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In the darkness came a hard pressure that took away Alyea's breath; then, abruptly, a growing light and a floating, empty feeling. She saw nothing around her, but felt surrounded by presence—one, many, she had no way of telling. It was just
presence
, stronger even than the ishrait's had been.
In a moment of clarity Alyea understood that the ishrait had to be a ha'ra'ha herself.
The light shifted and separated, forming pools and lines of not-light. Alyea stared at the abstract patterns for some time, watching them move, join, split, and curve, feeling the open, idiot wonder of a child learning the world for the first time.
At last she realized that the shadows and planes of light hinted at the definition of an actual, physical form. Focusing more sharply, she saw the ha'rethe in front of her for one searing moment, and as the light dropped steeply back into darkness, she screamed.
The floating, dreamy feeling returned, along with a sense of sadness that brought tears streaking down her face.
You do not offer us acceptance
, a voice said. S
o few humans offer us acceptance, despite all we give your kind. What do you bring us, then? What is your gift to us?
Gift?
She blinked hazily, trying to remember if the ishrait had said anything about a gift.
You must give something
, the voice insisted.
It is not sharing until both sides give. What is your offering?
We have been given many gifts, and none have asked that question.
The voice sounded rather startled. It fell silent for a time, as if thinking, then said,
Tell us a story that means something to you.
“A story that means something to me?” She paused, remembering a story one of her nurses had told her long ago. “All right. I'll tell you about Krilla.”
Drawing a deep breath, she began reciting, letting the cadence of the words take over her voice.
This is a story of a distant northern village, high in the Scarpane Mountains, the village of Alonir. Although it is in the path of many of the worst winter storms, somehow most of them turn aside and leave the village untouched. Old men and women of Alonir say this is because of Lord Krilla.
Krilla lived with her mother, father, and three sisters, in this village of Alonir. She was the youngest, no more than sixteen, and very slight and homely. Her older sisters were attractive but vain, and their mother desired to find them suitable, wealthy husbands. But the wealthy men lived in the foothills and plains below the Scarpane Mountains, and the family was too poor to travel so far.
The three sisters did not like to go outside. They protested that the harsh winter winds and freezing air would ruin their looks and that they would never find good husbands without their beauty. Krilla's sisters often complained about the weather and about their poverty, but Krilla loved the winter weather, loved to dance with the wind and spin with the snowflakes. She felt more comfortable outdoors in the clean, crisp air than in the stuffy little house filled with constant complaints and sighs.
But a winter came where the wind ran colder and stronger than ever before, and her mother forbade Krilla to go outside for fear of being blown away or frozen to death.
She found the confinement intolerable, and as the days passed she became more and more upset at the quarrels erupting around her. She had always spent so much of her time outdoors that she had not seen how very depressed her sisters were over the weather, and it puzzled her.
“Why do you hate going outside?” she asked. “It's so beautiful out there.”
“It's too cold!” one sister cried.
“It's too windy!” cried another.
“It snows too much!” said the third.
Krilla shook her head, confused that her sisters could so hate the very things she loved.
“Well,” she said bravely, “What if these things stopped?”
Her sisters laughed at her.
“Foolish girl!” they said scornfully. “Only the Lord of Winter could stop the snow and wind from coming to our village. What do any of us have that would persuade him to turn aside from this tiny place?”
“I do not know,” Krilla answered stoutly. “But I am willing to search him out and ask. What harm can it do to ask?”
“Go ahead,” they said. “You won't make it beyond the village borders, the weather is so terrible. We'll be waiting here. You won't go far.”
“I will!” Krilla declared, and catching up her coat and mittens, went out the door while her sisters kept their mother distracted.
The weather was indeed terrible, but Krilla knew how to dance with the wind. So she slipped through the blasts of freezing air with determination and went on. The snow fell thickly, but she knew how to whirl through the strange and beautiful patterns of the snowfall. At the edge of the village, she paused, but did not look back. Instead she looked at the very highest peak of the Scarpane range, where legend said the Lord of Winter lived.
“I hope the legends are right,” she said to herself. “It will be a very long walk.”
The story of Krilla also ran very long, and Alyea had demanded the entire thing over and over, until she could recite it herself. She had wandered around muttering parts of it to herself; that had inevitably led to the s'iopes finding out that her nurse was telling “forbidden folk tales” and sending her away. It had taken years for Alyea to realize that “sent away” had been a polite euphemism:
beaten to death for spreading heresy
would have been more truthful.
Just one more death to lay at the feet of the Northern Church. Alyea kept going, throwing the words into the darkness, telling of the determined little girl walking up the mountain, trudging on without much rest or food, driven by the urgency of her quest. At last Krilla reached the top:
She was very tired, but the sight of the huge cave opening drew her on, heart pounding with hope. Approaching the mouth of the cavern, she called out, “Is this the home of the Lord of Winter?”
The echoes of her voice came back to her, and she began to lose hope. Then something moved in the darkness of the cave.
“This is
my
home,” said a deep, gravelly voice. “The home of the Lord of Winter is on the next mountain over.”
Krilla's legs gave out from under her, and she sat down and wept, the tears freezing on her face. “I'm so tired,” she cried, “and I cannot walk that far, and have nowhere to rest. May I please rest here for a while?”
“Hm!” said the voice, and “hm!” again. “Yes, come in and rest. I will give you shelter from the wind and snow.”
Krilla was too tired to be wary. “Thank you very much,” she said, and went into the cave.
“Why do you seek the Lord of Winter?” inquired the voice. “Move to your right a little more, there is a soft place for you to sleep on there.”
Krilla followed the directions, and found a pile of soft cloth to stretch out on. “I am going to ask him to turn aside the winter storms from our village,” she replied.
“Hm!” said the voice. “Why?”
“My family is too poor to arrange good husbands for my sisters. If the storms turned aside, we could earn enough to give them a proper dowry.”
“How do you feel about the weather?” asked the voice.
“I love it,” Krilla said. “I love to dance with the wind and play with the snowflakes.”
“But if the Lord of Winter agrees to turn the storms away from your village, you would not have those things any longer.”
“I know,” Krilla said sadly. “But my family is more important.”
“Hm,” said the voice. “Sleep, human child. You are safe here tonight.”
Alyea drew a breath, paused for a moment to rest her throat, then told of Krilla waking to discover that her host was an enormous white dragon, and that she had slept curled up on one of its huge forelegs. Realizing that the dragon must be the Lord of Winter, the child fell to her knees and presented her request for the storms to be turned aside:
“What would you give for this request?” the Lord of Winter demanded, his eyes suddenly stern and cold. “What price would you pay?”
“Anything,” Krilla said humbly. “I would pay any price for this boon.”
“Asking me to turn aside storms is not a light request,” the dragon warned. “It will carry a heavy price.”
Krilla swallowed back her fear and nodded. “I will pay it.”
The dragon considered her for a moment, then said, “I will tell you the price first, and let you decide whether you still wish to pay it. You will stay with me for the winter—this one, and every one that you wish to see the village spared from the storms. You will share my bed and do anything I ask of you while you are with me. Are you still willing to pay the price?”
Krilla choked back a sob. “I am.”
A tear rolled down her face and struck the layer of snow on the floor, freezing instantly into a perfect tear-shaped drop of ice.
The Lord of Winter reached out and gently picked up the tiny drop. “You are braver than many warriors. Very well. I will turn the winter storms aside from the village of Alonir.”
Then he transformed himself, and became as a reptilian human, and took her to his bed. Two drops of her first blood fell to the icy floor, and froze as had the tear; and the Lord of Winter put all three aside in a small box.
Alyea paused for a moment and opened her eyes. It seemed that the darkness had eased a bit; she thought she could see the faintest outlines of a massive form before her. She shut her eyes again and went on, telling of Krilla's return to her family in the spring, of their disbelief and mocking. At last, stung by the unrelenting laughter, Krilla showed her family the gems that had formed from the frozen drops of her tears and blood, which the Lord of Winter had warned her to keep hidden:
Her family looked at the gems with wonder, and just as she thought they believed her at last, one sister asked where she had found such beautiful gems, and the second sister said she must have stolen them, and the third sister reached for the box, saying these would make a grand dowry. And Krilla's parents stepped between, and took the box away, and said they would decide how the gems would be used, and that Krilla had done well.
Krilla went to bed crying, and during the night her parents looked at the gems, and spoke together in low voices, and formed a plan. When Krilla awoke the next morning, her parents told her that the rubies would serve as dowries for two of her sisters, and the diamond as dowry for the eldest, and that Krilla herself would go with the eldest of her sisters and serve as a handmaiden in a rich man's house. When she protested that she must return to the Lord of Winter come the end of fall, her parents called her mad, and demon-ridden, and shut her in her room.
Three suitable young men were found, one for each of the elder sisters, and engagements announced as summer faded into fall. At last Krilla was taken from her room and readied for the journey down the mountain. She had been told so many times during the spring and summer and fall that she was ill, that she had imagined her meeting with the Lord of Winter, that she half-believed it herself.
But the day before they were to leave, she found by chance where the box was kept, and in secret she took one ruby back. And she remembered that the Lord of Winter had said that if she commanded it aloud, the rubies would break and that would summon his aid; and she thought, “If I am deluded, if I was ill, then nothing will happen.”
She took the ruby to the fireplace, set it on the stone hearth, and commanded, “Break, ruby!”
The ruby shattered, and the banked fire came alive again, and from the flames spoke the voice of the Lord of Winter.
“Little one,” he said, “little human, do you call for my aid?”
Krilla became frightened, and said nothing.
“Little one,” said the Lord of Winter, “little human, my Krilla, why do you call for me?”
Krilla still said nothing, and backed away from the hearth.
“Little Krilla,” said the voice of the Lord of Winter one more time, and Krilla thought the voice sounded angry now. “You have called, and I have answered, and now you are silent. One more time only I will ask; why have you called me?”
Krilla ran away, and hid under her covers for the rest of the night. In the morning the fire was just a banked fire again and there was no sign of the broken ruby; not the smallest shard remained. And Krilla became truly ill, and could not be moved. She developed a strange wasting fever that stripped the weight from her so that her bones showed against the skin.
And only the sister who could not marry because her dowry ruby had been destroyed stayed with Krilla. She was the same one who had said Krilla must have stolen the gems, and she was so bitter and angry over her loss that she did little to take care of her sister. The rest of the village tried. The priests of Alonir and of all the nearby villages prayed over Krilla, and the herb-wives and leechdoctors used their wisdom, but nothing helped.
At last in desperation they called for a healer from yet another village, a man of ill repute who was said to serve the old gods of the deep south. And this healer came, and he looked at Krilla, and asked her to tell him her story.
When she was done speaking, he said, “She speaks truth. She has seen the Lord of Winter, and made a pact with him, and shared his bed; those gems are her tears and her blood, and it is your taking them that has made her ill. These gems are a part of Krilla, and only she can safely handle them.”
The priests were angry, and they threw the healer from the house, and told him never to return. And Krilla continued to get worse. The priests decided the gems were evil, and Krilla possessed by a demon; and they sent a messenger hurrying to the village at the foot of the mountain, to return with the gems. Although Krilla's parents protested, they did not dare gainsay the priests, and returned to Alonir, angry at how Krilla had ruined their grand wedding plans. And when they returned, the priests seized the box and tried to smash the gems.
But the rubies would not break, and the diamond would not break, and the priests prayed and cast exorcisms and at last demanded that Krilla break the gems herself, to be free of the evil.
Krilla could not rise from her bed by that time, and had no strength to resist their demands. When she picked up the ruby and whispered, “Break,” it shattered into a million pieces instantly. And one of the shards stuck in her hand, and a drop of her blood fell to the floor; and to everyone's amazement the drop of blood hardened and became another ruby, larger than a man's fist. It was too hot to touch, and seemed filled with an inner flame.
“Little one,” said the voice of the Lord of Winter from within the ruby, “little human, do you call for my aid?”
Krilla tried to speak, but the priests moved too fast, and closed her mouth.
“Little human, my Krilla,” said the Lord of Winter, “why do you call me?”
But Krilla was held fast, and could not speak. And two of her tears fell on the floor, and to everyone's amazement they became great shining diamonds, larger and finer than the first.
“Little Krilla, my Krilla,” said the Lord of Winter one more time, and this time his voice sounded very sad. “You have called me, and I have answered, and you are silent. I ask you again: why have you called me?”
Krilla could speak at last, because the priests, distracted by the diamonds, had loosened their hold on her to reach for the shining gems; so she cried out, “Help me, my lord!”
The ruby grew and grew at those words, and became another form, a large form, one that nearly filled the free space in the room, and took the shape of a dragon.
“I am here,” said the Lord of Winter, and two great golden eyes opened in the ruby shape. “What help do you wish, my little human?”
Before Krilla could speak, her mother pushed forward and said, “She wishes to be free of you and your foul bargain, monster! Begone!”
The Lord of Winter looked only at Krilla, and he said, “Is that what you want, my Krilla?”
And Krilla looked at the Lord of Winter, and he at her.
“If I break our bargain,” said Krilla, “will you still hold the storms aside?”
“No,” said the Lord of Winter.
“If I keep our pact,” said Krilla, “how long will you hold the storms aside from my village?”
“Until the end of our pact,” said the Lord of Winter.
“And how long will our pact last?” said Krilla.
“Until you die,” said the Lord of Winter.
“And when will that be?” asked Krilla.
And the answer the Lord of Winter gave struck everyone silent with wonder, even the priests; and Krilla said, “I will keep the pact, my lord; and I will stay with you not only in the winter, but the spring and summer and fall as well.”
