Wyrms (novel)

Wyrms, a 1987 science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card, explores themes of desire, wisdom, and human will. Card incorporates a concept of the tri-partite soul, akin to the one Plato outlines in the Republic. The story takes place on Imakulata, a distant planet settled by humans millennia before the narrative begins.

The protagonist is Patience, a fifteen-year-old girl and the sole daughter of the rightful Heptarch, Peace. Peace lives as a willing slave to the usurper King Oruc, serving as a diplomat and assassin because he believes Oruc is the best ruler for their time. He ensures Patience is rigorously trained by her tutor, Angel, in languages, diplomacy, assassination, and constant vigilance. At thirteen, Patience learns of an ancient prophecy: as the seventh seventh seventh daughter of the Starship Captain—the first human on Imakulata—she is destined to bear Kristos, who will bring either eternal salvation or destruction. A religion has formed around the Captain’s legends, and thousands of Vigilants are ready to help her reclaim the Heptarchy and fulfill the prophecy.

King Oruc controls Patience and Peace by allowing only one to leave the castle at a time. When Peace falls ill, Patience cuts a crystal globe from his shoulder—the scepter of the Heptarchs—which he warns her never to let a gebling know she has. After Peace dies, Patience kills an assassin sent by Oruc and flees, stopping at Slaves’ Hall to consult her father’s preserved head, kept alive by headworms and forced to speak truth. Peace reveals he has fought a compulsion to bring her to Cranning, home of the geblings, where the “Cranning Call” draws great thinkers to disappear. He says the Unwyrm is the Call’s source, summoning Patience.

Patience decides to go to Cranning to challenge the Unwyrm, defying its pull by choosing her own route. Joined by Angel and a river woman named Sken, she meets Ruin and Reck, twin gebling monarchs repelled from Cranning until Patience’s Call cancels the repulsion. Will, Reck’s silent human slave, joins them. At a house offering “ANSWERS,” a dwelf named Heffiji explains Imakulata’s genetics: all life descends from a black segmented wyrm. Heffiji reveals the scepter is the gebling king’s mindstone, stolen 300 generations ago. Surgically implanted, it transfers memories. Ruin inserts it into Patience’s brain.