I dragged a body outside, let go, stumbled a few steps, was noisily sick- When I regained control, J turned back to examine my booty.

The others stood around looking green. "No phantom did that," Goblin said. Tom-Tom bobbed his head. He was more shaken than anyone. More shaken than the sight demanded, I thought.

Silent got on with business, somehow conjuring a brisk, small maid of a breeze that scurried in through the mausoleum door and bustled out again, skirts laden with dust and the smell of death.

"You all right?" I asked Tom-Tom.

He eyed my medical kit and waved me off. "I'll be okay. I was just remembering."

I gave him a minute, then prodded, "Remembering?"

"We were boys, One-Eye and me. They'd just sold us to N'Gamo, to become his apprentices. A messenger came from a village back in the hills." He knelt beside the dead soldier. "The wounds are identical."

I was rattled. Nothing human killed that way, yet the damage seemed deliberate, calculated, the work of a malign intelligence. That made it more horrible.

I swallowed, knelt, began my examination. Silent and Goblin eased into the tomb. Goblin had a little amber ball of light rolling around his cupped hands. "No bleeding," I observed.

"It takes the blood," Tom-Tom said. Silent dragged another corpse out. "And the organs when it has time." The second body had been split from groin to gullet. Heart and liver were missing.

Silent went back inside. Goblin came out. He settled on a broken grave marker and shook his head. "Well?" Tom-Tom demanded.

"Definitely the real thing. No prank by our friend." He pointed. The northerner continued its patrol amidst a swarm of fishermen and coasters. "There were fifty-four of them sealed up here. They ate each other. This was the last one left."