"That isn't age, it's passion," said Ruin. "We can only bleed him. It's the only hope."

Patience whirled to face them. "There is no hope!" she howled. She was an animal, her eyes darting from one of them to another. "Not for you!" And she hurled the loop at Reck.

Before the spinning wire could reach her, though. Will thrust Reck down on her face. The loop took him above the wrist of his right arm, cutting through to the bone.

The skin of his wrist and hand sloughed downward, like a glove suddenly pulled half off; blood gouted from above the wound.

Will screamed in pain, but almost at once acted to save what he could. Since there was no hope now that he could hold both Reck and Ruin, he shoved Ruin down, placed his foot on the gebling's leg, and then with his left hand he pulled the gebling up. Ruin cried out with pain as his leg snapped. He would stay in the room. "Sken!" cried Will. Sken hurried forward, slipping on the ice and nearly falling; she caught herself against Will, who still had the strength to take her weight without falling over.

"Hold Reck, keep her here!" cried Will. Then he dropped to his knees and fell forward, thrusting his arm into the crystal water that flowed in a stream across the middle of the cavern. "Patience!" he shouted. His arm cast a bloom of blood ribbons into the water. "Patience, he doesn't rule you!"

Reck felt Sken's powerful arms around her waist just as Unwyrm urged her to run, to fly away, to escape this place. But she could also feel Ruin calling to her in her othermind. Stay. Kill. With shaking hands she took her bow, nocked an arrow, and shot. Unwyrm dodged easily; the arrow fell harmlessly behind him. She nocked another, tried to concentrate. He pounded at her mind; her eyes blurred-

And Patience saw this, saw it all. There was no hope in her of resisting him, her lust for him was all she could think of. Yet at the same time, she could remember Will's story of who she really was, of that small and forgotten self masked by memory and desire. I must help, came the thought. She could not resist Unwyrm, but she could distract him.

She stepped forward, crying out to him. "Unwyrm!"

She pulled her tunic off over her head and knelt naked before him. "Unwyrm!" Her knees slipped smoothly across the ice and she leaned back, offering herself to him.

Reck felt the pressure on her ease. In a swift movement Unwyrm's body arched forward and lunged onto Patience. He rooted one of his appendages in her groin.

Patience cried out in her inexpressible relief. Weeks of longing were finally fulfilled.

Unwyrm's upper body began a rhythmic swaying. For a moment he had forgotten them; he, too, had a need that was too long unfulfilled to be put off. Reck fired two quick arrows. One struck him in the eye. Another spiked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

"His head is nothing!" screamed Ruin. "His belly!

His belly, where the blood is!"

Reck took another arrow, but this time, instead of notching it, she had a powerful urge to eat the arrow. To bring it to her mouth and jam it down her own throat.

She raised the arrow above her face and smiled at the death that pointed at her.

Suddenly Sken's fist came down savagely on her belly.

The pain drove Unwyrm's command from her mind. It also made her realize that she could not possibly do enough damage to Unwyrm's belly to kill him. Only Patience was close enough. The Heptarch now lay on her back, her hand within easy reach of one of Angel's knives. She was shuddering and writhing in ecstasy beneath him. Somehow, Reck knew, she had to be distracted from the delight that Unwyrm gave her, forced to remember what was really happening. A sudden pain might break the hold that Unwyrm had on her mind, make her forget the pleasure long enough to take the knife and disembowel him.

So Reck readied the arrow and aimed, not at Unwyrm, whose belly was pressed against Patience, but at the girl herself. Reck shot for the thigh, and in a moment the arrow trembled in the Heptarch's flesh.

Patience tossed her head back and forth from the pain.

Did she see the knife?

"Kill him!" cried Ruin.

She saw it. She reached it easily, brought it up to kill, then suddenly cried out again in ecstasy. She knew what she had to do, and yet her body could not respond. I am a gaunt, now, at the end, Patience realized. I have no will before him. She struggled to raise her hand against him, but all she could think of was a great aching love for him as she could feel her womb filling. Gradually her arm dropped back down. But her fingers clung to the knife. She did not let go, though now she couldn't even remember why she held it, or what it was.

"She's still holding it," said Ruin. "She's not gone!"

Sken raised her voice to taunt them. "King of the geblings! Why did you come alone? Where are your armies when you need them most!"

"Geblings," whispered Reck. And in that moment she and Ruin both knew that they had one tool that might free Patience's mind from Unwyrm's control.

"We must call the geblings-" murmured Ruin.

"The geblings must call her," said Reck.

They cried out with their silent mind. Feel and repeat this urgent need-to kill Unwyrm, to kill the child-killer, the mother-eater.

Geblings in the highest reaches of Cranning fell the urgent call in their othermind. They stopped what they were doing; it was the king, they knew who called them, it was the king and all unknown to them the final battle had already been joined. Kill Unwyrm! They echoed the silent shout, passing it on to the other geblings farther down the mountain.

Cart drivers let their oxen walk on unattended; geblings in conversation fell silent; workers let their tasks slip from their hands. All joined in the fervent call: Kill Unwyrm.

In moments, the message passed silently to every part of Cranning. It was echoed by ten million gebling minds.

Every other time that Cranning had cried out together, the geblings had gathered from every part of the world to join battle against the human kingdoms and strike them down. This time, the message was much simpler. Death to their brother, their enemy, their satan, the wyrm.

And in Patience's mind that same cry also arose, stronger and stronger, making its way against the perfect pleasure that Unwyrm gave her. She felt the knife in her hand again, knew that the desire to kill him was her true self even though her body cried out against it. She felt his blood spill almost before she felt the knife enter his body. Unwyrm arched backward, then slapped himself forward on top of her. She screamed in pain, then jabbed at him again. He whipped away, slithered toward his upper chamber, then writhed out his dance of death, smearing himself across the ice as he whipped to and fro.

All that he desired in the last moments of his life Patience felt, for the bond was still firm between them. She screamed his scream for him. At last he was still, and her voice was her own again.

Except for their labored breathing, the room was silent.

Patience curled up on her side and sobbed quietly, Unwyrm's blood slowly freezing on her.

Sken let go of Reck and leaned back against the ice behind her. Reck fell forward, gasping for breath. "Will," she whispered.

Ruin crawled to Will, dragging his broken leg behind him. He pulled the large man over onto his back. His face was blue from the cold, but the icy water had slowed the bleeding of his arm. "Save him if you can," whispered Reck. Ruin at once drew a threaded brass needle from his kit and began feverishly sewing the severed arteries and veins together.

Reck looked back at Sken. "Help the Heptarch, can't you?" She did not wait to see if Sken would obey. She slid across the ice to where her brother labored over Will. "He held us here, he got us here when no one else could have-"