The room was a laboratory, the workplace of a necromancer. A very powerful one by the look of the place. Possibly the head of necromancy himself. Who would that have been? Seskip wondered. If he was exactly a thousand years in the past it would be Theron Wardok, a man of fearsome reputation and most definitely a man to be avoided. Seskip knew that he ought to creep out of there, making every effort to cover up all trace of his intrusion, but instead he closed the door behind him and stepped further in.

     Books and racks of glassware covered all four walls, and a long table in the centre of the room contained a complicated apparatus of glassware and tubing through which noxious looking fluids dripped and bubbled. There was a sickly smell filling the air, something acrid that he very strongly did not want to identify, and when he touched a workbench it had a damp, sticky feel to it that made him rub his fingers on his robes in distaste. The only light came from a solitary glowing globe of marble floating near the ceiling which left most of the room in sinister shadows.

     No, that wasn't true, he realised. There was another source of light. Something sitting on a bench on the other side of the room that pulsed an unhealthy dull orange like a diseased heart. He felt himself drawn to it, and knew immediately that this was what had brought him here. The thing had some kind of life of its own. A horrid kind of sentience. He knew instinctively that it was wicked and evil and revulsion filled him at the thought of getting any closer. It took all his willpower, but with an effort he broke its hold over him and staggered back towards the door.

     "Wait!" said a voice in his head. A kind of telepathy but unlike any other he'd ever experienced. There was no sense that there was any kind of living mind behind it. It was cold and dead. The kind of thought that might ooze through the putrifying brain of a corpse as it lay rotting in its grave. Fear stabbed through his heart like a spear of ice. Undead! A rak!

     "Yes, I am a rak," confirmed the voice. "Captured by Theron Wardok and imprisoned in my own ark. He torments me daily, trying to force from me the secrets I hold. Free me, and you will be well rewarded."

     Free him, and his first act will be to kill me, thought Seskip in amusement, but before he could take another step his head was filled with images of fantastic wealth. Chests overflowing with gold. Jewels and gemstones spilling from gilded boxes or set in necklaces, coronets and brooches. Jewelery of all description sparkling and gleaming amongst mountainous piles of coins. Wealth to buy a kingdom. Wealth that even the Emperor himself would envy.

     "Free me," whispered the rak teasingly, "and all this shall be yours."

      Seskip knew that it had to be an exaggeration. The rak couldn't possibly have accumulated so much even over several centuries, but he didn't doubt the creature had a sizable treasure trove stashed away somewhere, even a small part of which would make him a wealthy man. For a moment he was tempted. Magic was an expensive art and he could rarely afford all the equipment and material components he would have liked. With the wealth this rak could offer, though... He shook his head, dismissing the notion and offended by the suggestion that the Head Proctor of Lexandria University could be bought like a corrupt border guard.

     He managed another step before a new image invaded his head. Women. Dozens of the most beautiful and desirable women ever to grace the dreams of men. Naked, or dressed only in the scantiest, flimsiest scraps of silk. Flaunting themselves at him, offering themselves to him. Full, firm breasts were thrust into his face. A pair of girls, barely into pubescence, kissed and stroked each other’s bodies while glancing longingly at him. A black girl rubbed oil into her own skin making it glisten and shine while moaning his name with desperate desire.

Seskip felt his body responding. He found himself longing to feel the softness of that skin for himself. He'd had little experience with women. They'd always found his faintly reptilian appearance repulsive and offputting, but this... If the rak could really offer him the free use of a harem like this...

     "Yes!" hissed the rak eagerly. "They will give themselves to you willingly if you free me from this place."

     Again Seskip was tempted, but he knew it was a trick. He could supply himself with women if he really wanted to. The world was full of women who would sell themselves to any man, even one with such an unflattering appearance as his. He didn't need to place himself in the debt of a rak to satisfy his body's needs. He dismissed the images from his mind, therefore, and took another step towards the door. If he could just cross the threshold and close the door behind him...

     He was actually in the doorway when the third vision came to him. This time he saw himself, but twenty years older than he was now. His blotchy skin was stretched tightly across his crumbling bones and his limbs trembled as a serving girl spooned a thin gruel into his sagging mouth, staring pityingly down at him as she wiped drool from his chin with a soft cloth.

     Seskip froze in horror, seeing his father and his grandfather in this image of himself, both of whom had suffered the loss of their minds during the last years of their lives. It seemed to run in the family, and Seskip had lived his whole life with the knowledge of what awaited him.

     "It does not have to be," whispered the rak. "Free me, and I will show you how to avoid the fate of your forebears."

     "Rak transformation?" sneered Seskip, trying to regain his composure. Most of the time he managed to avoid thinking about the onset of old age. It was only during the still hours of the early morning, as he lay awake in his cold bed, that the hard facts came seeping back despite his every effort to stop them. Rak transformation was a possibility that had occurred to him many times, but he had no idea how to go about it and he'd been able to fool himself into believing that he'd refuse to commit that worst of all possible crimes even if the opportunity presented itself. Now that he was actually in that position, though...

     "Yesss!" whispered the rak in growing excitement. "I can show you how to do it. No need to risk suspicion and discovery by doing the research yourself. A few simple preparations, carried out in the privacy and security of your own quarters. A few simple ingredients, easily acquired. No-one would know what you were doing until it was far too late to stop you."

     Seskip realised he was trembling, but he was helpless to stop himself. The image of the senile old man was still there, filling his vision, and the worst part of it was the mingled pity and contempt he saw in the serving girl's eyes. Soon, he knew, she would have to clean his incontinence and bathe him, and then she would sit him in a bath chair in a large room with a dozen others like him, all of them staring emptily out into space. Nothing behind their sunken, watery eyes except, perhaps, the occasional fleeting memory of what they had once been...

     "No," moaned Seskip in ultimate horror. "Noooo..."

     "It does not have to be," repeated the rak eagerly. It knew it had found his weakness, knew it had him. "Free me and your mind will not fade. Not though the centuries pass and the world itself grow old."

     Seskip shook his head, his eyes squeezed closed. He was the Head Proctor. It was his duty to uphold the University's rules and the banning of rak transformation was the most important, the most harshly upheld rule of all. But... He opened his eyes, stared at the image that still waited for him there. He couldn't become that! He would do anything to avoid that! Anything at all! He turned to face the ark, still pulsing on the other side of the room, perhaps a little brighter than it had been before. Perhaps pulsing a little more rapidly, as if in eager anticipation. "What... What do I have to do?"

     "For now, just carry me out of here. Later, I will instruct you in how to release my spirit, but that will require a place of solitude and time to work."

     Seskip nodded reluctantly and crossed the room. He wrapped a cloth around the ark to protect his hands from the freezing cold it was radiating, then picked it up. He turned, and nearly dropped it in shock when he saw Saturn standing in the doorway.

     "So," said the wizard contemptuously. "The mighty Seskip Tonn succumbs to temptation at last. What did he offer you? Money? Power? What price was high enough to buy even your self righteous superiority?"

     Nothing in his attitude and bearing gave any sign that he was nearly helpless. Still magically bound and unable to use his spells. He gave every appearance of being totally in control, that he could destroy the Head Proctor with a single muttered word.

     "Kill him!" whispered the rak urgently. "Kill him and we can escape together!"

     Seskip hesitated. He could do it. He could say Saturn had attacked him physically, that he'd been defending himself. No-one would doubt him. His account would be accepted without question.

     "Yes!" cried the rak frantically. "Do it quickly! Quickly!"

     Seskip raised a hand, pointed a finger...

     "Saturn!" a voice cried from down the corridor. "Hold it right there!"

     Saturn turned to face the newcomer, then turned his back on him and placed his hands behind his back, his wrists crossed. The wizards' sign of surrender. He gave Seskip a sneer of triumph and the Head Proctor hurriedly placed the ark back in its alcove.

     "No!" wailed the rak desperately. "You promised! You promised!" Seskip ignored it and left the room.

     Saturn was already stepping out of his clothes in accordance with Zanda's instructions, and Seskip manacled his hands for the second time that day, his own hands sweaty, his mouth dry. What had come over him? How could he have been so stupid? Now his career was ruined, ended in disgrace. He would be demagestrated and exiled, to live the rest of his life as a lonely old man, shunned and forgotten by everyone he knew. One moment of weakness! How could it have happened? To him of all people. He felt sick with despair. Saturn had won after all. He would pull him down with him even as his own sentence was pronounced.

     "Back to the rendezvous point," he managed to croak. "We'll meet up with Landar and return to the Ship of Space."