Orson Card - Wyrms

The great city in the cliff, the mapless tunnels and delvings that reached a mile deep from the face of Skyfoot.

Cranning, a city with more inhabitants than most nations, peopled with men and dwelfs and gaunts but ruled by geblings, for only geblings held within their minds the indelible, unwritable memory of every turn of every tunnel in the place. Every stone in every cavern was familiar, even to geblings like Ruin, who had never set his foot on the stone, never tasted the cold water that flowed through the tunnels from the glacier above, never slept under the arch of darkness that was infinitely more comforting than the sky. Where Reck was. Ruin could be at peace; but outside Cranning, he could never be at home.

And while Unwyrm lived, how could Ruin ever get there? It was the quandary of his life, ever since he was a child and his mother explained who he was and what he had to do. "You are the most excellent of excellent blood, you and your sister, with the seeds of mastery in your souls. There is nothing you cannot learn, nothing you cannot do, no thought that cannot come into your mind like light out of the storm. You were born to be the best answer of the geblings to the terrible hatred of Unwyrm, our only hope to slay him, the two of you."

"Where do I find him?" asked the child Ruin.

"He lives at the heart of Cranning, where the lifeblood flows. He lives in the very womb of the geblings, the viper in our womb, to devour our babies as they are born."

"Then teach me the way to Cranning, Mother, so I can go and kill him!"

Then Mother wept, her long tongue hanging dejectedly from her mouth, its twin points glistening with her tears.

"How can you, of all geblings, not already know the way? Ah, Ruin and Reck, my son, my daughter, we made you to be the downfall of our enemy, but already he knows you and hides Cranning from you in your own mind."

When Mother died, Ruin and Reck wandered aimlessly in the world for a time. Each of them at once rejected and prepared for the work their mother had taught them they must do. Reck learned the arts of archery and could kill anything that she could see-but she refused to search for Cranning, denying that the place meant anything to her. She mocked Ruin for his endless effort to reach the place. "All dreams and visions," she said, "all foolish prophecies." But still she practiced with the bow in all her spare hours, and studied all the lore of Unwyrm that she could find among the geblings who traveled the river and came to take the hospitality of her house.

Ruin, in turn, would not become a killer. Instead he learned the arts of healing. He wandered in the woods, testing the herbs that grew there, using them to heal the sick and broken animals, the wounds caused by men and other beasts. When an herb was promising, he grew and nurtured it, taught it more of what he wanted it to do, and soon he had herbs that could drive away infections, root powders that could cure disease, berries that took away all pain. And he knew the inward shape of every body just by looking at its outward lines. The lizard and the Lion, the rubin and the grouse, he knew them, could cut them open and set them to rights. He could never have set his knowledge down in books, like humans did.

Poor humans-they lacked the othermind, the secret memory in which geblings hid their great learning even from themselves. If you asked Ruin what was wrong with one of his many patients, he could not tell you, for his manmind, his wordmind-it knew nothing of healing.

His wordmind could only speak, could only remember sights and sounds; he had no use for it. It was his othermind that he trusted, his othermind that he let rule him, and his othermind that held all his greatest gifts.

Except it was also his othermind that Unwyrm had found and forced away from Cranning. Only his weak and hated manmind could drive him forward, again and again, struggling for control of his legs and arms, in the endless vertical climb to meet his enemy. And when I meet him, what will I do? What am I fit for, except to be the first of my people to be devoured?

It was near nightfall and Ruin was bitter with failure when he reached the house he shared with Reck. He knew from the smell that there were humans inside, knew also that it was the old man who was injured and the young woman who most loved and feared for him.

The fat woman was just a pile of sweat; he disregarded her. There was also the smell of Will, but Ruin disregarded him, too. If his sister wished to keep a human instead of an ox, that was her prerogative. Ruin never spoke to Will, and Will returned the favor.

Reck greeted him without a touch or a smile. There had been anger here. Ruin questioned her in Geblic.

"Why do you let them stay, if they offend you?"

"The girl," said Reck. "Tell me you can't feel it, what she does to Unwyrm, being here."

Ruin strode to the boy-dressed girl, sitting on the floor in the corner. Yes, he could feel it too, like prickles on his spine. Near her, Unwyrm was not driving them away at all. He was calling. It was something Ruin had never felt before, though he had heard of it: the Cranning call.

It was unbelievably strong, like the promise of sexual pleasure, like a mother's love for a child. Ruin knelt and put his face close to the girl's face. He ignored her revulsion, ignored the hand that went up to her hair.

The fat woman shouted from by the fire. "Keep that filthy beast away from her or I'll kill him myself!"

"Quiet," murmured the girl. "He has more to fear from me than I from him." Ruin felt her breath on his cheek, and it seemed to be a warm breeze from Cranning, which called him now for the first time in his life.

"A naked gebling coming at a girl like that," gRuinbled me reeking old dunghill. "Time was when goblins knew their place."

Reck called him back to duty. "The fat woman who loves geblings is Sken. The man who is dying is Angel."

Ruin pulled himself away from the girl. It was almost a physical pain, when the Cranning call receded. Standing well away from her, though, it still had power over him, for the constant pressure of Unwyrm's hate was slackened. Ruin had never realized how much of his othermind Unwyrm had been using up. Now as he examined the wound, the understanding of it came so quickly and clearly that he could almost-not quite, but almost- bring it into his wordmind and explain it to himself. For the first time he realized what he might become if Unwyrm were dead.

Angel was unconscious. It meant Ruin would not have to waste time drugging him to sleep. He tasted the wound, which was still oozing blood. He knew the poison-one of the childish weeds that the woodland robbers were so proud of. It was the arrow itself that worried Ruin more.

It had done some tearing on the way in and would do more coming out. The man's eating throat would not heal well, and he might starve to death before he could swallow again.

"I'll have to cut him," said Ruin, again in Geblic.

"To let him heal inside. You tell the humans." He knew enough Agarant to make himself understood, but it was easier to let Reck deal with the humans. He much preferred communicating with the animals that didn't think themselves intelligent.

While Reck told the others what Ruin would do, he found the fungus spores that would undo the poison, chose a thin brass knife from his toolbox, and gently drew a long, fine strand from the wireweed in the window planter. There had been no metal in the soil, so it was all organic, and would eventually dissolve inside the body. He put the blade and the wireweed in his mouth with a sprig of claffroot, to sterilize them. Then, in a swift motion, he cut deeply in the man's throat, above and below the arrow. Ruin dipped his tongue in the fungus spores and then inserted his tongue in the incisions, deep within the wound, where the arrow's poison still prevented the clotting of blood. It would take only a few minutes for the spores to do their work, feeding on the poison and then producing their own bloodbinder to help in the clotting of the blood.