"It was the grey wizard, of course," said Thomas. "Looking at me, him I mean, through his crystal ball. Now that I think back on it, the feeling of being watched was always strongest when he had no clothes on. In the bath, getting into bed, that sort of thing. If it had occurred to him them, he might have had some inkling of the horrors that were to come. The abuse he was to suffer at the hands of that evil monster."

     Lirenna was pale with shock and put her hands to her face. "It didn't happen to you," she said, as if reassuring herself of the fact. "It happened to a boy who died thousands of years ago. It's hard to imagine that such things actually happened."

     "Still does, among the externums," said Thomas. "Training an apprentice is a long and difficult business. Most wizards wouldn't do it if it didn't have its... compensations. It's funny to think that wizardry might have died out thousands of years ago if not for child abuse."

     "Thank the Gods for the University," breathed Lirenna. "Thank the Gods for Lexandros, for limiting all that to the externums. Yet another reason to govern the teaching of magic all over the world."

     Thomas nodded thoughtfully. "And yet the grey wizard, I still can't remember his name. His drooling lusts saved Tak's life one day. It was late spring the following year, and he was back at the lake. He'd been swimming and was drying himself on the grass again. The feeling of being watched was back and stronger than ever but he was trying to ignore it. He thought that it was just his reaction to being naked out under the open sky, although that had never bothered him in the past, nor any of his family.

     "Unknown to him, though, a river reacher had been washed down from the highlands during the rains that had stopped just a few days before. It had made a new home for itself in the lake, feeding on the fish, and the boy had woken it up with all his splashing around. It wasn't a big one. Tentacles no more than four or five feet long.

     Normally it would never have attacked anything as large as a human boy. It must have eaten all the fish and been driven to desperation by hunger. That's the only explanation I can think of, anyway. Tak certainly didn't catch any fish that day. If Tak had been awake he could probably have tied it up in knots, but he'd dozed off in the warm sunshine and it was able to slither right up to him before he smelled it; the smell of dead fish that clung to its rubbery flesh. The grey wizard must have been staring so hard at the boy that he also failed to see it, and it was only the boy's reaction, sitting bolt upright and gasping in horror, that alerted him to the threat.

     "The boy's sudden movement startled the reacher and it almost fled back to the water, but instead it leapt at the boy's chest, pinning his arms to his sides with tentacles that felt like bands of iron. He cried out, but there was no-one within miles to hear him."

     He shuddered at the memory and rubbed his arms as if he could still feel it.

     "So what happened next?" prompted Lirenna.

     Thomas frowned as he relived the memory, as vivid as if it had happened just the day before, as if it had happened to him. "Being wrapped up by that thing is the most horrible thing I can remember. The smell of it. The feel of it against his bare chest, sticky and slimy. He struggled like mad but it just squeezed tighter. Then it began dragging him down towards the water. He was much bigger than its usual prey and it took all its strength to move him, but it just barely managed it, one inch at a time. Tak was in full blown panic by then, all rational thought gone as he struggled madly, but he was totally helpless to slow his progress."

     Thomas looked up at his wife. "It's the feeling of helplessness I remember best. His arms strapped to his sides so tightly it was painful. Desperately trying to dig his fingers into the muddy soil but succeeding only in digging small furrows as he was dragged along. Head first, inch by inch.

     "Afterwards he wasn't really sure if what he saw was really real or whether he just imagined it in some kind of terror induced hallucination. There was a shimmer of light a few feet away from him up the beach, like sunlight reflected on gently rippling water, and then bolts of brilliant light shot towards him, striking the creature sitting on his chest. The creature quivered, then lay limp, but its suckers continued to adhere to his skin and it was several minutes before he could wriggle free of it.

     "He ran away from it, still terrified and disgusted, but his natural curiosity drew him back to get a better look at it. He must have been braver than I would have been…”

     “Oh really?” smiled Lirenna, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “You wouldn’t have been just as curious?”

     Thomas was forced to smile in return. “Well, maybe,” he admitted. “Anyway, he went back to it, rubbing his aching arms to try to get the circulation going again, and after prodding it with his toe to make sure it was really dead, he gingerly rolled it over to get a better look at it. Where the bolts of light had struck there were small burned patches, as if someone had repeatedly stubbed out a cigar on its skin."

     "Firebolts," said the demi shae. "The grey wizard shot firebolts through the crystal ball."

     Thomas nodded. "And that's not something you can just do on the spur of the moment. There's material components to gather, preparatory spells to cast first. He must have been rushing around like crazy to get everything ready before the reacher could pull Tak under the water."

     "Why didn't he just teleport over?"

     "He couldn't teleport, never could. I don't think the solo teleporting spell had been invented then. Any teleporting anyone did was done with arches, or the newly invented cabinets. Shooting through the crystal ball was the only option he had, and it could easily have backfired on him. He must have wanted to get his hands on Tak really badly."

☆☆☆

     Now that it was dead, Tak got his first chance to examine it properly and he stared with eyes wide with amazed relief. Each tentacle was wide and flat, like a ribbon, with a double row of suckers along one side and a row of rudimentary eyes along the other. Each sucker had left a little red circle on his skin, beginning to fade now as he rubbed some life back into his aching limbs, and he was covered with foul smelling slime. He rubbed it off as best he could and looked at the clear water of the lake, longing to jump in and wash himself clean, but what if there were more creatures in there? Instead he pulled on his clothes, keeping a wary eye on the dead reacher in case it moved. Then he ran back to the cabin as if all the demons of Hell were after him.

     He arrived breathless and exhausted and babbled the story to his parents. His father growled with anger, snatched up his spear and set off to find the creature, wanting to make sure it was really dead, while his mother made him remove his clothes so she could examine him for injuries.. She saw that, although the sucker marks had almost faded away, his body and arms bore bands of angry red where the tentacles had pressed into his flesh. She cooed over him for a while in relief, then began heating water for a bath.

     Tak was dressed in clean clothes and relaxing when his father returned. He'd found a flock of rooks tearing the reacher apart and, after examining the corpse and prodding it a few times with his spear he'd carried it out into the open grassland for the scavengers to finish their work.

     "It was the mercy of the Gods that it died when it did," he said. "Probably ruptured something trying to make off with prey too big for it."

     "No, it was struck down by something," insisted Tak. "I saw it. Like a crossbow bolt but made of fire or light. I saw it!"

     "I saw no crossbow bolt," said his father, though, and refused to discuss the matter further. "There may be more like it. From now on, no-one goes to the lake alone. We all go together next time, and I'm taking my spear."

     Tak nodded, disappointed but not wanting to go through the same thing again. Next time there might be no fiery bolt to save him. A tiny flame of anger burned within him that his father hadn't believed him, that his testimony wasn't taken seriously. There had been a fiery bolt! He'd seen the burn it had made!

     Then another thought came to him, a thought that made him sit bolt upright and froze him there. Where had the bolt come from? Who'd shot it? All the time he'd been there he'd had the strong feeling that he was being watched, but he'd dismissed it as his imagination. What if it hadn't been his imagination? What if there really had been someone there, hiding in the bushes perhaps? But who? Their nearest neighbours lived a days ride away.

     A bolt of fire. Wizards shot bolts of fire, according to the stories, but wizards were bad guys, wicked and evil. This person, if it was a person, had saved his life. Could there be such a thing as a good wizard? But this person had spied on him and seemed to like watching him when he had no clothes on. He didn't like that. It made him feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. He knew in his gut that it wasn't a nice person. If he'd saved his life, he'd done it for reasons of his own.

     He wanted to know more, and an idea occurred to him. The next time he had the sensation of being watched he would try to communicate. Maybe the grey wizard would talk to him. Tell him what he wanted.

     He didn't have long to wait. The very next day, while he was out in the fields hoeing weeds, the hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle in that familiar way. He stood upright and stared about him. Nothing, as always.

      This time, though, he gathered his courage and spoke out loud. "Hello? Is anyone there?" No answer. "Thanks for saving my life yesterday." Still nothing. "Why don't you show yourself? I just want to know who you are."

     No reply came, but Tak got the impression that the watcher was drawing away, perhaps alarmed by his questions. He had to draw it in closer. He glanced back at the cabin. Laira and his mother were inside, but busy, shelling nognuts and crushing the shells to make a paste that could be moulded like clay to make cups and pots. His father was behind the barn, stoking up the furnace to melt iron, to repair a broken plough. No-one could see him. Tak took a deep breath and removed his clothes.

     Immediately he sensed a quickening of interest in the unseen watcher and felt it drawing closer. "There is someone there, isn't there?" He stood with his bruised arms by his sides and concentrated on the feeling of being watched, trying to sense from what direction it was coming. That way? No, it was more from that way...

     He stared in that direction and suddenly he could see it. A faint shimmering in the air about a dozen feet away, hovering at head height. "I can see you," he breathed in mingled alarm and excitement. "I can see you!"

     He stooped to pick up a stone and threw it at the apparition, which vanished. Tak stared about trying to find it again but it seemed to be gone. He'd driven it away. He grinned in triumph as he put his clothes back on and returned to his work.

     He would have been less happy if he'd known that this incident would lead directly to the deaths of his parents. The grey wizard had decided that Tak was a fruit ripe for the picking.