funny little man's Skill-music. Eventually, I must have slept, and heavily.

When I awoke, it was late in the day. All around me were the tousled pallets of the men'at-arms, empty. I wondered why they had not wakened me and why we had not struck camp and begun our day's march. I crawled shivering from my blankets, grimaced at the robe I still wore and hastily pulled on my coat and outer trousers. I stuffed the robe into my pack, still wondering at the silence of the camp. I dreaded that some threat of the weather had. forced us to delay our journey.

I emerged from the tent into a steady sweep of mild wind, laden with tiny crystals of snow swept down from the bulging shoulder of glacier that loomed over us. Around me, the camp seemed almost deserted. Web was tending a kettle of food on a tripod over a tiny fire in a clay pot. The pot was settling into the snow as its heat melted the ice around it. 'Ah, you're awake,' Web said with a welcoming smile. 'I trust you're feeling better.'

'I ... yes, I am,' I replied, somewhat surprised to find it was true. The unreasoning blackness of yesterday's mood had lifted. I did not feel cheery; the loss of my Skill still weighted me heavily and the task before us daunted me, hut the deep despair that had led me to wishing to end my life had lifted. Slowly, a dull anger began to rise in me. I hated Peottre for what he had put me through. I knew that Chade's strategy with the man required me to refrain from any vengeance, but I refused to believe that those 'rations' held an ordinary amount of elfbark that his comrades could consume without devastating effects. I'd been deliberately poisoned. Again. I hoped that sometime before I returned to the Six Duchies, fate would afford me the chance to even things with Peottre. All my training as an assassin forbade me the luxury of vengeance. Ever since King Shrewd had first made me his, I had been taught that my talents were used at the will of the crown, not at my personal judgment or for private vengeance. Once or twice I'd strayed outside those guidelines, with devastating results. I reminded myself of that several times as I surveyed the area around me.

Our camp was pitched on a gentle slope of snow. Not far away, a ridge of black rock broke jaggedly through the snow's crust. Above

me towered a steep mountain. It was like a cup with a piece broken out of its lip. Here and there, black stone outcropped from the snow crust. Its bowl cupped ice and snow, a frozen cascade that sloped down toward us. We were camped on the final, flattest spread of the spill.

'You're very quiet,' Web observed gently. 'Are you in pain?'

'No. Thank you for your concern. I've just been given a great deal to think about.'

'And your Skill-magic has been stolen from you.'

At the glance I gave him, he held up a fending hand. 'No one else has deciphered that secret. Thick was the one who accidentally explained it to me. He was quite distressed for you. Annoyed by you, too, but worried for you. Last night, he tried to explain to me that it wasn't just your bleak mood and constant talking and fidgeting that alarmed him, but that you were gone from his mind. He told me a story from when he was small. His mother let go of his hand one night on a crowded street during a fair. He was lost for hours, and he could not find her, not with his eyes or his mind. From the way he told his tale, I think she abandoned him, and then thought better of it later that night and came back for him. But he took a long time to explain to me that he knew his mother was there, but she wouldn't let him touch her thoughts. With you, he says, you are just gone. As if you were dead, as his mother is dead now. And yet you walk around and he sees you. You frighten him, now.'

'Like a Forged one I must seem to him.'

Web winced sympathetically. I knew then that he had experienced the chilling presence of Forged ones, but then said, 'No, my friend. I feel you still, with my Wit. You have not lost that magic'

'And yet what use is it to me, without a partner?' I asked the question bitterly.

He was silent for a moment, then spoke resignedly. 'And that is yet another thing I could teach you, if ever you have the time to sit and learn.'

There seemed little I could say to that. So I asked a question. 'Why haven't we moved on yet today?'

He gave me a quizzical look, then smiled. 'We are here, my

friend. This is as close a camping site as we shall find. Peottre says the dragon used to he hazily visible in the ice near here. Prince Dutiful and Chade and the others are following Peottre and the Narcheska up to the dragon. The Hetgurd witnesses have gone with them. Up there.' He pointed.

The glacier's polished and sculpted surface was deceptive. Where it appeared smooth and continuous, there were actually many falls and rises in its surface. Now, as I watched, our people emerged in a long line like a trail of ants higher on the icy hillside. I spotted Peottre in his furs leading them, with the Narcheska at his heels. Everyone was there, following Peottre up the hillside immediately above us. Only Web and I had remained in camp. I commented on that.

'I didn't want you to wake alone. Riddle said you had spoken of ending your own life.1 He shook his head sternly. 'I believed better of you. And yet, having seen your black mood yesterday, I did not want to take the chance.'

'I would not kill myself. That was a passing madness, the herb's toxin speaking rather than any true thought of mine,' I excused myself. In truth, looking back on the wild words I had uttered the night before, I was ashamed that I had even spoken such a thought aloud- Suicide has always been deemed a coward's act in the Six Duchies.

'And why would you use such a herb, knowing it would affect you so?' He asked severely.

I bit my tongue, wishing that 1 knew what Chade had said of my debilitation. I've used it in the past, for great pain or weariness,1 I said quietly. This time, the dose was far stronger than 1 thought.'

Web sighed in a great breath. 'I see,1 he said, and no more than that, but his disapproval was strong.

1 ate the congealing mass in the kettle. It was Outislander food, stinking of oily fish. They made a soup from sticky dry cubes of cooked fish mashed with oil to bind it. Heated with snow water, it made a greasy chowder. Despite the foul flavour, I felt more myself after I had eaten it. There was still a strange absence all around me. It was more than Thick's music silenced. I had grown accustomed to threads of awareness that extended to

Dutiful, Chade, the Fool and Nettle. 1 had been torn free of that web of contact.

Web watched me eat, and then clean the kettle. I banked the tiny fire in the clay pot with small hope it would survive. Then, 'Shall we join them?' he invited me, and I nodded grimly.

Peottre had marked a trail with bright scraps of red fabric on sticks driven into the snow both to the left and right. Web and I followed the meandering path up the face of the glacier. At first, we spoke little. Then, as we walked, Web began to speak to me, and finally, I listened.

'You asked what the use of the Wit is, when you do not have a companion. I understand that you mourn your wolf still, and that is only fitting. I'd think less of you if you rushed into another bonding simply for the sake of assuaging your own loneliness. That is not the Old Blood way, any more than a widowed man should wed someone simply to provide a mother for his bereaved children and someone to warm his bed. So, you are right to wait. But in the meantime, you should not turn your back on your magic.

'You speak little to the rest of us Witted ones. Those who do not know you share our magic think you avoid us because you despise it, Swift included. Even if you do not wish to let them know you, too, arc Old Blood, I think you should correct that impression. I do not understand, fully, why you keep both your magics a secret. The Queen has said she will no longer allow persecution of the Witted, and I have seen that you fall under her protection in any case- And if you have the Farseer magic, the Skill, as I believe you do, well, that has always been an honourable and well-regarded magic in the Six Duchies. Why cloak that you serve your queen and prince with it?'