Orson Card - Wyrms

"They know you do. You've told us much in your sleep. We've been writing down the stories you shouted out, and Heffiji has been storing them away here and there. I've tried to figure out what her system is."

"She doesn't have one."

"That was my conclusion. A true dwelf. But no one else could have done this. Unwyrm was calling all the people who knew things. He would have called her, too, if she had actually known anything. The only way the knowledge could stay in the world was with someone like Heffiji who knew nothing of any value, but could lay her hands on everything that mattered. It's all here. All the learning of the world. Reck and Ruin have called geblings out of Cranning to guard the place. They're going to glaze and shutter the windows, put on a new roof. Whatever it takes to protect this house."

"Do the geblings accept Reck and Ruin as their king?"

Angel shrugged. "Who knows what goes on in their minds? They say one thing, but something completely different might be going on under the surface. The fact remains that for the time being, these kings can't go more than a few dozen meters away from you, or they start being driven away from Cranning by Unwyrm.

They can't exactly claim their right to lead the geblings while they're still chained to the human Heptarch, can they?"

"We've wasted enough time," Patience said. "Take me to the boat."

"We'll go as far as Cranning, but no deeper into the mountain until you're stronger."

"I wasn't sick, just crazy," Patience said. "Crazy people can be amazingly strong."

"Is the call-any different now?"

"Only because I know who it is that's calling me."

"So he doesn't control you-"

"Or if he does, he controls me so thoroughly that I don't know I'm controlled."

"That puts my mind at ease."

"Angel, I've become a terrible person."

"Have you?"

"If the scepter had been given to me before I knew the things we learned here in this house, I could never have coped with it. If I had been brought to Cranning without understanding all the things I understand, I would have been helpless when I faced him. I look back on all that you and father did, all that I did and the geblings did and-it was right, it was necessary."

"Why does that make you terrible?"

"Even Mother's death, Angel. Even that."

"Ah."

"What kind of person am I, to agree that my own mother had to die? I have lived through that so many times, all my life, only this time through Father's eyes. He never forgave himself for it. Yet I forgive him."

Angel bent down and kissed her forehead. "My Heptarch, only you are fit to rule mankind."

"What kind of person am I?"

"A wise one."

She didn't argue, though she knew it wasn't true. Wise she was not. But strong-she was strong. She had mastered the mindstone. There was a true self before all the folds of her life. She knew that much, but the rest of her self was still elusive, out of reach, out of sight. So let Angel call her wise, she cared nothing for that. "But am I good, Angel?"

"As Heptarch, your choice is no longer between good and bad. Your choice is between right and wrong."

She had been his student long enough to understand the difference, and agree that he was right. At least in her role as Heptarch, she could no longer live by the same moral code that others lived by. Her decisions now were the decisions of a larger community than just herself. But what community? "Right for whom?" she asked.

"For humankind, Heptarch."

She knew at once that he was wrong. "No. The King's House is all the world. I am a gebling, too. All the life that speaks, and all the life that doesn't speak, all the life of the world except one."

"And that one wants you. But I'll die before I let him have you. He thinks I'm too weak to save you, but I can, and I will."

His fervor as he spoke was no pretense. Whatever lies he was telling, this was not part of it. He did love her.

She touched his cheek. "Serve me as a free man. Angel."

"Slave or free, I serve you the same. What difference does it make?"

"I ask you now, as a free man, to help me."

Angel gently dressed her and led her from the room.

To her surprise, the house was busy with geblings, hundreds of them. Her room had been off limits to them, but through the rest of the house they were busy glazing, patching, repairing, making it whole again. Patience sat in the common room by a scant fire, a fall of sunlight catching her chair to help keep her warm, and watched the ladders going up and down, moving along the walls, the geblings scattering here and there. River's monkey scampered underfoot-a dozen times he was kicked, nearly stepped on, or knocked off some high perch. Always he got up, screeched a string of unintelligible obscenities, and bounded back into the thick of the fray. Patience could not help but notice that Heffiji was much like the monkey, almost frantic with delight and worry, scurrying in and out of the house, up and down the stairs. "Don't touch that!" she'd cry. The geblings would laugh and mock her, but they would also obey.

In his jar on the mantle piece. River slept. Away from Cranwater, the world did not exist for him.

Patience found herself trying to feel the geblings' silent communication, the speechless call of the othermind.

She remembered so clearly how it felt, when she was each of the first few gebling kings. Yet now she felt nothing. It was like reaching out with her hand, only to discover that her hand had been cut off. She watched them wistfully, grieving that she could never know them except in the vicarious memories that came to her through the scepter. And the geblings went about their business, not knowing who she was, not guessing that she was the one living human who knew what it was like to be a gebling, who could understand the constant fellowship that gave them their anchor in the world. How did I find the courage to live before, when I never knew what it was to know another person?

"Patience," whispered someone behind her/She knew the voice, knew that Reek's hand was reaching for her shoulder, and reached up her own hand to touch. And yes, it was there, the soft fur of the gebling hand. For a moment she thought that perhaps she had felt Reek's proximity through the othermind. But no; it could only be her instinct as an assassin, to know when a hand was reaching for her. She could not hope ever to take part in the gebling community.

"Reck," she said.

"We were afraid we'd carry a madwoman with us into Cranning."

"A madwoman should stay here. After all, this is a madhouse."

Reck laughed. "Not really. These geblings came to rebuild Heffiji's house, to keep the learning of humankind safe."

"How did you call them?"

"Oh, the gebling king is known. Not by face or name-no, when they see us here they think we're just two more geblings who were summoned and came. But in the othermind, they know the call of the gebling king."

"Do they come from Cranning?"

"I don't think so. We called, and the nearest geblings heard it and passed on the call. As more and more took it up, it got stronger, until we knew we had enough. We're not Unwyrm. Our own call, alone, could never reach from here to Cranning."

"It's good of you to keep this house alive."

"This house has done the impossible. It has humbled my beloved brother Ruin. All the ideas that Heffiji has saved here. Ruin's made a pest of himself, questioning her, dogging her heels from answer to answer. He's hardly known a human in his life, and for obvious reasons he's never known any of the Wise. Now, though, he's seen what human minds can do at their best."

"If he ever wants to know us at our worst, he has only to take the scepter," said Patience.

"Not likely," said Reck. "We used to pity you humans for your solitude. Well, I pitied you, and he despised you. But now, well, he keeps telling me that solitude is the foundation of true wisdom, that all the brilliant thoughts in this house come as the desperate cry of one human being to another, saying, Know me, live with me in the world of my mind."