I nodded. "At least. There were cat tracks near the water. Two different sizes."

"We know one rode a warhorse. Should we expect at least one large warrior?"

I shrugged reluctantly. "I think we should expect anything. Including more than six opposing us. They ride toward safety of some kind, Fool. Perhaps an Old Blood settlement, or a Piebald stronghold. And perhaps we are watched even now as we follow." I glanced up. I had not noticed any birds paying us undue attention, but that did not mean there weren't any. With the folk we pursued now, a bird in the air or a fox in a bush could be a spy. We could take nothing for granted.

"How long has it been happening to you?" the Fool asked as we rode.

"The shared dreams with the Prince?" I had not the energy to try to dissemble with him. "Oh, for some time."

"Even before that night you dreamed he was at Galekeep?"

I answered reluctantly. "I'd had a few odd dreams before then. I didn't realize they were the Prince's."

"You hadn't told me of them, only that you'd dreamed of Molly and Burrich and Nettle." He cleared his throat and added, "But Chade had mentioned some of his suspicions to me."

"Did he?" I was not pleased to hear that. I did not like to think of Chade and the Fool discussing me behind my back.

"Was it always the Prince, or only the Prince? Or are there other dreams?" The Fool tried to conceal the depth of his interest, but I had known him too long.

"Besides the dreams you already know about?" I deferred. I debated swiftly, not whether to lie to him, but how much of the truth I wished to share. Lying to the Fool was wasted effort. He had always known when I lied to him, and managed to deduce the truth from it. Limiting his knowledge was the better tactic. And I felt no scruples about it, for it was the device he most often employed against me. "You know that I dreamed of you. And, as I told you, once I dreamed clearly of Burrich, clear enough that I nearly went to him. Those, I would say, are the same types of dreams as those I have had about the Prince."

"You do not, then, dream of dragons?"

I thought knew what he meant. "Of Verity-as-Dragon? No." I looked away from his keen yellow glance. I mourned my King still. "Even when I touched the stone that had held him, I felt no trace of him. Only that distant Wit-humming, like a beehive far under the earth. No. Even in my dreams, I do not reach him."

"Then you have no dragon-dreams?" he pressed me.

I sighed. "Probably no more than you do. Or anyone who lived through that summer and watched them fly through the skies over the Six Duchies. What man could have seen that sight, and never dream of it again?" And what Skill- addicted bastard could have watched Verity carve his dragon and enter into it, and not have dreamed of ending that way himself? Flowing into the stone, and taking it on as flesh, and rising into the sky to soar over the world. Of course, dreamed sometimes of being a dragon. suspected, nay, I knew, that when old age found me, I would make a futile trek into the Mountains and back to that quarry. But like Verity, I would have no coterie to assist me in the carving of my dragon. Somehow it did not matter that I knew I could not succeed. I could imagine no other death than one devoted to the attempt to carve a dragon.

I rode on, distracted, and tried to ignore the odd looks the Fool cast my way from time to time. I did not deserve the next bolt of luck that struck me, but I was glad of it all the same. As we came to the lip of a small valley, a trick of the terrain provided me with a single glimpse of those we pursued. The narrow valley was forested, but divided by a noisy watercourse swollen by last night's storm. Those we followed were in the midst of fording it. They would have had to turn in their saddles and look up to see us. I reined in, motioning the Fool to do likewise, and silently watched the party below. Seven horses, one riderless. There were two women and three men, one on an immense horse. There were three cats, not two, though in fairness to my tracking skills, two were similar in size. All three cats rode behind their owners' saddles. The smallest cat rode behind a boy, dark haired in a voluminous cloak of Buckkeep blue. The Prince. Dutiful.

His cat's distaste for the water they crossed was evident in her tense posture and the set of her claws. I saw them for but an instant, and felt an odd giddiness at the sight. Then tree branches cloaked them. As I watched, the final rider and her mount lurched from the rocky streambed and up the slick clay bank beyond it. As she vanished into the forest, I wondered if she was the Prince's ladylove.

"That was a big man on the big horse," the Fool observed reluctantly.

"Yes. And they will fight as one. They were bonded, those two."

"How could you tell?" he demanded curiously. "I don't know," I replied honestly. "It is the same as seeing an old mamed couple in. the market. No one has to tell you. You can just see it, in how they move together and how they speak to one another."

"A horse. Well, that may present some challenges I hadn't expected." It was my turn to give him a puzzled look, but he glanced away from it.

We followed, but more cautiously. We wanted to catch glimpses of them without being seen ourselves. As we did not know where they were going, we could not race ahead to intercept them, even if the rough and wild terrain had offered us that possibility. "Our best option may be to wait until they've settled for the night, and then go in after the Prince," the Fool suggested.

"Two flaws," I replied. "By nightfall, we may reach wherever it is they're going. If we do, we may find them in a fortified location, or with many more companions. The second is that if they camp again, they will post sentries, just as they did before. We'd have to get past them first."

"So your plan is?"

"Wait until they camp tonight," I admitted gloomily. "Unless we see a better opportunity before then."

My premonition of disaster grew as the afternoon passed. The trail we followed showed signs of use by more than deer and rabbits. Other people used this path; it led to somewhere, a town or village, or at the least, a meeting place. I dared not wait for nightfall and their camp.

.

We ghosted closer than we had before. The uneven-ness of the terrain we crossed favored us, for as soon as they began their descent of the ridge, we could venture closer, Several times we had to leave the trodden path to keep hidden below the ridgeline, but those we followed seemed confident that they were now in safer territory. They did not often look back. I studied their marching order as trees hid and then revealed them. The man on the big horse led the way, followed by the two women. The second woman led the riderless horse. Our Prince came fourth, with his cat behind him on the saddle. Following him were the two other men and their cats. They rode like folk determined to cover ground before nightfall.

"He looks like you did as a boy," the Fool observed as we once more watched them wend out of sight.

"He looks like Verity to me," I disagreed. It was true.

The boy did look like Verity, but he looked even more likemy father's portrait. I could not say if he looked like me atthat age. I had had little to do with looking glasses then. Hehad dark, thick hair, as unruly as Verity's and mine. I wondered, briefly, if my father had ever struggled to get a combthrough his. His portrait was my only image of him, and inthat he was faultlessly groomed. Like my father, the youngPrince was long of limb, rangier than stocky Verity, but hemight fill out as he got older. He sat his horse well. And justas I had noted with the man on the large horse, I could seehis bond with the cat that rode behind him. Dutiful heldhis head tipped back, as if to be aware always of the catbehind him. The cat was smallest of the three, yet largerthan I had expected her to be. She was long legged andtawny, with a rippling pattern of pale and darker stripes.