He hated waking up dead. The shock was bad enough. The feeling – the feeling of a thousand insects burrowing into his flesh – was worse. But the worst part was the memory loss. There was a period, every time he died, where he didn't know who he was or what had killed him. As such, each time was as bad as the first. He woke up panting, clutching and clawing at his skin in a vain effort to extract the worms and biters that he could almost see writhing beneath the surface. The horrible feeling passed momentarily. As the crawling creatures disappeared, he stood still for a moment, trying to understand what had happened. He cried dry, dead tears for the loss of his life. Finally, he remembered his name: it was Sacrum. He stopped crying and squeaking and stood up into one of the fiercest winds he could ever imagine. Standing up as best he could, he looked around at the dark, gray world of death. He remembered being dead before and knew it was always worse when he woke up, knowing nothing but the dark truth of completed mortality. With the memory of his name came the memory of his geis.#He stood before the great crackling black. house, built high and solitary nearly fifteen leagues from the nearest village. When the door opened, he fell to his knees and knelt, apprentice-style, and offered to serve. The shriveled, gnarled man at the door looked at him as if he were a cow. After several minutes, the man spoke. "You will find me saecra. Your name is Sacrum now." The thin man let out a short, harsh laugh. Before he could respond, the sorcerer spoke again, a word Sacrum could neither say nor imagine, and all memories of his old name disappeared.... middle of paper ..., and the secrets were the the most important tools a wizard had. The Veil of Death was indeed a mighty firmament, but even it could not keep secrets from a wizard for long. Limner was an apprentice and had no totem of his own, so he collected secrets for his master. Secrets had power. Theonidus, his master, reiterated the axiom until Limner thought it had lost all meaning. Of course, secrets had power; it was so banal that even the peasants threw it among themselves, acting all the time as if they were passing on some sort of great wisdom. Limner's master was not a peasant. The little secrets that writeFor those who did Limner's job, dying was something to be avoided as much as possible, even for a wizard. This is not to say that the Earth is much larger than the living world, but everything that has ever been reduced to dust resided within its limits...