Tak

The War Wizard - Part 1



     "The baby dragons!" cried Lirenna in delight. "Your dreams of the baby dragons in their glass tanks!"

     Thomas nodded. "Yes, I'd already come to the same conclusion. Tak Eweela went on to become Lord Sapphire, a Gem Lord, who tried to create a race of legless dragons, the Gods alone know why. The engineering of new life forms must have become an area of expertise for him."

     "Just like that?" said Lirenna, however, suddenly doubtful. "He sees some scribbled notes left by his master and in no time at all he's churning out new hybrid creatures all over the place? If it's so easy, how come no-one's creating new forms of life now?"

     "It's vivomancy," pointed out Thomas. "The manipulation of the very stuff of life itself and closely related to necromancy, the study of death. Research into both areas is very tightly controlled and vivomancy has virtually died out nowadays. The spells just don't exist any more. Back then, though, you could study vivomancy and necromancy as much as you liked. In fact they were two of the most popular schools of magic, especially as rumours of elixirs of life spread. Tak would have had a much easier time pursuing those experiments than we would if we tried it today. He wasn't the only one either. It's thought that all chimeric organisms were created by wizards, some of them so long ago that their creations have evolved to smooth out some of the flaws in their original design."

     He paused, suddenly deep in thought. "If I concentrate, I can almost remember some of the spells he used. Spells that have been unknown to wizardry since the days of the immortal wizards. Maybe I can get them down in a spellbook. Actually cast them for myself..."

     "Be careful!" cried Lirenna in alarm. "If someone should find out what you're doing..."

     "I know," agreed her husband with a reassuring grin. "I could have my memory wiped with amnesia spells, maybe even demagistrated. They won't trust me to keep them to myself. They'll be terrified of necromancy spells getting out into the magical community, out of anyone's control."

     He frowned. "I have to say, they might have a point. Those spells are so dangerous... If the mundane population found out about them, that we had the means to meddle with the forces of life and death themselves... I mean, we may already have amazing powers compared with ordinary people, to fight and build and transform, but in the end we all die, just like everybody else. If that changed, though, if wizards suddenly learned how to live for hundreds of years, we'd be setting ourselves apart from them again. We'd we wiping out all the good the University's done over the past five hundred years trying to present ourselves as ordinary people, just like them."

     "The shae folk live for hundreds of years," pointed out Lirenna. "There's no great hatred between our two races, though."

     "But no great friendship either, and some humans feel a burning envy for the shae folk, for their long lives. I've seen what relations were like between wizards and mundanes back in the days before the Massacre of the Mages. I couldn't live with myself if we went back to that kind of existence because of me. Maybe I should have these other memories erased before I unleash something we can't control..."

      No!" cried Lirenna, though. "Don't even think it! We'll be careful, no-one else will ever find out. I want you to rediscover those spells. I want you to live as long as I will! You can keep them in a separate spellbook, hidden somewhere safe. You can conduct your experiments here, in the tree."

     "There's not enough room here for..."

     "Yes there is! For your initial researches, anyway, and we'll have much more space and freedom when we get back to Haven." She grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard. "I want you to rediscover the elixir of life! I'll help you anyway I can! Together we'll do it!"