Malefactos lost no time in heading for Lexandria University, speeding across the Great Lake, across deserts, mountains and vast areas of flat grassland as fast as his Robes of Flying could carry him. He flew in full daylight for most of the way, ignoring the burning in his rak eyes that the yellow sun caused him, and he was seen by many people as a fast moving speck of darkness high up in the sky. Others didn’t see him, but felt a momentary chill running up their spines as he passed, as though someone had stepped on their graves. They stopped whatever they were doing, a look of puzzlement and vague unease passing across their faces, and shuddered for no reason they could identify before shrugging dismissively and forgetting all about it.

     He arrived in Lexandria Valley just after sunset, opening a temporary gateway for himself in the valley’s protective dome of magical force with a single word and a contemptuous flick of his fingers. He spared just one brief glance at his old castle, looming dark and forbidding on top of the ridge that had been named after him, before activating his Robes of Flying again and swooping like a monstrous bat towards the senior wizards’ living quarters.

     Tragius had just settled into his favourite armchair with one of his spellbooks and a steaming mug of Lydian tea when the small window and half the wall exploded inwards and the rak landed in front of him, the tiny, burning points of light that served him as eyes blazing fiercely. “Malefactos!” exclaimed the wizard, jumping to his feet and sending mug and book flying. “You’re back!”

     “Perceptive as always,” replied the rak acidly. “I have completed the mission upon which you sent me and now I want my ark back.”

     “First tell me what you found out,” demanded the wizard. “Did you see Arnor? Did you find out what’s happening in there?”

     “Oh yes,” replied Malefactos, his skull-like, mummified head stretching into a cruel grin. “Oh yes. I would presume to say that I have learned all of their most important secrets.”

     “Then tell me!” demanded Tragius eagerly. “Tell me all of it!”

     Malefactos did so, telling it all in sequential order, starting with his arrival in the outlying town where he’d met the ghost Sharmos Attwin and going on from there. He told the wizard everything he’d seen. The hundreds of thousands of living Shadowsoldiers being kept in reserve, waiting for the Sceptre of Samnos to use the last of its three charges. The millions of zombies and other undead who would accompany them. The weapons and war machines being  and the hideous transformations the old Agglemonian cities had undergone in the hands of their new masters. He described it all in soul destroying detail, relishing every word as he saw the effect it was having on the old wizard.

     Tragius’s eyes were wide with horror, and he seemed to bend under the weight of the terrible news. Years seemed to settle on him like snow on an old, weather-beaten tree, and the spritely, wise old man who’d still had years of active life left in him despite his age came to resemble more and more a frail, doddering wreck, fit only to spend the rest of his life dribbling and mumbling incoherently as nurses fed him and cleaned him up. After just a few minutes he was teetering on the edge of madness.

     The effect was everything the rak could have wished for, and he gloated inwardly as he continued speaking, savouring his revenge for having been blackmailed into the spying mission. Unfortunately, though, his oath, sworn in the name of the Gods Themselves, meant that he had to tell him everything, including what had happened at the palace itself. After one last lingering pause during which he stared at the wizard, therefore, savouring his distress one last time, he told the rest.

     It took Tragius a moment or two to realise that the tone of the rak’s report had changed, but then he looked up, a new glimmer of life in his tired, bloodshot eyes. Malefactos was amazed at how quickly the transformation reversed itself, the wizard standing straight again as new life and vigour entered his ancient limbs. The years fell away, and by the time the rak had finished speaking it was the old Tragius standing there once more, grim and determined. The news of the terrible strength of the Shadowarmies still terrified him, but now he had something to counter the fear. Now he had hope.

     The wizard was silent for a long time after the rak finished speaking, digesting everything he’d heard. “Algol was the only one with you when you discovered their weakness?” he said at last. The rak nodded. “So now that he’s dead, none of the Shads know that we know their secret.”

     “He is not dead,” replied the rak, hating the oath that compelled him to correct the wizard. There was nothing he’d have liked better than to leave him labouring under a delusion. “He was devoured by the Shadowbeast, but his ark is intact. Sooner or later he will reform.”

     “How long have we got?”

     “I have no idea how long it will take for the Shadowbeast to digest him. However, even if his soul fled back to his ark the moment he was devoured, it will still take him a long time to regenerate the energy the beast stole from him. Months at least. Maybe years.”

     Tragius breathed a sigh of relief. They had a chance. “Did the other raks see you leave?” Malefactos shook his head. “So for all they know, you were also devoured by the Shadowbeast.”

     “They will probably think that,” agreed the rak, “until Algol returns and tells them the truth.”

     Tragius took a deep breath. “So all we’ve got to do,” he said, “is kill the Shadowbeast and close the Puncturium before Algol returns, and the Shads are finished.”

     Malefactos laughed. It sounded like a man drowning in dry sand. “May I remind you that both those things are in the very centre of the Shadow, where only the undead may go. You could not survive five miles in from its outer boundary.”

     “You could do it!” exclaimed Tragius excitedly. “You could...”

     “No!” thundered the rak. “I am done with this world! I am leaving!”

     “But you’d be a hero!” persisted the wizard. “All the world would praise your name! Think of it!”

     “I have come for my ark,” repeated Malefactos. “Give it to me now!”

     “I’ll give it back once you’ve...”

     “You will give it back now!” roared the rak. Outside, other senior wizards could be heard muttering to each other, wondering what all the noise was. The rak hurriedly cast an illusion spell, hiding the hole in the wall, and followed it up with a privacy spell that prevented any sounds from leaving the room. “If you do not return my ark to me this very instant, I will consider you to have broken your side of the oath and I will destroy you.”

     “All right, all right,” said Tragius in defeat, waving his hands to calm the rak down. “Wait here a few minutes.” He left the room and headed for the artifact repository.

     He returned forty minutes later carrying a large, leatherbound chest bound in straps of silver. Malefactos gave a hiss of eagerness as Tragius carefully placed it on the table with a gasp of relief. He unlocked it with a large, ruby encrusted key and lifted the lid. There sat the ark, sitting on a bed of padded velvet, glowing softly with its own inner light. The rak’s eyes shone with excitement and he dashed forward, almost bowling the wizard over in his eagerness, snatching up the oblate spheroid and cradling it in his arms like a baby. He subjected it to a careful examination.

     “In accordance with the oath,” said Tragius, “it is unchanged and undamaged. Exactly as it was when you last saw it.”

     “It had better be,” replied Malefactos, “or you will hear from me again.” He turned to leave.

     “Malefactos,” called out the wizard, however. The rak turned back to look at him. “This Algol character. The way you described him, he sounds like the kind of person who’d bear a grudge.” Malefactos nodded but said nothing. “Think he might come after you?”

     “Possibly,” admitted the rak.

     “Think you can handle him when he comes?”

     “On my own ground, I can handle him,” replied Malefactos. “Your men took me by surprise, before my defences were complete. Once they are complete, nothing in the Cosmic All will be able to touch me.”

     “Why don’t you help us destroy him?” pressed the wizard. “Once he’s destroyed once and for all, you’ll be able to rest easy. No more worries.”

     “You never give up, do you?” said the rak. Now that the ark was safely back in his hands, a trace of humour seemed to enter his voice.

     “No,” replied Tragius. “I never do.”

     Malefactos nodded. “Perhaps there’s hope for you after all.” He stepped out through the hole in the wall, activated his Robes of Flying and disappeared into the darkness.

☆☆☆

     An emergency meeting of all the enemies of the Shadowlord was held on Pargonn three days later, the earliest that all the nations and empires involved could send a pair of delegates. The conference took place in the same room as before, the room in which delegations from the gl-hugs and the cthillians had made their stunning announcement of alliance and in which Pronias, the then holder of the Sword of Retribution, had been murdered by a clay man. Very few of the people who’d been present at that first meeting were still alive, and the terrible toll that the war had taken was brought home to Resalintas with a shock as he watched the other delegates taking their seats around him.

     Tragius was there, of course, since it had been he who’d called this meeting, and the old priest recognised the black skinned Nyundians, the Louradan shae folk and the Clandanians, all still in a state of shock at the condition of the once beautiful island. The Fellowship of the Golden Griffin had managed to fight off the invasion by the Shadow armada, spearheaded by an army of water demons, but the devastation all over the island was immense, and even if they won the war it would still be years, perhaps decades, before the island was restored to its former beauty.

     Apart from those few people, the table was occupied entirely by new faces. Even Lanaris was absent, being too ill to attend, and his place was taken by Bedavarr, another old and distinguished paladin high in the Fellowship’s hierarchy. Even he was unable to prevent a grimace of displeasure from crossing his face, however, as the final two pairs of delegates entered. A pair of gl-hugs, looking terrible and magnificent in their full battle regalia, and a pair of slavers, their mottled, livid purple skins gleaming wetly in the light of the dim red glowbottles. Unlike the first meeting, where they’d simply entered, made their announcements and left, this time they took their places around the table as full allies, as was their right.

     As soon as everyone had found their place and speculative gossip began to break out, Bedavarr rose to his feet and raised a hand for silence. “Thank you all for coming at such short notice,” he said. “This meeting has been called by Tragius Demonbinder of Lexandria University, in order to discuss certain developments that have taken place since our last meeting.”

     “I take it you mean the sudden and dramatic increase in the size of the Shadow,” interrupted General Poll, who’d come with Resalintas from Bula Pass. Since the last usage of the Sceptre of Samnos, the Shadowarmies had been swept from the pass again and it would be several days yet before they returned, giving the two men a breathing space in which to attend the meeting. “Let’s cut the drass and get straight to the point. Have they made a breakthrough? Is the Shadowlord himself about to step through into our world?”

     Bedavarr gestured for Tragius to take the floor, and the old wizard stood. “Let me put your mind at rest on that point,” he said. “Although that is certainly their intention, they have not yet achieved it. The recent growth of the Shadow had a completely different cause. Before I tell you what it was, however, I must impress upon you the importance of total security. We may, just may, have a chance to defeat the Shadowarmies and win this war, by means of an unexpected weakness in their defences that we have discovered, but if they should learn that we know about it, they would undoubtedly correct that weakness and then all hope will truly be lost. Is that understood?”

     A ripple of excitement passed around the table, and Resalintas found himself looking at the fell men, sitting almost opposite him. Other delegates were also glancing at the notoriously unpredictable gl-hugs. They shouldn’t be here, thought the old priest in considerable apprehension. They would betray us all to the Shadowarmies in an instant if they thought, in some twisted, convoluted way, that it would increase the power and glory of their demon spider queen.

     The gl-hugs were aware of the attention they were receiving, however, and the more senior of the two stood. “I, Pholl-shich-ho'ell of the first chiar-hemm, hereby swear in the name of Atlacha, Queen of the Pit, that the Shadowarmies shall not learn of anything spoken here from any of my race. May my soul be thrown for ever into the outer darkness if I swear falsely.”

     The other fell man then made the same vow and everyone relaxed. Unpredictable and unreliable though they were, the one thing they would never do was betray the name of their spider queen.

     “Some of you will remember,” continued Tragius, “and the rest of you will no doubt have been fully briefed, that at our last meeting I announced our intention to send a spy into the Shadow to learn their secrets, to discover their strengths and weaknesses. That spy has now returned, and his mission was more successful than we ever dared to hope.”

     He then went on to tell of everything that Malefactos had done, everything he’d seen and learned, although he didn’t refer to him by name, telling them that the spy had been a wraith whose identity had to be protected for his own safety. “Although wraiths are powerful and terrifying creatures in any other context, compared to the denizens of the Shadow they are frail and weak and I had to promise to protect him from their wrath in order to gain his co-operation. In life he was a good and decent man, and he retains many of those characteristics despite what he has become.”

     And I’m a goblin, thought Resalintas, whose sixth sense, the ability to sense a lie, was as good as ever. He looked around the table and saw that Bedavarr was also looking doubtful. Their eyes met, and then they both turned to look at the slavers. It was impossible to read any expression in their hideous, alien faces, but their long probosces were coiling and uncoiling restlessly and rippling bands of colour were flickering rapidly over every visible patch of bare skin, signs that the old priest had heard corresponded most closely to the human emotion of irritation, the first stirrings of anger. Anger at being lied to? wondered the old priest anxiously. They’re telepaths! Remember that! They’re telepaths!

     Tragius continued to speak, and as he told of what lay at the very centre of the Shadow, the Puncturium and the Shadowbeast, several people around the table scowled and began whispering to each other. “But with all due respect, venerable one, what is the use of all this?” demanded one of the shae folk when the old wizard finally stopped talking. “What is the point of knowing any of this when there is no way we can take advantage of the information?”

     “Isn’t it obvious?” replied the old wizard incredulously. “If the Shadowbeast can be killed, the Shadow will vanish and the city of Arnor will become vulnerable to attack. Then all we’ll need to do is destroy the Puncturium and the flow of the Shadowlord’s power will be cut off. The armies of zombies will crumble into the dust and the natural animosities between the different races and tribes of humanoids will tear apart their living armies. The threat of the Shadowarmies will simply evaporate.”

     “But, my honourable and worthy friend,” spluttered the shae, struggling hard to retain the customary politeness of his race despite his agitation, “in order to kill the Shadowbeast it would be necessary to penetrate to the very centre of the Shadow, where only the undead may go. Not even our evil, er allies over there can go there. And even if they did find a way, we have no idea how to kill a Shadowbeast. I've never even heard of such a creature before.”

     “Mal, er, the spy said that sunlight can kill them,” replied Tragius. “Apparently, this creature generates Shadow primarily in order to protect itself from bright light.”

     An idea came to Resalintas, bursting into his head with all the force of divine inspiration. He remembered the expedition he’d led into the outer fringes of the Shadow shortly before the outbreak of the war, in order to determine whether the rumours of approaching war were true. He remembered something that had happened during that expedition. “There may be a way,” he mumbled to himself.

     “Did you say something?” asked Bedavarr, looking at him.

     “There may be a way to bring sunlight to the centre of the Shadow,” repeated the old priest. “To do it, however, it would be necessary for a large number of priests to go to the palace.”

     “But it's impossible!” declared the shae, unable to believe that they couldn’t grasp this simple fact. “Don’t you understand? Only the undead can go there!”

     “I understand perfectly,” replied Resalintas, however. “If only the undead can go there, then we shall have to become undead.”