“Skava was a priest of Samnos,” said the old priest. “He lived about two thousand years ago in the Pinatian Mountains, in a valley called Millin Dell which was, at that time, inhabited by about a hundred thousand people. Most of them in three medium sized cities and the rest in several towns and villages scattered round about. The land outside the valley was arid desert, inhabited only by a few wandering tribes of nomads, and the nearest civilization was three hundred miles away, so for all intents and purposes Millin Dell was cut off and isolated, with virtually no contact with the rest of the world.

   “Skava came to Millin Dell as a young man, a missionary, travelling with a nomad caravan, and he stayed in the valley for most of the rest of his life. He built a fortress monastery for himself, which he populated with young men from the local population, some of whom came to be accepted into the priesthood in due course. None of them came close to equaling Skava himself, though, who, as his years advanced, became one of the mightiest of our order there has ever been.

     “The priests were kept busy fighting the bastlins who came out of the mountains to raid the outlying towns and villages, and for thirty or forty years everything was as good as could be expected in the valley. When Skava was in his early sixties, however, and thinking of accepting promotion, the bastlins began to increase in number and became a real problem. Several of the smaller towns and villages were abandoned to the evil humanoids, their inhabitants fleeing to the protection of the larger cities, and the priests were hard pressed to hold back the threat. The numbers of the bastlins continued to increase, and the tactics they used in taking one town after another led Skava to believe that they were being led by some evil force. Some power of darkness that was using the humanoids as a tool to rid the valley of human civilisation. He prayed to Samnos and sent spies into the mountains, and eventually discovered that he was right. The bastlins were being led by a coven of priests of Marash, the evil God of Destruction.

     “Skava confronted the high priest of Marash and did battle with him, but the evil priest was half his age, in the prime of his life and strength, and like most evil priests he was well gifted in unholy power, much more so than priests of Samnos. Our God prefers that we depend more on our skill with weapons. Our intelligence, resourcefulness, our own strength and stamina than on...” His voice suddenly broke off and he cocked his head as if listening for something.

     “Is anything wrong?” asked Sorrell in concern.

     “Did someone just call my name?” asked the old priest, frowning in puzzlement.

     “I don’t think so,” replied the Major.

     “I thought I heard someone calling my name,” said Resalintas thoughtfully. “Maybe I just imagined it. Where was I? Yes. Skava confronted the leader of the priests of Marash but was defeated by him and only just managed to escape with his life. He won his way back to the fortress monastery, where he was forced to lie in bed for weeks while his injuries healed, and during that time he could only watch helplessly as the three cities were surrounded and besieged and the younger priests fell in battle one by one. By the time he was able to rise and take up the sword again he was the only priest of Samnos remaining in the valley, as he was when he first arrived.

     “He knew he could not stand against the priests of Marash as a living man, but neither could he bear the thought that the human civilization he’d lived in and helped to defend for half his life would soon be destroyed. There had to be some other way of defeating the evil priests and so, knowing that the three cities could endure the siege for several months, he left the valley and went back into the world to find it.

     “He visited many other priests of Samnos during the next few weeks, and called upon the leaders of several neighbouring kingdoms and city states, but everywhere he went the forces of evil were on the march and everyone had too many problems of their own to spare any help for a valley kingdom most of them had never heard of. He gradually came to realise that no-one could save Millin Dell unless he did so himself, so he turned his back on the civilised parts of the world and turned his attention to the wilderness areas beyond, searching for a secret that no priest of Samnos before him had ever dared to pursue. No-one knows where he went or what he did, but when he returned to the valley, three months after he’d left, he had transformed himself into a rak.”

     “A rak?” exclaimed Sorrell in amazement. “I thought only wizards could become raks.”

     Resalintas shook his head, and his steel grey eyes gleamed strangely as he looked back at the Major. “Priests can become raks too, but Skava is the only priest of Samnos ever to have attempted it. Most Gods consider it a deadly sin resulting in the immediate and irrevocable damnation of anyone who attempts it, but the legend states that Skava was given special leave by Samnos Himself because of the urgency of the situation. Whether that is, in fact, true, no-one really knows. What is known is that, with his new powers as an undead being, he defeated the priests of Marash and drove the bastlins out of the valley with a great slaughter, restoring peace and security to the valley.”

     “So the story has a happy ending,” said Sorrell, looking across at the old priest.

     “That is not the end of the story,” said Resalintas, however. “A few days after the defeat of the priests of Marash, Skava disappeared and was not seen by any inhabitant of the valley kingdom ever again. Nobody knows for certain what happened to him. There are two versions of the legend at this point. The first version, the one that I pray is the correct one, is that Samnos had allowed Skava to become a rak on the condition that he end his undead condition and go to judgement the moment the threat to Millin Dell was ended, and that he complied with the condition.

     "The other version is that, as an undead being, Skava gradually began to lose what remained of his humanity and turned into an evil being, no different from any other of the scores of raks who have plagued the world throughout history. Rak transformation has to be a sin for a reason, after all, and there are a great many sages who state that rakhood is an inherently evil condition and that anyone who becomes a rak, no matter how good and virtuous they may be to begin with, must inevitably be warped and twisted into evil.”

     The old priest’s eyes became distant and unfocused, and Sorrell got the impression that he was talking to himself now, as if he’d forgotten that he had company. “Even if that is true, though,” he mused, “he retained enough humanity long enough to defeat the priests of Marash. To do what had to be done.”

     The Major stared at him in shock and astonishment. “You’re thinking of becoming a rak!” he exclaimed in horror.

     “The one thing we know,” continued the old priest, unperturbed by the outburst, “is that before he vanished he wrote down all the steps required for a priest of Samnos to turn himself into a rak. One single copy of the set of instructions, set down on imperishable pettra parchment and sealed in a magically strengthened casket of marron wood.”

     “The Scrolls of Skava,” guessed Sorrell.

     Resalintas nodded. “He took them and hid them somewhere in what was then a wilderness area but which may well have been populated and civilized by now. Many priests of Samnos have tried to find them, wanting to destroy them as an abomination, but I want to find them for a completely different reason. As you correctly surmised, it is necessary for me to become a rak.”

     “But why?” demanded the Major. “In the name of all the Gods, why?”

     “We have discovered a way by which the Shadowarmies may be destroyed,” said the old priest. “The power of the Shadowlord cut off, the Shadow torn apart. The Shadowhordes scattered and dispersed, never to threaten civilisation again. But in order to do it, a number of priests must enter the Shadow, go all the way to the city of Arnor itself. No living man can survive there. To do it we will have to become undead.”

     “But if the second version of the legend is correct, you’d be damned for all eternity! Your very soul would be lost!”

     Resalintas looked up, looked straight into Sorrell’s eyes, and the Major stared as he saw all the age and weariness drop away from the priest as new fire and life flowed into him. Suddenly it was the old Resalintas standing there. The Resalintas that Colonel Vento and General Malchor had known. The Resalintas who’d led an expeditionary force a full five miles inside the outer fringes of the Shadow. The Resalintas who could rout an entire army with a single stern glance. The Resalintas whom men would follow to Hell itself if he led them. The bent, grey haired old man who’d been going around pretending to be him was gone, and in his place was the man who’d become a legend throughout the Beltharan Empire.

     Sorrell stared in astonishment, becoming fully aware for the first time of just who he was talking to, and a quiver of nervousness ran down his spine as if he were the newest raw recruit. This man is capable of anything, he told himself as beads of nervous sweat broke out on his forehead. He would casually dash a baby’s brains out against a brick wall if it somehow advanced the cause of the fight against evil. The Gods help us! The Gods help us all!

     “I am a priest of Samnos,” said Resalintas. “It is my duty to fight the forces of evil using all the means at my disposal, no matter what the consequences to myself. All priests of Samnos are willing to lay down their lives in the line of duty. A willingness to lay down one's soul is just an extension of the same principle. Besides, even if the worst happened and I became a servant of evil, the damage that I could do to the world would be negligible compared to the damage the Shadowarmies are doing. If I can help destroy the Shadow before I lose my humanity, then it will have been worthwhile.”

     Sorrell was speechless. The sheer magnitude of the sacrifice Resalintas was talking about quite literally struck him dumb and he could only stare, his mouth hanging open like a hypnotised goldfish. Finally, after several minutes seemed to have passed, he managed to croak out a few words, his voice sounding to his ears as if it were he who’d been turned into a rak. “Why are you telling me all this?”

     “Our secret hope for victory is known to only a handful of people,” replied the old priest. “Our greatest danger is that the enemy will become aware of it. It would be so easy for them to close this gap in their defences, and if they do that then our greatest hope will be lost. I am the only man in Bula Pass who knows of it. The other priests here do not know of it. Even Field Marshal Haines does not know. And yet someone else must know of it, for if I should fall on the battlefield before the expedition to Ganapha Keep returns bearing the Scrolls of Skava, there needs to be someone here who understands their significance. I chose you because of the strength of your spirit and your devotion to duty, which surpass even that of my fellow priests. The secret is safer with you than with anyone else.”

     Sorrell was stunned by the compliment, unprecedented, so far as he knew. “If you fall on the battlefield?” he said. “So other priests are considering rak transformation?”

     “Not yet,” replied Resalintas. “No other priest of Samnos yet knows of the plan, but if I fall it will be up to you to convince them. Start with Vasta, and he will carefully spread the word among our order. They will all volunteer. Every priest of Samnos in the world strong enough to have a fair chance of surviving the experience. About half of them will die in the attempt. Half of all the most powerful priests of Samnos in the world. If the enemy inflicted those kind of losses on us, they would consider it a good days work.”

     His eyes glowered grimly, and the Major shifted uncomfortably, nervous about being so close to this person while he was in this mood.

     Suddenly the old priest looked up, his eyes wide open as his dark thoughts were rudely interrupted. “There it is again,” he said. “Someone calling my name. It’s a farspeaking spell. Very faint, coming from very far away.”

     “What are they saying?” asked Sorrell.

     Resalintas frowned in concentration. “I can’t quite make it out. I can just about make out my own name, but the rest is just too faint. Too much interference between them and me. Dammit! It may be important!” He muttered a prayer to Samnos to improve the reception, but the farspoken message faded and disappeared, leaving the old priest storming about the tent in frustration.

     Sorrell was now anxious to be gone before something happened to worsen the priest’s mood further. “If there’s nothing else you wanted to tell me, I’ll go and make preparations for the expedition. I expect you’ll want to pick the men yourself.”

     Resalintas nodded but said nothing.

     “I’ll go and get on with it, then. Thank you for entrusting me with this knowledge.”

     The old priest still said nothing and carried on wandering around the tent, his eyes closed, deep in thought, so the Major slipped quietly out and returned to his duties.