It was a risk he could abide.
All thought receded, replaced by a distant thudding that grew ever louder with each breath.
The pulse was at the same time alien and familiar to him. There was a hint I of the old world, a hum that had beat in the veins of every soul born on Seren soil; the deep magic in the Island of Serendair had a unique ring to it, and it permeated the blood of those whose lives had been brought into existence there. But this was only the slightest trace in the rhythm that made up the rest of the heartbeat.
When he had first learned to listen to his skin, he had heard a roar of drums. Countless chaotic, cacophonous rhythms had thundered directly into him, threatened to overwhelm him, to drown him like the echoes of waves in a canyon. Here he heard barely a whisper.
Because the blood that pumped through the demon-spawn’s heart was almost totally of this world, he could not discern its rhythm, could not track it. The blood of the new world swirled around the evanescent flutter from the old world like ocean waves, like a windstorm of dried leaves in the last vestiges of autumn; and occasionally he could taste some of its traits. He chased them with his breath, tasted the mix and dip of tones, looking for the deep shadow tone he was hunting.
There would be warmth in a pulse-wave that broke over him—that must! be from the child’s unknown mother—followed by the chill of ice; be- queathed by its father, the Rakshas, the artificial being that had sired all these! cursed progeny of its demonic master. There was something feral in there as! well, something with red eyes and a wild, brutal nature. Rhapsody had said that F’dor used the blood of wolves and other night creatures when it constructed the Rakshas. Perhaps that was it.
Still, each passing moment the ancient rhythm grew slightly louder, a bid clearer. Achmed opened his left hand and held it aloft, allowing the gusts of wind to dance over his palm.
Each intake of breath became slower, deeper, each exhalation measured When the pattern of his breathing matched that of the distant beating heart! he turned his attention to his own heart, to the pressure it exerted on the vessels and pathways through which his blood flowed. He willed it to slow! lowering his pulse to a level barely able to sustain his life. He drove all stray thoughts from his mind, leaving it blank except for the color red. Everything else faded, leaving nothing but the vision of blood before his mind’s eye. Blood will be the means, the prophecy had said. Child of Blood. Brother to all men, akin to none.
Achmed held absolutely still, remained utterly silent. He loosed the pulse of his own heart, willing it to match the distant heartbeat. Like trying to catch a flywheel in motion, he could only synchronize with one beat in every five, then every two, until each beat matched perfectly. He clung to the tiny burr of the ancient blood, followed it through distant veins, chased its flow, gathered its ebb until from that whisper of a handhold he crawled into his victim’s rhythm. Their heartbeats locked.
And then, as the trail became clear, as his prey became unerringly linked to him, another tiny, discordant rhythm shattered the cadence. Achmed clutched his chest and staggered back as pain exploded like a volcano inside him.
Over his agonized groan he could hear Rhapsody gasp. His body rolled down the rocky outcropping, battering his limbs against the frozen rock ledge. Achmed struggled to find consciousness, catching intermittent glimpses of it from moment to moment, then fading into darkness between. The two heartbeats he had found wrestled inside his own; breath failed him. He clenched his teeth. The sky swam in blue circles, then went black.
He felt warmth surround him. The wind that tickled his nostrils was suddenly sweeter. Achmed opened his eyes to see Rhapsody’s face swimming among the circles.
“Gods! What happened?” Her voice vibrated strangely. Achmed gestured dizzily and curled into a tight ball, lying sideways on the ground. He took several deliberate, measured breaths, the cold wind stinging his burning chest. He noted absently that Rhapsody was still beside him, but had refrained from touching him. She’s learning, he thought, strangely pleased.
With the grind of sand in his teeth and a painful growl, he forced himself into a crouch. They sat in silence on the windy hilltop above the crumbling city. When the sun was overhead and the shadows shifted, Achmed finally looked up. He exhaled deeply, then rose to a shaky stand, waving away the offer of her hand.
“What happened?” Her voice was calm.
Slowly he shook the sand from his clothes, retied his veils, staring down at Yarim below. The city had come to life of a sort while he had been coming back to himself, and now human and animal traffic shuffled through the unkempt streets, filling the distant air with sound. “There’s another one here,” he said. “Another child?”
Achmed nodded slowly. “Another heartbeat. Another spawn of some sort.”
Rhapsody went back to the horses and pulled open one of the saddlebags.
Mie drew forth an oilcloth journal and brought it back to the rim of the hill.
“Rhonwyn said there was only one in Yarim,” she said, rifling through the pages. “Here it is—one in Sorbold—the gladiator—two in the Hintervold, one in Yarim, one in the easternmost province of the Nonaligned States, one in Bethany, one in Navarne, one in Zafhiel, one in Tyrian, and the unborn baby, in the Lirin fields to the south of Tyrian. Are you certain the second heartbeat belongs to one of the children?”
“No, of course I’m not certain,” Achmed spat crossly, shaking more grit from his hair and cloak. “And perhaps it’s not another child. But somewhere near here is another pulse with the same taint to it, the same clouded blood.”
Rhapsody pulled her cloak even closer. “Perhaps it’s the F’dor itself.”
2
The inside of the carriage was a haven from the blistering sun, dark and reasonably cool. He longed to disembark, to feel the wheels roll to a final stop, so that he could at last step out into the light and searing heat of the Sorboldian desert, where the earth held the fiery warmth of the sun even at the onset of winter.
From the sound of it, that moment was almost upon him. He stretched the arms of the aged body he now occupied, the human vessel that had been his host for many decades, feeling the weakness that time had rendered upon him. But not for much longer.
Soon he would be changing hosts again, would be taking on a newer, younger body. There would be a bit of an adjustment, as there always was, a transition he recalled clearly even though he had not made one in a very long time. Just the thought of it made his arthritic hands itch with excitement.
With that excitement came the burning, the flare of the fire that was the core of him. It was the primordial element from which all of his kind had come, and to which they would one day return. All in good time.
It was best not to contemplate it at the moment, he knew. Once the spark of anticipation had ignited it became more difficult to hide his nether side, the dark and destructive spirit of chaos that was his true form, clinging to the flesh and bone of the human body only out of necessity. It was at moments of excitement that the malodor was strongest, the stench that clung to him and the others of his race, the smell of flesh in fire. And in the thrill of expectation the color of blood would rise to the edges of his eyes, rimming them red.
He willed himself to be calm again. It would not do to be discovered on so important a mission. It would not do to be seen as anything other than the pious religious leader that he was.