The girl disappeared into the hut as he entered the clearing before it. He slowed, looking around him at the cluster of carven images pushing up like unnatural growths from the spongy ground, or dangling from tree limbs. Most of the images were subtly or blatantly obscene. He averted his eyes and limped between them to the hut’s entrance.
He stepped through the doorway without waiting for an invitation, to find the girl crouched by the hearth in the hut’s cramped interior, wearing the secret smile of a cat. Beside her an incredibly wrinkled, ancient woman sat on a three-legged stool. The legs were carved into shapes that made him look away again, back at the wrinkled face and the black, buried eyes that regarded him with flinty bemusement. He noticed abruptly that there was no wall behind her: the far side of the hut melted into the black volcanic stone, a natural fissure opening into the mountain’s side.
“So, Your Highness, you’ve come all the way from Kwansai seeking the Storm King, and a way to tame its power?”
He wrapped his cloak closely about him and grimaced, the nearest thing to a smile of scorn that he could manage. “Your girl has a quick tongue. But I’ve come to the wrong place, it seems, for real power.”
“Don’t be so sure!” The old woman leaned toward him, shrill and spiteful. “You can’t afford to be too sure of anything, Lassan-din. You were prince of Kwansai; you should have been king there when your father died, and overlord of these lands as well. And now you’re nobody and you have no home, no friends, barely even your life. Nothing is what it seems to be ... it never is.”
Lassan-din’s mouth went slack; he closed it, speechless at last. Nothing is what it seems. The girl called Nothing grinned up at him from the floor. He took a deep breath, shifting to ease his back again. “Then you know what I’ve come for, if you already know that much, witch.”
The hag half-rose from her obscene stool; he glimpsed a flash of color, a brighter, finer garment hidden beneath the drab outer robe she wore—the way the inner woman still burned fiercely bright in her eyes, showing through the wasted flesh of her ancient body. “Call me no names, you prince of beggars! I am the Earth’s Own. Your puny Kwansai priests, who call my sisterhood ‘witch,’ who destroyed our holy places and drove us into hiding, know nothing of power. They’re fools; they don’t believe in power and they are powerless, charlatans. You know it or you wouldn’t be here!” She settled back, wheezing. “Yes, I could tell you what you want; but suppose you tell me.”
“I want what’s mine! I want my kingdom.” He paced restlessly, two steps and then back. “I know of elementals, all the old legends. My people say that dragons are storm-bringers, born from a joining of Fire and Water and Air, three of the four Primes of Existence. Nothing but the Earth can defy their fury. And I know that if I can hold a dragon in its lair with the right spells, it must give me what I want, like the heroes of the Golden Time. I want to use its power to take back my lands.”
“You don’t want much, do you?” The old woman rose from her seat and turned her back on him, throwing a surreptitious handful of something into the fire, making it flare up balefully. She stirred the pot that hung from a hook above it, spitting five times into the noxious brew as she stirred. Lassan-din felt his empty stomach turn over. “If you want to challenge the Storm King, you should be out there climbing, not here holding your hand out to me.”
“Damn you!” His exasperation broke loose, and his hand wrenched her around to face him. “I need some spell, some magic, some way to pen a dragon up. I can’t do it with my bare hands!”
She shook her head, unintimidated, and leered toothlessly at him. “My power comes to me through my body, up from the Earth Our Mother. She won’t listen to a man—especially one who would destroy Her worship. Ask your priests who worship the air to teach you their empty prayers.”
He saw the hatred rising in her, and felt it answered: The dagger was out of its hidden sheath and in his hand before he knew it, pressing the soft folds of her neck. “I don’t believe you, witch. See this dagger—” quietly, deadly. “If you give me what I want, you’ll have the jewels in its hilt. If you don’t, you’ll feel its blade cut your throat.”
“All right, all right!” She strained back as the blade’s tip began to bite. He let her go. She felt her neck; the girl sat perfectly still at their feet, watching. “I can give you something—a spell. I can’t guarantee She’ll listen. But you have enough hatred in you for ten men—and maybe that will make your man’s voice loud enough to penetrate Her skin. This mountain is sacred to Her. She still listens through its ears, even if She no longer breathes here.”
“Never mind the superstitious drivel. Just tell me how I can keep the dragon in without it striking me dead with its lightning. How I can fight fire with fire—”
“You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water.”
He stared at her; at the obviousness of it, and the absurdity—“The dragon is the creator of storm. How can mere water—?”
“A dragon is anathema. Remember that, prince who would be king. It is chaos, power uncontrolled; and power always has a price. That’s the key to everything. I can teach you the spell for controlling the waters of the Earth; but you’re the one who must use it.”
He stayed with the women through the day, and learned as the hours passed to believe in the mysteries of the Earth. The crone spoke words that brought water fountaining up from the well outside her door while he looked on in amazement, his weariness and pain forgotten. As he watched she made a brook flow upstream; made the crystal droplets beading the forest pines join in a diadem to crown his head, and then with a word released them to run cold and helpless as tears into the collar of his ragged tunic.
She seized the fury that rose up in him at her insolence, and challenged him to do the same. He repeated the ungainly, ancient spellwords defiantly, arrogantly, and nothing happened. She scoffed, his anger grew; she jeered and it grew stronger. He repeated the spell again, and again, and again…until at last he felt the terrifying presence of an alien power rise in his body, answering the call of his blood. The droplets on the trees began to shiver and commingle; he watched an eddy form in the swift clear water of the stream— The Earth had answered him.
His anger failed him at the unbelievable sight of his success…and the power failed him too. Dazed and strengthless, at last he knew his anger for the only emotion with the depth or urgency to move the body of the Earth, or even his own. But he had done the impossible—made the Earth move to a man’s bidding. He had proved his right to be a king, proved that he could force the dragon to serve him as well. He laughed out loud. The old woman moaned and spat, twisting her hands that were like gnarled roots, mumbling curses. She shuffled away toward the woods as though she were in a trance; turned back abruptly as she reached the trees, pointed past him at the girl standing like a ghost in the hut’s doorway. “You think you’ve known the Earth; that you own Her, now. You think you can take anything and make it yours. But you’re as empty as that one, and as powerless!” And she was gone.
Night had fallen through the dreary wood without his realizing it. The girl Nothing led him back into the hut, shared a bowl of thick, strangely herbed soup and a piece of stale bread with him. He ate gratefully but numbly, the first warm meal he had eaten in weeks; his mind drifted into waking dreams of banqueting until dawn in royal halls.
When he had eaten his share, wiping the bowl shamelessly with a crust, he stood and walked the few paces to the hut’s furthest corner. He lay down on the hard stone by the cave mouth, wrapping his cloak around him, and closed his eyes. Sleep’s darker cloak settled over him.