Tak

Experiments - Part 5

     The city they lived in was a walled one, and what a wall! A vast rampart of earth and stone rearing fifty feet above the ground and as broad at the base as it was high. Broken only by tunnels where roads ran through it, guarded by huge gates of a blue metal that would have needed a dozen strong men to open and close. The gates were patrolled by guards wearing armour unlike anything Tak had ever seen and they were carrying weapons that looked like clubs but with smooth holes drilled in their narrow ends and triggers beside the moulded hand grips.

     The city itself was just as the legend of the demigods described it. Miles across, with buildings of gleaming glass and steel and with vehicles that sped along the ground all by themselves and even flew through the air, lifted and propelled by nothing that he could see. Magic! Powerful magic! Except that the legend also stated that the demigods didn't use magic. Didn't even seem to know that such a force existed.

     It was a pity that Elmias Pastin, the University's director of extra-planar studies from three thousand years in Tak's future, never saw those images, as he would have been struck by the similarity to certain worlds he'd visited. Worlds where they had something called science instead of magic. Those artifacts were lost long, long before Elmias's time, but Thomas Gown remembered the tales the strange old man had told, and remarked to Lirenna on their similarity to what Tak had seen, all that time before.

     He found no clue as to the nature of the power the demigods had possessed, however, to his frustration and that of the rak as he continued to report failure after failure. Months went by, with nothing of any more importance or significance being discovered, and Tak began to fear that he would eventually be forced to admit defeat, just like Gannlow and Chilgrone before him. Also, he'd begun to remember his real reason for being there, and he was beginning to feel angry with himself that so much time had passed without his having discovered any of the secrets of the raks. Without his even having tried! Time was running short. Gannlow would show him the door in less than half a year. If he was going to act at all, it would have to be soon.

     He began to pay attention to the forbidden door, therefore, studying it carefully whenever he could while being careful to always have an experiment in progress which he could rush back to if he heard footsteps out in the corridor. By then he'd realised that the rak had non-magical ways of watching him, that his treachery might be discovered any time he left his bench, but he knew he would accomplish nothing unless he was willing to take risks. He would simply have to chance it.

     His magic sense registered the magical wards and guards defending the door, and not knowing what their range of operation might be he made sure to always keep at least four feet away, but that was close enough for him to conclude that it would be surest suicide for him to try to get in that way. Gannlow had spared no expense and no effort in his determination to bar all unauthorised access, and he was far too superior to Tak in the magical arts for any attempt to dismantle his defences to succeed.

     On the face of it, that meant Tak was beaten, that he had no hope of success. Gradually, though,  another possibility began to occur to him and he found himself looking at the stone wall separating the laboratory from the forbidden room beyond. The door was locked and trapped, yes, but he sensed no magic in the wall. The rak apparently trusted to the strength of the solid rock itself to keep out intruders.

     The underground chambers he was in had been excavated out of the solid rock under the mansion, but the wall separating the main chamber of the laboratory from the forbidden room had been added later, apparently having been brought into existence by magic. It was not made of individual bricks. It was a single sheet of stone, but he could see the seam where it met the ceiling, looking a little like the welded join between two sheets of metal. Obviously a magic spell, therefore, and if it had been made by magic it could be penetrated by magic.

     A rock shaping spell would do the trick nicely, he thought. It would turn the stone semi liquid and allow it to be moulded by his mental commands, opening a new door in it, and a second use of the spell would return the wall to its original condition before his activity was discovered. The only problem was that Tak didn't know the rock shaping spell. He didn't even know what special ingredients it required. Oh well, he sighed. He would just have to learn it, that's all. Gannlow would have it in one of his spellbooks. Any wizard who created walls of rock would inevitably learn rock shaping as well, as it expanded considerably the uses to which the first spell could be put.

     Gannlow's spellbooks were here in this very room, lined up on a high shelf. They were trapped and guarded as well, but with much simpler spells that Tak was confident he'd be able to bypass. That confused him, though. A wizard's spellbooks were his most precious possession, and yet Gannlow guarded his less well than whatever was in the forbidden room. His heart raced with excitement. The secrets of the raks! It had to be! What else would a rak guard more carefully than his own spellbooks?

     There was no way he could conceal from Gannlow that he was learning a new spell, so he would have to learn two, one of which would be of use in his examination of the three artifacts. His learning of that spell would cover his learning of the other. He spent some time pondering what kind of spell would aid him in his work, therefore, and eventually came up with a simple Mend spell. A spell normally used to put a broken pot back together, or repair a broken window.

     They'd long since worked out that most of their problems stemmed from the fact that the artifacts were badly aged and corroded. Divination and examination spells had revealed that they contained many minute components, like a lock or the mechanism of a crossbow but much more delicate and intricate. Tak thought it was possible that some of them had been damaged, the kind of damage that a mend spell might be able to fix, and his perusal of the rak's notes and journals had revealed that this possibility had not occurred to Gannlow.

     He just hoped that the rak didn't know the Mend spell, in which case he would simply cast it himself and Tak would have to think of something else. He left the laboratory, therefore, to tell Gannlow what he had in mind.