At the bow of the ship, voices had been rising and falling. I recognized Althea’s voice raised in a query but did not catch the words. We were on the outer edges of those who had gathered there, for many of the crew stood between us and the figurehead. It was Paragon who responded. ‘No, you of all people should know that I am not Kennit and that Kennit does not petition you for this. Is Vivacia your father or grandmother? Of course not! It is not Kennit that demands this. It is I, Paragon. A ship made from massacred dragons, both embraced and enslaved by a Bingtown Trader family. I, we, had no say in that! No choice but to care, no choice in who we loved as Ludlucks poured out their blood and souls and memories onto the bones of our deck! I do not ask: I demand! Do I not have the right to him, as much right as his ancestors had to me? Is it not fair?’
‘It is fair!’ A female voice, clear and carrying. Vivacia. And suddenly my mind put together the bits of what I had heard. The liveship had dragged her anchor to come closer to Paragon, not just to hear his words but to add her voice to his. ‘Althea, you know it is! Were I setting out on my final voyage would you deny me Boy-O? Listen to them! They have the right to demand Kennitsson, after all they have been through as the Ludluck family ship.’
‘What’s happening over there?’ Wintrow demanded in the moment of silence that followed Vivacia’s words.
‘What must happen!’ Vivacia spoke before any of her crewmen could respond to their captain. ‘Did you think I would not hear the truth of what Paragon has spoken? Liveship I am, and a wondrous vessel I have been for your family for generations. But Paragon is right, and deep within we all knew that we had other natures, even before the truth of the so-called “wizardwood” was revealed. I will be a dragon again, Wintrow. I know of no liveship who will not wish to rise up and fly again. So, in this I will follow Paragon. Not just to Clerres but up the Rain Wild River afterward, to demand the Silver that is the right of every dragon!’
‘You will follow Paragon to Clerres?’
‘You wish to be a dragon?’ Althea and Wintrow spoke simultaneously.
‘I am considering it,’ the ship replied judiciously.
‘Why Clerres?’ Brashen’s voice was raised in complete confusion. ‘Why not go directly to Kelsingra?’
‘Because a memory stirs in me. A dragon memory, a memory eclipsed by human thoughts and emotions, a memory so over-scarred by human experiences that I cannot be certain of anything except a feeling of anger and betrayal that rises in me at the name Clerres. Dragons recall few memories of their serpent years but … there is something that I recall. Something intolerable.’
‘YES!’ Paragon flung back his head and shouted the word to the night skies.
The exultation that rushed through the ship infected me. I fought against the smile that bloomed on my face. His Skill was so strong, I thought to myself, and then with a shock recognized the implications of that and felt cold and shaky. I lifted Amber’s hand from my forearm and said to Spark, ‘Please take over guiding Lady Amber. I need a time alone to think.’
Amber clutched my shirtfront. ‘You are leaving? You don’t want to stay here and hear what is said?’
I took her wrist and tugged her hand free, more roughly than I intended. I could not keep from my voice the unease and the irritation I felt with myself for not recognizing the obvious. ‘Listening will change nothing. They will decide what becomes of us, when we travel and who goes with us. I have something else I have to ponder. Spark will be with you, and Lant and Per. But for now, I need to think.’
‘I understand,’ she said, in a voice that said she did not.
But my insight into the ship’s ability to manipulate human emotion was too large to share with her. I strode away to the crew quarters. Empty hammocks. Only a few sailor’s trunks and ditty bags remained. I sat down on someone’s sea-chest there in the dark and muggy hold and pondered. I felt as if I were assembling the pieces of a broken teacup. The Silver the liveships craved and the dragons so jealously guarded was the same Skill I had seen on Verity’s hands when he had carved his dragon. It was the raw stuff of magic, the very essence of it. I’d seen it as a thick slurry on my king’s hands, watched him shape stone into a dragon with the power it gave him. In a Skill-sharing dream of Verity I’d seen a river with a wide band of Silver in it, running with the water. I’d seen Silver tendrilling through a vial of dragon’s blood, and witnessed how it had rushed the Fool’s healing, just as the Skill had healed and changed the children of Kelsingra.
So the Silver was the Skill, and the Skill was the magic I used with my mind, to reach out to touch thoughts with Chade. The Fool had once insinuated that I had dragon’s blood in my veins. Tarman had said I had been claimed by a dragon. Was it the stone dragon I had touched, or an echo of Verity as I had known him. I re-ordered that thought now. Had I inherited something in my blood, some trace of actual Silver, that gave me the power to push my thoughts toward others? Silver traces in the portal-stones, in the Skill-pillars that I could use to travel. Lines of silver in the stones from which Verity had carved his dragon, and in the stone dragons that had slept until, with blood and the touch of my Skill, I had wakened them. Silver traces in the memory-stones that held the records the Elderlings had left for us.
What, then, was the Skill-current I used to reach out for Nettle or Dutiful? It was a force outside me, of that I was sure. And there were others in it, powerful awarenesses that attracted and might absorb me. Who were they? Had I truly felt Verity there? King Shrewd? How did that fit with the Silver?
I had too many thoughts. My mind leapt from wondering about the Skill-current to considering what magic I might be able to wield if I were to drink the vials of Silver that Rapskal had given me. Temptation vied with fear. Would it grant me great power, or a painful death? How much Silver was too much for a man’s body to absorb? Paragon had grown much more powerful with the Silver that Amber had given him. The vials in my pack each held more than twice what he’d taken. Now his emotions exploded from him with a force that I could barely resist. Did he know what he did to humans? Did it affect me more because I’d been trained in the Skill? If he understood his power and directed it, would I be able to resist it?
Would anyone?
When the stone dragons had risen in flight and Verity had led them to battle against the Red Ship raiders, they had affected the minds of the warriors below them. With acid breath and the powerful winds of their wings and the blows of their lashing tails, they had destroyed our enemies. But worse had been what they did to their minds. To be overflown by the stone dragons was to lose memories. It was not that different to how the OutIslanders had Forged their captives. Even our own men on the ground had felt the effect; even Verity’s presence as a stone dragon had worked it on the guardians of Buckkeep. The recollection of how the queen and Starling had returned to Buckkeep Castle was a hazy one for those who had witnessed it. The most common telling was that Verity had been astride a dragon when he delivered them to safety. Not that the king had become a dragon.
Such was the power of the Skill, of Silver, to confuse and confound. To steal memory and perhaps one’s humanity.
As my serving folk had been confounded on the night that Bee was taken. Had they used Silver or dragon’s blood to work that magic, to make all my people forget how they had come and stolen my child, to forget that she had even existed?