Despite the hour, Kaleb was far from the only traveler on these streets. The many lanterns illuminated all but the narrowest alleys and deepest doorways, and patrols of mercenaries, hired to police the roads and keep the peace, gave even the most timid citizen sufficient confidence to brave the night.
So it had been for some years now, ever since the Guilds had effectively taken over the city. Tight-fisted they might be, but keeping the shops open and commerce running into the hours of the evening was well worth the expense.
Kaleb kept his head down, sometimes nodding slightly to those he shoved past on the streets or to the occasional patrols, but otherwise ignoring the shifting currents of humanity entirely. And slowly, gradually, the traffic on the roads thinned, the lanterns growing ever farther apart until they were replaced by simple torches on poles, spitting and sputtering in the rain. Gaps appeared in the cobbled streets, missing teeth in the city's smile, and the great stone edifices vanished, edged out by smaller buildings of wood.
On the border between Mecepheum's two separate worlds, Kaleb briefly looked back. Looming high over the inner city, the great Hall of Meeting itself. Here, now, it looked magnificent, untouched by time or trouble. Only in the brightest noon were its recent repairs visible. Despite all the city's greatest craftsmen could do in six years, the new stone matched the old imperfectly, giving the Hall a faintly blotchy facade not unlike the earliest stages of leprosy.
Kaleb smirked his disdain and continued on his way.
Six years…
Six years since the armies of Audriss, the Serpent, and Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, had clashed beyond Mecepheum's walls. Six years since Audriss, gone mad with stolen power, had unleashed horrors on Mecepheum in an apocalyptic rampage that had laid waste to scores of city blocks. Six years-more than enough for the Guilds to patch Mecepheum's wounds, if not to heal the scars beneath.
Oh, the citizens had avoided those mangled neighborhoods for a time, repelled by painful memories and superstitious dread. But cheap property near the heart of Imphallion's greatest city was more than enough to attract interest from outside, in turn inspiring Mecepheum's own merchants and aristocrats to bid for the land lest outsiders take it from them. The rebuilding, though slow to commence, was long since complete. An outsider, ignorant of the region's history, might wonder at the abrupt shift from old stone to new wood, from the affluent to the average, but otherwise would never know that anything untoward had ever happened.
The confident footsteps of the richer-and safer-neighborhoods transformed into the rapid tread of pedestrians hoping to reach home before trouble found them, or else the furtive stride of those who were trouble. Coarse laughter staggered drunkenly through the doors and windows of various taverns, voices argued behind closed shutters, ladies-and men-of the evening called and cooed from narrow lanes. Still Kaleb ignored it all. Twice, men of rough garb and evil mien emerged from doorways as though prepared to block his path, and twice they blinked abruptly, their faces growing slack and confused, continuing on their way as Kaleb passed them by.
The rain had grown heavier, threatening to mature into a true summer storm, when Kaleb finally reached his destination. It was just another building, large, ungainly; he wasn't even certain as to its purpose. A storehouse, perhaps? It didn't matter. Kaleb hadn't come for what was, but for what had been.
Ignoring the weather, he lowered his hood and glanced about, his magics granting him sight beyond what the night and the storm permitted anyone else. Even in brightest day, no other would have seen what he did, but there it was: scorched wood and ash, the last remnants of the lot's former edifice, mixed in with the dark soil.
He knelt in the dirt behind the ponderous structure, digging his hands into the earth until he was elbow- deep, first through clinging mud, then drier loam the falling rains had not reached. It smelled of growth and filth, things living and things dying.
Very much like Mecepheum itself, really.
Kaleb tensed in concentration, closing himself off from the world around him. As though he had melted in the downpour, he felt himself-the essence of what he was-pour from his eyes like tears, flow down his skin and meld into the yielding soil. He cast about, blind but hardly unaware, seeking, seeking…
There.
He rose, the soil sliding in chunks and muddy rivulets from his arms. He moved several yards to his left and knelt once more. But this time, when his hands plunged into the soil, they did not emerge empty. He carefully examined his prize: a skull, cracked and broken, packed with earth.
Without hesitation or hint of revulsion, Kaleb lifted it to his mouth and drove his tongue deep into a socket, probing through the dirt to taste the essence within. It was not a technique his 'master' Nenavar would have recognized. For all the old wizard's skill, there were secrets of which even he remained ignorant.
Six years, but there was just enough left to work with. Just enough for Kaleb to taste, and to know that this was not who he sought.
No surprise, that. The dead from Audriss's rampage, lost amid burned ruins and collapsed buildings-buried by nature, by time, and by the rebuilding-numbered in the hundreds, if not more.
Kaleb, frankly, had no interest in taking the time to search them all.
With a grunt, he planted the skull before him and began to trace symbols in the mud. Twisted they were, complex, unpleasant even to look at, somehow suggesting memories of secrets never known…
He was chanting, now, his words no less corrupt than the glyphs accompanying them. Sweat covered his face, a sticky film that clung despite the pounding rain.
Until, audible to none but him, a dreadful wail escaped the empty skull.
'Speak to me,' Kaleb demanded in a voice nigh cold enough to freeze the surrounding storm. 'Tell me what I need to know, and I'll return you to your rest. Refuse… Refuse, and I will bind you to these last of your bones, here to linger until they've decayed to dust.'
A moment, as though the risen spirit hadn't heard, or wasn't certain it understood, and then the wailing ceased. It was all the answer Kaleb received, and all he required.
'You did not die alone,' he told the skull. 'Hundreds perished even as you did, burned by Maukra's fires, drowned in Mimgol's poisons, or crushed as the buildings fell. From here, your ghost made its way to the Halls of the Dead in Vantares's domain. You must have seen the others as well, and it is one of your fellow dead whom I seek.'
'A name…' It was no true sound, a mere wraith of a voice for Kaleb's ears and Kaleb's mind alone. 'His name…'
Kaleb spoke, and the spirit howled as though the worst agonies of Vantares's deepest hell had followed it even into the living realm. But the necromancer would not relent, and finally the skull spoke, told him where he must dig.
And dig he did, in another lot some streets away. Again his senses plumbed the earth, revealing to him the broken bones. Again he drew forth a skull, his tongue flickering out to taste of whom it once had been.
But this time, Kaleb drew no sigils in the mud. He had no use for the spirit that had gone below. From this one, he needed knowledge possessed while living, not sights seen beyond the veil of death.
For hours he sat, fingers and tongue flitting across the interior of the skull, seeking every last trace of lingering thought and dream, every remaining sliver of what had once been a living essence, desperately seeking, desperately hoping…
And only as the eastern sky began to lighten, dawn transforming each falling raindrop into a glittering jewel, did Kaleb hurl the skull to shatter against a nearby wall, screaming his frustration to the dying night.
Chapter Two
ALTHOUGH SITUATED ABOUT AS FAR from Mecepheum as Imphallion's borders allowed, Rahariem was one of the nation's more important centers of trade. Grains and hardwoods thrived nearby, and what little trade trickled into Imphallion from Cephira and other neighboring dominions invariably crossed this border. Even more significant, however, the local laborers and craftsmen were rather more enthusiastic about working in general, for they kept more of what they earned. Far-eastern Imphallion remained largely under the sway of its hereditary
