Very well. Then, What was that?

We froze as we stood, every sense prickling. "Let's go and find out," I suggested quietly.

Afternoon was venturing into evening, and the shadows under the trees were deepening. What we had heard was a sound that didn't belong amongst the creakings of the frogs and insects and the fading calls of the day birds. It had come from the place of battle.

We found Will on his belly, dragging himself toward the pillar. Rather, he had been dragging himself. When we found him, he was still. One of his legs was gone, severed away jaggedly. Bone thrust out of the torn flesh. He had bound a sleeve about the stump, but not tightly enough. Blood still leaked from it. Nighteyes bared his teeth as I stooped to touch him. He lived, but barely. No doubt he had hoped to reach the pillar and slip through to find others of Regal's men to aid him. Regal must have known he still lived, but he had sent no one back for him. He had not even the decency to be loyal to a man who had served him that long.

I loosed the sleeve, and bound it more tightly. Then I lifted his head, and dribbled a little water into his mouth.

Why do you bother? Nighteyes asked. We hate him, and he's nearly dead. Let him die.

Not yet. Not just yet.

"Will? Can you hear me, Will?"

The only sign was a change in his breathing. I gave him a bit more water. He breathed some in, gasped, then swallowed the next mouthful. He took a deeper breath, and sighed it out.

I opened myself and gathered Skill.

My brother, leave this. Let him die. This is the doing of carrion birds, to peck at a dying thing.

"It's not Will I'm after, Nighteyes. This may be the last chance I'll ever get at Regal. I'm going to take it."

He made no reply, but lay down on the ground beside me. He watched as I drew still more Skill into myself. How much, I wondered, did it take to kill? Could I summon enough?

Will was so weak I almost felt shamed. I thrust past his defenses as easily as one would push aside a sick child's hands. It was not just the loss of blood and the pain. It was Burl's death, following so close on Carrod's. And it was the shock of Regal's abandonment. His own loyalty to Regal had been Skill-imprinted on him. He could not grasp that Regal had felt no real bond with him. It shamed him that I could see that in him. Kill me now, Bastard. Go ahead. I'm dying anyway.

It's not about you, Will. It was never about you. I saw that clearly now. I groped inside him as if I were probing a wound for an arrowhead. He struggled feebly against my invasion, but I ignored that. I shuffled through his memories, but found little that was useful. Yes, Regal had coteries, but they were young and green, little more than groups of men with potential for the Skill. Even the ones I had seen at the quarry were uncertain. Regal wanted him to make large coteries, so they could pool more power. Regal did not understand that closeness could not be forced, nor shared by that many. He had lost four young Skill users on the Skill road. They were not dead, but vacant-eyed and vague. Another two had come through the pillars with him, but had lost all ability to Skill afterward. Coteries were not so easily made.

I went deeper and Will threatened to die on me but I linked with him, and forced strength into him. You won't die. Not yet, I told him fiercely. And there, deep within him, my probing finally found what I sought. A Skill-link to Regal. It was tenuous and faint; Regal had abandoned him, done all he could to leave Will behind. But it was as I had suspected. They had been linked too strongly for too long for the bond to be easily dissolved.

I gathered my Skill, centered myself, and sealed myself. I poised myself, and then I leaped. As when a sudden rain gathers and fills a stream bed that has been dry all summer, so I flowed through that Skill link between Will and Regal. At the last possible moment, I held myself back. I seeped into Regal's mind like slow poison, listening with his ears, seeing with his eyes. I knew him.

He slept. No. He almost slept, his lungs thick with Smoke, his mouth numb from brandy. I drifted into his dreams. The bed was soft beneath him, the coverlets warm over him. This last falling fit had been a bad one, a very bad one. It was disgusting, to fall and twitch like the Bastard Fitz. Not proper for this to happen to a king. Stupid healers. They could not even say what had brought these fits on. What would people think of him? The tailor and his apprentice had seen; now he would have to kill them. No one must know. They would laugh at him. The healer had said he was better, last week. Well, he would find a new healer, and hang the old healer tomorrow. No. He would give him to the Forged ones in the King's Circle, they were very hungry now. And then let the big cats out with the Forged ones. And the bull, the big white one with the sweeping horns and the hump.

He tried to smile and tell himself it would be amusing, to tell himself that tomorrow would bring him pleasure. The room was thick with the cloying odor of Smoke, but even it could scarcely soothe him. All had been going so well, so very very well. And then the Bastard had ruined it all. He had killed Burl, and wakened the dragons and sent them to Verity.

Verity, Verity, it was always Verity. Ever since he'd been born. Verity and Chivalry got tall horses, while he was kept to a pony. Verity and Chivalry got real swords, but he must practice with wood. Verity and Chivalry, always together, always older, always bigger. Always thinking they were better, even though he came of finer blood than they, and by right should have inherited the throne. His mother had warned him of their jealousy of him. His mother had bade him always be careful, and more than careful. They would kill him if they could, they would, they would. Mother had done her best, she had seen them sent away as much as she could. But even sent away, they might come back. No. There was only one way to be safe, only one way.

Well, he would win tomorrow. He had coteries, did he not? Coteries of fine strong young men, coteries to make dragons for him, and him alone. The coteries were bound to him and the dragons would be bound to him. And he would make more coteries and more dragons, and more, until he had far more than Verity. Except Will had been teaching the coteries for him, and now Will was useless. Broken like a toy, the dragon bit his leg off when he flung him in the air, and Will had landed in a tree like a kite with no wind. It was disgusting. A man with one leg… He couldn't stand broken things. His blind eye had been bad enough, but to lose a leg, too? What would men think of a king who kept a crippled servant? His mother had never trusted cripples. They are jealous, she had warned him, always jealous, and they will turn on you. But Will he had needed for the coteries. Stupid Will. It was all Will's fault. But Will was the one who knew how to wake Skill in people and form them into coteries. So maybe he should send someone back for Will. If Will still lived.

Will? Regal Skilled tentatively toward us.

Not exactly. I closed my Skill around him. It was ridiculously easy, like picking up a sleeping hen from its perch.

Let me go! Let me go!

I felt him reaching for his other coteries. I slapped them away from him, closed him off from their Skilling. He had no strength, he had never had any real Skill-strength. It had all been the coterie's power that he had puppeteered. It shocked me. All the fear I had borne inside me, over a year's time now. Of what? Of a whining, spoiled child who schemed to take his older brothers' toys. The crown and the throne were no more to him than their horses and swords had been. He had no concept of governing a kingdom; only of wearing a crown and doing what he wished. First his mother and then Galen had done his scheming for him. He had learned from them only a sly cunning as to how to get his way. If Galen had not bound the coterie to him, he would never have wielded any true power. Stripped of his coterie, I saw him as he was: a cosseted child with a penchant for cruelty that had never been denied.