galleries, coffee shops, and hostess bars. After careful research

through old city records that no one ever bothered to examine

anymore, he chose the site for his shop precisely for that reason.

Years ago, the subterranean mall had been completely sealed off,

buried and forgotten beneath new construction, but using his

magical skills, Kanno had broken through to it. The magically

warded and camouflaged entrance was now located in the basement

of his shop and not even his apprentices, who passed by it several

times a day, suspected its existence. Each night, after he locked the

doors of his shop, Kanno descended into his secret necromantic

enclave, to practice the black arts.

Necromancy, Kanno felt, was the pinnacle of the sorcerer’s art.

Dangerous, demanding, forbidden, and intoxicating. It demanded

the ultimate in skill and concentration on the part of the

necromancer, whose own life hung in the balance with each and

every spell attempted. But, unlike the white magic of the

thaumaturge, black magic was exponential in its rewards. White

magic could never increase the power of the sorcerer the way that

necromancy could. It was both intensely fulfilling and intensely

addictive.

Necromancy—literally, the sorcery of death—had a price, just as

thaumaturgy did. Magic had its own immutable laws of

metaphysics. Matter and energy could not limply be created out of

nothing. The energy, the fuel, had to come from somewhere. To the

white magician or the thaumaturge, the energy came most

frequently from his or her own life force. On occasion, and only

under the strictest licensing and observation of the codes

administered by local Bureaus of Thaumaturgy and overseen by the

International Thaumaturgical Commission, a thaumaturge could

draw upon the life force of carefully screened volunteers, but only in

the same way as blood could be taken from a donor—a little at a

time and under carefully controlled conditions, allowing for natural

replenishment. But in most cases, white sorcerers and wizards

drew on their own life force, which placed strict limitations on their

powers. The more demanding a spell, the greater the drain on a

magician’s life force, for which reason magic-users such as pilot

adepts needed to be in peak physical condition and could only put in