Wyrms

by Orson Scott Card

  "She's going to lift us up?" asked Patience.

  "I brought some luggage with me," said Angel. Patience recognized his small trunk. Of course. Her things he could leave somewhere in hiding, but his little trunk was never long out of his sight. She knew he kept his disguises in it, but there were other things, too, which he showed to no one.

  The trunk rose quickly upward into the house. Then Angel motioned for Patience to climb.

  The house swayed slightly when they walked from one end to another. To someone who lived on the river, it probably felt fine, but to Patience it was unnerving. It was like living in a constant earthquake, she thought.

  And when Sken moved from place to place, her great mass tilted it even more. She seemed not to notice it, and Patience said nothing.

  "I'm sorry I didn't meet you on time," Patience said.

  "I had some questions I had to ask Father. Questions I could only ask him when he was dead."

  "I guessed as much," said Angel. "Did you leave him there when you were through?"

  "Oruc had enough use of him when he was alive," said Patience. "He'll have no use of him now."

  Sken was horrified. "You killed your father's head?"

  "Shut up and tend to the food," Angel said softly.

  Sken glowered but obeyed.

  "He asked me to," said Patience.

  "As any sane man would," said Angel. "Just because we can preserve them doesn't mean we should. Just one more abomination we'll have to answer for someday."

  "To God? I don't think he cares what we do with our heads."

  Sken couldn't keep her silence. "If I'd known you were blasphemers I would have put you at the bottom of the river."

  It was Patience who answered this time. "And if I'd known you were unable to keep your mouth still I would have left your head in the privy hole."

  Angel smiled. "So you did have your loop on you?"

  "I needed it twice. I wasn't very subtle, either."

  "God knows," muttered Sken.

  "Well, what did your father tell you?"

  Patience looked at him coldly. "He told me what he said you were going to tell me."

  "What is that?"

  "Tell me what you're supposed to tell me, and I'll see if it agrees."

  "Patience, I know more games than I ever taught you. If you tell me what secrets he told you, then I don't have to go on lying to you for the next thirty years."

  "Did you know about how mother died?" asked Patience.

  Angel grimaced."! see you didn't ask him easy questions."

  "He broke in two hours. I thought he had more strength than that."

  "He had more strength than anyone."

  "He whined and whimpered-and when the worms punished him, he even wept."

  Angel nodded gravely. "Of course."

  "What do you mean, of course! He was the one who taught me endurance, who taught me that the emotion I showed should never be the emotion I felt, and there he was-"

  She stopped, feeling stupid.

  "Yes?" asked Angel.

  "There he was, showing emotions and I fell for it."

  "Ah. So perhaps he didn't break at all."

  "He wasn't lying to me. I saw when he was lying, and I saw when he stopped. He can't hide everything. Can he?"

  "No. I think he told you the truth. What else, besides your mother's death?"

  "Wasn't that enough?" '

  "The prophecy?"

  "I knew a little about that anyway. He told me what the Starship Captain did with his left hand."

  "Mm."

  "Angel, I've decided where I want to go."

  "Your father left me strict instructions."

  "My father is dead now, and you belong to me."

  Sken was surprised. "You mean you're a slave? I've been taking orders from a slave?"

  "I am the slave of a Slave of the King. That puts me so far above you that you're unworthy to inhale one of my farts. Now will you shut up, woman?"

  Actually, thought Patience, I'm the Heptarch now.

  You're Slave to the King herself. Her only Slave. Much may it profit you.

  "So," said Angel. "Where do you want to go?"

  "Cranning," said Patience.

  Angel was angry, though he answered with humor.

  "Stiff as steel, the girl has lost her mind."

  Now Sken was livid. "Girl! Girl! You mean this snip of a boy is a female? It is an abomination for the woman to wear the clothing of the man, and the man to wear the clothing of a woman-"

  "Shall I kill her to get us some silence?" Angel asked.

  Sken fell silent, stuffing hardbread into sacks and spiced sausages into watertight pouches.

  "Child," said Angel, "that is the one place you can never go."

  "I'm sure of it," she said. "But it's the one place I: have to go. I was born for it, don't you see?"

  "You were born for something better than to go off fulfilling mad prophecies."

  "How will you stop me? Kill me? Because it's the only way you ever will."

  "It's the Cranning call. That's what makes you want to go. It comes this way, an insane determination to go there, for no reason at all, against all reason-"

  "Don't you think I know?"

  Angel chewed on that for a moment. "So you think that whatever it is, you're stronger."

  "I think that if it can call the wisest men out of the world and force my mother to want to sacrifice her daughter, then someone needs to stop it. Why not me?

  Don't the prophecies say that mankind will be reborn?"

  "When Kristos comes," muttered Sken.

  "The prophets were given their visions and prophecies by whatever it is that calls," said Angel. "They might be lies, to entice you."

  "Then I'm enticed. If you're so wise. Angel, why haven't you felt the Cranning call?"

  Angel went cold, his face a hard-set mask. She had always had the gift of goading him. "No one ever proved that every wise one heard the call."

  There was no need to hurt him; she was using diplomatic tricks on a man whose honest words she would need again and again. So she smiled and touched his hand. "Angel, you spent your life making me as wise and dangerous as possible. When will I be readier? When you're too old to come with me? When I've fallen in love with some cod and had three babies that I have to protect?"

  "Maybe you'll never be ready for whatever waits."

  "Or maybe now. When I'm willing to die. When I've lost my father for the first time and my mother all over again. Now, when I'm willing to kill because of the rage that burns in me for what has been stolen from me and my father and my mother, now is the time for me to face whatever waits for me there. With you or without you, Angel. But better with you."

  Angel smiled. "All right."

  Patience glared at him. "That was too easy. You intended to be persuaded all along."

  "Come now, Patience. Your father warned us both that the worst thing in the world was waiting in Cranning.

  As well as we knew him, and as well as he knew us, don't you think he knew we'd come to this moment?"

  Patience remembered her father's head. Was he scheming even then, letting her force from him the very truths that he most wanted to tell her? "I don't care if he was," she said. "Even if my father really wanted me to go, I'll go."

  "Good. Tonight then. We don't want another day here." He took a purse from his belt and took out two large steel coins. "Sken, do you know what these are worth?"

  "If they're real, then you're a damned fool for carrying them without a bodyguard."

  "Are they enough to buy your boat?"

  Sken squinted at him. "You know it's enough to buy ten of my boats. If they are steel."

  He tossed them to her. She bit them and weighed them in her hand. "I'm not a fool," she said.

  "You are if you think they aren't real," said Angel.

  "I won't sell you the boat unless you buy me, too."

  "Buy you! That's enough to buy your silence, and that's all we want of y
ou."

  "I said I'm not a fool. This isn't the price a man offers for a boat if he means to leave the money behind. You plan to kill me before you go."

  "If I say I'm buying, I'm buying."

  "You've let me hear enough tonight that you daren't let me live behind you. A girl traveling in disguise with a man who tosses steel about as if it were silver? Her father recently dead, and them both afraid of the law? Do you think we of the river haven't heard that Lord Peace died today? And that the King looks for his daughter Patience, the rightful Heptarch, the daughter of prophecy? You didn't care if I figured it out because you knew I'd be dead."

  Patience knew Sken was right-she knew Angel well enough for that. "I thought you were talking so openly because this woman was to be trusted, not because she was to die."

  "And what if you're right?" asked Angel. "What if I did mean to kill you? Why should I change my mind now, and take you along?"

  "Because I know the river and I'm strong enough to row."

  "We can hire a rower if we feel the need."

  "Because you're both decent folk who don't kill people who don't deserve it."

  "We're not that decent," said Angel. "We leave justice up to the priests."

  "You'll take me along because she's my rightful Heptarch, and I'll serve her to the end of my life. I'd die before I let any harm come to her."

  The fervency of Sken's speech was convincing. Schooled in guile, they knew naivet? when they saw it. Sken hadn't the art to lie to them even if she wanted to.

  "Well?" asked Angel.

  Patience was willing. Sken's loyalty appealed to her. It hadn't occurred to her until now that she might have more friends with her identity revealed than she could ever have in disguise. "I almost cut off her head before.

  It's the least we can do now."

  "Until we have no more need of you, then," said Angel. "And your parting wages will be a good deal better than death."

  "What about these coins?"

  "Keep them," said Angel. "They're an earnest of rewards to come."

  It took only a few minutes to load the boat. They sang ribald songs together as they passed among the guardboats, and Sken roundly cursed the guards by name. They knew her well, and let her pass. They rounded a bend and passed into the forest, where the river ran cool and deep.

  Heptam was behind them, and they had begun the long road to Cranning.

  Chapter 7. TINKER'S WOOD

  PATIENCE DID NOT ENJOY THE RIVER TRAVEL NOT THAT the water made her sick-she had crossed seawater often enough between King's Hill and Lost Souls' Island that the river seemed calm. There were many things that contributed to her malaise. The death of her father, the loss of all that was familiar to her, and, on top of that, the ever-present Cranning call, urging her on; she felt she had lost control of things, and it made her anxious.

  What made it worse was that she had genuine physical discomfort as well. Sken and Angel were frank enough about handling the elimination of waste; they hung over the gunnel and everyone discreetly looked away. But Patience had swallowed the scepter of the Heptarchs, and wasn't about to let it vanish in the depths of the River Glad. So she could only relieve her bowel on land, and they didn't stop every day, or even every other day. And when they did, she took no pleasure in searching for the crystal. Many times she wished it had been smaller, or that she hadn't swallowed it. Since no one searched her, it hadn't been necessary after all, and now all this annoyance was for nothing.

  But she found it at last, and tucked it safely away, hoping she would never have to resort to her own alimentary system as a hiding place again.

  They left the Glad River at Wanwood, where it bent north and west. They bought a half-open carriage with four horses; they wouldn't need to keep out the cold, only the rain. The roads alternated between ruts and mudholes, depending on the weather. On the worst roads, Sken climbed off the carriage and walked.

  "I thought you were well enough padded to withstand a little bouncing," said Angel.

  "Padded! This is all meat, and tender as veal today, after this pounding."

  No doubt they seemed an odd family, if anyone on the road took them for father, mother, and son. Patience, still disguised as a boy, publicly referred to Angel and Sken as uncle and aunt, which annoyed them both. But on the highway, few people commented on oddities, not to their faces, anyway; and their money won them admirers wherever they went.

  The roads were not as safe as the river, not for travelers without armed escort. They were careful to stop for the night well before dusk, and in every inn they stayed at, the three of them shared a room. more than once Angel had to persuade burglars to abandon their life of crime. Removing a few fingers usually did the trick.

  At last they reached Cranwater, the great river that flowed from Skyfoot in a single stream to the sea. They reached it at Waterkeep, an ancient castle that once marked the northeast boundary of Korfu. Now the castle was in ruins and the city had shrunk to a fair-sized market town. Two dozen inns and taverns, what with the intersection of the river and the road.

  They chose an inn and stabled the horses. At supper, with bread and cheese and pea soup at the tavern table, and Sken's mug filled with warm ale. Angel and Patience discussed their plans for the morning.

  "It's time we left the road," said Angel. "The river is here, our highway northward."

  "The river's narrow here," said Sken. "The current's strong. I'd need two strong men to help me row against it."

  Angel had already thought of that. "The prevailing wind in these latitudes at this time of year is from the west, and usually the southwest."

  "You're going to buy a windsucker?" asked Sken.

  "Do you know how to pilot one?"

  "I was wrapped in sailcloth the day I was born," said Sken. "Long before I settled me on the river with my second husband, my family was a seafaring family. Left our stilts every spring with the floods and a cargo of such stuff as Heptam makes, then home again before summer with the earliest fruits from the islands. Never got rich, as I recall it, but we got drunk a lot."

  "Then you know how to handle a sailing vessel."

  "Never done it on a river this narrow. But no reason it can't be done. Just have to do things faster, that's all.

  Don't buy too big a boat, that's all. You'd better let me choose it, too."

  "Is that all?"

  "That's all. Are you two made of money?"

  A dwelf stood by their table with a pitcher of ale.

  "More?" he asked.

  "No," said Angel.

  "Yes," said Sken, glaring at him.

  "Are you two made of money?" asked the dwelf. He had Sken's intonation exactly.

  "Now look what you've done," said Angel. "We'll have the dwelf repeating it all over the tavern."

  "Repeat repeat," said the dwelf. Then he giggled.

  Angel put a couple of coppers in his hand, turned him around, and pushed him toward the kitchen.

  "Sorry," said Sken.

  "Even if dwelfs have no brains, they still have ears, and they can repeat anything." Angel let his annoyance show. It could be intimidating, and Sken was silent.

  "Dwelfs are a puzzle," said Patience. "They do have their own language. They must have some kind of brain, to hold a language."

  Angel shrugged. "I never ponder the mental capacity of dwelfs. I just think of them as exceptionally stupid geblings."

  "But they aren't geblings, are they?"

  "Another indigenous species. Imakulata needed humans, whether the geblings and dwelfs and gaunts thought so or not."

  The innkeeper came out of the kitchen carrying bread to another table. But when that job was done, he came over and pulled up a chair beside Angel.

  "Everything is excellent," said Sken. She was beginning to be drunk. "Everything is perfect. More ale, please."

  The innkeeper was not amused. "I don't know where you people are from-probably Heptam, since you seem to think nothing can harm you."

  "There are plenty o
f things that can harm us in Heptam," said Angel.

  "There isn't a tavern in Waterkeep where you can; safely show as much money as you've shown, and talk as freely. I hope you aren't planning to travel from here by road."

  "Shouldn't we?" asked Angel.

  "Better hire a trustworthy guard. Preferably by arranging with the townmaster for some of the local police.

  Otherwise you won't get ten miles from here alive."

  "What is the unbearable danger?"

  "Robbers."

  "Is that all?"

  "All? There's plenty of trade through here, and not much protection. Officially we're part of Pankos, but we haven't seen a royal officer in thirty years. So the townmaster makes the law in Waterkeep, and Tinker makes the law in the woods."

  "Tinker?"

  "He used to be a royal governor, or maybe just a royal governor's son. They say he was caught sleeping in the wrong bed. That was fifteen years ago. He lives in the forest north of here. They say he has a whole city of robbers living in treehouses. We call it Tinker's Wood."

  "Sounds like children playing," said Angel.

  "If you go south or east or west they'll stop you, and as long as you give them everything you own without a fight, they'll usually let you keep your clothes and your lives. If you have enough money, even your horses and carriage."

  "And if we go north?"

  "Then take an army. A very large one. Or go by boat.

  Tinker figures anyone headed north by road has decided to die. And he believes that death can be a long and satisfying spectator sport."

  "You've convinced us," said Angel. "And thank you for taking the risk of angering him, by warning us."

  "Oh, he doesn't mind if we warn people. There's always plenty of fools who figure if they buy a few extra arrows they can go where they like."

  "I can go anywhere," mumbled Sken. "I'll cut em in half, every last bastard of em."

  "Go by boat," said the innkeeper. "And don't go anywhere near shore for at least thirty miles upriver. It's good advice. People who take it live to thank me."

  The innkeeper went back to the kitchen.

  "Back to the water," said Sken. "About time." She lifted her mug to salute the others and sloshed ale on Angel. They enlisted the help of the four household dwelfs to get her to her room.