I stared at the battered tools, and considered all the months that Verity had been gone. For this? For the carving of a stone dragon?

"I don't understand," I said faintly.

Kettle spoke clearly, as if I were slow. "He has been carving a dragon, and storing all his memories in it. That is part of why he seems so vague. But there is more. I believe he used the Skill to kill Carrod, and has taken grievous hurt in so doing." She shook her head sadly. "To have come so close to finishing, and then to be defeated. I wonder how sly Regal's coterie is. Did they send one against him, knowing that if Verity killed with the Skill, he might defeat himself?"

"I do not think any of that coterie would willingly sacrifice himself."

Kettle smiled bitterly. "I did not say he was willingly sent. Nor did I say he knew what his fellows intended. It is like the game of stones, FitzChivalry. One plays each stone to best advantage in the game. The object is to win, not to hoard one's stones."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Girl on a Dragon

Early in our resistance to the Red-Ships, before anyone in the Six Duchies had begun to call it a war, King Shrewd and Prince Verity realized that the task facing them was overwhelming. No individual man, no matter how Skilled, could stand alone to fend the Red-Ships from our coasts. King Shrewd summoned before him Galen, the Skillmaster, and directed him to create for Verity a coterie to aid the prince's efforts. Galen resisted this idea, especially when he found that one of those he must train was a royal bastard. The Skillmaster declared that none of the students presented to him were worthy of training. But King Shrewd insisted, telling him to make the best of them that he could. When Galen grudgingly gave in, he created the coterie that bore his name.

It soon became apparent to Prince Verity that the coterie, while internally cohesive, did not work well with the prince at all. By then Galen had died, leaving Buckkeep with no successor to the post of Skillmaster. In desperation, Verity sought for others trained in the Skill who might come to his aid. Although there had been no coteries created in the peaceful years of King Shrewd's reign, Verity reasoned that there might still live men and women trained for coteries before that. Had not the longevity of coterie members always been legendary? Perhaps he could find one who would either help him, or be able to train others in the Skill.

But Prince Verity's efforts in this area availed him nothing. Those he could identify as Skill users from records and word of mouth were all either dead, or mysteriously vanished. So Prince Verity was left to wage his war alone.

Before I could press Kettle to clarify her answers, there was a cry from Verity's tent. Every one of us jumped, but Kettle was the first to the tent flap. The Fool emerged, gripping his left wrist in his right hand. He went straight to the water bucket and plunged in his hand. His face was contorted with either pain or fear, perhaps both. Kettle stalked after him to peer at the hand he gripped.

She shook her head in disgust. "I warned you! Here, take it out of the water, it won't do it any good. Nothing will do it any good. Stop. Think about it. It's not really pain, it's just a sensation you've never felt before. Take a breath. Relax. Accept it. Accept it. Breathe deep, breathe deep."

All the while she spoke, she tugged at the Fool's arm until he reluctantly drew his hand from the water. Kettle immediately overset the bucket with her foot. She scuffed rock dust and gravel over the spilled water, all the while gripping the Fool's arm. I craned my neck to peer past her. His first three fingers on his left hand were now tipped with silver. He looked at them with a shudder. I had never seen the Fool so unnerved.

Kettle spoke firmly. "It won't wash off. It won't wipe off. It's with you now, so accept it. Accept it."

"Does it hurt?" I asked anxiously.

"Don't ask him that!" Kettle snapped at me. "Don't ask him anything just now. See to the King, FitzChivalry, and leave the Fool to me."

In my worry over the Fool, I had all but forgotten my king. I stooped to enter the tent. Verity sat on two folded blankets. He was struggling to lace up one of my shirts. I deduced that Starling had ransacked all the packs to find clean clothes for him. It smote me to see him so thin that one of my shirts fit him.

"Allow me, my king," I suggested.

He not only dropped his hands away, he put them behind his back. "Is the Fool much hurt?" he asked me as I fought with the knotted strings. He sounded almost like my old Verity.

"Just three fingertips are silvered," I told him. I saw that the Fool had laid out a brush and thong. I stepped behind Verity, and began to brush his hair back. He hastily snatched his hands around in front of him. Some of the gray in his hair had been rock dust, but not all. His warrior's queue was now gray with black streaks in it and coarse as a horse's tail. I struggled to smooth it back. As I tied the thong I asked him, "What does it feel like?"

"These?" he asked, holding up his hands and waggling the fingers. "Oh. Like Skill. Only more so, and on my hands and arms."

I saw he thought he had answered my question. "Why did you do it?" I asked.

"Well, to work the stone, you know. When this power is on my hands, the stone must obey the Skill. Extraordinary stone. Like the Witness Stones in Buck, did you know that? Only they are not nearly as pure as what is here. Of course, hands are poor tools for working stone. But once you have cut away all the excess, down to where the dragon waits, then he can be awakened with your touch. I draw my hands over the stone, and I recall to it the dragon. And all that is not dragon shivers away in shards and chips. Very slowly, of course. It took a whole day just to reveal his eyes."

"I see," I murmured, at a loss. I did not know whether he was mad or if I believed him.

He stood up as far as he could in the low tent. "Is Kettricken angry with me?" he asked abruptly.

"My lord king, it is not for me to say…"

"Verity," he interrupted wearily. "Call me Verity, and for Eda's sake, answer the question, Fitz."

He sounded so like his old self I wanted to embrace him. Instead, I said, "I do not know if she is angry. She is definitely hurt. She came a long and weary way to find you, bearing terrible news. And you did not seem to care."

"I care, when I think of it," he said gravely. "When I think of it, I grieve. But there are so many things I must think of, and I cannot think of them all at once. I knew when the child died, Fitz. How could I not know? He, too, and all I felt, I have put into the dragon."

He walked slowly away from me, and I followed him out of the tent. Outside, he stood up straight, but did not lose the stoop in his shoulders. Verity was an old man now, far older than Chade somehow. I did not understand that, but I knew it was true. Kettricken glanced up at his approach. She looked back into the fire, and then, almost unwillingly she stood, stepping clear of the sleeping wolf. Kettle and Starling were binding the Fool's fingers in strips of cloth. Verity went straight to Kettricken and stood beside her. "My queen," he said gravely. "If I could, I would embrace you. But you have seen that my touch…" He gestured at the Fool and let his words trail away.

I had seen the look on her face when she had told Verity about the stillbirth. I expected her to turn aside from him, to hurt him as he had hurt her. But Kettricken's heart was larger than that. "Oh, my husband," she said, and her voice broke on the words. He held his silvered arms wide, and she came to him, taking him in her embrace. He bowed his gray head over the rough gold of her hair, but could not allow his hand to touch her. He turned his silvered cheek away from her. His voice was husky and broken as he asked her, "Did you give him a name? Our son?"