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"I don’t care any longer if I die or live," Santi said. "They have taken from me the tribe – they have destroyed all I have, all I’ve ever known. What is left for me to lose that I should be afraid?"

"You know the whole of the legend – that if anyone can look upon me and not be afraid, I give them what they truly desire?"

Santi had not known. "Kirtee hadn’t told us that," she said.

"It is true, though." The thing reared higher, solidifying as the cold grew more intense. "What is it you wish of me?" it asked at last. "Is it death?"

Santi did not know what she would say till her lips parted. "I want revenge," she said.

The thing hissed, and frost glittered in the air before its face. "Revenge comes costly," it replied. "Revenge will shred you as surely as it will destroy your enemies. Revenge comes with a steep price to pay."

Santi shrugged. "I don’t care. Once I have my revenge, you can do to me as you wish. Kill me. I just don’t care."

"Oh, girl, death is easy. The price to be paid is much, much more than death. And once you take the first step, there is no turning back. Are you still ready?"

Santi hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. Past the thing towering over her, she could see the pass, and the broken, stripped corpses lying amidst the flames. She thought of Kirtee, who would never again tell stories to frighten the tribe. She thought of Aanjn, who would never hold her to her breast when she was ill, would never sing her to sleep again. She even thought of the witchman, whose magic had been powerless against a gang of mountain bandits.

"I’ll pay what it takes," she said.

There was another hiss and glitter of frost. "Go then," the thing said. "Go down and take your revenge."

Santi stared. "But...how?"

"You’ll know," the thing said. Its laugh was the noise of cracking icicles. It reached out with one of its claws and touched Santi’s head. Its touch sent a jolt down to her feet. "When the time comes, you’ll know."

Aachi bleated with terror, and tugged so frantically that she almost got away. The thing turned its gaze to the animal. "What do you intend to do with your beast?"

Santi turned to glance at Aachi, but for whose falling into the crevice, she would have been among the dead in the pass. The calf was wild with fear. "I don’t know what to do about her," she said miserably. "I can’t just let her go. She’d never manage without me."

There was a long silence. "Very well," the thing said at last. "She will share your fate, if that is what you want."

"I don’t know what I want for her," Santi confessed miserably."But I can’t let her starve to death or freeze on the mountain."

"It is your choice," the thing said.

"Can you tell me one thing more?" Santi asked. "That thing that’s going to happen to me that’s worse than death. What..."

Something seemed to pass her, like a cold wind which swept her from her head down so sudden that she squeezed her eyes shut. Aachi suddenly stopped struggling. When she could look again, the thing had gone.

Wrapping her cloak around her, and holding on to Aachi’s fur, Santi trudged down towards the pass.

The first faint light of dawn was just beginning to appear in the sky.

It took her three days to catch up with the bandits.

The first day, she had spent in the pass, doing what she could to bury the bodies. It was little enough, because the bandits had taken all the tools except for a few broken weapons, and because the stone-hard slopes were too much for her strength. In the end she had dragged them one by one into a cleft in the rock, pushed them in, and rolled stones over them. It was all she could do.

By then, by one of those quirks of the weather, the cold had slackened a little, so the pass wasn’t yet blocked. That night the wind picked up again, icy gusts blowing through the pass, and she and the calf had huddled together for shelter behind a tumbled boulder. But though she couldn’t sleep at all, she didn’t feel as cold as she’d done when they had been plodding down from the plateau or when she had gone looking for Aachi. Nor did she feel any hunger or thirst, but after the kind of work she’d done all day that wasn’t surprising.

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