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
