"He isn't paying attention to us right now."

Strings looked thoughtful for a moment. "You're right.

It doesn't mean anything, though. He left me alone for ten years. And then three days ago he came to me again.

I've never hurried so fast. I was on the other side of Cranning, playing in a decent place, a palace filled with people of breeding and discernment. Then he made me leave everything and come here, to take a booking like this-I don't like working in this kind of place. The crowd has deplorable tastes. Why do you want me to keep talking?"

"I like the sound of your voice."

"No, you want more than that from me. You want to know-ah. Yes. Well, how can anyone know who a gaunt really is? Am I good or evil? Can you trust me or not? Can you tell him, Kristiano?"

Kristiano smiled. His face had the peaceful sweetness of a saint. Or an idiot.

"How strong are your passions, man? You have the size and strength of a horse, but that's nothing to me. It's the dimension of your lust, your gluttony, your ambition.

You can trust me if your desires are strong and never waver."

"In your list of desires, you mention only evil ones."

"In my experience, they're the ones with vigor. Except the fanatics. I once fell in with a Vigilant, when I was a child. He made me whip him until he bled. And one day such a religious fervor came over him that he died of it. Give me the lust of the sinners before the austerity of the holy men."

"What about your own desires?" asked Will. "You said you have them."

"Oh, I'm a man of passion, all passion, and no achievement.

I have done shameful things. I have led my brothers to the wyrm's maw. Unwyrm isn't kind to his servants.

He doesn't stop us from regretting what we do."

"Until regret is the taste in your mouth in the morning, and the last painful noise in your ears at night."

Will and Strings looked at Angel, who was awake now.

"I know what it is to be a gaunt," said Angel.

"Unwyrm makes gaunts of us all."

"You shut up," said Sken. "That little girl believed in you."

Will looked at her, and at the look on his face she fell silent.

"Except you," said Angel. "Except Will. Strings, can you believe it? Will is one of the Wise. Only he never came to Unwyrm. He was even here in Cranning once, and he never came to Unwyrm."

Will shook his head. "I never felt the Cranning call when I was here. It was only later. When I learned enough to be worth calling."

"I can't untie you," said Strings, regretfully. "This one is so much stronger."

Angel sighed. "Yes, very strong. I tried, you know.

All the way from Cranning to Lord Peace, I tried to disobey. I even tried to kill myself. And later, many times, I wanted to warn Peace, to tell him about the snake that he kept in his own house. But above all that came the desire to stay with Patience, to protect her, to bring her safely to him. I would have killed you if you had tried to sleep with her."

"And now? When he no longer pulls you?"

"Is he truly gone? No wonder I feel so empty. Like a head with an empty air bladder, nothing to say and no breath to say it. I can hardly remember who I was before.

But is he gone? I still love her."

"You tell me."

Angel smiled. "I'm an excellent liar. You can't believe me, especially when I'm most believable. I warn you. Kill me now. It's the only way you can trust me not to stab you in the back."

"There's another way," said Will. "I can keep you in front of me."

"He's gone from me," said Angel. "And I still love Patience. I was so afraid that I wouldn't, that-she's been my life. All I cared about. She's my child-as surely as her father or her mother, I caused her to be alive. I did. Unwyrm can't put knowledge in a human brain-I had to learn it, with my own mind, to understand it. What the Wise before me said could never be undone, I undid. And if I discovered that I had never cared for her, that it was all from Unwyrn, then what was my life, who was I?" Then, to Will's surprise, Angel began to weep. "And all the time, I hoped that I would hate her, that when he-took her from me, when he finally left my mind, I'd find that she was loathsome, and I hated her, and she deserved to be betrayed."

Then his weeping overpowered his speech.

Strings nodded wisely. "That's the way it is, for us.

We know what we're doing. We know it, and we don't want it, but we can't choose otherwise. We're very sad creatures, actually."

Sken looked at him with surprise. "You said you felt no guilt."

Strings sighed. "It makes people feel better when I tell them that. But it's a lie. We remember doing everything that we have done. We even remember wanting to do it.

How can we absolve ourselves of that?"

Kristiano began stroking Strings's forehead, his gentle fingers making a graceful dance on the old gaunt's face.

Will wondered how it would feel, to have those fingers touching him. And then, almost before he was aware of having the thought, Kristiano came to him and touched him, just as he had caressed Strings. Will felt ashamed;

Kristiano quickly moved away, cowered in a corner, hid his face.

"I'm sorry," said Will.

"Oh, Kristiano's very sensitive. And you're very powerful."

Strings smiled. "When you want something, when you decide something, why, it's decided, isn't it?"

Will shrugged.

"Where is she?" asked Angel.

"Gone. With the geblings. To face him."

"She can't. She doesn't understand-he's much stronger than he's ever shown her. Stronger than the geblings, stronger than she is. And with only three of them, his attention won't be divided, he'll have his way with them-"

"So," said Will. "That's why Strings is going to take me and Sken up the mountain."

"And me. You're a Vigilant, aren't you? For God's sake, then, let me redeem myself."

"You misunderstand the doctrine. It is Kristos who will redeem you."

"There'll be no Kristos! Her children will be monstrous parodies of human beings!"

"I understand that," he said. "But I'll never let you up the mountain with us. A moment ago you asked me to kill you. It was a good idea."

"No it wasn't," said Angel. "You need me."

"Unwyrm doesn't even need you now."

"You can't kill me. As a Vigilant, you gave up murder, didn't you?"

"I also vowed never to let an unbeliever use my belief against me."

"I can help!"

"Unwyrm knows all the paths into your brain. Angel.

How many years now? He has crawled through every passage in your skull and knows secret doors you've never found."

"Do you think so? I had my hands on her head and neck, I was ready, I could have made her sleep. I could have said she had fainted, and gone off with her and the geblings, and killed them both so easily, and we would have been free to go to him then. Patience and I-and he wanted me to do it, he made me want to do it." He smiled triumphantly. "I didn't. I didn't. I held on, I held out just long enough that she could put me to sleep. It wasn't long, Will, it wasn't a heroic resistance like yours has been, never to succumb to him. There'll be no epic poem about it. But Unwyrn could have won, right in that moment, and I resisted him just long enough." His voice became an intense whisper, a plea, a prayer. "I do love her. Will, and even if you kill me, you have to remember that I saved her, I did, I saved her-"

"He's stronger than he looks," said Strings.

"What do you know about it?" said Will. "All you can feel is desire. And what he lacks is what you lack-a will of his own."

"I know what I know," said Strings. "You tell me I'm wrong, but you want me to speak on. Because you do want to forgive him. I know you do, because I want to forgive him."

"That's his desire you're feeling."

"No," said Strings. "He wants me to kill him. And I would, too. I have my little ways."