Wyrms

by Orson Scott Card

  On the dock the next morning they found a good many boats for hire, but not many for sale. "Doesn't matter," murmured Angel. "Any boat is for sale when the price is high enough."

  "Our money isn't infinite," said Patience. "We may want some next year."

  "Do you want to get to Cranning or not?"

  Yes, she wanted to get to Cranning. Wanted to more than anything else in the world. The Cranning call was with her now as a constant hunger. As long as she was moving toward Cranning, it eased, and she felt satisfied.

  But when there were delays, like now, as they walked on the wooden wharf of the riverport, the need became quite intense.

  Today, though, she noticed a subtle change. It wasn't just that she needed to get to Cranning. Now she felt a longing to be on the water, to travel up the river. The morning sunlight dancing on the water looked magical, the curve of the river enticed her.

  And it occurred to her that she had never felt such feelings before. She hadn't particularly enjoyed the journey on the Glad River. Why should she long for water- home travel now?

  She thought of last night, when the innkeeper had come to them. Perhaps he advised everyone to avoid Tinker's Wood, but she doubted it. The people of Waterkeep had to have some working arrangement with the local highwaymen, especially since they had no protection from a larger government. If the innkeeper was free to warn away travelers, then the robbers must not be very dangerous after all. And if the robbers were as dangerous as he had said, then how did he dare to risk his life to warn a trio of rich and foolish strangers away from the road?

  What could it be but the Cranning call, prompting the innkeeper and now making her long to go by water. For some reason, Unwyrm-whoever he was-wanted her not to travel on the forest road. Was it simply to keep her safe? Or was it because there was something in that forest, along that road, that she must not discover?

  Am I not a trained killer? And Angel? Sken, too, looks like she could be dangerous enough. Even if the robbers are as vicious as the innkeeper said, we could probably get through. And if Unwyrm wants us not to go that way, then that is the way I will go.

  In the moment she made that decision, she felt an agony of regret. How could she even have thought of doing such a stupid thing? Risking the lives of all three of them on some stupid whim. When the water looked so inviting, was so easy, just to sail upriver-

  And now she knew, through the cloud of these passions, that Unwyrm wanted desperately for her to stay off the forest road. She also knew that regardless of the cost, she would travel by land. The gnawing hunger for Cranning and for the river only got worse, but hadn't she been schooled all her life in putting off her ease? Hadn't she gone without sleep, without food, without water, in order to stretch her limits, to toughen her resistance? She could ignore any of her body's hungers, especially when she knew that it was an illusion sent into her mind by an enemy.

  Or was it an enemy? It didn't matter. She was determined not to succumb to the Cranning call in every particular. She would go to Cranning, but she would take any route she pleased. She would not be controlled.

  "This one," said Sken. The boat was small, compared to some of the sailing vessels, but it looked clean and sturdy.

  "All right," said Angel.

  "No," said Patience.

  Sken was annoyed. "What's wrong with it?"

  "Nothing. Except that I'm not going by boat."

  Angel drew her away from Sken. "Are you out of your mind?" he whispered.

  "Probably. But I'm not going by boat. I'm taking our carriage through the forest road."

  "It's suicide. Didn't you hear the innkeeper?"

  "I heard him very well. I also hear the Cranning call.

  He wants me to go by water. Wants it badly. I'm going to find out what it is that he doesn't want me to find in the forest."

  "Death, that's what he doesn't want you to find,"

  "Are you sure? I think he's a little too eager to get us off the road. This isn't the best place to begin a sailing voyage upriver-the current's too swift. Sken said so herself, didn't she?"

  "It's better than dying."

  "Since when have you been afraid of a few highwaymen, Angel?"

  "Since I thought of dozens of them dropping out of trees onto our heads. I'm trained to kill unsuspecting people in subtle ways, not fight with a bunch of unmannered thieves."

  "You haven't met them. You know nothing about their manners."

  "Did it occur to you that maybe this is just what Unwyrm wants you to do? Maybe the creature knows that you're stubborn and rebellious. Maybe it wants you to go into the forest, and figured this was the way."

  "A little far-fetched, Angel."

  "Maybe it wants the robbers to get rid of your traveling companions."

  He was as much as confessing that he feared for his own life. The Cranning call resonated with his words.

  The feelings welled up in her. How can you endanger them? What kind of person are you? Selfish, arrogant.

  Go by water, for their sake.

  But the more the Cranning call pressed her, the more she resisted. "Go by boat, then. I'll meet you in the first riverport village upstream. I can handle the carriage alone.

  You can even take all the money-I trust you."

  "No," said Angel. His hands were trembling. "No, I won't leave you."

  He really is afraid, thought Patience. Almost she decided to give in, for Angel's sake. But the moment she thought that, the Cranning call redoubled its force, as if her thought of yielding had opened a floodgate. She winced from the pain of it. Then the longing subsided, as if it had taken a great effort from Unwyrm to call her with such power. Good, thought Patience. Wear yourself out with trying. I didn't go without comfort all that time in my childhood just to give in and take the easy way now.

  "Good. We go by land."

  Sken was no happier than Angel had been.

  "You don't have to come with me," Patience said.

  "You've served me well and earned your passage home."

  "We need all the help we can get," Angel said. "I'll double your payment, if you come with us."

  Sken looked at him with contempt. "I'll come because of who she is, not what you offer."

  Angel smiled. Patience knew perfectly well that Angel had expected Sken to react that way. The art of diplomacy, as Father had always said: to provoke your opponent into wanting to do what you planned. Angel was a diplomat. Unwyrm wasn't. Unwyrm was very blunt about what he wanted, and Patience was just as blunt about rejecting him. There was no subtle byplay in this battle.

  They left the dock and went to the stable. Their horses had been well groomed-Angel had paid for the service, since he was expecting to sell them.

  Patience prepared her blowgun with three dozen wooden darts. They were more visible than her glass darts, but they flew farther and carried as lethal a close of poison.

  Angel gRuinbled about being an old man as he took a shortbow and a packet of arrows from his trunk. "I'm not very good with this," he said. "I'm better with knifework in close."

  "From behind, too, no doubt," said Sken.

  "I can poison them all, too," said Angel. "Provided they invite us to supper."

  "Poison and a knife in the back. What a man."

  "Enough," said Patience. "This will be dangerous enough without a stupid quarrel over nothing." She spoke sharply, letting her voice carry away some of the ever- increasing punishment the Cranning call was inflicting on her. Just climbing into the carriage made her feel ill; she was trembling and nauseated as Angel snapped the reins to start the horses out onto the cobbled lane. The stones were ancient and worn even and flat by years of traffic, but Patience felt the tiny breaks between them like ruts that jarred her until her head ached.

  But she had learned all her lessons well. She kept her demeanor calm, managing to look slightly amused at moments that were far from amusing. She would not break under Unwyrm's twisting grip. She would not let Angel see that she suffered. If she could fool
Angel, she knew she was still in control of herself.

  The town was not very big, and soon the highway passed between fields of vegetables and orchards, where farmers hoed or harvested among the ruins of old mansions that had once been the pride of Waterkeep. It was part of the cycle of things, in the years of human life on Imakulata. Waterkeep had once been great; it would be great again, or it would disappear entirely, but nothing stayed. Even the religions had their changing fashions, the Keepers and the Brickmakers, the Rememberers and the Watchers, and, only in the last century, the Vigilants in their little hermit huts. They would also fall to ruin.

  Nothing lasted.

  Except the bloodline of the Heptarchy, which had gone on unbroken, the only institution that endured through all the millennia of mankind on Imakulata. It was a thing unknown in human history. She tried to remember anything comparable. The Romans were only a thousand years by the most generous count; the Popes only lasted some 2500 years. Even the patriarchate of Constantinople was gone now, though it had lasted long enough in a perverse and polluted form to send this colony to Imakulata.

  The colonists on Imakulata were supposed to keep Greek religion alive, though none of them spoke Greek or cared much, in the end, about maintaining the forms of the old Greek church. Nothing lasted except the Heptarchy.

  Until now, thought Patience. Now this distant being, this enemy, this Unwyrm tears at me. It is the end of the Heptarchy if he conquers me. And if I keep resisting him, it is the end of me.

  Orchards began to give way to stands of wood. Here and there a tiny village interrupted the growing forest, with a few cows on the commons, a few farmers in the fields, and children who shouted at the carriage and ran alongside until they couldn't keep up any longer. Sken cursed them loudly, which delighted them, and Patience pretended to enjoy it, though she was beyond anything but the imitation of pleasure now. Angel, however, stayed glum, urging the horses on at a brisk pace.

  Finally, in early afternoon, the trees won out entirely, as the road become closed in with thick underbrush and old giants ten or twenty meters round. It was a perfect place for ambuscade, and Patience felt a new wave of shame at having led them into such danger.

  They came to a long straight lane through the densest part of the woods. At the far end of the lane they could plainly see a thick rope stretched across the road, at such a height that it would catch the horses' necks.

  "Brazen, aren't they?" said Sken. "They give us plenty of time to see what's coming."

  "I'm turning around," said Angel.

  At his words Patience felt grateful assent well up within her. But she had learned discipline. And her resistance to Unwyrm had become a madness in her now, as the pain of it became greater. "Go back if you want," she said. "I'm going on."

  She had her glass blowgun in the cross beneath her shirt; it and the loop were her weapons of last resort if she were captured. She carried a longer, more accurate wooden blowgun. The darts, all heavily poisoned, were in a pouch. She could handle them safely enough; her father had seen to it she was inured to the most useful poisons before she was ten years old. She swung down from the carriage and strode out boldly toward the waiting rope. Sken cursed, but followed her with a hatchet in each hand. And Angel grimly brought the carriage along after.

  "They can kill us whenever they want," he said.

  "Watch the trees," said Patience. "The innkeeper said they liked torturing people. They'll try to take us alive."

  "Now I feel better," said Sken.

  "The rope is yours," said Patience.

  "It's as good as down."

  Patience scanned the underbrush, the trees overhead.

  The leaves were sparse enough to allow plenty of light; there was a slight breeze, too, which concealed any signs of movement by the robbers. Patience saw only a couple of men high in the branches. Bowmen, no doubt. But it was not an easy thing to aim a bow to shoot almost straight down at a moving target; if the archers in the trees hit any of them, it would be more by chance than design.

  What worried her were the men on the ground, no doubt dozens of them hiding behind trees. They could swarm out from any direction. She slipped a dart into the blowgun and held three in her right hand.

  They were still a few meters from the rope when four men stepped out from behind a tree and stood in the middle of the road, behind the rope. They swaggered, they smiled, they knew their victims had no chance. One stepped forward, preparing to speak. Patience knew that as he talked, others would come out and surround them.

  So there would be no talk. She blew a puff through the pipe. She had aimed for the throat, but the dart went high and entered his mouth. He stood, transfixed, the dart invisible to his companions behind him. So she had time to load again and shook before they realized what was happening. The second dart struck its victim in the forehead; the first man finally gagged and choked and fell over, writhing from the poison that was already reaching his brain. The other two men backed away, surprised for a moment that the initiative had been taken from them.

  Sken moved slowly, but with great momentum, and one blow with her hatchet split the rope. Immediately Angel urged the horses forward, Sken swung up onto the carriage, and Patience jogged alongside, then caught hold.

  The carriage bounced over the bodies in the road. She! heard a voice in the underbrush saying, "The boy got'" Tinker. With his mouth."

  For a moment it seemed they might be allowed to pass. Then the men began to shout, to scream, and arrows began striking the carriage from behind. Angel urged the horses on, shouted at them, and then suddenly I gurgled and choked. An arrow stuck out of the side of his I neck. Many hands clutched at the horses; the carriage came to a stop.

  Patience had no time to worry about Angel. Fortunately the robbers wasted time cutting the horses loose.

  Patience ignored the horses and shouted for Sken to do; the same. Sken took the left side of the carriage, swinging her hatchets and spattering blood in every direction.

  They backed off from Sken, perhaps hoping an archer would take care of her, but Patience kept blowing darts with deadly aim-at this range, she could hardly miss- and those who weren't killed outright screamed in such agony at the poison that the robbers began to lose heart.

  After all, their commander had been killed, they had already lost a dozen men, with some vicious injuries from the hatchets, and every dart that hit home meant another death. They cried out terrible threats and oaths, but broke and ran as the darts kept coming.

  Sken had a deep cut in the back of one arm. "I'm all right," she said. "We've got to get out of here. They'll be back, they'll follow us, we've got to keep moving."

  "Can you pull the carriage?"

  "Better to run; what good will all your money do you if you're dead?"

  "Angel's still alive. The only way to bring him is in the carriage."

  Sken looked at the arrow in his throat, grunted, then took her place at the front of the carriage. "Just keep a good lookout," she said.

  Angel's wound wasn't bleeding much, and Patience knew to leave the shaft in place until they had time to try surgery. Unless they could find a good-sized town with an expert physician, though, there wasn't much hope for him. She should go back, hurry back to Waterkeep, where there would be a physician. And they could continue their trip by water, after Angel was better.

  But she recognized this thought, too, as coming from Unwyrm. Or did she? Maybe it was common sense, maybe what she was doing with this determination to resist was killing Angel. How could she push on, not even knowing if there was a village ahead, when this loyal man, her teacher, virtually the only father she had ever really known, lay dying in the carriage?

  On. She held that single thought in her head, go on.

  Go on. She scanned the road ahead and behind, watching for robbers or for one of the horses. Once a man stepped into the road behind them, armed with a bow; he died before he could get off a shot. There were no others.

  Perhaps they had given up. It d
idn't matter. For Angel's sake there could be no slackening of the pace.

  She tried to join Sken in pulling the carriage. "Go away," said the woman. "You break up my rhythm.

  Keep watching."

  And finally the trees thinned, and there was an orchard, and after the orchard, a field; villagers shouted to each other and began to gather.

  "Tinker let you through?" asked a child.

  "Have you a healer!" called Sken.

  "Not a village healer," Patience said.

  "They sometimes know more than the town physicians," she answered. "And if they have one, so much the better for the old man."

  "We have a healer," said a man. "A gebling. But a fine healer all the same."

  "Can you pull this carriage?" asked Sken. "Can you pull this to the healer? We can pay."

  "Tinker left you with money?"

  Patience was tired of hearing his name. "Tinker's dead," she said. "Take us to the healer."

  "The boy's a pretty one," said one of the girls, a snaggle-toothed wretch who was trying to flirt. Patience sighed and climbed onto the carriage. Angel's eyes were open now. She held his hand to ease the fear he no doubt felt. "We're with friends," she said.

  The villagers took hold of the carriage leads, and some pushed from behind. Sken gratefully climbed aboard. A strange feeling came over Patience as soon as the carriage started to move again, a feeling of sweetness, of peace. All the resistance from Unwyrm was gone. And now the Cranning call was back again, a yearning to go on, to go north, to Cranning. Where her lover waited for her, with gentleness and tender kisses, her lover waited to fill her womb with life. Patience forced these new feelings into the background, just as she had done with the old, more vicious ones. Unwyrm now wants to hurry me on. So apparently I'm right where he didn't want me to be. Heading for a gebling healer in a village hidden from the world by a band of robbers. Unwyrm couldn't have guided her here more surely if he had given her a ' map. Have I done, after all, what my enemy wanted? Or have I defeated him?

  "There," cried some of the villagers. It was a good- sized house at the far end of town.