Tragius spent the rest of that day, and all the next, in conference with the rest of the University’s senior staff, briefing them on everything that had happened during the council and discussing what they were going to do to help the war effort. The next day, though, he was free and, saying that he wanted a little time alone to think, he went to visit the world’s youngest ark rak in his castle.
He walked all the way along the narrow, winding path that led up the ridge, not wanting to waste a spell teleporting there in case he needed all his magical power during the confrontation. He didn’t expect things to turn nasty, but you could never be sure with raks, and Malefactos had always had a reputation for unpredictability even when he’d been alive. Just in case, he carried a selection of his favourite wands on his belt and wore an Amulet of Invulnerability around his neck. He was getting old, but he wasn’t yet so old and foolish as to walk into an ark rak’s stronghold without some pretty hefty protection.
Arriving at the summit, he spared a moment to gaze around at the scenery. To his right, the whole valley was spread out below him. About five miles across and roughly circular with a lake in the middle into which a number of small streams ran, too small to properly be called rivers. There were three clusters of buildings. On one side, off to his left as he faced the central lake, were the teaching buildings and dormitories. Each in a different architectural style, due to their having been brought from different parts of the world, and separated by gardens, walks, orchards and animal breeding compounds.
Directly across the valley from him, huddled beneath Barkol Crag, were the research buildings, lined up along both sides of The Wizard's Way, a road that led to the feet of a magnificent palace in which the most important work was carried out. The entire complex was surrounded by invisible barriers of force to ensure that no students or mundanes could reach it, where they might cause irreparable harm to the delicate experiments conducted there, as well as to themselves.
The third cluster of buildings, just off to the right of the lake, was the village, where the valley’s non-wizards lived. The mundanes. Gardeners, caretakers, carpenters, masons, cooks, maids and general maintenance workers. Few of them lived there permanently, although some chose to retire there. Most of them were on five or ten year contracts, working for vast sums of money before retiring to their homelands. A tour of duty in Lexandria University was often seen as the pinnacle of one’s professional career.
All around the valley were tall, jagged mountains encased by sheets of glittering ice and swept by howling blizzards and, turning his back to look down the other side of the ridge, Tragius got a bird’s eye view of one of the deadliest, least hospitable terrains the planet had to offer. Lexandria Valley was fairly flat and level because several whole mountains had been demolished to fill the narrow, steep sided passes that had originally existed there, but the sight that greeted Tragius as he looked west from Malefactos Ridge was a reminder of how the area had originally looked, before the wizards came.
It was all steep mountain faces, with ice capped peaks separated by plunging crevasses the bottoms of which were hidden by a white haze of snow and ice dust. It was a living hell of freezing winds inhabited only by yaks, yetis and the occasional frost giant, although even they found the climate around Lexandria Valley rather uncomfortable and tended to remain in the slightly less extreme northern arm of the range. It was the ideal protection against unwelcome intruders, and in all the University’s long history, no-one had ever made it there by travelling overland.
Turning his attention back to the castle, he walked the remaining few yards up to the great door. The castle was a blocky, square edifice, fifty yards on a side and four storeys high with narrow windows protected by thick iron bars and with battlements and catapult emplacements all over the roof. Once, it had been a border fort of one of the tiny kingdoms that were scattered along the coast of the great Eastern Ocean. It had been brought here by Malefactos himself, making it the most recent addition to the valley, although it now looked as though it had stood on the ridge for centuries. Its defences remained fully intact, even though unmanned, no longer being necessary. Malefactos hadn't seen the point of clearing them out. The only change the new owner had made had been to replace the royal coat of arms above the door with his own; a winged lizard wearing a crown.
The door had been magically sealed closed, as had all the castle’s other entrances, and Tragius had to cast a counterspell to get in. There was a bright flare of light and a loud fizzing noise as the locking spell was broken and the door swung open. Tragius walked in, wary and cautious.
Inside, the castle had been completely stripped bare, every item of furniture and everything else that wasn’t actually part of the castle’s structure having been removed following its occupant’s supposed death. Tragius strode quickly through the empty rooms and corridors, his footsteps on the bare stone floor echoing back from walls and ceiling. There was no point in creeping around. Malefactos would have become aware of him while he was still half a mile away and Tragius would rather lure the ark rak up to the ground floor than descend into its hidden caverns deep inside the mountain. Up here, he could confront it on more or less equal terms, but down there he would be far too much at its mercy for his liking.
He stopped when he came to the room that contained the hidden door down to the ark rak’s secret laboratory. He had deduced its existence years before but had told no-one else, and now he was glad that he hadn’t. If Malefactos had known that his secret laboratory was no longer secret he wouldn’t have dared remain so close to the University and Tragius would have had to search the whole world for him.
“Malefactos,” he said, not too loudly because he knew that the ark rak had to be watching him from wherever he was hiding. “I want to talk to you. I know you’re not dead, I know what you’ve done, and if you don’t want anyone else to know you’ll come out and show yourself. I mean you no harm. I’ve got a proposition for you, something that will benefit both of us.”
A few seconds passed, in which he imagined the rak pondering the relative merits of coming out and revealing himself or remaining hidden and trying to bluff him out. Then he became aware that the temperature in the castle had dropped several degrees, making it decidedly chilly, and that a presence was watching him intently. He backed away from the door until he felt the comforting solidity of the wall behind him and put his hand on one of his wands. Malefactos was coming.
Sure enough, a second later, the door ground slowly open and a figure stepped out from the darkness beyond. Tragius gasped despite himself. The figure that stood revealed in the narrow shaft of sunlight slanting in through one of the grilled windows looked as though it had been dead for a month and left in a burning desert to dry out and mummify. Its skin had shrunk until it was stretched tightly over the skeleton, revealing every individual bone, from the almost hairless skull-like head with sunken cheeks and lips, drawn so far back that almost the entire width of the jaw was revealed, to the dark cavern of its abdomen where it was sunken in beneath the ribcage like the entrance to a tunnel. It had sticklike arms and legs with skeletal hands and feet. It wore no clothes as such. Only a few strips of cloth hanging across its shoulders and around its hips with several pockets in which it kept the material components for its spells. If not for that necessity, Tragius expected that it wouldn’t have bothered with any clothes at all. Clothes were for the living.
It might have been mistaken for a common zombie, except for two things. First, its empty eye sockets were lit by hellish pinpoints of light which even Tragius didn't dare look at directly. Secondly, its whole body radiated cold. A cold so intense that the great voids between the stars would have seemed comfortably warm by comparison. The cold was so intense that it would suck the very life out of anything it touched, and Tragius felt the entire front of his body go cold and clammy as it approached, his skin prickling into goosebumps and becoming slick with nervous sweat. He felt that if it got too close to him, all his body heat would be sucked out, leaving him to thump to the ground like a frozen side of beef. It took every ounce of self control he possessed to keep himself from staggering back in fear.
“Tragius,” said the ark rak, recognising him. “How did you find out about me?”
“That’s not important,” replied the wizard, struggling to sound calm and self assured. It wasn’t easy; his mouth had gone as dry as a desert.
“It is of the very greatest importance to me,” stated Malefactos, however. “I thought that all my precautions had been sufficient to ensure my secrecy. I must know how you found out, so that I can take additional precautions. Tell me. What small detail did I forget?"
“I’ll tell you after we...”
“You will tell me now!”
The rak stepped closer, the pinpoints of fire that served as its eyes blazing in fury, and Tragius feared that he’d made a terrible mistake coming here alone. He should have brought Franklos and Adantus, perhaps even a couple more, but no. If they’d come in strength, Malefactos would simply have hidden until they’d gone away. The ark rak would only have come out if it wasn’t afraid, if it didn’t feel threatened. If they’d all come, it would have thought they were coming to destroy it, an entirely natural assumption.
“All right, if you insist,” said Tragius, and he related how Adantus had detected the stray magical energies coming from his secret laboratory.
The ark rak seemed to frown as it listened, although it was no longer capable of any facial expression. “How many know about me?” it asked when the wizard had finished speaking.
“Myself. Adantus. One of his assistants and a couple of others whose co-operation we’ll be needing.”
“And you will not tell anyone else about me if I do something for you?” said the ark rak. “Why Tragius, I never took you to be a devious one. It seems I’ve misjudged you. What is it you want of me?”
Tragius took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure how it would take what he was about to say. He took a firm hold of his wand, ready to draw it instantly if the need arose. “We want you to go into the Shadow,” he said. “Have a look around, then come back and tell us what you saw. We desperately need to know more about them if we aren’t to be totally wiped out in the next couple of years.”
Malefactos stared in disbelief. “You want me to be a spy?” it asked in amazement. “Don’t be ridiculous. You think I’ve got nothing better to do than get involved in some petty war? Well, I’m very sorry, but I’m very busy at the moment and can’t possibly spare the time. Sorry your trip up here was wasted. Please do call again.”
Tragius had expected the reply. It was common for young ranks to be arrogant and condescending. The sense of triumph at having survived the transformation, which failed around half the time leaving the wizard's soul to be sucked away to the afterlife and the judgement of the Gods, had probably left Malefactos giddy with euphoria and the sense that all its problems were behind it. Tragius would have to break him out of that misapprehension.
“What do you mean, nothing to do with you?” he asked. “The Shadowlord is the Prince of the Undead, and now you are within his sphere of influence. You must be able to feel his power, now that you’re undead, and if you don’t want to become another one of his slaves you’ll have to help us defeat him. It’s in your own self interest.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the ark rak in contempt. “I can feel his power, it’s true, but I am easily able to resist it. He may be able to enslave the lower forms of undead, zombies, ghouls, wights and wraiths, but his power on this world will never be great enough to enslave an ark rak, and even vampires ought to be able to resist him. Those ark raks that serve him do so voluntarily, because of the power and authority he has promised them.”
“But if he conquers the whole world...”
“I will simply move to another world. If that fool Elmias can walk the planes of existence, then so can I. There are worlds beyond number out there. There’s no reason to get sentimental about this one.”
“But his power is growing, and as he widens the portal between this world and the Pit, the amount of power he can wield in this world will grow. How long will it be before you can resist him no longer, and you go to kneel at his feet? You will, you know, sooner or later.”
“Not so,” replied the ark rak, in the manner of a schoolteacher correcting a not too bright pupil. “If his power grows, I will sense it, and if it approaches the point where I may not be able to resist it much longer, I will simply move further away. The mortal planes are vast without limit. There will always be somewhere to hide, no matter how powerful he grows. No matter how many worlds he conquers.”
Tragius, beginning to despair now, decided to play on his vanity. “You’d rather run and hide like a frightened rabbit than play a part in defeating him? You, Malefactos, the most powerful wizard in the world in recent centuries?”
Malefactos began to grow angry, and the glowing points of light that served it as eyes glowed brighter. “I’ve told you, I’m not going to get involved, and I’m not prepared to spend all day arguing about it. Don’t think you can manipulate me like one of your students. Now get out of here before you begin to bore me."
Tragius realised that he was never going to persuade him with logic and reason, and decided that only a direct threat would do. “Then you leave me no choice. If you won’t agree to help us voluntarily, I’ll have to make you. You will go into the Shadow as our spy, or I will reveal your existence to the rest of the University and they will destroy you. I don’t want to do that, but the situation forces me to it.”
“You're threatening me?" cried the ark rak, almost laughing as he bounded forward. “You fool, coming to threaten me here, in my own castle! Don’t you realise that I can destroy you with a single word?”
He leapt upon the wizard, who felt himself engulfed in a cold so intense that his blood seemed to freeze in his veins. His limbs suddenly felt as heavy as lead, and it took a real effort to draw a wand and raise it between himself and the rak, who was searching for an opening through the aura of protection generated by the Amulet of Invulnerability. He would find one, too, Tragius knew. The wizard who had created the amulet was powerful, but a mere apprentice compared to Malefactos, and given time he could unravel any spell cast by any other wizard in the world.
Tragius knew he had only seconds to live unless he could use the wand, but a tightness seemed to have grown around his throat, as though an invisible hand was trying to throttle him. The ark rak’s hands flew over his body, getting the feel of his aura of protection and calculating the counterspell necessary to dissipate it, and Tragius summoned all his strength and willpower for one final, desperate effort.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to say the command word that would activate the wand, but it only came out as a rasping croak. The tightness around his throat seemed to have loosened a little, though, and his second effort was more successful. The wand flashed, and Malefactos gave a howl of pain, his grip on the wizard broken. Tragius used the wand again and the ark rak vanished, leaving behind only a faint smell of ozone.