They found the wizards gathered in the corridor, peering nervously in at the tiny cloud of insanity that floated in the middle of what had once been a large ballroom. There were three large double doorways leading into the room, so there was plenty of room for most of the powerful undead creatures to look in at once without crowding, and there wasn’t one of them who wasn’t shocked to the very core of his being by what he saw.

     As Malefactos had found before them, it was impossible to look at directly. The tiny trans-dimensional rupture seemed to dance around, always on the very edge of their vision, while at the same time they could have sworn that it was stationary, that it was rooted so solidly at the centre of the room that nothing in the world could have moved it. None of them could have described it, since none of them were able to get a good look at it no matter how much they strained and tried to focus their eyes on it, but they all agreed that it was horrible, even the most evil of them, and that trying to look at it was giving them a headache.

     Tragius glanced at the Samnians, and his eyes flicked briefly down to the layer of slime drying on their bony, sticklike legs. “Any problems?” he asked.

     “Nothing we couldn’t handle,” replied Resalintas, making Vasta stare at him in amazement. “What’s the delay?”

     “Just waiting for the interference from the Shadow to die down,” said the wizard. “Are you getting this, Elmias?”

     There was a sound like wind howling through narrow mountain passes in which the sound of a man’s voice could just barely be heard. Tragius made a motion with a hand and the sound stopped. “That’s what the remains of the Shadow does to a Farspeaking spell. The Gods alone know what would happen if he tried to teleport in. It’ll be a few more minutes yet before it’s safe for him to come.”

     “He could use the teleportation network, like we did,” suggested Renda.

     The wizard shook his head. “The time it’d take him to get here from Grand Central, we might as well wait until he can teleport direct. It won’t be long. We’ve won the race against time, there’s no further need to hurry.”

     Resalintas nodded, and the crowd of undead creatures waited silently, watching the incomprehensible madness of the Puncturium through the three empty doorframes. Tragius imagined all the power flooding through from the Pit, enough power to animate millions of skeletons and zombies and overcome the mutual animosities of hundreds of humans and humanoid tribes, not to mention enslaving the minds of the dragons, the giants and the less powerful spiritual undead. All that power flooding through a transdimensional rupture about the size of a man’s head! It was awesome to contemplate! Then another thought came to the wizard. The Shadowlord himself must be just on the other side of that rupture! Less than twenty yards away! His undead body shivered and he took a couple of steps away from the doorframe.

     A few minutes later Tragius tried the Farspeaking spell again, and this time Elmias’s voice came through loud and clear, with only a trace of hissing and whooshing in the background. “Is it safe to come yet?” the living wizard asked hesitantly.

     “Should be,” replied Tragius. “Teleportation spells are pretty robust, and if you’re injured the Samnians can soon heal you. Come on down.”

     There was a brief delay, and then a small group of living wizards appeared, including Elmias who immediately patted his hands all over his body to make sure everything was where it should be. “I seem to be okay,” he said after a moment. “Is this...”

     His voice fell silent as he looked up and saw all the terrible undead creatures looking at him. Nearly thirty raks, brilliant points of light burning in the empty eye sockets of their shrunken, skull like faces. The tall, gaunt forms of the vampires, the only ones who looked even remotely human. The gl hugzi with their dark, slimy skins and, worst of all, the Eeii; their probosces, swollen with putrescent fluids, hanging limply from their bleached white, puffy heads and their octopus eyes bulging like great pussy sores about to burst. The living wizards huddled together as they became aware that they were probably surrounded by more supernatural evil than had ever been gathered in one place before.

     Elmias paled as the blood drained from his face and he wobbled on his feet. Tragius reached out a hand to steady him and just managed to stop himself in time. Now that he was a rak, his touch would kill a living man. Freeze him instantly into a lump of frozen meat. They hadn’t come this far only to end it all in a single thoughtless act of disastrous stupidity.

     “Don’t be afraid,” said Dorth reassuringly. “You’re among friends here.” The rak tried to smile, but the stretching of his dry, leathery skin and the baring of his crumbling teeth only made him look even more hideous. Elmias gulped nervously and forced a grin.

     “In there,” said Tragius, indicating the entrance to the ballroom, and the living wizards hurried in, glad for something to do to take their minds off the company they were in. Like the others, they found themselves unable to look at the Puncturium directly, but Elmias didn’t seem bothered by that and bustled around the room humming and aahing to himself, now in a world all his own. Occasionally he would go right up to the transdimensional rupture and wave some kind of magical device at it before going over to the wall while making muttered comments to one or another of his assistants. At one point he cast a spell, after which he stared into empty space as if at something that only he could see.

     The others watched for a while, expecting him to say something sooner or later, but after a few minutes Tragius lost patience and strode over to join him. “Well?” he demanded.

     “Yes, well,” replied the living wizard, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I've never come across anything quite like this before, but it seems to be a fairly simple structure, wouldn't you say, Normus?"

     The younger man standing beside him nodded nervously, still staring warily at the raks.

     “Closing this thing should be simple enough," continued Elmias, "but I’m afraid it’s going to be rather time consuming. It’s held open by thousands of individual spells, you see, each one of which contains as much energy as a hundred fireball spells. Each and every one of them is going to have to be broken individually, to allow that energy to be released slowly and safely.”

     “How long will that take?” asked Resalintas, who’d also joined them. Behind them, some of the others were also edging cautiously into the room.

      “Well, I’ll show you,” replied Elmias, beckoning Normus closer and holding out a hand. The other wizard reached into his robes and produced two objects, that Elmias took. One was a wand tipped with silver at either end. The other was a visor of tinted glass.

     “This Rod of Cancellation will do the job nicely," he said as he placed the visor over his eyes. "I'd look away if I were you, and brace yourselves.”

     He waved the other living wizards away. They retreated to the other side of the room, turned their backs and put their hands over their eyes. The raks also backed away. Elmias then raised the wand, aiming it at nothing that the others could see, and spoke a word. There was a dazzling flash of white light accompanied by a clap of thunder and a shockwave that pushed him back as if he'd been shoved by a giant's fist. The wizard staggered to keep his balance while large flakes of plaster fell from above.

     Elmias looked nervously up at the centuries old ceiling. "Er, yes," he said, tapping the wand in the palm of his hand. "I was able to contain most of the energy released, but enough got out to create quite a respectable blast. We're going to have to cast a few strength spells on the room before we go any further or the whole building'll come down on us, which wouldn't inconvenience the Puncturium in the slightest. And that was just one of the spells cancelled. There’re many thousands more. You see what I mean when I say it’ll be a time consuming task.”

     “Too time consuming,” said Resalintas. “In about two hours Mase will smash our arks and send us all to judgement, and shortly after that the Shadowraks will reform. You must find a faster way.”

     “There is no faster way,” replied Elmias calmly. “There’s enough energy in all these spells to blow this city clean off the map. It must be dissipated slowly and safely.”

     “Of course it doesn’t,” said Fangrap, though. “Let Arnor be destroyed and good riddance. Close the Puncturium now and let’s get out of here.”

     “The Skorvosian is right,” agreed one of the gl hugzi. “Give the rest of us time enough to leave, and then close the Puncturium quickly.”

     “For once I find myself in agreement with the servants of evil,” said Resalintas. “Can Tragius use that wand?”

     “Of course," replied the living wizard, clearly unhappy with the idea. "It only needs a word of command, but when he uses it he’ll blow himself straight to judgement, along with everything else for about a mile in every direction.”

     “When the sun sets, I’m going to judgement anyway,” pointed out Tragius. “Hand it over.”

     Elmias handed over the wand with a sigh, and then explained what he’d have to do in order to sever all the spells holding the Puncturium open at once. Tragius nodded when he’d finished. “Okay, go back to Crystalwade. Your job here’s finished. We’ll take care of what has to be done.”

     Elmias looked at him, trying to see the Tragius he’d known for half his life in the shrunken, leathery tissues stretched across the framework of bones. Trying to see his friend’s soul in the searing points of fire that burned in his empty eye sockets. “You really mean it?” he asked breathlessly. “You’re really going to voluntarily end your own existence? Go to the judgement of the Gods of your own free will?”

     “It’s that or slowly turn to evil,” replied Tragius, nodding. “I already find that the idea of committing evil acts is not nearly as horrific to me as I seem to remember it being. My end can't come a moment too soon.” Around him, the Samnians and the other wizards were nodding, while their evil companions stared at them in various combinations of amusement, contempt and disbelief.

     “All right,” said Elmias sadly. “I’ll see to it that you’re remembered the way you should be. I’ll make the University honour your memory if it’s the last thing I do!” He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose on it. “Goodbye, all of you. Tell the Gods they’re to look after you or they’ll have me to answer to.”

     Tragius grinned, and suddenly the old Tragius was back. The Tragius who’d plotted and schemed for years behind the Director’s back. The Tragius who’d dared to blackmail one of the most powerful raks in the world. The Tragius who’d been willing to risk his very soul in the attempt to save the world. The rak was gone, and in its place was a man he’d been honoured to call his friend, even though he’d been the butt of his scorn and derision for most of his professional life. Then his grin faded and the rak was back, growing impatient at the delay. “Well?” he demanded. “What are you waiting for?”

     Elmias nodded, and the living wizards left the room, in case all the spells holding the Puncturium open interfered with the teleportation spell. “Goodbye,” he said one last time. Tragius gave him an absent minded wave and then turned back to the Puncturium, forgetting about his living friend. Elmias gave a sigh, and held his hands out to the other living wizards. They linked hands, forming a circle. Elmias then spoke a word and they vanished.

     “We will also go,” said Kar-Noth as he and the other evil members of the assault force made their way back out into the corridor. “You may have the honour of bringing the curtain down on the Shads all to yourselves.”

     Resalintas nodded, but Tragius, who knew him better than almost anyone else in the world, could see the priest wondering if it would be possible to make him close the Puncturium before the vampires had time to escape. The explosion wouldn’t do the raks, the gl hugzi or the Eeii any permanent harm, of course, as their souls would return to their arks (or the deadpools in the case of the Eeii) and their bodies would reform shortly afterwards, but the vampires would be destroyed permanently, and the removal of so many of the bloodsucking, sunhating undead from the world could only be a good thing.

     The undead priest would have no moral problems about destroying his former allies, the wizard knew. Both sides of the trans-alignment alliance (as he could imagine historians of the future calling it) knew that their alliance would only last until their common enemy had been defeated, and that had now virtually been accomplished. Resalintas harboured no silly notions concerning mercy to an unrepentant enemy or gratitude towards someone who’d helped them out of their own selfish self interest. If he could have destroyed the vampires at that moment he would have done it.

     Before he could give Tragius the command, though, Kar-Noth had teleported to safety and the others were dissolving into a ground mist, seeping down into tiny cracks and crevices in the floor. In that form, no amount of physical violence could harm them, not even an explosion the size of the one they were about to set off. Only the prayers of priests could do that, and the Samnians no longer had the strength for any such thing. Tragius imagined the priest cursing the lost opportunity, and hoped that the younger, less experienced priests of Samnos still alive in the world would be able to stand up to them.

     “Goodbye, Resalintas,” said Fangrap, grinning broadly and stroking the remaining wisps of his once handsome moustache. “Looks like you’ll be meeting your God before I meet mine after all, although I could have told you that twenty years ago. I only regret that I wasn’t able to finish you off myself. The last time we met, we were interrupted before we could decide it, if you remember.”

     Resalintas could only glare back, apparently unperturbed, but Tragius knew that there would be a cold fear squeezing what was left of his heart. All these powerful, evil undead creatures would be left to plague the world after all the most powerful wizards and priests of Samnos were gone. The arduous task of defending civilisation would fall on young Robert Drake and others like him. Youngsters not nearly ready for such a challenge. What would happen to the world when he and the other Samnian raks were gone?

      Was there any way they could remain to continue fighting the forces of evil? Tragius wondered. Resalintas had to be wondering the same thing, he knew. Perhaps they could return to Crystalwade and persuade Mase not to destroy their arks. Maybe they could even steal their arks back and hide them somewhere safe, thereby ensuring their continued existence. But then they would turn to evil and become a greater plague to the world than the ones they were staying behind to fight.

     Tragius saw the priest's shoulders sag as he came to the same realisation as the wizard. No, there was no choice. They had to go to judgement, and the world would just have to look after itself the best it could. The fight against evil would go on, the banner of light and freedom carried by younger hands. The days of Tragius and Resalintas had come to an end.

     “You’d better go while you’ve got the chance,” the priest said therefore.

     Fangrap grinned even more broadly, savouring the moment. “Goodbye, Resalintas,” he said again. “I will remember you.” He then went out into the corridor, gave the Samnians and the wizards a last cheerful wave, and vanished.

     Resalintas stood there for several minutes longer, the points of light that served him as eyes blazing with frustration. What must it be like for him, Tragius wondered, to leave the world with so much evil still in it. But he had defeated the Shadow, and that was a far greater victory of good over evil than most priests of Samnos ever managed to achieve. Surely that would be enough to satisfy him.

     Apparently it wasn't, because the look of anger and frustration remained. There was nothing he could do about it, though, and as Tragius's mother had liked to say, what can't be cured must be endured. The priest turned to the wizard, therefore. “Do it,” he barked, indicating the Puncturium. “Close the damned thing.”

     Tragius nodded, aiming the wand, and a moment later the city of Arnor simply ceased to exist.