GRADUAL INTERVIEW SPOILER WARNING!   ..........   Spoilers - The Runes of the Earth Stephanie:  Hello there. I recently finished reading "Runes of the Earth" and wanted to ask you about the Demondim. As described in the book, they are essentially animate dead, created by the Viles. My question is this - how was it possible for the Viles to reanimate dead in a time /before/ the Law of Death had been broken? I assume I must be missing something. I see that earlier Esmer tells Linden that the Demondim-spawn are not creatures of Law, though I do not recall the actual Demondim being described as such. Does this exclusion from the confines of Law make such things as reanimating dead possible for them? This sounds like a slight confusion created by terminology. I don't think of the Demondim as reanimated corpses: I think of them as living, vital, and powerful spirits which make use of corpses as a form of physical instrumentality. During the siege of Revelstone in "The Power that Preserves," the attackers--in essence--raised the dead, which they presumably could not have done prior to Elena's tragic miscalculation. It is far otherwise with the Demondim. They simply inhabit corpses as we inhabit clothes (if you assume that the word "clothes" includes a Glock and a survival knife <grin>). In those terms, the Law of Death simply isn't relevant to their actions. (04/09/2005)