Wyrms

Chapter 20. THE COMING OF KRISTOS

THE RUINORS HAD BEEN COMING ALL WINTER, AND INTENSIFIED in the spring. King Oruc began to hear whispers, and finally open speech. Agaranthemem Heptek, they called her, and her husband was Lord Will, who had been slave to dozens of great generals, and now was the greatest general of them all. Other Ruinors called her Kristos, and said she had killed the great satan with her own hands;

God would .now give the world to her, and King Oruc would die an agonizing death, after witnessing the torture and death of all his children.

There were also stories of the geblings. How all the geblings in the world had stopped at one moment, their faces twisted with murder and hate, while the daughter of prophecy worked her miracle in the heart of the world.

Now the gebling king had become an angel, and was coming to destroy all human life on Imakulata. Behind him was Mother Wyrm, a great dragon who had been resurrected from a corpse as ancient as the time before the starship; she was calling for the purification of Imakulata, the final battle between human and gebling.

In the spring the Ruinors became reality. A gebling army gathered; the spies confirmed it. And Patience had been seen, had even spoken to one of them. He brought back her message:

"Lord Oruc, my friend," the messenger quoted. Oruc trembled at the way she did not call him King, and at the bitter irony in her condescension. "I come to you at last, to thank you for your good care of my kingdom. You will be well rewarded for the excellence of your regency, for I have not forgotten anything you ever did." She signed it with her dynastic name, and then with the signature he had so often seen: "Patience."

He knew then that she meant his death, and he prepared for war. He called on the other human kings and rulers to stand with him against the gebling invasion and the traitor Patience. This was one more in the long history of gebling invasions, and it would be the most terrible of all; if humankind was to survive, they would have to stand together.

Most of the kings agreed with him, and brought their armies, uniting under the banner of the Heptarch. But he knew that in every camp, in every tent, the men and women muttered the name of Agaranthemem Heptek, and remembered the prophecies of the seventh seventh seventh daughter, and wondered if they were not blaspheming and fighting against God and his Kristos. How can I defend humanity, when my people are not even sure they want to defeat their enemy?

He gathered his children and grandchildren around him, and told them the danger that was coming. They all chose to stay with him, knowing well that if the geblings won, there would be no hiding place.

The armies camped in sight of each other in the last afternoon of spring, before the solstice. There were no banners in the gebling camp. The grey-furred bodies seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon; the spies said that what they saw was only the vanguard of the gebling host. His own army, the largest ever assembled by any human king, looked pathetic as a pebble before a flood.

Oruc had chosen his ground as well as he could-a hill to defend, with open ground before them and wooded land behind. But he could not hope for victory against such an enemy. That night he withdrew into his tent, alone, and wept for his children and grandchildren, and the death they would suffer on the morrow.

When dawn came, however, his generals brought the incredible news. The gebling army was gone.

Oruc came down himself to the field where he had expected his blood to flow, and found that only the trampled ground gave proof that the gebling army had been there the day before. Only a single tent remained of all his enemies, and a single banner.

As he stood there, the tent flap opened, and she came forth: Patience, as he remembered her, scarcely changed by the year that had passed. To her right walked a giant of a man, whose right arm hung limp and useless at his side; to her left, a small furry gebling carried himself with the ease and dignity of power. Lady Patience, Lord Will, and King Ruin, alone, at his mercy. He had wept in grief the night before. Now he did not understand at all.

Lord Will called out, and his voice could be heard clearly by the soldiers in the front ranks; they passed along his words to those behind. His declaration was simple.

"Here is the daughter of prophecy. By right of blood and prophecy, she is your King. She will not shed one drop of human blood to claim her right. If you refuse her, she will gladly die. If you receive her, she will forgive you."

And when he was sure that every man in Oruc's army had heard his words, he cried:

"Where are the soldiers of Agaranthemem Heptek! Where are the Vigilants of God!"

Oruc's soldiers did not hesitate. Their voices swelled like the rising voice of the wind over the sea, and they threw down their weapons and came to her, crying her name at first, but then changing the cry into the simple chant: "Kristos! Kristos! Kristos!"

Oruc gathered his family about him, preparing to die with courage. But when she had him brought to her, she smiled kindly at him, and he could detect no savagery in her face or vengeance in her voice.

"You stood in a hard place, and did well," she said simply. "I have come as Heptarch of all humankind. I ask you to rule Korfu as my viceroy, a title to be conferred on your heirs as long as one of your blood is found worthy."

He bowed before her then, as she gave his children back to him, and his life, and his kingdom. He ruled as always in King's Hill, and she visited him only once a every year; he served her loyally and well, and she honored him above all other human kings.

But the center of the world was no longer Heptam. It had moved to a new city, only a few days downriver of Cranning. The city was built around a university, and the university was built around a house on a hill overlooking

Cranwater. The city took the name of the school, and the school was named for the house, and from this new city called Heffiji's House the Gebling King and the Heptarch ruled. This was the place where all the humans and geblings and dwelfs and gaunts of the world looked for justice, for wisdom, for mercy, for peace.

And every year. King Ruin and Agaranthemem Heptek left Heffiji's House and made the voyage up Cranwater to Skyfoot; every year they climbed together to an ice cave at the base of the glacier that roofed the world.

There they sat with Mother Wyrm, and told her all that had happened in the world, and like any other supplicants to that holiest place in all Imakulata, they listened to her wisdom and received her love and joy. So also did their children, and their children's children, through all the ages of the world.