Excerpt from the Prologue...   

    Mal Tarsis read aloud from the book. He could hear nothing but his own voice now. The man's cries and pleas were a distant dream. He saw nothing but the aged, yellow pages and his hands as he followed the lines of text. He must concentrate.
 

    “With the soul of fire I consecrate you,

     With the stone of earth I will create you,

     Take from him his, which is not his,

     Take from him life, and give him this.”

    Mal Tarsis rose from the ground after reading these words. The knife had taken on a reddish hue. Everything went according to plan. Yet he had barely begun. Sweat began to bead on his forehead.

    The next part of the rite would be the most difficult. He would read aloud the passages from the book while he made the proper cuts in the subject's body. But he had to finish the incisions before the candles burned halfway to the floor. If the candles were to burn out before the rite was over, even one of them, his life and his very soul would be forfeit to the demon conjured.

    The Anointed had deemed it necessary to memorize this part of the rite. He would then chant the words while he cut open the helpless victim. He began to speak as he placed the point of the blade in the crevice between the rib cage and the neck.

    “Let him be that which you choose.”

    He made a cut directly from the point where he had originally placed the knife down to the area just above the groin. A second or two passed before the blood began to fill the gap. The victim no longer struggled or pleaded as he had before. His eyes stared forward with blind terror.

    “To lay yourselves inside his noose,

     And make his shell your shell.”

    As he chanted these words, he made two more cuts, one down each leg to above the foot. Despite the wounds, the victim must live through the rite. The spirits, which would soon occupy the victim's mortal body, needed living, breathing flesh in which to function. Without the mortal soul to feed upon, the spirits from the Lands of Death would strike at anyone in the general area and destroy them.

    Mal Tarsis edged his way to the head of the altar. The final, most important, cut neared. He laid the blade across the man's throat. With a dark elation, the warlock drew the knife from one side to the other. As he did so, he spoke again.

    “I summon thee, oh timeless ones.”

    The warlock bolted from the center of the circles. To remain within would be suicide. Soon the tortured souls would bridge the gap between the Lands of Death and the mortal world. The outer circle of herbs protected the summoner and any others present from the souls of the damned.

    As he reached the outer edge of the second circle of herbs, Mal Tarsis quickly glanced at the red candles. The candles had not been very tall to begin with. They were almost three quarters down now. He must finish the spell quickly.

    He tucked the knife away in a fold of his cloak. He threw back the hood of his robe and lifted his arms to the ceiling. A mist of swirling gray clouds had begun to form there. An eye formed in the cloud directly above the stone slab with the bleeding victim. Although the mist seemed to be fog driven into a funnel by a wind, the phantom wind did not touch the candles' flames or the two warlocks at all.

    “Come from the lands you know,

     Come from the hands of fate,

     To live again and breathe again,

     To destroy those which you would hate.”

    The final part of the conjuration came. The words that the red-robed summoner had just spoken would draw the souls from within the cloud now swirling above the altar. The warlock watched as faces began to appear in the mist. Their features seemed to be contorted with screams, which gave no sounds. They melded into and out of the gray funnel. Only the whiteness of their countenance distinguished them from the cloud.

    “Take his body I command you,

     But obey me I demand you,

     Or the darkness again will you know.”

    With the incantation finished, the Anointed spread his hands out before him towards the victim bound to the altar. The souls that swirled inside the cloud had begun to flow smoothly into the man's body through the cuts that had previously been made in his skin. As the first soul entered the body of the half dead subject, he suddenly roared to life with a violent scream. It pierced the ears of the two dark magicians.

    The tortured souls dove from the cloud into the mortal body of the unconscious man. They poured in and seemed to fill out his wiry frame. The bloody shape writhed in a pool of dark red liquid upon the stained stone slab. His face twisted and spasmed, as did the rest of his body. He seemed to grow somehow as the tortured souls filled him. His muscles bulged out and he started to take on an almost primitive look in the features of his head and body. He also took on a reddish hue in his skin, not a glow exactly, but it seemed to glow with darkness, which consumed his mortal shell.

    As the newborn demon servant convulsed, the funnel disappeared. The candles winked out suddenly, although they were not completely done burning. A final peel of agony escaped from the drained white lips of the man turned demon, it broke the silken bonds with a single effort and leapt at the summoner.

    Mal Tarsis recoiled from the expected blow reflexively, as did Demtry. But the demon thing never reached them. The protective circle repelled it. Almost as if an invisible wall spread up from the circle and into infinity.
    The demon thing brought itself up to its full height and spread wide its red, clawed hands. The stripes of flesh, which had previously been cut by the summoner, now glowed with a supernatural obsidian black. The demon thing stood twice as tall as he.