"What's stopping you?" said Angel.

"This one." Strings pointed at Will. "He's a monster of compassion. He pities you."

"It's very hard to conduct a delicate bargaining session," said Will, "with you telling him what I really want."

"But you want me to tell the truth. I promise you, Will, that the minute you really want me to shut up, I will."

Will laughed. "For years I kept my silence and no one knew anything about me. Now my conscience has found a voice."

Angel moved uneasily, straining at his bonds.

"Don't try to get loose," said Sken. "It won't do you no good."

Angel slowly sat up and moved his hands out in front of him. He was completely untied. "Fools," he said.

"There was never a cord that could hold me, when I want not to be held."

Sken reached for her knife, but then she saw that Angel had it. "I swear I tied him," Sken protested.

"And my knife, how did he-"

"I could kill you all," said Angel. "But you see? I don't. Because I'm not what I was. He doesn't rule me now. I want to go with you, to have a chance to help her.

I love her more than any of you, and I've harmed her more and must repay her more. And if we all face him together, if we all-he won't be able to take command of me, then. I can stand with all of you, and fight him-"

"You couldn't answer for yourself for a second," said Will.

"I could. I'm stronger than you know."

"And so am I," said Will. As he wanted, Strings had moved behind Angel, silently, slowly. Now, at Will's unspoken wish, Strings flipped a loop out around Angel's neck and drew it close. "Drop the knife," said Will.

Angel dropped the knife. Kristiano picked it up. Strings removed his loop from around Angel's neck. Angel touched a spot where the loop had broken his skin. "No one has ever done that," Angel said. "No one has ever surprised me."

"I'm a dancer," said Strings. "I'm very good at this."

"I wasn't going to hurt anyone," said Angel. "I just wanted you to see that I could, but chose not to."

"And I just wanted to show you that you couldn't," said Will.

"You're all insane," said Sken. "I wish I was back on the river."

"Before you kill him," said Strings to Will, "would you let me ask him a question?"

Will nodded.

"I led so many to him, but none of the others has ever returned. Tell me-what did he do to the others?" His face was eager; then, suddenly, it wasn't. He looked at Will through tired eyes. "Can't you leave my desires alone, even now, Will? You have made it so I don't want to know the answer to that question. But I know that I want to want to know. As soon as you take away this compulsion, I'll want to know again, it will obsess me again as it does whenever I'm undistracted. So I beg you, give me back the desire of my heart, and let me want to know."

But Will did not think it would be good for Strings to know the fate of the humans he had led up the mountain.

If he was consumed with guilt, to a point where he could not function well, he might not be able to guide Will to Unwyrm's lair.

"Will," whispered Strings, "if you don't let me ask this question now, then you're no different from Unwyrm, changing people's desires to whatever is convenient for you."

It struck Will hard, to hear himself compared to Unwyrm. And Strings smiled. "Tell me. Angel," he said.

"You are sly," said Angel. "You have some tricks to manipulate human beings, too."

"We gaunts do have a will, you know. It's weak and not well-connected. It drys up like old cake and crumbles into dust whenever a human or a gebling or even, disgusting as it is, a dwelf desires something of us. But when we're alone, we don't just sit staring into space until another human comes. Alone, we have strength enough to think and scheme and, sometimes, act. My question, please, even though you don't want to tell it."

Will nodded to Angel. "I want to know, too."

"It's nothing-painful," said Angel. "He implants in them-in us-in me. He implanted in me a seed, a virus of some sort, I believe, that caused a crystal to grow within my brain. That's all. Most of them he kept there for a year or two, to give the crystal time to penetrate, to gather memories and wisdom from every part of the brain. Then he-took it out."

"He killed them, then," whispered Kristiano.

"No," said Angel. "No, they're humans, they're not from Imakulata. They can live without the mindstone.

The crystal steals their memories, but it leaves them shadows. They don't die when the crystal is gone. They just-forget. Everything. But it's still there, the shadows are there in their brains, and as long as they live, they stumble now and then over some of the old information, quite by chance. They may even find some of the pathways, recover some of their identity. I don't know. It doesn't kill them, though. He lets them all die a natural death."

"Prisoners, till they die?" asked Will.

"No. Not really prisoners. They love him."

"Thank you," said Strings. "I've done evil, but not as evil as I feared."

"Never evil," murmured Kristiano. He touched Strings's hand. "Good heart," the boyok whispered. The old gaunt smiled and nodded.

"You were different," said Will to Angel. "He didn't take your mindstone."

"He needed me to go back out into the world. To cause Patience to be born."

"What was your wisdom?" asked Will. "What was it you studied, that made him call you?"

"I studied new life. The way young organisms grow, from the genetic cells in the parent's body to the final maturation of the living child."

"Not just organisms. You studied humans."

"All there is to know about the growth of the human infant, fetus, embryo, egg, and sperm-I know it. I knew it then."

"He didn't take your mindstone-but you taught him."

Angel shook his head. "No."

"Yes," said Will. "If he wanted to gather information vital to destroying the human race, he'd have to know what you knew."

"Oh, yes," said Angel. "But I didn't teach him. I studied him. I examined the cells he had developed within himself. Ready to combine with the vigorous new human genes that Patience would bring to him. He wanted to be sure that he was ready. He wanted to know that his offspring would do all he wanted them to do."

"And what does he want them to do?"

"Oh, I don't mean their careers, or anything like that.

I only studied them to predict their growth patterns. He has done marvels. His incredible genetic molecule-it can change itself. His own body makes new hormones, and those pass into his gametes and cause them to change.

They lack the human component as an active feature. But they're there, anyway, though no human traits are dominant.

I was able to stimulate artificial growth, cloned life from his sperm alone. It never lived longer than a few minutes. I don't work miracles."

"What did you learn?"

"In those few minutes, they did what human zygotes do in six months. It's why they died. He had jiggered them so the individual cells reproduced at an incredible rate. My nutrient solution was too poor for them. I pumped it into them; they grew visibly in front of my eyes, and then they withered and died. It frightened him.

For a moment he made me want to kill myself."

"He's sterile, then?" asked Will. "His children will die in the womb?"

"No. Not now."

"What do you mean?"

"I told him what they needed. To grow slower, that's what I told him first, but he said no. He wants his children to be adults within hours, minutes-then they can eat his mindstone, you see, and know all that he knows, and walk out of the birthing place knowing everything."

"He talked to you?"

"I dreamed of it. He made me desire it, too. To see them grow so fast, and live. So I told him that his children must have a yolk. A source of material and energy so rich that they'll have enough to grow at that incredible rate. He can't have as many children as he would have, but they'll be adults within an hour. He's afraid for them, he knows he can't protect them. So from his own body he'll produce a very dense, very rich yolk, which he'll implant along with his sperm-"