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“How did you get to the Witness Stones?” I could not imagine the blind Fool and the burdened girl making that trek.

“We didn’t.” The Fool spoke starkly. “In the dark of night, we dressed warmly and Spark shouldered our pack. She had obtained a walking staff for me. And we went down to the dungeons of Buckkeep. It was a trick to get past the guards, but when they changed for the night, we managed it. And Spark had done it before, following Chade. She knew where to take us. Dutiful had put an iron grate across that corridor, and locked it securely, but again Spark knew the trick of opening it. And once we were through, we took our first big gamble. She spread dragon blood on the palm of my hand, then held tight to me. I pressed my palm to the old Skill-stone, the one that whoever rebuilt Buckkeep Castle from an Elderling ruin had used in the foundation. And it worked. We stepped out in Aslevjal.”Advertisement

I recalled it well. I stared at him. “How long did you stay there?”

“Long enough to locate the correct facet of the pillar to bring us here. Another smear of dragon blood and on we came. Only to find Lant and Perseverance here. I was startled to find them. Spark, however, seemed almost to expect Perseverance. Though I sensed a bit of a chill from him when he saw how we were dressed.” He turned his blind gaze on the lad again. Per said nothing and stared at the fire. “I guessed where you had gone. I even considered following you. I would like to once more walk in the Stone Garden. To touch Verity-as-Dragon.” A strange smile curved his mouth. “To touch, a last time, Girl-on-a-Dragon. Did you visit her?”

“No. I didn’t.” In some ways, the thought of that stone dragon still put a chill up my spine.

He lowered his voice. “Will she recover? Spark?”

I wanted to be angry with him, to demand he tell me why he had risked her so wildly. “I don’t know. Four portal journeys in less than two days? I’d never attempt it. We’ll keep her as warm as we can, try to get a hot drink down her, and wait. It’s all I know to do.” I bit back the recriminations and questions. “I would love to understand why you seem so little affected.”

He suddenly sat up straight and stared around the ancient pavilion almost as if he could see. “Fitz. We camped here. Do you recall? When I was dead?”

“How could I not recall it?” I ignored the peculiar looks that both Per and Lant were giving me. They had been staring at the fire but hanging on the edges of our conversation avidly. I had no intention of explaining to them what had happened here on that long-ago summer day. Just the Fool’s mention of it had brought it vividly to mind. It was not that I had become him in death that still shook me to my core; it was the remembrance of how, as we had traded our bodies that he might resume his existence as the Fool, we had mingled and for that long instant, become one creature. One being.

And it had felt so correct. So perfectly balanced.

“It was here,” I confirmed again.

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“It was. And when we left here, we left my things here. The Elderling tent. My little cook-pot …”

“Decades ago,” I reminded him.

“But they were Elderling-made. And you made our camp on the pavilion stones. Do you recall where we camped? Could you look for what’s left of them, under the snow?”

I could. I recalled where I had pitched the tent, recalled, too, where I had built the funeral pyre for him. “Possibly.”

“Please, Fitz. Look for them now. It would be warm shelter for all of us. Even if only enough of it remains to be blankets, it will warm us better than wool and furs.”

“Very well.” I knew I’d get no more of the tale out of him until I had done as he asked. I found a likely branch and thrust it into the fire. As I waited for it to kindle into a torch, I asked Per, “How is she?” He had gradually edged closer to his friend.

“She’s stopped moaning and muttering. She’s still now. Is that good?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s been through four Skill-pillar trips in quick succession. I’m not sure I could survive that, let alone an untrained mind like hers.”

“But Mage Gr—your friend seems unscathed.”

I said nothing to that. I didn’t want to speak of dragon blood and how I’d seen the Fool changing since he’d drunk it, let alone smeared it on his palm. “Keep her warm. Talk to her. Be her anchor to this world. Lant, come with me, please.”

He rose with alacrity, and as I held our pathetic “torch” aloft, he followed me into darkness. I took a bearing from the Skill-pillar, and recalled where the ornamental stone wall had been in relation to our tent. And the funeral pyre had been there. I lifted the torch higher. Was there a slight mound there beneath the snow, the reminder of limbs and logs and branches that had rotted there for years? I walked toward it. pqdm.com