Many of the chambers on this stone level seemed untouched by the vandalism and degradation I had seen elsewhere in the ice fortress. Themes of forest and flowers or fish and birds were lovingly chiselled into the stone lintels, and were echoed in the friezes within the chambers. The friezes seemed exotic and foreign, the colours either too pastel or too smoky for my Six Duchies taste. The figures of the humans were elongated, with fancifully coloured eyes and strange markings on their faces. They called to mind Selden, the Bingtown Trader, with his unnatural growth and scaled face. I said as much to the Fool, and he nodded. Sometime later, as we walked down yet another stone passageway, he asked me, 'Have you ever seen a white rose that has grown for years in proximity to a red?'

'Probably,' I said, thinking of the gardens at Buckkeep. 'Why?'

His mouth quirked to one side. 'I think you have looked at them without truly seeing them. After years of such closeness, there is an exchange. It shows most plainly in the white roses, for they may take on a rosy blush, or exhibit faint tendrils of red in what used to be snowy white blossoms. It happens because there has been an exchange of the very stuff of their beings.'

I gave him a curious look, wondering if his mind was wandering and I should be concerned. He shook his head at me. 'Be patient. Let me explain. Dragons and humans can live side by side. But when they do so for a long period, they influence one another. Elderlings show the effect of having been exposed to dragons for generations.' He shook his head, a bit sadly and added, 'It is not always a graceful transformation. Sometimes, there is too much exposure, and the children do not survive much past birth, or suffer a shortened lifespan. For a few, life may be extended, at the expense of ferI'llity. The Elderlings were a long-lived race, but they were not fecund. Children were rare and treasured.'

'And we are responsible for bringing dragons back into the world, so they may wreak this change upon us again?I I asked him.

'Yes. We are.' He seemed quite calm about it. 'Humanity will learn the cost of living in proximity to dragons. Some will pay it gladly. Elderlings will return.'

We walked for a time in silence and another question came to me. 'But what of dragons? Do they take no effect from their exposure to us?'

He was silent for a longer time. Then he said, 'I suspect they do. But they find it shameful and banish such beings. You have been to Others' Island.'

That boggled my thoughts. I could think of nothing to say. Again we came to a junction of corridors, one of ice and two of stone. I chose one of the stone ones at random. As we paced along it, I tried to reconcile the Fool's notion of Elderlings with what I had experienced of them.

'I thought Elderlings were close to gods,' I said at last. 'Far loftier than humans in both spirit and mind. So they have seemed when I've encountered them, Fool.'

He gave me a quizzical look.

'In the Skill-current. Bodiless beings, of great power of mind.'

He threw up his head suddenly and I halted beside him, listening. He turned to look at me, his eyes huge. My hand went to my sword. For a time, we stood frozen. I heard nothing. 'It's all right,' I told him. 'Air moves in these old passages. It sounds like someone whispering in the distance-'

He nodded, but it took several minutes for his breath to slow. Then he said, 'I suspect that the Skill is what remains to you from an older time. That it is the trailing end of a talent that developed between dragons and humans, as a way to communicate. I do not understand what you speak of when you talk of the Skill-current, but perhaps the ability can allow one to transcend the need for a physical body. You have already shown me that it is a far more powerful magic than I ever suspected. Perhaps it was a result of living alongside the dragons, and perhaps it lingered. So that even after dragons were gone, the descendants of the Elderlings kept that ability, and passed it down to their children. Some inherited little of it. In others,' he gave me a sideways glance, 'the Elderling blood ran stronger.'

When I was silent for a time, he asked, almost mockingly, 'You can't quite admit it aloud, can you? Not even to me.'

'I think you are wrong. Would not I know such things if they were true, would not I feel them? You seem to be saying that I am descended, somehow, from the Elderlings. And that would mean that, in a sense, I am part dragon myself.'

He gave a snort of laughter. It was so welcome a sound from him. that I treasured it, even at my expense. 'Only you would put it that way, Fitz. No. Not that you are part dragon, but rather that, somewhere, the stuff of dragons entered your family line. Some ancestor of yours may have "breathed the dragon's breath" as the old tales say. And it has come down to you.'

We walked on, our feet scuffing on stone. The passages echoed oddly, and several times the Fool glanced back over his shoulder. 'Like a long-tailed kitten horn from a long line of stump tails?' I asked him.

'I suppose you could think of it that way.'

I nodded slowly to myself. 'That would account for the Skill cropping up in odd places. Even in the Outislanders, it would seem.'

'What's this?'

His eyes had always been sharper than mine. His long fingers touched a mark scratched on the wall. Incredulous, I stepped closer to peer at it. It was one of mine. 'It's the way home,' I told him.

THIRTY-ONE

Dragon's Head

We followed my marks backward through the Elderling maze, and emerged eventually from the crack in the icy wall into a bright day. The wind was brisk and blowing ice crystals filled the air, peppering our skins and making the steep path treacherous underfoot. The clear light of true day made my eyes tear. The Fool went before me down the steep path- Here, exposed to the wind and cold, his weakness showed plain, and I muttered at my own stupidity. This had overtaxed him. The second time he slipped, I took a firm grip on the back of his collar and kept him upright on his feet unI'll we reached the Black Man's door. 'Knock!' I told him, but when he only stared back at me, bleary-eyed with exhaustion, I reached past him to thud my fist against the wood.

The door was opened so swiftly that I had to believe that he had been waiting for us. Even then, the Fool stood frozen, staring at the smiling Black Man who confronted us. 'He's cold, and very weary,' I excused him, and then thrust him into the room in front of me. Once inside I pushed the door firmly shut behind us and then turned back gratefully to the cosy room. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness after the brightness of full daylight. I saw the small hearth fire first, and then I found the Black Man staring at the Fool in mutual incredulity.

'He was dead,' the Black Man told me firmly. 'He died.' His eyes were very wide.

'Yes. He was.' I confirmed it for him. 'But I am the Catalyst. I change things.'

And then Thick sprang up from the hearth and grasped me in a short-limbed hug. He danced like a little bear as he shouted, 'You're back! You're back! I thought you would never come back. Cbade said, "The ship is coming," and I said, "But he's not here and I won't get on a ship." Then he said, "It's coming anyway." And it did, but no one was there and it went back, because I said, "No, I am not walking back all alone, all alone, and I don't want to get on a ship anyway!"' He halted his dance and then told me with a satisfied grin, 'Either you are dead or Chade is so angry at you that you'll wish you were. That was what he said. Dutiful. Oh, and the dragon head, I forgot to tell the dragon head part. Nettle did it! She sent the dragon head to the mothershouse and it was a big surprise for everyone. Except me. She told me she could do it, could talk to Tintaglia and make her sorry if she didn't. So she did. And everything is good again now.'