I let out my breath finally. I was trembling. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and turned toward the Fool. Who was gone.

"Nighteyes! Where is the Fool?"

We both know where he is gone. There is no need to shout.

I knew he was right. Yet I could not deny the urgency I felt. I ran down the ramp of stone, leaving the empty dais behind me. "Fool?" I cried as I reached the tent. I even paused to look inside, hoping that he might be packing up what we'd need to take with us. I don't know why I indulged such a foolish hope.

Nighteyes had not waited. When I reached Girl-on-a-Dragon, he was already there. He was sitting patiently, tail neatly coiled about his feet, looking up at the Fool. I slowed when I saw him. My premonition of danger faded. He was sitting on the edge of the dais, feet dangling, head leaned back against the dragon's leg. The surface of the dais was littered with fresh chips from this day's efforts. I walked toward him. His eyes were lifted to the sky and the expression on his face was wistful. Contrasted against the dragon's rich green hide, the Fool was white no longer, but the palest of golds. There was even a tawny edge to his silky fine hair. The eyes he turned to me were pale topaz. He very slowly shook his head at me, but be did not speak until I leaned against her pedestal.

"I had been hoping. I could not help hoping. But I have seen today what must be put into a dragon so it can fly." He shook his head more forcefully. "And even if I had the Skill to give it, I do not have it to give. Even were she to consume all of me, it would not be enough."

I did not say that I knew that. I did not even say that I had suspected it all along. I had finally learned something from Starling Birdsong. I let him have a silence for a time. Then I said, "Nighteyes and I are going to go get two jeppas. When I come back, we had better pack swiftly and be gone. I did not see Verity give chase to anything. Perhaps that means Regal's troops are still far away. But I don't want to take any chances."

He drew a deep breath. "That is wise. It is time for this Fool to be wise. When you come back, I shall help you pack."

I realized then I was still gripping Verity's sword in its sheath. I took off the plain shortsword and replaced it with the blade Hod had made for Verity. It weighed strangely against me. I offered the shortsword to the Fool. "Want this?"

He glanced at me, a puzzled look. "What for? I'm a Fool, not a killer. I've never even learned to use one."

I left him there, to say his farewells. As we wended our way out of the quarry and toward the woods where we had been pasturing the jeppas, the wolf lifted his nose and snuffed.

Nothing left of Carrod but a bad smell, he noted as we passed the vicinity of the body.

"I suppose I should have buried him," I said as much to myself as him.

No sense in burying meat that is already rotten, he noted with puzzlement.

I passed the black pillar, but not without a small shudder. I found our straying jeppas on a hillside meadow. They were more reluctant to be caught than I had expected. Nighteyes enjoyed rounding them up considerably more than they or I did. I chose the lead jeppa and one other, but as I led them away, the others decided to trail along after us as well. I should have expected it. I had rather hoped the rest would stay and go wild. I did not relish the idea of six jeppas at my heels all the way back to Jhaampe. A new thought came to me as I led them past the pillar and into the quarry.

I did not have to return to Jhaampe.

The hunting here is as good as any we've found.

We've the Fool to think of, as well as ourselves.

I would not let him go hungry!

And when winter comes?

When winter comes, then… He is attacked!

Nighteyes did not wait for me. He streaked past me, gray and low, claws scratching against the black stone of the quarry floor as he ran. I let go of my jeppas and ran after him. The wolf's nose told me of human scent in the air. An instant later, he had identified Burl, even as he hurtled toward them.

The Fool had not left Girl-on-a-Dragon. That was where Burl had found him. He must have come quietly, for the Fool was never easy to take unawares. Perhaps his obsession had betrayed him. Whatever the case, Burl had got the first cut in. Blood ran down the Fool's arm and dripped from his fingertips. He had left smears of it all up the dragon as he climbed her. Now he clung, feet braced against the girl's shoulders and one hand gripping the dragon's gaping lower jaw. In his free hand he gripped his knife. He stared down at Burl balefully, waiting. Skill boiled from Burl, angry and frustrated.

Burl had climbed up onto the dais and was seeking to clamber up the dragon itself now as he strove to reach up and impose a Skill-touch on the Fool. The smoothly scaled hide was defying him. Only one as agile as the Fool could have shinnied up to the perch where he clung just out of Burl's reach. Burl drew his sword in frustration and swung it at the Fool's braced feet. Its tip missed, but not by much, and its blade rang against the girl's back. The Fool cried out as loudly as if the blade had bit truly, and sought to scrabble higher. I saw his hand slip where his own blood had greased the dragon's hide. Then he was sliding down, scrabbling frantically as he came down hard right behind the girl's seat on the dragon's back. I saw his head bounce glancingly against her shoulder. He looked half stunned, and clung where he was.

Burl lifted his sword for a second swing, one that could easily separate the Fool's leg from his body. Instead, soundless as hate could be, the wolf surged up onto the dais and took Burl from behind. I was still running toward them as I saw Nighteyes' impact drive Burl forward to smack against Girl-on-a-Dragon. He sank to his knees against the statue. His sword blow missed the Fool and rang again against the dragon's gleaming green hide. Ripples of color raced away from that clash of metal against stone, like the ripples made when one tosses a pebble in a still pond.

I reached the dais as Nighteyes darted his head in. His jaws closed, gripping Burl from behind, between his shoulder and neck. Burl screamed, his voice going amazingly shrill. He dropped his sword and lifted his hands to clutch at the wolf's ravening jaws. Nighteyes worried him like a rabbit. Then the wolf braced his front feet on Burl's wide back and made more sure of his grip.

Some things happen too swiftly to tell well. I felt Will behind me at the same moment that the wild spattering of Burl's blood became a sudden gushing. Nighteyes had severed the great vein in his throat, and Burl's life was pumping out in jumping gouts of scarlet. For you, my brother! Nighteyes told the Fool. This kill for you! Nighteyes still did not let go, but shook him again. The blood leaped like a fountain as Burl struggled, not knowing he was already dead. The blood struck the dragon's gleaming hide and ran down it, to puddle in the chiseled troughs the Fool had made attempting to free his feet and tail. And there the blood bubbled and steamed, eating into the stone as scalding water would have eaten into a chunk of ice. The scales and claws of the dragon's hind feet were unveiled, the detail of the whiplike tail exposed. And as Nighteyes finally flung down Burl's lifeless body, the dragon's wings opened.

Girl-on-a-Dragon soared up into the sky as she had strained to do for so long. It seemed an effortless lifting, almost as if she floated away. The Fool was borne away with her. I saw him lean forward, clutching instinctively at the supple waist of the girl before him. His face was turned away from me. I glimpsed the bland eyes and still mouth of the girl's face. Perhaps her eyes saw, but she was no more separate from the dragon than its tail or wing; merely another appendage, one to which the Fool clung as they rose higher and higher.