Orson Card - Wyrms

Strings laughed.

Kristiano touched her knee. "Lady, great lady, Strings can't be deceived, not by someone whose need shouts so clearly."

"I know where you're going," said Strings, "and I know the way."

Will spoke softly. "Let's leave here. Now."

Patience was uncertain. Obviously this gaunt was unusually adept at empathy. Yet how could empathy tell him her destination? There were no words in it, no images.

As if in answer to her question, Strings let his head rock backward at an impossible angle, as if all the muscles in his neck had gone slack. Then he began to murmur, his words an incantation. "I'm not so old now that I can forget the taste of the need like a knife in your heart. I've tasted the hunger, the yearning to climb to the ice where he waits, where he waits, where he waits. And the lady he calls is the one that he waits for, he calls you more strongly than any before you, but under the layers of pain that he sends you I feel something stronger than ever before. You are his enemy. You are his lover. And I am your guide to his lovemaking chamber."

During the speech, Kristiano had almost unconsciously begun to move, as if the words were lyrics and he the visual music. Even in the confines of the box, the shape and movement of the boyok's body were exquisite. He oriented himself, perhaps instinctively, so that the light from the candle-window played off his arms and hands, profiled his face, and made shadows that became part of the dance.

How can one so young be so experienced already in the most difficult of arts? No sooner had she asked herself the question than Patience saw an answer to it:

Kristiano was enacting the dance that Strings gave him.

Strings-and Kristiano his puppet. But that would mean that Kristiano was responding to a gaunt as if the gaunt were a human or gebling, with a powerful will.

"How does a gaunt put a dance into a gauntling?" she asked.

Strings came out of his trance, looking confused.

"Dance?" Then he looked at Kristiano, as if he had been unaware the boyok was dancing. "Not now," he said.

Kristiano at once relaxed his pose.

"You gave him a dance as you spoke to me," she said. "How can you do it, when you have no will?"

He was preparing to lie; she could see that. But if he was indeed Unwyrm's guide up the mountain-for the Wise who had come before her, and now for the seventh seventh seventh daughter-then she had to have the truth from him, and for some reason she knew that this was the question that mattered.

His face contorted. "Lady, you torture me with your desire."

"Then ease yourself, and answer me."

"I am a monster among gaunts," he said.

"Because you have a will, after all?"

"Because I wish I had one. I wish. I take them up the mountain-from the time I was little I find these men and women with the hunger on them, and I take them up the mountain to the yellow door. It's where they want to go, but they never come down. And you, such beauty you gave me, do you think I can forgive you far being such a lifegiver? Like the water down the mountain out of his palace, a lifegiver, and I'll take you up the mountain like all the others and you'll never come down and what am I to do then? How are we ever to dance again, now that we've found the audience that can bring us to life?"

Again, Kristiano danced during Strings' recitative, giving a strangely separated life to his words.

"I'm old," said Strings. "The boyok here, he is my child-self. What dance can I do now, except to stand and give the others their movements around me? Not until you came, not for years have I done anything but stand in the middle of my dance."

"Then you are powerful," said Patience. "Enough to control the others, anyway."

"I have no will, great lady, but I have desires, as strong as yours are, hot as fires, cold as the bedchamber waiting for you, and perfect, yes, I know the perfect shapes. I desire the shape of perfection from them, and they answer me, they follow me. Let me follow you, lady." His eyes pled with her.

She tried to understand the pleading look he gave her.

All that he had told her was true. But something more.

She had to know even what he kept back from her. She let the desire grow within her, pushed into the background her desire for Will, her fear of this place; she even subdued, for a moment, her need to rise to where Unwyrm waited.

His face twisted. His breath came in labored heaves.

And then, suddenly, out of a mask of agony he spoke again. "Don't go up the mountain, lady, he'll have you then, all alone, there'll be no help for you."

"I'm not alone," she said.

"You will be, you will be, except for the liar, except for his puppet, except for the wise man who went and came back, the traitor who-"

As he spoke, Patience thought of the one man who claimed to be Wise and who admitted he had been to Cranning and returned. She looked at him, and so the others did, too. Will, ready to betray her for Unwyrm's sake.

And she would have gone on believing that, if she hadn't glanced back at Strings just before his speech petered out, and he went limp and collapsed on the chair, his breath a thin whisper of exhaustion. Kristiano gasped, and immediately felt him for a pulse; relieved that Strings was not dead, the boyok held the old gaunt against him.

But even in the dim light. Patience had seen. Strings had not collapsed from exhaustion. Angel's hand had reached out, had touched the gaunt in the places that Angel had taught her could make a man lose consciousness.

Just when Strings had said enough to incriminate Will, but before Strings had said all he meant to say, Angel had silenced him. Had silenced him at the moment when all were looking at Will. She was the only one who could have noticed. Had silenced him before Strings had actually named a name or pointed a finger or looked at anyone.

"You," said Angel. He was looking at Will. "You're the one he meant. You've been here before. And I heard you tell Patience the other morning on the boat, I heard you tell her that you had felt the Cranning call. That you are one of the Wise. Do you deny it?"

If she had not seen Angel's fingers at their work, she would have believed his words. But she knew that the traitor was Angel. Even as he accused Will, he confirmed the truth to her. He had been a young man when he heard the Cranning call. He came to Cranning as all the Wise had come, no better able to resist the call than any other. But Unwyrm needed one task performed. The daughtering of Peace. So Angel had come back down from the mountain, armed with the knowledge of how to repair what had been done to Peace. Soon Unwyrm's bride was conceived and born, and Angel then devoted his life to bringing her up, preparing her. And finally bringing her here. All the time, he had been in Unwyrm's service. All the time. And my father trusted him. She wanted to tear at him with her hands, reach in through the soft places of his face and rip him to pieces. Never had she felt such rage and shame as now, knowing that all her childish love had been given to a man whose show of affection was all a mockery. He is a pigherd, and I am his only swine. Now he leads me to the slaughter, and I, blind to what he truly is, love him.

Not blind now, though. And because she could hide anything when she needed to, she let nothing of her rage show.

Ruin was laughing at the thought of Will being one of the Wise, but Reck was alert. Patience caught her eye and gazed steadily at her for a moment, while Angel continued his accusation against Will. Did she understand?

I will act, and you must watch me if you mean to stay with me up the mountain.

Still her thoughts raced, putting everything together now, revising all her past memories to fit the present reality. Angel was the enemy. He had tried his best to keep her from meeting Ruin and Reck, and now he meant to get rid of them before she reached Unwyrm. He was too good an assassin for her to believe the gebling king would reach the top of the mountain alive, if Angel were with them, and Will not there to protect them. So Angel would not be with them.