“And our houses too, like as not, for being present,” Seal observed sullenly.
Peottre did not look at them as he reminded them, “Our mothershouse has accepted all that may come from this. It will not fall upon you.”
“So you say!” Owl snorted disdainfully. “Yet I doubt you speak for Icefyre, you who would destroy him for a woman's whim!”
“Where is the dragon?” Chade broke in, his exasperation complete. His answer came from an unexpected source.
“He's here,” Swift said quietly. “Oh, yes, he is. His presence ebbs and surges like a wild tide, but there's no denying he's here.” The boy swayed as he spoke and his voice was far away. Cockle set his hand to the young man's shoulder, and Web left me to hasten to Swift's side.
“Look at me!” he commanded the boy, and when Swift was slow to comply, he gave the lad a shake. “Look at me!” he urgently ordered him again. “Swift! You are young and never-bonded. You may not understand what I'm telling you, but keep yourself to yourself. Do not go to him, and do not let him come into you. This is a powerful presence that we feel, splendid and awe-inspiring. But do not become absorbed in that. I feel in this creature the charm of a great cat, the beckoning wile that can bond a youngster whether he would or no.”
“You can feel the dragon? He is definitely here, and alive?” Chade was incredulous.
“Oh, yes,” Dutiful replied unwillingly. For the first time, I realized how pale he was. The rest of us were ruddy-cheeked with the cold. Dutiful stood very still and slightly apart from us. He looked at the Narcheska as he spoke. “The dragon Icefyre is indeed here. And he is alive, though I do not understand how that can be so.” He paused as if thinking deeply, his eyes going afar. “I can just brush my mind against his. I reach for him, but he ignores me. Nor do I grasp how I can be aware of him one moment, and then feel him fade beyond my reach the next.”
I tried not to gape as the Prince carelessly revealed that he was Witted. I was also surprised that he seemed to be sensing the dragon with his Wit when I could barely perceive him. Some time ago, I had realized that the Prince's Wit ability was not as strong as my own. Had his lessons with Web sharpened it? Then an alternative shocked me. Did he speak of the Wit, or of the Skill? In my dreams, the dragon Tintaglia had touched me with the Skill. I suspected that she had used the Skill Magic to find Nettle, as well. I transferred my gaze to Chade. The old man looked deeply thoughtful, and frustrated. It was Thick who decided me. He seemed completely absorbed in his humming, nodding his head in time. I wished that I could hear his Skill-music, and wished even more that I could provoke him to raise his Skill-walls. I had never seen the little man so enraptured.
“Do not go groping after him!” Web gave the command without regard for the Prince's rank. “There are legends, very old Wit tales, of the fascination of dragons. It is said they can infatuate the unguarded mind, inspiring a nearly slavish devotion. The oldest songs warn of breathing of the exhaled breath of a dragon.” He turned suddenly, putting me in mind of a commander ordering his troops as he said to Cockle, “You know the song I speak of, do you not? Tonight, it would be a good song for all to hear. In my youth, I gave little thought to such old songs, but in my older years, I have learned that much truth can be hidden in the old poetry. I would hear it again.”
“As would I,” Chade unexpectedly agreed. “And any other songs you know that may have to do with dragons. But for now, if our prince's Wit coterie can sense this dragon, perhaps they can guide us in where we should begin our digging.”
“Tell you where he is, so you can dig down to kill him? No! I, for one, won't do it!” Swift uttered the words with sudden, wild passion. He looked more distressed than I had ever seen him. Chade rounded on him immediately.
“Do you so quickly forget your vow to your prince?”
“I--” The boy could find no words. His face flushed and then paled. I watched him struggle to find his loyalty, and wished I could help him. But I knew, possibly better than anyone there, how torn he might be.
“Stop this,” Web said quietly as the old assassin fixed Swift with his stern stare.
“It is nothing to do with you,” Chade said quietly, and for the first time, I saw Web's anger. It came as a physical bunching of his muscles and a swelling of his chest. He contained himself, but I saw how difficult it was for him. So did my prince.
“Stop this,” Dutiful echoed Web's words, but he gave them the inflection of royal command. “Swift, be calm. I do not doubt your loyalty to me. I will not test it this way, setting one of my men to decide between what his heart says is right and what he has vowed to do. I do not judge that I can honorably lay that burden upon him. Nor is my own will certain in this.” He swung his gaze suddenly to the Narcheska. She did not meet his gaze but looked out over the snowy plain below us. He surprised me by going to her and standing before her. Peottre took a step as if to intervene, but Dutiful did not offer to touch her. Instead, he said quietly, “Will you look at me, please?”
She turned her head and lifted her chin to meet his eyes. Her face was still, save for one brief flash of defiance in her eyes. For a moment, Dutiful said nothing, as if hoping she would speak to him. All was silent save for the shushing of the wind as it stirred the old ice crystals on the glacier's face and the crunching of snow underfoot as the men-at-arms shifted their weight in readiness. Even Thick's humming had ceased. I spared him a glance. He looked perplexed, as if he were trying to recall something. When the Narcheska held her silence, Dutiful sighed.
“You know more of this dragon than you have ever revealed to me. And I have never mistaken this task you have given me for a maiden's challenge to her suitor. There is no woman's whim in what you ask me to do, is there? Will not you tell me the greater import of this task you have laid upon me, so that I may judge what best to do?”
I thought he had won her, until he added that last phrase. I could almost feel her distress that he might flinch from doing what he had said he would. I saw her retreat from the honesty that had tempted her into a pique worthy of any court-bred young noblewoman. “Is it thus that you fulfill your pledges, Prince? You said you would do this thing. If it daunts you now, speak so plainly, so all may know the moment at which your courage slipped.”
She did not have her heart in the challenge. I saw that and so did Dutiful. I think it hurt him all the more that she flogged his pride with such a merciless dare and it did not even come from her heart. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “I keep my word. No. That is not the exact truth of it. I have given my word to you, and you choose to keep it. You could give it back to me and release me from this task. But you do not. So, by the honors of both my mother's and my father's houses, I will do what I have sworn to do.”
Web spoke. “This is not a stag you hunt for meat, my prince. It is not even a wolf that you slay to protect your flocks. This is a creature, as intelligent as yourself if the legends be true, that has given you no provocation to kill it. You must know--” And then Web halted his words. Even as provoked as he was, he would not betray his prince's secret Wit. “You must know what I shall now tell you. He lives, this Icefyre. How he does, I do not know, nor can I say how robust the spark that lingers in him. He flickers in and out of my awareness like a flame dying on a final coal. It may be that we have come all this way and arrived only in time to witness his passing from the world. There would be no dishonor in that. And I have traveled far enough at your side that I think it is not in you to slay any creature that lies defenseless at your feet. Perhaps you shall prove me wrong. I hope not. But”--and here he turned to his Witted companions--“if we do not fulfill our prince's request to help him locate the dragon, if we do not unearth Icefyre from this ice that grips him, I believe he will die just as surely as if our prince took his head. The rest of you may do as you will in this. But I shall not hesitate to use what magic Eda has blessed me with to discover the dragon's prison and free him from it.” He lowered his voice. “It would, of course, be much easier if you all helped me.”
During all of this, the Hetgurd contingent had held themselves apart. I stole a glance at them, and was only mildly surprised to see the Fool standing, not with them, but beside them, as if to show plainly where his loyalties lay. The Owl, their bard, had that listening look so familiar to me from my days with Starling. Every word uttered here would be fixed in his memory, to be later set in the swinging, lurching rhymes of the Outislander bard's tongue. Speculation and dread played over the faces of the others. Then Bear, their leader, thudded a fist on his chest to draw everyone's attention to him.
“Do not forget us, nor forget why we are here. If it is as your wizards say, if the dragon lives but only feebly and you unearth him, we will witness that. And if this Six Duchies farmer-prince kills our dragon when he is in sickness and unwarlike, then all the wrath of every clan will fall, not just on Narwhal and Boar clans for condoning such a cowardly act, but upon the Six Duchies. If the young Prince does this to make an alliance and stave off further war with the God's Runes folk, then he must be sure that he does it in the manner agreed upon. He was to meet our dragon in fair combat, not ignobly take his head as he lies ailing. There is no honor in taking a battle token from a warrior who is already dying and not by your own hand.”
The Fool stood silent through the Bear's declaration, and yet something in his stance made it seem the man was his spokesman. He did not have his arms crossed on his chest, nor did he scowl forbiddingly. Instead he looked deeply at Dutiful, the White Prophet pondering the man who might be his antagonist in his quest to set the world on a better path. The look sent a chill up my back.
As if aware of my gaze on him, he suddenly turned his eyes to mine. The question in them was plain. What would I do, how did I choose? I looked away from him. I could not choose, not yet. When I saw the dragon, I thought to myself, then I would know. And a cowardly part of myself muttered, “If he dies before we chip him out of the ice, then all is solved, and I need never stand in opposition to Chade or the Fool.” It was no comfort that I suspected they were both aware of that secret hope.
Peottre spoke in reply to the Bear. He said, in the weary way of a man who explains something for the hundredth time to a stubborn child, “The Narwhal mothershouse accepts all consequences of this act to our own. Be it so, if the dragon rises against us and curses our descendants. If our kin and fellows turn against us, be it so. We accept that we have brought it upon ourselves.”
“You can bind yourself!” Bear declared angrily. “But your words and gestures cannot bind Icefyre! Who is to say he will not rise to take his vengeance on any who came here to witness his betrayal?”
Peottre looked down at the snow in front of his feet. He seemed to brace himself, as if preparing to shoulder a heavier burden on top of what he already bore. Then he spoke slowly, clearly, as if saying his lines in a ritual, yet his words were plain as bread. “When the time comes to take sides, lift your weapons against me. I vow I will stand and face them all. If I am defeated, let every man of you bloody his weapon in me before I die.”
Midway through his speech, Elliania had gasped in a sharp breath and surged forward as if to stand in front of him. He thrust her aside roughly, a harsher treatment of her than I had ever seen him make, and he held her out from him at arm's length with a firm grip on her upper arm, as if to hold her apart from whatever he had just taken onto himself. Her body heaved as if she stifled sobs or screams as she hid her face in both her hands as he spoke on.
“If Icefyre is all the legends say he is, then he will recognize that you have championed his cause, and he will not hold you or your mothershouses responsible for what we did here. Does that satisfy you?”
When his words were finished, Peottre abruptly drew Elliania close to his side and embraced her, muttering words into her hair as he bent over her, words I could not catch. A terrible gravity had seized every Outislander face at Peottre Blackwater's words. Again, I was left groping after the full meaning of some foreign gesture. I felt that somehow he had once again bound them as well as himself. Was there some shameful attachment to what he had offered them? I did not know, but could only guess.
Dutiful was a white-faced witness. Chade stood motionless and silent, and I longed to once more have the Skill in me. It seemed to me that there were suddenly too many ways the dice could fall now. If the dragon was dead when we unearthed him, if he was alive, if he fought, if he didn't, if we slew the dragon and took his head, but Peottre died keeping his word...I suddenly found myself sizing up the Hetgurd witnesses as warriors, estimating who I could kill by fair means and who must fall to foul. A glance at Longwick showed him issuing soft-spoken commands to his men, and I suspected that the Prince would now have a shadow at every moment of the day and night.
But strangest of all, perhaps, were the actions of Web, Cockle, Swift, and Civil. Ignoring all else, they walked a random, searching pattern over the snow and ice, looking intently down as if each had lost a diamond and must find it amongst the sparkling crystals of snow. Web was the first to find a stopping place. He was silent and motionless, waiting. Swift came to a halt perhaps a dozen paces away from him. A ship's length from him, Civil scrambled down a steeper piece of ice and then stood still. Cockle was the last to choose his place. He had an uncertain look on his face. He moved slowly, hands outstretched and seeking, as if feeling for rising warmth where none could exist. Slowly he walked away from all of them until he came to a halt about fifteen paces away from Web. The minstrel appeared uncertain as he looked up for Web's approval. Web nodded slowly. “Yes. I believe you are right. He is immense, larger than any creature I have ever seen. Here beneath my feet, I feel him strongest. But if that is where his slow heart beats or where his head rests, I cannot say. Perhaps it is only where his tail tip is closest to the surface. Each of you others, drop a token to mark where you stand. Then walk toward me and tell me if you judge it as I have.”