“That is what we believe, yes. But it’s not what we want.”

Valkyrie frowned. “What?”

“Our souls, our life force, flow through that never-ending stream – but not our minds. Not our memories. When I die, my essence will move on, but this man you see before you, this mind, this personality, this being, will be gone. I’ll become something else. Someone else. But it won’t be me.”

“You’re… you’re scared of death?”

“We all are.”

“But you’re Necromancers! You embrace death!”

“We study Necromancy because we’re trying to defeat death. That’s what this is all about, Valkyrie. This is all it’s ever been about.”

“So what does this mean? You want Melancholia to break down the walls between life and death so that you’ll never have to die? What was all that about evolution? We will evolve to meet the dead, or whatever it was.”

“Society will evolve. It’ll have to. Evolve or perish. We figure it’s worth the risk.”

“Solomon, what the hell is going on? What does the Passage mean?”

“The energy stream that flows through this world, this reality, it links up with the next reality, and the next, and it loops around again. It’s a natural force and a natural system.”

“OK. So?”

“So we want to stop it. We want those alive today to remain alive for ever.”

“So no one dies? What about new life? What about babies being born?”

“No life leaves. No life enters.”

Valkyrie stared at him, and immediately thought of Alice. “You can’t do that. Are you insane? You can’t do that.”

“Society will adapt to the new way of living.”

“No more babies? Solomon, come on! That’s nuts! It’s a biological need!”

“Having children is a biological need only because we are mortal – even sorcerers. We die. And we know we’re going to die, and so we have children, to continue our bloodline, to continue our legacy, to try to ensure our own immortality. But when we are immortal, we won’t have that need to procreate.”

“That’s… my God, Solomon, please tell me that you know this isn’t right.”

He sighed. “This is the kind of reaction we feared.”

“People aren’t going to accept this. The whole world will be after you.”

“No. Not the whole world. Half the world.”

“What?”

“In order to stop death, we have to block the flow. We have to dam the energy stream.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“We need a massive influx of souls.”

“You mean you’re going to need a lot of people to suddenly die.”

“Yes. Their life forces will block the stream, overload it, cutting it off for ever.”

“How many? How many people?”

Wreath shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t asked me these things.”

“How many people, Solomon?”