Tak

Experiments - Part 1

     "It was years before they dared to even think about freedom again," said Thomas some time later. "They were all sent back to their far flung homes. All except Barl, who had to stay under Gal-Gowan's eye. That must have been hard for him. He must have been in an almost constant state of terror. Tak was lucky. He was sent back to Castle Nagra, where he concentrated on trying to forget the awful 'lesson' the rak had taught them. It was months before he was in the right frame of mind to think about his experiments again, although Trobo made sure the animals were fed and cared for."

     "But they did eventually succeed in killing Khalkedon?" asked Lirenna. "They eventually gained their freedom?"

     "Yes, but that was some years later. Some other things happened before then. Things that I sense are important to what happened later, although I can't yet remember why. They're to do with his experiments. He succeeded in creating several brand new forms of life, including one that was more than just a curiosity. Something that went on to become really useful to him and the other Gem Lords. Crucially useful, maybe..."

☆☆☆

     It was five months after his return to Castle Nagra before Tak resumed his animal experiments, and a year before he made his first breakthrough.

     He'd been concentrating on the flying mice that Molos Gomm had had such success with, mainly because the old wizard had left such a wealth of notes behind that it was easy to retrace his steps. Magic being what it is, though, no magical experiment can ever be duplicated with complete precision and Tak had to fiddle around with the ingredients of the potions and the words of the magic spells, creating endless numbers of deformed monsters that he killed as quickly and painlessly as he could.

     Gradually, though, his patience began to pay off, and he never forgot the day a fat, female mouse gave birth to a litter of perfectly normal pink, hairless baby mice. Perfectly normal, that is, except for the tiny wing buds each of them bore on their backs. He watched with breathless excitement as the days and weeks passed and the baby mice grew up, grey fur covering their bodies and feathers adorning their wings. They were perfect in every detail, and when they seemed to be close to adulthood he moved them into a large aviary, twelve feet across, in which they'd have room to fly.

     It took them a while to get the knack of flying, not having any winged parents to teach them, but they eventually got the hang of it, encouraged by Tak's placing of their food on the other side of a large gap in the floor, too wide for them to jump across. Soon they were more at home in the air than they were on the ground, and when he allowed them to breed he was overjoyed to find that they bred true, producing perfect winged babies. He'd succeeded in creating a brand new form of life!

     He was so proud of them that, when a few mouse generations had passed and he had nearly two hundred of the creatures, he took most of them outside and released them into the wild, eager to see whether they could survive on their own. He had no thought for the possible ecological consequences of his actions, mainly because ecology was an unknown science on Tharia. Even if there had been a concerned ecologist there, though, he would have had nothing to worry about. Tak had the occasional sighting of a flying mouse now and then over the next few months, but they became less and less frequent as time went on and he was eventually forced to the disappointing conclusion that they'd become extinct. His creations could not compete with the natural inhabitants of the world and could only survive in captivity. All of Tak's efforts had succeeded only in creating a new and unusual kind of pet.

     A hobby doesn't have to be of any practical use, however. You do it just because you enjoy doing it, and so, encouraged by his success, he was emboldened to try something a little more ambitious. One cage of Molos Gomm's pets had survived the months of neglect following the onset off his final illness, due to their ability to go into a state of hibernation during times of hardship. The horned lizards of the Kelting Islands grew to a length of nearly eighteen inches, although the two males and the solitary female lounging lazily in their enclosure had remained half that size as an adaptation to an irregular and unreliable food supply. At the same time that Tak began his experiments with the flying mice, though, he increased their food supply, and by the time he released his first creations into the wild the lizards had grown to their full size and the female had produced a clutch of rubbery, white eggs. When they hatched, Tak began the construction of a much larger enclosure for them. Large enough to house several dozen of the creatures.

     Fortunately, once they had a good and steady food supply they multiplied rapidly, which was probably the reason Molos Gomm had chosen them for his experiments, and within a year the hatchlings had grown large enough to produce young of their own, giving him a good supply of animals for his experiments. Gifting creatures with the power of flight was where his heart really lay, but some instinct warned him that he'd have no success trying to give them bird wings and he found himself thinking of the bats that roosted in some of the castle's empty rooms. When he'd caught some of them, he felt a strange sense of rightness as he looked at them. The feeling of certainty that he'd made a good choice. This would work, he knew it! It was almost as if the creatures wanted to be blended together!

     He was still disposing of hideous freaks and mutants, though, when his experiments were interrupted by the call to participate in another war, and he left Trobo with instructions to look after them while he was away. This time the war was with Yinnfarsia, the golden city, ruled by the twin terrors of Dorvold the Dour and Morken the Grim. A pair of raks who'd held the most beautiful city of ancient Garon under their undead thumbs for over two hundred years.

     There was some fear that one of the raks themselves might appear on the battlefield, but the fear turned out to be groundless and the wizards of Domandropolis were relieved to find themselves up against only living wizards. Tak's reputation went ahead of him, as Cuthbert had warned it would, and he had the uncomfortable experience of having great things expected of him. "Here he comes!" cried the soldiers whenever he appeared in the open. "The killer of Jarlon! The wizard slayer! Maybe he'll kill two of the golden city's wizards for us!"

     Tak was more inclined to stay out of trouble as much as possible, though, and he was relieved to find that his role in the battle was much the same as Barl's had been in the last one. Gal-Gowan hadn't set him up this time, since he no longer feared the young wizard would replace him. Not since his participation in the conspiracy against Khalkedon's life. Tak might well grow to become the better wizard, but the rak King now knew he would never be able to trust him the same way he trusted Gal-Gowan and the red wizard felt secure enough not to wish him dead any longer. Not yet, anyway.

     The war lasted longer than the first one had, and the fighting continued for nearly two weeks before the two sides decided to look for a negotiated settlement. Gal-Gowan and some of his officers met the leaders of the Yinnfarsian army in a tent erected in the middle of the battlefield, while the wizards of both armies stood nearby, watching each other warily, and when the officers emerged they revealed that they'd agreed to move the border between the two countries in such a way that both sides could claim victory. Domandropolis would get the fertile lands between the rivers Fay and Lomm, which the rak King had had his eye on for some time, while Yinnfarsia got the iron rich hills of Yaing, which was what they'd wanted anyway.

     Both armies then packed up and returned to their own homelands, leaving Tak astonished that so many people had had to die before such an eminently sensible solution had been reached. Why couldn't they have gotten together to talk before all the fighting? Gal-Gowan laughed when he overheard the comment, made to Barl. "Because both sides wanted to gain from the other without giving anything away," he sneered, speaking as if to an imbecile. "You don't grow to be a great power by giving away your lands to your enemies."

     "But all the lives that were lost..." protested Tak.

     "Life is cheap," said the red wizard. "Especially mundane lives. Besides, they lost as many as we did."

     "But we have other enemies! If we squander all our manpower in trivial territorial disputes, what'll we do if the shologs invade again? We're not so far away from the days when the very survival of mankind was under threat. If you'd spent your early years on the borderlands, as I did, you'd realise that our survival as a species isn't as certain as most people think."

     Gal-Gowan dismissed him with another sneer of contempt, though, and retired to the interior of his wagon.