And when the shepherd-turned-warrior had wearied himself with whetting his blade on the dragon's impervious hide, he fell back from him, sweating and panting. Yet the moment he had breath to curse him, he did so again, saying he would take vengeance times three on the creature that had eaten his entire flock. At those words, the dragon seemed to waken from his sated sleep. Slower than a sunrise, he lifted his head and opened his eyes. He looked down at the man and his blade, and his great green eyes swirled and whirled. Some say they were like whirlpools in the deep, and that they sucked Herder son's soul down into their depth and made it the dragon's servant. Others say that Herderson stood firm before the dragon's gaze, and it was only when Herderson breathed in the dragon's outblown breath that he became subject to the creature. It is a hard thing to bear true witness to, for those who had gathered to watch Herderson attempt to slay the dragon had come no closer than the edge of his pasture.
Be it his gaze or his breath, it took the man's heart. He suddenly flung aside both shield and sword and cried out, "Forgive me, emerald one. O creature of jewel and flame and truth. I did not perceive what glory and might was yours when I first approached you. Forgive me, and allow me ever after to serve you and sing your praise."
The world was a bright white place and cold. I found my feet, got them firmly under me, and remembered how to make them work. From somewhere, Burrich came, to grab my other arm. Then Dutiful, Burrich, and I were staggering and sliding through the dawn light toward the huddled tents. I saw Chade all but running up the hill toward us. At a considerable distance behind him, Thick trudged along. Longwick and his remaining guardsmen were following them. The Wit coterie had tumbled half-dressed from their tent, and stood in the snow, pointing up the hillside and shouting to one another as they pulled on their coats and boots. The Hetgurd warriors stood apart and staring, nodding to one another as if they had expected a doom like this all along. Icefyre's first try at breaking free had felt like a small earthquake, and he continued to make efforts as we hastened away from the excavation. Behind us, we felt as much as heard the dragon shuddering to break free of his icy prison. The cracking ice squeaked and popped and groaned as he fought it. Even so, it seemed to me that each effort was feebler than the first one. Then, when we were halfway down the hill, the creaking of the ice ceased. My Wit-sense of Icefyre remained as strong, but that awareness told me of a creature that had expended tremendous effort and was now on the verge of collapse.
"It would be ironic," I panted to Burrich and Dutiful, "if after all these years of longing to die, he finally perished in an attempt to live."
Burrich snorted. "We all perish in our last attempt to live."
"What went wrong?" Dutiful demanded. "Why did you wake him instead of just killing him? Did the powder fail? What changed your mind?"
Before I could answer, Chade was upon us. My old mentor stalked toward me, trembling with his outrage. His questions were harsher.
"How could you?" he demanded, his voice shaking with passion as soon as he was within hearing range of me. "How could you betray your own blood that way? You were sent to kill the dragon. What right do you have to decide against that? How could you turn on your family?"
"I haven't turned on my family. I've let the Fool be Forged for the sake of the Farseers," I said. Speaking that harsh truth aloud, under the bright morning light, suddenly made it real. I had to take a breath. In a quieter voice, I went on. "She's had us watching the puppets, Chade, until we forgot that she was up there, pulling the strings. The Pale Woman wishes the dragon killed, yes. Perhaps if we killed him, she even would have given us back the Fool, but only so that he could witness the destruction of all he'd hoped for. Only so he could witness the end of the Farseer line."
Heedless of the men who were drawing into hearing range, I lined out my logic for Dutiful and him. In their prolonged silence, I heard them trying my reasoning and finding it sound. Into the silence, I said to Dutiful, "I've broken your promise, and lost you your bride. But I cannot tell you I am sorry to have done so. I fear it would have been a marriage founded on death, and death would be the only fruit of it. For now, at least, we've chosen life. Life for the dragon. And possibly a stronger peace between the Six Duchies and the Out Islands than we could have built on the dragon's death."
"Fine words!" Chade fumed. "Grand words, but you've no idea what you've chosen. And neither do I! If that thing breaks out of there and is hungry, will he 'choose life' for us? Or a hearty meal? I admit I've been shortsighted. Perhaps you were wise not to kill him. But that does not mean you were wise to wake him. Who will thank you for this, FitzChivalry, when this long day is done?"
"FitzChivalry?" I heard Civil say, striding up behind Chade. "FitzChivalry? Is that who he means? Tom Badgerlock is FitzChivalry, the Witted Bastard?" He turned to clutch Web's arm incredulously, demanding an answer. His eyes were wide, and he was breathless with shock. Dutiful's friend stared at me as if he had never seen me before, but there was no admiration in his eyes. He was a man cheated of a legend, shown common earth when he had expected the gleam of gold.
"Hush." It was Web, silencing a secret that had outgrown its shroud. "Not now. Later, I'll explain. There is no time now. He has wakened Icefyre. It's up to us to free him." Web measured me with his eyes and seemed pleased with what he saw. He gave me a nod that was almost a bow, and then strode past us. For the first time, I noted that the Witted coterie carried their digging tools, shovels and pry bars. A new purpose animated them all. Swift and Cockle were bringing up the sled to haul away the ice. Swift did not look at Burrich or me as he passed. Nonetheless, Burrich was aware of him and undeterred by his son's cold silence. "Be careful, son," he admonished him as the boy passed us. "No one knows what Fitz has awakened there, or what his feelings toward us will be."
Then Burrich turned his gaze to me, and I had not known that clouded eyes could still pierce a man. "What did you do up there? And why?"
Perhaps it was time for that truth, too. "It wasn't me. Not completely. I knew the dragon was alive, but I couldn't reach him with my Skill, only my Wit. My Skill wasn't strong enough. But then Nettle found me. And—"
"And Nettle waked him up!" Thick announced happily as he finally trudged up to us. "And I saved her and put her safe. She loves me."
"What?" This burst from Burrich, a cry of outrage and pain. "Nettle, my Nettle? Witted? It isn't possible, it cannot be!"
"No. Not Witted. Skilled." Chade sounded impatient. "But untrained. Dangerously untrained. Another consequence for which we must thank Fitz and his whims. We nearly lost her in the Skill-current, but Thick knew her well enough to find her and take her out of it. She's safe now, Burrich. Probably very confused as to what happened to her just then, but safe."
"This is too much. I cannot deal with this." Burrich had been holding my arm, but now I was suddenly supporting him. He shuddered out a breath. "I suspected she had a touch of Chivalry's magic. I suspected for a long time, and when she told me of her wolf dream… that was when I knew I must go to Kettricken, to find out what it meant and to arrange for Nettle to be taught." He gave me a strange smile, torn between pride in her and fear for her future. "She was strong enough to wake a dragon?"
Then all of us were rocked by a blast of thought that sent Chade tottering, and then sinking to his knees. It was dragon speech, reaching into our minds. Tintaglia had found us.
Go and help him! Dig Icefyre out, and harm not a scale upon him. I come swift as flame, for by touch of our minds, I know where he is and no longer need the guidance of a bird! I warn you, I am not far away, and when I arrive, I expect to see him standing to meet me. If he is not, woe upon you all!
It was neither the Skill nor the Wit, and yet it struck my mind with the force of a strong Skill-sending. Icefyre's recent use of my mind had left me raw to the Skill, and the force of Tintaglia's thought physically staggered me. I suspect that those of us versed in the Skill were more susceptible to her thoughts than the others. Certainly it staggered Dutiful's entire Skill coterie. Those of his Wit coterie reacted in a variety of ways, some seeming to take the full import of her words, others looking about as if puzzled, and Cockle showing no awareness of it at all. Civil raised a shout. "You all heard her! Tintaglia commands that we dig Icefyre out! Let's do it!" He raced up the hill as if leading a charge against an enemy.
Among the Outislanders, as least one prostrated himself, believing that a god or demon had spoken to him. Two of the others stared off in the distance, as if questing after something they might have heard. The others gave no reaction. Burrich, long sealed off to the Skill by my father in order to protect him, looked puzzled for a moment, as if he had almost recalled something. I suspect his Wit made him vaguely aware of a sending without comprehending the thought that had accompanied it.
An instant only I had to absorb all this. Then Thick, with a wide and joyous smile, went racing away from us, up the hill, his short legs pumping as hard as they could. "I'm coming!" he shouted. "I'm coming to dig you out, Icefyre!"
I put his enthusiasm down to Icefyre's earlier influence over his simple mind and his recent success at rescuing Nettle, which must have been a heady experience for the man. I strode after him, Dutiful at my side and Chade at our heels. It was only when I heard Dutiful mutter, "We have moved much of the ice above his back. Surely that is where he will break through first. We have not much more work to do!" that I wondered at his sudden enthusiasm for the task.
"Then you do not share Chade's hope that we could simply leave the dragon where he is, as he was?"
"Yes. I do. I did. But that was… before. Before Nettle woke him. No. Before… But Tintaglia commands this. Tintaglia…" His pace slowed and he looked at me in consternation. "This is, this was, almost like when you commanded me with the Skill. But it isn't. I can set this aside. I think." He caught at my arm and halted me alongside him, an odd expression on his face. "She commanded, and for a moment, I could think of nothing but obeying her. Strange. Is that what they mean by the charm of a dragon?"
Burrich startled me when he spoke. I had almost forgotten him, and yet he had somehow kept pace with us. "The old tales speak of the charm of a dragon coming from its breath. What have I missed? Some sort of Skill-sending?"
"Something like that," Dutiful pondered. "Almost a Skill-command, I think, but I do not know. I think I wanted to help Icefyre before she commanded it. It seems my own thought to me. Yet—"
And then Chade passed us, muttering, "The powder. The powder will do it; the powder will blast him free. We only have to change where we set it. Or perhaps set it in smaller vessels—"
Dutiful and I exchanged a glance and then caught up with him. I seized his sleeve, but he shook me off. I grabbed hold of him again.
"Chade, you cannot kill him now. It's too late. Tintaglia is nearly here, and too many of our people are intent on digging him free. It won't work."
"I… kill him?" He looked shocked at the thought. "No, not kill him. Blast him free, you fool." I exchanged a worried look with the Prince. "Why?" I asked Chade gently.
He looked as if my ignorance mystified him. Then, for just a moment, I saw another look pass over his face, one that frightened me. He groped. But however Tintaglia had fogged his mind, Chade had long been an expert at fabricating reasons to have me do whatever he decided I should do. "Does it escape you that an angry female dragon is on her way here, one that has been alerted to our presence thanks to you? What have you left us to do? If we kill him now, she'll kill us all. She as much as said so. Unfortunately, that means we must make ourselves useful to a dragon. If we extricate Icefyre before Tintaglia arrives, she may see it as a sign of good intentions on our part. You yourself said we might use her goodwill to build an alliance with Bingtown. Until we know her strength, I judge it best to placate her in any way we can. Don't you?"
"And you think the best way to free him is with your powder?"
"One blast can do the work of ten men with shovels. Trust me on this, Fitz. I know what I'm doing." He now seemed as enthused to blast Icefyre free as he had earlier been to blow him up. How hard had Tintaglia's command hit him? With the force of a Skill-command, which one must unquestioningly obey, regardless of one's own judgment?
Was the Fool Forged yet? Dead? The sudden thought broke abruptly over me like a wave of cold water, dashing me from my present worry. I staggered with the impact of it. I had done what the Fool had hoped I would do. I had wakened the dragon and now all our forces were turned to freeing him and uniting him with Tintaglia. It had even felt like the right thing to do, at the moment that I did it. But now my soul scrabbled at the remorselessness of time. I could not go back and change the decision, yet it suddenly seemed far too heavy and sharp a thing to carry for the rest of my life. His fingerprints burned briefly cold on my wrist. Still my feet carried me on with the rest of them. When we reached the excavation, we discovered that all the dragon's struggles had done little. The ice over his back was cracked and starred from beneath, and he had collapsed part of the tunnel that had been dug above his neck and head. The Wit coterie had already attacked the cracks in the ice with much enthusiasm and little manpower. As I arrived, the Hetgurd men joined them. For the first time, every man at the camp was united in the task of unearthing the dragon alive. But no amount of excitement could make the work any less arduous.
Chade berated me for being an idiot when we all discovered I had left the powder pot behind when I had fled the tunnel. He put two men to work reopening the tunnel, and then completely confused the suspicious Wit coterie by putting them to work digging deep, narrow holes alongside the dragon. "We'll put smaller loads of powder along the edge of that crack he's made. It won't be enough to harm him, just enough to break the ice up so we can haul it away in larger chunks. Fitz, I'll need you with me to help me measure and package the powder. Dutiful, you too, and bring Longwick. We'll need more vessels suitable for holding the fires. It will be tricky to set them off, but I'm convinced that near-simultaneous blasts will serve us best." Chade was in his element, organizing and improvising. He burned with a fierce joy at putting his thoughts into action. I realized then that in his own way, he would have been a fine soldier and strategist, much as Verity had been. The times in my life when he had seemed most alive had been when he had finally flung aside all constraints to transform his thoughts into deeds.
Burrich had come with us when we returned to Chade's tent, for he could be of little help with the digging. It was sad to know that he realized that. He reminded me somewhat of an old dog that knows he can no longer keep up with the pack on the scent, and so holds his place at his master's stirrup in faith that he will be there for the kill. I glanced up at him as he sat attentively on Chade's pallet. Chade was opening another small cask of his powder. I knelt on the floor, a clean hide stretched out before me, measuring powder into piles that were approximately the same size as the example that Chade had heaped for me. The consistency of the powder troubled me; it was not a uniform color, and some seemed ground finer than the rest, but Chade had already shrugged aside my questions. "In time I will perfect it. But for now, it will work, and that is all that counts, boy. Where is the Prince? I sent him to scavenge tight containers from any of the tents. He should be back by now. And Longwick, with the kettles. It's going to be a mix-and-match that we must do, and the sooner we begin, the better."
"I'm sure he'll be here soon," I said, and then to Burrich, "You're very quiet. Is it because you came here to kill the dragon, and now we all struggle to save it?"
He knit his dark brows at me. "You thought I came here to slay a dragon?" He gave a snort of amazement and then shook his head. "I didn't believe in this dragon. I thought it a girl's bad dream, and so it was easy for me to assure Nettle that I'd protect her from it. I took her to Buckkeep and there I learned that there might be some vestige of a dragon here. But when I came here, I came to bring you home, you and Swift. Because, regardless of what it might cost you, or me, that is where you belong." He gave a sudden sigh. "I've always been a simple man, Fitz, seeking simple answers to my problems. And here I am, trying to see how to untangle the mess you and I have made of things, and now to protect Nettle from a dragon that knows her name and how to talk sense to Swift about Beast Magic. I'd thought that you had died of the Wit, you know. The Queen tried to give me what she knew of that tale, how a Forged One came to be wearing a shirt I'd sewn for you, with King Shrewd's pin still in the collar… When I think of the anguish I felt as I buried that wretch. "
But his thoughts were interrupted abruptly by Dutiful bursting into the tent. "They've gone! I can't find them anywhere!"
"Containers to put the powder in?" Chade demanded single-mindedly. "What, all gone?"
"No! The Narcheska and Peottre! They are gone, their beds left empty. I do not think they returned to them after we spoke last night. I think they left then and if they did—"
"Then there is only one place they could have gone." Despite Chade's earlier assurances that it didn't matter, he was now scowling and poking at the piles of more finely ground powder. "They went to the Pale Woman. And told her that Fitz had come back to us, and that we now knew the true stakes of the game." He suddenly scowled. "And we spoke of Web's gull in front of them, and Tintaglia coming here. They will have told her. She will now know of our thoughts of her, and what our vulnerabilities are. The Pale Woman will know that if she wishes to move against us, she must act swiftly. Our only recourse is to be even swifter than she is. We must get that dragon out of the ice."
"But why would Elliania and Peottre do that? Why would they turn on us, when they knew I was willing to kill the dragon for them?" The Prince was agonized.
"I don't know." Chade was implacable. "But it's safest for us to assume treachery, to assume that everything we spoke of last night is now being told to the Pale Woman. And we must now see how that leaves us vulnerable."
"But it's all changed since last night! Last night, Fitz and I plotted to do her bidding, to give way to her will. Why go to the Pale Woman to tell her that, why not wait until the deed was done?" Dutiful scowled. "When they left us last night, Peottre did not look like a man about to cower before an enemy."
"I don't know." Chade's concentration didn't waver. "Make the piles only this size when the powder is this fine, Fitz." Then, "I don't know, Dutiful. But it is my duty to assume that they mean you harm, and try to think of what move we could make to forestall them." With a scraper, he corrected one of my piles. "After the dragon is freed," he added, almost to himself. He lifted his eyes back to Dutiful. "We still need those containers."
"I'll get them," the boy replied faintly.
"Good. Set the girl and Peottre out of your mind for a time. If they slipped away last night, they are long gone, and too far away for us to be able to do anything about it. Let us deal with the crisis at hand, and then move on to the next one."
Dutiful nodded distractedly and left. My heart was heavy for him. "Do you really believe they went to report to her?"
"Perhaps. But I don't think so. As I told Dutiful, we must assume the worst, and there draw our lines of defense. And our best defense may be to free the dragon that you have wakened." He knit his brows, pondering it, but then seemed to find his piles of powder more interesting. "We will think more on it when Icefyre is freed." I feared that Tintaglia's command had sunk deep into his mind. I wanted to believe Chade was thinking clearly, but I was not confident of it.
Longwick came first with the kettles, and then Dutiful with the containers of varying sizes. As soon as he had what he wanted, Chade sent them back to the excavation site, with orders to be sure the six holes he had ordered dug alongside the dragon were progressing. I wondered if he merely intended to keep the Prince busy. Chade seemed very picky to me as he sorted through the containers, first selecting the vessels to hold the powder, making sure of the tightness of the stoppers or lids, and then matching them to their firepots. I offered to help him but he refused. "Eventually, I will devise the perfect container for my powder. It must be one that will yield to fire, but not too swiftly, for whoever sets fire to it must have time to move away. It should be tight enough to keep out moisture, if the powder is to be safely stored in it. And it must be one that can be filled cleanly, with no residual powder clinging to the outside. Eventually, I will fashion a better way to ignite it…" He was now completely focused on what he was doing, a master still puzzling out his new invention, unwilling to trust it to his journeyman's hands. I withdrew from him a small way, sitting on Dutiful's pallet next to a silent Burrich. He seemed deep in his own thoughts. I still felt a terrible sense of urgency, a desire for it all to be over. I could not decide if Tintaglia had imprinted me with a command, or if it was my agony over the Fool. I could not keep my thoughts from turning to him. I tried not to wonder what he might be enduring, or if he was past enduring anything. The dragon's touch seemed to have restored my Skill, yet when I groped for my silk- thin Skill-bond with the Fool, I could not feel him. It frightened me. "I'm doing what you wanted me to do," I promised the Fool quietly. "I'll try to get the dragon free."
Chade, absorbed in his sorting and loading of the powder vessels, did not appear to hear me, but Burrich did. Perhaps it is as they say, that his fading sight had sharpened his other senses. He set his hand to my shoulder. Perhaps if Web had never spoken of it, I would never have noticed it. But he was right. I felt Burrich's calm flow into me. It was not his thoughts that reached me, but a sense of connection with his being. It did not match the strength of a Wit-bond between man and animal, and yet it was there. He spoke quietly. "You've been doing that for a long time, boy. Doing what others wanted you to do. Taking on tasks no one else wanted." It was a statement, not a judgment. "So did you."
He was quiet a moment. Then, "Yes. That's true. Like a dog that needs a master, I believe someone once told me."
The cutting words I had once flung at him now brought bitter smiles to both of us. "Perhaps that has been true for me as well," I admitted.
We both sat still and silent for a time, finding a moment of respite in the eye of the storm all around us. Outside, I could hear the muffled noises of the working men. Their voices came distantly through the cold. I heard the dull ring of metal tools against ice, and the deeper thuds of chunks of ice flung into the wooden-bottomed sleds. Closer to hand, Chade muttered to himself and scraped his powder into precise loads. I felt for the dragon, and he was there, but my Wit-sense of him was dimmed as if he conserved his strength and now would do no more for himself than remain alive and await rescue. Burrich's hand was still on my shoulder. I suddenly suspected that, just as I did, he quested out toward the dragon.
"What will you do about Swift?" I asked Burrich, before I was even aware I was going to speak. Burrich spoke almost casually. "I'll take my son home. Try to raise him to be an upright man."
"You mean, not to use his Wit."
Burrich made a noise that might have been an assent or a request to drop the topic. I couldn't.
"Burrich, all those years in the stables, all your gift for healing and calming and training animals. Was that the Wit? Did you have a bond with Vixen?"
He took his time answering me. Then, he gave me a question instead. "What you are really asking me is, did I do one thing and demand another of you?"
"Yes."
He sighed. "Fitz. I've been a drunk. It was nothing I ever wished to see you or my sons become. I've given in to other appetites, knowing well that no good could come of it. I am a man, and human. But that doesn't mean that I would condone or encourage those things in my boys. Would you? Kettricken told me that you had a foster son. I was glad to hear that you had not been entirely alone. But did raising him not teach you something about yourself? That the faults you find abhorrent in yourself are even more horrifying when you see your son manifest them?"
He had summed it up too neatly. But I still took him round to the jump again, asking him, "Did you use the Wit when you were Stablemaster?"
He took a breath and said shortly, "I chose not to." I thought that was all he would say, but a short time later, he cleared his throat and said, "But it is as Nighteyes said long ago. I could choose not to reply, but I could not choose to be deaf to them. I know what the hounds called me. I've even heard it from your own lips. Heart of the Pack. I knew what they called me and I was aware of their… regard for me. I could not conceal from them that I was aware of them, when they cried back to me of the joy of the hunt as they gave tongue to the chase. I shared that joy, and they knew it.
"Long ago, you told me you did not choose Nighteyes. That he chose you and bonded to you and gave you little choice in the matter. So it was with Vixen and me. She was a sickly pup, the runt of an otherwise hearty litter. But she had… something about her. Tenacity. And a mind to find a way around every obstacle. It was not to her mother that she whimpered when her brothers pushed her aside from the nipple, but to me. What was I to do? Pretend I could not hear her plea for a fair share, for a chance at life? So, I saw that she had a chance at the milk. But by the time she was large enough to fend for herself, she had attached herself to me. And in time, I admit, I came to rely on her."
On some level, I had known it. I don't know why I wanted him to admit it. "Then you did forbid me what you yourself did."
"I suppose I did."
"Have you any idea how unhappy you made me?"
He didn't flinch. "About as unhappy as you made me when you didn't obey me. But, then, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Doubtless you never forbade anything to your Hap that you yourself were guilty of. And I'm sure he always listens to your wisdom." He was very good. The sarcasm was there only if I looked for it.
That silenced me, for a time. But there was still one more question. "But why, Burrich? Why did you, why do you still so despise the Wit? Web, a man I much admire, sees no harm or danger in his magic. How could your own magic disgust you?"
He smoothed his hair back from his face and then rubbed his eyes. He spoke reluctantly. "Ah, Fitz, it's a long, old tale. My grandmother, when she discovered I had the taint, was horrified. Her father had it. And when he was faced with the choice of saving his wife and small children from slavers or getting his Wit-partner out of a burning stable, he chose his Wit-partner. And because of that, slavers took them. My great-grandmother lived a short, miserable time after that. My grandmother said she was a very beautiful woman. There are few worse traits for a slave to have. Her masters used her and her mistresses abused her out of jealousy. My grandmother and her two sisters witnessed it all. And grew up as slaves, used and abused. Because the man who should have made his primary bond to his wife instead chose a horse over her and his children."
"One man, Burrich. One man making a bad decision. Or who knows what went through his head. Did he think that if he got to the horse, it could carry his wife and children to safety? Or help him battle the slavers? We can't know. But he was only one man. That seems a small foundation upon which to condemn all the Wit." He exhaled a short breath through his nose. "Fitz. His decision condemned three generations of his family. It did not seem small to anyone who bore that burden. And my grandmother feared that if I were allowed to go on as I had begun, I would do the same. Find an animal, bond to it, and put it above all other considerations. And after she died, for a time, she was right. I did exactly that. As did you. Have you never looked at your own life and said, 'Take the Wit away, and what changes?' Think on it. If Nosey had not come between you and me, would not we have been closer when you were a boy? If you had not bonded to Smithy, would you have done better with your Skill-lessons? If Nighteyes had not been in your life, could Regal have found excuse to condemn you?"
For a moment, I was stymied. Then I replied, "But if the Wit had not been held a shameful thing, none of that would have been true. If you had spoken of it as Old Blood and taught me why I must not bond, if the Wit had been held in esteem as the Skill is, then all would have been well."
His face darkened with rising blood, and for a moment I glimpsed Burrich's old temper. Then, with a patience that only time could have taught him, he said quietly, "Fitz. It is a thing I was taught from the time my grandmother first discovered the taint in me. The Wit is shameful magic, and it shames a man to practice it. Now, you talk of people who practice it openly and find no disgrace in it. Well, I have heard of places where men marry their sisters and have children, where women go about with their breasts showing, where it is not accounted shameful to discard your mate simply because her youth has faded. Yet, would you teach your children that these behaviors are good? Or would you teach them to live as you yourself were taught?" Chade startled me when he spoke. "There are unspoken rules to every society. Most of us never question them. But surely, Burrich, you must have at some time wondered about what you were taught. Did you never decide that you would determine for yourself if the magic was worth having?"
Burrich turned to regard Chade with his clouded eyes. What did he see? A shape, a shadow, or only his Wit- sense of the old man?
"I always knew it was worth having, Lord Chade. But I was an adult, and I knew the cost of it. Your prince out there; what price would he have to pay for his useful, worthwhile magic if it became known that he was Witted? You deny he has it to shield him from hatred and prejudice. Do you fault me that I tried to shield Chivalry's son?"
Chade looked down at the work of his hands and didn't answer. He had finished. Six containers, everything from flasks to saltboxes, were filled with his explosive powder and resting in kettles or pots. "I'm ready," he said. He lifted his gaze to me and smiled a strange smile. "Let's go and free the dragon."
I could not read his green eyes. I could not decide if he truly intended to free the dragon from the ice or meant to blast it to pieces. Perhaps he himself didn't know. But as if his resolve were contagious, I suddenly felt tight with the need to end this.
"How dangerous is this?" Burrich asked.
"Just as dangerous as it was last night," Chade replied testily.
Burrich put out a hand and ran his fingertips lightly across the pots. "Not six times as dangerous?" he asked. "How will you do it? Will one man set them all, or six?"
Chade thought a moment. "Six men, each to get a kettle fire going. And then Fitz, to go down the line putting the containers in each pot."
I nodded to the wisdom of that. Six men each judging their own time to put the powder in and flee might end up running into one another. "I'll do it."
I carried three of the pots and Chade carried the other three. Burrich brought the sack of fuel and a smaller kettle of coals from the guards' hoarded night fire. The day seemed very bright to me as we walked up the hill. It was warm, for that place, and the sun glinted off the glistening ice. As we walked up the hill together, Burrich asked me, "Are you sure Nettle is safe now? I do not understand the risk she took, but it seems to have frightened all of you."
I swallowed and admitted my guilt. "I asked her to go into the dragon's dream and wake him. Her strongest Skill-talent is the manipulation of dreams. I never paused to consider that it might be dangerous, that the dreams of a dragon might be a far different challenge than the dreams of a man."
"Yet still she went?" There was quiet pride in Burrich's voice. "Yes, she did. Because I asked her. I'm ashamed that I risked her."
He was silent for several strides then said, "So. She knows you, and knows you well enough to trust you. For how long?"
"I'm not sure. It's a hard thing to explain, Burrich." I felt a flush rise but forced myself to speak on. "I used to… look in on you. Not often. Only when it got so… It was wrong of me."
His silence was long. Then he said, "That must have been a special torment for you. For the most part, we have been happy."
I took a deep breath. "Yes. It was. Yet I never realized I was involving Nettle to do it. She was my… I don't know, my focus point, I suppose. After a time, she became aware of me. She knew me through her dreams of me, as a, as a wolf-man." I halted, flustered.
Burrich almost kept the amusement out of his voice as he said, "Well. That accounts for some very odd nightmares, when she was small."
"I didn't know I was doing it. Then, after a time, I became aware of her. In my dreams. We talked there, in the dream worlds she made. It took me a while to realize that she was manifesting the Skill, in a way I'd never seen it used before her. But I never… She doesn't, that is, she doesn't know—" And suddenly I couldn't go any further. My throat had crushed the words unsaid. "I know. If you had told her I wasn't her father, I'd have known."
I nodded wordlessly. It was strange to see how he would perceive such a telling. I thought only of telling her who her father was; Burrich saw it as telling her who was not her father.
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "She will have to be taught how to manage her magic, or the Skill can steal her mind. I know that is so, from what Chivalry taught me of it."
"Nettle should be taught," I conceded. "It has become dangerous for her to go further without being taught. But she will, if we don't intervene. She must be taught."
"By you?" he asked quickly.
"By someone," I amended. And there we left it. I listened to the sound of tools crunching into snow and ice and the ever-present whooshing of the wind over the glacier. It was like a strange music, one interspersed with the upraised voices of the workers as they exhorted one another. But when we arrived at the lip of the ice quarry, work ceased almost immediately.
Chade stood at the edge of our excavation and spoke to them all, explaining his exploding powder and what he intended to do with it. I felt oddly apart from all of it. I looked from face to uplifted face, seeing concern on Web's and intrigue on Cockle's. Some of the men reverted to being boys immediately, with boyish enthusiasm for testing the unknown. Chade went down the ramp with his kettles and I followed with mine. He inspected the holes that Dutiful and Longwick had caused to be dug. One he wanted deepened and another he declined, requesting that a new hole be dug close to the mouth of the caved-in tunnel. All would be in a row, along the deepest fractures that the dragon had made in the ice. Here Chade judged the ice to be weakest and that the powder would have the most efficacy. He chose six men to build the fires in the pots, and Burrich walked slowly down the line of them, giving each kindling and fuel and coals from his fire kettle. Then Chade sent him out of the pit. Chade remained, moving slowly from firepot to firepot, making sure that each was set well in its hole in the ice and that the fire would have a deep foundation of coals for the powder vessels to nestle into. Several times as his chosen men were kindling the fires in their pots, he repeated how these were actually rather small doses of the powder, not enough to do harm to the dragon, only enough to further crack the ice around him so that we might move it more swiftly.
Each man stood as he judged that his pot was burning well enough. In each case, Chade moved down the line, added more fuel, and then sent the man up to stand with the others at the edge of the excavation. Each container of powder was left sitting on the ice, two spans away from the fire. When Chade and I alone remained in the hole, he came to me and spoke quietly. "I will join the others at the edge of the pit. When I nod to you, move swiftly down the kettles. Drop each container of powder into the kettle that matches it. Then come quickly to join me. It will take some little time for the fire to burn through to the powder, but I judge it best that you do not linger here."
"And I."
He paused as if he would say something more, then shook his head wordlessly at me. I wondered again if his will warred with his action. Then I watched him climb up the ramp and join the row of men standing at the edge of the pit looking down at me. It struck me that the walls that had first divided us were gone. Hetgurders, guardsmen, and Wit coterie mingled. Burrich stood beside Chade. Swift was next to Web. Civil's Wit-cat was belly down on the ice, peering down at me curiously.
I took a deep breath, walked to the end of the row, and lifted the first powder vessel. I dropped it into the first burning kettle and sparks flew up around it. The second likewise; the third landed badly and had to be nudged deeper into the flames. I heard the watchers mutter as I did so. The fourth was easy. The fifth stuck to the ice and it seemed to take a year before it gave way to my tugging. Its lid came loose as it did so, and a small quantity of powder leaped from the mouth of it. I put the top back on and brushed it clean. As I set it into its firepot, the flames licked eagerly at the powder-smeared side, sparking and burning white. I reminded myself that quite a lot of time had elapsed before Chade's original flask had exploded in my fireplace. The sixth was as easy as the first, and then I gave in to my impulse and burst into a run. I fled up the ramp and joined the others on the edge of the pit. The fifth pot suddenly burst into a fountaining roar of flames, sparks, and sulfurous fumes. I heard gasps of amazement and fear from the watchers, but as I gained the lip of the pit, the leaping white fire grew less and subsided. The pot that had held it cracked loudly and we heard a hiss as melted water met fire.
When I reached Chade's side, he was shaking his head. "That is one wasted," he said tersely. "El's balls! I wish I'd had more time to test the powder and devise the right sort of container for it. But again, consider how the flame traveled up the powder to reach the main dose of it. Could we use that? I had believed that the powder had to be inside a vessel for it to—"
And then the first explosion went off. It wasn't in the first pot. I think it was the second, that perhaps that container had burned through more swiftly. It was hard to tell, for as shards and lumps of ice burst up from the floor of the pit and rained down around us, one of the other pots, or perhaps two, burst simultaneously. The second blast was much louder than the first, deafening me. I had never experienced anything like it. The very air seemed to slap my skin and my ears felt as if they had been boxed. Fine ice stung my face. I blinked, thinking I'd been blinded, but it was a mist of impossibly fine snow hanging in the air.
Around me, men were yelling, deep-voiced cries of anger and dismay, as they retreated from the lip of the pit. Civil's terrified cat bolted past me, his master in frantic pursuit. From the buried dragon, I felt a wave of outrage. We're trying to free you! I Skilled at him, but felt no response. Beside me, Burrich gripped my shoulder and stared about frantically, his face twisted with panic.
I seized Burrich's arm to guide him back from the lip of the pit but he twisted free of me, crying, "Swift! Where is my son?" as the next explosion slapped the earth against our feet. I found myself driven to my knees and Burrich prone beside me. The air was thick with drifting crystalline ice, and Burrich choked and spat and shouted out, "Swift! Swift, where are you, boy?"
"I'm here, Papa!" the boy cried out, and he came bounding to us through the hanging fog, hurtling into Burrich's embrace. His eyes were huge.
"Thank Eda, you're safe! Stay close by me, now. Damn my eyes. Fitz, what is happening? I expected flame and sparks and smoke, not this! What has that madman done?"
"It's like a log bursting apart in the fire, Burrich, no more than that. The powder has burst, breaking the ice that surrounded it. I did not think it would be like this, but it's over now. Be calm." But even as I spoke the words, seeking to reassure myself as much as him, the earth heaved a second time under our feet. At the same moment, I felt a furious mental onslaught.
You will pay, you puny treacherous grubs! Your blood will be shed, a bucket for every loosened scale on his flesh. I come! Tintaglia's wrath is upon you! All of you will die!
"We're trying to help him, not harm him!" I flung the words wide, voice, Wit, and Skill. She made no reply.
But as I blinked the clinging mist of ice from my lashes and peered down into the pit, something stirred there. The settling flurry of ice crystals concealed it, but within that haze, something dark bucked and heaved, showing above the settling mist like a breaching whale. I heard the squeal and crack of breaking ice, and a smell came to me, a stench of trapped and scabrous flesh, a reptilian stench. I scrabbled to my feet and then ventured closer to the edge of the pit, peering down.
A slow and mammoth struggle was taking place down there. Parts of the dragon's emaciated back were exposed. His tail humped and twitched, almost a separate creature as it strove to free its lashing tip from the ice. One immense hind leg was free, the overgrown claws of the long-captive dragon scoring deep gashes in the ice as it strove to free the rest of his body. Then a wing unfolded, clumps of ice flung wide as it lifted like the tattered canvas of a derelict ship. It flapped desperately, and the waft of unhealthy animal gagged me. Icefyre struggled there, his head and neck still encased in ice. As the mist of ice crystals settled, the humans straggled back to the edge of the pit and stared down, some gawking, some transfixed with horror. Chade's face was a picture. I could not decide if his awe was for the destruction his powder had wrought or for the size of the creature he had partially bared.
Burrich spoke first. "That poor beast." He lifted both his hands, the fingers wide, and pushed gently at the air before him. So often I had seen him gesture as he approached an uneasy horse. Now I wondered if quelling calm emanated from his hands. He raised his voice suddenly. "He needs our help. Shovels and picks, but I want you all to go carefully. It would be as easy to harm him now as to help him. Don't encourage him to struggle." One hand clamped onto Swift's shoulder, and the other stretched out a little before him as he stumbled toward the edge of the pit. "Easy, easy down there," he was already calling, and his words, freighted with soothing Wit, were for the dragon. "We're coming. Still your struggles, you'll only hurt yourself. Or us. Be easy now. We'll help you."
Again, I was aware of the flow of comfort that went with those words. The dragon too seemed affected by them. Or perhaps it was exhaustion that made his struggles slow and then cease.
"Mind the edge of the pit, man. The ramp is this way. Swift, guide your father down there. We'll need him." Web's brow was bleeding from a glancing blow from a chunk of flung ice. He strode past us, unmindful of his own hurt, shovel in hand. For the first time, I became aware that the blast had injured some of us. One Hetgurd man was down, unconscious in the snow, blood trickling from his nose and ears. One of his fellows knelt by him in bewilderment. Civil had caught his hissing cat and held him in an awkward hug, trying to calm the struggling animal. I looked around for Dutiful, and saw him already hurrying down the ramp toward the trapped dragon, using a pry bar as a stave as he descended. The floor of the pit had been broken, reminding me of ice floes on a restless sea.
"My prince! Be careful! He may be dangerous!" Chade bellowed after him, and then he went hastening down the ramp and into the pit. Witted and unWitted alike converged on the trapped creature and began removing the loosened chunks of ice. It was hazardous, for the dragon continued to buck and heave as he struggled to free himself.
The stench was terrible. Starvation and dormant snake fouled the air. Burrich seemed unfazed by it as he stepped forward and then set his hands calmingly on the creature's black and scaly hide. "Be easy. Let us clear away the loosened ice before you struggle any more. Breaking a wing now will not help you." He stilled. It was not Skill but Wit that carried to me the dragon's panicky suffocation. I sensed Icefyre's attention was focused elsewhere now, and suspected that he communicated with Tintaglia. I hoped he would tell her that we were trying to help him.
"We need to get his head free. He can't get enough air to struggle," Burrich told me as I came closer. "I know. I feel it, too." I tried not to smirk as I added, "I am Witted, you know."
I had not realized that Swift would overhear me. Perhaps, because my ears were still ringing, I had spoken more loudly than I thought. But he stared at me, avid and intent. "Then you are FitzChivalry, the Witted Bastard. And it's true that my father raised you in the stables?" There was a strange lilt in his voice, as if he had suddenly discovered a link to fame and legend in his own family. I suppose he had, but I did not think it was healthy.
"We'll discuss it later," Burrich and I said at almost the same instant. Swift gaped at us and then gave a strangled laugh.
"Clear that loose ice from around his left shoulder," Web called as he strode by, and men hastened to obey him, Swift among them.
But Web halted beside us, pick in hand. A sharp motion of his hand halted Swift beside him. Quietly he observed to Burrich, "Later will not wait forever, for either of you. A time will come when both of you will have to explain yourselves to this lad." Yet his words were not a rebuke, and I almost thought that a small smile played across his face when he spoke to us. He bowed to Burrich and went on, "Forgive me if I offend. I know that your sight is failing you, but your shoulders and back still look strong. If your son guided you, you could be most useful helping to pull the sleds full of ice chunks away from the worksite. Would you help us, Burrich?"
I thought Burrich would refuse. I knew he still wished to avoid Web and all he stood for. But the request had been made courteously, and it was a way in which Burrich could be genuinely helpful. I could guess how it chafed him to stand by a trapped animal while others labored to free him. Web's offer was also putting Swift right at Burrich's side, under his paternal authority. I saw Burrich make a difficult compromise. He spoke, not to Web, but to Swift, saying, "Guide me to the sled, lad, and let's put our backs into it."
I was left standing alone as Swift and Burrich, father and son, departed to do Web's bidding. I watched them take up the hauling lines alongside Civil and Cockle. They leaned into their work, and despite Burrich's bad leg, his brawn was much the greatest there. The laden sled moved steadily up the ramp and out of the pit. It had been neatly done, that throwing together of them, and I think Burrich welcomed it as much as Swift did not. Did Web try to mend the rift between them, even as he sought to mellow Burrich's attitude toward the Wit? I was still pondering the permutations of that when the final blast went off.
I now believe that the little kettle I had carelessly left burning when I retreated from the dragon's head had continued to burn. Did it eventually ignite the hides it rested upon, spreading fire to the oil flask and to the powder container? Or had the flask of oil spilled when the earlier, smaller blasts overset it on the hides near the powder and kettle? I have spent far too much time wondering about such useless questions. It was a larger charge of powder, intended to kill. The explosion from it burst the icy roof of the tunnel up into the air at the same time that it blew loose chunks of ice out of the tunnel's mouth and into the pit where we all worked. Men and ice were flung in the slamming concussion of that blast. I myself was thrown across the excavation. In the wake of that blast, ice sharper than arrows rained down and pierced some of us. I felt the falling chunks, but all was white before me. I thought I had been blinded as well as deafened. Then the fine ice mist began to settle, revealing a soundless chaos. I saw Web stumbling past me, his hands clasped over his ears. I saw Eagle crumpled in a broken heap under immense chunks of ice. I saw men screaming but did not hear them. I wondered if I would ever hear anything ever again.
I lifted my eyes and saw Chade and Dutiful looking down in horror. They had not been in the pit, and an instant later I realized that the men dragging out the sleds would also have escaped the worst effects of the blast. But just as I found my feet and decided that none of my bones were broken, a second trembling shook me. The ground beneath me shifted, pieces of ice heaving beneath my feet, and new cracks gaped wide and then suddenly gave way. Black flesh heaved to the top through broken fragments of ice. Free!
It was the most coherent thought I had received from Icefyre, and it was more a sensation of triumph than a word.
His immense black head lifted on a serpentine neck. His wings, half-opened, served him as additional limbs as he levered his way up out of the clinging ice. The sight of his long-trapped body woke pity in me, even in the midst of my horror at what had befallen my fellows. His flesh barely coated his bones, and his scaled skin was tattered and sagging like badly sewn garments. When he opened his wings, there were rents and gaps in them, a fine cloak snagged by brambles.
He wallowed up from the ice, pausing several times to roar and struggle to free a leg and then a wingtip. He was heedless of the men who lay dazed about him, but that did not reassure me, for his sudden great hunger radiated like heat from him. For the first time, I knew on an instinctive level that I was prey to this far larger predator. My words to him would have no more effect on his thoughts than the wild frenzy of a rabbit had on a wolf's thoughts. Nighteyes and I had never tried to speak to our meals while they were alive; neither would this creature. "Fool, what have you turned loose on this world?" I groaned.
The dragon gave another lurching heave and emerged more fully from the tumbled ice. His size only became more impressive as he did so. As Icefyre gained footholds on the shifting wreckage of his tomb, he drew his tail up and out of the ice. It just kept coming, impossibly long, until it lay around him on the broken surface like a whip's curled lash. He threw back his head suddenly and let out a wild cry that began as a deep roar and then climbed until it was beyond reach of my hearing. It was my first perception of sound since the blast, and it seemed a new sense to me as the creature's trumpeting shook the lungs inside my body.
Then I saw his nostrils flare, and his wedged head dipped down toward Eagle's body. Even though the man was dead, what was about to befall him appalled me. Icefyre nosed the body, dislodging it from the ice boulders that had crushed it. He lipped it carefully, and then lifted Eagle up and shook the remaining ice fragments from him, like Nighteyes worrying dead leaves from a fish. The dragon ate like a gull, tossing the meat that had been a man up into the air and opening his maw wide so that the falling body was halfway down his gullet before he gulped. Then Eagle was no more than a lump sliding down that long throat.
The wolf in me was nonjudgmental: a dead man might as well be meat as anything else, and the dragon had done no more than eat carrion. I myself had done it in times of great hunger, and had been glad to steal a share of a bear's kill while the owner slept off his gluttony. But Eagle had been a man and a leader of men, someone who had eaten beside me and met my eyes over a fireside. It upset my order in the world that he could suddenly be no more than food for this creature we had wakened.
In that instant, I dimly grasped the immense scale on which our actions had reordered the world. This was no dragon of stone, imbued with the souls of heroes, awakened to save us. This was a huge creature of flesh, with appetites and drives and the will to sate them for the sake of his own survival, with no regard for what it might cost us humans.
I lifted dazed eyes to look for escape. I was not immediately in front of Icefyre, but I was among his closest available prey. I was shocked to see the bleeding men who had staggered forward to line the edges of the pit and stare down in amazement at what we had freed. Burrich was there, his hand clamped on Swift's shoulder, and Cockle with his greedy minstrel's eyes and Civil. His cat by his knee was twice his normal size, every hair on his body standing up. I looked in vain for Chade and Dutiful and feared they had perished. I saw one booted foot not far from me, and hoped a body was still attached to it under the flung snow. Who was it? I saw Swift's arm lift, his finger pointing at me urgently as he spoke to Burrich, and then that great fool moved his mouth and I knew the words he shouted out, "Fitz! Fitz, get out of there, flee!"
And the dragon's head turned toward that shout. I saw his whirling eyes of silver and black focus on the man who had raised me, I saw his head lift at the end of that long neck, and "No!" I roared out, my own words little more than a whisper to my ears.
He seemed to know he had drawn the dragon's attention to himself, for Burrich turned and gave Swift a savage shove that sent him flying to sprawl facedown in the snow. He turned, weaponless, to face the dragon. And then a second shock threw me from my feet. Suddenly the earth seemed to be giving way under me. Icefyre was also abruptly struggling to keep his footing. He spread his tattered wings wide and clawed at the edges of the pit. Men fled before him as he scrabbled at the edge of it and then hauled himself up out of it. As he did so, the ice beneath him fell away into a gaping hole. Even as I clung to the edges of the pit, some part of my mind recognized what had happened. His struggles to free himself and perhaps Chade's exploding powder had weakened the ceiling of the Pale Woman's grand throne room. It was caving in on her. I savagely hoped she would be crushed under the fall. I looked down at the collapsing ice chunks, draining in ponderous boulders into the palace below. I wondered if some opening to the chamber below would suddenly be revealed, wondered if I could enter that way and survive such a fall amid the cascading ice and somehow free the Fool while he still lived. More likely was that the collapse of the ice ceiling into the chamber below would fill and obliterate it. A quick end for him, some part of me suggested, but I roared out, "No! No, no, no! Beloved Fool! No!"
As if in answer to my cry, something shifted in the ice below me. I stared at it, unable to comprehend the strength of whatever bucked and heaved beneath that avalanche. The movement subsided. I clung to the icy ledge, and cried out in shock as Dutiful's hand suddenly gripped my wrist. "Come up!" he bellowed at me, and I suddenly knew he had been calling to me before this, trying to get my attention away from the fall of ice and the struggling dragon. Icefyre was almost free of the pit. The others seemed to have fled, save for two limp bodies that I could not identify.
I gave Dutiful my weight and he grunted as he took it, bracing to allow me to scrabble up the edge of the pit and out. "Where is Chade? We must flee!" I bellowed at him. He made a wide gesture that seemed to indicate that the others had fled downhill, toward the camp. Then he opened his mouth wide and then wider as his eyes popped from their sockets in terror. I twisted to look back over my shoulder, for he was staring down into the pit. In the bottom of the collapsed pit of ice, churning his way to the top like a toad emerging from an icy hibernation, was the Pale Woman's dragon. Life had imparted no grace to him. He was still a creature crudely carved and fashioned of many discordant lives, a murky gray color like unfired clay. My Wit sensed his roaring hunger. He was hollow with appetite and I knew he would devour anything within his reach. Then the blast of his Skill-thrust hit me, and I quailed before it. It was not just the hunger of a ravenous beast. One personality had come to dominate the dragon that wallowed and roared beneath us. I knew that she must have flung him to her stone dragon in a last wild effort to wake it. And the Pale Woman had succeeded.
Rawbread comes! I come to conquer and kill and devour. I hunger for farmers' flesh. Revenge shall be mine today! His gaze snagged on Icefyre. Six Duchies dragon, today you die! The stone dragon lunged, his great jaws closing on the base of Icefyre's tail. He braced his stubby legs and began to drag the black dragon back into the pit with him.