It took some time to calm the servants down. Tak found a potion of healing and gulped it down, then told them there'd been an accident with one of the rak's experiments, something they were all too ready to believe and accept as the righteous judgement of the Gods.

     Chilgrone was more sceptical, though. "He was working in the west laboratory," he said, examining Tak suspiciously, "and he was attempting a transfiguration. When they go wrong, they result in alterations, not explosions. So what really happened?"

     Tak saw there would be no deceiving him, so with a sigh of resignation he hold him the truth. "How much do you know about raks?" he asked when he'd finished. "Do you have any idea what that object was? Why he should have been so desperate to protect it?"

     "About raks, I know no more than you do," Chilgrone replied, still looking shaken and uncertain. "What am I to do now? You're all right, you can go home, back to where you came from, but I have no home. Not any longer. Where will I go? What will I do?"

     "Why not stay here?" suggested Tak. "This can be your mansion now. You know where the treasure is. You can go on paying the staff, those who choose to stay, and if they all go you can soon recruit some more. The house has got to belong to somebody, after all. Why not you?"

     "Yes," replied the older wizard, looking up hopefully. "Yes, why not? And after all, haven't I spent long enough looking after this place, neglecting my own career to serve an undead master? I've put just as much into this mansion as he ever did. I deserve to retire here. Yes, by the Gods! That's exactly what I'll do!"

     "I ask only one thing," added Tak. "I came here hoping to learn about raks. Not to become one myself, I can see you thinking that, but to learn how to destroy one. I'd like to spend some more time here looking through his things. The answers I'm looking for have to be among them somewhere."

     "Yes, of course," agreed Chilgrone immediately. "And I'd be glad of your company, at least until I've sorted myself out."

     "You're not angry with me them?" asked Tak hesitantly. "For killing your master?"

     "I'd say you did him a favour," replied the older wizard. "Thanks to you, he died while he was still more or less human. He never became the monster that all raks turn into sooner or later. Wherever his soul has gone now, I think he'll be grateful to you, for freeing him and allowing him to go to the Gods."

      "It's good of you to say so," replied Tak gratefully, "but I still feel bad about it. He was good to me, in his way. He took me into his home, treated me as an honoured guest, and in return... But you're right. Death was the best thing that could have happened to him, while he was still the person I admired.

☆☆☆

     "Tak spent another fifteen months in that mansion," said Thomas wearily, rubbing his eyes. He seemed to have been talking forever. "He had to leave once, to answer Khalkedon's call to take part in another confrontation with Yinnfarsia, but no fighting actually broke out that time and he was able to return to Gannlow's mansion within a few days.

     "Khalkedon questioned him closely on why he was spending so long away from Castle Nagra. He was growing a little suspicious and Tak knew the rak had to think that he was looking for a way to destroy him. Any attempt to deny it would only confirm Khalkedon's suspicions, of course, so he simply said he was studying with Chilgrone, both of them looking for ways to increase their powers.

     "The rak believed him, since he believed he knew the reason for his thrall's endeavours. Tak managed to conceal the fact that the mansion had recently been the home of a rak, and that the books and papers he was studying contained the secrets of the raks, although disguised in archaic poetry that was almost as good as being in code. If Khalkedon had discovered these things, he would certainly have destroyed Tak on the spot. Instead, believing their researches to be doomed to failure, he allowed Tak to return, pleased and amused that he was wasting his time when he might instead have been becoming a threat to him.

     "No, Khalkedon thought that the real threat came from Barl Hobson. The ginger haired wizard had been snooping around where he shouldn't have, poking his nose into his most private laboratories and workrooms, and if he was allowed to continue there was a chance he might discover something dangerous. Barl had to be punished, therefore. He would have a ward with Gal-Gowan about it, and meanwhile Tak would be safely out of the way. No need to worry about that one..."

     Or so he thought," said Lirenna with a grin. "Did he learn the secrets of the raks?"

     "Oh yes," relied Thomas. "Everything. All the things that we're taught routinely in the second year of apprenticeship plus a whole lot more. Things that I bet only senior wizards are allowed to know these days. Knowledge that he could have used to become a rak himself. In fact..." He paused, looking worried. "In fact, yes, I think I remember it all, or most of it at least. I could become a rak myself, if I wanted. Me, Thomas Gown."

     "But you wouldn't, would you?" asked Lirenna, suddenly looking scared. "I mean, when we were talking about using Tak's knowledge to extend your life..."

     Thomas laughed and took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "Don't worry, I'm not in the least bit tempted. Potions of long life would be one thing, if Tak ever knew how to make them, but rakhood... No. I'm content to live my natural span and pass away when my time comes, just like everyone else."

     Thomas was only middle aged, though. The spectre of decrepit old age, which had driven better men than he to despair, had not yet begun to raise its hideous head before him. One thing that did worry the wizard, though, was a vision he'd had during his second visit to the Emerald Oracle, many years before. The Oracle appeared to those who saw it as an older version of the viewer, so that a young soldier might see an old, battlescarred warrior, while a cleric might see an ancient healer. Withered and bent by a lifetime of holy power flowing through his body. When Thomas had seen it for the second time, for one brief moment he'd seen the hideous, mummified form of a rak.

     The possibility of rakhood was there for him, of course, just as it was for all wizards, and Thomas had told himself that that was why he'd seen what he had. Because there was the possibility, no matter how remote, that he would one day become a rak. It didn't mean it was going to happen, though, and he'd long since put the worry out of his mind. Now, though, it began to creep back as the knowledge of how to make the transformation echoed around in his head, silently mocking him. Tempting him. Power! Immortality! Centuries without end in which to seek out the world's secrets! How could he let himself die with so much still unknown? No, he assured himself, however. It's not going to happen. I will never become a rak. Never!

     Was it possible that Tak had succumbed to the temptation, though? He remembered that, when the acquired memories had first started coming, he'd asked Saturn about them. The senior wizard had speculated that Thomas had, at some point, come into contact with an undead being and had formed a brief telepathic contact with it, without even becoming aware of it. It needn't have been a dangerous creature, a powerful spirit of some kind. A simple, harmless shade might have been the culprit.

     Later, after Thomas had given up seeking advice from him, he'd formed the opinion that he was the reincarnation of Tak, despite the declarations of the worshippers of all the known Gods that reincarnation never happened, but now he began to wonder if maybe Saturn had been right after all. Maybe he'd come into contact with an undead being. The undead spirit of Tak himself! Maybe Tak had turned himself into a rak, and after thousands of years of change and evolution his freezing, mummified body had disintegrated completely, leaving him a creature of pure spirit. Pure speculation, of course, and useless to dwell on things that couldn't be verified in any way, but disturbing nonetheless.

     "So," prompted Lirenna, unaware of the mental turmoil affecting her husband. To her, this was little more than a good story, with little if any relevance to their real lives. She was eager to hear the next chapter. "Did he use that knowledge to kill Khalkedon?"

     "Eh?" said Thomas, snapping back to the here and now. "Oh. Oh, yes. Together, they killed him, the seven of them together, but do you mind if I tell that bit some other time? I'm almost asleep here, you know. I'm not going to be any use for anything tomorrow as it is, if it's not tomorrow already."

     Lirenna was disappointed but reluctantly agreed and so they went to bed, but it was a long time before Thomas was able to get any sleep. He kept seeing the Emerald Oracle in his mind's eye. The Oracle as he'd seen it for that brief moment as he'd entered its audience chamber for the second time, looking for the Scrolls of Skava. In his mind's eye the rak was still staring at him, the fiery pinpoints of light that served it as eyes staring at him as if it knew something he didn't. Its black, shrunken lips drawn back from its rotting grey teeth in a gleeful, knowing grin...