Tak

The Conjuration - Part 6

     "Molos Gomm had never beaten Tak before," said Thomas thoughtfully, "and he never did again. The exertion of inflicting physical punishment put a heavy strain on his old heart. He had to stop while still full of fury, taking deep breaths, before sending the battered and bruised apprentice limping away. I'm wondering now whether he acfually came close to having a fatal heart attack. I think that if he'd carried on with the beating, he might have dropped dead right there and then."

     "Would have served him right if he had," said Lirenna, watching her husband with concern.

     "Yeah. Molos Gomm himself might have preferred to die that way if he'd known what wad coming."

      "He died badly, then?" Lirenna gave a start and suddenly looked ashamed at herself. "I'm sorry. I keep forgetting that these were real people who really lived. I keep thinking this is just a story you're telling, as if you're just making it up as you go along."

     "It seems real to me. It's like they're my memories, as though these things happened to me. Except for those bits that the older Tak wiped out with Amnesia spells. Like the night after Gal Gowan arrived and Molos Gomm gave Tak to him as 'hospitality', like he did during his first visit. I'm really glad I don't remember any of that."

     Lirenna reached over and squeezed his hand. He squeezed it back gratefully.

     "What I do remember was that Tak was terrified. He was afraid that Gal Gowan would punish him for his defiant words at the end of his last visit, but his fears turned out to be groundless. It was as though the older wizard didn't even know that he was the same boy.

     "I also remember how Tak felt about it the next day. He remembered that Gal Gowan's use of him that night was casual and impersonal. He was nothing more than a sex object to him, and although Tak was grateful for that, that it was no worse than it had to be, he was also infuriated that he was of so little importance to him. Was Tak such a nothing, such a nobody, that the red wizard had forgotten all about him the moment he'd left the castle?.

     "It was this, rather than the defilement of his body, that hurt him the most. He coped with it by reassuring himself that it wouldn't go on for ever. One day he would be as powerful as he was. A wizard in his own right, or one day he would be dead. Either way, he told himself, the day will come when no-one will ever be able to use him like that again...

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     The next day Tak saw almost nothing of Gal-Gowan, the two wizards spending most of their time in the south tower. That night, though, after the visiting wizard had used him again for his pleasure, he spoke to him for the first time, casting a light spell so he could see the boy's face. It was the only memory Thomas Gown had of the two of them in bed together. A memory the adult Tak had deliberately not erased because he wanted to remember the conversation that had followed.

     "Gomm says you're ready to assist in a conjuration," Gal Gowan had said. "Is that true?"

     Tak was too startled to reply at first, and then too frightened. He could only nod dumbly as the wizard's eyes burned searchingly into his own. Just when he thought he'd become numbed to the horror of it all, being spoken to made him acutely aware of his and Gal-Gowan's nakedness, and of the fact that their bodies were touching in several places. The wizard was actually caressing his flank and the smooth roundness of his buttocks as he searched his face for any trace of a lie, and the continuing effort of keeping his body relaxed, of resisting the impulse to tense up and thereby incur his displeasure, made it difficult for Tak to concentrate on anything else. He couldn't have concocted a plausible lie at that moment if his life had depended on it.