Extract from The Fallen World.

     The servant arrived dressed as a butler, since that was the role it played in the rak’s household, for the most part. It consisted of the soul of one of his first real enemies imprisoned in a body of cold, hard but living stone. The soul of the man whose betrayal had ended forever his chances of a normal, happy life and started him down the path of cruelty and lust for power that he’d been following ever since. Giving it orders and watching it going off to obey, hating him but unable to disobey, had been one of the great joys of his early life, but his hatred had faded even before his transformation and the revenge he was taking on it had now become as cold as the rak’s touch.

     In the early years of Arok’s captivity, his hatred for Malefactos had been just as great as the hatred the rak felt for him. His original betrayal hadn't been motivated by hatred. The other wizard had been nothing but a rival. A man who needed to be removed in order for him to achieve his ambitions. The death of Malefactos’s wife had been unintended, and Arok had been almost as grief stricken as the husband himself. The hatred had come after his captivity as Malefactos took his revenge, with tortures that only a mind as creative as his could devise, interspersed with mind numbing tasks intended to give him plenty of time to contemplate his situation. In the decades since then, though, the fire and passion had gradually faded from the eyes of the living statue, and Malefactos wondered now and again whether there was any sanity left in his one time enemy. Before his transformation this had seemed important to him, but now he no longer cared. Arok was nothing more than the servant who would keep his castle in good order while he was away. Whether there was anything still going on in the creature’s head was of no importance.

     “I’m going now, Arok,” he said. “I trust everything will be alright while I’m away.”

     “Yes, master,” replied the servant with flat indifference. “Any intruders will be dealt with, and your ongoing experiments will be watched carefully.”

     “And keep an eye on the staff. Make sure they all know their duties.”

     “Yes, master.” The ‘staff’ were mindless magical creations. Automatons of pure energy that swept, cleaned and repaired as necessary. They didn't really need any supervision so long as they worked correctly but, like all spells, they could be corrupted by wisps of stray, randomised magic that left them either behaving erratically or completely nonfunctional. They then had to be shut down before they corrupted more of the castle’s magics and a chain reaction began that could, in a worst case scenario, leave the castle with no functional magics at all. Malefactos had never heard of that happening in the entire history of magic, but he wasn't going to take any chances.

     Malefactos nodded with satisfaction, then moved closer to examined his servant closely. Was there still anyone in there? Was there still a mind and consciousness behind that stony, expressionless face, or had Arok long since retreated into the catatonia of utter despair? He decided to find out. Not out of any malice, he had long since lost interest in tormenting his one time enemy. He was motivated only by curiosity.

     “I don’t want you getting bored while I’m away,” he said therefore. “So whenever you get any free time I want you to go down into the valley, search for stones exactly one inch across and arrange them in straight lines running directly away from the castle. If you run out of stones that size, break up rocks to make them. Understand?”

     “Yes, master,” replied Arok dispassionately. Malefactos watched him carefully and saw no trace of either hatred or fear in the unchanging expression on its face. The winds outside the castle were fierce and carried abrasive dust from the plains that would wear away at Arok’s stone body every minute it was outside. Every bit of erosion it suffered reduced its strength and mobility a little, and if Malefactos left it out there, then one day, centuries from now, it would be reduced to a vaguely man shaped lump of rock as immobile as any other lump of stone but with whatever mind and intelligence it still possessed intact, incapable of anything except suffering and cursing its fate. If there was still a person inside the stone body it should have been terrified, but the rak saw no trace if it. He would leave the servant to it, he decided, and see what kind of state it was in when he returned. Maybe Arok’s demeanor then would give him a clue.

     Giving Arok a final pat of mock affection on the shoulder, therefore, Malefactos left the room and climbed the long spiral staircase to the tower at the very top of his fortress. The castle was surrounded by a bubble of magical energy that shielded the castle from the violent weather and served as a barrier to teleportation, but the tower rose through it and widened out at the top to form a wide platform with no wall or fence around it to protect visitors from the hundred foot drop all around. It was occupied by four of his magical creations, terrible creatures carved from stone with teeth, claws and batlike wings that would come to life and tear to pieces any intruder attempting to enter the fortress that way. Malefactos gave them only a passing glance, though, as he walked to the very edge of the platform, spoke a word and vanished.

     Just under nine minutes later, having covered the distance between the two worlds at the speed of light, he reappeared in the master bedroom of the imperial palace in the city of Darundra, largest of the Five Cities of the Tannaric plains. This was the place where he’d carved out and ruled over a thriving empire in the wild and exciting days of his youth, and he’d chosen it as his destination because teleporting was much safer when you were aiming at a place you were familiar with. Teleporting into unfamiliar territory always carried an element of risk, and although he’d do it if necessary, only a very stupid wizard would do such a thing if it could possibly be avoided.

     He looked around the room with unexpected nostalgia as all the memories came flooding back. The early days when he’d first come to this city, the pain of Arok’s betrayal still fresh and burning. The way he’d murdered its corrupt and stupid king and his entire family, except for the sixteen year old daughter he’d taken as his wife, needing her to give a seal of validity to his rule. He remembered how impressed he'd been by her strength and courage as she held back her grief for her family and submitted willingly to him to save her people from further misery. She'd been beautiful too, he remembered, even though he considered appearance, either of a person or a tool, to be a trivially unimportant property. Either a person or a thing was useful to him or it was not. For a moment, the memory of his first wife, Lyssa, tried to come back to him. The only woman he had truly considered to be beautiful. The only person he had ever loved. He forced the memory aside angrily.

     He remembered the way he’d terrorised its inhabitants of this city into submission. The slow and painful process by which he’d slowly gained his new subjects’ admiration and respect as he dragged them, kicking and screaming, back to strength and prosperity. The days of glory as he’d led his armies against the other cities of the Tannaric plains one after the other, uniting them into a budding empire that had made every other kingdom and city for hundreds of miles around sit up nervously and take notice.

     Ah, the plans he’d had, the glories he would have achieved if he’d had longer! Genista would have been next, the jewel of the Moaning Mountains, and then Cortis, the so called Mala of the south, and by then he’d have been strong enough to go up against Tannar itself, the mighty independent city that dominated this part of the world and gave it its name. He would have moved his throne to Tannar then, making it his capital after having created the largest human nation south of the Great Lake, but all his great ambitions had been cruelly curtailed when his illness had begun and, feeling the cold hand of death on his shoulder, he'd been forced to return to Lexandria Valley to begin his futile quest for immortality, leaving his son, Olmak, to rule in his place.

     Did his son still rule the Five Cities? he wondered briefly. He found that he didn’t really care, and although he could have found out by simply crossing over to the bed and looking under the sheets to see who was sleeping in it, wrapped in the arms of a pale skinned, golden haired beauty, he instead turned his back on the lovers and silently left the room. He had left behind the world of the living and everything that went with it. He had new interests now and new ambitions, and the fate of his children was no longer of any interest to him. It would all be the same soon enough, anyway, whether any relative of his still ruled the Five Cities or not.

     He walked swiftly and confidently along the familiar corridors of the palace, not caring who saw him and ignoring the occasional panicked scream from those members of the palace staff who happened to be around at this time of night, and as soon as he reached the high walls that looked out over the city below he spoke the word of command that activated his Robes of Flying and rose swiftly into the air. The black robes billowed out behind him as he flew, and those who happened to be looking in the right direction at the time saw a dark, batlike shape outlined against the stars. Filled with terror, they had fled indoors to hide their heads under pillows and blankets until it had gone. The next day the city was filled with rumours of a bat demon that had invaded the palace in an attempt to kill the King, no doubt sent by an evil wizard in the employ of the city’s enemies, and the palace guard were quick to take the credit for driving it away, but no-one ever discovered the true identity of the city’s mysterious visitor that night.

     Malefactos flew rapidly over the night landscape. It was as dark as it ever was on Tharia. Both suns were down, none of the three moons were in the sky and the only comet was a tiny, pitiful thing that did nothing at all to illuminate the landscape. Malefactos’s rak vision enabled him to see as clearly as though it were full daylight, though, and with the Crown of Auros on his head he could see the way ahead as though he were looking through a pair of high powered binoculars. He urged the magic robes to as much speed as they were capable of, wanting to reach the Shadow before sunrise. Not because sunlight was dangerous to him but because, like most undead, he hated it, much preferring the coolness and restfulness of the night. His dislike of daylight had surprised and dismayed him when he’d first become aware of it, a few days after his transformation, since as a living wizard there’d been nothing he enjoyed more than a nice stroll on a sunny afternoon, but he’d soon become resigned to it as yet another sacrifice to be made in his bid to cheat death.

     He knew exactly in which direction the Shadow lay, but even if he hadn’t, he could have found it easily enough simply by homing in on the sensation of pure evil that radiated from it in all directions, like the foul stench from a piece of rotting meat. It seemed to draw him in, attracting him like a carrion fly, and the rak had the sudden impression that, instead of radiating outward, the flow of pure evil was rushing inwards, like the strong current flowing towards a waterfall, and that it was drawing him irresistibly onwards so that he couldn’t stop even if he’d wanted to. For a moment he almost panicked and he forced himself to come to a halt, just to prove to himself that he could, hovering motionless in the air while he pulled himself together.

     Don’t be a fool, he chided himself. You’re no ordinary ark rak, who might legitimately fear the Shadowlord. You are Malefactos the Great, the most powerful wizard the world has seen since the days of the immortal wizards! There’s nothing in the world that’s a real threat to you, either in the Shadow or outside it, so stop these stupid flights of fancy and keep a tighter rein on your imagination! With that thought he continued on again, but there was still a tiny part of his mind that continued to warn him that he might be getting into more trouble than even he could handle.

     Eventually, he arrived at the edge of the Shadow and dropped to the ground to stand amidst the tall grass of the Endless Plains just outside the boundary between ordinary night and malevolent evil darkness. It wasn’t dark to his rak vision, though. Instead, it glowed a soft orange-red filled with slowly moving eddies like whirls of aromatic smoke, and when he stretched out his shrunken, bony hand to touch it, it felt pleasantly cool and inviting, like a swimming pool on a hot, summer’s day. He felt that it was welcoming him, inviting him in, and he felt strange, unfamiliar emotions stirring to life within him in response. He felt the same as the ugly duckling when the swans told him that he wasn’t an outcast any more, that he’d found others who were the same as him and that they could live together and be friends forever. There are raks in there, he thought. Other creatures like me who’ll be glad to see me and who’ll put me to good use. I’ll be a General in the Shadowarmy. I’ll have power, more power than I ever dreamed possible, and as the most powerful rak in the world, it’ll only be a matter of time before I rise right to the top, become the Shadowlord's deputy on this world. I’ll lead them to victory! Under my leadership nothing and no-one will stand against us! I’ll lead a special task force against the University to get my ark back, and then, when the whole world has been conquered, I’ll be the Shadowlord’s viceroy on Tharia, ruling in his name, ruling for ever and ever and ever...

     No, not for ever, he realised with a start. Only until the Day of Fire, and who can say when that will be? And if I’m here when it comes, it’ll be the end of me as well! As this realisation shocked his mind out of the spell under which it had fallen, he realised with alarm how close he’d come to falling completely under the Shadowlord’s power, that he’d almost become merely another servant of the Demon Prince.

     Violent rage flared up inside him. “How dare you!” he cried aloud to whoever and whatever might be listening. “How dare you try to enslave me, Me! I’m Malefactos, do you hear? Malefactos! I am nobody’s slave!”

     Gradually, sanity returned, however, and he realised with horror what a fool he’d been to shout his defiance out loud. He cast a few detection spells, and was relieved when they detected no-one for miles in all directions. He’d been lucky, but he might not be so lucky next time and he resolved to be much more careful in future, to show much more self control. The anger remained, however. You may be Prince of the Undead, he thought, simmering with fury, but you’re not my Prince and I will teach you what happens to those who think they can manipulate Malefactos!

     He then stepped defiantly across the boundary of the Shadow, activated his Robes of Flying and flew towards the city of Arnor. The Necropolis.