"What do I care what he says?" said Ruin. "It's his strength that we need now, not his ideas. We need the strength that let him stand against the Cranning call."

"He says that geblings and humans all have souls, and the same god means to save us all."

"If he does, then I adjure this god to bring us Will, to stand before Unwyrm and resist him for us." Ruin was mocking, but not to amuse them. His mockery was a mask for desperate faith, Patience could see that. He had invented for himself a god he could believe in, and now he prayed to that god.

And was answered.

Outside, during a lull in the wind, they could hear the high, sweet sounds of Kristiano and Strings singing harmony.

And another voice calling Patience by name.

"Angel," said Patience.

"He killed the others," said Reck. "Unwyrm has brought him to us."

There were footsteps crunching in the crisp dry snow outside.

"Patience!" cried Angel again. He knocked on the door.

"Go away!" shouted Patience. "I don't want to have to kill you."

Reck was knotching an arrow, and Ruin had his knife ready.

"Patience, I'm free of him!" shouted Angel. "Let me in, I can help you!"

"Don't believe him," said Reck.

"Go away!" shouted Patience. She held the blowgun near her lips. "I'll kill you!"

The door crashed open and swung back to bang against the wall. Immediately an arrow trembled in the door at belly height; Reck was preparing to shoot again, as soon as anyone entered.

Patience knew, however, that Angel hadn't the strength to kick in the door. "Will," she said. "You can come in, Will."

Will came in, followed by Angel, who was tightly bound and tethered to Sken. Strings and Kristiano came after. They were warmly dressed against the cold.

"Here we are," said Strings cheerfully. "The House of the Wise. And the Wise, as you can see, are asleep."

It was true; even the shouting and the banging of the door hadn't aroused them. It was a sign of Unwyrm's presence here, that he could keep them asleep through anything.

"Will," said Reck. "Why didn't you speak! We were sure Angel had-"

"He didn't speak," said Angel, "because he didn't know whether you were under Unwyrm's power. The arrow in the doorway was quite convincing,"

Patience looked at Angel. His bonds were a joke, of course-she knew that Angel could easily slip the knots, if he wanted to. It was his face she studied.

"I know why you look at me that way," said Angel.

"Do you think I haven't thought ten thousand times, what will she think of me, when she learns the truth?"

But Patience was not thinking of his betrayal now. She was thinking: the fire is gone from behind his eyes. He is weak and alone, and he was never alone before. Even though Unwyrm is your enemy. Angel, it strengthened you to have him always with you. And now, you have the look of a child whose parents have wandered off.

You are waiting for him to come back. You think you can carry on alone, but you wait for him all the same, to bring you back to life.

"But I'm not who I was," said Angel. "I don't need bonds now. I was young when he took me, young and unprepared. But I know him, and now that he's gone, I'll never let him back."

"Why did you bring him?" demanded Ruin of Will.

"Why didn't you just kill him down below?"

Will only glanced at Ruin, as if to say. Who are you to expect an accounting from me? Then he turned to Patience.

"My Heptarch," he said, "I brought your servant to you. He wanted to redeem himself."

"After Unwyrm is dead," said Patience, "then he can become himself, and my true servant. But as long as Unwyrm is alive, Angel is the wyrm's slave, and not the Heptarch's."

"No," said Angel. "I've faced him before. I know where he's weak-"

"You know nothing of the kind," said Ruin, "or you would have killed him before."

"All he's thinking about now is you, Patience," said Angel. "All he cares about is to stay alive long enough to impregnate you. He's waited seven thousand years, constantly renewing himself, until he hates the taste of his own life, but when you come, then he can achieve all he waited for. He cares nothing for me, or Will, or the geblings-"

"He leaves you free," said Ruin, "so we'll trust you and bring you with us. Then he'll rule you again and you'll betray us in our moment of greatest weakness."

"These bonds won't hold me," said Angel. "Either take me with you, or kill me now."

Patience shook her head. "You did me no kindness, Will, to bring him here."

"Kindness was never my purpose," said Will.

"What was your purpose?"

"My purpose is God's purpose."

Ruin laughed aloud.

"And what is God's purpose?" asked Angel scornfully.

"We are his purpose," said Will. "Our life, we who create and discover and build and tear down, we who love and hate, who grieve and rejoice, we are his purpose.

His work is for our kind to live forever, human and gebling, dwelf and gaunt, rising up from the womb and lying down in the grave."

"Very lovely," said Ruin. "But right now our job is to lay Unwyrm in his grave, and the only way to have a chance at that is to put Angel there first."

Patience drew the loop from her hair and let it hang, limp, from one hand. "The more of us who go there to face him, the better. He'll be calling to me, and it'll be hard for him to concentrate on destroying you."

"We hope," said Reck.

"He won't let anyone come close but me," said Patience.

"It's the bow that will kill him, if anything does. Reck."

"Of course," she said. "It's what I was born for."

"But no one understands his body, or where he must be shot to be killed. Ruin, you're the one who has lived with the life of this world. Your intuition is all we have to go on, in knowing where to strike him so he'll die."

"I know," said Angel. "I know where to strike-in his eyes, piercing through to-"

"You know nothing now," said Patience. "He could have lied to you a thousand times, and you would have believed him because you wanted to believe." She walked around Angel, stood behind him. "I think that Unwyrm controls best the minds that he knows best. Angel he would control most easily. But scarcely better than Reck and Ruin and me. He has held us in his grasp so many times that he knows all our pathways as surely as the geblings know the tunnels of Cranning. It will take all our strength just to stand against him. But you. Will, and you, Sken-he doesn't know you. Not the way he knows us. Will can resist him, and Sken-forgive me, but he must not hold you in high regard or he would have called you before now. So you must come last, and stand behind us. Keep the geblings from running away, force them to stand against him, so they can concentrate all their strength on killing him. And in the end, if they fail, then you must kill me before Unwyrm's children are born."

"I'm not a hero," said Sken.

"We aren't here for heroics," said Patience. "We're here for murder. Unwyrm's, if we can manage it. Mine, if we can't."

"They'll begin by killing you, if they can," said Angel. "It's the easiest way to stop his children from being born. You'll have Reek's arrow in you before the end. You can't trust them."

"And you, Angel, my teacher, my friend, my father," said Patience. "How can I leave you behind me, when Unwyrm has only to think of you, and you flinch and cower and obey?"

She whipped the loop around his neck and gave it a quick twist, a slight, delicate pull. Blood flowed from all around his neck. Angel's face held a look of surprise, of wonderment, perhaps even of gratitude. Then he toppled forward off the chair. Patience bent over him, carefully unwinding the loop from his neck. The others looked away to give her a moment of grief. She had done what must be done, and had not put the terrible duty on anyone else. She was the stuff Heptarchs were made of, they all saw that.