Orson Card - Wyrms

"Unwyrm held in his mindstone the memory of this planet," said Reck. It was as if she had read Patience's thoughts. "His root was back to the first wyrm that had a thought. And in his mindstone, the stories of his kind, forever. Of our kind. We have as much wyrm ancestry as he had."

"You favor the human side," murmured Will.

"See how beautiful it makes us," said Ruin.

"You are beautiful," said Patience, looking at Reck.

"I remember being a gebling myself. I remember the way it felt, inside my body; I remember the voice of my siblings in the othermind. And something else, too. The loneliness of never knowing my father, and then, when the scepter came to me, finally remembering his life as he knew it."

"It nearly drove you to insanity," Ruin reminded her.

"I wish that every human could have such madness.

Or a taste of it, just for a moment, to know their mother or father. It would be a great gift."

"To know them, but not to be them," said Will.

"You are very strong. Lady Patience. Few can endure having other people's memories live in their minds. I couldn't."

"You?" said Patience. "You're the strongest of all."

His eyes went distant, rejecting the praise. "Will I keep my hand?" he asked.

"It will dangle as beautifully as ever at the end of your arm," said Ruin. "As for using it-I've done all I can to encourage the nerves to grow."

"I won't be much use to anyone without my right arm," he said.

Patience touched his forehead, drew her finger along his cheek, and finally let her fingertips rest on his lips.

"We're all looking for new careers," said Patience.

"There aren't any prophecies about what I'll do after Unwyrm is dead. I'm not seventeen yet, and everything I was born to do is done. Does this mean that I'll have to learn a trade?"

Reck laughed softly, and Will smiled.

"You're Heptarch," said Ruin.

"There's a man in King's Hill who would disagree," said Patience. "And he's not a bad man, and not a bad Heptarch."

"He's a caretaker," said Will. "Ruling only until your work here is done."

"When an army of a million geblings stands at his border, he might give thought to abdication," said Ruin.

"No," said Patience.

"What, do you think we'd do it for you out of altruism?

The geblings are best served by having a Heptarch who remembers being a gebling. We aren't subhumans to you, now."

"Not a drop of my people's blood will be shed in my name," said Patience.

"There you are," said Ruin. "You're right. Your life work is over."

"Shut up, Ruin," said Reck.

Sken walked up to them, buttoning a clean gown that fit her like the draping of a warhorse. Her ruddy face gleamed in the firelight. "Heptarch, the geblings have brought the body of your former slave out of the birthing place. They want to know what you want done with it."

"I want him buried with honor," said Patience. "Here, among the Wise. The graves here are all honorable ones."

"I'm sorry we didn't take his head in time," said Reck. "We know that's how you humans preserve the counsel of your wise ones, since you don't have mindstones to eat."

"We were busy," said Ruin, "and the moment passed."

"But he does have a mindstone," said Sken. "Doesn't he. Will? Isn't that what he said? He had a mindstone, just like these other old coots. Unwyrm just didn't take it from him, that's all. That's why his mind isn't at the low-water mark. Isn't that right, Will?"

Will closed his eyes.

"Angel had a mindstone?" asked Ruin.

"Let it die with him," said Will.

"Bring his body in here. Bring him to me!" shouted Ruin. The rest of the room fell silent. Ruin stood, leaning against the chimney, his face flickeringly lit by the fire below and beside him. "The gebling king will have his mindstone."

"No," said Reck. "You can't."

"When the ancient king of the geblings died, a human Heptarch took his mindstone and had it placed within his brain. Some Heptarchs were so weak that it maddened them, but some were not. Do you think I'm weak, Sister?"

"But you're the gebling king," she said. "You can't take the risk."

"You're also the gebling king," he answered.

She looked away from him.

"Do you think I didn't know what you were planning?" said Ruin. "And I understand it, Reck. I understand, I agree, and I know you're strong enough to bear it, and to pass it whole to your children. But what will I be then? The feeble gebling king, a pale shadow of the human Heptarch who can hold both races in her mind, an even weaker shadow of you? What will they call you, Mother Wyrm? There'll be no name for me, if I'm too weak to do as you do, as she did."

"What are you planning?" asked Patience.

At that moment, the geblings who had been working on Unwyrm's mindstone came toward them. One of them held a single crystal in the palm of his hand. "This is the one," he said. "It was in the center, and it's the oldest of all."

"I've never seen a larger one," said Reck.

"Much larger than your own," Ruin reminded her.

She lifted the stone to her mouth and swallowed.

"You can't!" cried Patience.

"She already has," said Will.

"He was so strong! How can she endure-"

Reck smiled. "It wasn't right for our ancestors to perish utterly from their own world. So I will remember, and my children after me. Not particularly Unwyrm, not above any other-what was he, compared to the thousands of generations before him? They're all in here, all in me. And now I will come to know them, and speak in their voice."

Will spoke from his pallet on the floor, his voice thick with grief. "And what of my friend Reck? Will she have a voice left, when this is done?"

"If she does," said Reck, "it will be a wiser one than before."

Ruin insisted that they make a bed for her. Reck laughed lightly, but then, when it was ready, she lay in it, for the crystal was already beginning to work its influence on her.

Then they brought Angel's body from the snow outside and laid it on a table in the middle of the room.

Patience went to him, and looked down into his stiffened face, forever locked in the same neutral, undecipherable expression he had cultivated in life. "You never had a chance to discover who you were," she murmured to him. "Nor had I."

They carried Ruin to a stool beside the table where the body lay. "He was your slave," said Ruin. "I should have your permission."

"He was Unwyrm's slave, and he won his manumission before he died," she answered. "Still, if you must have a human memory to join with your own, why his?

Why not any of the others-there are five hundred mindstones there."

"They've all been tainted with Unwyrm's mind," said Ruin. "I want no part of him-that's my sister's sacrifice.

I hated him too long; she never did. And Angel-if I'm to understand human beings, why not this one?

Strings says that he was good, before Unwyrm had him.

Wouldn't you rather the gebling king became human through the memories of a good man?"

The geblings rolled the body over on its side, and they brought Ruin a knife, to cut into his brain and retrieve the mindstone that had grown there. Patience did not watch. She returned instead to Will, who lay by the fire.

She reached across him and took his left hand, his whole hand, and held it tightly.

"We have unfinished business," she said.

"I'm not the man for you now," he answered.

"If I'm to be Heptarch in fact, and not in name, I need a man who can lead armies."

"I'll serve you however I can."

"And not just lead them, but create them. Out of whatever rag-tag of volunteers and rebels I can raise, I need a man who can train them into a force that can put me in my place."

"So you want that place now?"

"I can see what Reck and Ruin want to do, and they're right. The time has come for all of humanity to be united in fact under one king, as the geblings are. A king who remembers being a gebling, as the geblings will be ruled by a king who remembers being a human.