Tak

Khalkedon - Part 8

     As the pain caused by the spell faded, Tak found that he was on his knees and struggled back to his feet with an effort. Gal-Gowan was grinning triumphantly at him, a look of such gleeful malice that Tak reeled back in dismay. "What..." he began, but had to stop to work up enough spit to speak. "What have you done to me?"

     "Your soul has now been permanently linked to this sapphire by a tendril of magical energy," replied Khalkedon.

     Tak looked down in horror at the jewel he still held, now glowing with a soft blue light.

     "What that means," the King continued, "is that your life is linked to the gem. If it should come to harm, so will you. So long as you obey me you will come to no harm, but defy me and I have only to crush the jewel in my fist. You would then die, no matter where you were in the world. No matter how far away you were."

     Tak stared in horror. "You do this to all your wizards?" he asked.

     "All the new ones, for the past thirty years or so," replied the King. "Gal-Gowan here, his apprentice. A dozen or so others. Not Molos Gomm, though, nor one or two of my other older thralls. They joined me of their own free will before I had perfected the technique. Gomm serves me because he knows he lacks the ability to achieve true greatness on his own. The only spark of wisdom I've ever observed in him. Other wizard Kings have similar ways of keeping their underlings in order, or else chaos would reign as ambitious apprentices murdered their teachers to replace them. It is quite possible that human civilisation could not survive otherwise. Gal, the jewel, if you please."

     Gal-Gowan held out his hand for the sapphire, but Tak shrank back in fear. "No!" he cried, clutching the jewel to his chest. "No, please!"

     "Don't be a fool," hissed the red wizard. "I could kill you where you stand! The sapphire! Now!"

     Numb with horror, the young man handed it across, his hand trembling. Gal-Gowan then handed it to Khalkedon, who slipped it back into his pocket..

     "Good," said the King. "A satisfactory conclusion to a day's work. I give him back to you now, Gal. Keep him here, or send him back to old Gomm as you see fit." He turned back to the young man. "First, however, it is only right that you know what kind of creature you serve."

     He pulled off his white gloves, and Tak gasped when he saw that his hands were withered and shrunken, like the hands of a desiccated corpse. He reached up and removed his golden mask, and Tak cried out in terror at his first sight of the King's face. Like his hands, the flesh was withered and shrunken, the lips drawn back to reveal the full width of his jaws. The cavernous cheeks were so deep that it seemed that the flesh was actually missing in those places. The greatest horror were the eyes, however. The eyeballs were missing, the sockets dried out and sunken, but they were far from empty. In each socket burned a tiny pinpoint of cold, white fire, like pin sized holes into the pits of Hell themselves.

     Tak staggered back until he was brought up short by a rack of bromeliads growing on lengths of bark. The King advanced upon him, but was careful not to approach too closely. He hadn't gone to all this trouble only to kill him.

     "I am what is called a rak," he explained. "That is, I am undead. In this form I can exist far longer than the normal span of human life. Centuries at least. Maybe thousands of years before I eventually evolve into a new form and leave this world. In this form I have power unknown to mortal men and am almost indestructible. In this form I am invincible. Invincible! Do you understand?"

     Tak nodded, too horror stricken for words. The King reached out and touched a golden flower swaying on the end of a long stalk. It turned grey and became covered by a layer of frost. He snapped it off and crushed it to frozen splinters between his fingers. He advanced closer, allowing Tak to feel the supernatural chill that radiated from his undead body. Tak moaned as he felt the heat literally being drawn from his body. Another pace closer and the rak would literally freeze him solid.