Wyrms

Chapter 17. THE HOUSE OF THE WISE

"YOU SHOULD HAVE GOT MORE EXERCISE ON THE BOAT," said Ruin.

Patience could hardly speak for panting; Reck was doing scarcely better. Only Ruin seemed tireless as they ran along the narrow street.

Despite Ruin's greater endurance, it was Patience who had chosen their route so far, dodging among the buildings, climbing over roofs and scrambling up ladders and trellises. Reck and Ruin had little experience with urban scenery; they had no sense of where blind alleys might lead, or what buildings could serve as inadvertent highways to the next level. Patience, however, had spent years climbing over, under, and through the many palaces and public buildings of King's Hill, which in some areas was as densely populated and overbuilt as Cranning.

The soldiers were shouting behind them, but a curve in the road that skirted a jut in the cliff's face hid them from the soldiers' view. Patience saw an open gate into a small garden on the cliff side of the road. She quickly scanned the area for possible escape routes. The garden was beside a two-story house, which led upward to a stone retaining wall built against the cliff face. The wall no doubt supported a road on the next level up. A sewer pipe protruded a couple of meters below the lip of the retaining wall; to avoid having the waste from above pollute them, the builders on this level had connected it to a thick masonry drainpipe that carried the wastewater down to a collector barrel. Until now, there had always been ladders or stairs or elevators connecting the different levels, but apparently these two states were feuding, and the sewer connection was the best they had seen so far. To Patience, it looked like a highway to safety.

The problem was that during the climb they would be hopelessly exposed. But if they hid in the garden, the soldiers might pass them by. It would give them a few moments until Unwyrm realized what had happened and began to guide them back. Powerful as Unwyrm was, he couldn't see through his minions' eyes, or even understand their conscious thoughts. He could only shove them in roughly the direction he wanted them to go, by making them want desperately to go that way. It gave Patience some time, some room to maneuver; it was the only reason Reck and Ruin had not yet been killed, or Patience separated from them.

All this thought took only a moment; Patience drew the other two through the garden gate. It had been open slightly, jammed in place by debris and built-up dirt that showed that the owner never moved it. Patience left it undisturbed. She had the other two move well into the garden, behind some barrels, out of sight. She waited near the entrance, her loop in hand. Only one person at a time could get through the gate. With luck, though, no one would try.

They heard the soldiers run by. Their captain was shouting orders to them. Then there was silence, except for their distant running footsteps as they ran farther and farther away.

Patience turned to leave the gate and join the geblings, but Ruin was waving to her frantically: get back, get back. She turned around just as a soldier, his sword leading, stepped through the gate. It was a reflex, with no thought at all, to lariat his head with the loop and snap it tight. By chance the loop fell right where cartilage connected two vertebrae of his neck; the force and speed of her attack were so great that the loop gave only a moment's hesitation in cutting right through the spine.

The man's head twisted and spun off his shoulders; both his own forward movement and the pull of the loop made the head tumble toward her, striking her chin and rolling down across her chest.

Angel said I couldn't do this, she thought. Said I couldn't cut off a man's head with a single pass of the loop.

And at the same time, she thought: The blood will never wash out of this gown.

The soldier's body still stumbled forward, his arms reaching out to break his fall. Then the last instructions of the head to the body were exhausted; the body collapsed.

Patience quickly dragged the body inside the gate, where it couldn't be seen from outside. Then she put the head back on the neck and propped it in place with rocks and a small keg. Let them not see at once that he was dead. It might be a useless gesture, but Angel had taught her to do that, since it usually bought more time than it cost; and because the person who discovered the body was the one whose action would make the head separate from the neck, it was all the more horrifying-and therefore demoralizing.

Ruin and Reck had already guessed the next move, and were climbing up to the roof of the house. After climbing dozens of similar buildings this morning, they had mastered the basic routine. They stayed behind chimneys and did their best to be invisible from the street.

Patience quickly joined them-she was a more practiced climber than either of them. In moments she was leading the way again.

There was a boy, about ten years old, working on the roof. He had a hammer, which he had been using to repair shingles. At the moment, however, he had a murderous glint in his eye. Unwyrm was in him, and all he wanted was to use his hammer to stop them. Patience knew she could get by him; already his gaze went past her, as he looked with loathing on the geblings behind her.

"I don't want to kill you," said Patience.

"Go back," he said to the geblings. "Go back, you filth!"

Behind her, Reck fitted an arrow to her bow.

"He's a child!" Patience shouted. "He can't help himself!"

"Neither can I," said Reck.

Before Reck could get off a shot, Patience kicked out, catching the boy in the belly and knocking the wind out of him. He fell back against the stone wall of the cliff face behind him. He didn't drop the hammer. So she had to do it again, and this time she could feel ribs break.

"Live!" she shouted at the boy. "Live and forgive me!"

Then she ran on, leading the geblings to the base of the sewer line.

"All Unwyrm needs to do to defeat you is send an army of children," said Ruin. "Save your compassion for a time when we're not fighting to survive."

"Shut up. Ruin," said Reck. Then she pushed on the sewer pipe. It wobbled. "We're supposed to climb this? It's pottery. It'll break."

"The frame is wooden," said Patience. "And there are gaps in the stone wall. Easy." She proved it by climbing up beside the sewer pipe, using only the crevices in the stonework. Reck and Ruin scrambled up behind her.

Shouts below; the soldiers had come back, and Patience and the geblings were clearly visible now. There was no possibility of hiding; they were as visible as roaches on a whitewashed wall, and could not scurry nearly as fast. Patience knew the only escape was to climb as quickly as possible, getting higher and harder to hit before the soldiers came within bowshot.

"Maybe I could get some from here," Reck said. The gebling woman was obviously frustrated at not having been able to use her weapon all day.

"If you killed five, there'd still be fifteen shooting at us," said Patience.

She reached the place where the sewer pipe stuck out from the stone wall. Unfortunately, the wall was newer here; it had not weathered as many years, and there were no crevices to which she could trust her weight. Using the last of the cracks below the sewer line, she was able to get up on top of the pipe. It was a precarious balance, not helped at all by the fact that the pipe was not firmly cemented in place; it wiggled slightly. Her face pressed against the stone, she carefully raised her arms above her head.

It occurred to her that if she really wanted to thwart Unwyrm, she had only to lean backward just a little, and it would be over. But as soon as she felt that desire, she was filled with a desperate urge to survive. Her fingers touched the top of the wall, with a few inches to spare.

The stones were firm; she began to lift herself. It was harder than hoisting herself onto a tree branch; she couldn't swing front-to-back in order to give herself momentum.

But slowly, with growing pain in her arms, she was able to lift herself till the wall was at waist height; then she toppled over to safety beyond the wall.

On this side, the road was half a meter below the level of the wall, so that the wall formed a sturdy curb to keep carts from toppling over the edge. Almost as soon as she was behind the wall, the arrows started flying from below.

Of course Unwyrm hadn't been willing to let anyone shoot when there was a chance of hurting her. Now, though, only the geblings clung to the wall, high and difficult to shoot, but open targets nonetheless. A chance arrow was bound to hit one of them sooner or later.

"I can't reach!" shouted Ruin.

Of course. The shorter geblings couldn't possibly climb as she had done. And she doubted she had the strength left in her arms to reach over and pull him up.

At the same moment, Unwyrm increased the urgency of the Cranning call. Leave them. She felt a sudden revulsion for the geblings. Filthy creatures, hairy and crude, imitating human beings but planning only to betray and kill her. It took all her strength not to do as she desired, to run from the wall and proceed alone to where Unwyrm waited, her lover, her friend.

She clung to the memory of Will's voice, telling her that her desires were not herself. She pictured the passions that Unwyrm sent as though they stood outside her, while her passionless self remained inside the machine of her body, making it do what it so desperately desired not to do.

She pulled her gown off over her head and knotted it to her cloak. Then, clad only in her chemise, with a cold wind whipping along the road, she sat with her feet braced against the wall, passed the cloak behind her back, and flipped the gown over the wall. She held the knot in her left hand, the other end of the cloak in her right; the friction of the cloth against her back would allow her to support far more weight on the gown than her arms could have managed alone.

"I'm supposed to climb this?" shouted Ruin.

"Unless you can fly!" she shouted back. Unwyrm raged at her, tore at her in her mind, but she held, despite the impulse to let go, to let the gebling fall. I will do what I decide to do, she said silently, not what I want to do, and she felt the emotional part of herself become smaller, recede as if it were rushing away from her. This is Will, she realized. This is his silence, his strength, his wisdom, that he can send away all his feelings when he doesn't want them.

The cloth of the gown gave and tore slightly, then more, but in a moment Ruin scrambled over the wall.

Then he leaned over and shouted encouragement to Reck.

Suddenly there was a cry from the other side.

"She's hit," said Ruin. He shouted, "It's nothing, it barely hurt you, come on, come on!"

From the weight on the makeshift ladder. Patience knew that Reck was climbing now. Ruin leaned over, caught his sister under the arm, and helped pull her up.

The arrow protruded from her left thigh, but Ruin was right-the head had not buried itself, and he easily pulled it out. Reck was gasping, her eyes wide with terror.

"Never," she said. "I could never stand heights."

"And you think of Cranning as home?" asked Patience.

She was examining her gown. It was shredded where it had scraped on the wall. It pulled apart in her hands. "I'm glad there aren't three of you. The third one would have fallen."

She unknotted the cloak from the gown. A spent arrow dropped beside her. She flipped it back over the wall.

"Hope it lands in someone's eye."

Ruin was looking at her. Studying her. "Why didn't you go off and leave us?"

"I thought of it," she said.

"I know-we get the shadow of what he says to you."

"Well, if I'm going to be a bride, I need a wedding party. Have to have you along." It was a bitter joke. She wrapped the cloak around her waist to protect her legs from the cold wind that whistled down the unprotected road. "I also need a warm fire."

"At least we don't have to run for a few moments."

Reck tried out her injured leg. "Hurts," she said.

Ruin looked around. "If we find the right herb-"

"They say everything that grows anywhere grows in Cranning," said Reck.

"Somewhere in Cranning," said Ruin.

"There are trees that way," said Patience. "And if we're lucky, we won't run into anybody that Unwyrm can set to chasing us."

The houses, which were several streets deep for a while, thinned out and finally gave way to gardens and orchards. Soon they found themselves on a road that led along the rim of a large flat orchard area. The trees were stunted, for only dwarf trees could live at such an altitude.

Ruin wandered among the trees, which had long since lost leaf and fruit; finally he called to Reck and jammed a furry leaf against her wound.

"We can't rest here for long," Reck said, holding the leaf in place. "He'll have someone after us soon."

"I've never worked so hard in my life," said Patience.

"And I'm so tired."

"We haven't slept since we left the boat," said Ruin.

"But Unwyrm couldn't be happier. We've got to sleep sometime."

"Now," said Patience.

"Not now," said Reck. "We have to get higher.

Where there's no human or gebling to send after us."

Patience could see heavy clouds moving in from the west, at their level. "There'll be fog. We can hide in the fog."

"It won't be fog, it'll be snow," said Ruin. "We need shelter. And we need to get higher."

"Can't we use the tunnels yet?" asked Patience. Tunnels would be shelter and a passage to Unwyrm that they could follow easily.

"Oh, yes, of course," said Reck. "But the entrances are pretty rare up this high. We're nearly at the top of the inhabited area now. We'll just have to find another way up."

The herb acted quickly, taking away enough of Reek's pain that she could keep up, though she kept losing blood in a thin trickle as a scab formed and broke, formed and broke. Finally they found a stairway along the surface of the steep and polished wall that led up to the next level.

The gate at the bottom was wide open. The gate at the top was less cooperative.

"They could at least have had the decency to lock the gate at the bottom, too," said Reck.

But Patience had been trained as a diplomat, and among his other lessons. Angel had taught her that a simple lock like this meant that the owner wasn't really serious about wanting privacy. Using a short stick and a dart, she had it open in a few moments.

They emerged in another garden, this time without trees. Behind the garden Skyfoot rose steeply again. This time, however, it was no polished wall. It was the raw mountain, with a few caverns yawning in its face. They had not seen natural rock like this since they reached Cranning. It looked as though no human hand had ever cut into it.

"Is this the top?" asked Patience.

Reck shook her head. "The top is a glacier, but the city may not go any higher than this. At this point, anyway."

"Do you know where we are?"

"I would if I could stand in that cave," said Ruin.

They began to trot toward it, between two low hedges that seemed to lead in that general direction. Then the clouds moved in, and a few seconds later they couldn't see at all.

They stopped at once and touched each other, held hands so they wouldn't be separated.

"You're cold, Heptarch," said Reck. "You're trembling."

"She doesn't have fur," said Ruin. "We'll have to hold her until the cloud passes."

"He doesn't want me to wait," murmured Patience.

"He's waited so long already."

They lay on the ground. Reck in front of her, Ruin behind, shielding her as best they could from the snow that now fell heavily from within the cloud.

"Are you all right?" Reck asked her once.

"All I can think about," said Patience, trembling, "is how much I want him." Then she laughed slightly. "All I can think about is sleep."

They held her tighter, and in the warmth of the geblings' embrace she slept.

The cloud was gone and the stars were out, but the snow half-covered them and the air was thin. Reck felt the wound in her thigh throbbing. The pain was not intense, but it had been enough to wake her. Reck felt no breath on her back from the human girl that slept behind her. She called her brother silently.

Ruin opened one eye and looked at her.

"How is she?" Reek whispered.

"She's weak. But then, I think he wants her weak."

"The caves won't help much. They're colder than outside."

"Stand up and see if there are any lights," said Ruin.

"I'll hold her."

Reck pulled herself away from the sleeping human.

There were some lights twinkling far away. A long walk in the darkness.

"A long way," said Reck. "But we can't go for help.

So we'll have to take her, cold as it is." Reck knelt and stroked Patience's cold bare arm, then shook her lightly.

"She won't wake up."

As if in answer. Reck suddenly felt what she had not felt in all the time they had been with Patience: the repulsion of Unwyrm. But here, so close to his lair, it came with such power that she could not breathe. She cried out with the pain of it. "We're too close to him!" she cried. With Patience asleep, Unwyrm could focus on them, on pushing them away.

"Wake her!" Ruin gasped.

Reck hardly heard him. She could hardly think of anything at all now except her urgent need to run to the wall of the garden and throw herself over the cliff, downward, all the way through the air down to the water at the base of Skyfoot, to sink into Cranwater. She got up and started staggering toward the wall.

"No!" screamed Ruin. He clutched at her feet. Strong as the repulsion was, he was more practiced at resisting it; her wound had weakened her a little, too, and so he held on to her. "Wake up, damn you!" he screamed at Patience. "Wake up, so he'll have to call you again!"

In answer, Patience began to tremble from the cold.

She whimpered. She called her father softly. She did not wake up.

"Let go of me!" shouted Reck. "Let me fly!"

"He's trying to kill us!" cried Ruin, though he, too, felt the need to leap.

"What is it!" called someone in the distance.

"Where are you, ta-dee, ta-doo!" sang someone else.

"It's kickety cold!" cried someone else. Obviously the group was in a good mood, whoever they were.

"Here!" shouted Ruin. "Help!"

"Let go of me!" cried Reck.

The would-be rescuers bounded up to them. Ruin saw only that they were humans. "Let go of her!" said one of them. "Help him," said another.

They were old, and they sounded either drunk or stupid. Ruin doubted they could hold Reck if she wanted to get away. There was only one hope. "Wake up the one that's lying there! She's lying there, the girl in the snow-wake her up!"

"Look at this! She's not very warmly dressed-"

"In the snow-that's not very wise."

"Good thing we came. We know what's what."

They pulled Patience upright.

"Slap her!" Ruin shouted.

He heard several slaps. Then the sound of Patience crying. "Stop it," she said.

And suddenly the need to die faded. Reck stopped struggling.

"Take this frozen young thing into the house-"

"No," said Ruin. "Not without us! Keep her near us-"

"Do we want geblings?"

"Oh, they're quite all right. This is a gebling city, after all. Very nice geblings."

"Yes. Keep us together," said Ruin.

Many hands lifted him, helped him stand. They were carrying Reck, who was too exhausted to walk. Patience walked ahead of them, murmuring, "I'm coming, I'm coming, this isn't the way-"

"Of course it's the way. We know the way, don't we? Isn't this the way?"

Fires at both ends of the long, low room kept it almost hot. Ruin and Reck sat on either side of Patience, holding her hands as they faced the fire. The old men surrounded them, commenting inanely.

Patience tried to ignore them. She was worried about how they could go on from here. The snowstorm was none of Unwyrm's doing, of course. But he had been able to use it well enough. And now she was afraid to sleep, for fear that Reck and Ruin could be made to kill themselves or run away while she wasn't there to protect them. It was so complicated-they needed her to protect them so they could get to Unwyrm; she needed them to kill Unwyrm before he could mate with her. And Unwyrm was too strong, they were no match for him. No one was a match for him.

"No," said Reck.

"Is he doing it to you, too?" asked Ruin.

"Despair. We can't do it," said Reck.

Patience nodded.

The old men changed their babbling a little. "What are these little ones talking about? Buck up, children, don't despair. This is a happy place, don't look so mournful. Maybe a song, what?"

A few of the old men began a song, but since no one could remember the lyrics, it soon petered out.

"We need Will," said Reck.

"What for?" asked Ruin. "There's nothing to plow here, and Angel's the only one of our party who's been this high before."

"We need him," said Reck again.

It was Patience who told him why. "We've been blown by the wind that Unwyrm can blow, and it's too much weather for us. We need the man who has never bowed to Unwyrm."

"Unwyrm!" shouted one old man, and the others took up the cry. "Unwyrm! Unwyrm!"

Patience had been trying to ignore the old men till now. "You know about him?"

"Oh, we're old friends!"

"We came here to visit him, and he lets us stay as long as we like."

"No one ever goes home."

"Till they die, of course. Lots've done that."

"We all will, you know."

"Did Unwyrm invite you, too?"

Bald and gray and white-haired heads bobbed up and down around them. Like little children, they could hardly stand still. Their obvious senility had lulled Patience.

Now she began to remember that she had followed a path that others had walked before. "Yes," she said. "Unwyrm invited us. But we got lost in the snow. Can you tell us where he is?"

"Behind the golden door," said one. The others nodded solemnly. "But you can't go all at once. Only one at a time."

"He wants us all at once," said Reck.

"Liar liar," said one of the men.

Patience glared at Reck, as if to tell her, I'm the diplomat and you're the recluse. Leave this to me. But in fact Patience had no idea how to deal with these men.

They seemed harmless enough. Still, they knew Unwyrm and Unwyrm knew them, and they might have strength enough to make things difficult.

"Right now we have to rest," said Patience.

"No tricks," said the youngest of them, a man whose hair had not yet turned white, though his plump face was sagging badly.

"You," said Patience, "sir, could I know your name?"

"Trades," said the man. "You tell us first."

"My name is Patience," she said.

"Patience, you shouldn't walk around with such thin clothing in snowstorms." Then he giggled as if his advice had been a masterpiece of wit.

"And your name."

"I cheated," he said. "I don't have a name."

"I thought you said no tricks."

He looked crestfallen. "But Unwyrm took our names and he won't give them back."

Patience wasn't sure what game they were playing, but she tried to play along anyway. "You must be very angry, then, to have lost your name."

"Oh, no."

"Not at all."

"Who needs a name?"

"We're very happy."

"We have everything we need."

"Cause we don't need anything." This last was said by the youngest one. He was nodding wisely, like a child. But his eyes were no child's eyes. They were heavy with sadness and loss.

It occurred to Patience that these men, for all their cheerful babbling, might indeed be trying to communicate.

We have everything we need because we don't need anything. Therefore we have nothing. She began to pry, as delicately as she could.

"What other good things has Unwyrm done for you?" she asked.

"Oh, he takes away our worries."

"We never worry about a thing-"

Suddenly Ruin interrupted. "Makes me sick," he said.

The men fell silent.

Patience looked at him and smiled with murder in her eyes. "Maybe Unwyrm will help you feel better for the next few minutes, so you won't feel obliged to say anything."

Ruin got the hint and returned to glowering at the fire.

"What did he do with your worries?" asked Patience.

"Took them all away."

"Took them out of our heads."

"Put them into his own head."

"No more worries about ..." But he didn't finish his sentence. They all waited stupidly for someone else to speak.

"What did you worry about?" asked Patience.

"Old bones," said one. "But I'm very sleepy."

"Got to sleep," said another.

"Oh my. About to yawn."

"Goodnight."

The youngest man also yawned, but he leaned close to Patience, smiled, and whispered, "The capacity of long genetic molecules to carry intelligence." Then he smiled and toppled to the floor.

All the old men lay in heaps on the floor, snoring.

"The Wise," said Patience.

"Funny," said Reck.

"I'm not joking. These are the Wise. The ones that Unwyrm called, who stopped at Heffiji's house to answer her questions. Unwyrm ate out the kernel of their minds, and these are the husks he threw away."

She knelt by the man who had made the effort to tell her what he really was. "I know you now," she said softly. "We've come to give you back what he's taken, if we can."

"Why would he do this?" asked Reck.

"Gathering all the knowledge of the human species, so he could replace it, mind and body both," Ruin held his hands between his legs to warm them. "What I don't understand is why he left them alive."

"These can't be all the Wise in the world," said Reck.

"Unwyrm's call began sixty years ago," answered Patience. "These must be the ones who were young, who were brought most recently. Even they will die soon, and if it weren't for Heffiji's house, all that they knew would be lost."

"But there is Heffiji's house," said Reck. "And you did come to our village, despite Unwyrm's best efforts.

And when Ruin and I were in danger out there in the snow, Unwyrm's own cast-off manflesh saved us. Why?"

"Luck," said Patience. "It can't always go against us.

Chance."

"I hate chance," said Ruin. "I hate believing that the future of my people, of the whole world, depends on an accidental coming-together of events."

"Come away from the fire," said Reck. "You'll singe your hair."

He turned, silhouetted against the hotly burning fire. "What kind of majesty is there in a victory like that?"

"Maybe," said Patience, "with all the patterns of life on this world set against us, maybe a little luck is the only way we'll win."

"I'll take luck," said Reck. "I'll even take acts of the gods. Just so we win."

"Will would say that it was the hand of God that got us this far," said Patience.

"If God's hand is in the game, and on our side," said Reck, "why doesn't he just snuff out Unwyrm himself?"

"God doesn't have the power to act except through our hands," said Ruin. "He can only do what we do for him."

Reck laughed aloud. "What! Are you secretly a Watcher, my gebling, my sibling? In your wanderings through the forest, did you find religion?"

"What do humans know about their god? They want him to have power over earth and sky. But all he has power over is the human will. Because he is the human will-and a weak, feeble god he is. Not like the god of the geblings. We've seen it, haven't we? Together, all the geblings are one soul. We ignore it most of the time, but at a time of great need we act together, we do the thing that consciously or not we know must be done for the whole of us to survive. That is the god of the geblings-the common, unspoken and unspeakable will.

The othermind. Even the humans have a faint touch of othermind that lets Lady Patience hear a dim echo of our call, that lets Unwyrm speak to them. Together they create a god, which is the good of them all, and it rules.

Weakly, pathetically, in fits and starts, but it rules."

Ruin twisted the hair of his cheek. "It rules even Unwyrm.

Just like a gebling, he's half human, too. The human god lies like a root in his path; he doesn't see, he stumbles."

"I can't think of many priests who would like your theology," said Patience.

"That's why I'm not putting it up for sale," said Ruin. "But it's more than chance that helps us. We aren't lonely creatures trying to save our people. We are the instrument of our people, which they unconsciously created to save themselves."

Patience connected Ruin's view to something spoken to her on the boat not too many days before. "Will says that geblings-"

"What do I care what he says?" said Ruin. "It's his strength that we need now, not his ideas. We need the strength that let him stand against the Cranning call."

"He says that geblings and humans all have souls, and the same god means to save us all."

"If he does, then I adjure this god to bring us Will, to stand before Unwyrm and resist him for us." Ruin was mocking, but not to amuse them. His mockery was a mask for desperate faith, Patience could see that. He had invented for himself a god he could believe in, and now he prayed to that god.

And was answered.

Outside, during a lull in the wind, they could hear the high, sweet sounds of Kristiano and Strings singing harmony.

And another voice calling Patience by name.

"Angel," said Patience.

"He killed the others," said Reck. "Unwyrm has brought him to us."

There were footsteps crunching in the crisp dry snow outside.

"Patience!" cried Angel again. He knocked on the door.

"Go away!" shouted Patience. "I don't want to have to kill you."

Reck was knotching an arrow, and Ruin had his knife ready.

"Patience, I'm free of him!" shouted Angel. "Let me in, I can help you!"

"Don't believe him," said Reck.

"Go away!" shouted Patience. She held the blowgun near her lips. "I'll kill you!"

The door crashed open and swung back to bang against the wall. Immediately an arrow trembled in the door at belly height; Reck was preparing to shoot again, as soon as anyone entered.

Patience knew, however, that Angel hadn't the strength to kick in the door. "Will," she said. "You can come in, Will."

Will came in, followed by Angel, who was tightly bound and tethered to Sken. Strings and Kristiano came after. They were warmly dressed against the cold.

"Here we are," said Strings cheerfully. "The House of the Wise. And the Wise, as you can see, are asleep."

It was true; even the shouting and the banging of the door hadn't aroused them. It was a sign of Unwyrm's presence here, that he could keep them asleep through anything.

"Will," said Reck. "Why didn't you speak! We were sure Angel had-"

"He didn't speak," said Angel, "because he didn't know whether you were under Unwyrm's power. The arrow in the doorway was quite convincing,"

Patience looked at Angel. His bonds were a joke, of course-she knew that Angel could easily slip the knots, if he wanted to. It was his face she studied.

"I know why you look at me that way," said Angel.

"Do you think I haven't thought ten thousand times, what will she think of me, when she learns the truth?"

But Patience was not thinking of his betrayal now. She was thinking: the fire is gone from behind his eyes. He is weak and alone, and he was never alone before. Even though Unwyrm is your enemy. Angel, it strengthened you to have him always with you. And now, you have the look of a child whose parents have wandered off.

You are waiting for him to come back. You think you can carry on alone, but you wait for him all the same, to bring you back to life.

"But I'm not who I was," said Angel. "I don't need bonds now. I was young when he took me, young and unprepared. But I know him, and now that he's gone, I'll never let him back."

"Why did you bring him?" demanded Ruin of Will.

"Why didn't you just kill him down below?"

Will only glanced at Ruin, as if to say. Who are you to expect an accounting from me? Then he turned to Patience.

"My Heptarch," he said, "I brought your servant to you. He wanted to redeem himself."

"After Unwyrm is dead," said Patience, "then he can become himself, and my true servant. But as long as Unwyrm is alive, Angel is the wyrm's slave, and not the Heptarch's."

"No," said Angel. "I've faced him before. I know where he's weak-"

"You know nothing of the kind," said Ruin, "or you would have killed him before."

"All he's thinking about now is you, Patience," said Angel. "All he cares about is to stay alive long enough to impregnate you. He's waited seven thousand years, constantly renewing himself, until he hates the taste of his own life, but when you come, then he can achieve all he waited for. He cares nothing for me, or Will, or the geblings-"

"He leaves you free," said Ruin, "so we'll trust you and bring you with us. Then he'll rule you again and you'll betray us in our moment of greatest weakness."

"These bonds won't hold me," said Angel. "Either take me with you, or kill me now."

Patience shook her head. "You did me no kindness, Will, to bring him here."

"Kindness was never my purpose," said Will.

"What was your purpose?"

"My purpose is God's purpose."

Ruin laughed aloud.

"And what is God's purpose?" asked Angel scornfully.

"We are his purpose," said Will. "Our life, we who create and discover and build and tear down, we who love and hate, who grieve and rejoice, we are his purpose.

His work is for our kind to live forever, human and gebling, dwelf and gaunt, rising up from the womb and lying down in the grave."

"Very lovely," said Ruin. "But right now our job is to lay Unwyrm in his grave, and the only way to have a chance at that is to put Angel there first."

Patience drew the loop from her hair and let it hang, limp, from one hand. "The more of us who go there to face him, the better. He'll be calling to me, and it'll be hard for him to concentrate on destroying you."

"We hope," said Reck.

"He won't let anyone come close but me," said Patience.

"It's the bow that will kill him, if anything does. Reck."

"Of course," she said. "It's what I was born for."

"But no one understands his body, or where he must be shot to be killed. Ruin, you're the one who has lived with the life of this world. Your intuition is all we have to go on, in knowing where to strike him so he'll die."

"I know," said Angel. "I know where to strike-in his eyes, piercing through to-"

"You know nothing now," said Patience. "He could have lied to you a thousand times, and you would have believed him because you wanted to believe." She walked around Angel, stood behind him. "I think that Unwyrm controls best the minds that he knows best. Angel he would control most easily. But scarcely better than Reck and Ruin and me. He has held us in his grasp so many times that he knows all our pathways as surely as the geblings know the tunnels of Cranning. It will take all our strength just to stand against him. But you. Will, and you, Sken-he doesn't know you. Not the way he knows us. Will can resist him, and Sken-forgive me, but he must not hold you in high regard or he would have called you before now. So you must come last, and stand behind us. Keep the geblings from running away, force them to stand against him, so they can concentrate all their strength on killing him. And in the end, if they fail, then you must kill me before Unwyrm's children are born."

"I'm not a hero," said Sken.

"We aren't here for heroics," said Patience. "We're here for murder. Unwyrm's, if we can manage it. Mine, if we can't."

"They'll begin by killing you, if they can," said Angel. "It's the easiest way to stop his children from being born. You'll have Reek's arrow in you before the end. You can't trust them."

"And you, Angel, my teacher, my friend, my father," said Patience. "How can I leave you behind me, when Unwyrm has only to think of you, and you flinch and cower and obey?"

She whipped the loop around his neck and gave it a quick twist, a slight, delicate pull. Blood flowed from all around his neck. Angel's face held a look of surprise, of wonderment, perhaps even of gratitude. Then he toppled forward off the chair. Patience bent over him, carefully unwinding the loop from his neck. The others looked away to give her a moment of grief. She had done what must be done, and had not put the terrible duty on anyone else. She was the stuff Heptarchs were made of, they all saw that.

"I'm so sorry," said Strings. "So sorry. He was so very very good. And he wants to kill Unwyrm, he truly does."

"Enough," said Will. "It's done."

"He's calling me," said Patience. "It's stronger than I can bear."

"You know," said Ruin, "when it comes down to the truth of it, Heptarch, you are the least reliable of us all."

"I'm going now," said Patience.

"He knows his way through your mind better than anyone's but Angel's, and he cares more about you. He can do what he wants with you. And yet you're the one who made our plan for us."

Patience walked to the door. "Now," she said. She opened the door and walked out into the moonlit snow.

The wind whipped a white dust behind her, like a cowardly shadow retreating into the warm room. Will snatched a lamp from the wall and followed right behind her, with Ruin, Reck, and Sken trotting close after.

Sken was enthusiastic. "Now I finally get to see what this Unwyrm looks like."

The others ignored her. Will was holding Patience's arm; she struggled against his grip, trying to run to Unwyrm. "Slowly, calmly," whispered Will. "I'll hold you back for now, Lady Patience. Remember that none of this is you. All of us face him in you. You aren't alone against him."

The mouth of the cave waited for them in the distance.

"I'm coming," whispered Patience.

Back in the House of the Wise, the old men awoke, yawning and stretching. One of them stumbled over to where Angel lay. "Nasty cut there," he said. He busied himself untying the knots that held Angel's arms together.

Angel opened his eyes. Then he sat up and gently touched his neck. "She cut it close, there. Cut it close."

"Why were we asleep?" asked the man who had untied him.

"It's time," said Angel. "And he has her now." He got up and tore open the lining of his cloak. Three throwing knives were hidden there.

"What happens now?" asked the man.

"You'll see," he said. "You'll see." And then he spoke quietly, to someone who could not hear his words. "Call me all you like. I'm coming."