Wyrms Read online

  One of the heads behind him spoke up. Apparently the dwelfs were pumping again. "Oruc, you're likely to lose half your kingdom because you don't know."

  Another head gave a crazed old man's giggle. "So it's a bargain for him, to give it up and get back the Wise in the bargain."

  "You know where the Wise went," said the third, a grim face with no teeth. "Cranning. And there's no bringing them back from there."

  "It's the dilemma of our times," said Oruc to Patience.

  "We're long overdue for another gebling invasion.

  Twelve times in seven thousand years they have poured out of their vast city Cranning, out of the caverns of Skyfoot, and each time all of human civilization has been broken under their onslaught. Then they go back to their caverns or back to being somewhat pitiful merchants and voyagers and wanderers through the world, while human beings struggle back, rediscover what science they can. Only one human institution has outlasted it all, a single bloodline of power from the first moment mankind set foot on Imakulata until it was time for the thirteenth gebling invasion." He did not say it, but of course she knew he was referring to the Heptarchy. To her family.

  "And then," said Oruc, "instead of an invasion, all the Wise, all the men and women of learning-no, not of mere learning, but of true understanding-all of them, one by one, felt the Cranning call. An unbearable, undeniable, irresistible urge to go somewhere. They were never sure where, they said. But they were followed, and they all went to Cranning. All of them. Statesmen, generals, scientists, teachers, builders-all the men and women that a King must rely on to carry out his rule, they all left. Who could stand then, when the Wise were gone?"

  "No one," whispered Patience. She was truly afraid now, for he was speaking so frankly of the fall of her family's ancient dynasty that she could not help but assume he intended to kill her after this conversation was over.

  "No one. The Cranning call took them, and the Heptarch fell. He wasn't much of a Heptarch, your great-grand- father."

  "I never knew him," said Patience.

  "A beastly fellow. Even discounting the propaganda my father put out, he was unspeakable. He used to preserve the heads of his former lovers and put their canisters around his bed, to watch him make love to his latest creature."

  "I should think," said Patience, "that was more of a torture to the current lover than to the former ones."

  Oruc laughed. "Yes. Though you're only a child, so you shouldn't know about such things. There are so many things you shouldn't know about. My personal physician-who is not Wise, I suspect-examined you before the earwig man sewed you up. He tells me you could not possibly have done a more perfect job of cutting yourself to draw the most possible blood without causing any permanent or even dangerous damage."

  "I was fortunate," said Patience.

  "Your father didn't tell me he was training you in the arts of murder."

  "He has trained me to be a diplomat. He has often told me of your maxim, that one well-placed assassination can save untold numbers of lives."

  Oruc smiled and spoke to the heads. "She flatters me by quoting my own words back to me, and telling me that the great Lord Peace repeats them often."

  "Actually," said the dourest head, "I said those words to you first."

  "You're dead, Konstans. I don't have to give you credit."

  Konstans. Eight hundred years ago there had been a Konstans who restored Korfu to hegemony over the entire length of the Glad River, only ten years after a gebling invasion, and without a drop of blood being shed. If it was the same man, it would explain the decrepit condition of the head. Few heads ever lasted as long as a thousand years-this one was nearing the end of its function.

  "I still have my vanity," said Konstans's head.

  "I don't like it that he has taught her how to kill. And so deftly that she can create death's illusion on herself."

  "She is her father's daughter," said another head.

  "That's what I'm afraid of," said Oruc. "How old are you? Thirteen. How can you kill besides the loop?"

  "Many ways," said Patience. "Father says I'm not strong enough to pull the bow properly, and casting a javelin isn't much use in our trade. But poisons, darts, daggers-I grew up with them."

  "And bombs? Incendiaries?"

  "The duty of a diplomat is to kill as quietly and discreetly as possible."

  "Your father says."

  "Yes."

  "Could you kill me now? Here, in this room, could you kill me?"

  Patience did not answer.

  "I command you to answer me."

  She knew too much of protocol to be drawn into the trap. "Sir, please don't toy with me this way. The King commands me to speak about whether I could kill the King. Whether I obey or not, I commit terrible treason."

  "I want honest answers. Why do you think I keep these heads around me? They can't lie-that's what the headworms do to them, they make sure that they can never answer dishonestly, or even withhold part of the truth."

  "The heads, sir, are already dead. If you wish me to behave as they do, it is within your power."

  "I want truth from you, and never mind protocol."

  "As long as I am alive, I will never speak treason."

  Oruc leaned close to her, his face angry and dangerous.

  "I am not interested in your determination to survive at all costs, girl. I want you to speak honestly to me."

  Konstans chuckled. "Child, he can't kill you. You're safe to speak to him, for now, at least."

  Oruc glared at Konstans, but the head was undeterred.

  "You see, he depends on your father, and he believes your father will never serve him faithfully unless you're held hostage here. Alive. So what he's trying to determine now is whether you can also be useful to him, or whether you will remain nothing more than a constant temptation to his enemies."

  Konstans's analysis made sense, and Oruc didn't argue with him. It seemed absurd to her, to have the most powerful human being in the world treating her like a potentially dangerous adult. But her respect for Oruc was rising in the process. Many a lesser ruler would have destroyed her and Father, fearing the danger of them more than any possible value they might have.

  So she made the decision to trust him. It frightened her, because that was the one thing Father and Angel had never taught her: when to trust. "My Lord Heptarch," said Patience, "if the thought of killing you could live for a moment in my heart, then yes, I could do it."

  "Now?" There was an expression of veiled triumph in his eyes. Had he won a victory, then, by convincing her to trust him?

  I have begun; I will not retreat. "Even now, even if I told you I was going to do it, I could kill you before you raised a hand to defend yourself. My father knows his trade, and I have studied with the master."

  Oruc turned to one of the dwelfs. "Go fetch my guards and tell them to come arrest this girl for treason."

  He turned to Patience and calmly said, "Thank you. I needed a legal basis for your execution. These heads will be witnesses that you claimed in my presence to be able to kill me."

  It shook her, how calmly he betrayed her. And yet she could not wholly believe the betrayal. No, this was just another test, another move in the game. He really did need Peace-he proved it by the fact that he took no major action without consulting Peace first-and so he really did fear to kill Patience. Nothing had changed that.

  And if it was a test, she would win. She nodded gravely. "If I can best serve my Heptarch by dying through legal process, I'll confess to that or any other crime."

  Oruc walked to her, touched her hair, stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Beautiful. The Mother of God."

  She endured it placidly. He wasn't going to kill her.

  That was victory enough for the moment.

  "I wonder if someone is breeding humans, as the Tassaliki claim. Not God-I doubt he bothers much with the mating of humans on Imakulata-but someone. Someone with the power to call the Wise." He took her chin, not gently,
and tipped her face upward. "If someone wanted to breed magnificence, I could believe you as the result of his work. Not right now, you're still a child.

  But there's a translucence to you, a lightness in your eyes."

  Until this moment, it had never occurred to Patience that she might be beautiful. Her mirror did not reveal the soft and rounded features that were the fashion of beauty these days. But there was no hint of flattery or deception in Oruc's words.

  "As long as you're alive," he whispered, "anyone who sees you will want me dead, so you can take my place. Do you understand that? Me and all my family, dead. Whether or not someone bred you to be what you are, you are. And I will not have my children destroyed for your sake. Do you understand me?"

  "Your children have been my playmates all my life," said Patience.

  "I should kill you. Your father even advised me to kill you. But I won't do it."

  But Patience knew that there was an unspoken word: yet. I will not kill you yet.

  "What maddens me is not that I choose to leave you alive, for in truth I rejoice in you as surely as any Vigilant. What maddens me is that I don't remember deciding to leave you alive. I don't remember choosing.

  The decision was simply-made. Is it you? Is it some trick of manipulation your father taught you?"

  Patience didn't answer. He didn't seem to expect her to.

  "Or am I being twisted as the Wise were twisted? The decision made for me because whoever it is wants you, wants you alive." He turned to the heads. "You-you have no will anymore, only memory and passion. Do you remember what it is to choose?"

  "A dim memory," said Konstans. "I think I did it once or twice."

  Oruc turned his back on them. "I have done it all my life. Chosen. Consciously, deliberately chosen, and then acted upon my choice, regardless of passion. My will has always been in control of my triune soul-the priests know it, that's why they fear me, why there is no revolution in your name. They believe that whenever I choose to, I can and certainly will kill you. They don't know.

  That on this matter I have no will."

  Patience believed that he believed what he was saying.

  But it was still not true. There would come a time when he feared her more than now, and he would kill her. She could feel that certainty lying beneath everything he said.' For that was the foundation of his power, that he could kill anyone when he chose to. "Father told me once,"' she said. "There are two ways to rule human beings.

  One is to convince the people that if they do not obey they and those they love will be destroyed. The other is to earn the love of the people. And he told me where these two ways lead. Eventually, the course of terror leads to revolution and anarchy. Eventually, the course of flattery leads to contempt and anarchy."

  "So he believes no power can last?"

  "No. Because there is a third way. It looks like the course of love sometimes, and sometimes it looks like the course of terror."

  "Back and forth between the two? The people wouldn't know you then, and none would follow you."

  "No. It isn't back and forth between anything. It's a straight and steady course. The course of magnanimity Greatness of heart."

  "It means nothing to me. One of the cardinal virtues but the priests don't even know what it means."

  "To love your people so much that you would sacrifice anything for the good of the whole. Your own life, your own family, your own happiness. And then you expect the same from them."

  Oruc looked at her coldly. "You're repeating what you learned by rote."

  "Yes," she said. "I will observe you, though, my Heptarch, and see if it is true."

  "Magnanimity. Sacrifice anything. What do you think I am-Kristos?"

  "I think you are my Heptarch, and you will always have my loyalty."

  "But will my children?" asked Oruc. "Can you tell me that?"

  She bowed her head. "My lord, for your sake I would die for your children."

  "I know. We've had theatrical proof of that. But I know better than you do. You are loyal to me because your father taught you to be, and he is loyal to me because he loves Korfu as much as I do. He's a wise man, your father. The last of the Wise, I believe. I think it's only because of his bloodline that he hasn't heard the Cranning call. When he is dead-that old man, can see death in him now already-when he is dead, how can I trust you then?"

  The guards he had sent for were waiting in the doorways.

  He beckoned them in. "Take her back to the physician and have those bugs removed. Then give her back into the custody of her father's slave. Angel. He's waiting in the garden." He turned to Patience. "He's waited there for days, never stirring. A most devoted servant. By the way, I've ordered a medal struck in your honor. Every member of the Fourteen Families will wear it for this week, as will the Mayor and Council of Heptam. You handled the situation with the Tassali brilliantly.

  Perfectly. I will have occasion to use your talents again." He smiled gruesomely. "ALL your talents."

  This had been her final examination, then, and she had passed. He intended to use her as a diplomat, young as she was. And as an assassin. She would wait now, as her father had always waited, for the knock on the door in the night, and the shadowy messenger with a note from King Oruc. She would read the note, as Father did, to learn who it was who should die. Then she would burn it and comb the ashes into fine powder. Then she would kill.

  She almost danced down the corridors of Heptagon House. She needed no litter now. She had faced the King, and he had chosen her as her father had been chosen.

  Angel took up her education where it had left off only a few days before, as if nothing had happened. She knew enough not to speak of these matters inside King's Hill, where everything was overheard and reported.

  Two days later, Angel received a message late in the afternoon and immediately closed his book. "Patience," he said. "We will go down into the city this afternoon."

  "Father is home!" she cried in delight.

  Angel smiled at her as he put her cloak around her shoulders. "Perhaps we could go to the School. We might learn something."

  It wasn't likely. The School was a large open place in the middle of Heptam. Years ago, the Wise of the world had come here to teach to all corners. Because of Crossriver Delving and Lost Souls' Island, Heptam was known as the religious capital of the world; the School made it the intellectual center as well. But now, a generation after the Flight of the Wise, the School was no more than a gaggle of scholars who endlessly recited dead and memorized words that they did not understand. Angel took great delight in teaching Patience to go to the heart of an argument and find its weak place. Then she would confront the would-be philosopher and skewer him publicly.

  She didn't do it often, but enjoyed knowing that she could, whenever she liked. Learn something? Not at the School.

  It wasn't learning she was after anyway. It was freedom.

  Whenever Father was away, she was forced to remain within the high walls of King's Hill, among the same nobles and courtiers and servants. She had long since explored every corner of King's Hill, and it held no surprises for her. But whenever Father came home, she was free. As long as he was behind the walls of King's Hill, Angel could take her wherever he wanted in the city.

  They used these times to practice techniques they could never use in King's Hill. Disguises, for instance. They would often dress and talk as servants, as criminals, as merchants, pretending to be father and daughter. Or, sometimes, mother and son, for as Angel said, "The most perfect disguise is to change from one sex to another, for when they are searching for a girl, all boys are invisible to them."

  Even better than the disguises, though, was the talk.

  Switching from language to language, they could freely converse as they walked along the bustling streets. No one could stay near them long enough to overhear an entire conversation. It was the only time when she could ask her most difficult and dangerous questions and voice her most rebellious opinions.

&nbs
p; It would have been completely joyful, this trip down the hill to Heptam, except for one constant sadness:

  Father never came with her on these trips. Oruc never let them leave King's Hill together. So all her life, all her conversations with her father had been guarded, careful.

  All her life, she had had to guess what Father really meant, discern his true purpose, for as often as not he could never say in words what he wanted her to know.

  Their secrets could only be passed back and forth by Angel. He would take her out into the city, and she would talk with him; then he would leave her in King's Hill and walk in the city with Peace. Angel was a good friend, and both of them could trust him implicitly. But in spite of Angel's best efforts, it was like conversing through an interpreter all the time. Never in her life had Patience known a single moment of true intimacy with her father.

  As they walked through King's Gift and High Town, descending long sloping roads toward the School, Patience asked Angel why the King forced them to be separate this way. "Doesn't he know yet that we are his most loyal subjects?"

  "He knows you are, Lady Patience, but he misunderstands why. In treating you and your father this way, he says nothing about you, but much about himself. He believes that by keeping one of you hostage at all times, he can guarantee the loyalty of the other. There are many people who can be controlled that way. They're the people who love their families above anything else. They call it a virtue, but it is nothing more than protecting one's own genes. Reproductive self-interest. That is the thing that Oruc lives by. He is a great King, but his family comes first, so that in the final crisis, he could be held hostage, too." It was treason to say such a thing, of course, but he had split the sentence into Gauntish, Geblic, and the argot of the Islanders, so there was little chance of a passerby understanding any of it.

  "Am I Father's hostage, then?" Patience asked.

  Angel looked grim. "Oruc thinks you are. Lady Patience, and any assurance Lord Peace gives him that he would be loyal even if you were free seems further proof to the Heptarch that your father is desperate to win your freedom. And mark me well, little girl. Oruc thinks you are obedient in order to protect your father's life, as well."