Wyrms

Orson Scott Card published Wyrms in 1987. The novel is concerned with desire, with wisdom and with the human will, and it works with a picture of the soul in three parts that comes from Plato's Republic.

Its central figure is Patience, fifteen years old and the rightful Heptarch's only daughter. Her father, Peace, lives openly as a slave to the king who took his throne, serving the usurper Oruc as a diplomat and an assassin while quietly making sure his daughter is prepared for what he expects to come.

Patience is taught by her tutor Angel, and by the time she is in her teens she is fluent in dozens of languages and trained both in diplomatic manners and in the techniques of killing. At thirteen she is told of a prophecy about her. Her descent runs back to the Starship Captain, the first human on Imakulata, and she is the seventh seventh seventh daughter in that line, which is said to mean that she will bear Kristos, and that he will bring the world either its salvation or its destruction. An entire religion has been built on the story, and the novel is about what she makes of it.