"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-t
ogether 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 bor
n 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."
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