Tak

Experiments - Part 9

     It took some time to calm the servants down. Tak found a potion of healing and gulped it down, then told them there'd been an accident with one of the rak's experiments, something they were all too ready to believe and accept as the righteous judgement of the Gods.

     Chilgrone was more sceptical, though. "He was working in the west laboratory," he said, examining Tak suspiciously, "and he was attempting a transfiguration. When they go wrong, they result in alterations, not explosions. So what really happened?"

     Tak saw there would be no deceiving him, so with a sigh of resignation he hold him the truth. "How much do you know about raks?" he asked when he'd finished. "Do you have any idea what that object was? Why he should have been so desperate to protect it?"

     "About raks, I know no more than you do," Chilgrone replied, still looking shaken and uncertain. "What am I to do now? You're all right, you can go home, back to where you came from, but I have no home. Not any longer. Where will I go? What will I do?"

     "Why not stay here?" suggested Tak. "This can be your mansion now. You know where the treasure is. You can go on paying the staff, those who choose to stay, and if they all go you can soon recruit some more. The house has got to belong to somebody, after all. Why not you?"

     "Yes," replied the older wizard, looking up hopefully. "Yes, why not? And after all, haven't I spent long enough looking after this place, neglecting my own career to serve an undead master? I've put just as much into this mansion as he ever did. I deserve to retire here. Yes, by the Gods! That's exactly what I'll do!"

     "I ask only one thing," added Tak. "I came here hoping to learn about raks. Not to become one myself, I can see you thinking that, but to learn how to destroy one. I'd like to spend some more time here looking through his things. The answers I'm looking for have to be among them somewhere."

     "Yes, of course," agreed Chilgrone immediately. "And I'd be glad of your company, at least until I've sorted myself out."

     "You're not angry with me them?" asked Tak hesitantly. "For killing your master?"

     "I'd say you did him a favour," replied the older wizard. "Thanks to you, he died while he was still more or less human. He never became the monster that all raks turn into sooner or later. Wherever his soul has gone now, I think he'll be grateful to you, for freeing him and allowing him to go to the Gods."

      "It's good of you to say so," replied Tak gratefully, "but I still feel bad about it. He was good to me, in his way. He took me into his home, treated me as an honoured guest, and in return... But you're right. Death was the best thing that could have happened to him, while he was still the person I admired.

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     "Tak spent another fifteen months in that mansion," said Thomas wearily, rubbing his eyes. He seemed to have been talking forever. "He had to leave once, to answer Khalkedon's call to take part in another confrontation with Yinnfarsia, but no fighting actually broke out that time and he was able to return to Gannlow's mansion within a few days.

     "Khalkedon questioned him closely on why he was spending so long away from Castle Nagra. He was growing a little suspicious and Tak knew the rak had to think that he was looking for a way to destroy him. Any attempt to deny it would only confirm Khalkedon's suspicions, of course, so he simply said he was studying with Chilgrone, both of them looking for ways to increase their powers.

     "The rak believed him, since he believed he knew the reason for his thrall's endeavours. Tak managed to conceal the fact that the mansion had recently been the home of a rak, and that the books and papers he was studying contained the secrets of the raks, although disguised in archaic poetry that was almost as good as being in code. If Khalkedon had discovered these things, he would certainly have destroyed Tak on the spot. Instead, believing their researches to be doomed to failure, he allowed Tak to return, pleased and amused that he was wasting his time when he might instead have been becoming a threat to him.