In all, she mused, the benefits of her success were covering over the threats and dangers that had loomed over her life-some old, like her paucity of food, and some new, like the threat of death, or worse. She took some time to watch the falling snow, forgivingly covering up the grime in the streets and providing the overcrowded city with a new garment of pristine white.

Kehrsyn sighed with relief when she finally saw the gates of the Thayan enclave through the falling snow. Though she had just broken a vow that she'd kept for many long years, she couldn't help but feel some tinges of pride at how she'd conducted herself. She'd planned well, allowed for complications, and kept her head when things turned against her. If she could just keep that up for maybe one more day, she'd be all right.

As instructed by the guards, Kehrsyn knocked on the door indicated and pushed it open, letting herself into the room. Her heart pounded. She had never been in a mage's study before.

A large, low wooden table dominated the center. What little of the tabletop could be seen through the clutter of scrolls, tomes, and glassware was covered with scars and stains. A thin silver chain rose from the center of the table and reached two thirds of the way to the ceiling. A greenish phosphorescent flame burned at the end of the chain. It seemed as if the fire's ethereal magic supported the chain against gravity. Kehrsyn could see no other means of support.

A second large table sat against one wall, covered with a humanoid cadaver so thoroughly dissected that Kehrsyn could not even hazard a guess as to its species. Thankfully, a pot burning with heavy incense sat next to the bloody surgical instruments and masked the corpse's dead-meat stink. Bookshelves dominated another wall, filled with thick, leather-bound tomes inscribed with arcane and sinister characters. A sticky pall of incense hung in the air, veiling the misshapen wizard Eileph, who sat on a wide, comfortable chair studying a book that sat propped up on a stand. The book was easily half as large as he was.

Though that was all strange, it was the toad that made Kehrsyn stop in shock. A large toad, closing on a foot in length, sat atop Eileph's nearly hairless head, its paws spread wide across the Thayan's skull to grip his pallid skin in a tight embrace that seemed obscenely intimate. Its color was reminiscent of rotting leaves, and its grotesque and flaccid obesity stretched taut its greasy, warty skin. It had a wide, sagging mouth surmounted by two cold eyes the color of dead fish.

Kehrsyn's lower lip curled in disgust as the toad's head swiveled slowly, just a small adjustment in her direction until it looked squarely at her. Its body pulsed, and its throat filled with an appalling amount of air. It let the air back out in a deep croak that sounded like a glutton's belch. Perhaps, surmised Kehrsyn, it was.

The toad opened and closed its mouth once. Kehrsyn pulled her lip back farther, disgusted.

Eileph sat reading his book and as yet seemed unaware of her presence. Kehrsyn cleared her throat, and the toad responded with an even louder croak.

The hideous thing opened its mouth again, stabbing its tongue into the air in the direction of an empty bench placed against the wall, then staring at her again. When Kehrsyn hesitated, the toad repeated the gesture.

Kehrsyn cringed, closed the door behind her, and edged over to the bench, which sat close to the dissection table. As she put her bag down and sat on the edge of the bench, the toad nodded almost imperceptibly.

As she sat and waited, Kehrsyn took the opportunity to pull out the magic wand, careful to handle it only through the square of cloth she had cut.

At first glance, Kehrsyn thought that for Eileph to dub it a "necromancer's staff" seemed far too grandiose. It measured less than a cubit, stretching from Kehrsyn's elbow to her wrist, barely even worthy of being called a scepter. At its crown it was no thicker than a flute, tapering to the size of Kehrsyn's finger at the other end. Despite what she'd been told, for some reason Kehrsyn had expected it to be made of some unusual or glowing substance, but instead it was a plain material, almost pure white, perhaps bone or some exotic wood. It looked so clean that one could easily believe it had been forged but the day before.

Still, she thought, the necromancer's staff demanded a name far weightier than "wand." Its polished surface was deeply etched with pictograms of exquisite detail. Tiny stylized birds, eyes, hands, and other images covered the staff from one end to the other, minute and detailed enough to absorb the mind for hours, and with edges sharp enough to provide a satisfying, biting grip in the hands, even through the cloth. The interior portions of the relief work were inlaid with what looked like powdered gold. Viewed at even a short distance, the gold blended with the white to give it a unique color. The bronze band around the top had all of its luster, and was formed into delicate waves of flowing water and studded with smoky quartz. The bronze river whirled up to hold a large piece of black amber at the top, delicately carved. The staff was light and moved easily in the hand, yet it had an indefinable momentum about it that conveyed a sense of consequence.

It was beautiful. Even were it not magical, it would be incomparably valuable, worth far more than anything Kehrsyn had ever seen in her life, let alone held in her delicate hands.

And it belonged to someone else.

The full import of her actions came back to her, washing away her confidence and exhilaration with the undeniable truth of what she held in her hands. She had stolen a priceless item from someone, selfishly taking their valuables to benefit herself, and she had ruined the cloth during her theft, a thoughtless act of vandalism to further her crime.

Kehrsyn clenched it tightly as the tears began to well up in her eyes. Why did the gods make it so that all her prospects for survival or prosperity could be obtained only by taking that which belonged to others? Why did her benefit have to come at someone else's pain?

Why had the gods conspired to force her to break the only vow she'd ever made?

A loud croak and a rough-edged "Aha!" interrupted her painful musings. She looked up through blurry eyes and saw Eileph hobbling over to her with great excitement, the toad still sitting implacably on his head. He let out a long, covetous sigh that sounded like nothing so much as a death rattle. Kehrsyn barely managed to wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her free hand before Eileph reached her.

She drew back as far as she could while sitting against the wall, contained by the corner of the room at one shoulder and the dissected cadaver at the other. Eileph's avaricious eyes bulged out of his head, and his face was blotchy with anticipation. His whole body quaked with excitement, and Kehrsyn could see his trembling fingers flex like a malformed spider. She feared the misshapen Thayan might rupture a blood vessel in his brain just by looking at her ill-gotten treasure.

Instead of falling over dead, however, Eileph moved with a speed Kehrsyn would not have thought possible. He snatched the small scepter from her grip and held it in front of her eyes, shaking his white-knuckled fist.

"Do you have any idea what you have?" he shouted, his face and baleful breath mere inches from hers.

Kehrsyn tried not to wince and tried to shrink back even more, both unsuccessfully.

"Neither do I," said the wizard. "Look at this aura, will you? Look at the power throbbing within!"

Eileph held it in front of his face and hers, rotating it in his hand as if he expected she could see the magical auras as well as he could.

"Thissss," he hissed, "is amazing! This is a true relic, an item…" His tone changed to a purr as he stepped away from Kehrsyn and limped for his work table, all the while stroking the wand. "Oh, such craftsmanship. It's beautiful. A masterpiece! Such runes, such sigils as I have never seen. And the magic embedded within, wrought within the matrix of these symbols, why… why this could be the Staff of the Necromancer!"