Until Father says one day, when he finds me covered with blood, "I wish Unwyrm had killed you that day in the birthing place, I wish he had killed me and eaten me rather than let me live to make you what you are. I'm sorry that I taught you, any of you."

So I kill him and eat his brain in front of the others, even though I find no mindstone in it; I don't tell them that he had no stone. And now my power is perfect, even greater than Unwyrm's power, because he has no one to obey him and I have all of these.

Patience screamed at the memory, at the taste and smell of Father's blood, at the look of horror and awe and admiration in the other geblings' eyes. I couldn't do this, I never could have done this, she cried out in revulsion. And yet this is what I was raised for, to kill in order to get power, to devour anything that threatens to block me from my will-

"It's maddening her," said Angel.

"Give her time to find herself," said Reck.

The voices meant nothing to Patience. For all she could see was the bloodshed through the years. The murders of the gebling kings, the murders of the Heptarchs.

Wars and assassinations, tortures and rapes, she remembered committing all the crimes of seven thousand years of power and she hated herself for all that she had done-

Nothing in my life except death and terror, she thought.

And then her own mother's face (or was it her mother?

She had three hundred mothers) smiling at her, touching her, saying, "Broken heart, don't cry. Don't cry at the' things that have been done in your name. For every life that was taken, there were ten thousand who lived in peace with your protection. Do you think your power would last for a moment if all you had was the power to kill? They would rise up and strike you down. You have the power to draw them together, to make them act as one. You have made the weak strong by the sound of your voice, and they love you forever."

Patience clung to the message of that voice. I have made the weak strong by the sound of my voice. They love me forever.

And at last, having found a thread to cling to so she would not fall into the abyss, she slept.

Chapter 13. TRUE FRIEND

SHE AWOKE LYING IN A BED, COVERED WITH THREE FEATHERBEDS.

A cold breeze from a broken window whipped past her face. The trees outside the window were golden with autumn. Are you really the trees of Earth? she asked them silently. Or are you strange alien creatures that have captured the trees and hidden them deep inside, so you can wear their mask?

She thought of all the children she had ever had in her hundreds of lives, pictured them smiling up at her, good children every one; but then something dark, a dark worm crawled into their mouths and now when they look out at her it is the wyrm with the tiny head and the fanlike fingers-not a wing at all-and the hundred fleshy organs of tearing and digesting and reproducing-Unwyrm, do you know the difference between eating and mating?

Or is there a difference to you? All hungers are the same hunger.

She opened her eyes. She saw him before she saw anything else, standing there half lit by the dim autumnal light through the window. Will. His face watching her in his utter silence, his unreadable stolidness, like an animal; or no, like a mountain, like the face of living rock.

Why are you watching me?

She did not speak; he did not answer. He only noticed that her eyes were open, nodded, and walked from the room. He closed the door gently behind him. It was the tenderness, the gentleness of the closing of the door that told her that he was not, after all, made of stone. It wasn't lifelessness that made him still, it was peace. He had made his peace with life, and so his face had no more to say, no silent pleas to make between speeches, and his mind had no speeches to make between silences.

He isn't hungry. He is already satisfied.

And as she thought of hunger, she felt again the Cranning call, as powerful as ever, gnawing at her womb.

I am hungry to have his babies, she thought. It came to her as the memory of a hundred nightmares during the time she slept. He will make me hungry for his seed in me, just as his mother made the Starship Captain yearn for her. He will make me think that it is ecstasy.

She shuddered. But now that she had dreamed Unwyrm a hundred times, his writhing as he devoured his mother and slaughtered his helpless deformed brothers, now that it was so familiar to her it did not make her lose control of herself and scream, as she had done in all the dreams.

She was too tired of it to cry out against it anymore. I'll just have to see to it that it doesn't happen, that's all.

He'll die before he has me, or I'll die. His children will not be born from my body.

But even if I live, will I ever want a man as I want Unwyrm? What if he dies while still calling me? Will that need be with me then forever, always unsatisfied?

Thoughts like that made her angry with herself. She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. At once she was almost overcome with dizziness. The door to her room opened, and Angel came in. Angel, looking strong and healthy, no longer weak from the wound in his throat.

"Your wound has healed and the trees have turned colors," she said. "How long have I slept?"

"Forty days and forty nights, like Moses in the mount, like the rain of the deluge, like Elijah fasting in the wilderness. If you can call it sleeping. You've done a lot of shouting and kept us all awake. Even River has complained that you frighten his monkey. How are you?"

She reached up and touched the side of her head that Ruin had shaved. The hair had grown several centimeters.

"Weak," she said. "Unwyrm is calling me."

"We were afraid the scepter was too much for you."

"It wasn't the scepter, really. It was all the terrible things I had done."

"You didn't do any of them."

"But I did. Angel. No, don't argue with me. I didn't kill my own father and eat his brain, the way the first gebling king did, or kill my own wife, as my father did.

But I have killed. Obeying you or father, or to save my own life, I have killed easily, with pleasure, with pride.

That made it hard for me to-separate myself from all their crimes. I could only find and follow a very slender hope running from life to life throughout my past, Angel.

A hope that it all works together for good. That out of the blood I've poured into the ground, life can grow again."

"Many people who've just awakened from a sound sleep think they're philosophers," Angel said.

"Don't make fun of me," said Patience. "This is important. This is my-my contribution to the scepter, if I have one to make. All the children will look to me, gebling children and human children, they all will look to me and I have to keep them safe. From Unwyrm's children. And yet sometimes I think-Unwyrm's children would not be murderers. They would all be bound together with one heart and mind, the way the wyrms were before the coming of humans to this world. Before human genes made us strangers to each other. Unwyrm's children would never be alone. And I could be their mother."

"Don't say that. Patience," said Angel.

"It's just that I finally understood the thought he sends to me, Angel. I know what Unwyrm did to his own mother. He's the devourer, not me. I'll kill him if I can." But she knew she didn't sound convincing. It didn't matter, though. It wasn't Angel she had to convince, it was herself.

"He is a wyrm, then? A descendant of the ones the first colonists killed?"

"He is the Unwyrm, Angel. The very one. The only one. Alive for all seven thousand years of the world's history."

"To live so long-"

"We're strangers here. The native life can adapt itself, make changes in a single generation that we take a million years to make. Unwyrm is more intelligent than all of them. In him are combined the most powerful of the native gifts, and he called the most brilliant of human minds, and they must have taught him all they knew. What's to stop him from repairing himself genetically, when he finds any part of him becoming weak, decaying?