Orson Card - Wyrms

"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.

"He lives there with his sister," said a villager.

"And a human, a giant."

"They say the geblings sleep together," said another. '

"Filthy beasts."

"But he's a healer, a true healer."

"What is his name?" asked Patience.

"Ruin," said a man.

Sken snorted. "That's a promising name."

Smoke curled from the chimney. Pass it by, said the Cranning call. Hurry on. Angel will be safe. Go on, pass it by, pass it by.

The door opened and a gebling woman emerged, covered with fur. She was clean, not filthy at all, beautiful by gebling standards. There was an intelligence in her eyes that made Patience decided to be wary with her. No sense in letting her know that she could speak Geblic.

This house was important enough that Unwyrm didn't want her there. So she would enter it as an ambassador, and learn all she could before committing herself to anything.

And in the meantime, she hoped against all likelihood that Angel could be saved. Blood oozed from the arrow's root as the villagers carried him in. Patience thought of scattering copper coins for them, but instead took a steel coin and handed it to the old man who seemed to be the village headman. "For the whole village, for your kindness to us." The old man smiled and nodded, and people murmured their thanks. It was more money than the whole village earned in a year.

RECK HEARD THE VILLAGERS COMING WHEN THEY WERE STILL well away from her little house. There was an excitement in the murmur that the wind brought. She cocked her head to hear better. Could it be a gobbing? No, there was no anger in it. This wasn't a village that was given to letting the priests stir them up against the geblings. Which was not to say that it wasn't always a possibility. One never knew when humans would get religion and start killing.

But why the excitement, if they were coming for a healing? Someone important needed physicking, then, someone unusual or powerful. A stranger, of course, since no one unusual or powerful had ever lived anywhere near Waterside Village-one of a hundred villages by that name along the shores of Cranwater alone. The stranger must also be injured, not sick, for disease never drew a crowd for long. Fear of contagion.

Reck went to the door and called to Will. He was in the field, hoeing out the potatoes. He heard her, waved, tossed the hoe onto the sledge and pulled the heavy burden along the ground toward the barn. He was a tall man, a giant even by human standards; to a gebling he was almost double size. He had once been an owned soldier, a slave in the service of a general officer in one army or another. He was an accomplished killer, and stronger than any other man Reck had heard of.

But Reck had no fear of him. She had found him as a runaway slave many years ago and offered him protection and a place to farm. It was enough for him. He and Reck made a pleasant enough life of it. Neither said much to the other, because neither had much to say. Both did their work dependably and well, and took pleasure in the labor.

Still, they were wise enough to be discreet. After all these years it was no secret in the village that there was a giant man living with the geblings near the forest's edge.

But they didn't enrage the villagers by flaunting it, just kept Will out of sight when people brought their sick and injured to be healed. It was not a problem with them.

Will got the sledge in the barn and no doubt climbed into the loft to sleep until the people went away. Will had a remarkable ability to sleep whenever he wanted, for as long as he wanted. Reck often wondered if Will was ever haunted by the dreams that kept her sleepless so many nights. She wondered, but did not ask. Dreams were not a subject that a gracious gebling asked about.

She saw the people drawing a carriage toward her house. No horses. That meant that the owners of the carriage had fallen afoul of the robbers-Tinker's men, no doubt. That was no surprise. The surprise was that anyone came out of it alive. Tinker was usually more careful.

She sniffed the air. Blood, but no bowel smell. Perhaps only a superficial wound, something she could clean and bind up without waiting for her brother to come home.

There was a young boy in the carriage, sitting up and conversing with the villagers. He seemed to be in charge of things. An old man lay with his head in the boy's lap.

A coarse-looking fat woman rode in the driver's seat, calling to the villagers who drew the carriage, urging them on with curses and promises and taunts. It was the old man who was injured, then. Only the one? And a young boy like that-Tinker always had his eye out for a catamite. Something strange had passed in the forest.

Unlikely that Tinker was alive, with an outcome such as this. Whatever they were, they must be more formidable than they looked at first. That was all right; Reck understood that. She, too, was more formidable than she seemed.

She met them at the gate. "Carry the man in, if he can't walk," she said. "Leave the carriage there, and the rest of you go home."

"They killed Tinker," one of the villagers said.

"And half his men."

The fat woman was feeling boastful. "I killed half of em myself, and you can trust there was a mark or two on every one!" Could be bluster, but no. Reck saw bloodstains halfway up her arms. Some of the blood was her own. "You can wash in the basin outside here. Get that wound clean."

The fat woman washed as the villagers brought in the old man and laid him on the physicking table. The boy and the fat woman came in to watch; Reck paid no attention to them. The man had an arrow in his throat, lodged well in. It had passed behind the windpipe, so he had pain but no blood in his breath.

Blood was still welling slowly from the base of the wound. Reck leaned down and sniffed it, then put forth her long tongue to lick it. She heard the fat woman grunt in revulsion. The boy said nothing. There's something wrong with the boy, thought Reck. But she couldn't place it; more important was the taste of the old man's blood.

"Poison," Reck told them. "A nasty one. This wound won't heal. The blood won't stop flowing."

"Then we don't take the arrow out?" asked the fat woman.

"You were right to leave it in."

"What will you do?" asked the boy.

"Nothing." Reck turned to the villagers. "Go away, I told you. You've done all you can!"

"You'll do nothing!" said the boy. "Then we'll go on to the next village, thank you." The boy spoke in a voice that said that he expected to be obeyed.