Kennit looked only at the boy. He appeared to be pondering her words. 'I see. But we shall move him carefully, and we will not leave him there long. The ship needs assurance that he lives still, and I think he may need her strength to heal.'
'I am sure you know better than I-' she faltered, but he cut off her objection with 'I am certain that I do. Go fetch some crewmen to move him. I shall wait here.'
WINTROW SWAM DEEP, IN DARKNESS AND WARMTH. SOMEWHERE, FAR ABOVE, there was a world of light and shadow, of voices and pain and touch. He avoided it. In another plane, there was a being that groped after him, calling him by his name and baiting him with memories as well. She was harder to elude, but his determination was strong. If she found him, there would be great pain and disillusionment for both of them. As long as he remained a tiny formless being swimming through the dark, he could avoid it all.
Something was being done to his body. There was clatter, talk and fuss. He centered himself against anticipated pain. Pain had the power to grasp him and hold him. Pain might be able to drag him up to that world where he had a body and a mind and a set of memories that went with them. Down here, it was much safer.
It only seems that way. And while it seems that way for a long time, eventually you will long for light and movement, for taste and sound and touch. If you wait too long, those things may be lost to you forever.
This voice boomed rich all around him like the thundering of surf against rocks. Like the ocean itself, the voice turned and tumbled him, considering him from all angles. He tried in vain to hide from it. It knew him. 'Who are you?' he demanded.
The voice was amused. Who am V. You know; who I am, Wintrow Vestrit. I am whom you most fear, and whom she most fears. I am the one you avoid acknowledging. I am the one you deny and conceal from yourself and each other. Yet, lama part of you both.
The voice paused and waited for him, but he would not speak the words. He knew that the old naming magic worked both ways. To know a creature's true name was to have the power to bind it. But the naming of such a creature could also make it real.
I am the dragon. The voice spoke with finality. You know me now. And nothing will ever be the same.
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' he babbled silently. 'I didn't know. None of us knew. I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry.'
Not as sorry as I am. The voice was implacable in its grief. Nor yet as sorry as you shall be.
'But it wasn't my fault! I had nothing to do with it!'
Nor was it my fault, yet I am the one punished most grievously of all. Fault has no place in the greater scheme of things, little one. Fault and guilt are as useless as apology once the deed is done. Once the action has been taken, all must endure what follows.
'But why are you down here so deep?'
Where else should I be? Where else is left to me? By the time I recalled who I was, your memories were stacked many layers deep upon me. Yet here I am, and here I shall remain, no matter how long you deny me. The voice paused. No matter how long I may deny myself, it added wearily.
Pain scoured him. Wintrow struggled in a blaze of heat and light, fighting to keep his eyes closed and his tongue stilled. What were they doing to him? It did not matter. He would not react to it. If he moved, if he cried out, he would have to admit he was alive and Vivacia was dead. He would have to admit his soul was linked to a thing that had been dead longer than he had been alive. It was beyond macabre; it numbed him with horror. This was the wonder and glory of a liveship. He must consort forever with death. He did not wish to awaken and acknowledge that.
Would you prefer to remain down here with me? There was bitter amusement in the being's voice now. Do you wish to linger in the tomb of my past?
'No. No, I wish to be free.'
Free?
Wintrow faltered. 'I don't want to know any of this. I don't want to have ever been a part of it.'
You were a part of it as soon as you were conceived. There is no way to undo such a thing.
'Then what must I do?' The words wailed through him, unvoiced. 'I cannot live with this.'
You could die, the voice offered sardonically.
'I don't want to die.' Of that, at least, he was certain.
Neither did I, the voice pointed out remorselessly. But I did. Rich as I am in memories of flying, my own wings never were unfurled. For the sake of building this ship, my cocoon was stripped from me before I could hatch. They dumped that which would have been my body to the cold stone floor. All I am are memories, memories stored in the walls of my cocoon, memories I should have reabsorbed as 1 formed in the hot sun of summer. I had no way to live or grow, save through the memories your kind offered. I absorbed what you gave me, and when it was enough, I quickened. But not as myself. No. I became the shape you had imposed upon me, and took to myself the personality that was the sum of your family's expectations. Vivacia.
A sudden shift in the position of his body freshened Wintrow's physical pain. Air flowed over him and the warmth of the sun touched him. Even that contact scoured his denuded flesh. But worst of all was the voice that called to him in a mixture of gladness and concern. 'Wintrow? Can you hear me? It's Vivacia. Where are you, what are you doing that I cannot feel you at all?'
He felt the ship's thoughts reach for him. He cringed away, unwilling to let her touch minds with him. He made himself smaller, hid deeper. The moment Vivacia reached him, she must know all that he did. What would it do to her, to confront what she truly was?
Do you fear it will drive her mad? Do you fear she will take you with her? There was fierce exultation in the voice as it framed the thought, almost like a threat. Wintrow went cold with fear. Instantly he knew that this hiding place was no asylum, but a trap. 'Vivacia!' he called out wildly, but his body did not obey him. No lips voiced his cry. Even his thought was muffled in the dragon's being, wrapped and stifled and confined. He tried to struggle; he was suffocating under the weight of her presence. She held him so close he could not recall how to breathe. His heart leaped arrhythmically. Pain slapped him as his body jerked in protest. In a distant world, on a sun-washed deck, voices cried out in helpless dismay. He retreated to a stillness of body and soul that was one degree of darkness away from death.
Good. There was satisfaction in the voice. Be still, little one. Don't try to defy me, and I won't have to kill you. A pause. I really have no desire to see any of us die. As closely interwoven as we are, the death of any of us would be a risk to the others. You would have realized that, if you had paused to think. 1 give you that time now. Use it to ponder our situation.
For a space, Wintrow focused only on his survival. Breath caught, then shuddered through his lungs again. His heartbeat steadied. He was peripherally aware of exclamations of relief. Pain still seethed. He tried to pull his mind back from it, to ignore its clamor of serious damage to his body so that his thoughts could focus on the problem the dragon had set him.
He cringed at her sudden flash of irritation. By all that flies, have you no sense at all? How have creatures like you managed to survive and infest the world so thoroughly and yet have so little knowledge of yourselves? Do not pull back from the pain and imagine that makes you strong. Look at it, you dolt! It is trying to tell you what is wrong so you confix it. No wonder you all have such short life spans. No, look at it! Like this.
THE CREWMEN WHO HAD CARRIED THE CORNERS OF THE SHEET SUPPORTING Wintrow's body had lowered him gently to the deck. Even so, Kennit had seen the spasm of fresh pain that crossed Wintrow's face. He supposed that could be taken as an encouraging sign; at least he still reacted to pain. But when the figurehead had spoken to him, he had not even twitched. None of the others surrounding the supine figure could guess how much that worried Kennit. The pirate had been certain that the boy would react to the ship's voice. That he did not meant that perhaps death would claim him. Kennit believed that there was a place between life and death where a man's body became no more than a miserable animal, capable only of an animal's responses. He had seen it. Under Igrot's cruel guidance, his father had lingered in that state for days. Perhaps that was where Wintrow was now.
The dim light inside the cabin had been merciful. Out here, in the clear light of day, Kennit could not insist to himself that Wintrow would be fine. Every ugly detail of his scalded body was revealed. His brief fit of spasms had disturbed the wet scabs his body had managed to form; fluid ran over his skin from his injuries. Wintrow was
