Alec noted the gore on either side of the door, thick on the walls and floor. “And that’s where the night guards were.”

Sedge nodded. “Good lads, both of them.”

Thero made a close investigation of the space, running his hands over the walls and casting an orange sigil on the air that Alec recognized as one that would lead to magical items or places. This time, however, it simply dissipated into thin air. Thero gave Klia a shrug, then nodded for Sedge to proceed.

The smell of old blood hit them as soon as the door swung open, and with it the stink of guts and shit, worse than anything Alec had encountered in some time. Trying not to gag, he covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. The others did the same.

Sedge and the riders stepped in, then emerged a moment later looking grim.

“No sign of danger, Highness,” Sedge reported. “But it’s bad.”

Klia stepped past him into the room with Thero. Seregil, Alec, and Micum crowded into the doorway to see.

The bedchamber was a well-appointed charnel house. Most of the furnishings were overturned, the draperies shredded, the windows smashed. The silken bed hangings hung in tattered ribbons and tangled with what could only be dried bits of intestine. This horror framed an even more horrific sight: the bedclothes had been thrown aside, and the sheet and mattress were torn to pieces and black with dried blood, or worse. Alec could make out bits of scalp with hair still attached, smears of what was probably brains, and excrement. Flies crawled over everything and buzzed thickly in the room. Something else hung from the frame above the bed: a maggot-ridden dead owl.

It was too much. Alec staggered back down the corridor into the bath chamber and was noisily sick in a marble basin. When there was nothing left to throw up, he wiped his mouth and sat back on his heels, mortified. He jumped as a hand touched his shoulder, but it was only Micum.

“You should go keep Lady Zella company,” the older man murmured.

But pride would not allow it. “I’m fine.”

Forewarned this time, he and Micum went back to the death chamber.

Thero had taken out his crystal wand and held it between his palms, eyes closed, frowning. The others were making a thorough but gingerly search of the room.

“What do you think of that?” Seregil said through his handkerchief, pointing up at the dead owl.

“Just like in my dream,” Alec replied, keeping his own handkerchief over his mouth and nose and trying hard not to think about the foulness of the air.

Thero opened his eyes and turned to Alec. “You dreamed of a hanged owl? Not Seregil?”

“That’s right.”

“Tell me the rest of it.”