Orson Card - Wyrms

"If I can destroy him, it will be to save myself."

"Yourself is the world, and all the worlds. How long before his children, after they've replaced all other intelligent life on this world, build starships and go out to conquer every other world that humanity has visited?

There was once a philosopher who said that there could never be war between the worlds of different stars, because there'd be nothing to gain. But he was a fool.

There is greatness to be gained, largeness of self, to have every world filled with your children. It's the most powerful urge of all life. Questions of profit or politics are trivial beside it."

"When I face Unwyrm," said Patience, "it won't be a grand question of good and evil. It'll be me, my body, my wit, such as it is, against his. Nothing more."

"His house against the King's House. The prize is the world."

"I don't want the world."

"That's why you'll have it."

She laughed in frustration. "Will, what can I do with you? You see me larger than I am. I can never be what you imagine me to be."

Will shook his head. "I imagine you to be a girl, fifteen years old, sometimes frightened, always brave. I imagine you to be unaware of your beauty, which makes you infinitely beautiful; unaware of your power, which makes you dangerously powerful. I have had many masters in my life, but you are the only master I could follow until I die."

"You see? How can I bear that? I can't be perfect."

"If I can be perfect, you can be perfect." He showed no sign that he was aware of how boastful he sounded.

"You're perfect?" she asked.

"I made myself perfect, so I could serve you when you came. You are skilled in all the skills of government but one: war. I made myself perfect in that, so I could serve you in it. My masters were all generals, but I served each one the same-I made them all victorious."

"You? A slave?"

"A trusted slave. They all learned that when they took my counsel, they won. I prepared myself so that you would find me ready when you needed me."

"How did you know that we'd ever meet? There on your farm with Reck and Ruin. What were the chances I'd ever find you?"

"There's no chance in this. From the time I discovered the truth of the soul, the Cranning call was always with me, Lady Patience. Then one day we marched along a road, from Waterkeep to Danswatch, and for a brief moment, as we passed a hut at the north end of the village, the call faded. And was replaced by a repulsion, a powerful desire not to go toward Cranning. And then we went a little way, and the Cranning call returned to me. I knew at once that something in that house-"

"Reck and Ruin."

"I didn't know that geblings lived there. I certainly didn't know they were the gebling king. But I knew that whatever was there, Unwyrm feared it, and if Unwyrm feared it, it was good, and I must ally myself with it. So I escaped and went to Reck. With her and Ruin, the Cranning call disappeared, so I was at peace. But that wasn't why I went to them, and it wasn't why I stayed. I stayed waiting for you."

"How could you possibly know that I would come there?"

"For the same reason that I went there. Because if you didn't, Unwyrm couldn't be defeated."

"That's not the reason."

"Nevertheless, it is the reason."

"You're too mystical for me."

"I don't think so," said Will. "I think I'm exactly mystical enough for you."

"I liked you better when you were silent," she said.

"I know," he said. "Endure me." He reached out his hand. With the tips of his fingers he stroked her cheek, her hair. His fingers traveled down her body, her neck, her shoulder, her breast, her waist. Finally he rested a hand on her thigh. "When you want me to speak again," he said, "I will. As slave to master. As subject to king.

As Vigilant to Kristos. As husband to wife."

Then he leaned down and kissed her lips. Unwyrm again filled her with revulsion at his touch, but this time she ignored it, put it behind her, and accepted the agonizing gift he gave. When the kiss was finished, he stood and walked across the deck to where his boots waited for him. "Time for me to clump around," he said, "and wake the others."

It was true. Light was coming in the east, over the trees; the stars were fading. And the high wall of Skyfoot rose in the northern sky, topped with eternal snow, where Unwyrm waited for her, hungered for her. Will has told me stories, and some of them I believe, but what will it matter when I come to you, Unwyrm? You're the only husband that was prophesied for me.

Even Unwyrm couldn't stop her from wishing for Will's hand to touch her again, his lips to invite her.

After all Will's philosophy, she suspected that the only thing he had given her that might help her at all when she faced Unwyrm at the end would be the dream of a human lover. She could not hold on to a mystic view of good and evil. But she could hold on to the memory of the touch of a living man.

She turned around, just to look downstream, just to be turning, and happened to see River's face. His eyes were open, gazing at her. Tears had tracked their way down his face.

"Did we wake you?" she asked inanely.

His lips answered, silently: The river is all the life I need.

But she knew it was a lie. For a few minutes in this early morning, she and Will had reminded him of life.

THE CLOSER THEY GOT TO SKYPOOT, THE BETTER THEY COULD see that it wasn't a sheer cliff at all. It was steep, but a slope nonetheless, with occasional deep ledges that were thick with orchards or farmland. Large reaches of the mountain were terraced for farming, while houses and buildings clotted and clumped in towns and villages and vast cities on the mountain's face. There were horizontal roads high up the mount, with carts that had been built on the mountain passing back and forth. There were hanging platforms that were constantly rising and lowering to carry passengers and cargos to towns hundreds of meters above or below. The whole face of the mountain as far and as high as they could see was a hive of activity.

Clouds hung only a few hundred meters above them when they came at last to the clean and seemingly bottomless lake that fronted the mountain like an apron many kilometers wide. Dozens of bustling harbors thrust wharves out into the water. River muttered his commands, and Sken worked the helm as they picked their way skillfully among the boats and jetties, finding an empty slip in the harbor River picked out for them.

To everyone's surprise, Will jumped ashore almost before an aging portboy had finished tying their line to the dock. Will elbowed the old man aside, then retied the line himself.

"Why did you do that?" demanded Angel as Will carefully stepped back into the boat. The portboy was muttering curses behind him.

"Because this is Freetown, and if you fall in with the jackals at the beginning you're lost."

"What do you know of it?" asked Ruin.

Will looked at him steadily for a moment, then turned to Reck. "I've been here before," he said.

Reck raised her eyebrows.

"I had a master once who brought me here as his bodyguard."

Patience saw that Will spoke with the same openness that she had seen a few mornings before, when they talked in the predawn darkness, lit only by the moon. It was the same in daylight. He did not lie. It was impossible not to believe that he believed what he said. Yet in all their journey, he had not given her or anyone else the slightest hint that he had ever been to Cranning before.

"You've been to Cranning?" asked Ruin.

"Why didn't you say so before?" demanded Angel.

Will considered a moment before he answered. "I didn't know you'd dock right here. This is the only part of Cranning I've visited." He smiled. "My master thought there were some secret whores in some of the houses higher in Freetown. Some whores who could do things that no one had ever imagined."