BY MIDSUMMER OF that final year, the Six Duchies situation had become desperate. Buckkeep Castle, so long avoided by the Raiders, came under sudden siege from them. They had possessed Antler Island and its watchtowers since midwinter. Forge, the first village to fall victim to the scourge that took its name, had long since become a watering stop for Red-Ships. There had been for some time rumors of Outlsland sailing ships anchoring off Scrim Island, including several sightings of the elusive "White Ship. " For most of the spring, no ships had made passage either into or out of Buck Harbor. This strangle of trade was felt not just in Buck, but in every trade village on the Buck, Bear, and Vin Rivers. The Red-Ships had become a sudden reality to the merchants and lords of Tilth and Farrow.
But at the high point of summer, the Red-Ships came to Buckkeep Town. The Red-Ships came in the dead of night after several weeks of deceptive quiet. The fighting was the savage defense of a cornered folk, but they were also a starved and beggared folk. Almost every wooden structure of the town was burned to the ground. It is estimated that only one quarter of the town's residents were able to flee up the steep hills to Buckkeep Castle. Although Lord Bright had endeavored to refortify and supply the castle, the weeks of strangulation had taken their toll. The deep wells of Buckkeep Castle assured them a good supply of fresh water, but all other things were in scarce supply.
Catapults and other engines of war had been in place for decades to defend the mouth of the Buck River, but Lord Bright diverted them to the defense of Buckkeep Castle itself. Unchallenged, the Red-Ships beat their way up the Buck River, carrying their war and Forging deep into the Six Duchies like a spreading poison following a vein to the heart.
At a time when Red-Ships threatened Tradeford itself, the lords of Farrow and Tilth were to discover that a great part of the Six Duchies armies had been sent far inland, to Blue Lake, and beyond, to the very borders of the Mountain Kingdom. The nobles of these duchies suddenly discovered that their own guardsmen were all that stood between them and death and ruin.
I emerged from the pillar into a circle of frantic people. The first thing to happen was that a wolf hit me full force in the chest, driving me backward, so that as Verity emerged he all but fell over me.
I made her understand me, I made her know you were in danger and she made him go after you. I made her understand me, I made her understand me! Nighteyes was in a puppyish frenzy. He thrust his nose into my face, nipped at my nose, then flung himself to the ground beside me and half in my lap.
"He stirred a dragon! Not quite to wakening, but I felt one stir! We may yet wake them all!" This was Verity, laughing and shouting to the others these good tidings as he calmly stepped over us. He flourished his shining sword aloft as if to challenge the moon. I had no idea what he was talking about. I sat flat on the earth, staring around at them. The Fool looked wan and weary; Kettricken, ever a mirror to her king, smiled at his exultation. Starling looked at all of us with greedy minstrel eyes, memorizing every detail. And Kettle, her hands and arms silver to the elbow, knelt carefully beside me to ask, "Are you all right, FitzChivalry?"
I looked at her magic-coated arms and hands. "What have you done?" I asked her.
"Only what was necessary. Verity took me to the river in the city. Now our work will proceed more swiftly. What happened to you?"
I did not answer her. Instead I pinned Verity with a glare. "You sent me off so I would not follow you! You knew I could not wake the dragons, but you wanted me out of the way!" I could not conceal the outrage and betrayal I felt.
Verity gave me one of his old grins, denying all regrets. "We know one another very well, don't we?" was all he offered by way of apology. Then his grin grew wider. "Yes, it was a fool's errand I sent you on. But I was the fool, for you did it. You woke one, or stirred him at least."
I shook my head at him.
"Yes, you did. You must have felt it, that rippling of Skill, just before I reached you. What did you do, how did you stir him?"
"A man died on the stone boar's tusks," I said flatly. "Perhaps that is how you rouse these dragons. With death." I cannot explain the hurt I felt. He had taken what should have been mine and given it to Kettle. He owed that Skill-closeness to me, no other. Who else had come so far, given up so much for him? How could he deny me the carving of his dragon?
It was Skill-hunger, pure and simple, but I did not know it then. At that time, all I could feel was how perfectly linked he was with Kettle, and how firmly he repulsed me from joining that link. He walled me out as firmly as if I were Regal. I had forsaken my wife and child and crossed all of the Six Duchies to be of service to him, and now he turned me away. He should have taken me to the river, been beside me as I had that experience. I had never known myself capable of such jealousy. Nighteyes came back from frisking about Kettricken to push his head under my arm. I rubbed his throat and hugged him. He, at least, was mine.
She understood me, he repeated anxiously. I made her understand, and she told him he must go.
Kettricken, coming to stand beside me, said, "I had the strongest feeling you needed help. It took much urging, but finally Verity left the dragon and went for you. Are you much hurt?"
I got to my feet slowly, dusting myself off. "Only my pride, that my king would treat me as a child. He might have let me know he preferred Kettle's company."
A flash of something in Kettricken's eyes made me recall to whom I spoke. But she hid her twin hurt well, saying only, "A man was killed, you say?"
"Not by me. He fell on the stone boar's tusks in the dark and gutted himself. But I saw no stirring of dragons."
"Not the death, but the spilled life," Kettle said to Verity. "That might be it. Like the scent of fresh meat rousing a dog starved near to death. They are hungry, my king, but not past rousing. Not if you find a way to feed them."
"I like not the sound of that!" I exclaimed.
"It is not for us to like or dislike," Verity said heavily. "It is the nature of dragons. They must be filled, and life is what fills them. It must be given willingly to create one. But dragons will take what they need to sustain them, once they rise in flight. What had you supposed that King Wisdom offered them in return for defeating the Red-Ships?"
Kettle pointed a scolding finger at the Fool. "Pay heed to that, Fool, and understand now why you are so weary. When you touched her with Skill, you linked with her. She draws you to her now, and you think you go out of pity. But she will take from you whatever she needs to rise. Even if it is your whole life."
"No one is making any sense," I declared. Then, as my own scattered wits returned to me, I exclaimed, "Regal has sent soldiers. They are on the march here: They are no more than a few days away at most. I suspect they push themselves and travel swiftly. The men guarding the pillars are placed there to prevent Verity's escape."
It was much later that night before I had it all sorted out. Kettle and Verity had indeed gone to the river, almost as soon as I left. They had used the pillar to get down to the city, and there they had laved Kettle's arms in the stuff and renewed the power in Verity's. Every glimpse of that silvering of her arms woke in me a Skill-hunger that was almost a lust. It was something I masked from myself and attempted to hide from Verity. I do not believe he was deceived, but he did not force me to confront it. I masked my jealousy with other excuses. I told them both hotly it was only the purest luck they had not encountered the coterie there. Verity had calmly replied that he had known the risk and taken it. Somehow it hurt me all the more that even my anger left him so unmoved.
It had been on their return that they had discovered the Fool chipping at the stone that mired Girl-on-a-Dragon. He had cleared an area around one foot, and began on the other. The foot itself remained a shapeless chunk of stone but the Fool insisted that he could feel the foot, intact inside the stone. He felt certain that all she wished from him was that he chop the dragon free of that which mired it. He had been shaking with exhaustion when they found him. Kettle had insisted he go right to bed. She had taken the last piece of often boiled elfbark and ground it down fine, to make one last dose of tea for him. Despite the drug, he remained detached and weary, scarcely even asking a question as to what had happened to me. I felt deep uneasiness for him.
The news I had brought of Regal's men stirred everyone to action. After food, Verity sent Starling, the Fool, and the wolf to the mouth of the quarry, to keep watch there. I sat by the fire for a time, with a cold wet rag wrapped around my swollen and discolored knee. Up on the dragon dais, Kettricken kept her fires burning, and Verity and Kettle worked the stone. Starling, in helping Kettle search for more elfbark, had discovered the carris seeds that Chade had given me. Kettle had appropriated them and brewed them up into a stimulant drink she and Verity were sharing. The noise of their work had taken on a frightening tempo.
They had also found the sunskirt seeds I had bought so long ago as a possible substitute for elfbark. With a sly grin, Starling asked me why I was carrying those. When I explained, she had snorted with laughter, and finally managed to explain they were regarded as an aphrodisiac. I recalled the herb-seller's words to me and shook my head to myself. A part of me saw the humor, but I could not find a smile.
After a time of sitting alone by the cook fire, I quested toward Nighteyes. How goes it?
A sigh. The minstrel would rather be playing with her harp. The Scentless One would rather be chipping at that statue. And I would rather be hunting. If there is danger coming, it is a long way away.
Let us hope it stays there. Keep watch, my friend.
I left the camp and gimped up the scree of stone to the dragon dais. Three of its feet were free now, and Verity worked on the final front foot. I stood for a time beside him, but he did not deign to notice me. Instead he went on chipping and scraping, and all the while muttered old nursery rhymes or drinking songs to himself. I limped past Kettricken listlessly tending her fires back to where Kettle was smoothing her hands over the dragon's tail. Her eyes were distant as she called for the scales, and then deepened their detail and added texture to them. Part of the tail also remained hidden in the stone. I started to lean on the thick portion of the tail to take weight off my bruised knee, but she immediately sat up and hissed at me. "Don't do that! Don't touch him!"
I straightened away from him. "I touched him before," I said indignantly. "And it did no harm."
"That was before. He is much closer to completion now." She lifted her eyes to mine. Even in the firelight, I could mark how thickly rock dust coated her features and clung to her eyelashes. She looked dreadfully tired and yet animated by some fierce energy. "As close as you are to Verity, the dragon would reach for you. And you are not strong enough to say no. He would pull you in completely. That's how strong he is, how magnificently strong." She all but crooned the last words as she stroked her hands again down the tail. For an instant, I saw a sheen of color right behind their passage.
"Is anyone ever going to explain any of this to me?" I asked petulantly.
She gave me a bemused look. "I try. Verity tries. But you of all people should know how wearisome words are. We try and try and try to tell you, and still your mind does not grasp it. It is not your fault. Words are not big enough. And it is too dangerous to include you in our Skilling now."
"Will you be able to make me understand after the dragon is finished?"
She looked at me and something like pity crossed her face. "FitzChivalry. My dear friend. When the dragon is finished? Rather say that when Verity and I are finished, the dragon will be begun."
"I don't understand!" I snarled in frustration.
"But he told you. I said it again when I warned the Fool. Dragons feed on life. A whole life, willingly given. That is what it takes to make a dragon rise. And usually not just one. In olden times, when wise men sought out Jhaampe town, they came as a coterie, as a whole that was more than the sum of its parts, and gave that all over into a dragon. The dragon must be filled. Verity and I must put all of ourselves, every part of our lives, into it. It is easier for me. Eda knows I have lived more than my share of years, and I have no desire to go on in this body. It is harder, much harder, for Verity. He leaves behind his throne, his pretty loving wife, his love of doing things with his hands. He leaves behind riding a fine horse, hunting stags, walking amongst his own people. Oh, I feel them all within the dragon already. The careful inking of color onto a map, the feel of a clean piece of vellum under his hands. I even know the smells of his inks, now. He has put them all into the dragon. It is hard for him. But he does it, and the pain it costs him is one more thing he puts into the dragon. It will fuel his fury toward the Red-Ships when he rises. In fact, there is only one thing he has held back from his dragon. Only one thing that may make him fall short of his goal."
"What is that?" I asked her unwillingly.
Her old eyes met mine. "You. He has refused to allow you to be put into the dragon. He could do it, you know, whether you willed it or not. He could simply reach out and pull you into him. But he refuses. He says you love your life too much, he will not take it from you. That you have already laid down too much of it for a king who has returned you only pain and hardship."
Did she know that with her words she gave Verity back to me? I suspect she did. I had seen much of her past during our Skill-sharing. I knew the experience had to have flowed both ways. She knew how I had loved him, and how hurt I had been to find him so distant when I got here. I stood up immediately to go speak with him.
"Fitz!" she called me back. I turned to her. "Two things I would have you know, painful as you may find them."
I braced myself. "Your mother loved you," she said quietly. "You say you cannot recall her. Actually, you cannot forgive her. But she is there, with you, in your memories. She was tall and fair, a Mountain woman. And she loved you. It was not her choice to part from you."
Her words angered me and dizzied me. I pushed away the knowledge she offered me. I knew I had no memories of the woman who had borne me. Time and again, I had searched myself, and found no trace of her. None at all. " And the second thing," I asked her coldly.
She did not react to my anger, save with pity. "It is as bad, or perhaps worse. Again, it is a thing you already know. It is sad, that the only gifts I can offer you, the Catalyst who has changed my living death to dying life, are things you already possess. But there it is, and so I will say it. You will live to love again. You know you have lost your springtime girl, your Molly on the beach with the wind in her brown hair and red cloak. You have been gone too long from her, and too much has befallen you both. And what you loved, what both of you truly loved, was not each other. It was the time of your life. It was the spring of your years, and life running strong in you, and war on your doorstep and your strong, perfect bodies. Look back, in truth. You will find you recall fully as many quarrels and tears as you do lovemaking and kisses. Fitz. Be wise. Let her go, and keep those memories intact. Save what you can of her, and let her keep what she can of the wild and daring boy she loved. Because both he and that merry little miss are no more than memories anymore." She shook her head. "No more than memories."
"You are wrong!" I shouted furiously. "You are wrong!"
The force of my cries had brought Kettricken to her feet. She stared at me, in fear and worry. I could not look at her. Tall and fair. My mother had been tall and fair. No. I recalled nothing of her. I strode past her, heedless of the wrench of pain my knee gave me at every step. I walked around the dragon, damning it with every step I took, and defying it to sense what I felt. When I reached Verity working on the left forefoot, I crouched down beside him and spoke in a savage whisper.
"Kettle says you are going to die when this dragon is done. That you will put all of yourself into it. Or so, with my feeble understanding of her words, I take it. Tell me I am wrong."
He leaned back on his heels and swiped at the chips he had loosened. "You are wrong," he said mildly. "Fetch your broom, would you, and clear this?"
I fetched my broom and came up beside him, almost of a mind to break it over his head more than use it. I knew he sensed my simmering fury, but he still gestured for me to clear his workspace. I did so with one furious brush. "Now," he said gently. "That is a fine anger you have. Potent and strong. That, I think, I shall take for him."
Soft as the brush of a butterfly's wing, I felt the kiss of his Skill. My anger was snatched from me, flayed whole from my soul and swept away to …
"No. Don't follow it." A gentle Skill-push from Verity, and I snapped back to my body. An instant later, I found myself sitting flat on the stone while the whole universe swung dizzyingly around my head. I curled forward slowly, bringing up my knees to lean my head against. I felt wretchedly ill. My anger was gone, replaced by a weary numbness.
"There," Verity continued. "As you asked for, I have done. I think you understand better now, what it is to put something into the dragon. Would you care to feed it more of yourself?"
I shook my head mutely. I feared to open my mouth.
"I will not die when the dragon is finished, Fitz. I will be consumed, that is true. Quite literally. But I will go on. As the dragon."
I found my voice. "And Kettle?"
"Kestrel will be a part of me. And her sister Gull. But I shall be the dragon." He had gone back to his wretched stone chipping.
"How can you do that?" My voice was filled with accusation. "How can you do that to Kettricken? She's given up everything to come here to you. And you will simply leave her, alone and childless?"
He leaned forward so that his forehead rested against the dragon. His endless chipping stopped. After a time, he spoke in a thick voice. "I should have you stand here and talk to me while I work, Fitz. Just when I think I am past any great feelings at all, you stir them in me." He lifted his face to regard me. His tears had cut two paths through the gray rock dust. "What choice do I have?"
"Simply leave the dragon. Let us go back to the Six Duchies, and rally the folk, and fight the Red-Ships with sword and Skill, as we did before. Perhaps …"
"Perhaps we would all be dead before we even reached Jhaampe. Is that a better end for my queen? No. I shall carry her back to Buckkeep, and clean the coasts, and she shall reign long and well as Queen. There. That is what I choose to give her."
"And an heir?" I asked bitterly.
He shrugged wearily and took up his chisel again. "You know what must be. Your daughter will be raised as heir."
"NO! Threaten me with that again, and regardless of the risk, I will Skill to Burrich to flee with her."
"You cannot Skill to Burrich," Verity observed mildly. He appeared to be measuring for the dragon's toe. "Chivalry closed his mind to the Skill years ago, to keep him from being used against Chivalry. As the Fool was used against you."
Another small mystery laid to rest. For all the good it did me. "Verity, please. I beg you. Do not do this thing to me. Far better I should be consumed in the dragon as well. I offer you that. Take my life and feed it to the dragon. I will give you anything you ask of me. But promise me that my daughter will not be sacrificed to the Farseer throne."
"I cannot make you that promise," he said heavily.
"If you bore any feelings at all for me anymore," I began, but he interrupted me.
"Cannot you understand, no matter how often you are told? I have feelings. But I have put them into the dragon."
I managed to stand up. I limped away. There was nothing more to say to him. King or man, uncle or friend, I seemed to have lost all knowledge of who he was. When I Skilled toward him, I found only his walls. When I quested toward him with the Wit, I found his life flickering between himself and the stone dragon. And of late, it seemed to burn brighter within the dragon, not Verity.
There was no one else in camp and the fire was nearly out. I flung more wood on it, and then sat eating dried meat beside it. The pig was nearly gone. We'd have to hunt again soon. Or rather, Nighteyes and Kettricken should hunt again. She seemed to bring meat down easily for him. My self-pity was losing its savor, but I could think of no better solution than to wish I had some brandy to drown it in. At last, with few other interesting alternatives, I went to bed.
I slept, after a fashion. Dragons plagued my dreams and Kettle's game took on odd meanings as I tried to decide if a red stone was powerful enough to capture Molly. My dreams were rambling and incoherent, and I broke often to the surface of my sleep, to stare at the dark inside the tent. I quested out once to where Nighteyes prowled near a small fire while Starling and the Fool slept turn and turn about. They had moved their sentry post to the brow of a hill where they could command a good view of the winding Skill road below them. I should have walked out and joined them. Instead I rolled over and dipped into my dreams again. I dreamed of Regal's troops coming, not by dozens or scores, but hundreds of gold-and-brown troops pouring into the quarry, to corner us against the vertical black walls and kill us all.
I awoke in the morning to the cold poke of a wolf's nose. You need to hunt, he told me seriously, and I agreed with him. As I emerged from my tent, I saw Kettricken just coming down from the dais. Dawn was breaking, her fires were needed no longer. She could sleep, but up by the dragon, the endless clinking and scraping went on. Our eyes met as I stood up. She glanced at Nighteyes.
"Going hunting?" she asked us both. The wolf gave a slow wag to his tail. "I'll fetch my bow," she announced, and vanished into her tent. We waited. She came out wearing a cleaner jerkin and carrying her bow. I refused to look at Girl-on-a-Dragon as we passed her. As we passed the pillar, I observed, "Had we the folk to do it, we should put two on guard here, and two overlooking the road."
Kettricken nodded to that. "It is odd. I know they are coming to kill us, and I see small way for us to escape that fate. Yet we still go out to hunt for meat, as if eating were the most important thing."
It is. Eating is living.
"Still, to live, one must eat," Kettricken echoed Nighteyes' thought.
We saw no game truly worthy of her bow. The wolf ran down a rabbit, and she brought down one brightly colored fowl. We ended up tickling for trout and by midday had more than enough fish to feed us, at least for that day. I cleaned them on the bank of the stream, and then asked Kettricken if she would mind if I stayed to wash myself.
"In truth, it might be a kindness to us all," she replied, and I smiled, not at her teasing, but that she was still able to do so. In a short time I heard her splashing upstream from me, while Nighteyes dozed on the creek bank, his belly full of fish guts.
As we passed Girl-on-a-Dragon on the way back to camp, we found the Fool curled up on the dais beside her, sound asleep.
Kettricken woke him, and scolded him for the fresh chisel marks about the dragon's tail. He professed no regrets, but only stated that Starling had said she would keep watch until evening, and he would really prefer to sleep here. We insisted he return to camp with us.
We were talking amongst ourselves as we returned to the tent. Kettricken it was who stopped us suddenly. "Hush!" she cried out. And then, "Listen!"
We froze where we were. I half expected to hear Starling crying a warning to us. I strained my ears, but heard nothing save the wind in the quarry and distant bird sounds. It took a moment for me to grasp the importance of that. "Verity!" I exclaimed. I shoved our fish into the Fool's hands and began to run. Kettricken passed me.
I had feared to find them both dead, attacked by Regal's coterie in our absence. What I found was almost as strange. Verity and Kettle stood, side by side, staring at their dragon. He shone black and glistening as good flint in the afternoon sunlight. The great beast was complete. Every scale, every wrinkle, every claw was impeccable in its detail. "He surpasses every dragon we saw in the stone garden," I declared. I had walked about him twice, and with every step I took, the wonder of him increased. Wit-life burned powerfully in him now, stronger than it did in either Verity or Kettle. It was almost shocking that his sides did not bellow with breath, that he did not twitch in his sleep. I glanced to Verity, and despite the anger I still harbored, I had to smile.
"He is perfect," I said quietly.
"I have failed," he said without hope. Beside him, Kettle nodded miserably. The lines in her face had gone deeper. She looked every bit of two hundred years old. So did Verity.
"But he is finished, my lord," Kettricken said quietly. "Is not this what you said you must do? Finish the dragon?"
Verity shook his head slowly. "The carving is finished. But the dragon is not completed." He looked around at us, watching him, and I could see how he struggled to make the words hold his meaning. "I have put all I am into him. Everything save enough to keep my heart beating and the breath flowing in my body. As has Kettle. That, too, we could give. But it would still not be enough."
He walked forward slowly, to lean against his dragon. He pillowed his face on his thin arms. All about him, where his body rested against the stone, an aura of color rippled on the dragon's skin. Turquoise, edged with silver, the scales flashed uncertainly in the sunlight. I could feel the ebbing of his Skill into the dragon. It seeped from Verity into the stone as ink soaks into a page.
"King Verity," I said softly, warningly.
With a groan, he stood free of his creation. "Do not fear, Fitz. I will not let him take too much. I will not give up my life to him without reason." He lifted his head and looked around at us all. "Strange," he said softly. "I wonder if this is what it feels like to be Forged. To be able to recall what one once felt, but unable to feel it anymore. My loves, my fears, my sorrows. All have gone into the dragon. Nothing have I held back. Yet it is not enough. Not enough."
"My lord Verity." Kettle's old voice was cracked. All hope had run out of it. "You will have to take FitzChivalry. There is no other way." Her eyes, once so shiny, looked like dry black pebbles as she looked at me. "You offered it," she reminded me. "All your life."
I nodded my head. "If you would not take my child," I added quietly. I drew a breath deep into my lungs. Life. Now. Now was all the life I had, all the time I could truly give up. "My king. I no longer seek any bargain of any kind. If you must have my life so that the dragon may fly, I offer it."
Verity swayed slightly where he stood. He stared at me. "Almost, you make me feel again. But." He lifted a silver finger and pointed it accusingly. Not at me, but at Kettle. His command was as solid as the stone of his dragon as he said, "No. I have told you that. No. You will not speak of it to him again. I forbid it." Slowly he sank down to his knees, then sat flat beside his dragon. "Damn this carris seed," he said in a low voice. "It always leaves you, just when you need its strength most. Damn stuff."
"You should rest now," I said stupidly. In reality, there was nothing else he could do. That was how carris seed left one. Empty and exhausted. I knew that only too well.
"Rest," he said bitterly, his voice failing on the word. "Yes. Rest. I shall be well rested when my brother's soldiers find me and cut my throat. Well rested when his-coterie comes and tries to claim my dragon as their own. Make no mistake, Fitz. That is what they seek. It won't work, of course. At least, I don't think it will …." His mind was wandering now. "Though it might," he said in the faintest of breaths. "They were Skill-linked to me, for a time. It might be enough that they could kill me and take him." He smiled a ghastly smile. "Regal as dragon. Do you think he will leave two stones of Buckkeep Castle atop each other?"
Behind him, Kettle had folded herself up, her face against her knees. I thought she wept, but when she slowly fell over onto her side, her face was lax and still, her eyes closed. Dead, or sleeping the exhausted sleep of the carris seed. After what Verity had said to me, it scarcely seemed to matter. My king stretched himself out on the bare gritty pedestal. He slept beside his dragon.
Kettricken went and sat down beside him. She bowed her head to her knees and wept. Not quietly. The rending sobs that shook her should have roused even the dragon of stone. They did not. I looked at her. I did not go to her, I did not touch her. I knew it would have been of no use. Instead I looked to the Fool. "We should bring blankets and make them more comfortable," I said helplessly.
"Ah. Of course. What better task for the White Prophet and his Catalyst?" He linked arms with me. His touch renewed the thread of Skill bond between us. Bitterness. Bitterness flowed through him with his blood. The Six Duchies would fall. The world would end.
We went to fetch blankets.