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far than that.
    The oak door opened with a screech of dry hinges, and Helmut pushed through. The sight that greeted him held him paralyzed like a rat before a snake, or a priest feeing a god. The Liche held his eyes with a burning vision, grinning from empty eye sockets above a throne as shapeless as black fire. Welcome , it seemed to say in his head; I've been waiting a long time for you. Helplessly, he felt himself drawn forward by the deathless bony gaze. And the door closed behind him.
    Klaus Kerzer's first reaction was to protect hearth and home. As Maria stood immobile, hearing the brassy clangour of the bell, he was already reaching for the heirloom which hung in oilcloth above the lintel. He swept it down from its pegs, swiftly unrolling the swaddling of greasy rags that protected the blade from damp. He looked at his wife grimly.
    "Smoke you smelt," he said; "at high tide, and the bell tolling." He breathed deeply and pulled the door open. "Quick woman, rouse out your neighbours! Good wife Schlagen, the Bissels. Everyone. Get them to the temple and take sanctuary there, or else wherever the rest go. But hide - I fear the reavers are coming."
    Her freeze broke. She embraced him swiftly, tears forming in her eyes. "Come back to me," she whispered.
    "Go," he grunted, turning his head away. The sword lay naked on the rough table, edge gleaming and sharp. His throat was dry. Despite his bulk and his brooding temper, Klaus Kerzer was no warrior. The sword merely emphasized how his family's fortunes had sunk over the years. He grunted again, in the back of his throat, then inexpertly took the weapon in both hands. It was long and heavy, and he hoped that he remembered what his father had taught him of its use. Behind him, Maria slipped into the darkness of the night. The bell still clanged mournfully, but now there was no mistaking the noises that carried from the beach on the chill night breeze.
    He stepped outside just as the first of Ragnar One-Eye's soldiers reached the village.
    Oblivion's sweet and sickly sea floated Helmut away. It was dark in the crypt, and he knew he slept - no one could, waking, face the Liche and not flee screaming - for he sat on a stool that crackled beneath his weight and payed attention to the ancient monster.
    Long ago , it seemed to say, things were not as they are now. The people of this land were not poor fisherfolk and peasants, oppressed by the Imperial nobility and the ravages of war and piracy. Things were better - far better. They had me. Whether it was truly dead or only half so remained a mystery. But there was no sign of malevolence, nor arrogant disdain; it talked to him quietly, like a friendly uncle or a visiting scholar. As if it sensed an affinity in him, and wished to enlarge upon it.
    As he gazed upon the candle-lit skull of the robed and bejewelled corpse that sat, enthroned, against the wall opposite him, Helmut seemed to see visions of that far-gone time. It had been a bright age, golden in colour. The Nameless One had ruled mercifully for centuries from his fastness on the headland, exacting a tax of corpses and little else from his domain. Those who lived there closed their minds and their souls, leaving their mortal remnants to the high one; only foreigners chose to dispute his supremacy.
    There had been endless days and endless nights of splendour in his fastness. The elixir of life, served from a golden bowl beneath a chandelier of fingerbones; the butler a black-robed skeleton. The dark studies of the eternal overlord who sought to extend his knowledge into every niche, temporal and spiritual, from pole to pole. The searing light of dawn, seen by eyes grown too sensitive for daylight but which yet anticipated a billion tomorrows. His Nameless splendour had ruled for five hundred years while all around him were little more than barbarians.
    There came a time, the mummy seemed to say, when the burden became tiresome. When night alone was sufficient for me, and I chose