The Patriarch turned away from him and looked to Achmed, whose body had tensed almost imperceptibly.
“For nineteen years of my life I carried such a taint within my own blood,” he said, his voice deep and certain. “I would know that stench in any form. It is undeniable. Somewhere in this man’s life he was touched by a demon spirit; most likely not a host, but perhaps a thrall to one.”
“So somewhere there is another F’dor alive, walking the continent,” Achmed said, trying to absorb the words, struggling to contain his blood rage, the racial hatred of F’dor that screamed like needles in the veins of every Dhracian. “Of this you are certain?”
“Yes. Or there was; where it currently resides is unknowable until we speak with this man.”
Achmed turned to Grunthor. “Get back to Ylorc,” he said tersely. “Guard the Child.” The Sergeant nodded and turned toward the door, only to be stopped by the Patriarch’s large, rough hand on his arm.
“Tarry but a moment, Sergeant,” Constantin said gently. “I may have need of you until we have heard all that we can. Then you can go.”
“Is it true,” Ashe said desperately, trying to blot the image of Rhapsody in such a demon’s clutches from his mind, “that you can see into the realm between life and death?”
The Patriarch said nothing, just passed his hand over the moldering flesh, thinking.
“Can you speak with the spirits of the dead, Your Grace?” Ashe asked again, more forcefully this time.
“No,” Constantin said flatly. “It is not to the spirit of a dead man that I can speak, but rather to his blood.” He looked askance at Achmed as he spoke.
“I assume you know that a few years ago, in the time of this world, I was a gladiator in the arena of Sorbold,” he said, his thunderous voice now soft. “It was Rhapsody that dragged me from that life, brought me beyond the Veil of Hoen, to that place between life and death that you mentioned, Lord Gwydion, the realm of the Lord and Lady Rowan. I know you visited that place, too, in your hour of need, but you left upon being healed.
“I chose to stay. Had my mother not been of Cymrian descent, I would doubtless be dead now; I remained within that drowsy place of healing and wisdom for centuries, aging, growing old, though on this side of the Veil, only a few short months passed. Much of what I learned of blood, and of healing, I learned in that place.
“But not all of it. Some of it I learned in the arena. I was born with a tie to blood; in my youth, that bond made me a skilled and relentless killer. Now, in my old age, I try and use it for healing, to be a blood saver, not a blood letter.” He ran a finger carefully down the gashes in the bowman’s body.
“In the arena, I used to hear blood sing the death of my opponents. Sometimes it rang a story, sometimes not. Perhaps it was this cheering, rather than that of the crowd, which motivated me. It was too long ago to say adequately.”
He caressed the body again. “This man is quite dead. He has little life left in his blood, if any, perhaps no more than a whisper or a hum left for me to trace. But I will endeavor to trace it, if that’s what you wish, for Rhapsody. And to find out whatever clues we can to the origins and intents of this man’s master. The dead know more than the living, but it is not easy to hear them when they tell what they know.”
The three men nodded silently.
The Patriarch excused himself and returned a few moments later, clad in a white robe, rather than the silver one he had been wearing, and carrying a tear-shaped religious vessel known as a lachrymatory, a canopic urn, a cinerary bowl used to store burial ashes, and a censer of burning incense. He was followed by two acolytes bearing white linen cloths, which they spread on the table beneath the body.
“Whatever this man did in life, he is entitled to the same rituals in death as any who sought succor under my roof would be offered,” he said, his deep tone denoting the refusal to hear dispute. He waited until the acolytes had lit the ceremonial braziers, then gestured for them to leave, closing the door behind them.
As silence took hold in the room, the Patriarch set the burning censer on the table, then uncorked the crystal ampulla that hung on a chain around his neck, a tiny phial with many facets that contained a blood-red liquid. He anointed his own eyes and ears with the contents of the phial, then the chest of the corpse above the heart. Then he made a countersign on his own lips.
“You will tell me who has taken the woman,” he said, his deep voice ringing in the tones of a Namer, or a king.
Next, he opened the lachrymatory, and with great care poured a drop of the liquid into the rotting eye sockets of the body, quietly chanting a prayer. The liquid in the lachrymatory emitted a sound that hummed familiarly in Achmed’s skin; after a moment he recognized it as Ocean’s Tears, living water from the sea. He had one such drop in a protective case, hidden deep within the Loritorium where the Earthchild slept.
The body on the sheeted table seemed to swell slightly, rehydrating, its shrunken flesh and stretched skin reinvigorating a bit.
The Patriarch then moved his robes aside about his waist. From a belt sheath he took forth two implements, a tool that looked like a burnishing roller and a curved ceremonial knife with a platinum blade.
As the three men watched, Constantin firmly sliced into the chest of the cadaver, not wincing at the black ooze that slid out, coating his hands. He sawed down the length of the dead man’s chest, cutting through bone and all-but-dry viscera, then carefully wiped the bloody blade and his hands on the edge of the canopic urn, meticulously collecting every drop.
He set the knife down across the corpse’s legs, then took the roller and pressed down on the chest, wringing the blood drop by drop from the rigid flesh.
More than an hour passed, then two, as the Patriarch continued to work, squeezing the blood from the body into the canopic urn. When he had collected enough to barely cover the bottom of the container, he held it up to his ear, closing his eyes.
No sound could be heard in the cavernous room; each man held his breath, lest the release of it disturb the Patriarch’s ear.
Finally, Constantin looked up.
“There is very little of this man’s soul left behind,” he said quietly, reverently, his blue eyes gleaming sharply. “There is but one tie he had in life, to another heart that beat in time with his own. This man was a twin, and not just any twin, but a heart twin, someone whose physiology is so similar to his brother’s that their pulses matched. It is that one fragile tie, thinner than the silk of a spider’s web, that binds even the slightest bit of his soul to this realm; elsewise, if not for that connection, he would be beyond our reach in the Afterlife, or the Vault of the Underworld, more likely.”
Achmed and Grunthor nodded, while Ashe, who had grown gray with the effort to remain calm, merely listened.
“I can hear but one word in the clotted remains of this man’s blood.”
“What is that word?” Ashe asked nervously.
“
“‘Seneschal,’ ” the Patriarch replied.
“Seneschal?” the Lord Cymrian repeated. “Like a regent, or a castle protector?”
The Patriarch shrugged. “Sometimes it is a judge, someone who is appointed by a sovereign to oversee justice,” he said. “Do you know of any in the Alliance?”
“No,” Ashe said. “For a short time, Tristan Steward was a seneschal of the House of Remembrance, but of course that is gone now, burnt to ashes and being rebuilt.”
The Patriarch held up his hand “Shh,” he said suddenly. “There is another whisper, even fainter, perhaps something that he did not hear himself, but that was heard by his twin.”
The three men held their breath again.
From the depths of the rotting corpse’s sundered chest, a tiny puff rose, like a wisp of smoke. The words were so slight as to be almost inaudible, but they were spoken in a woman’s voice, a voice they all recognized.