and the brownback walked soulless among the many rival geometries of the city , and its necromancers enticed him with myriad layered putrescences and pouches of skulldust ground of the skulls of great men liberated from historys yoke by the therial lightness of the dust great men who merely happened to be large of crania and he came across a lecherous little alley shunned by lanterns and streetlights alike , and there he stopped to breathe the dust out of his cheeks .