Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [20]
“What have you tried?” the Marshal-General asked.
“Prayer, of course, and the Relic of our grange.”
Sudden nausea gripped Dorrin’s belly; she gagged and grabbed for a basin on a table to one side. As the others watched, she heaved into it, too sick to be embarrassed for the moment.
“What—?” the Marshal-General said.
“It’s a body,” Dorrin said. “We have to get the floor up. It’s—under there.”
“It?”
“The body—the blood’s coming up, not down.” She saw their faces pale and knew her own must be bloodless as well. “And we must do it now. Quickly.” She stepped to the door of the room and called out. “Bring an ax; there’s one in the stable! Bring it here at once.” Feet thudded in the distance as someone ran through the house.
“What do you think it is?”
“Someone was killed to hide a secret. I don’t know how it was done, but the blood survives until a counterspell removes it.”
“And you know the counterspell,” Arianya said.
“I hope I do,” Dorrin said. “Something similar guarded the vault in which I found the crown—you heard about that, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“I think this is another old family secret, and it’s dangerous.”
Inder appeared at the head of the stairs, a towel tied around his waist, with an ax and a sharpening stone. “It’s not that sharp, m’lord, but you said hurry—”
“Thank you, Inder. You should go back downstairs—do not be alarmed if you hear wood cracking, but if you see—” She paused. What might he see that would give warning for her servants’ escape? “If you see an odd mist in the house, get everyone out.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Dorrin took the ax into the bedroom. She heard a thin buzzing whine, as if a wasp circled her head. “You should leave the room,” she said to the others. “And risk or no, set fire to the place if I’m not successful.”
“I do not run from danger,” the Marshal-General said. “I will witness.”
“I do not know if I can protect you,” Dorrin said.
“Dorrin, I don’t ask your protection. Perhaps I can even help. Tamis, what Relic do you have?”
“It’s supposed to be a piece of the Cudgel … of a cudgel, anyway.”
“Hold it up, then.”
Dorrin raised the ax; the buzzing grew louder. “Do you hear anything?” she asked, wondering if the sound were perceptible to those without magery.
“There’s a fly in the room somewhere,” the Marshal-General said.
“It’s not a fly,” Dorrin said. She brought the ax down full force on the floor. The old wood, hardened by time, rang but did not yield. The bloodstain darkened perceptibly. Again … again … and the wood cracked. Blood spurted up through the crack, the smell of it strong in the room, followed by the stench of decay. Dorrin ignored it, striking again and again, working the head of the ax into the gap and tugging pieces of board free. She had no time to think of the others, not with wave after wave of malice pounding at her. The first board yielded finally with a shriek, and then another and another. The red mist she had seen before formed in the air, but this time others were also praying, and it dissipated more quickly.
Under the floor a space the size of a small body had been framed in and covered with a blood-soaked cloth. She pulled that back and saw for a few moments a child’s mummified body resting on a bed of shattered bone. Then it collapsed, the skin and flesh vanishing away like the blood-mist, leaving clean bone behind. Every prayer she knew ran through her mind; she felt her eyes burning, the hot tears on her face.
“Gird’s grace,” the Marshal-General said softly. She was kneeling beside Dorrin now and put out a hand to touch the small skull, stroking it. “Gird’s grace on this child and—I presume—the others whose bones lie here. Poor little ones. And their families—they must have thought them run away or fallen into the river.”
Dorrin blinked her tears away and wished she could erase that momentary glimpse of the body—the obvious marks of pain on those small limbs. “Marshal Tamis is right,” she said. “This house should be destroyed. We burned the old keep, back in Verrakai domain, for the same