“Then I could have it at my mercy. ...” He heard nothing else.
“Yes. If you can make the Earth move to your will.” Her voice was flat.
His hands tightened. “I have enough hate in me for that.”
“And what will you demand, to ease it?” She glanced at him again, and back at the sky. “The dragon is defiling this sacred place; it should be driven out. You could become a hero to my people, if you forced the dragon to go away. A god. They need a god who can do them some good…”
He felt her somehow still watching him, measuring his response, even though she had looked away. “I came here to solve my problem, not yours. I want my own kingdom, not a kingdom of mud-men. I need the dragon’s power—I didn’t come here to drive that away.”
The girl said nothing, still staring at the sky.
“It’s a simple thing for you to move the waters—why haven’t you driven the dragon away yourself, then?” His voice rasped in his parched throat, sharp with unrecognized guilt.
“I’m Nothing. I have no power—the Old One holds my soul.” She looked down at the crystal.
“Then why won’t the Old One do it?”
“She hates, too. She hates what our people have become under the new gods, your gods. That’s why she won’t.”
“I’d think it would give her great pleasure to prove the impotence of the new gods.” His mouth stretched sourly.
“She wants to die in the Earth’s time, not tomorrow.” The girl folded her arms, and her own mouth twisted.
He shook his head. “I don’t understand that…why didn’t you destroy our soldiers, our priests, with your magic?”
“The Earth moves slowly to our bidding, because She is eternal. An arrow is small—but it moves swiftly.”
He laughed once, appreciatively. “I understand.”
“There’s a cairn of stones over there.” She nodded back into the darkness. “Food is under it.” He realized that this must have been a place of refuge for the women in times of persecution. “The rest is up to you.” She turned, merging abruptly into the shadows.
“Wait!” he called, surprising himself. “You must be tired.”
She shook her head, a deeper shadow against darkness.
“Stay with me—until morning.” It was not quite a demand, not quite a question.
“Why?” He thought he saw her eyes catch light and reflect it back at him, like a wild thing’s.
Because I had a dream. He did not say it, did not say anything else.
“Our debts have balanced.” She moved slightly, and something landed on the ground at his feet: his dagger. The hilt was pock-marked with empty jewel settings; stripped clean. He leaned down to pick it up. When he straightened again she was gone.
“You need a light—!” he called after her again.
Her voice came back to him, from a great distance: “May you get what you deserve!” And then silence, except for the roaring of the falls.
He ate, wondering whether her last words were a benediction or a curse. He slept, and the dreams that came to him were filled with the roaring of dragons.
With the light of a new day he began to climb again, following the urgent river upward toward its source that lay hidden in the waiting crown of clouds. He remembered his own crown, and lost himself in memories of the past and future, hardly aware of the harsh sobbing of his breath, of flesh and sinew strained past a sane man’s endurance. Once he had been the spoiled child of privilege, his father’s only son—living in the world’s eye, his every whim a command. Now he was as much Nothing as the witchgirl far down the mountain. But he would live the way he had again, his every wish granted, his power absolute—he would live that way again, if he had to climb to the gates of Heaven to win back his birthright.
The hours passed endlessly, inevitably, and all he knew was that slowly, slowly, the sky lowered above him. At last the cold, moist edge of clouds enfolded his burning body, drawing him into another world of gray mist and gray silences; black, glistening surfaces of rock; the white sound of the cataract rushing down from even higher above. Drizzling fog shrouded the distances any way he turned, and he realized that he did not know where in this layer of cloud the dragon’s den lay. He had assumed that it would be obvious, he had trusted the girl to tell him all he needed to know…Why had he trusted her? That pagan slut—his hand gripped the rough hilt of his dagger; dropped away, trembling with fatigue. He began to climb again, keeping the sound of falling water nearby for want of any other guide. The light grew vaguer and more diffuse, until the darkness falling in the outer world penetrated the fog world and the haze of his exhaustion. He lay down at last, unable to go on, and slept beneath the shelter of an overhang of rock.
He woke stupefied by daylight. The air held a strange acridness that hurt his throat, that he could not identify. The air seemed almost to crackle; his hair ruffled, although there was no wind. He pushed himself up. He knew this feeling now: a storm was coming. A storm coming ... a storm, here? Suddenly, fully awake, he turned on his knees, peering deeper beneath the overhang that sheltered him. And in the light of dawn he could see that it was not a simple overhang, but another opening into the mountain’s side—a wider, greater one, whose depths the day could not fathom. But far down in the blackness a flickering of unnatural light showed. His hair rose in the electric breeze, he felt his skin prickle. Yes…yes! A small cry escaped him. He had found it! Without even knowing it, he had slept in the mouth of the dragon’s lair all night. Habit brought a thanks to the gods to his lips, until he remembered— He muttered a thank you to the Earth beneath him before he climbed to his feet. A brilliant flash silhouetted him; a rumble like distant thunder made the ground vibrate, and he froze. Was the dragon waking—?
But there was no further disturbance, and he breathed again. Two days, the girl had told him, the dragon might sleep. And now he had reached his final trial, the penning of the beast. Away to his right he could hear the cataract’s endless song. But would there be enough water in it to block the dragon’s exit? Would that be enough to keep it prisoner, or would it strike him down in lightning and thunder, and sweep his body from the heights with torrents of rain?...Could he even move one droplet of water, here and now? Or would he find that all the thousand doubts that gnawed inside him were not only useless but pointless?
He shook it off, moving out and down the mist-dim slope to view the cave mouth and the river tumbling past it. A thin stream of water already trickled down the face of the opening, but the main flow was diverted by a folded knot of lava. If he could twist the water’s course and hold it, for just long enough . . .
He climbed the barren face of stone at the far side of the cave mouth until he stood above it, confronting the sinuous steel and flashing white of the thing he must move. It seemed almost alive, and he felt weary, defeated, utterly insignificant at the sight of it. But the mountain on which he stood was a greater thing than even the river, and he knew that within it lay power great enough to change the water’s course. But he was the conduit, his will must tap and bend the force that he had felt stir in him two days ago.
He braced his legs apart, gathered strength into himself, trying to recall the feel of magic moving in him. He recited the spell-words, the focus for the willing of power—and felt nothing. He recited the words again, putting all his concentration behind them. Again nothing. The Earth lay silent and inert beneath his feet.