Orson Card: Wyrms

"Then stop pumping."

Patience stopped pumping air, and lay supine before the severed head in order to read its lips and catch the scraps of sound that an unbreathing mouth can produce.

"You are in grave danger. They believe the seventh seventh seventh daughter will bring Kristos."

Patience wasn't sure whether she had heard correctly.

The phrase meant nothing to her. She let her face show her puzzlement.

"No one told you?" asked Letheko. "God help you, child. An ancient prophecy-some say as old as the Starship Captain-says that the seventh seventh seventh daughter will save the world. Or destroy it. The prophecy is vague."

Seventh seventh seventh daughter. What in the world did that mean?

"Seven times seven times seven generations since the Starship Captain. Irena was first. You are the 343rd Heptarch."

Patience covered Letheko's lips with her fingers, to keep her even from mouthing such treason.

Letheko smiled in vast amusement. "What do you think they can do to me, cut off my head?"

But Patience was no fool. She knew that heads could be tortured more cruelly and with less effort than would ever be possible with a living human being. If she were wise, she would stop this dangerous conversation with Letheko at once. And yet she had never heard of this prophecy before. It was one thing to know she was in the dangerous position of being a possible pretender to the throne. But now to know that every true believer in every human nation of the world thought of her as the fulfiller of a prophecy-how could Father have let her go on for so many years without telling her all of what others thought she was?

Letheko wasn't through. "When you were born, a hundred thousand Tassaliki volunteered to form an army to invade Korfu and put you on the throne. They haven't forgotten. If you gave the Tassaliki so much as a hope that you would join them, they would declare a holy war and sweep into Korfu in such numbers and with such fury as we haven't seen since the last gebling invasion.

King Oruc is insane to put you in the same room with a young Tassal prince who wants to prove his manhood."

Again Patience covered Letheko's mouth to stop her speech. Then she lifted herself on her hands, leaned forward, and kissed the wizened head on the lips. The stench of the fluids in the canister was foul, but Letheko had risked great suffering to tell her something far more important than how one behaves properly with a devout Tassal prince. A gool sloshed lazily in the canister. A tear came to the corner of the old woman's eye.

"How many times," mouthed Letheko, "I wanted to take you in my arms and cry out, My Heptarch, Agaranthemem Heptek."

"And if you had," whispered Patience, "I would be dead, and so would you."

Letheko grinned maniacally. "But I am." Patience laughed, and gave Letheko air to laugh aloud. Then she called the headsman to take the old lady back to Slaves' Hall.

Patience walked through the great chambers of the court, seeing the people on their errands there in a different light. Most of them wore crosses, of course, but that was the style. How many of them were believers? How many were Watchers, or even secret Vigilants, harboring mad thoughts of her saving-or destroying-the human race, ushering in the coming of Kristos to Imakulata? More to the point, how many of them would die in order to bring down King Oruc and restore Peace to Heptagon House as its master, and Patience as his daughter and heir?

And as thoughts of bloody revolution swam through her head, her Father's cool voice came to the surface and said, through a hundred memories, "Your first responsibility is the greatest good for all the world. Only when that is secure can you care for private loves and comforts and power. The King's House is all the world."

If she was the sort of woman who would plunge Korfu and Tassali into a bloody religious war, she was too selfish and mad for power to serve as Heptarch. As many as a million could die. Perhaps more. How could anything ever surface from such an ocean of blood?

No wonder Father never told her. It was a terrible temptation, one she could never have faced when she was younger.

I am still young, she thought. And King Oruc is putting me alone in a room with Prekeptor and Lyra. We could talk in Tassalik and never be understood. We could plot. I could commit treason.

He is testing me. He is deciding whether or not I will be loyal to him. No doubt he even arranged for Letheko to be available, so I could learn from her what he no doubt knew she would tell me. My life, and possibly Father's life, is in my own hands right now.

But Father would say, What is your life? What is my life? We keep ourselves alive only so we can serve the King's House. And he would not say, but I would remember, The King's House is all the world.

Patience tried to figure out whether the world most needed her alive or not. But she knew that this was not a decision she was capable of making, not yet, not now.

She would try to stay alive because it was unthinkable to do anything else. And to stay alive required perfect, absolute loyalty to King Oruc. She could not even appear to consider a plot to take the throne.

One thing was certain. After this was over, if she pulled it off, Father's and Angel's simple little tests would never frighten her again.

LYRA WAITED IN THE GARDEN OF heptagon house of Viously, her mother had dressed her. Her gown was a bizarre mixture of chastity and seduction, modest from neck to floor, with just a touch of lace at her throat and wrists. But the fabric was translucent, so that whenever she was backlit her voluptuous shape was perfectly silhouetted.

"Oh, Patience, I was so glad when Father said I could have you interpret for me. I begged him for days, and he finally relented."

Could it be that her presence here was only the result of Lyra's pleading? Impossible-Oruc was too strong a man to let his daughters endanger his throne on a whim.

"I'm glad he did," said Patience. "I'll be sorry if you have to leave Heptam, but at least I can tell you whether I approve."

This was obviously a joke, spoken by a thirteen-year- old slave to the daughter of the Heptareh, but Lyra was so tense she didn't notice the impropriety of the remark.

"I hope you do. And oh, if you see something in him that I don't see, please let me know. I want so very much to please Father by marrying this prince, but if he's really awful, I can't possibly go through with it."

Patience showed nothing of the contempt she felt.

Imagine-a daughter of the Starship Captain's blood even thinking of refusing a marriage, not for reasons of state, but because she found the suitor unattractive. To put one's personal pleasure ahead of the good of the King's House was proof of unfitness. You should be out in a country house, said Patience silently, the daughter of a country lord, going to country dances and giggling with your girlfriends about which of the country boys had the fewest pimples and the least repulsive breath.

Neither her words nor her face betrayed her true feelings.

Instead she made herself a perfect mirror, reflecting back to Lyra exactly what Lyra wanted to see and hear.

"He won't be awful, Lyra. The negotiators would never have come this far if he had a second head growing out of his shoulder."

"Nobody gets second heads anymore," said Lyra.

"They have a vaccine for it."

Poor child, thought Patience. She was usually bright enough to understand such an obvious irony as that.

It did not seem incongruous to Patience that she was thinking of Lyra, three years her senior, as a child. Lyra had been pampered and spoiled, and despite the evidence of her body she was not a woman yet. A thousand times in their years as children together in King's Hill, Patience had wished for just one night a year in the soft bed of one of the Heptarch's daughters. But now, seeing the poor result of a gentle upbringing, she silently thanked her father for the cold room, the hard bed, the plain food, the endless study and exercise.