“Just wake him up, then.” She offered the solution disdainfully.

“That might help, for a little time. But I need a more permanent solution.” For a brief moment, I considered telling her that the man's nightmare endangered Swift, as well. I pushed the thought aside. There was no use frightening her, especially when I wasn't sure she could help me.

“What did you think I could do about it?”

“I thought you could help me go into his dream and change it. Make it pleasant and calm. Convince him that what is happening to him won't kill him, that he'll be fine. Then his dreams might be calmer. And we could all rest.”

“How could I do that?” And then, more sharply, “And why should I do that? What do you offer me in exchange, Shadow Wolf?”

I did not like that it had come down to barter, but I had only myself to blame. It was cruelest of all that the only thing I had to offer her would bring pain and guilt for her father. I spoke slowly. “As to how, you are very strong in the magic that lets one person walk into another person's dreams and change them. Strong enough, perhaps, to shape my friend's dream for him, even though he himself is also very strong in magic. And very frightened.”

“I have no magic.”

I ignored her words. “As for why . . . I have told you that Swift is with me, and safe. You doubt me. I don't blame you, for it appears I have failed you in my earlier assurance. But I will give you words, to say to your father. They will . . . they will be hard for him to hear. But when he hears them, he will know that what I say is true. That your brother is alive and well. And with me.”

“Tell me the words, then.”

For one brief Chade-ish moment, I thought of demanding that first she help me with Thick's dreaming. Then I harshly rejected that notion. My daughter owed me exactly what I had given her: nothing. Perhaps there was also the fear that if I did not speak to her then, I would lose my courage. Uttering those words was like touching my tongue to a glowing coal. I spoke them. “Tell him that you dreamed of a wolf with porcupine quills in his muzzle. And that the wolf said to you, ‘As once you did, so I do now. I shelter and guide your son. I will put my life between him and any harm, and when my task is done, I will bring him safely home to you.' ”

I had cloaked my message as best I could, under the circumstances. Nettle still struck far too close to the truth when she eagerly asked, “My father cared for your son, years ago?”

Some decisions are easier if you don't allow yourself time to think. “Yes,” I lied to my daughter. “Exactly.”

I watched her mull this for a moment. Slowly her tower of glass began to melt into water. It flowed, warm and harmless, past my feet until her balcony had descended to the ground. She offered me her hand to help her climb over the railing. I took it, touching and yet not touching my daughter for the first time in her life. Her tanned fingers rested briefly on my black-clawed paw. Then she stood clear of me and looked down at the fog and creeping briars that were ascending the hillside toward us.

“You know I've never done anything like this before?”

“Neither have I,” I admitted.

“Before we go into his dream, tell me something about him,” she suggested. The fog and bramble crept ever closer. Whatever I told her about Thick would be too much, and yet for her to enter his dream ignorant might be dangerous to all. I could not control what Thick revealed to her in the context of the dream. For one fleeting second, I wondered if I should have consulted Chade or Dutiful before seeking Nettle's aid. Then I smiled grimly to myself. I was Skillmaster, was I not? In that capacity, this decision was mine alone.

And so I told my daughter that Thick was simple, a man with the mind and heart of a child, and the strength of an army when it came to Skill Magic. I even told her that he served the Farseer Prince, and that he journeyed with him on a ship. I told her how his powerful Skill-music and now his dreams were undermining morale on the ship. I told her of his conviction that he would always be seasick and that he would likely die from it. And as I told her these things, the thorns grew and twined toward us, and I watched her quickly drawing her own conclusions from what I said; that I was on board the ship also, and therefore that her brother was with me, on a sea voyage with the Farseer Prince. Rural as her home was, I wondered how much she had heard of the Narcheska and the Prince's quest. I didn't have to wonder long. She put the tale together for herself.

“So that is the black dragon that the silver dragon keeps asking you about. The one the Prince goes to slay.”