I came close to the gleaming wet stone, noticing that neither seaweed nor barnacles clung to it. It was as clean and black as the day it had been shaped. Gingerly, I set a hand to it. It was cold, wet and hard, and it hummed with Wit under my touch, just as the drowsing stone dragons had. And yet it was different. I could not decide how until I touched the adjacent block. It, too, harboured that hidden seething of life. And yet the two were different things. Cautiously, fearing some arcane trap, I ventured toward them with my Skill. There was nothing there. I ran my hand along the wet surface where neither seaweed nor barnacle clung. And then there was suddenly, something, a confusion of voices lifted in agitation, and then nothing again.

I turned my head slowly, and then realized how foolish that was. The Skill-furore I had sensed was not a conversation muffled by distance or a barrier. As gingerly as if I caressed a hot coal, I slid my fingertips over the wet stone before me. Again, I received a

confused impression of many voices, all speaking at once, at a great distance from me. I wiped my hand reflexively down the front of my shirt and stepped away. Uneasily, I examined the thought that had come to me.

This was memory stone. Although quarried on this island, but it was unmistakably the same sort of stone that Verity had used to carve his dragon. All of the dragons I had encountered in the Stone Garden in the Mountain Kingdom had originally been carved from this stuff, some by Skill-coteries seeking to store permanently their memories and being; others, perhaps, by Elderlings. The dragons I had seen had been shaped as much by the memories and thoughts poured into them as by the tools the carvers had wielded. Those dragons had eventually completely absorbed the people who had created them- I had witnessed Verity's passing into his dragon. It had demanded all of his memories and life force as well as Kettle to satiate and saturate the stone, waking it to Hfe. The old woman had sacrificed herself as willingly as Verity had. She had been the last of her Skill-coterie, a lone woman who had outlived her time and her monarch, but returned nonetheless to serve the Farseer line. Kettle's extended years and Verity's passions had been barely enough to rouse the dragon. 1 knew that well. Verity had taken a bit of me for his dragon, and later 1 had impetuously fed other memories into the Girl on a Dragon carving. 1 had felt the pull of a stone dragon's voracity. It would have been easy to let Girl on a Dragon take all of me; it would have been a release, of a sort.

Or perhaps an imprisonment. What happened to a stone dragon which did not have enough memories to take life and flight 11 had seen what had happened to Girl on a Dragon. She had remained there in the quarry, mired in unformed stone. In her case, I did not think it had been lack of memories, but her creator's lack of willingness to surrender individuality to the whole. The leader of the coterie who had carved her had tried to hold back, and isolate her memories into the figure of the Girl astride the dragon rather than release them into the sculpture as a whole. Or so Kettle had told me, when I asked her why that statue had not taken life and flown away. She had told me the tale to warn me  away from Verity's  dragon,   I  think;   to help me

understand that the dragon would not be content with any less than all of me.

I wished Kettle stood beside me now, to tell me this dragon's story. But I suspected I knew it- The stone had not been shaped as a whole, but worked in blocks. Nor had the carvers put their own memories into the stone. Instead, I suspected that I stood by a dark memorial to the Red Ship War. What had become of the memories and emotions of the Forged folk? The disjointed clues came together in this disjointed creature. Blocks of memory stone had been ballast in the holds of White Ships. Had the Pale Woman and Kebal Rawbread learned the magic of waking a stone dragon from a purloined and sold Skill-scroll? What had stopped them, then, from creating an Out Island dragon to ravage the coast of the Six Duchies? Had they lacked the willingness to sacrifice their own lives to give life to their creation? Had they thought they could create a dragon from the memories they had stolen from the Six Duchies folk?

Here before me was the evidence of their failure to grasp the fundamental reason why a coterie might journey to Jhaampe and beyond to create a stone dragon. They could steal the memories of Six Duchies folk and imprison them in stone forever. But they could not Forge from those memories the singleness of purpose that was required to breathe life into a dragon. Not even all the coteries that set out for the Mountains succeeded in that goal. Some had taken Mountain women as wives and settled down to end their lives in love. Others that had gone to carve their dragons had failed. It was not an easy task, even for a single-minded Skill-coterie. A dragon filled with the memories of divergent folk forced into a single stone, a dragon born of terror and anger and hopelessness would have been an insane creature if ever they'd managed to wake it.

Had that been what Kebal Rawbread and the Pale Woman had intended?

There had been a time when plunging myself into a stone dragon had been very tempting indeed. I could still recall my hurt that Verity had excluded me from the creation of his. In retrospect, as a man grown, I could understand why. Sometimes, when Nighteyes had still been alive, I had toyed with the idea. What sort of a dragon

could we two have made, I had wondered. And now, willing or no, I was a part of a coterie again. Yet I had never considered that at some time Dutiful, Thick, Chade and I might wish to make a dragon of ourselves. We were a coterie born more of chance than intent. I could not imagine us finding the devotion and purpose to carve a creature, let alone the will to simultaneously end our human lives and memorialize our joining in a dragon.

I turned and slowly walked away from the shaped stone. I tried not to wonder about the Forged memories imprisoned in it. Was awareness imprisoned in the rock? If not, exactly what was it?

1 reached again for Dutiful and Chade. I think I've found some of the memories and feelings Forged away from Six Duchies folk during the war.

What? Chade was incredulous.

When I had explained, a long moment of aghast horror lingered between us. Then Dutiful asked hesitantly, Can we free them?

For what purpose? Most of the people they belonged to are long dead. Some may have died at my hand, for all I know. Besides, I have no idea whether it can be done, let alone how. The more I thought on it, the uneasier I became.

Chade's thought was full of calm resignation. For now, we must leave it as it is. Perhaps after we have dealt with this dragon, Peottre will be more willing to share what he knows. Or perhaps we can arrange for a Six Duchies ship to come here, quietly, and take home what is ours. I felt his mental shrug. Whatever it is.

The cook-fire near our tent had burned down to a faded red eye in the night. I poked at it a bit, pushing in the last nub ends of the firewood, and woke a pale flame or two. There was lukewarm tea in my weary kettle and a scraping of porridge in the bottom of the pot. Riddle himself had gone, either to watch duty or to his own blankets. I crawled into the tent's low entry and found my sea chest by touch in the dark. Thick was a shape huddled beneath blankets. 1 tried not to wake him as I rummaged for my cup. I was startled when he spoke into the darkness. 'This is a bad place. I didn't want to be here.'

Privately, I agreed with him. Aloud I said, 'It seems wild and barren to me, but no worse than many a place I've been. None of

us really wanted to come here. But we'll make the best of it and do what we must.'