And then, dimly, he became aware that the girl had followed him, stood above him looking down. He opened his eyes unwillingly, to see her unbelt her tunic and pull it off, kneel down naked at his side. A piece of rock crystal, perfectly transparent, perfectly formed, hung glittering coldly against her chest. He kept his eyes open, saying nothing.
“The Old One won’t be back until you’re gone; the sight of a man calling on the Earth was too strong for her.” Her hand moved insinuatingly along his thigh.
He rolled away from her, choking on a curse as his back hurt him sharply. “I’m tired. Let me sleep.”
“I can help you. She could have told you more. I’ll help you tomorrow ... if you lie with me tonight.”
He looked up at her, suddenly despairing. “Take my body, then; but it won’t give you much pleasure.” He pulled up the back of his tunic, baring the livid scar low on his spine. “My uncle didn’t make a cripple of me—but he might as well have.” When he even thought of a woman there was only pain, only rage…only that.
She put her hand on the scar with surprising gentleness. “I can help that too ... for tonight.” She went away, returned with a small jar of ointment and rubbed the salve slowly into his scarred back. A strange, cold heat sank through him; a sensuous tingling swept away the grinding ache that had been his only companion through these long months of exile. He let his breath out in an astonished sigh, and the girl lay down beside him, pulling at his clothes.
Her thin body was as hard and bony as a boy’s, but she made him forget that. She made him forget everything, except that tonight he was free from pain and sorrow; tonight he lay with a woman who desired him, no matter what her reason. He remembered lost pleasure, lost joy, lost youth, only yesterday…until yesterday became tomorrow.
In the morning he woke, in pain, alone and fully clothed, aching on the hard ground. Nothing. ... He opened his eyes and saw her standing at the fire, stirring a kettle. A Dream—? The cruel betrayal that was reality returned tenfold.
They ate together in a silence that was sullen on his part and inscrutable on hers. After last night it seemed obvious to him that she was older than she looked—as obvious as the way he himself had changed from boy to old man in a span of months. And he felt an insubstantiality about her that he had not noticed before, an elusiveness that might only have been an echo of his dream. “I dreamed, last night ...”
“I know.” She climbed to her feet, cutting him off, combing her snarled hair back with her fingers. “You dream loudly.” Her face was closed.
He felt a frown settle between his eyes again. “I have a long climb. I’d better get started.” He pushed himself up and moved stiffly toward the doorway. The old hag still had not returned.
“Not that way,” the girl said abruptly. “This way.” She pointed as he turned back, toward the cleft in the rock.
He stood still. “That will take me to the dragon?”
“Only part way. But it’s easier by half. I’ll show you.” She jerked a brand out of the fire and started into the maw of darkness.
He went after her with only a moment’s uncertainty. He had lived in fear for too long; if he was afraid to follow this witch-girl into her Goddess’s womb, then he would never have the courage to challenge the Storm King.
The low-ceilinged cleft angled steeply upward, a natural tube formed millennia ago by congealing lava. The girl began to climb confidently, as though she trusted some guardian power to place her hands and feet surely—a power he could not depend on as he followed her up the shaft. The dim light of day snuffed out behind him, leaving only her torch to guide them through utter blackness, over rock that was alternately rough enough to flay the skin from his hands and slick enough to give him no purchase at all. The tunnel twisted like a worm, widening, narrowing, steepening, folding back on itself in an agony of contortion. His body protested its own agony as he dragged it up handholds in a sheer rock face, twisted it, wrenched it, battered it against the unyielding stone. The acrid smoke from the girl’s torch stung his eyes and clogged his lungs; but it never seemed to slow her own tireless motion, and she took no pity on his weakness. Only the knowledge of the distance he had come kept him from demanding that they turn back; he could not believe that this could possibly be an easier way than climbing the outside of the mountain. It began to seem to him that he had been climbing through this foul blackness for all of eternity, that this was another dream like his dream last night, but one that would never end.
The girl chanted softly to herself now; he could just hear her above his own labored breathing. He wondered jealously if she was drawing strength from the very stone around them, the body of the Earth. He could feel no pulse in the cold heart of the rock; and yet after yesterday he did not doubt its presence, even wondering if the Earth sapped his own strength with preternatural malevolence. I am a man, I will be a king! he thought defiantly. And the way grew steeper, and his hands bled.
“Wait—!” He gasped out the word at last, as his feet went out from under him again and he barely saved himself from sliding back down the tunnel. “I can’t go on.”
The girl, crouched on a level spot above him, looked back and down at him and ground out the torch. His grunt of protest became a grunt of surprise as he saw her silhouetted against a growing gray-brightness. She disappeared from his view; the brightness dimmed and then strengthened.
He heaved himself up and over the final bend in the wormhole, into a space large enough to stand in if he had had the strength. He crawled forward hungrily into the brightness at the cave mouth, found the girl kneeling there, her face raised to the light. He welcomed the fresh air into his lungs, cold and cleansing; looked past her—and down.
They were dizzyingly high on the mountain’s side, above the tree line, above a sheer, unscalable face of stone. A fast-falling torrent of water roared on their left, plunging out and down the cliff-face. The sun winked at him from the cloud-wreathed heights; its angle told him they had climbed for the better part of the day. He looked over at the girl.
“You’re lucky,” she said, without looking back at him. Before he could even laugh at the grotesque irony of the statement she raised her hand, pointing on up the mountainside. “The Storm King sleeps—another storm is past. I saw the rainbow break this sunrise.”
He felt a surge of strength and hope, absorbed the indifferent blessing of the Holy Sun. “How long will it sleep?”
“Two more days, perhaps. You won’t reach its den before night. Sleep here, and climb again tomorrow.”
“And then?” He looked toward her expectantly.
She shrugged.
“I paid you well,” not certain in what coin, anymore. “I want a fair return! How do I pen the beast?”
Her hand tightened around the crystal pendant hanging against her tunic. She glanced back into the cave mouth.
“There are many waters flowing from the heights. One of them might be diverted to fall past the entrance of its lair.’’
“A waterfall? I might as well hold up a rose and expect it to cower!”
“Power always has its price; as the Old One said.” She looked directly at him at last. “The storm rests here in mortal form—the form of the dragon. And like all mortals, it suffers. Its strength lies in the scales that cover its skin. The rain washes them away—the storm is agony to the stormbringer. They fall like jewels, they catch the light as they fall, like a trail of rainbow. It’s the only rainbow anyone here has ever seen ... a sign of hope, because it means an end to the storm; but a curse, too, because the storm will always return, endlessly.”