Prologue
The dark, bald-pated man finished encircling himself and a companion in a ring of rock salt, his saffron robes stained with sweat. In one hand he grasped a black candle, in the other an obscenely formed mandrake root. Wetting his dry lips he turned to his compatriot, a swarthy, mustachioed man clad in black silken finery.
