do. The ancient wyrms were one self. No matter how many bodies his mate brings forth, Unwyrm will have one child.

And if they do take over the earth, they'll be a single entity, knowing all things that each one knows. If any survive at all-"

"None will," said Will.

"I'll see to that," said Sken. "I'll see to the little monsters."

"Monsters?" said Angel. "Yes, you see to the monsters."

"Strings," said Will. "How fast can you get us up the mountain to Unwyrm's lair?"

"Outside Freetown, the Miserkorden have platforms that rise most of the way. If Unwyrm doesn't try to stop us, we could be there in twelve hours or so. If we leave here at dawn, we'll be there by nightfall."

"You can bet the others won't have it so easy," said Will. "It won't do to face Unwyrm unrested. Strings, is there somewhere here that we can sleep? Just for a few hours?"

"You've paid for this box," said Strings.

"I suppose we wouldn't be the first to stay all night."

"You'd be the first who slept." Strings smiled. Kristiano laughed.

"Sken," said Will, "I'll stand a two-hour watch. Then you wake for the next two."

"I had hoped for more sleep than that," she said.

"It's all we'll get. And you, Angel-you might as well sleep straight through. You may think you're an invincible assassin, but I've been a soldier in my day, and my body count is at least as high as yours."

"I told you, he isn't in me anymore."

"I just warned you in case he came back." Will smiled.

"You mean you're not going to kill him?" asked Sken.

"That's right," said Will.

"And will you take me with you?" asked Angel.

"I've known Unwyrm's call," said Will, "and I feel no contempt for those who succumb to it. God has some good purpose in mind for every soul that's born. You have a right to try to redeem yourself. But I promise you, I'll kill you in a moment if I see that Unwyrm has you again."

"I know," said Angel. "I want you to."

"He does," said Strings.

"Four hours," said Will. "At dawn we'll head for the top. We're not much of an army, but with God's help we'll be more than Unwyrm can handle."

"How do you know God doesn't want Unwyrm to win?" asked Angel.

"If he wins, we'll know God wanted him to." Will smiled. "Reality is the most perfect vision of God's will.

It's discovering God's will in advance that causes all the trouble."

"The fate of mankind is in the hands of a fanatic," said Angel. "As usual."