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An instant only I had to absorb all this. Then Thick, with a wide and joyous smile, went racing away from us, up the hill, his short legs pumping as hard as they could. “I'm coming!” he shouted. “I'm coming to dig you out, Icefyre!”

I put his enthusiasm down to Icefyre's earlier influence over his simple mind and his recent success at rescuing Nettle, which must have been a heady experience for the man. I strode after him, Dutiful at my side and Chade at our heels. It was only when I heard Dutiful mutter, “We have moved much of the ice above his back. Surely that is where he will break through first. We have not much more work to do!” that I wondered at his sudden enthusiasm for the task.Advertisement

“Then you do not share Chade's hope that we could simply leave the dragon where he is, as he was?”

“Yes. I do. I did. But that was . . . before. Before Nettle woke him. No. Before . . . But Tintaglia commands this. Tintaglia . . .” His pace slowed and he looked at me in consternation. “This is, this was, almost like when you commanded me with the Skill. But it isn't. I can set this aside. I think.” He caught at my arm and halted me alongside him, an odd expression on his face. “She commanded, and for a moment, I could think of nothing but obeying her. Strange. Is that what they mean by the charm of a dragon?”

Burrich startled me when he spoke. I had almost forgotten him, and yet he had somehow kept pace with us. “The old tales speak of the charm of a dragon coming from its breath. What have I missed? Some sort of Skill-sending?”

“Something like that,” Dutiful pondered. “Almost a Skill-command, I think, but I do not know. I think I wanted to help Icefyre before she commanded it. It seems my own thought to me. Yet—”

And then Chade passed us, muttering, “The powder. The powder will do it; the powder will blast him free. We only have to change where we set it. Or perhaps set it in smaller vessels—”

Dutiful and I exchanged a glance and then caught up with him. I seized his sleeve, but he shook me off. I grabbed hold of him again.

“Chade, you cannot kill him now. It's too late. Tintaglia is nearly here, and too many of our people are intent on digging him free. It won't work.”

“I . . . kill him?” He looked shocked at the thought. “No, not kill him. Blast him free, you fool.”

I exchanged a worried look with the Prince. “Why?” I asked Chade gently.

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He looked as if my ignorance mystified him. Then, for just a moment, I saw another look pass over his face, one that frightened me. He groped. But however Tintaglia had fogged his mind, Chade had long been an expert at fabricating reasons to have me do whatever he decided I should do. “Does it escape you that an angry female dragon is on her way here, one that has been alerted to our presence thanks to you? What have you left us to do? If we kill him now, she'll kill us all. She as much as said so. Unfortunately, that means we must make ourselves useful to a dragon. If we extricate Icefyre before Tintaglia arrives, she may see it as a sign of good intentions on our part. You yourself said we might use her goodwill to build an alliance with Bingtown. Until we know her strength, I judge it best to placate her in any way we can. Don't you?”

“And you think the best way to free him is with your powder?”

“One blast can do the work of ten men with shovels. Trust me on this, Fitz. I know what I'm doing.” He now seemed as enthused to blast Icefyre free as he had earlier been to blow him up. How hard had Tintaglia's command hit him? With the force of a Skill-command, which one must unquestioningly obey, regardless of one's own judgment?

Was the Fool Forged yet? Dead? The sudden thought broke abruptly over me like a wave of cold water, dashing me from my present worry. I staggered with the impact of it. I had done what the Fool had hoped I would do. I had wakened the dragon and now all our forces were turned to freeing him and uniting him with Tintaglia. It had even felt like the right thing to do, at the moment that I did it. But now my soul scrabbled at the remorselessness of time. I could not go back and change the decision, yet it suddenly seemed far too heavy and sharp a thing to carry for the rest of my life. His fingerprints burned briefly cold on my wrist.

Still my feet carried me on with the rest of them. When we reached the excavation, we discovered that all the dragon's struggles had done little. The ice over his back was cracked and starred from beneath, and he had collapsed part of the tunnel that had been dug above his neck and head. The Wit coterie had already attacked the cracks in the ice with much enthusiasm and little manpower. As I arrived, the Hetgurd men joined them. For the first time, every man at the camp was united in the task of unearthing the dragon alive. But no amount of excitement could make the work any less arduous. pqdm.com