The Fool's pulse is a thunderous rush in his ears; in the real world, he sits rigid and motionless on the edge of the bed, his pupils blown wide and his jaw clenched in a rictus of fear and pain.

It is going to get worse long before it gets better.

It's as though his fear of what followed one horror makes it impossible to avoid reliving it. When the memory shivers and shifts around them, the Fool voices a soft, feeble protest of "no" that transforms with uncanny swiftness into a sobbing scream. His eyes are open, but the agonizing pain that starts just above his shoulders and radiates across every nerve in his back renders him nearly blind from it. Someone has bound him expertly in place to do this grisly work, and even in the frigid cold of this glacial cave, he can feel hot blood running down his skin, matting in his clothes and hair. Behind him, a woman laughs as he tries and fails to thrash in his bindings; she takes her knife to him again.

His despairing, anguished scream of, "Fitz--" dies in his throat. He remembers his death; the screams hadn't helped him then, either.