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What do you do, when a Companion dies? You mourn the great tragedy that has occurred. You offer the little comfort and solace you can to the one bereaved. And then what?
It is one thing when a Companion dies in the fury of battle, fallen at last to the horrific wounds accrued in the fulfillment of duty. Cremation in a battle pyre, surrounded by those who fell beside you, honored by all who knew you and all who wish they had, is no fate to scoff at. But when a Companion dies, alone, in a hip-deep snowdrift in a distant corner of the Field, then what? Burial, cremation? A floating barge down the Terilee, as the Northern Barbarians are rumored to honor their dead?
It seems horribly wrong, to disturb the remains. It almost seems that the instant the Companion departed ths life, her body should have vanished in a puff of mist, or shattered into a handful of sparkling stardust, or become a spring surrounded by wildflowers or a great strong tree, pillar of the forest.
I look into my son's flat dark eyes—my son, no longer my Heir—as he speaks, for the first time since that awful morning. Nellan was already old when she Chose him, nearly thirty to his thirteen. Eight years, that was all they had, and then she left him behind. She was a small mare, never strong, and why she didn't come into the stables or call for help I'll never know. But she stood in that drift through the long watches of the night, until she froze where she was standing and the Palace was roused by my boy's heartbroken screams. He opens his mouth now again. It's his voice, but it isn't—there's no passion, no joy, nothing. It's just a voice, flat as the top of the drifted snow.
"She won't care. She's gone. It's not her anymore."
And he was right. Despite what I might have thought, in death, lovely little Nellan looked less ethereal and otherworldly than she ever had in life. Without that quiet soul inside, the frozen white mare stood solid and steady in the sunshine, in the sparkling white snow. Seeing her mortal coil left behind meant little more than seeing a dead horse. Only a Herald—or a hostler, perhaps—would know the difference.
My heart ached as my son, face devoid of emotion, eyes empty of pain, stroked Nellan's long neck one last time before he turned away. It didn't matter what we did with the body. No longer was she his. She was gone.