ludicrous white magic, would be unable to withstand. But the fools hadn't listened and they had paid the

price for their intransigence. They had fought singly and in small groups, with stronger adepts bending the

weaker ones to their will, competing against each other even while they fought the Council, and their

reward for their stupidity had been ignominious defeat.

ludicrous white magic, would be unable to withstand. But the fools hadn't listened and they had paid the

price for their intransigence. They had fought singly and in small groups, with stronger adepts bending the

weaker ones to their will, competing against each other even while they fought the Council, and their

reward for their stupidity had been ignominious defeat.

Instead of making an organized retreat to find a sanctuary where, together, they could renew their

strength and marshal their powers, they had scattered, each hoping that the avatars would be occupied

with seeking out the others while they, themselves, remained in hiding and gradually built up their strength

until they could defeat the power of the runestones.

Wulfgar labored under no illusions when it came to that. He knew that the odds were great against any

one of them becoming powerful enough to prevail against the united strength of the spirits of the Council.

In order for one to prevail against many, that one had to gain the strength of many and that meant that the

life energy of a large number of humans would have to be consumed. The laws of magic were immutable.

The amount of power generated was in direct proportion to the amount of energy expended.

There were three possible ways of defeating the power of the runestones. One was to build up power

gradually and circumspectly, claiming one or two human lives at a time with a minimum of energy

expenditure and doing it in such a way that the bodies could never be recovered to alert the avatars by

the manner of their death. This Wulfgar had done, always choosing his victims with care, disposing of

their remains, and constantly moving from one location to another, so as not to establish a pattern of

killings that would give away his presence.

The second way was to unite with other necromancers, so that the combined strength of their power

could defeat the runestones. Only it would take more than two or three adepts working together in order

to accomplish this, unless all of those adepts had greatly augmented their powers by following the first

method. Wulfgar had rejected this option as impractical. He knew that power gained through

necromancy, while potentially far greater than the power that white magic could produce, could be highly

addictive and corruptive. It was what had happened to the others. Driven by their greed, by their

ambition, and by their fear of being discovered by the avatars before they had sufficiently built up their

strength, they had been impatient and incautious.

Now they were dead, having survived ages of imprisonment only to be destroyed within a short while of

having gained a taste of freedom. Wulfgar did not intend to join them.

The third method of defeating the power of the runestones was the one that the others had all tried and

failed at, the quickest means of gaining power, a spell designed to consume the life energies of many

humans at one time and redirect that energy at the avatars. Only in addition to being the shortest, quickest

way to power, it was also the riskiest, because it meant the necromancer would be acting as a channel

through which immense amounts of energy would flow, being expended as quickly as it was acquired,

and if the slightest thing went wrong, the necromancer would be left weakened and vulnerable, unable to

recuperate in time.

That was a mistake that Wulfgar was not about to make. As great as the temptation was to gorge

himself on human energy and strike out at his enemies—and that temptation grew with each new victim,

like a gnawing hunger—he would not give in to it.