I lowered my head. It was not praise.
“We passed each other as we each resumed life in our own bodies. Do you remember that?”
“Somewhat,” I hedged.
“Somewhat? As we passed, we merged and blended.”
“No.” Now he was the one who was lying. It was time to speak the truth. “That is not what I recall. It was not a temporary merging. What I recall is that we were one. We were not wholes blending as we passed. We were parts, finally forming a whole. You and me and Nighteyes. One being.”
He could not see me and yet he still averted his face, as if I had said a thing too intimate for us to witness. He bowed his head, a small affirmation. “It happens,” he said softly. “A mingling of beings. You’ve seen the results, though you may not have recognized it. I certainly didn’t. That tapestry of the Elderlings that once hung in your room.”
I shook my head. I’d been a child the first time I’d seen it. It was enough to give anyone nightmares. There was King Wisdom of the Six Duchies, treating with the Elderlings, who were tall, thin beings with unnaturally colored skin, hair, and eyes. “I don’t think that has anything to do with what I’m talking about now.”
“Oh, it does. Elderlings are what humans may become through a long association with dragons. Or more commonly, what their surviving offspring may become.”
I saw no connection. “I do recall, long ago, when you tried to convince me that I was part dragon.”
A smile twisted his weary mouth. “Your words. Not mine. But not so far from what I was theorizing, even if you’ve phrased it very poorly. Many aspects of the Skill put me in mind of what dragons can do. And if some distant ancestor of yours was dragon-touched, so to speak, could it be why that particular magic manifests in you?”
I sighed and surrendered. “I’ve no idea. I don’t even know quite what you mean by ‘dragon-touched.’ So, perhaps. But I don’t see what that has to do with you and me.”
He shifted in the bed. “How can I be so tired, and not one bit sleepy?”
“How can you start so many conversations and then refuse to finish any of them?”
He went off into a coughing fit. I tried to tell myself he was feigning it but went to fetch him water anyway. I helped him sit up and waited while he drank. When he lay back down, I took the cup and waited. I said nothing, simply stood by the bed with the cup. After a time I sighed.
“What?” he demanded.
“Do you know things you aren’t telling me?”
“Absolutely. And that will always be true.”
He sounded so much like his old self and took such obvious pleasure in the words that I felt almost no annoyance. Almost.
“I mean about this. About what bonds us in such a way that I can take you with me through a Skill-pillar, and almost without effort enter your body to heal it?”
“Almost?”
“I was exhausted afterward, but that was from the healing, I think. Not from the joining.” I would say nothing of what it had done to my back.
I thought he would detect I was holding something back. Instead he spoke slowly. “Because perhaps the joining already exists and always does.”
“Our Skill-bond?”
“No. You haven’t been listening.” He sighed. “Think again about the Elderlings. A human lives long in the company of dragons, and eventually he begins to take on some of the traits of the dragon. You and I, Fitz, lived in close company for years. And in the healing that was actually a snatching back from death, we shared. We mingled. And perhaps we became, as you claim, one being. And perhaps we did not completely sort ourselves back into our own separate selves as thoroughly as you think. Perhaps there was an exchange of our very substances.”
I thought about this carefully. “Substances. Such as flesh? Blood?”
“I don’t know! Perhaps. Perhaps something more essential even than blood.”
I paused to sort the sense from his words. “Can you tell me why it happened? Is it dangerous to us? Something we must try to undo? Fool, I need to know.”
He turned his face toward me, took a breath as if he was going to speak, then paused and let it out. I saw him thinking. Then he spoke simply, as if I were a child. “The human that lives too long near the dragon takes on aspects of the dragon. The white rose that is planted for years beside the red rose begins to have white blossoms threaded with red. And perhaps the human Catalyst who is companion to a White Prophet takes on some of his traits. Perhaps, as you threatened, your traits as a Catalyst have infected me as well.”
