I awoke in the morning to the cold poke of a wolf's nose. You need to hunt, he told me seriously, and I agreed with him. As I emerged from my tent, I saw Kettricken just coming down from the dais. Dawn was breaking, her fires were needed no longer. She could sleep, but up by the dragon, the endless clinking and scraping went on. Our eyes met as I stood up. She glanced at Nighteyes.

"Going hunting?" she asked us both. The wolf gave a slow wag to his tail. "I'll fetch my bow," she announced, and vanished into her tent. We waited. She came out wearing a cleaner jerkin and carrying her bow. I refused to look at Girl-on-a-Dragon as we passed her. As we passed the pillar, I observed, "Had we the folk to do it, we should put two on guard here, and two overlooking the road."

Kettricken nodded to that. "It is odd. I know they are coming to kill us, and I see small way for us to escape that fate. Yet we still go out to hunt for meat, as if eating were the most important thing."

It is. Eating is living.

"Still, to live, one must eat," Kettricken echoed Nighteyes' thought.

We saw no game truly worthy of her bow. The wolf ran down a rabbit, and she brought down one brightly colored fowl. We ended up tickling for trout and by midday had more than enough fish to feed us, at least for that day. I cleaned them on the bank of the stream, and then asked Kettricken if she would mind if I stayed to wash myself.

"In truth, it might be a kindness to us all," she replied, and I smiled, not at her teasing, but that she was still able to do so. In a short time I heard her splashing upstream from me, while Nighteyes dozed on the creek bank, his belly full of fish guts.

As we passed Girl-on-a-Dragon on the way back to camp, we found the Fool curled up on the dais beside her, sound asleep.

Kettricken woke him, and scolded him for the fresh chisel marks about the dragon's tail. He professed no regrets, but only stated that Starling had said she would keep watch until evening, and he would really prefer to sleep here. We insisted he return to camp with us.

We were talking amongst ourselves as we returned to the tent. Kettricken it was who stopped us suddenly. "Hush!" she cried out. And then, "Listen!"

We froze where we were. I half expected to hear Starling crying a warning to us. I strained my ears, but heard nothing save the wind in the quarry and distant bird sounds. It took a moment for me to grasp the importance of that. "Verity!" I exclaimed. I shoved our fish into the Fool's hands and began to run. Kettricken passed me.

I had feared to find them both dead, attacked by Regal's coterie in our absence. What I found was almost as strange. Verity and Kettle stood, side by side, staring at their dragon. He shone black and glistening as good flint in the afternoon sunlight. The great beast was complete. Every scale, every wrinkle, every claw was impeccable in its detail. "He surpasses every dragon we saw in the stone garden," I declared. I had walked about him twice, and with every step I took, the wonder of him increased. Wit-life burned powerfully in him now, stronger than it did in either Verity or Kettle. It was almost shocking that his sides did not bellow with breath, that he did not twitch in his sleep. I glanced to Verity, and despite the anger I still harbored, I had to smile.

"He is perfect," I said quietly.

"I have failed," he said without hope. Beside him, Kettle nodded miserably. The lines in her face had gone deeper. She looked every bit of two hundred years old. So did Verity.

"But he is finished, my lord," Kettricken said quietly. "Is not this what you said you must do? Finish the dragon?"

Verity shook his head slowly. "The carving is finished. But the dragon is not completed." He looked around at us, watching him, and I could see how he struggled to make the words hold his meaning. "I have put all I am into him. Everything save enough to keep my heart beating and the breath flowing in my body. As has Kettle. That, too, we could give. But it would still not be enough."

He walked forward slowly, to lean against his dragon. He pillowed his face on his thin arms. All about him, where his body rested against the stone, an aura of color rippled on the dragon's skin. Turquoise, edged with silver, the scales flashed uncertainly in the sunlight. I could feel the ebbing of his Skill into the dragon. It seeped from Verity into the stone as ink soaks into a page.

"King Verity," I said softly, warningly.

With a groan, he stood free of his creation. "Do not fear, Fitz. I will not let him take too much. I will not give up my life to him without reason." He lifted his head and looked around at us all. "Strange," he said softly. "I wonder if this is what it feels like to be Forged. To be able to recall what one once felt, but unable to feel it anymore. My loves, my fears, my sorrows. All have gone into the dragon. Nothing have I held back. Yet it is not enough. Not enough."

"My lord Verity." Kettle's old voice was cracked. All hope had run out of it. "You will have to take FitzChivalry. There is no other way." Her eyes, once so shiny, looked like dry black pebbles as she looked at me. "You offered it," she reminded me. "All your life."

I nodded my head. "If you would not take my child," I added quietly. I drew a breath deep into my lungs. Life. Now. Now was all the life I had, all the time I could truly give up. "My king. I no longer seek any bargain of any kind. If you must have my life so that the dragon may fly, I offer it."

Verity swayed slightly where he stood. He stared at me. "Almost, you make me feel again. But." He lifted a silver finger and pointed it accusingly. Not at me, but at Kettle. His command was as solid as the stone of his dragon as he said, "No. I have told you that. No. You will not speak of it to him again. I forbid it." Slowly he sank down to his knees, then sat flat beside his dragon. "Damn this carris seed," he said in a low voice. "It always leaves you, just when you need its strength most. Damn stuff."

"You should rest now," I said stupidly. In reality, there was nothing else he could do. That was how carris seed left one. Empty and exhausted. I knew that only too well.

"Rest," he said bitterly, his voice failing on the word. "Yes. Rest. I shall be well rested when my brother's soldiers find me and cut my throat. Well rested when his-coterie comes and tries to claim my dragon as their own. Make no mistake, Fitz. That is what they seek. It won't work, of course. At least, I don't think it will…" His mind was wandering now. "Though it might," he said in the faintest of breaths. "They were Skill-linked to me, for a time. It might be enough that they could kill me and take him." He smiled a ghastly smile. "Regal as dragon. Do you think he will leave two stones of Buckkeep Castle atop each other?"

Behind him, Kettle had folded herself up, her face against her knees. I thought she wept, but when she slowly fell over onto her side, her face was lax and still, her eyes closed. Dead, or sleeping the exhausted sleep of the carris seed. After what Verity had said to me, it scarcely seemed to matter. My king stretched himself out on the bare gritty pedestal. He slept beside his dragon.

Kettricken went and sat down beside him. She bowed her head to her knees and wept. Not quietly. The rending sobs that shook her should have roused even the dragon of stone. They did not. I looked at her. I did not go to her, I did not touch her. I knew it would have been of no use. Instead I looked to the Fool. "We should bring blankets and make them more comfortable," I said helplessly.

"Ah. Of course. What better task for the White Prophet and his Catalyst?" He linked arms with me. His touch renewed the thread of Skill bond between us. Bitterness. Bitterness flowed through him with his blood. The Six Duchies would fall. The world would end.