What's to stop him from living until he's ready to mate?"

"Why would he wait so long?"

"I don't know. I only know how humans looked to the first geblings. The machines that let our ancestors fly, that made pictures in the air, that chewed up forests and spat out wheatfields. What did the wyrms see, when a new star appeared in the sky and metal birds skittered above the surface of the world? They weren't gnats, replacing safe and stationary wheat. They were at the peak of the ecological system, these wyrms, but we were more powerful than they. And if they were to replace us-"

"They had to know all that we knew."

"The wheat sits there, passively waiting for its enemy to destroy it. But the wyrms knew that human beings weren't passive. We were the most deadly competitor for life that this world had ever seen. To overpower us, the wyrms' grandchildren not only had to be identical to human beings-they had to excel at the things that human beings do best. They had to know more, to be more beautiful, more brilliant, more powerful, more dangerous.

How could a single wyrmchild, Unwyrm, hiding in his ice cave in Skyfoot, how could he learn enough to prepare his children?"

"An ice cave? That means he's high in the mountain, where the glaciers are."

"Don't you understand, Angel? He couldn't defeat us if we built machines. The wyrms knew it from the start.

When they captured the Starship Captain, before they even brought him down, they first made him destroy all the metal that was easy to mine. But there was still metal-I remember my ancestors who pursued it, who mined it, who tried to build machines with it. They might have succeeded. But always the geblings came, a flood of geblings out of Cranning."

"I'm reasonably familiar with the history of the world."

"Angel! I'm telling you what no one ever knew. I'm telling you the why of it. I've seen the pattern in it, remembering it all at once like this. Unwyrm sent the geblings to stop mankind from making the machines that would have made us irresistible. He waited all this time to keep us weak while he gathered wisdom to himself.

He gave himself seven thousand years. And then fulfilled his own prophecy by causing my brothers to be killed and me to be-"

He touched her head gently, to soothe her. His hand felt cool and loving on her forehead, on her cheek.

"River tells us that Cranning is only a week away, and the autumn winds are strong for getting there. But we have to go now. The winter winds will beat us back. It's good you came to yourself today-we'll bring you to Cranning in your right mind."

There was an artificiality in his tone as he spoke; his heart wasn't in what he said, and she couldn't think why he was lying to her. But that was no surprise, she could hardly think at all. So she let it go, didn't try to discover what it was he was concealing. "Tell Reck and Ruin that I also know the map of Cranning."

"They know you do. You've told us much in your sleep. We've been writing down the stories you shouted out, and Heffiji has been storing them away here and there. I've tried to figure out what her system is."

"She doesn't have one."

"That was my conclusion. A true dwelf. But no one else could have done this. Unwyrm was calling all the people who knew things. He would have called her, too, if she had actually known anything. The only way the knowledge could stay in the world was with someone like Heffiji who knew nothing of any value, but could lay her hands on everything that mattered. It's all here. All the learning of the world. Reck and Ruin have called geblings out of Cranning to guard the place. They're going to glaze and shutter the windows, put on a new roof. Whatever it takes to protect this house."

"Do the geblings accept Reck and Ruin as their king?"

Angel shrugged. "Who knows what goes on in their minds? They say one thing, but something completely different might be going on under the surface. The fact remains that for the time being, these kings can't go more than a few dozen meters away from you, or they start being driven away from Cranning by Unwyrm.

They can't exactly claim their right to lead the geblings while they're still chained to the human Heptarch, can they?"

"We've wasted enough time," Patience said. "Take me to the boat."

"We'll go as far as Cranning, but no deeper into the mountain until you're stronger."

"I wasn't sick, just crazy," Patience said. "Crazy people can be amazingly strong."

"Is the call-any different now?"

"Only because I know who it is that's calling me."

"So he doesn't control you-"

"Or if he does, he controls me so thoroughly that I don't know I'm controlled."

"That puts my mind at ease."

"Angel, I've become a terrible person."

"Have you?"

"If the scepter had been given to me before I knew the things we learned here in this house, I could never have coped with it. If I had been brought to Cranning without understanding all the things I understand, I would have been helpless when I faced him. I look back on all that you and father did, all that I did and the geblings did and-it was right, it was necessary."

"Why does that make you terrible?"

"Even Mother's death, Angel. Even that."

"Ah."

"What kind of person am I, to agree that my own mother had to die? I have lived through that so many times, all my life, only this time through Father's eyes. He never forgave himself for it. Yet I forgive him."

Angel bent down and kissed her forehead. "My Heptarch, only you are fit to rule mankind."

"What kind of person am I?"

"A wise one."

She didn't argue, though she knew it wasn't true. Wise she was not. But strong-she was strong. She had mastered the mindstone. There was a true self before all the folds of her life. She knew that much, but the rest of her self was still elusive, out of reach, out of sight. So let Angel call her wise, she cared nothing for that. "But am I good, Angel?"

"As Heptarch, your choice is no longer between good and bad. Your choice is between right and wrong."

She had been his student long enough to understand the difference, and agree that he was right. At least in her role as Heptarch, she could no longer live by the same moral code that others lived by. Her decisions now were the decisions of a larger community than just herself. But what community? "Right for whom?" she asked.

"For humankind, Heptarch."

She knew at once that he was wrong. "No. The King's House is all the world. I am a gebling, too. All the life that speaks, and all the life that doesn't speak, all the life of the world except one."

"And that one wants you. But I'll die before I let him have you. He thinks I'm too weak to save you, but I can, and I will."

His fervor as he spoke was no pretense. Whatever lies he was telling, this was not part of it. He did love her.

She touched his cheek. "Serve me as a free man. Angel."

"Slave or free, I serve you the same. What difference does it make?"

"I ask you now, as a free man, to help me."

Angel gently dressed her and led her from the room.

To her surprise, the house was busy with geblings, hundreds of them. Her room had been off limits to them, but through the rest of the house they were busy glazing, patching, repairing, making it whole again. Patience sat in the common room by a scant fire, a fall of sunlight catching her chair to help keep her warm, and watched the ladders going up and down, moving along the walls, the geblings scattering here and there. River's monkey scampered underfoot-a dozen times he was kicked, nearly stepped on, or knocked off some high perch. Always he got up, screeched a string of unintelligible obscenities, and bounded back into the thick of the fray. Patience could not help but notice that Heffiji was much like the monkey, almost frantic with delight and worry, scurrying in and out of the house, up and down the stairs. "Don't touch that!" she'd cry. The geblings would laugh and mock her, but they would also obey.