A Cold Cry

Choice

"No evil!" Carras cried. "My lord, that cannot be! What of the words of my king, the king of Dirion? What of the reports he told me?"

"What king gives heed to a few frightened tales?" Culathan asked quietly.

"Yet it was not only travelers. What of the dreamers, and the ones who sense evil in their minds? Will you count their word as naught?"

"Even a dreamer can be shown such a thing as he only deems himself to be evil; and the sensers of evil, they can interpret their gifts according to their fear. Do you not know this? For though they thought this thing evil, yet it was not."

"Nay, my lord," Carras stammered, "how can you know this, unless you be such a man yourself?"

"I am not such a one. Nevertheless I am the presence that they feel. I was the evil."

"My lord Culathan!" cried Carras astounded, and could say no more.

"You believe that I am no mere man, and rightly. Indeed, I am a legaeësse. And I have many designs; yet they are for the good of Legea, not for ill. But men, they fear the legaeësser, and know not what has come to them, and they see him as a mar upon the earth." And a heavy breath escaped him, filled with tempered sadness. "Foolish ones! Yet I wish only their trust and goodwill. And if I must bare my heart, I hoped that when you came here you would not turn away from me, but would help me.

"It is yours to choose, Lord Carras. Let me not sway you in your decision. Only judge for yourself, what manner of man I have showed myself to you, and what I have been in word and deed. Am I a foul creature, and such as from which you shrink?

"It is yours to choose. Will you reject me, or will you aid me in my labours?"

Carras stared at him, a turmoil within his head. He is the evil, so he said.

But would a man truly evil not have kept that knowledge?

The gifted ones felt him.

Yet could they have been mistaken?

He is dangerous. You know this. And now you know more, that he is a legaeësse, and such beings bear peril not lightly cast aside.

Yet he has received me into his house; he has tended me in my weariness and fed me. He has dealt with me in kindness, and has not used his power against me. If he wished to kill me, he could have done it in the storm – easily. Instead he saved my life.

And the words thus tugged at him, like a breeze flicking up the snowdust, one way first, but more often the other.

_

And Culathan looked at him, and dark thoughts stirred within him like a winter's storm.

"If he refuses now, I have lost him forever. But he will not refuse. Though I feared him, yet he was delivered into my hand and now he shall do nothing against me."

And he smiled a strange smile, the only thing that betrayed him, the only break in the surface of his face to show the moonless night of his mind beneath.

_

Carras bent his head. "What would you have me to aid you in, my lord?"