Wyrms

Chapter 18. THE BIRTHING PLACE

IT WAS EARLIEST DAWN WHEN THEY PASSED INTO THE CAVE, the first light shimmering in the east. They did not wait for sunrise; the lantern was the light they'd live by now.

Patience led the way. Will's hand gripping her arm with the strength of a tree root. Their passage wound upward through the rock, with an icy stream of water coming down the tunnel. The walls were covered with ice, and so was the tunnel floor; they soon found that if they walked on the frozen ground, their feet slipped, and if they walked in the stream, their feet froze. After half an hour they came to the golden door.

It was just a wooden slab that had once been painted yellow. There was no lock. There was no handle. Dozens of names were scratched in it, and in the ice-slick rock beside it. The door could not have been more than a hundred years old. The names in the rock might have been there for millennia.

Patience was calmer now. Headed toward Unwyrm, she could feel the pressure ease, and she gained some control of herself. The door was the last barrier between them. Even as she longed to pass beyond it, she could feel, like a distant memory, a desperate wish for it to stay closed.

"Resist him as much as you can," said Ruin. "Go as slowly as you can."

Patience just nodded. She was gasping with the effort to stay and listen.

"I'll look at him, try to figure out where the arrow has to go. We know almost nothing about his body, and what parts are vital. We know he has no brain, though. Probably no heart. In the end, we may have to pierce him as often as we can, till he loses enough fluid to die. That's why you have to be as slow as possible. To give us time."

Again Patience nodded.

"All of you," said Will. "All of you listen. We don't know how many of us will be left alive at the end of this.

But whoever lives, if we're too late, and he fathers children on Patience-Angel told me that the children will grow quickly. They must be killed. There may be dozens of them, and they must all be killed because if any of them lives, we've lost."

"They'll be my children," whispered Patience. "Mine."

"God help us," said Sken. "Will they look like worms?"

"Human infants," said Will. "And killing them will feel like murder."

Reck saw how Patience was sweating, steam rising from her body in the bitterly cold tunnel. Reck remembered all too well the terrible need that Unwyrm had forced on her, how little she had been able to think, to remember that throwing herself from the mountain was certain death. When Unwyrm commanded with that much strength, there was no denying him. She spoke to Ruin.

"We're asking too much of her. She's sheltered us all this way, and had no shelter for herself. When she's with him, she'll have no thought for any plan."

Patience began to sob and struggle against Will's hold on her. Now that she was stopped again, the call began to build an unbearable pressure within her. "Let me go, Will," she begged.

"Patience!" The cry rang through the tunnel. Reck and Ruin whirled to look down the tunnel they had just traveled. "Patience! I'll go! I'll go first!"

Will handed the lantern to Sken and gripped Patience by the shoulders with both hands. "You didn't kill him!"

"Unwyrm wouldn't let me!" she sobbed.

Angel appeared in the dim light their lantern cast at the far end of the tunnel, where it curved down and out of sight. He brandished throwing knives in both hands. The clotted blood still made a ghastly pattern on his neck.

"Out of my way!" he shouted. "I'll kill him, I can do it!

Let me by! You can't, none of you can do it, let me by!"

He forced his way past them, knocking Will to one side, shoving the door open with his shoulder. Patience came free of Will's grasp then, and began to run after Angel. Ruin and Reck stumbled after her. But she had gone too far ahead. Almost immediately they began to move slowly, as if they were pushing through stone.

"Help us!" cried Ruin.

Will came after them, seized their clothing in bunches from behind, and shoved them brutally forward through the tunnel. Sken ran after with the lantern.

The birthing room was ablaze with light. Sunrise had come while they were in the tunnel. The icy ceiling was so thin in places that the light burst through. It showed them Angel dead on the ice in the middle of the floor.

His knives had slid away from him when he fell. A slender dart arose from the back of his head. Patience was still holding her blowgun. Then she cast it away. It skittered across the ice and slid into a swift-flowing stream that carried it away, out of the birthing room, down through one of the tunnels that led from here to the farthest reaches of Cranning.

"She's his now," said Will. "She'll do nothing to help us."

"Where is he?" whispered Reck.

As if in answer, the black wyrm slid rapidly down into the birthing room from a white tunnel near the ceiling.

Where is he weak, thought Reck desperately. Where can I put an arrow and end his life?

"My bow," said Reck. "Tell me where to shoot him."

His back was made of hard segments that formed an impenetrable wall. "I don't know where," said Ruin, "I don't know, there's no place."

"That's Unwyrm speaking."

"No place," he said.

Unwyrm came near to where Patience waited. Then he rose up, exposing his belly. It was not the soft, smooth belly Reck had hoped for. Instead it was alive with appendages that alternately thrust forward like soft swords, then went limp and receded. They were wet and dripping.

Unwyrm's feeble hands fanned out across his side, trembling.

"Look how he's shaking," whispered Reck. "He's old."

"That isn't age, it's passion," said Ruin. "We can only bleed him. It's the only hope."

Patience whirled to face them. "There is no hope!" she howled. She was an animal, her eyes darting from one of them to another. "Not for you!" And she hurled the loop at Reck.

Before the spinning wire could reach her, though. Will thrust Reck down on her face. The loop took him above the wrist of his right arm, cutting through to the bone.

The skin of his wrist and hand sloughed downward, like a glove suddenly pulled half off; blood gouted from above the wound.

Will screamed in pain, but almost at once acted to save what he could. Since there was no hope now that he could hold both Reck and Ruin, he shoved Ruin down, placed his foot on the gebling's leg, and then with his left hand he pulled the gebling up. Ruin cried out with pain as his leg snapped. He would stay in the room. "Sken!" cried Will. Sken hurried forward, slipping on the ice and nearly falling; she caught herself against Will, who still had the strength to take her weight without falling over.

"Hold Reck, keep her here!" cried Will. Then he dropped to his knees and fell forward, thrusting his arm into the crystal water that flowed in a stream across the middle of the cavern. "Patience!" he shouted. His arm cast a bloom of blood ribbons into the water. "Patience, he doesn't rule you!"

Reck felt Sken's powerful arms around her waist just as Unwyrm urged her to run, to fly away, to escape this place. But she could also feel Ruin calling to her in her othermind. Stay. Kill. With shaking hands she took her bow, nocked an arrow, and shot. Unwyrm dodged easily; the arrow fell harmlessly behind him. She nocked another, tried to concentrate. He pounded at her mind; her eyes blurred-

And Patience saw this, saw it all. There was no hope in her of resisting him, her lust for him was all she could think of. Yet at the same time, she could remember Will's story of who she really was, of that small and forgotten self masked by memory and desire. I must help, came the thought. She could not resist Unwyrm, but she could distract him.

She stepped forward, crying out to him. "Unwyrm!"

She pulled her tunic off over her head and knelt naked before him. "Unwyrm!" Her knees slipped smoothly across the ice and she leaned back, offering herself to him.

Reck felt the pressure on her ease. In a swift movement Unwyrm's body arched forward and lunged onto Patience. He rooted one of his appendages in her groin.

Patience cried out in her inexpressible relief. Weeks of longing were finally fulfilled.

Unwyrm's upper body began a rhythmic swaying. For a moment he had forgotten them; he, too, had a need that was too long unfulfilled to be put off. Reck fired two quick arrows. One struck him in the eye. Another spiked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"His head is nothing!" screamed Ruin. "His belly!

His belly, where the blood is!"

Reck took another arrow, but this time, instead of notching it, she had a powerful urge to eat the arrow. To bring it to her mouth and jam it down her own throat.

She raised the arrow above her face and smiled at the death that pointed at her.

Suddenly Sken's fist came down savagely on her belly.

The pain drove Unwyrm's command from her mind. It also made her realize that she could not possibly do enough damage to Unwyrm's belly to kill him. Only Patience was close enough. The Heptarch now lay on her back, her hand within easy reach of one of Angel's knives. She was shuddering and writhing in ecstasy beneath him. Somehow, Reck knew, she had to be distracted from the delight that Unwyrm gave her, forced to remember what was really happening. A sudden pain might break the hold that Unwyrm had on her mind, make her forget the pleasure long enough to take the knife and disembowel him.

So Reck readied the arrow and aimed, not at Unwyrm, whose belly was pressed against Patience, but at the girl herself. Reck shot for the thigh, and in a moment the arrow trembled in the Heptarch's flesh.

Patience tossed her head back and forth from the pain.

Did she see the knife?

"Kill him!" cried Ruin.

She saw it. She reached it easily, brought it up to kill, then suddenly cried out again in ecstasy. She knew what she had to do, and yet her body could not respond. I am a gaunt, now, at the end, Patience realized. I have no will before him. She struggled to raise her hand against him, but all she could think of was a great aching love for him as she could feel her womb filling. Gradually her arm dropped back down. But her fingers clung to the knife. She did not let go, though now she couldn't even remember why she held it, or what it was.

"She's still holding it," said Ruin. "She's not gone!"

Sken raised her voice to taunt them. "King of the geblings! Why did you come alone? Where are your armies when you need them most!"

"Geblings," whispered Reck. And in that moment she and Ruin both knew that they had one tool that might free Patience's mind from Unwyrm's control.

"We must call the geblings-" murmured Ruin.

"The geblings must call her," said Reck.

They cried out with their silent mind. Feel and repeat this urgent need-to kill Unwyrm, to kill the child-killer, the mother-eater.

Geblings in the highest reaches of Cranning fell the urgent call in their othermind. They stopped what they were doing; it was the king, they knew who called them, it was the king and all unknown to them the final battle had already been joined. Kill Unwyrm! They echoed the silent shout, passing it on to the other geblings farther down the mountain.

Cart drivers let their oxen walk on unattended; geblings in conversation fell silent; workers let their tasks slip from their hands. All joined in the fervent call: Kill Unwyrm.

In moments, the message passed silently to every part of Cranning. It was echoed by ten million gebling minds.

Every other time that Cranning had cried out together, the geblings had gathered from every part of the world to join battle against the human kingdoms and strike them down. This time, the message was much simpler. Death to their brother, their enemy, their satan, the wyrm.

And in Patience's mind that same cry also arose, stronger and stronger, making its way against the perfect pleasure that Unwyrm gave her. She felt the knife in her hand again, knew that the desire to kill him was her true self even though her body cried out against it. She felt his blood spill almost before she felt the knife enter his body. Unwyrm arched backward, then slapped himself forward on top of her. She screamed in pain, then jabbed at him again. He whipped away, slithered toward his upper chamber, then writhed out his dance of death, smearing himself across the ice as he whipped to and fro.

All that he desired in the last moments of his life Patience felt, for the bond was still firm between them. She screamed his scream for him. At last he was still, and her voice was her own again.

Except for their labored breathing, the room was silent.

Patience curled up on her side and sobbed quietly, Unwyrm's blood slowly freezing on her.

Sken let go of Reck and leaned back against the ice behind her. Reck fell forward, gasping for breath. "Will," she whispered.

Ruin crawled to Will, dragging his broken leg behind him. He pulled the large man over onto his back. His face was blue from the cold, but the icy water had slowed the bleeding of his arm. "Save him if you can," whispered Reck. Ruin at once drew a threaded brass needle from his kit and began feverishly sewing the severed arteries and veins together.

Reck looked back at Sken. "Help the Heptarch, can't you?" She did not wait to see if Sken would obey. She slid across the ice to where her brother labored over Will. "He held us here, he got us here when no one else could have-"

"Get me a leather pouch," said Ruin. "Not that one, no, sniff it, like krisberries, yes, that's it." Reck opened the pouch and Ruin dipped his tongue into it, then smeared it on the severed surfaces. It would make the cells of Will's body grow again; it would stimulate the living nerve ends to grow out and find new connections.

Then Patience cried out. Softly. Reck looked up. Patience had rolled over and was lying on her stomach, her head toward the others. Her body heaved twice.

"What's happening?" whispered Reck.

Ruin looked up in time to see the head of a half- developed fetus rise up from between Patience's legs.

"The wyrm's child!"

"We were too late!" shouted Sken.

Reck reached for her bow and arrow, but Sken was stumbling along the ice, her hatchet in hand, blocking a clear shot. And by the time Sken got there, Patience was standing up, holding the infant, shielding it. "I'm going to kill it!" Sken shouted.

Patience nodded, but she still held the child out of Sken's reach. Was it an illusion, or had the child grown?

Yes, it was larger, and it was no longer fetal-it was a fully developed infant.

"Take the baby!" shouted Reck.

"It's going to die anyway!" Patience cried. "Can't you see? I killed his father too soon, he's going to die."

It was true. They could almost see that as the child grew taller, feebly wiggling its limbs, the skin tightened, grew tight around the bones, like a victim of famine. The baby opened its mouth, and spoke its only words: "Help me." They were grotesque, coming from a body so young. It was clearly Unwyrm's child, clearly a monster, yet from the sight of him he was any infant, helpless, demanding their compassion and getting it.

The baby died. Patience felt it, the sudden slackness of the body. She relaxed her protective posture. Only then could Sken reach the body, tear it away, cast it to the ground, and raise her hatchet to hack at it.

"It's dead!" shouted Patience.

"It was growing!" Sken cried. "It spoke!"

"But it's dead!"

Sken lowered her hatchet. Reck took Patience's garment from the cave floor and carried it to her. "Only the one," said Reck. "And Unwyrm didn't have time to give it strength to live. We did it. In time."

Patience turned away and pulled the chemise over her head.

There were shouts and footfalls in the tunnel leading up from the golden door. Armed geblings rushed a few steps into the room, then stopped to take in the scene.

The corpse of Unwyrm, split open and spilt on the ice; the starved, skeletal body of a human infant. A few of the old men came in, not looking half so doltish now.

"Behold," said Sken bitterly, "the gebling kings.

Behold the Heptarch!" Her face worked to keep from crying. She flung out her hand toward the baby lying on the ice. "Behold the child of prophecy!"

Reck hushed her. "The baby was no Kristos. It was a wyrm, it was death to humans and geblings, and if it hadn't died I would have killed it with my own hands."

The old men walked toward Unwyrm's body. One of them took Angel's other knife, the one that Patience hadn't used, and sliced Unwyrm's head from snout to crown. The skin burst apart as if it had been under pressure, revealing the shining facets of a green crystal.

"His mindstone," whispered Reck. She walked toward them, looked at the crystal.

It was not a single mindstone, but many hundreds of them, fused together. The old men pulled the flaps of skin farther apart, and the crystal toppled forward onto the ice.

"Here," said one of them.

"This is where he kept all the gifts we gave him," said another.

"Everything we knew."

The old men knelt, touched the crystal, as if to find where in the living jewel their own knowledge lay. The youngest one lifted his head and cried out like a dog baying. "Give it back to me!"

Reck turned from the old men and walked slowly, wearily to Patience. They embraced, and Reck helped the exhausted woman walk across the ice, out of the room.

Geblings were already helping Ruin, preparing to carry him out. Others were binding up Will's arm and wrapping him in blankets.

Sken looked up when Patience passed. "Heptarch," she said. "Did we sin?"

Patience stopped, stood before the fat woman with her twisted, tear-stained face. She touched Sken's cheek with her bent fingers.

"Did I raise my hatchet to murder God's own son?"

Her voice was high and weak, like a child's. "Am I damned forever?"

In answer, Patience pulled her close, embraced her.

"No sin," she whispered. "This day's work honors us all forever."