"Hurry?" she asked. "You are the one who keeps slowing. Keep up, now."

The last march before rest always seems longest. So the soldiers of Buckkeep always told me. But that night I felt we waded through cold syrup, so heavy did my feet seem. I think I kept pausing. I know that several times Kettle tugged at my arm and told me to come along. Even when we rounded a fold in the mountainside and saw the lit tent ahead of us, I could not seem to make myself move faster. As if in a fever dream, my eyes brought the tent closer to me, and then set it afar. I plodded on. Multitudes whispered around me. The night dimmed my eyes. I had to squint to see in the cold wind. A crowd streamed past us on the road, laden donkeys, laughing girls carrying baskets of bright yarn. I turned to watch a bell merchant pass us. He carried a rack high on his shoulder, and dozens of brass bells of every shape and tone jingled and rang as he walked along. I tugged at Kettle's arm to bid her turn and see it, but she only seized my hand in a grip of iron and hurried me on. A boy strode past us, going down to the village with a basketful of bright mountain flowers. Their fragrance was intoxicating. I pulled free of Kettle's grip. I hurried after him, to buy, a few for Molly to scent her candles.

"Help me!" Kettle called. I looked to see what was the matter, but she was not by me. I couldn't find her in the crowd.

"Kettle!" I called. I glanced back but then realized I was losing the flowermonger. "Wait!" I called to him.

"He's getting away!" she cried, and there was fear and desperation in her voice.

Nighteyes suddenly hit me from behind, his front paws striking my shoulders. His weight and speed threw me face-first on the thin layer of snow covering the road's smooth surface. Despite my mittens, I skinned the palms of my hands and the pain in my knees was like fire. "Idiot!" I snarled at him and tried to rise, but he caught me by one ankle and flipped me down onto the road again. This time I could look down over the edge into the abyss below. My pain and astonishment had stilled the night, the folk had all vanished, leaving me alone with the wolf.

"Nighteyes!" I protested. "Let me up!"

Instead he seized my wrist in his jaws, clamped his teeth down and began to drag me on my knees away from the road's edge. I had not known he had such strength, or rather, I had never supposed it would be turned on me. I swatted at him ineffectually with my free hand, all the while yelling and trying to get to my feet. I could feel blood running on my arm where one tooth had sunk in.

Kettricken and the Fool suddenly flanked me, seizing me by my upper arms and hoisting me to my feet. "He's gone mad!" I exclaimed as Starling raced up behind them. Her face was white, her eyes huge.

"Oh, wolf," she exclaimed, and dropped to one knee to give him a hug. Nighteyes sat panting, obviously enjoying her embrace.

"What is the matter with you?" I demanded of him. He looked up at me, but did not reply.

My first reaction was a stupid one. I lifted my hands to my ears. But that had never been how I had heard Nighteyes. He whined as I did so, and I heard that clearly. It was just a dog's whine. "Nighteyes!" I cried. He reared up to stand on his hind legs, his front paws on my chest. He was so big he could almost look me in the eye. I caught an echo of his worry and desperation, but no more than that. I quested out toward him with my Witsense. I could not find him. I could not sense any of them. It was as if they had all been Forged.

I looked around at their frightened faces and realized they were talking, no, almost shouting, something about the edge of the road and the black column and what was the matter, what was the matter? For the first time it struck me how ungainly speech was. All of those separate words, strung together, every voice mouthing them differently, and this was how we communicated with each other. "Fitz, fitz, fitz," they shouted, my name, meaning me, I suppose, but each voice sounding the word differently, and each with a different image of whom they spoke to and why they needed to speak to me. The words were such awkward things, I could not concentrate on what they were trying to convey by them. It was like dealing with foreign traders, pointing and holding up fingers, smiling or frowning, and guessing, always guessing at what the other truly meant.

"Please," I said. "Hush. Please!" I only wanted them to be silent, to stop their noises and mouthings. But the sound of my own words caught my attention. "Please," I said again, marveling at all the ways my mouth must move to make that inexact sound. "Hush!" I said again, and realized the word meant too many things to have any real meaning at all.

Once, when I was very new to Burrich, he had told me to unharness a team. It was when we were still getting a measure of one another, and no task any sane man would give a child. But I managed, climbing all over the docile beasts, and unfastening every shining buckle and clasp until the harness lay in pieces on the ground. When he came to see what was taking me so long, Burrich had been mutely astounded but unable to fault that I had done what he had told me to do. As for me, I had been amazed at how many pieces there were to something that had seemed to be all one thing when I had started in on it.

So it was for me then. All these sounds to make a word, all these words to frame a thought. Language came apart in my hands. I had never stopped to consider it before. I stood before them, so drenched in the Skill-essence on that road that speech seemed as childishly awkward as eating porridge with one's fingers. Words were slow and inexact, hiding as much meaning as they revealed. "Fitz, please, you have to…" began Kettricken, and so engrossed did I become in considering every possible meaning those five words might have that I never heard the rest of what she said.

The Fool took hold of my hand and led me into the tent. He pushed at me until I sat down, and took off my hat and mittens and outer coat. Without a word, he put a hot mug into my hands. That I could understand, but the rapid, worried conversation of the others was like the frightened squawking of a coop full of chickens. The wolf came and lay down beside me, to rest his big head on one of my thighs. I reached down to stroke the broad skull and finger the soft ears. He pressed closer against me as if pleading. I scratched him behind the ears, thinking that might be what he wanted. It was terrible not to know.

I was not much use to anyone that evening. I tried to do my share of the chores, but the others kept taking them out of my hands. Several times I was pinched, or poked and bid "Wake up!" by Kettle. One time I became so fascinated by the motion of her mouth as she scolded me that I didn't realize when she walked away from me. I don't remember what I was doing when the back of my neck was seized in her clawlike grip. She dragged my head forward and kept her hold while she tapped each stone in turn on her gamecloth. She put a black stone in my hand. For a time I just stared at the markers. Then suddenly I felt that shift in perception. There was no space between me and the game. For a time I tried my pebble in various positions. I finally found the perfect move, and when I set my stone in place, it was as if my ears had suddenly cleared, or like blinking sleep from my eyes. I lifted my eyes to consider those around me.

"Sorry," I muttered inadequately. "Sorry."

"Better now?" Kettle asked me softly. She spoke as if I were a toddler.

"I'm more myself now," I told her. I looked up at her, suddenly desperate. "What happened to me?"

"The Skill," she said simply. "You just aren't strong enough in it. You nearly followed the road where it no longer goes. There is some sort of marker there, and once the road diverged there, one track going down into the valley and the other continuing across the mountainside. The downhill path is sheared off, carried away in a cataclysm years ago. There is nothing but tumbled stone at the bottom, but one can just see where the road emerges from the ruin and continues. It vanishes in another jumble of stone in the distance. Verity could not have gone there. But you nearly followed its memory to your death." She paused and looked at me severely. "In my days… you haven't been trained enough to do what you've been doing, let alone face this challenge. If this is the best you were taught… Are you certain Verity is alive?" she suddenly demanded of me. "That he survived this trial alone?"