becoming significantly more intelligent, the attitude that many of the Old Ones had toward them had

changed.

becoming significantly more intelligent, the attitude that many of the Old Ones had toward them had

changed.

The conservationists among the Old Ones had chosen to cloak their newly enlightened beliefs in a mantle

of ridiculous purity—they had called it "white magic," that which drained, but did not kill. And those who,

like Wulfgar, did not subscribe to their new notions had been branded as the Dark Ones, necromancers

who practiced so-called "black magic," the sorcery of death, as all the Old Ones had once done. Only

the pompously self-styled Council of the White had decreed that it was barbarous. They had ruled that

necromancy would be outlawed in favor of white magic, which conserved the human resource. Those

whom they had called the Dark Ones had not had a voice in their decision, as they were not members of

the Council. They had simply been presented with the new "law" as a fait accompli. Wulfgar and the

others had treated it with the contempt that it deserved and had refused to abide by it. It had led to war.

Humans now remembered that war only vaguely, as part of their myths and legends. They called it the

Ragnarök, the Götterdämmerung, the Twilight of the Gods. Many of the Old Ones had died. Wulfgar

and his faction had been defeated and captured, but the Council of the White had not seen fit to execute

their prisoners. They had, after all, fought the war in the name of the sanctity of life—something that

Wulfgar felt was the ultimate hypocrisy—and they had not been able to bring themselves to kill their

captive enemies. Instead, the Dark Ones were imprisoned, entombed in a deep, subterranean pit in the

Euphrates Valley and held there by the most powerful spell the Council could devise. The spell of the

Living Triangle, the Warding Pentagram, and the Eternal Circle. To empower that spell, the members of

the Council had nobly sacrificed themselves, fusing their life energies with three enchanted runestones—a

ruby, a sapphire, and an emerald.

When the spell had been cast, only one member of the Council was left—Gorlois, the youngest. It was

Gorlois who had placed the runestones into a small bronze box, which he then placed into a spellwarded,

golden chest on a ledge above the deep shaft to which Wulfgar and his fellow necromancers had been

consigned. The pit was the Eternal Circle, ringed by a mosaic of obsidian and gold, the tiles forming runes

that were essential to the spell. The runestones were the Living Triangle, the three-in-one, enchanted

gems containing the life essence of the Council of the White, the keys to lock the spell. And surrounding

the pit was the huge Warding Pentagram, laid into the cavern floor in a mosaic of obsidian and gold.

Such incredibly elaborate preparations, Wulfgar had thought, before the spell had lulled him and the

others in the pit into a deep torpor, would last for centuries. How much simpler, he thought, and

ultimately how much kinder it would have been to kill us. But kindness was not what the Council had

intended. No, despite their high-flown, noble pronouncements, what they had really wanted was revenge,

a way to torment their enemies throughout all eternity. And eternity it might well have been, had Gorlois

not proved susceptible to being contaminated by human weakness.

Since his escape, Wulfgar had sought to gain as much knowledge as he could of the humans in their

brave new world and he had tried to discover if anything was remembered of his race. What he had