Several weeks beforehand, while Thomas and his friends were still in Redhill, Tragius Demonbinder was sitting in black despair in one of Lexandria University’s magic proof cells. He was dressed only in simple cotton garments, guaranteed to be totally free of magical wards and charms, and the cold stone walls and iron bars of his cell were heavily impregnated with anti-magic. Even if it had been an ordinary cell, though, there wouldn’t have been anything Tragius could have done to escape. His mind had been wiped clean of magic spells and there was now nothing but a great empty space in his head where they’d been. Even if he’d been locked in the cells of an ordinary town sheriff, he’d have been as much a prisoner as the common drunks and pickpockets he’d have been sharing it with.

     His trial, and that of his ‘co-conspirators’, had been going on for a week now, and any hopes that he might have been able to persuade the court of the rightness of his plans were all but gone. Even his defence proctor was obviously only going through the motions, being as convinced of his guilt as his prosecutors, and was limiting himself to an attempt at having the almost certain death sentence commuted to demagestration; the infliction of a curse that would make it impossible for him to ever use magic again. At his age, though, and considering the state of his health, it would amount to the same thing. He would almost certainly be dead within the year.

     “Fools!” he hissed in impotent fury. “The fools! They’re all blind! They can’t see that they’re throwing away the only chance we’ve got!”

     It was a source of never ending torment to him that a way existed by which the Shadowhosts could be defeated, and that the rest of the magical community lacked the courage and the vision to take advantage of it. Only a handful of wizards had seen the need for action, the necessity to take the drastic and terrible step of turning themselves into raks, and they were all locked up like him. He’d only seen one of them since their arrest. Two days before, while being taken to an appearance in court by a pair of burly proctors, he’d passed Aerethil in the corridor, and the sight of the elderly but once gloriously beautiful enchantress, her hair now cut short and her magnificent robes replaced by the ugly cotton prison uniform, had torn the heart out of him. They’d called out to each other, but the proctors wouldn’t let them talk and had hurried them away from each other, probably afraid they’d try to confer or something. Tragius hadn’t seen a single friendly face since.

     He paced up and down in boiling frustration, his bare feet slapping on the bare stone floor and his hands clenched into fists at his side. There had to be something he could do! The world was being consumed by evil, he had what might well be the only realistic way of stopping it, and here he was cooped up in a cell like a common criminal! It was enough to make a grown man burst into tears!

     He mood was so black that it took him some time to notice that something was happening to the wall opposite the barred door, and he paused to stare in wonder and renewed hope. The wall was rippling and shimmering like the surface of a sheet of water, a clear sign that someone was trying to punch a hole through the anti-magic permeating the cold stone. Tragius’s knowledge of magic, unaffected by the amnesia spell, told him how strong a magic spell would have to be to accomplish this, and the presence of so much magical energy so close by scared him enough to make him up end his cot and crouch down behind it. He knew as well as anyone how much protection a half inch of wooden planking would give him if magics like these slipped out of control, but survival instincts honed by millions of years of evolution were too strong to ignore. He wanted to live, and so he snatched at whatever protection was available to him, no matter how flimsy and weak.

     His fears proved unfounded, though. The magic spell struggled with the anti-magic for a few minutes longer, filling the cell with hot air and the smell of ozone, and then there was a pop and a cool breeze was blowing. Tragius peeped timidly around the side of his cot and was astonished to see the mouth of a tunnel leading away from the cell, looking as though it had been carved out of solid stone even though Tragius knew that there were other rooms and corridors on the other side of the foot thick stone wall. Then there was a man in the cell with him, pulling him roughly to his feet and ushering him towards the tunnel. “Come on!” he cried urgently. “We haven’t got much time! There’ll be alarm spells going off all across the valley by now!”

     “What is this?” demanded Tragius in confusion. “What’s going on?”

     “A breakout!” replied his companion with a grin. “We’re busting you out of jail!”

     Then came cries of alarm and the sound of running feet from outside in the corridor, and that was enough to make Tragius’s mind up for him. He dashed into the tunnel, closely followed by his companion, and the mouth of the tunnel closed behind them, leaving them running away from a dead end and with the Gods alone knew what ahead of them.

     “Come on!” urged the younger man as Tragius faltered, panting for breath. “We’re not safe yet. They might try to re-open the tunnel behind us.” The older wizard’s face paled with fear and he urged himself to a new effort.

     The tunnel snaked its way through strange alien dimensions, twisting and turning so that Tragius couldn’t see further than twenty or thirty yards ahead of him. The tunnel continued to close behind them as they ran, adding to Tragius’s fears as he imagined it overtaking him, the tunnel walls closing in on him from either side and crushing him into a long, thin tube of pulp. The point of closure remained a comfortable six feet behind them, though, even when the older wizard’s strength failed him and he had to slow to a walk, a sharp pain shooting through his chest.

     “Come on!” urged his companion, pulling at his elbow. “It’s not much further!” Tragius nodded and forced himself into a painful trot.

     Then the tunnel opened out into a large cavern, also carved out of solid rock, and the younger wizard indicated that Tragius could rest for a while as the last of the tunnel vanished behind them, leaving the wall smooth and featureless. “We should be safe now,” he said as the older wizard doubled over in exhaustion, gasping for breath. “How do you feel?”

     “I’ll live,” replied Tragius, forcing himself to stand erect again. “I recognise you now. You’re Smarth Hedley, aren’t you? You work in the archives.” The younger wizard nodded. “No way did you do this,” continued the older wizard. “You show promise in your studies, it’s true, but no way are you capable of punching a transdimensional duct through an anti-magic barrier. Who did it?”

     “You’ll meet him soon enough,” replied Smarth. “He prepared the tunnel and then left it dormant so that I only had to speak a word of command to activate it. He prepared five tunnels, one for each of you. We wanted to get you all out at the same time, so as not to alert the proctors.”

     Tragius brightened at the news. “You got them all? Aerethil? Adantus? Barchil?”

     “We’ll soon find out,” said Smarth, indicating a spot on the wall where another tunnel was forming. “Our glorious leader must be ready to see us. Come on.”

     They entered the second tunnel, this time walking at a sedate pace but with Tragius leading the way, anxious to meet his saviour. Who could it be? he wondered. So far as he knew, there were only half a dozen wizards in the world capable of a feat like the one he had just witnessed, and two of them were among the prisoners being rescued. It would have to be someone with extensive knowledge of the various planes of existence, someone like... He froze as an amazing possibility occurred to him. “It couldn’t be!” he muttered doubtfully. “That silly old fool hasn’t got the guts for an escapade like this!”

     He was wrong, though. They reached the end of the tunnel and found the silly old fool himself waiting for them. None other than Elmias Pastin, the University’s Director of Extra-Planar Studies, grinning all over his face and surrounded by the other escapees, together with the younger, more junior wizards who’d led them to safety. “Elmias!” cried Tragius in delight. “You old dog! I didn’t know you had it in you!”

     Elmias shrugged modestly. “Well, I couldn’t just leave you there, could I? I had to do something.”

     “You realise you’ve made yourself a fugitive along with the rest of us, don’t you?” pointed out Phileas Garno seriously.

     “Not so much a fugitive,” replied Elmias, though. “More a member of a breakaway party. There are quite a few of us who think your plan is a good one. Possibly the only way of saving our world.”

     “Then why in the name of hell didn’t you vote with us in the assembly?” exploded Tragius. “With enough votes we might have forced that fool Westin to take action.”

     Elmias hung his head in shame. “We all thought we were the only ones who agreed with you. We were all afraid of the proctors, even me. Since then, though, there’s been a lot of whispering in corridors. We found that we weren’t alone, that there were others who felt the same way. When we found out how many of us there were, it gave us the courage to act.”

     “If you’d spoken up in the assembly, the proctors would probably have kept a close eye on you, and you wouldn’t have had a chance to rescue us,” pointed out Aerethil. “You were right to keep silent.” Elmias smiled gratefully at her.

     “How many of us are there, exactly?” asked Barchil.

     “Twenty three, including all of us gathered here. I’d say that about a dozen of us have about a fifty fifty chance of surviving rak transformation.”

     “So if we’re lucky, we can produce about six raks,” mused Tragius thoughtfully.

     “Plus six corpses,” added Aerethil dryly.

     Tragius ignored her. “I’ll need all my equipment,” he told Elmias. “My spellbooks, my powders and potions, my notes...”

     “All taken care of,” replied Elmias smugly. “I’ve had a little bolt hole prepared for myself for years now, just in case I ever had to get out quick, and some of the others have been moving all your stuff over. All of you. I wanted to get that done first, because I knew all hell would break loose once we got you out.”

     “Where?” demanded Tragius excitedly.

     “This way,” replied Elmias, and he led the way down another tunnel.

     “Where are we, anyway?” asked Adantus as they walked.

     “One of the planes of stone,” replied Elmias. “A strange universe I discovered years ago that’s always fascinated me. Millions of miles of rock stretching endlessly in all directions, honeycombed with tunnels and caverns, some of them as big as entire worlds with continents and oceans, mighty civilizations and wilderness. This particular area is sparsely populated, though. That’s why I chose it.”

     They were in a natural tunnel now, rather than a magically created transdimensional conduit, and Elmias lit a small ball of light to illuminate the way. Soon, they saw a glow of light ahead of them, and a moment later they came to an open door, on the other side of which was a tastefully decorated reception area, such as might be found in the country mansion of a wealthy nobleman. More rooms and corridors led away from it, all richly carpeted and hung with paintings and tapestries, and expensive looking ornaments sat in snug little alcoves in the walls.

     “Welcome to Chez Pastin,” said the small wizard, waving his arms around to encompass it. “My emergency refuge, now our campaign headquarters. I’ve added a few more rooms, so there’s plenty of room for all of us, but I’m afraid you’ll have to furnish and decorate them yourselves.”

     The other wizards stared around in amazement. “You’ve had this place all these years?” said Aerethil in disbelief. “We never even suspected!”

     “Well, you know the kind of man I am,” said Elmias sheepishly. “I’ve never been the world’s bravest man. I just wanted a place I could run away to, if I had to.”

     He showed them around, and showed them the rooms he’d prepared for them, bare and empty except for their books and equipment piled roughly in a heap in the middle of the floor.

     “Well, the first thing to do is get ourselves settled in,” said Phileas, gazing unhappily at his beloved possessions, casually and thoughtlessly deposited with none of the care and attention they deserved. “Once we’ve sorted ourselves out, we can figure out what to do next.”

     He began picking out his spellbooks, arranging them carefully on another pile, and the others left to do the same in their own rooms.

☆☆☆

      The next day, Elmias visited Tragius in his rooms to see how he was getting on.

     “Fast work,” he said, gazing in admiration at the brightly furnished rooms, transformed by a few well placed spells and now as luxurious and comfortable as his old rooms in the University. All his alchemical equipment was arranged on wooden benches in his makeshift laboratory, his collection of spell components stood in neat rows on a couple of shelves next to his spellbooks, and the few personal belongings that Elmias’s assistants had managed to bring were stuffed in a large ironbound chest half hidden behind his bed. Tragius felt much better now that he had his proper clothes on again, wrapping him around with all their protective wards and charms, and had refilled his head with all his spells, and he smiled with pleasure as he welcomed his host in.

     “It’s not home,” he admitted, “but it’s better than a jail cell.”

     “We’re having a meeting in the library to discuss tactics,” said Elmias. “Coming?”

     “Of course,” replied Tragius, and followed him out.

     There were only eight wizards present at the meeting. Elmias, the five escapees and two of the more junior wizards who’d been helping to remove all traces of the transdimensional tunnels, carefully erasing all traces of residual magic that the University wizards might have tried to use to trace their hide-out. All the other members of Elmias’s ‘breakaway group’ were out doing important work, but their opinions and advice would be sought as soon as they returned. There weren’t so many of them that Elmias could afford to alienate any of them by making them feel that they were being taken for granted.

     “First of all,” said Elmias as the last of his fellow wizards arrived and seated themselves around the large oaken table, “I’ve heard that the Proctors have figured out my part in your escape and have put out a warrant for my arrest. I am therefore now in exactly the same boat as the rest of you.” He smiled nervously.

     “How did you hear this?” asked Barchil.

     “Some of our little group have remained in the University, concealing the fact that they’re associated with us. They keep me informed of everything that’s going on there. They’re also on the lookout for possible new recruits.”

     “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” said Tragius, though. “They’re bound to guess the size of our conspiracy and may try to infiltrate us. We should admit no new members.”

     “I wish you wouldn’t keep using that word ‘conspiracy’,” said Elmias with a pained expression.

     “What word would you rather use?”

     “Let’s not get sidetracked,” said Aerethil irritably. She’d regrown her hair and cast some illusion spells on herself to look young and beautiful again. She was wearing flimsy, diaphanous silks that did little to conceal her body. She wasn’t consciously trying to seduce the others, but the habits of a lifetime were hard to break. “We came here to discuss a specific issue.”

     “Quite right,” agreed Adantus. “We're all here, we’re all safe and we’re ready to act, so what actions are we to take?”

     “Well that’s obvious,” said Tragius. “We’ve all got a lot of intensive research ahead of us. We’ve got to find out exactly how a wizard turns himself into a rak.”

     Phileas stared at him in horror. “I thought you already knew that!” he cried.

     “No,” admitted Tragius. “I’ve been too busy lately. I haven’t had the chance to find out.”

     “But some wizards spend years doing the research and preparing themselves!”

     “I doubt we have that long,” replied Tragius calmly. “We should aim to be ready to attempt transformation in six weeks. Preferably less.”

     “Six weeks!” exclaimed Phileas in disbelief. “You expect us to complete the research in just one month?”

     “The longer we spend preparing our bodies, the better our chances of surviving the transformation,” pointed out Barchil. “If we rush it, the chances are that we’ll all end up dead.”

     “We thought you’d done all this!” protested Phileas angrily. “When you first proposed the idea to us...”

     “I thought I would have all the resources of the University to draw upon,” replied Tragius impatiently. “Now we’ll have to do it all ourselves, using what we have here.”

     “My contacts at the University may be able to provide us with some information and vital supplies,” suggested Elmias. “So long as it doesn’t mean risking their exposure.” Tragius nodded at the suggestion.

     “We’ll have to co-ordinate our efforts, make sure we’re covering all the necessary ground and avoid duplication of research,” suggested Adantus. “Since I’m the most senior research wizard here, I suggest that I be put in charge.”

     “Makes sense,” agreed Tragius, and the others nodded, although Phileas continued to glower unhappily.

     “Well, if we’re in such a hurry, we ought to start right away,” said Barchil. “The obvious place to start is to find a wizard who's already turned himself into a rak. Grab him and wring the secret out of him.”

     “Would Malefactos be willing to furnish us the information?” asked Aerethil.

     Tragius shook his head. “He's finished with us. Finished with this whole world. He's made it quite clear that he’ll kill me if he ever sees me again.”

     “That means an externum,” said Aerethil, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I’d rather bathe in acid than trust my life to an externum’s spells.”

     “Once we have the information, we can test it for safety and make any necessary improvements,” said Adantus. “Besides, any rak we capture will already have survived the transformation, which is a powerful testimony to its effectiveness.”

     “Are there any raks in the world not connected with the Shadowarmies?” asked one of the two junior wizards, a handsome young chap with straw blonde hair and a sunburned face. Tragius searched his memory for his name. It was Hanus Osterlan.

     “One or two,” replied Barchil, “but they’re very old and powerful. They’d have to be, to resist the call of the Shadowlord. I don’t suggest we try to storm their fortresses without the full force of the University behind us.”

     “It would probably be easier to abduct a Shadowrak,” agreed Tragius. “They travel around with the armies they command and so don’t have the protection of a fortress. Also they’ll be complacent, off their guard. If we plan it carefully we ought to be able to carry it off.”

     “Well they might be complacent,” cried Phileas in disbelief. “I’d be complacent with an army of a hundred thousand to protect me, not to mention twice as many zombies.”

     “Please try not to get overexcited,” said Adantus patiently. “I’m sure that, if we apply a little thought, we’ll be able to overcome these difficulties. One or two ideas are already occurring to me.”

     He described them to the others, and they spent many long hours talking them over and working out a complete plan of action.