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
