"We need Will," said Reck.

"What for?" asked Ruin. "There's nothing to plow here, and Angel's the only one of our party who's been this high before."

"We need him," said Reck again.

It was Patience who told him why. "We've been blown by the wind that Unwyrm can blow, and it's too much weather for us. We need the man who has never bowed to Unwyrm."

"Unwyrm!" shouted one old man, and the others took up the cry. "Unwyrm! Unwyrm!"

Patience had been trying to ignore the old men till now. "You know about him?"

"Oh, we're old friends!"

"We came here to visit him, and he lets us stay as long as we like."

"No one ever goes home."

"Till they die, of course. Lots've done that."

"We all will, you know."

"Did Unwyrm invite you, too?"

Bald and gray and white-haired heads bobbed up and down around them. Like little children, they could hardly stand still. Their obvious senility had lulled Patience.

Now she began to remember that she had followed a path that others had walked before. "Yes," she said. "Unwyrm invited us. But we got lost in the snow. Can you tell us where he is?"

"Behind the golden door," said one. The others nodded solemnly. "But you can't go all at once. Only one at a time."

"He wants us all at once," said Reck.

"Liar liar," said one of the men.

Patience glared at Reck, as if to tell her, I'm the diplomat and you're the recluse. Leave this to me. But in fact Patience had no idea how to deal with these men.

They seemed harmless enough. Still, they knew Unwyrm and Unwyrm knew them, and they might have strength enough to make things difficult.

"Right now we have to rest," said Patience.

"No tricks," said the youngest of them, a man whose hair had not yet turned white, though his plump face was sagging badly.

"You," said Patience, "sir, could I know your name?"

"Trades," said the man. "You tell us first."

"My name is Patience," she said.

"Patience, you shouldn't walk around with such thin clothing in snowstorms." Then he giggled as if his advice had been a masterpiece of wit.

"And your name."

"I cheated," he said. "I don't have a name."

"I thought you said no tricks."

He looked crestfallen. "But Unwyrm took our names and he won't give them back."

Patience wasn't sure what game they were playing, but she tried to play along anyway. "You must be very angry, then, to have lost your name."

"Oh, no."

"Not at all."

"Who needs a name?"

"We're very happy."

"We have everything we need."

"Cause we don't need anything." This last was said by the youngest one. He was nodding wisely, like a child. But his eyes were no child's eyes. They were heavy with sadness and loss.

It occurred to Patience that these men, for all their cheerful babbling, might indeed be trying to communicate.

We have everything we need because we don't need anything. Therefore we have nothing. She began to pry, as delicately as she could.

"What other good things has Unwyrm done for you?" she asked.

"Oh, he takes away our worries."

"We never worry about a thing-"

Suddenly Ruin interrupted. "Makes me sick," he said.

The men fell silent.

Patience looked at him and smiled with murder in her eyes. "Maybe Unwyrm will help you feel better for the next few minutes, so you won't feel obliged to say anything."

Ruin got the hint and returned to glowering at the fire.

"What did he do with your worries?" asked Patience.

"Took them all away."

"Took them out of our heads."

"Put them into his own head."

"No more worries about ..." But he didn't finish his sentence. They all waited stupidly for someone else to speak.

"What did you worry about?" asked Patience.

"Old bones," said one. "But I'm very sleepy."

"Got to sleep," said another.

"Oh my. About to yawn."

"Goodnight."

The youngest man also yawned, but he leaned close to Patience, smiled, and whispered, "The capacity of long genetic molecules to carry intelligence." Then he smiled and toppled to the floor.

All the old men lay in heaps on the floor, snoring.

"The Wise," said Patience.

"Funny," said Reck.

"I'm not joking. These are the Wise. The ones that Unwyrm called, who stopped at Heffiji's house to answer her questions. Unwyrm ate out the kernel of their minds, and these are the husks he threw away."

She knelt by the man who had made the effort to tell her what he really was. "I know you now," she said softly. "We've come to give you back what he's taken, if we can."

"Why would he do this?" asked Reck.

"Gathering all the knowledge of the human species, so he could replace it, mind and body both," Ruin held his hands between his legs to warm them. "What I don't understand is why he left them alive."

"These can't be all the Wise in the world," said Reck.

"Unwyrm's call began sixty years ago," answered Patience. "These must be the ones who were young, who were brought most recently. Even they will die soon, and if it weren't for Heffiji's house, all that they knew would be lost."

"But there is Heffiji's house," said Reck. "And you did come to our village, despite Unwyrm's best efforts.

And when Ruin and I were in danger out there in the snow, Unwyrm's own cast-off manflesh saved us. Why?"

"Luck," said Patience. "It can't always go against us.

Chance."

"I hate chance," said Ruin. "I hate believing that the future of my people, of the whole world, depends on an accidental coming-together of events."

"Come away from the fire," said Reck. "You'll singe your hair."

He turned, silhouetted against the hotly burning fire. "What kind of majesty is there in a victory like that?"

"Maybe," said Patience, "with all the patterns of life on this world set against us, maybe a little luck is the only way we'll win."

"I'll take luck," said Reck. "I'll even take acts of the gods. Just so we win."

"Will would say that it was the hand of God that got us this far," said Patience.

"If God's hand is in the game, and on our side," said Reck, "why doesn't he just snuff out Unwyrm himself?"

"God doesn't have the power to act except through our hands," said Ruin. "He can only do what we do for him."

Reck laughed aloud. "What! Are you secretly a Watcher, my gebling, my sibling? In your wanderings through the forest, did you find religion?"

"What do humans know about their god? They want him to have power over earth and sky. But all he has power over is the human will. Because he is the human will-and a weak, feeble god he is. Not like the god of the geblings. We've seen it, haven't we? Together, all the geblings are one soul. We ignore it most of the time, but at a time of great need we act together, we do the thing that consciously or not we know must be done for the whole of us to survive. That is the god of the geblings-the common, unspoken and unspeakable will.

The othermind. Even the humans have a faint touch of othermind that lets Lady Patience hear a dim echo of our call, that lets Unwyrm speak to them. Together they create a god, which is the good of them all, and it rules.

Weakly, pathetically, in fits and starts, but it rules."

Ruin twisted the hair of his cheek. "It rules even Unwyrm.

Just like a gebling, he's half human, too. The human god lies like a root in his path; he doesn't see, he stumbles."

"I can't think of many priests who would like your theology," said Patience.

"That's why I'm not putting it up for sale," said Ruin. "But it's more than chance that helps us. We aren't lonely creatures trying to save our people. We are the instrument of our people, which they unconsciously created to save themselves."

Patience connected Ruin's view to something spoken to her on the boat not too many days before. "Will says that geblings-"