I was silent for a time. I tried to imagine that scene and winced from it. Then I spoke softly in reply to his words. “It seems a hard way to treat a friend.”

“We treat him thus precisely because he is your friend. You were the one who wished him stopped. He told you he had foreseen his death on Aslevjal, and that you must somehow prevent the Prince from slaying the black dragon. As I told you then, I put little weight on either event happening. If Lord Golden does not accompany us, he cannot die there. Nor can he provoke you into interfering with the Prince’s mission. I doubt it will be much of an adventure, anyway. He will have missed only some cold and difficult work. I think that the Prince’s ‘slaying’ may be no more than chopping free the head of something that was buried in the ice ages ago. How are you two getting along lately?”

He added the final question so adroitly that I answered it without thinking. “Not well and not poorly. Mostly I don’t see much of him.” I looked down at my fingers and scraped at a hangnail. “It’s as if he has become someone else, someone I don’t know very well. And would have no reason to know, in this life we live now.”

“And I the same. I’ve the feeling that he has been very busy of late, and yet I am not sure with what. The common gossip tells me only that he has begun to gamble heavily on games of chance. He spends his money lavishly, on dinners and gifts of wine and fine garments for his friends, but he spends even more on gambling with them. No fortune will withstand that for long.”

I scowled. “That does not sound like the man I know. He so seldom does anything without a purpose, yet I see no reason to that.”

Chade laughed without humor. “Well, so many say when they see a friend fall to a weakness. He would not be the first intelligent man I’ve known to succumb to an unreasoning appetite for games of chance. And in a way, you may blame yourself. Since Dutiful introduced the Stone game, it has roared into popularity. The young men call it “the Prince’s Stones.” As with all such caprices, what started out as simple has become terribly expensive. Not only do opponents wager against each other, but now men back favorite players, and the wagers on a single game may mount to a small fortune. Even the game cloths and stones have increased in value. Instead of a cloth, Lord Valsop has created a board of polished walnut set with lines of ivory, and his playing pieces are of jade, ivory, and amber. One of the better taverns in town has refitted its upper room exclusively for Stones players. It is expensive even to enter it. Only the finest wine and foods are served there, by only the comeliest servants.”

I was appalled. “All this from a simple game supposed to help Dutiful focus his mind on the Skill.”

Chade laughed. “One never knows where such things will lead.”

It recalled another question to my mind. “Speaking of something that led to something else: of those we felt stir when Dutiful and Thick Skilled out, have any come to Buckkeep?”

“Not yet,” Chade replied, and tried to keep disappointment from his voice. “I had hoped they would hasten here, but I suppose that summons was both too strange and too abrupt. We should make a time when we can all sit down and intentionally reach forth in that way again. Last time, it only occurred to me in that instant that we could summon those we had wakened. My thoughts to them were rushed and unclear. And now we have so little time before we sail that there is no point to calling them here. Nonetheless, it should be one of the first things we attend to when we return. How I wish that our prince were setting out with a traditional coterie of six trained Skill-users at his beck and call. Instead we are five, and one is the Prince himself.”

“Four, for we leave Lord Golden behind,” I pointed out.

“Four,” Chade agreed sourly. He looked at me and Nettle’s name hung, unuttered, between us. Then, as if to himself, he said, “And there is no time now to train any others. In truth, there is scarcely time enough to train those we have.”

I cut him off before he could voice his frustration with himself. “It will come with time, Chade. I am convinced you cannot force it, any more than a swordsman can use will alone to make himself better. It must be coupled with endless practice and with drills that seemingly have nothing to do with its ends. Patience, Chade. Patience with yourself, and with us.”

He still could not hear any individual of the coterie Skill to him, unless there was physical contact as well. He was aware of Thick’s Skilling but it was like the humming of a gnat by his ear; it conveyed nothing. I did not know why we could not break through to him, and I did not know why he could not reach out to us. He had the Skill. Both my healing and my scarring had proven that he possessed great talent with it in that specialized area. But Chade was a man consumed by his ambition, and he would not rest until he had mastered the full spectrum of his magic.