He who draws his powers from the stars or from beyond that luminous multitude may, upon relinquishing his flesh, be raised into the empyrean, while he who depends upon the earth and its aspects hidden from the herd of men, may rest beneath the land from which he gained his powers. Yet the mind of the mage is not restful, nor shall it sleep. He may be heard to insist upon his name like an infant hot to establish its identity, and be observed making shift to piece together his lost form out of the environs of his grave. His thoughts and his discoveries remain available to the initiated, for the earth itself shall grow eloquent when questioned. The merest handful contains the essence of its occupant, and shall yield all its knowledge to the searcher…

I lifted my eyes from the page, not just to give them a respite but in a bid to put my thoughts in order. Had my aunt gained any esoteric knowledge from the samples she’d taken from the sites – the burial sites? Or had that been the purpose of the man who’d ingratiated himself with her? Was Bella attempting it, and far more importantly, was Roy? I was distracted by a face mouthing so fiercely at me that it seemed to be opening too much of a mouth. I could have thought the book had summoned it until I realised it was beyond the window, which muted the shouts of a man calling to a friend across the road. I returned to the book, only to be daunted by the task, and started leafing through it in the hope that anything I ought to learn would catch my eye. I was somewhere near the middle when a word or phrase snagged my attention, and I used my blackened fingertips to pin the pages down.