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?
Could that same magic be used against them?
I dared myself to imagine drinking the Silver. Not all of it, not at first. Just a little, to see what I could do. Just sufficient to make me strong enough to resist the ship’s emotions. Enough to heal the Fool without losing my vision to him. Was that possible? Enough to reach out to ask Chade’s advice, perhaps to heal his body of the ravages of age and restore his mind. Could I do that? Would Nettle know more of what it could or could not do?
If I drank it all, could I walk into Clerres and demand that all there kill themselves?
Could it be that easy to destroy them and win back my daughter?
‘What are you doing down here?’ Lant asked me. I turned to see him coming toward me, Per and Spark trailing behind him.
‘Where is Amber?’
‘She is with the figurehead. She dismissed us. What are you doing?’
‘Thinking. Where are the others?’
