Necromantra

In the Hundred, the working folk are kept in order by the masters who administrate the mills, pits and manufactories. Strict records are kept in town halls, every death certified, despite a crushing mortality. However, the old grim certainties face a new threat with the arrival of the necromancers - dark-skinned pilgrims who, by the chant of a strange mantra, are able to raise the recently dead, thus throwing the immaculate records of the town halls into chaos. In retaliation, the masters appoint rectifiers to each town. Reviled and feared by most of the Hundred, their job is to 're-decease' the risen. Jem Nadin is a rectifier. One night, he witnesses a resurrection in a cemetery. Caught up in a compulsion he cannot explain, he goes against orders and attempts to catch the necromancer performing the chant. Meanwhile, in another part of the Hundred, the soldier Hawbind returns to his native town, haunted by the ghost of a comrade killed in battle. The lives of rectifier, necromancer and soldier entwine in a series of nightmarish adventures, culminating in the 'Necrocomb', a pocket of supernatural darkness beneath the deepest pit of the filthy conurbation, where the fate of every one of the Hundred-Towns is decided.