limited amounts of flying time, interspersed with periods of

recuperation. But necromancy did not have the drawbacks of such

limitations.

The necromancer could and often did draw on his own life force,

but rather than take the time necessary to recuperate, he could

replenish it immediately. With the life force of another. Or if the

spell was more demanding—and necromantic spells usually

were—the sorcerer could draw directly on the life force of another,

consuming it entirely. The more demanding and ambitious the

spell, the more energy in the form of life force was required and the

necromancer could, by casting certain spells, increase the strength

of his own life force. In effect, he would consume the souls of his

sacrificial victims until his power was magnified many times. And

that was both the intoxication and the addiction of necromancy.

Once “fixed” with the appetite for souls, the necromancer became

hooked for life. He killed to increase his power. The more his power

increased, the more ambitious—and more dangerous—were the

spells he could attempt. And the more ambitious his spells, the

more power they consumed. And the more power they consumed,

the more he had to kill.

Ambrosius had called it the “dark circle, ” a circle from which, he

had claimed, there was no escape. But Kanno did not believe that.

It was a lie, he thought, fostered by Ambrosius and perpetuated by

his disciples, by the B. O. T. and I. T. C., meant to control adepts

and keep them from gaining too much power so that they could be

controlled by the thaumaturgic hierarchy. Forced to function within

the limits of the bureaucracy, governed by codes Ambrosius had laid

down. Ambrosius himself, Kanno was certain, had been a

necromancer. How else could he have attained such power? What

about those stories, which could neither be substantiated nor

refuted, of how the legendary archmage had brought the world

back from the Collapse? ,

He awoke from his enchanted slumber of two thousand years to

find the world plunged into anarchy and darkness. No more fossil

fuels. An environment that was poisoned beyond measure. The

machines had all stopped. Governments and economies were in a

state of collapse. Riots. Lawlessness. Starvation and disease. Two