The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Doom of the Gem Lords - Part 2

     "What happened?" he asked as the two Gem Lords ran along the corridor. The man limping on a slightly arthritic leg, the woman puffing from the exertion. Neither of them were young any more. Tak was fifty five years old and looked older because of the ageing effect of magic passing through his body, while Alustra was over sixty. "Are we under attack?"

     "Lan died in the night," replied Alustra. "Heart attack, it looks like. His concubine ran screaming through the palace, waking everyone up..."

     She paused and looked around when she realised Tak had come to a halt behind her, staring at her in surprised anger. "That's it?" he demanded. "He died in the night? It's sad, of course, but he was old and we were all expecting it. Why all this fuss..."

     "He didn't stay dead!" cried the silver haired woman. A stunner in her youth who was still amazingly good looking, the lines on her face somehow adding to her beauty instead of detracting from it. "He came back to life, but not the same! We don't know what to do!"

     There was real terror in her eyes now, and Tak nodded, beginning to run again. Didn't stay dead? What in the name of the Gods was that supposed to mean?

     He found out a couple of minutes later. The other Gem Lords were gathered outside Lan's room, except for Barl who'd gone inside, and he heard scared sounding voices drifting out from the bedchamber. "What am I going to do?" he heard. It sounded like Lan's voice, but different. There was something about it. Something that sent shivers of ice racing up Tak's spine. "I can't stay like this! What am I going to do?"

     Tak pushed his way between Sheena and Talpha-Ja, both of them covering their aged, wrinkly nudity with thin silken nightgowns. He made his way to the open door, tensing up as he wondered what he was about to see, and as he entered Lan turned to see the new arrival.

     Their eyes met. Tak's eyes, the blue of his youth now looking faded and watery as the years took their toll, and the things that now occupied Lord Opal's eye sockets. The things that now served the same function as the organs that had originally sat there. Two tiny pinpricks of hellish white fire. The eyes of a rak.

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     "I think I know what happened," said Tak half an hour later.

     They were all gathered in the throne room. The original seven Gem Lords and their best nine apprentices. The nine who had graduated to the status of fully fledged wizard and chosen to undergo the same transformation as their masters. They were also wearing soul gems on their wrists, therefore, and had all followed the tradition of naming themselves after gemstones, usually of the same colour as that of their masters. Tak's two apprentices, therefore, Francesca Foldvary and Tam Hom, both wore blue gemstones, a lapis lazuli and a topaz respectively, while Sophie Beele, Lord Emerald's beautiful but erratic apprentice, wore a jade and the two young men sitting beside Lord Ruby wore a jasper and a garnet. Only Enna Mael's lovely young apprentice had broken the tradition, wearing a bracelet of polished ivory on her pale, slim wrist, but it served the same function as the gemstones and did it just as well.

     "Several of us have died since the day we were transformed by Khalkedon," continued Tak, "and each time our soul gems held our souls until our bodies could be revived by clerics. We thought we'd become immortal, but we were wrong. Our bodies continue to age, and there comes a time when all the prayers of all the priests in the world cannot extend our lives any longer. When that time comes, though, our soul gems will still prevent our souls from going to judgement. We are bound to the world of the living, for as long as our gems survive."

     He looked around at the others, and especially at Lan, who was sitting a little way apart from the others. His body was already beginning to radiate the bone chilling cold of a rak, and if the change continued, pretty soon his touch would be deadly to the living. He still looked shocked and afraid by what was happening to him, and his face bore a stunned expression as if the events of the morning had struck him on the back of the head like a lead cosh. He was doing his best to pay attention to what Tak was saying, though, and the fiery pinpoints of fire that now served him as eyes were fixed on his fellow Gem Lord while he prayed to all the Gods that he'd come up with an answer. Some way to make things right again.