He made me ask the question, enjoying it. "Where?"

"Do you remember the broken plaza, like an ancient market circle? The one where the forest was trying to encroach? I stood on top of a stone pillar there, and for a moment, in a dream, I wore the Rooster Crown. You saw me. You remember it."

I nodded slowly. "It was on our road to the Stone Garden. Where the stone dragons slept, before we roused them and sent them to fight the Red Ships. Where they sleep again now, Verity-as-Dragon amongst them."

"Exactly. Again, I went down that forest path, and I saw him there. But he was not the one I sought. I found Girl-on-a-Dragon there, sleeping, her arms clasping the neck of her dragon, just as you had told me. And I woke her and made her understand that I must come here, and once again I mounted behind her and she flew here with me. And left me. So, you see, old friend, I did not lie to you. I flew here."

I sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. A hundred questions swelled in me but I asked the most important one. "How did you wake her? It takes the Wit, the Skill, and blood to wake a stone dragon. Well do I know that!"

"It did. And it does. The Skill I had on my fingertips, and blood was easy enough to come by." He rubbed his wrist, possibly remembering an old cut. "I did not and do not have the Wit. But you may remember that, foolishly, I had already put some of myself into Girl-on-a-Dragon, when I was attempting to complete the carving of her and wake her."

"As did I," I recalled guiltily.

"Yes. I know," he said softly. "It is still in her. You put in the memories you could not stand to recall and the emotions you would not let yourself feel. You gave her your mother abandoning you, and never knowing your father. You gave her Regal"s torment of you in his dungeons. You gave her, most of all, the pain of losing Molly and your child, to Burrich, of all people. You put into her your fury and your hurt and your sense of being betrayed." He gave a little sigh. "It is all in her still. The things you could not allow yourself to feel."

"I left all that behind me long ago," I said slowly.

"You cut out a part of yourself and went on, less than you had been."

"I do not see it that way." My reply was stiff.

"You cannot see it that way," he informed me calmly. "Because you cannot truly remember how awful any of it was. Because you put all of it into Girl-on-a-Dragon."

"Can we leave this?" I asked, almost frightened, almost angry, but confused over what would scare or anger me.

"We must. Because you already left it, long years ago. And only I will ever know the full depth of what you felt about those things. Only I fully remember who and what you were before you did it. For we are bound together, not only by Skill and fate, but also because both of us live on, inside Girl-on-a-Dragon. Because I knew what went into her, I could reach her and rouse her. I could convey to her my desperate purpose. And so she brought me to Aslevjal.

"It was a strange journey, wild and wonderful. You know I have ridden with her before. I was with her when she and the other dragons attacked not just the Red Ships that a.s.sailed the Six Duchies, but the White Ships that were the cruel tools of the Pale Woman. It was strange for me to be caught up in true battle. I did not like it."

"No one does," I a.s.sured him. I put my brow back down on my knees and closed my eyes.

"I suppose not. But this time, flying with her, it was different. There was no killing to witness, no other dragons flying beside us. Instead, it was just she and I. I sat behind her and put my arms around her slender waist. She is a part of the dragon, you know, not a separate creature at all. Rather like a girl-shaped limb more than anything else. So she did not speak to me, yet, strangely enough, she did smile and from time to time, she would turn to look into my face or gesture to something on the world below us that she wished me to see.

"She flew tirelessly. From the time I climbed up behind her and the powerful beat of her dragon"s wings lifted us through the canopy of tree limbs until the moment that we landed on the black sand beaches of Aslevjal, she took no rest. Nor did I. At first, we flew through blue summer skies of the lands beyond Mountain Kingdom. Then higher we flew, until my heart pounded and I was giddy, over the snowy peaks and trodden pa.s.ses of the Mountains, and then back into summer. We flew over the villages of the Mountain Kingdom. They nestle into the crooks and flanks of the mountains, and their flocks are scattered over the steep pastures like white apple blossoms litter the orchard meadow after a spring windstorm."

I saw it, in my mind, and smiled faintly when he spoke of flying over a Six Duchies hamlet early in the morning, and the one lad who looked up and saw them and ran whooping into his cottage. And on he spoke, of rivers like silver seams in the land and planted fields like patchwork when seen from above, and of the ocean, wrinkling like paper tipped with silver. In my mind, I flew with him.

I must have fallen asleep, lulled by his strange story. When I awoke, night was deep all around us. The camp outside our tent was still, and his pot fire held only a single flickering flame on a wick in the oil. I was huddled beneath one of his blankets, fallen over sideways on his bed. He slept, curled like a kitten, his brow nearly touching mine, on the other end of his pallet. His breathing was deep and even, and one long hand was palm up on the blankets between us, as if in offering, or beseeching something of me. Sleepily I reached over and set my hand in his. He did not seem to wake. Strangely, I felt at peace. I closed my eyes and sank down into a deep and dreamless slumber.

chapter 19.

BELOW THE ICE.

The Outislanders have always been raiders. In the years before the Red Ship War, there were raiding incidents, as it seemed there had always been. Individual ships led by the kaempra of a clan would make a quick strike, carrying off stock, harvested crops, and occasionally captives. Bearns took the brunt of these clashes, and seemed to relish them much as Shoaks enjoyed its border disputes with Chalced. The Duke of Bearns seemed content that they were his concern, and made little complaint of dealing with them.But with the appearance of the red-hulled ships of Kebal Rawbread, the rules of engagement changed. Suddenly, the ships appeared in groups, and seemed more intent on rape and ruin than on a quick acquisition of goods. They burned or spoiled what they could not carry off, slaughtering herds and flocks, torching grain in the field and storehouses. They killed even those who did not resist them. A new malice had appeared in these raids, one that delighted not just in theft, but also in destruction and devastation.At that time, we did not even know of the Pale Woman and her influence over Rawbread.- SCRIBE FEDWREN, SCRIBE FEDWREN, " "A HISTORY OF THE RED SHIP WAR"

In the morning, when we reached the edge of our pit, both Riddle and I groaned. Then we went to work, lifting and flinging the snow that had blown in to half-fill our excavation of the day before. This snow was lighter and unpacked, but for all that, it was frustrating work. It was like shoveling feathers, and half of what we lifted floated free to drift back to the bottom of the hole. It was nearly noon before we had cleared it all down to where we had left off the evening before. Then out came the picks, and we began to break ice and sc.r.a.pe it up and shovel it out again.

I ached at first, and then I didn"t, and then I began to hurt in new places. That night, I dropped into an exhausted sleep, deeper than dreams or regret. The wind blew again. Every night, the wind blew. Every morning, we began our task by clearing the previous night"s drifted snow. Yet slowly, relentlessly, we toiled and the pit deepened. When we could no longer throw the ice out of the pit, we dug a ramp at one end. After that, we shoveled the ice onto one of the sleds and two men would drag it up out of the pit and away to dump it. The task was beyond tedious. And we found no sign of a dragon in the bottom. Worse, my Wit-sense of him grew fainter, not stronger.

The workforce grew after the first day. Our first addition was Prince Dutiful rolling back his sleeves and taking up a pickaxe. Chade limited his partic.i.p.ation to supervising. He reminded me of Civil"s cat, who perched at the edge of the pit and watched us with supreme disinterest.

When the Narcheska entered the pit, Dutiful stopped his work to warn her that the flying ice from his pick might injure her. She gave him an odd little smile, between sad and flirtatious, and cautioned him to be wary of the flying ice that her own pick might free. And then she set to work beside him, swinging her pick with a country girl"s competence. "She used to help dig the rocks out, when we were preparing the new fields in spring," Peottre observed. I turned to find him watching her with a mixture of pride and chagrin. "Here, give me your shovel for a time, while you rest yourself."

I saw his aim and surrendered my tool to him. After that, both Narcheska and Peottre worked alongside us, with Peottre taking care that he was never far away from his ward. The Narcheska seemed to take care that she was never far from the Prince. It was the first sign of warmth Elliania had shown toward Dutiful in days and the Prince seemed to take heart from it. They conversed, in quiet, breathless bursts, between pick strokes, and took their rest periods together. Peottre watched over them, sometimes disapproving and sometimes wistful. I think he had come to like our prince despite himself.

The Witted coterie decided that it supported the idea of freeing the dragon, and hence had no qualms about helping with the digging. When the Fool applied his wiry strength to both digging and moving ice, the Hetgurd representatives cautiously came to watch. By the third day, they were helping to drag sledloads of snow and ice from the pit to dump it. I suspect that curiosity to see the ice-encased dragon was as much their motivation as any other.

On the fifth day, Chade sent Riddle and young Hest back to the stored supplies on the beach. Peottre was uncertain about sending them off, and cautioned them many times to follow the flags we had posted along our route and not to wander from it. He looked grave and apprehensive as they set out. They took a sled, for they were to bring back food, and the spare shovels and picks we had brought, now that he had a larger workforce. Chade also told them to bring back all the canvas, in the hopes of rigging a windbreak or cover for the excavation that might block the blowing snow that thwarted our efforts each night. I suspected they would also retrieve the rest of the little kegs of explosive powder. I wanted nothing to do with that when I thought of it in the evenings, but by day, when I was battling the ancient hard ice, I sometimes longed to discover what it might do.

We dug on. If I paused to rest and looked at the sides of our pit, I could see the layers in the ice that marked the pa.s.sing winters. Every year, more snow had been deposited here, and every following year, yet another layer had blanketed it. It occurred to me that we were digging down through time, and sometimes as I looked at the layers, I wondered when the ice I stood on had fallen as snow. How long had Icefyre been down here, and how had he come to be here? Deeper we dug, and deeper, and still saw not one scale of a dragon. From time to time, Chade and Dutiful would consult with the Witted coterie. Each time, they a.s.sured the Prince and his adviser that they still, from time to time, felt the stirring of the dragon"s being. I agreed with them. Yet those consultations also made me aware that my own Wit-power was substantially stronger than Dutiful"s. I was not as perceptive as Web, but I thought I was at least on a footing with Swift. c.o.c.kle was probably a bit stronger than Dutiful, and Civil stronger than the minstrel, but not as sharp as I was. It was odd, to be able to perceive that the Wit might be a strong or weak talent in a man. I had always thought of it as a sense that people either had or didn"t. Now I perceived that it was like an apt.i.tude for music or gardening. The strength of it varied widely, just as Skill-ability did.

Perhaps it was Thick"s prodigious Skill-strength that kept him latched so firmly to the dragon. The little man seemed to have become a complete idiot, staring vacantly before him and humming. Occasionally, he would pause and make small motions with his hands. Neither the tune he hummed nor his hand motions conveyed anything to me. Once, when I was taking my rest after a digging shift, I sat down next to him. Hesitantly, I set my hand to his shoulder, and tried to find my Skill-ability. I had hoped the fierce Skill-fire that always burned in him would reignite my own talent. But nothing happened except that after a short time Thick shrugged my hand away much as a horse might shudder a fly from his coat. Even his interest in food had waned, which concerned me most of all. Not only Galen, my first Skill instructor, but Verity had warned me of the danger in becoming too absorbed in the Skill. It was always the first hurdle that new initiates had to leap, and for many it had been a deadly one. The Skill-instruction scrolls recounted many sad tales of promising students who were swept away in the Skill-current, losing all touch with our world as they enjoyed the unique contact that the magic provided. Eventually, such people were so enraptured that they lost interest in food and drink, in talking with their fellows, and eventually stopped caring for themselves at all. One warned that such a Skill-user would become "a great drooling babe" and Thick seemed poised on the brink of such a decline. I had always supposed the danger was the fascination with the Skill itself, for I had often felt that pull myself. But if Chade and Dutiful were correct, then Thick was being seduced not by the Skill but by the attraction of another, more powerful mind. I made several fruitless attempts to engage him in conversation, which drew minimal responses from him until finally, in annoyance, he told me to "Go away! Bothering a busy person is not polite!" And then he went back to his staring and rocking.

My Skill remained dead in me.

It was all the more frustrating in that Dutiful had made contact with Nettle. Twice he had touched minds with her, trying to persuade her of who he was and what he needed. The first time, she slammed her walls against him, saying she was in no mood for silly stories and why would a prince be trying to contact her in a dream? The second time, she was more receptive, for I think he had piqued her curiosity. She even tried, with little success, to distract Thick from his preoccupation, though I think she did so more out of concern for him than to please the Prince. Dutiful accompanied her on that mission, but could make little sense of the dream imagery she used. He could explain only that Thick seemed to have gone to a place where his little song was an essential part of a far grander piece of music, and he could not be lured away from it. It was a frustrating a.n.a.logy. As for conveying the Prince"s messages to the Queen, Nettle said she would make mention of her "odd dreams" to Kettricken, if chance afforded her a private moment with Her Majesty, but that she would not risk making a fool of herself before the ladies of the court. She had done that several times already, with her lack of court manners, and had no wish to give them any more amus.e.m.e.nt than she already had.

That gave me a pang. If I had consented, from the beginning, to letting her know her history and to her visiting the court, she would have grown up in the company of ladies and gentlemen and would not have been shamed by her country ways. I wondered if Kettricken now groomed her, in both studies and manners, so that she might take up a role as secondary heir to the throne. I longed to be able to talk to Nettle, to find out how much they had told her of her heritage, and to give her my explanations for why she had been raised as she had. But my lack of the Skill silenced me, and I could only nightly beg of the Prince that he be circ.u.mspect in what he told her.

Daily we continued to dig. The work was backbreaking and the food both limited and boring. Nights were cold and windy, and we looked forward to the men returning with canvas. But they did not. Chade gave them an extra day, and then two. The Hetgurd men claimed to have glimpsed the Black Man circling our camp at night, but their offerings were never taken, and the flowing snow erased any tracks he might have left. In one of our nightly talks, the Fool said that several times he thought he had felt the Black Man"s presence and suspected that we were observed. I too had experienced that uneasy sensation of being watched, but could never see anyone spying on us. I suspected that Web did, too, for twice he summoned Risk from her sh.o.r.e-side scavenging and asked her to fly over our camp. He told me that she saw nothing out of the ordinary, just snow, ice, and a few protruding rocks.

In the brief times when we were not digging, eating, or sleeping, Web would find moments in which to work on my Wit with me. He said, without cruelty, that it was actually good that I was currently unpartnered, as it gave me more focus on the magic without making it specific to one creature. He added that Swift too seemed to be benefiting from studying while unenc.u.mbered, from which I gathered that the lad"s lessons continued as well as mine. When he was with me, Web focused on making me see how the Wit connected all living things, not just those of Old Blood, but all. He showed me how he could extend his Wit and wrap it around Thick, to become more perceptive of his needs and feelings, even though Thick remained unaware of him. It was not an easy discipline to master, for it involved surrendering my own needs and interests to subservience to his. "Watch a mother with an infant, any kind of a mother, human or beast. There you will see this done on the simplest and most instinctive level. If one is willing to work at it, one can extend that same sort of perception to others. It is a worthwhile thing to do, for it conveys a level of understanding of one another that makes hate almost impossible. Seldom can one hate a person if one understands that person."

I doubted that I would ever achieve that level of understanding, but I tried. One evening, as I was eating with Dutiful and Chade in their tent, I tried extending my Wit to include Chade. I let go of my own hunger and aching back and anxiety about my lost Skill and focused myself on the old man. I saw him as clearly as if he were prey. I studied how he sat, his back straight, as if he were too stiff to even slump, and how he kept his gloves on while he spooned up the pallid mush that was our evening repast. His face was a study in contrasts, red nose and cheeks, while his forehead was pale with the cold. Then, as if I suddenly saw his shadow for the first time, I glimpsed an aloneness that trailed back behind him to his earliest years. I suddenly felt his years and the strangeness of a fate that had sent him, in his old age, to camp on a glacier alongside the boy he would make king.

"What?" he demanded suddenly of me, and I started, realizing that I"d been staring at him.

I scrabbled for an answer and then replied, "I was just thinking of all the years and times when I"ve sat across from you, and wondered if I"d ever truly seen you at all."

His eyes widened, almost as if he feared such a thought. Then he scowled and said, "And I"d hoped you had something useful in your mind. Well, this is what I"ve been pondering. Riddle and Hest haven"t returned with the supplies. They should have been back by now. Today, I asked Web if his bird could seek for them. He said it was difficult to convey to her that we wanted news of two specific men, rather as if I asked you if you had seen two specific gulls. He asked her to look for two men with a sled; he said she did not see them." Chade shook his head. "I fear the worst. We need to send someone back, not just to look for Riddle and Hest, but also to bring back the supplies we needed. Longwick told me tonight we have food for four more days, five if he cuts the rations again." He rubbed his gloved hands together wearily. "I never thought it would take this long to dig out the dragon. All the reports we had seemed to say he was near the surface, even visible years ago. Yet we dig and dig and find nothing."

"He"s there," the Prince a.s.sured him. "And every day we get closer."

Chade snorted. "And if I took one step southward every day, I"d be getting closer to Buckkeep, but no one could tell me how long it would take me to get there." With a groan he got up. Sitting on the cold earth, even with several layers of bedding beneath him, was obviously uncomfortable. He moved slowly around the cramped tent, cautiously stretching his legs and back. "Tomorrow, I"m sending Fitz to see what became of Riddle and Hest. And I want you to take Thick and the Fool with you."

"Thick and the Fool? Why?"

It was obvious to him. "Who else can I spare from the digging? Removing Thick from the dragon"s vicinity may restore him. If it does, then leave him with Churry and Drub on the beach with our supplies. Have him Skill to us from there whatever news he has."

"But why the Fool?"

"Because it takes two men to pull the sled when it"s loaded, and I don"t think Thick will be of much use to you at that. I suspect you"ll have to put Thick on the sled to get him to move from here. And you are one of the few people who can manage Thick at all, so you have to be one of the ones who goes. Fitz, I know it"s not an a.s.signment you would choose, but who else can I send?"

I c.o.c.ked my head at him. "Then you aren"t just trying to send the Fool and me away from the digging area before the dragon is uncovered?"

He sighed. "If I sent you and not the Fool, you would ask if I were trying to separate you. If I sent the Fool and not you, I"m sure you"d say the same. I suppose I could ask Web to take Thick and another man for this errand, but he does not understand Thick"s Skill-ability. And if something has befallen Riddle and Hest, well, I think you more capable of dealing with a threat than . . ." He suddenly threw up his hands and said in defeat, "Do what you will, Fitz. You will anyway, and the Fool will only go if you ask him. I"ve no power to send him anywhere. So you decide."

I felt a bit sheepish. Perhaps I had been looking for motivations that truly didn"t exist. "I"ll go. And I"ll ask the Fool to go with me. To be honest, I"ll welcome the change from digging. Make a list of what you want brought back." Privately, I resolved that I"d scavenge any driftwood I could find on the beach and bring it back with me, regardless of how much weight it added to the load. Chade could do with a good roaring blaze, I decided, even if it only lasted one night.

"Be ready at first light, then," Chade advised me.

The Fool was not as pleased to leave the digging as I was. "But what if they reach the dragon while we are gone? What if I am not here to defend him?"

"The Hetgurd guardians and the Witted coterie oppose killing him as much as you do. Don"t you think they"ll be enough?"

We were bedded down together, sleeping back to back for the body warmth just as we had in the Mountains so many years ago. Truth to tell, I gained little from it, for the Fool"s body had always felt cool to the touch. It was rather like sleeping alongside a lizard, I thought. Yet if he did not give off much warmth, the solid feel of his back against mine was a rea.s.surance of camaraderie that I had not felt since Nighteyes had died. There is security in knowing that a friend has your back, even if he is sound asleep.

"I don"t know. I"m too close to where all my visions stopped." He paused, as if he expected me to ask a question, but that was a topic I did not wish to explore. Then, "Do you think we ought to go?" he asked cautiously.

I shifted in the bed, groaning as my aching muscles complained. "I don"t think I thought much about it. Chade has been telling me what to do for so long that I simply accepted I should go. But I would like to know what has happened to Riddle and Hest. And I"d like to see if Thick recovers himself when he"s moved away from the dragon"s influence. And-" I shifted and groaned again. "I wouldn"t mind a few days of doing anything other than shoveling."

He was quiet. I was too, pondering his silence. I wondered what was making him take so long to make up his mind. Then I laughed aloud. "Ah, yes. I nearly forgot. I am the Catalyst, the one who makes changes. And this would be a change in what you think you should do. So, you cannot decide whether to oppose it or not."

The silence stretched so long I thought he had fallen asleep. The day had been the warmest we had had so far, making sodden work of our task. I listened to the wind, and hoped the night"s cold would crust the surface of the glacier and keep the wind from blowing snow into our excavation. I had almost dropped off to sleep myself when he said, "You frighten me, sometimes, when you give voice to my thoughts. We will go, tomorrow. We"ll take this tent for shelter, shall we?"

"That sounds fine to me," I said as I drowsed off.

And so the next morning we set off. Longwick issued us three days of supplies, which, he told us, should be ample for us to reach the beach. We struck the Fool"s elegant tent and packed it on the sled while Longwick gave us last-minute directives. If we reached the beach without encountering the others, we should warn the guard there of our sightings of the Black Man. If we encountered evidence that the others had met with foul play, we should return to the camp immediately and report. If we met the others coming back, we should simply turn around and come back with them. Web"s bird would check on us, from time to time. I nodded as I arranged the Fool"s tent and bedding for three onto the sled. As predicted, we had to load Thick onto the sled. He could not be persuaded to walk. It was not that he resisted; he simply didn"t cooperate. He would take a few steps, and then become lost once more in his musings. Dutiful and Chade both came to bid us farewell. Dutiful snugged Thick"s cap down around his ears. I know that he tried desperately to stir Thick with the Skill. I could not feel it, but I saw the intensity in Dutiful"s face. Thick turned his head slowly to look at the Prince. "I"m fine," he said sluggishly. And then he stared off in the distance again.

"Take care of him, Tom," the Prince told me gruffly.

"I will, my lord. We"ll try to make a quick trip of it." And so saying, with Thick sitting on the great sled bundled up like a coc.o.o.n, I took up the lines and began to pull.

The heavily waxed runners moved easily over the snow. Almost too easily, for we were now going downhill rather than up. I had to stop and set the drag to keep the sled from running over the top of me. The Fool went ahead of us, his pack riding high on his shoulders, prodding the snow to make sure our path was sound, even though we were following the line of stakes that Peottre had set up to mark our path for us.

The day was warm, and snow collected, heavy, on my boots. When our path leveled for a time, the runners of the sled began to stick. The sled was cutting a deeper path upon our old one, and as the runners sank into the snow, heavy damp snow began to ride on the tops of the runners. But the day was pleasant and pulling Thick on the sled was still less strenuous than shoveling ice out of a pit. The gaudy sword the Fool had given me tapped against my leg as I strode along, for Longwick had insisted that I, at least, should go armed. We were traversing the trail much more swiftly than we had before, for the path was clearly marked with Peottre"s stakes, and there was at least a slight downhill slope for all of it. Thick"s humming, the squeak of the runners, and the crunch of our footsteps on the softened crust of the glacier were not the only sounds. The warmth had wakened the glacier. We heard one distant fall of ice, a thunder that went on for some time. It was followed by lesser creakings and crashes, but always at a distance.

The Fool began to whistle, and I was much cheered when I saw Thick sit up and take notice of the music. He still hummed breathlessly to himself, but I began to make comments on the scenery, uniformly white as it was, and occasionally elicited a response from him. That cheered me unreasonably, but also left me pondering. The Skill was not a magic bounded by distance, and yet Thick seemed to be recovering more of his own awareness of the world the farther we got from the buried dragon. I had no answer to why that might be so, and wished I could discuss it with Dutiful and Chade.

Several times I attempted in vain to reach out with the Skill. A legless man trying to jump would have had more success. The magic was simply gone. If I dwelt on that, I felt a cold pit in the bottom of my belly. I pushed the thought aside. There was nothing I could do about it now.

The daily cycle of warmth and chill combined with the nightly wind had smoothed all the edges of our previous pa.s.sage"s trail. I made a few vain attempts to read it, trying to discern if Riddle and Hest and their sled had pa.s.sed this way, with no success. We had a wide view of the snowy lands below us. Nothing moved on them, certainly nothing so large as a sled and two men. It was possible that they had lingered at the beach, I told myself, or that some mishap had delayed their return. I tried not to stack their disappearance with the theft of my Skill and the sightings of the Black Man. I had too few facts to make them add up to anything. Instead, I tried to enjoy the freshness of the day. At one point, I heard the high cry of a seabird, and looked up to see a gull describe a wide circle over us. I lifted a hand and waved a greeting at Risk, wondering if that acknowledgment would be relayed to Web.

We pa.s.sed our previous campsite while we still had plenty of daylight and energy to continue, so we did. That night, we pitched the tent on the trail behind the sled. Thick still periodically hummed to himself, but also expressed both an interest in and then dismay at the simple dinner I prepared. The little tent was a bit more crowded with the three of us, but also warmed more quickly. The Fool told simple children"s stories that night until we were all more than ready for sleep. With every pa.s.sing tale, Thick hummed less and asked more questions. At one time the constant interruptions to the story would have annoyed me. Now they filled me with relief.

"Would you tell Chade and Dutiful good night for me?" I asked Thick as he settled into his blankets.

"Do it yourself," he suggested grumpily.

"I can"t. I ate some bad food, and now I can"t find them in my mind."

He sat up on one elbow and stared at me. "Oh. Yes. Now I remember. You"re gone. That"s too bad." He was silent for a time, then said, "They say good night, and thanks for letting them know. And maybe I should stay at the beach, but they"ll decide later." He drew a deep, satisfied breath and dropped back into his blankets.

It was my turn to sit up. "Thick. You aren"t coughing anymore. Or wheezing."

"No." He rolled over, managing to kick me in the process. I nearly complained but then he said, "He told me, "Mend yourself. Don"t be dumb, mend yourself, don"t be annoying." So I did."

"Who told you that?" I asked, even as I was stricken with guilt. Why hadn"t Chade and Dutiful and I thought of trying to heal Thick? It now seemed obvious. I was ashamed we hadn"t done it.

"Huh," Thick sighed out consideringly. "His name is a story, too long to tell. I"m sleepy. Stop talking to me."

And that was that. He went off into a deep sleep. I wondered if Icefyre had another name, a dragon name.

I woke once in the night, thinking I heard cautious footsteps outside our tent. I crept to the door flap, and then reluctantly stepped outside into the clear cold. I saw nothing and no one, even when I had made a full circuit of the tent.

When morning came, I made a wider circuit of the camp while the Fool tried to heat water for tea for us. I brought my news back to them. "Someone came to see us last night," I said, trying to keep my voice light. "He walked all around our camp in a big circle. Then he lay down in the snow over there for a while. Then he went away, that way, the same way he came. Do you think I should go see where he went?"

"Why?" Thick asked, even as the Fool said thoughtfully, "I think Lord Chade and Prince Dutiful might want to know about that."

"I think they would, too." I looked at Thick. He sighed wearily, and then turned his gaze inward.

A few moments later, he said, "They said, "Go to the beach." Dutiful says he thinks he left maple candy in a bag there. They say we should hurry there, and come back with the stuff, and tell the guards there to come back with us. "Don"t go looking for where the footprints go right now.""

"Then that is what we"ll do." How I wished to be able to hear Chade"s thoughts on this for myself.

We packed up the tent and loaded it on the sled. Thick matter-of-factly climbed onto it. I thought it over and decided it was the simplest solution to traveling with him. Dragging him was easier than matching his slow pace. As before, the Fool went on before us, testing the trail while I pulled. The day was fine, a warm wind blowing across the snowy face of the world. I expected that we might reach the beach by the next afternoon if we held our present progress. Thick suddenly spoke.

"Nettle said she missed you. She asked if you hated her."

"I hated- When? When did she say that?"

"At night." Thick waved his hand vaguely. "She said you just went away and never came back at all."

"But that"s because I ate the bad food. And I couldn"t reach her."

"Ya." Thick dismissed this casually. "I told her you can"t talk to her anymore. She was glad to hear it."

"She was glad?"

"She thought you were dead. Or something. She has a friend now, a new girl. Will we stop and eat soon?"

"Not until tonight. We don"t have much food, so we have to be careful. Thick, did she-"

My words were interrupted by a whoop of dismay from the Fool. His sounding post had suddenly plunged deep in the snow. He picked it up, took two steps to the left and shoved it in again. Again it sank deep.

"Sit still," I told Thick. I took one of the extra poles from the sled and walked forward to stand beside the perplexed Fool. "Soft snow?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "It"s as if there"s only a crust, and then nothing. If I hadn"t held tight to the pole, it would have dropped right through."

"Let"s be very careful." I took hold of his sleeve. "Thick, stay on the sled!" I reminded him again.

"I"m hungry!"