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But Narvi was unimpressed.

‘Is that you, Narvi?' a soft voice said.

‘It's me,' he answered, rising as the priest came up to him. He was an old man, frail and short, with a long silver beard. His yellow cloak of office was studded with gems. He was Narvi's mentor, and had taught him to use his powers as a sorcerer. When Narvi was a teenager, the priest had introduced him to necromancy. He couldn't cast spells himself, for he wasn't a sorcerer, but he was a learned man. He would show Narvi how the spells were cast, and his pupil would imitate him, casting them correctly. With necromancy, he taught him how to hex and curse.

‘You're a necromancer now, and I cannot say I am glad. I wouldn't have thought it possible,' the priest said quietly, ‘but what must be done must be done. Without necromancy, you can do naught with the king's scepter. ' He gazed at Narvi. The young man appeared unconcerned. ‘Are you sure you can go through with this?'

‘I have no reason to withdraw.'

‘You are an expert necromancer.'

Narvi merely smiled. There was neither gratitude nor relief in that smile. Just arrogance.

When he left for the palace of King Arivi, a cloud of anxiety and tribulation settled over the hidden free clans. Narvi was a sorcerer and a necromancer, the key to their freedom and the harbinger of good fortune to all the people of Imin.

Wasn't he? They tried not to think of his strange dual personality. He was, some of the elders said, a serpent tongue. Not that it mattered, because the ancestor spirits trusted him.

Or did they? He was the only sorcerer the clans had seen.

The truth was, nobody knew Narvi's destiny, and the ancestor spirits had gambled by choosing him. He was raised by the two free clans. He couldn't betray his own people.

Vae was Imin's first necromancer. The scepter the kings of Imin bore was bound by necromantic powers, and the sorcerers could not figure out its working. They didn't want to, and their king forbade necromantic studies.

Necromancy was, after all, an art that thrived on curses and hexes, and it was a feared, forbidden art. Vae, born under Tan, was in his lifetime a brilliant sorcerer and a deadly necromancer. His powers remained undiminished as an ancestor spirit after his death.

Narvi stopped, a month after he had set out, before a rice field. He was on the outskirts of the clan Ur, part of the kingdom of Imin. He saw hills in the distance, and headed towards Ur's marketplace.

The people of Ur were shabbily attired. The roads were bad and there were potholes clogged with murky water. The air was heavy with the smell of rain as the skies grew overcast.

He stopped at the dairy.

‘Yeah?' a man in a grimy outfit snapped. ‘You want milk? Butter? Cheese? Maybe a little buttermilk? Ghee?'

‘Cheese. A wheel.'

‘Here,' the man thrust it into Narvi's hands. He stared. Green fungus dotted the surface.

‘I don't want this!'

‘Fungus is good for you.'

‘Just as venom detoxifies the blood, eh?'

The man gave him a fresh wheel. Narvi nodded, paid, and left the store, breaking pieces of the cheese and popping them into his mouth.

‘You want to buy a horse?'

‘Clothes?'

‘Fresh vegetables?'

‘No money!' Narvi called.