Eventually, I found the dungeons that had held the Narcheska's mother and sister. Peottre had left those doors ajar when he had snatched his women free of them. The next dungeon showed me a more grisly sight. Three dead men sprawled within it. I wondered if they had died as Forged Ones, fighting amongst themselves, or if the death of the dragon had restored them to themselves, so that they perished of cold and hunger while in full possession of their sensibilities.
The door of the cell that had held Riddle and Hest stood open. Hest's plundered body lay face up on the floor. I forced myself to look down into his face. Cold and death had blackened his countenance, but I saw there still the young man I had known. After a moment's hesitation, I stooped and seized his shoulders. It was hard work, but I pried his body from the floor. It was not a pleasant task, for he was well frozen to it. I dragged him back to the room that had held the Narcheska's mother and placed him on the wooden bed. I gathered from that room and her daughter's cell anything that I thought might burn, old bedding and straw from the floor. I heaped it around his body, and then sacrificed half of the flask of oil that I had brought with me for burning the Fool's body. It took some little time to get a bit of the straw to light, but once it did, the flames licked eagerly at the oil and clambered over the wood and straw. I waited until a curtain of flames had risen around his body. Then I cut a lock of my hair and added it to his funeral pyre, the traditional Six Duchies sacrifice to say farewell to a comrade. “Not in vain, Hest. Not in vain,” I told him, but as I left him burning, I wondered what we had truly accomplished. Only the years to come would tell us, and I was not yet ready to say that the freeing of the dragon was a trumph for humanity.
And that left the last chamber. Of course. It would have been her final degradation of him, her final mockery and triumphant discarding of him. In a chamber spattered with human waste and garbage, by a heap of offal and filth, I found my friend.
He had been alive when they dumped him here. She would have wanted him to be aware of this final indignity offered him. He had crawled to the corner of the room that was least soiled. There, huddled in a piece of dirty sacking, he had died. My Fool had been such a clean man in his life that I did not doubt that dying among filth had been an additional torment for him. I do not know if someone had flung the old sacking over him or if he had sought it himself in the time before he finally died, curled in a tight ball on the icy floor. Perhaps whoever had disposed of him here had bundled him in it to make his body easier to drag. Blood and fluids had soaked the coarse and crusty weave of the fabric, freezing it tight to his diminished body. He had drawn up his knees and tucked his chin tight to his chest, and his face was locked in an expression of pain. His gleaming hair was loose and tattered, with mats of blood in it.
I set my hand on his cold clenched brow. I had not known I was going to do it until I did it. With all the Skill I could muster, I reached and sought for him. I found only stillness. I set both my hands to his cheeks and forced my way in. I explored his corpse, pushing my way through the passages where life had once flowed effortlessly. I tried to heal it, to awaken it again to life. Go! I commanded his blood and Live! I commanded his flesh.
But his body had been still too long. Reluctantly, I learned too well what all hunters know. At the instant of death, the decay begins. The tiny bits that make up the flesh begin the slide into carrion, letting go of one another so that they can find the freedom to become other things. His blood was thick, the skin that once held out the world had become a sack that held in the separating flesh. Breathless, I pushed at it, willing life into it, but it was like pushing on a hinge rusted closed. The pieces that used to move separately had become a single unmoving entity. Function had become stillness. Other forces were at work here now, disassembling the tiniest pieces, breaking them down like grinding grain into flour. All the little links that bound them were coming undone. Nevertheless, I tried. I tried to move his arm; I tried to force his body to take a breath.
What are you doing?
It was Thick, mildly annoyed that I had broken into his sleep. I was suddenly frantically glad to feel him with me. Thick, I have found him, the Fool, my friend, Lord Golden. I have found him. Help me heal him. Please, lend me your strength.
He was sleepily tolerant of my request. All right. Thick will try. I felt the wide yawn he did not disguise. Where is he?
Here! Right here! With my Skill, I indicated the still body before me.
Where?
Right here! Here, Thick. Under my hands.
There's no one there.
Yes there is. I'm touching him, right here. Please, Thick. Then, in my despair, I threw my plea wider. Dutiful, Chade. Please. Lend me strength and Skill for a healing. Please.
