Kaina¶
Lore of the Craft: costs and the Law of Balance
„The sea never asks what you wanted. It asks only what you took, and it keeps the tally in your own hands.“
[The saga’s invention] A Palanga fisherman’s saying, set down by the amber-keepers.
The Law of Balance¶
Kiek paimi, tiek atiduok: as much as you take, give back. Magic in the saga is a trade, not a superpower. It is rare, it costs something the reader can see on the page, and it never solves the political problem; it only buys time to face it (Magic rules, §4–5.1).
Three rules govern every bill:
The caster pays. For tau (another) and man (oneself) alike, though man is lighter.
Time and place scale the bill. At the zenith the cost is halved; off it, doubled (elements and zeniths). Consecrated stone doubles it again.
A cost cannot be refused, only deferred, and deferred costs compound: memory first, then health, then years of life, then madness, then death.
Eight worked examples¶
# |
What was asked |
Who paid |
How |
Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
A Stars vision (a black ship, Kęstutis at its helm) |
Birutė |
Blind for days; the hour was wrong, so the price was double |
|
2 |
A Wind fog over the Krėva courtyard |
Birutė, for Vytautas |
Her voice, entirely; half price at Vėlinės, yet it took „everything left of that sound“ |
|
3 |
Everything that was still owed |
Birutė, once and whole |
She walks into the sea at Palanga and becomes the amber kneeling woman |
|
4 |
Fire for a failing flame |
Vytautas, alone |
Soul-chill: ache, anger and the smith’s kneeling figure all become „pure and far away“; spring damp doubled it |
|
5 |
The Five-Voice at the Vorskla ford |
Vytautas, alone |
Elena’s face, permanently; sound and colour pulled away „as under water“ |
|
6 |
Poison drawn from two boys |
Nobody: the transfer was refused |
The witch names a child’s body as the forbidden road; Vytautas answers Ne; the boys die |
|
7 |
Earth, to stop a felling |
The žynys Kantaudas |
Petrification at double price; he becomes stone against his oak |
|
8 |
A thunder oath to Perkūnas |
Kęstutis |
He can never again give a promise lightly: a false one closes his throat |
The Water-healing rule¶
Vandens taisyklė paprasta: whoever heals takes the wound into herself. In Book II ch. 9 the old Lagoon witch could draw the poison from the hostage sons „through the hair and the blood, across the whole distance“, but her body is too old to carry two children’s poison. She names the forbidden transfer: a small, unlearned body to take it in her place, the child of the poisoner. „Debt poured into another body that did not choose it finds its owner, sooner or later.“ The rule is stated there, never exercised, and Vytautas’s refusal is itself a price paid in sons.
Surety: who pays when someone is bound¶
In the Sutartis of Book I ch. 3 Birutė speaks Jo skola — mano skola. From 1382 to 1384 she pays part of every bill Vytautas incurs: she hears a fog that costs her voice (Book I ch. 14), and he feels the burning amber at his chest „as if the pain were not his“. At Palanga in Book I ch. 27 she pays the whole remainder and the surety ends. In Book II ch. 27 he thinks of the earlier price in the bog, when „his mother paid part“, and knows that this time no one will pay for him. See Oaths and pacts.
Unpaid debts¶
A deferred cost does not vanish. Three examples:
Žemyna’s price for the burned village (Book I ch. 20) arrives as a red blister under his pouch, „the first part of the debt“, and the amber dies again once she has taken what was hers.
Eglė’s price, never to give the living forest to the axe, is held as a pledge, not paid. Vytautas breaks it again in Book II ch. 19 by making peace on the Order’s terms, and the Root-Mother’s reckoning follows at Salynas (1398).
The Flame promise. If the Last Flame dies while Vytautas lives, the Pact’s penalties fall on him: madness, then death.
Who always pays¶
Every working in the books shows a bill, even when the page does not show the payer. The one exception is the Shadow-Seller, whose bargains are bound only by their letter (What magic cannot do).
Left open: the Water transfer is „forbidden and costly“, but what the cost is is never fixed beyond „the debt finds its owner“. This page does not specify it.