It made no sense any way the young witch looked at it; how could there be a seal in place that kept the strongest necromancers locked away, but gave free reign to the lesser ones? If that was indeed the case, she had to imagine it working like a kind of sieve that kept the largest pieces out while being too coarse to catch finer grains. But then again, Gerald had said that Pelgaid’s guard consisted mostly of men-at-arms and walls. Was the tribunal just biding its time? Could they leave at any moment and they simply chose not to? Just how they chose to leave Gerald in possession of Omni? It was all very ominous and frightening. Feeling suddenly reminded of the impending marriage between Pelgaid and Zerul, she could hope that this union would at least bolster Pelgaid’s defenses with more knowledgeable mages, at least. If nothing else, they would reinforce the illusion of control and safety. It just dawned on Jillian just how many catastrophic dangers were looming over Rodoria, a fact that she had been quite ignorant to when she had still been a regular citizen. There was the Withering, of course, which had turned out to be the ploy of none other than Kreshtaat; there was Hazzergash who, even in a weakened state, could obliterate a majority of Anaxim, and only the Spirits knew where the [i]other [/i]generals of the Grand Master hid; and now she was being told that the Black Tribunal was not nearly as convincingly quarantined as one might wish. Any one of these threats, and she was sure there were many others now that she was still unaware of, could be enough to plunge the entire human world into darkness and chaos. All the more reason to justify leaving behind her old life and becoming an active participant in shaping the fate of the world she knew.

And she wasn’t the only one doing the shaping; curious eyes fixated on her companion, she questioned how it came to be that the Black Tribunal had trusted Gerald so readily, even sought him out on their own volition. He revealed that, essentially, he did not know why they did what they did. At best, he had figured, it was to set him up as a competent necromancer for when he became the new dean at the academy. It began when he clumsily attempted to learn the art on his own, in secret, and they learned of this in spite of his precautions. Apparently they had simply offered him membership in the tribunal, and agreed to teach him. Jillian guessed that the necromancers must either have been very desperate for new blood or very naïve. Or perhaps Gerald was lying; she still found it hard to believe that he had just woken up to find Omni one day. He was either hiding part of the truth, or the tribunal was vastly less competent than she would have expected. Or, as she had guessed before, he was being played and did not know the truth himself. She wondered if the staff could be used to spy on him in some form and if that was what kept them docile for the time being, given that he was involved in a great many interesting affairs. In the end, though, Jillian decided to ask about something far more personal.

“Is your goal still the same, Gerald? About your late wife?” she asked softly, almost cautiously. Jillian knew that it was almost certainly a sensitive topic to ask about, especially when considering his taciturn nature when it came to personal things. She had suspected that this might have been his reason for seeking necromancy ever since the Grand Master had mentioned his beloved’s death and wondered if this fancy of his still held true. There was no way he could bring her back in a way that would not be a grotesque mockery of who she had been in life. Gerald had to know this, surely? Or was he privy to some elder lore that whispered promises of true resurrection?