“I told her that I had no desire to become a spiritist. Sophia smiled and said it didn’t matter to her if I wanted to or not, only that I did. She said that it was a dying art and she had never found anyone willing to learn the old craft. She said that young sorceresses nowadays don’t really want to have anything to do with the world of the dead. They figured that they would have an eternity of being dead and so they would rather spend their time living.

“Sophia said that it was understandable for people to feel that way, but she believed in the value of what she did and didn’t want to see the old ways die out. I certainly believed in the value of what she did. In fact, it seemed the only thing of real importance to me at the time.

“Still, as much as I wanted her help, I admit that I was repulsed by the idea of taking up such a profession myself. She reminded me of how much I’d wanted the help of a spiritist, and said that there would be others in the future who would also need such help. Sophia said that without younger people like me learning the old ways, they would vanish forever and that help would be lost to them.

“She told me that it might be my chance to make a difference for the future of the living. I told her that I would have to think on it.

“Then we got the reports that the soldiers who had gone back with me to Grandengart and then gone south after General Kuno’s forces had been slaughtered.”

Magda gasped at the news. “Slaughtered? All of them?”

Isidore nodded. “It had been a trap. Sophia thought that the bodies the enemy took had been the bait for the trap. Two men had escaped to tell what they saw.”

“More likely Kuno let them escape to spread fear.”

“I think you’re probably right. The men said that they were charging south and thought they were getting close when they were ambushed. All of our men, other than the two who had escaped, were killed or gravely injured.

“After the battle, Kuno’s men tied all of our fallen soldiers together into bundles of a dozen or so, tied them by their wrists, and then fastened groups of them to the wagons of the dead from Grandengart. One of the two men said that it reminded him of stringers of dead fish. Kuno’s army dragged all the dead and dying soldiers away with them, some of them still alive and screaming in pain, or moaning in mortal agony.”

Magda was incredulous. “I’ve never heard of an army hauling away the soldiers they’d killed.”