I thought I understood, too, what the Fool had in mind and why he had come here. 'Don't do it!I I pleaded with him, and when he looked at me in sharp surprise, I said, 'I know you are thinking of putting your memories of her torture of you into the dragon. Girl on a Dragon could drain them out of you and keep them forever locked away where they cannot stab you. It would work. I know that. But there is a cost to that surcease from pain, Fool. When you dull pain and hide it from yourself . . .' My words trickled away. I did not want to sound self-pitying.

'You dull your joys as well.' He said it simply. He looked away from me for a time, his lips folded. I wondered if he weighed the one against the other. Would he decide to be rid of night terrors at the expense of taking fresh joy in every morning? 'I saw that in you, afterwards,' he said. 'I felt guilty. If I had not been chipping away at Girl on a Dragon, you never would have done it. I wished to undo it. Years later, when I came to see you at your cottage, I thought, "surely he will be healed by now. Surely he will have recovered."' He swung his gaze to meet me. 'But you had not. You had just . . . stopped. In some ways. Oh, you were older and wiser, I suppose. But you had not made any move on your own to reach out to life again. But for your wolf, I think it would have been even worse. As it was, you were living like a mouse in a wall, off the crumbs of affection that Starling tossed to you. As thick-skinned as she is, even she could sec it. She gave you Hap and you took him in. But if she had not brought him to your doorstep and dumped him there, would you have sought out anyone to share your life?' He leaned closer to me and said, 'Even after you came back to Buckkeep and your old world, you held yourself apart from it. No matter what I did or offered. Myblack. You couldn't even connect to a horse.'

I stood very still. His words stung hut they were also true. 'Done is done,' I said at last. 'The best I can do now is to say, if that is what you came here to do, don't do it. It wasn't worth it.'

He sighed. 'I'll admit I thought of it. I admit I longed for it. I will even tell you that this is not the first time I have visited Girl on a Dragon since we came here. I thought of offering her my memories. I know she would take them, just as she took yours. But ... in a way . . . although I did not see this future, almost it seems as if it was meant to be. Fitz. What do you recall of her story?'

I took a breath. 'Verity told me that she was part of a coterie making a dragon. I recall her name. Salt. I discovered that, the night I gave her my memories. But Salt could not give herself willingly to the dragon. She sought to remain a part of the coterie, and yet separate, to be only the Girl of Girl on a Dragon. And with that, she doomed them. Because she held back too much, they did not have enough life to take flight as a dragon. They nearly quickened, but then mired down in stone. UnI'll you freed them.'

'UnI'll we freed them.' After a long time, he said, 'It is like an echo of a dream to me. Salt was the leader of the coterie, and so it was called Salt's Coterie. But, when it came to the carving, the one willing to give heart to the dragon was Realder. So. When all believed that the dragon would be quickened, it was announced as Realder's Dragon.' He looked at me quietly. 'You saw her. Crowned with the Rooster Crown. A rare honour, and even rarer for a foreigner. But she had come a long way to seek her Catalyst. And like me, she had taken on the role of performer, jester, minstrel, tumbler.' He shook his head. 'I had only that moment of being her. Just that brief dream, when I stood upon the pillar. I was, as I am, a White Prophet, and I stood high above the crowd and announced the flight of Realder's Dragon to the people of this Elderling town. But not without regrets. For I knew that my Catalyst would do that day what he had always been destined to do. He would enter a dragon, so that years hence, he could work a change.' He stopped and smiled a bitter-sweet smile, the first I had seen on his face in days. 'How it must have grieved her, to see Realder's dragon mire and fail due to Salt's hesitation. She probably thought that she had failed, too. But if Realder had not made a dragon, and if that dragon had not failed, and if we had not found them there, still, in the quarry . . . what then, FitzChivalry Farseer? You looked far back that day, to see a White Prophet clowning on top of a Skill-pillar. Did you see all that?'

I blinked slowly. It was like awakening from a dream, or perhaps returning to one. His words seemed to wake memories I could not possibly hold.

'I will give Realder's dragon the Rooster Crown. That was the price he named for me, the first time I flew with him. He said that he wished to wear forever the crown the White Prophet wore, on the day his beloved said farewell to him right before he entered this dragon.'

'The price for what?' I asked him, but he did not answer. Instead, he looped the crown over one of his wrists and then began his cautious climb up the dragon. It saddened me to see him move so stiffly and cautiously. Almost I could feel the tightness of the new skin that pulled across his back. But I did not offer him my hand; I think that would have made it worse for both of us. Once he stood behind her on the dragon's haunches, he balanced himself. Then, taking the crown in both hands, he settled the circle on her brow. For a moment, it remained as it was, silvery wood. And then, colour flowed into it from the dragon. The crown gleamed gold, the rooster heads that ringed it shone red and their jewelled eyes winked. The feathers themselves took on the gloss of real feathers and lost all stiffness, to bow just as real cockerel plumes would have nodded.

A deeper flush seemed to suffuse the Girl's cheeks. She seemed to draw a breath. I was transfixed with amazement. And then her eyes opened, as green as her dragon's scales. She gave no look to me, but twisted in her seat to look up at the Fool still standing on the dragon's haunches behind her. She reached back a hand to cup his jaw. Her eyes locked with his. He leaned closer to her, captured by her gaze. Then her hand moved to the back of his head, and she pulled his mouth down onto hers.

She kissed him deeply. I had to witness the passion of what she shared with him. Yet it did not seem like gratitude, and as she prolonged the kiss, I think the Fool would have broken away if he could. He stiffened, and the muscles of his neck stood out. He never embraced her, but his hands went from wide open and forbidding to clenched fists clutched against his chest. And still she kissed him, and I feared to see him either melt into her or turn to stone in her embrace. I feared what he gave and feared more what she took from him. Had not he heard a word of what I had said to him? Why hadn't he heeded my warning?

And then, as suddenly as she had stirred to life, she released him. As if he no longer mattered, she turned away from him and once more stretched her face up to the sunlight. It seemed to me that she sighed once, deeply, and then closed her eyes. Stillness crept over her. The gleaming Rooster Crown had become a part of Girl on a Dragon.

But the Fool, released from that unwelcome intimacy, was limp and falling. In a near swoon, he toppled from the dragon's back, and I was barely able to catch him and keep him from tearing loose all his newly-healed hurts. Even so, he cried out as I closed my arms around him. I could feel him shuddering, like a man in an ague. He turned to me, his eyes blind, and cried out piteously, 'It is too much. You are too human, Fitz. I am not made for such as this. Take it from me, take it, or I shall die of it.'

'Take what?' I demanded.

Breathlessly, he replied, 'Your pain. Your life.'

I stood frozen and uncomprehending as he lifted his mouth to mine.