I stood silent for a moment, pondering that. Then I said quietly, 'I can't help what people think, Chade.'

'You won't avoid him?'

I met his eyes. 'No. He's my friend.'

Chade folded his lips for a moment. Then, very cautiously he asked, 'Is there any chance that you could persuade him to our way of thinking?'

'To your way of thinking?' I corrected him- 'I doubt it. This isn't some whim he has suddenly conceived, Chade. All his life, he has believed he is the White Prophet. Part of his mission in life is to restore dragons to the world. I don't think I can persuade him that is not a good idea.'

'You've been friends for a very long time. He cares deeply about you,' Chade observed delicately.

'Which is exactly why I wouldn't attempt to influence him that way.' I pushed my hair hack out of my face. The drying sweat from my digging was beginning to chill me. I ached, and not just in body. 'Chade. In this, you will have to trust me. I cannot be your tool, and I cannot promise that I will act in a certain way regardless of what we dig up. This one time in my life, I have to be true to myself.'

Anger twitched his face, and then in a flash so swift I almost missed it, hurt. He turned aside from me, putting his countenance in shadow as he said, 'I see. I had thought your vow to the Farseers meant more to you than that. And, foolishly, I had thought that perhaps we had been friends a long time, perhaps even longer than you and the Fool.'

'Oh, Chade.' I was suddenly so weary I could scarcely speak. 'You are far more to me than friend. You have been my mentor, and my parent and my protector when many hands were lifted against me. Never doubt that I would lay down my life for you.'

'And he is a Farseer,' Dutiful suddenly interjected, startling both of us. 'One whose vow to his family has already cost him many things. So, this time, as your prince, I command this, FitzChivalry Farseer. Keep your vow, to yourself. Be as true to your own heart as you were to Verity's, and to King Shrewd's before him. That is the command of your king.'

I looked at him, amazed, not just at the generosity of his command, a freedom that no other Farseer king had ever thought to grant me, but also at his sudden change from sulky fifteen-year-old to heir to the throne. He frowned slightly at my puzzled look, completely unaware of what he had done. I found my tongue. 'Thank you, my prince. That is the greatest boon that any Farseer king has ever granted me.'

'You're welcome. I just hope that I haven't done something truly foolish. For we must both recall that regardless of what decision you make for yourself, I must hew to my promise to the Narcheska. I am here to take the dragon's head. And much joy may she have of a frozen skull.' Abruptly, he was a morose boy again. I looked at him, and was newly reminded of how difficult all this must be for him. He had left stolen kisses behind on Mayle Island. I doubted he had

had a private word with Elliania since we'd left her mothershouse. He shook his head to my sympathetic look. 'I can only try to do right, and hope that this time I have truly guessed what "right" is.1

'That makes two of us,' Chade grumbled.

'No. Three,' I contradicted him. He was bent over by the little flrepot and had succeeded in waking the embers to a single tongue of flame. He took a small piece of coal and added it to the tiny fire.

'I'm too old to be doing this any more,' he repeated his favourite complaint.

'No. You're not. You'll only be old when you try to stop doing this. I think this trip has done you good.' I hunkered down beside him. 'Chade. Please believe this of me. This isn't about whether you or the Fool pulls my strings. It isn't a contest of will between you two to see who holds my heart.'

'Then what is it?' he demanded grudgingly.

I tried to give him an answer. 'I need to see what is true, before I decide what stance I'll support. We've all known, since before we left Buckkeep, that there is an undercurrent to the Narcheska's request. There may come a time when you are glad I hesitated and did not blindly obey her will. Her handmaid, Henja, was connected somehow to the Piebalds. I'll wager whatever you like on that. She and Peottre and their mothershouse defy the majority of the Hetgurd to put this condition on the Prince. Why? What do they gain? What value to them is a rotting dragon's head?'

'She does not seem pleased with having to ask this of me,' Dutiful observed quietly. 'She is hard as stone in her determination that I must do this thing for her. Yet she does not seem to regard it with anticipation or eagerness, but dread and reluctance. As if it is not of her will that she asks this.'

'Then whose? Peottre's?'

Chade slowly shook his head. 'No. His interests run with hers, and she is loyal to him. I think that if she asked this to please him, she would take more pleasure in it. No. So. Fitz asks our basic question. Whose will?'

I gave my best guess. 'Henja's. She has power over them somehow.

We have seen that. And she is connected to the Piebalds, who have no love for us.'

'The Piebalds.' Chadc pondered this. 'Do you discount the Fool's Pale Woman, then?' He asked the question keenly.

'I do not know. What have we seen or heard of her? Nothing save what the Fool has told us. The Outislanders speak of her as an old evil, a malevolence from the past to be avoided, but not with the dread of something that lurks now. Our Six Duchies dragons killed her and Kehal Rawbread, or so I have often heard. Yet the Outislanders still connect them with this island. They say they mined the black stone here to ballast their White Ships. And there is no denying that the aborted stone dragon back at our landing spot stinks of Red Ship Forging.' A sudden yawn ambushed me.

'Oh, go to bed,' Chade rebuked me. 'At least you can rest. Tonight the Prince and I shall reach far and see if we cannot persuade Nettle to aid us. I will admit that I long to know what is passing in the Six Duchies these days. If the Piebalds have stirred to action there, it might tell us that they play a double game.'

'Perhaps,' Dutiful agreed with a yawn, and 1 suddenly pitied him. I was going to honest sleep. He had a night's work ahead of him. Yet, as I bade them good night and left their tent, I sensed that he regarded Nettle as a challenge he anticipated as well as dreaded. I set aside worrying about that as I left the tent. It was pointless. I was out of that game for now. Perhaps for always. I felt the earth lurch under me as I considered that thought, and then forced myself to go on. Would it be so terrible to go through the rest of my life unSkilled? Could not I think of it as being free of the Skill?

I made a brief stop at the guardsmen's tent. Longwick kept a weary watch at the opening. He nodded at me silently as I slipped inside amongst the heavily sleeping men-at-arms and then out again. He did not ask what I was about. Chade's man. Chade's men, I corrected myself, looking around at the sleeping forms. Every guardsman on this island with us had been hand-picked by him, for both discretion and loyalty. How ruthlessly would they obey his commands?

I was still pondering that when I paused outside the Fool's tent. I listened for a moment to the sweep of the wind that stirred flurries of ice crystals in a storm at ankle height. Every now and then a

gust would propel a stinging onslaught into my face. But wind and rustling ice was all 1 heard. Within the Fool's tent, all was silent, but the bright figures on the outside of the thin, tight fabric glowed with the life of the tiny fire within. 'May I come in?' I asked quietly.

lA moment,' he replied as softly. I heard the rustle of fabric, almost indistinguishable from the wind, and after a brief wait, he untied the door-flap and admitted me. Clinging frost came with me. It could not be helped, yet the Fool still winced as I brushed it from my clothes. I took the bundled Elderling robe from inside my coat, 'Here. 1 brought it back.1