"Get me a leather pouch," said Ruin. "Not that one, no, sniff it, like krisberries, yes, that's it." Reck opened the pouch and Ruin dipped his tongue into it, then smeared it on the severed surfaces. It would make the cells of Will's body grow again; it would stimulate the living nerve ends to grow out and find new connections.

Then Patience cried out. Softly. Reck looked up. Patience had rolled over and was lying on her stomach, her head toward the others. Her body heaved twice.

"What's happening?" whispered Reck.

Ruin looked up in time to see the head of a half- developed fetus rise up from between Patience's legs.

"The wyrm's child!"

"We were too late!" shouted Sken.

Reck reached for her bow and arrow, but Sken was stumbling along the ice, her hatchet in hand, blocking a clear shot. And by the time Sken got there, Patience was standing up, holding the infant, shielding it. "I'm going to kill it!" Sken shouted.

Patience nodded, but she still held the child out of Sken's reach. Was it an illusion, or had the child grown?

Yes, it was larger, and it was no longer fetal-it was a fully developed infant.

"Take the baby!" shouted Reck.

"It's going to die anyway!" Patience cried. "Can't you see? I killed his father too soon, he's going to die."

It was true. They could almost see that as the child grew taller, feebly wiggling its limbs, the skin tightened, grew tight around the bones, like a victim of famine. The baby opened its mouth, and spoke its only words: "Help me." They were grotesque, coming from a body so young. It was clearly Unwyrm's child, clearly a monster, yet from the sight of him he was any infant, helpless, demanding their compassion and getting it.

The baby died. Patience felt it, the sudden slackness of the body. She relaxed her protective posture. Only then could Sken reach the body, tear it away, cast it to the ground, and raise her hatchet to hack at it.

"It's dead!" shouted Patience.

"It was growing!" Sken cried. "It spoke!"

"But it's dead!"

Sken lowered her hatchet. Reck took Patience's garment from the cave floor and carried it to her. "Only the one," said Reck. "And Unwyrm didn't have time to give it strength to live. We did it. In time."

Patience turned away and pulled the chemise over her head.

There were shouts and footfalls in the tunnel leading up from the golden door. Armed geblings rushed a few steps into the room, then stopped to take in the scene.

The corpse of Unwyrm, split open and spilt on the ice; the starved, skeletal body of a human infant. A few of the old men came in, not looking half so doltish now.

"Behold," said Sken bitterly, "the gebling kings.

Behold the Heptarch!" Her face worked to keep from crying. She flung out her hand toward the baby lying on the ice. "Behold the child of prophecy!"

Reck hushed her. "The baby was no Kristos. It was a wyrm, it was death to humans and geblings, and if it hadn't died I would have killed it with my own hands."

The old men walked toward Unwyrm's body. One of them took Angel's other knife, the one that Patience hadn't used, and sliced Unwyrm's head from snout to crown. The skin burst apart as if it had been under pressure, revealing the shining facets of a green crystal.

"His mindstone," whispered Reck. She walked toward them, looked at the crystal.

It was not a single mindstone, but many hundreds of them, fused together. The old men pulled the flaps of skin farther apart, and the crystal toppled forward onto the ice.

"Here," said one of them.

"This is where he kept all the gifts we gave him," said another.

"Everything we knew."

The old men knelt, touched the crystal, as if to find where in the living jewel their own knowledge lay. The youngest one lifted his head and cried out like a dog baying. "Give it back to me!"

Reck turned from the old men and walked slowly, wearily to Patience. They embraced, and Reck helped the exhausted woman walk across the ice, out of the room.

Geblings were already helping Ruin, preparing to carry him out. Others were binding up Will's arm and wrapping him in blankets.

Sken looked up when Patience passed. "Heptarch," she said. "Did we sin?"

Patience stopped, stood before the fat woman with her twisted, tear-stained face. She touched Sken's cheek with her bent fingers.

"Did I raise my hatchet to murder God's own son?"

Her voice was high and weak, like a child's. "Am I damned forever?"

In answer, Patience pulled her close, embraced her.

"No sin," she whispered. "This day's work honors us all forever."

Chapter 19. CRYSTALS

THE FIRES ROARED IN THE HOUSE OF THE WISE. It was afternoon, but outside it was dark with clouds and falling snow. The cold seeped in through the shutters and under the door, but the fires in the two hearths fought it back to the edges of the room.

Sken, stark naked, was up to her neck in a huge and steaming tub, occasionally bellowing curses at Strings, who was scrubbing her back. Strings endured it calmly enough; Patience, listening, knew that he only served Sken because Reck and Patience wanted him to. Sken cursed again, but then began to tell him-for the third time-how she had killed Tinker's men in the battle in the woods, months before. Strings listened, the perfect audience, responding exactly when she needed to hear him say, "Yes," or "Bravely done," or "Remarkable."

Patience knew that Sken was telling of the battle with Tinker because she could bear to think of it; she had little to say of the battle in Unwyrm's cave, and did not tell the tale of the baby who died only moments before Sken would have murdered it. We'll all choose the stories we can live with, and forget the rest, thought Patience. I hope so, anyway.

She walked to the east fireplace. Many of the old men were watching as several geblings carefully worked on Unwyrm's huge mindstone. Reck was directing the work of separating the hundreds of mindstones that had grown together. The geblings poured a solution over the crystal, then carefully pried the surface crystals away. Many small mindstones, the size of the one that Patience bore within her brain, lay in a tray before the fire, drying.

"What are you looking for?" asked Patience.

"These are all the crystals of the Wise, which he took from them and ate," said Reck. "But in the center there'll be the crystal that was his own. Himself. That's the one I want."

"What can you do with it?" asked Patience.

"We'll know what to do when we find it." Reck led her away from the fire. "See how the old men watch?

They know where those mindstones came from, and they want them back."

"Can't you do it? Give the mindstones back? They came from their brains in the first place."

"Which one do we give to each of these men? They have so little memory left-just their memory of life in this house, with vague shadows of the past-that whatever stone we give them will take them over and become them. It would be no favor. And besides, these stones have lived as long in Unwyrm's head as they ever lived in their original human hosts'. Do these men look strong enough to endure Unwyrm's memories?"

Patience shook her head. "But it's tragic. This great treasure of learning, useless."

"This?" asked Reck. "These stones are the way that wyrms passed their wisdom from one generation to the next. You humans brought another way. And that way still lives."

"Heffiji's house," said Patience.

"What was learned once can be learned again," said Reck. "Ruin is already babbling about a university there, administered by geblings whose whole purpose is to protect Heffiji and catalogue her house. I think nothing will be lost."

"Except these old men."

"What's the tragedy there, Heptarch?" asked Reck.