"The Tamanous," he says with some distaste. "Ghouls and grave-robbers who traffic in stolen body parts. They have never troubled us before this. I will have to see to it that they do not think they can interfere with our sacred sites. You are fortunate to have escaped from them intact." He gives a faint smile tinged with irony. "Perhaps you should have been a warrior instead of a mystic." A tantalizing smell reaches my nostrils, and the old man gestures toward the tray at the bedside.