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Adron's Disaster, in which those same powers were unleashed a second time upon the world, and the Lesser Sea was created. The Great Sea, in area, is seven times that of the Lesser Sea; I cannot, in my own mind, imagine the cataclysm of the moment when it came into being, that instant when for the first time the Unknowable took form."
    This was something I didn't care to imagine.
    "But," continued Sethra before I had to mentally go there, "the Unknowable is, by definition, formlessness: the totality of content, with nonexistence of form. What happens when the Unknowable takes form? One answer is, it ceases to be unknowable. As soon as there was a Sea of Amorphia, there had, sooner or later, to be a Goddess named Verra to codify and define the Elder Sorcery that could manipulate it; and a Serioli named Clylng Fr'ngtha that made the Elder Sorcery tangible by embodying it in objects blurring the distinction between animate and inanimate; and a Human" - she meant a Dragaeran - "named Zerika to craft an Orb that would make this power subject to any mind that could discipline itself to learn the patterns and codes by which the Orb translated the raw power of amorphia into the fingers that shape reality. Now the Unknowable is knowable again, and it is a power such as exists, so far as I know and so far as the Necromancer has been able to discover, nowhere else in the universe - in any universe, for there is more than one, as the Necromancer has demonstrated." I had some trouble with this, but just sort of mentally stored it away for future consideration, and kept listening.
    "So in our world, thanks to the gods, there exists this power, and, somewhere, are the Jenoine, filled with lust for the power, and hatred for those who destroyed their brethren - or so I believe we might think of their feelings and not be too far from the truth.
    "Who is it, Vlad, who might protect us from this jealous and angry species, who see us all as the rebellious objects of science - as test subjects placed in a maze who not only escaped it, but killed the observers and now in their arrogance operate the maze as they please and will not let those who built it so much as observe? Who might protect us from the Jenoine?"
    I guessed what the answer was going to be, and I was right, but I didn't interrupt.
    "The gods," said Sethra. "Above all else, that is their task.
    "The place we call the Paths of the Dead sits, as I think you know better than most, both in and out of our world, and at its heart is the place we call the Halls of Judgment, because our legends tell us that this is where we go upon death to have our lives judged. And, as far as it goes, this is the truth. I know how your mind works by now, Vlad, and I see the glimmer of understanding in your eyes; I suspect that you begin to glimpse the true purpose of the Halls of Judgment."
    I swallowed. She was right, I was getting a glimmering.
    "Yes," she said. "It is there that the gods sift souls as a Serioli sifts for gold in a mountain stream. The gods search for those who can be useful to them in their long war. It is in the Halls of Judgment that they sometimes glimpse pieces of what to us is the future, and try to interpret these glimpses, and prepare to meet each threat as it develops. And as they sit those who are considered worthy are brought to them, upon death, for this reason. It is a way of building the forces to protect their world."
    "Their world?" I said, catching significance in that.
    She nodded. "Yes. Their world, not ours."
    "I see."
    "Yes. As they review the dead, some they have no use for; these are allowed to reincarnate, or are taken to be servants in the Paths of the Dead - those who wear the Purple Robes. Others have skills that might someday be useful, and those are held in the Paths of the Dead against that use, or reincarnated into circumstances where their skills can develop. A few study for the Godhood themselves, and a tiny number are sent out once more, as Undead, because