“Have you seen her, your own self?”

“Indeed I have.” The Fool smiled at the boy's wonder. “And had words with her.”

Swift drew his breath in. He seemed to have forgotten my hulking presence. Yet I wondered to which of us the Fool spoke as he said, “This tent is one of the gifts she persuaded the Rain Wild folk to give me.”

“Why did she ask them to give you gifts?”

“She told them to give me gifts because she knew that I would serve her purpose unswervingly. For we have known each other, in other days and shapes.”

“What do you mean?” The boy suspected he was being teased. I feared he was not.

“I am not the first of my kind to have dealings with dragonkind. And she has all the memories of her race. They cascade through her mind like bright beads sliding on a string. Back they go, past the serpent she was once to the egg that serpent came from, to the dragon that laid that egg, to the serpent that dragon was, to the egg that serpent hatched from, to the dragon that laid that egg, to the serpent that dragon—”

“Enough!” the boy laughed breathlessly. The Fool's tongue juggled the words like pins.

“Back to where she knew another such as I. And perhaps, had I a dragon's memory, I might have been able to say to her, ‘Ah, yes, I do recall, and that is exactly how it was. Such a pleasure to meet you again.' But I have not a dragon's memory. And so I had to take her word for it that I was as trustworthy a fellow as she was ever likely to meet.”

His words had fallen into the artful cadence of the storyteller. The boy was enraptured. “And what is her purpose that you shall serve?” Swift asked eagerly.

“Ah!” The Fool swept his hair back from his face, then stretched, but suddenly his long forefinger was pointing unerringly at me. “He knows. For he has promised to help me. Haven't you, Badgerlock?”

Frantically, I scrambled through my memories. Had I promised to aid him? Or had I only said that I would decide when the time came for it? I smiled, and with a wittiness I did not feel, I replied, “When the time comes, I'll serve my purpose.”

I knew he marked my distancing from his words, but he smiled as if I had agreed and said, “As shall we all. Even young Swift, Burrich's son and Molly's son.”

“Why do you name me so?” In that instant, the boy was stung. “My father is nothing to me. Nothing!”

“Whatever he is to you, you are still son to him. Perhaps you can deny him, but you cannot make him deny you. Some ties cannot be severed by a word. Some ties simply are. Such ties are what bind the world and time together.”

“Nothing binds me to him,” the boy insisted sullenly. A little time passed. He perceived he had broken the string of the story, and that the Fool was not going to knot it back together for him. After a pause, he conceded, asking again, “What is the dragon's purpose in your being here?”

“Oh, you know what it is!” The Fool sat up. “You've heard what was said back on the beach, and I know how swiftly gossip travels in a small group like this. You have come to slay the dragon. I am here to see that you don't.”

“Unless it's a righteous battle. Unless the dragon attacks us first.”

The Fool shook his head. “No. I am simply here to see that the dragon survives.”

Swift's eyes traveled from the Fool to me and back again. He spoke hesitantly. “Then you are our enemy here? To battle us if we try to kill the dragon? But there is only one of you! How can you think to challenge us?”

“I challenge no one. I make no one my enemy, though some may consider me theirs. Swift, it is simply as I say it is. I am here to see that no one slays the dragon under the ice.”

The boy shifted uncomfortably. I could almost see the thought pass through his mind, and when he spoke it, he sounded so like Burrich that it nearly broke my heart. “I am sworn to serve my prince.” He took a breath, but when he spoke his voice was still troubled. “If you oppose him, sir, then I must oppose you.”

The Fool had kept his eyes fixed on the boy's face all the while. “I am sure you will, if you believe it is the right thing to do,” he said quietly. “And if that is so when the time comes, well, that will be soon enough for us to be opponents. I am sure you will respect the duty of my heart just as I respect yours. For now, however, we travel all together in the same direction, and I see no reason why we should not share what Tom Badgerlock came to seek here. Fellowship.”

Again Swift's eyes traveled between us. “Then you are friends, you two?”