Orson Card - Wyrms

"Human infants," said Will. "And killing them will feel like murder."

Reck saw how Patience was sweating, steam rising from her body in the bitterly cold tunnel. Reck remembered all too well the terrible need that Unwyrm had forced on her, how little she had been able to think, to remember that throwing herself from the mountain was certain death. When Unwyrm commanded with that much strength, there was no denying him. She spoke to Ruin.

"We're asking too much of her. She's sheltered us all this way, and had no shelter for herself. When she's with him, she'll have no thought for any plan."

Patience began to sob and struggle against Will's hold on her. Now that she was stopped again, the call began to build an unbearable pressure within her. "Let me go, Will," she begged.

"Patience!" The cry rang through the tunnel. Reck and Ruin whirled to look down the tunnel they had just traveled. "Patience! I'll go! I'll go first!"

Will handed the lantern to Sken and gripped Patience by the shoulders with both hands. "You didn't kill him!"

"Unwyrm wouldn't let me!" she sobbed.

Angel appeared in the dim light their lantern cast at the far end of the tunnel, where it curved down and out of sight. He brandished throwing knives in both hands. The clotted blood still made a ghastly pattern on his neck.

"Out of my way!" he shouted. "I'll kill him, I can do it!

Let me by! You can't, none of you can do it, let me by!"

He forced his way past them, knocking Will to one side, shoving the door open with his shoulder. Patience came free of Will's grasp then, and began to run after Angel. Ruin and Reck stumbled after her. But she had gone too far ahead. Almost immediately they began to move slowly, as if they were pushing through stone.

"Help us!" cried Ruin.

Will came after them, seized their clothing in bunches from behind, and shoved them brutally forward through the tunnel. Sken ran after with the lantern.

The birthing room was ablaze with light. Sunrise had come while they were in the tunnel. The icy ceiling was so thin in places that the light burst through. It showed them Angel dead on the ice in the middle of the floor.

His knives had slid away from him when he fell. A slender dart arose from the back of his head. Patience was still holding her blowgun. Then she cast it away. It skittered across the ice and slid into a swift-flowing stream that carried it away, out of the birthing room, down through one of the tunnels that led from here to the farthest reaches of Cranning.

"She's his now," said Will. "She'll do nothing to help us."

"Where is he?" whispered Reck.

As if in answer, the black wyrm slid rapidly down into the birthing room from a white tunnel near the ceiling.

Where is he weak, thought Reck desperately. Where can I put an arrow and end his life?

"My bow," said Reck. "Tell me where to shoot him."

His back was made of hard segments that formed an impenetrable wall. "I don't know where," said Ruin, "I don't know, there's no place."

"That's Unwyrm speaking."

"No place," he said.

Unwyrm came near to where Patience waited. Then he rose up, exposing his belly. It was not the soft, smooth belly Reck had hoped for. Instead it was alive with appendages that alternately thrust forward like soft swords, then went limp and receded. They were wet and dripping.

Unwyrm's feeble hands fanned out across his side, trembling.

"Look how he's shaking," whispered Reck. "He's old."

"That isn't age, it's passion," said Ruin. "We can only bleed him. It's the only hope."

Patience whirled to face them. "There is no hope!" she howled. She was an animal, her eyes darting from one of them to another. "Not for you!" And she hurled the loop at Reck.

Before the spinning wire could reach her, though. Will thrust Reck down on her face. The loop took him above the wrist of his right arm, cutting through to the bone.

The skin of his wrist and hand sloughed downward, like a glove suddenly pulled half off; blood gouted from above the wound.

Will screamed in pain, but almost at once acted to save what he could. Since there was no hope now that he could hold both Reck and Ruin, he shoved Ruin down, placed his foot on the gebling's leg, and then with his left hand he pulled the gebling up. Ruin cried out with pain as his leg snapped. He would stay in the room. "Sken!" cried Will. Sken hurried forward, slipping on the ice and nearly falling; she caught herself against Will, who still had the strength to take her weight without falling over.

"Hold Reck, keep her here!" cried Will. Then he dropped to his knees and fell forward, thrusting his arm into the crystal water that flowed in a stream across the middle of the cavern. "Patience!" he shouted. His arm cast a bloom of blood ribbons into the water. "Patience, he doesn't rule you!"

Reck felt Sken's powerful arms around her waist just as Unwyrm urged her to run, to fly away, to escape this place. But she could also feel Ruin calling to her in her othermind. Stay. Kill. With shaking hands she took her bow, nocked an arrow, and shot. Unwyrm dodged easily; the arrow fell harmlessly behind him. She nocked another, tried to concentrate. He pounded at her mind; her eyes blurred-

And Patience saw this, saw it all. There was no hope in her of resisting him, her lust for him was all she could think of. Yet at the same time, she could remember Will's story of who she really was, of that small and forgotten self masked by memory and desire. I must help, came the thought. She could not resist Unwyrm, but she could distract him.

She stepped forward, crying out to him. "Unwyrm!"

She pulled her tunic off over her head and knelt naked before him. "Unwyrm!" Her knees slipped smoothly across the ice and she leaned back, offering herself to him.

Reck felt the pressure on her ease. In a swift movement Unwyrm's body arched forward and lunged onto Patience. He rooted one of his appendages in her groin.

Patience cried out in her inexpressible relief. Weeks of longing were finally fulfilled.

Unwyrm's upper body began a rhythmic swaying. For a moment he had forgotten them; he, too, had a need that was too long unfulfilled to be put off. Reck fired two quick arrows. One struck him in the eye. Another spiked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"His head is nothing!" screamed Ruin. "His belly!

His belly, where the blood is!"

Reck took another arrow, but this time, instead of notching it, she had a powerful urge to eat the arrow. To bring it to her mouth and jam it down her own throat.

She raised the arrow above her face and smiled at the death that pointed at her.

Suddenly Sken's fist came down savagely on her belly.

The pain drove Unwyrm's command from her mind. It also made her realize that she could not possibly do enough damage to Unwyrm's belly to kill him. Only Patience was close enough. The Heptarch now lay on her back, her hand within easy reach of one of Angel's knives. She was shuddering and writhing in ecstasy beneath him. Somehow, Reck knew, she had to be distracted from the delight that Unwyrm gave her, forced to remember what was really happening. A sudden pain might break the hold that Unwyrm had on her mind, make her forget the pleasure long enough to take the knife and disembowel him.

So Reck readied the arrow and aimed, not at Unwyrm, whose belly was pressed against Patience, but at the girl herself. Reck shot for the thigh, and in a moment the arrow trembled in the Heptarch's flesh.

Patience tossed her head back and forth from the pain.

Did she see the knife?

"Kill him!" cried Ruin.

She saw it. She reached it easily, brought it up to kill, then suddenly cried out again in ecstasy. She knew what she had to do, and yet her body could not respond. I am a gaunt, now, at the end, Patience realized. I have no will before him. She struggled to raise her hand against him, but all she could think of was a great aching love for him as she could feel her womb filling. Gradually her arm dropped back down. But her fingers clung to the knife. She did not let go, though now she couldn't even remember why she held it, or what it was.