Being such a powerful wizard, Malefactos was capable of holding a great deal of magic in his body, enough to cast a great number of high level spells a day. One of the downsides of that, though, was that it took him a great many hours to refill himself with magic. Fortunately, Algol had thoughtfully equipped a side room with thaum mirrors. Coated with a substance that reflected the magic force the same way that a normal mirror reflected light, they collected the magic force that fell in other parts of the room and directed it towards a spot in the middle. Standing in that spot, therefore, Malefactos was bathed in much more or it than normal, allowing his undead body to refill itself in a fraction of the time it would normally have taken.

     Another downside of being such a powerful spellcaster was that, with so many spells in his spellbooks, it was common for several of them to change every day. A great deal of his time was taken up reading and memorizing the new versions, therefore. A living man who spent that long concentrating on any normal book, let alone a spellbook, would have had a splitting headache by the end of it, but one of the benefits of being undead was that he was beyond all the failings of a living body so that, when he finally finished, he was as clear headed as he’d been when he’d started. Perhaps failing to find the secret of immortality was a blessing in disguise, he thought with a wry smile.

     He used a few spells to make the improvements to the room he’d planned; the tapestries and the tiled floor. He nodded at them in satisfaction and then, as a last thought, he added an illusion to the windows looking out over the city. Anyone looking out would now see the scene he’d had from his bedchamber in his palace in the city of Darundra, capital of the Five Cities of the Tannaric plains which he’d ruled in his youth. It was a programmed illusion, so that anyone else looking through them would see the city dead and destroyed; covered in Shadow and inhabited only by the undead. They would see it and think that he shared their ambition for a whole world in that condition. Only when Malefactos himself looked through would it show the city as he’d known it. Alive with noise and bustling with thousands of cheerful, chattering people.

     He looked out through the window, savouring unfamiliar feelings of nostalgia, and then temporarily lowered the illusion to see the reality of Arnor. If they have their way, he thought, they’ll do the same to the whole world, including my five cities. The five cities that I laboured so long and so hard to make wealthy, powerful and prosperous. The illusion I made will become fact. It bothered him, and it annoyed him that it bothered him. I’m past all that, he thought angrily, and anyway, it doesn’t matter what the Shads do to them. They’ll all be destroyed in the Day of Fire anyway.

     He banished the thought from his mind and left the room, strolling down the corridor to explore. He hadn’t gone far, though, when he saw Algol ahead of him, coming in his direction. “Ah, so thou hast rested and renewed thyself already,” said the demon rak as they grew level. “Thee dost have the vigour of youth.”

     “I don’t have as many spells to memorise as you, my lord,” replied Malefactos, trying to conceal his hatred for the creature while he kept his voice as meek and subservient as possible.

     “That is true,” agreed Algol. “No matter how powerful we do become, we do never escape the necessity to read spells that have changed, and to absorb more magic into our bodies before we can cast them again. Enough small talk. I do have thy tasks for today, which thou wilt perform as well as thou didst do yesterday.”

     Malefactos ignored the compliment. “Before we begin,” he said, “I would be grateful if you could answer a question that’s been bothering me ever since I saw the Puncturium yesterday.”

     Algol glared in annoyance. “Thou art bold,” he said. “No other would dare to interrupt me so. What wouldst thou know?”

     “I would very much like to know the source of the Shadow,” said the younger rak. “I know now that it doesn’t come from the Puncturium, so where does it come from?” He saw the look on Algol’s face and added hastily, “Of course, if you don’t think I should know yet...”

     “No, thou mayest as well learn now,” replied Algol. “There is no reason for thee not to know, and thou wilt find out soon enough in any case. Follow me.” He led the way down a side corridor and Malefactos followed eagerly.

     They went towards the centre of the palace, past the huge audience chamber with its dome of human ribs and down another of the palace’s eight wings. They passed rooms that had once been art studios, ballrooms, music halls and theatres, some of which still contained the crumbling remains of wooden furniture and fittings even after all this time. The shades of the artists, dancers and actors who’d once lived and worked here crowded the corridors, screaming in soundless torment as they mindlessly acted out the things they’d done in life, but Algol simply walked through them as though they weren’t there. They also passed the occasional true ghost and spectre, which hurriedly ducked out of sight as they passed, only peeping out again when they were gone.

     Seeing the ghosts, Malefactos was reminded of the vast hordes of undead that inhabited the Necropolis, and he mentioned them to Algol. “Why do you keep them here?” he asked. “Why not send them all out with the Shadowarmies? Think what a mighty army they would make!”

     “Indeed,” agreed Algol. “Unfortunately, they do be needed here. Without such a concentration of undead evil, the Shadow could not exist. In fact, they are partly responsible for creating it. It is an extension of the phenomenon of the lowering of temperature that surrounds all undead creatures, particularly raks.”

     “But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” replied Malefactos. “If you took a hundred ghosts and crammed them all in one room it would get very cold in there, but no Shadow would spontaneously form around them.”

     “Indeed not,” agreed Algol. “It doth require a trigger. A catalyst. Thou wilt see it thyself in just a moment, when we do arrive in the Garden of Darkness.”

     The Garden of Darkness? thought Malefactos curiously. He felt a tingle of excitement thrumming through him as they strode down the long corridor, wondering what was waiting for him up ahead. Would he regret having asked to see it? Was this Algol’s way of punishing him for his boldness? What would happen to him when they arrived at their unknown destination? Just wait and see, he told himself sternly. You’ll find out soon enough.

     As they got closer to the exact centre of the Shadow, Malefactos’s apprehension grew stronger as his rak vision, which he now took completely for granted as if he’d always been able to see perfectly in the complete absence of light, began to play tricks on him. It seemed to grow darker around him, which was, of course, impossible as it was already as dark as it could possibly be. Had it been possible for a living man to exist here, he would have been completely blind in the pitch blackness. And yet it was true, it was getting darker. A strange kind of darkness that affected his rak vision in the same way that a cloud passing over the sun affected normal human vision. We’re getting close, he thought in mingled excitement and apprehension. We’re getting really close.

     The corridor ended with a single plain wooden door, with a simple wooden doorknob and a simple metal keyhole, scratched around the hole where centuries of caretakers and servants had fumbled to insert the key. It was now so dark that Malefactos could barely see a dozen yards in any direction, and the very substance of the Shadow itself was so dense that he could feel it all around him, pulsing and vibrating almost like a living thing.

     Algol took hold of the doorknob and turned it, pulling the door open, and it made a dry, grinding sound as it slid against the bare stone floor. He then stepped through without looking back, and the younger rak was left with no choice but to follow him or else remain standing there all alone.

     It had indeed once been a garden. A square garden about a hundred yards on a side in the centre of the outermost of the four quadrangles of which this wing of the palace was composed. Once, it must have been beautiful, with fragrant rose gardens, brightly coloured flower beds, pools of crystal clear water and sparkling fountains reaching high into the air, and the shades of princesses, titled ladies and ladies in waiting still strolled around within it, their pretty mouths gaping open in silent, tormented screams as they practised their needlecraft in the golden sunshine (as it had been then) and carefully placed flowers in each other’s long, silky hair. Now, however, it was inhabited by something else, and even Malefactos, who’d seen many terrible and frightening things in his time, gasped in horror as he became aware of it.

     The darkness was almost total here, and Malefactos only knew that Algol was standing next to him from the aura of soul-freezing cold that radiated from him. He couldn’t actually see the creature in front of him, but he could sense the presence of something huge in the gardens with them. Something so large that it took up nearly all the space around it. Something that shifted and fidgeted restlessly as if it were unhappy at being hemmed in. Something that made wet, slippery noises as it wallowed in a pool of slime of its own creation. Something that, he somehow knew, was so hideously ugly that one glimpse of it would drive him instantly and hopelessly insane...

     The prideful and arrogant Malefactos was actually shivering with fear as the presence of the creature weighed down on him and, unseen in the darkness, Algol nodded in satisfaction. "If thou hads’t asked to be brought here, I would have brought thee very soon anyway," he said. "Raks always think a lot of themselves, and an encounter like this doth be very useful for reminding them of their true place in the greater scheme of things."

     “What is it?” whispered Malefactos, almost too scared to speak.

     “A Shadowbeast,” replied Algol. “It doth feed on the auras that surround all undead, the same auras that do cause the lowering in temperature we did speak of earlier. It doth feed on it and then it doth excrete it as Shadow. This single beast is responsible for all the Shadow on this world, all fourteen hundred thousand square miles of it. See, it doth become aware of us.”

     Malefactos realised he was right. He took a nervous step back as he felt the beast leaning towards him, and for a single moment part of it came close enough for him to see. There was a flash of dirty grey white about six feet in front of him, gleaming damply as it reflected the rainbow colours of the Shadow overhead. There was the faintest suggestion of detail within the beast’s flesh, something that made him cry out in anguished horror, but mercifully it had disappeared back into the darkness before he could make out what it was. It lunged forward again, straining against the spells that held it in place, but then it gave up and sank back into the small lake of slime with a disgusting oozing, bubbling sound.

     “It would devour thee if it could,” remarked Algol conversationally. “It would gulp thee down, as a toad doth swallow a fly, and thy days would end in its belly, suffering beyond thy ability to imagine as thou wert slowly digested.”

     “Nice,” said Malefactos drily. “Where did it come from?”

     “It is a denizen of the Pit,” replied Algol. “From the very lowest levels of that infernal realm. It is a member of a race of beings more ancient than anything else that doth live there. More ancient even than the Gods Themselves. In the early days, before I was appointed by the Shadowlord to take over here, when our predecessors were establishing our bridgehead on this world, an attack by this world’s life could easily have destroyed them, so a Shadowbeast larva was brought here to generate Shadow for defence. By the time they did know we were here, the Shadow was already dense enough that no living creature could survive here. From that moment, our eventual victory was certain.”

     “It just generates Shadow as a by-product of its metabolism?” said Malefactos in wonder.

     “Aye,” replied Algol. “And it is only for that reason that it can survive, for light of any kind, even the brightness of the fires of the Pit, would be instantly fatal to such a creature...”

     It happened so fast that it was all over almost before Malefactos was aware of it. The moment Algol mentioned the effect of sunlight on the Shadowbeast, Malefactos knew how it could be destroyed, after which the Shadow would swiftly dissipate, leaving the city of Arnor vulnerable to attack. A swift, sudden strike by a Beltharan assault force was all it would take to throw the Shadowarmies, already in a state of barely controlled anarchy, into complete turmoil, unable to attack or even defend itself coherently. Each individual Shadowarmy could then be destroyed individually until, by the time the Shadow High Command got itself sorted out again, their strength would have been fatally reduced. They could win this war! Malefactos had thought in amazement. The good guys could actually win this war! Tragius was right after all.

     These thoughts flashed through his mind in just a split second. Not in complete words and sentences as they’ve been written above, but in a sudden, brilliant burst of realisation, of pure, wordless concepts. In a moment of catastrophic absent mindedness, though, his carefully constructed mental mask had slipped and Algol, who’d been reading his mind to gauge his reaction to the Shadowbeast, was aware of it almost before he was.

     He stopped in mid sentence, therefore, and jabbed the younger rak with a full powered mental probe. Malefactos’s mental mask, hastily pulled back into place, was torn to shreds and the demon rak read the truth about his coming to Arnor. The theft of his ark by Tragius and his agreement to go on a spying mission in order to get it back. For a moment the demon rak was too stunned to say a word, but then his gaunt, almost hairless head was twisted into a mask of rage and he clenched his bony fists in fury.

     “Traitor!” he screamed shrilly, his whole body shaking with anger and disbelief. “Thou art a traitor! Never have I been fooled so completely! I trusted thee and would have heaped rewards upon thee. Now thy punishment shall be equally great. Thou shalt still be begging for release when the suns that shine upon this world are dead and frozen and the stars have ceased to shine.” He then began the casting of a spell.

     Malefactos knew that everything the demon rak had said was true and that there was no way he could defeat him in a straight magical duel. A tiger might just as well try to fight a dragon. He started to cast an attack spell of his own nevertheless, intending to go down with a fight even though he knew it was hopeless, but then another burst of inspiration came to him. He abandoned his attack spell, therefore, and began casting another. It was a much simpler spell. A low level spell. One of the very first spells he'd ever learned back in his long gone apprentice days. Being so simple, it took very little time to cast. He would easily finish it before Algol's high level attack spell.

     Algol paused in puzzlement, wondering what the younger rak was up to. He listened to the magic words Malefactos was speaking, trying to work out what kind of spell it was, and his face paled in fear. “Nay, thou fool!” he cried in terror, the first real fear the demon rak had experienced in unknown ages. “Not here!”

     Malefactos ignored him, however, continuing with his spell, and Algol rushed at him, trying to disrupt his spellcasting with a physical attack. He was just a fraction of a second too slow, though, and the younger rak finished the last tonguetwisting syllable just in the nick of time. It was a Nullification spell, which was used to cancel the effects of other spells, and it shattered some of the magical bonds holding the Shadowbeast in place.

     Not completely free but with a suddenly much greater freedom of movement, the beast’s first act was to lunge out again at the two tasty undead morsels standing so close to it. Malefactos shoved Algol away from him and towards the Shadowbeast, and the demon rak just had time to look up, his eyes staring in purest terror, before the monstrous maw descended on him and gulped him down before he could raise a hand in self defence. “Nooooooo!” he cried, and then he was gone.

     Malefactos activated his Robes of Flying and shot away into the air before it could attack again. The beast writhed and struggled, trying to follow him, but the remaining magical bonds were still too strong and after a moment or two it gave up and settled down to digest its unexpected meal.

     Malefactos remained hovering in the air for a moment longer, trying to make out the beast’s general shape in its cloud of supernatural darkness, his curiosity greater than his sense of danger, but then he realised that the other raks would soon be after him. One or two at a time he could handle, but all of them at once...

     He turned, therefore, and flew out across the city, heading south. Back towards the University and the ark that would soon be returned to him if Tragius knew what was good for him.