What dark secrets must be penned upon them! Reinheiser thought. Despite the presence of so great a lure, he dared not approach and risk the spells the wizard might have cast to protect his works.
Sunset came soon after and the room blackened quickly. Reinheiser sat very still and noiseless, feeling small and vulnerable to the hiding demons his imagination assured him were all about. He fought off panic with every passing second and wondered if these overwhelming fits weren’t some trickery of the wizard, a subtle suggestion of promised horror, a mental ward against thieves.
After what seemed an eternity, the door creaked open and the white-robed mage entered, bearing a candle. Without taking notice of the physicist sitting in the shadows, he limped across the room, leaning heavily on his small staff, and mumbling a quick spell to close the door, then another to light the candles on the desk. Reinheiser sat amazed and amused at these small feats of wizardry and watched with continued interest, squinting to discern every movement in the weak and flickering light as the mage’s bony hands began slowly pulling back on the cowled hood.
“It should be black, I suppose,” Reinheiser said finally, smiling with satisfaction at having caught so wise a man by surprise. The hands kept moving without a hitch, undisturbed by what should have been an unexpected voice, and it was the physicist’s composure that was shaken.
“Your mark, I mean,” he continued in a less certain, almost defensive tone. “It should be black, since black is the mark of Morgan Thalasi, and that, unless I miss my guess, is who you are.”
The wizard turned slowly to Reinheiser and gave a laugh that sounded more like a hiss. “You play dangerous games, Dr. Martin Reinheiser,” he said calmly, pulling his hood back to let the intruder see what he was dealing with.
Reinheiser shuddered at the sight, for the man before him was indeed the Black Warlock, Morgan Thalasi. He was completely bald, with pallid, sickly skin that seemed stretched beyond its limits just to cover his bony frame. His black eyes showed as no more than holes in deep, sunken sockets, his cheeks hollowed and taut, as if he had wasted away, like a starved man who should have died long ago. Centuries of wickedness had indeed exacted a heavy toll on Thalasi, eating at his physical being, but not at his evil will, for that was all-enduring. The many-faceted black sapphire that was his wizard’s mark glistened from its setting on his forehead as if newly cut and polished.
“I knew it was you,” Reinheiser said, and he laughed meekly, trying to seem at ease. Despite his effort, the tremor in his voice betrayed his true feelings of terror. “I reasoned that only the mighty Thalasi was capable of the feats that the mage, Ardaz, credits to Istaahl.”
“So you were right,” the Black Warlock mocked, his voice remaining unnervingly calm and sure. “Small comfort in light of the terrible death that is about to befall you.”
Reinheiser stroked his goatee and tried to hold fast to the control and reason he needed now to get him through this. Something was going very wrong. He had never figured his meeting with Thalasi to be like this, not even in the worst of his scenarios, and his imagined pictures of the Black Warlock fell far short of the true horrors of the being standing before him. This man, appearing so physically fragile, exuded an aura of overwhelming evil and limitless power, like Satan incarnate a black hole of morality that Reinheiser knew could sweep him away on a whim to an eternity of hellfire.
“Kill me?” he asked incredulously, trying to put the idea into a preposterous light. “Why would you want to kill me?”
“For knowing my identity and intruding on my privacy, or for talking to that dog, Glendower, that you call Ardaz,” Thalasi replied. “That is surely reason enough. Or I might dismember you merely for the pleasure of dealing pain.” He hissed that wicked laugh again, as if the last idea had appealed to him.
And Reinheiser knew without doubt that this heartless creature was more than capable of such random murder. “But you summoned me!” he cried. “The mist that allowed us to escape; you had to have sent it! That’s how I finally knew your true identity. Istaahl’s magic is limited to the seacoast, and he couldn’t have reached that far inland.”
“I did conjure the mist.”
“And the sleeping Warder?”
“A simple task.”
“Then you brought me here for a purpose,” Reinheiser reasoned.
“For the map, that is all,” Thalasi said. “I reached to possess your mind; and you, thinking that some knowledge was unfolding before you, let me in. I had not the time to take control, but I saw through your eyes and perceived that you were among the night dancers. Yet I could not discern exactly where that was. So I brought you here for the map, and that is all.”
“But Mitchell-” Reinheiser began, desperately grabbing at anything that might save him.
“Mitchell is a fool!” Thalasi interrupted. “ ‘I commanded an army of millions,’ he said. Ha! I, too, lived in the United States before the holocaust, and I remember no General Hollis Mitchell. And I assure you, my memory is excellent.
“I remember you, though,” Thalasi continued. “Your work, at least, and the departure of the Unicorn from Woods Hole.”
The reminders of that other world caught Reinheiser by surprise, but in them he saw a chance and boldly forced himself under control. “Then you know that I, too, mastered an art,” he stated as proudly as he dared. “I was a master of physics and technology. I thought that was why you sent for me, for if we could combine our knowledge-”
Thalasi cut him off with a loud burst of laughter, mocking the physicist’s pitiful attempt to save his life.
“You laugh?” Reinheiser cried, leaping from his seat in anger. He realized that Thalasi would probably kill him then and there for daring to argue, but so frustrated was he by his miscalculations, and so confused by the Black Warlock’s responses and attitude, that at the moment he hardly cared. “You who knew the wonders of the world before the holocaust doubt the power of science?”
“Power?” Thalasi echoed, with such strength in his voice that it made Reinheiser huddle back into his chair. “Destructive, yes,” Thalasi went on. “That has been proven, poignantly so. But do not equate the ability to destroy with power. You confuse the two. A bomb reduces a city to a pit of bubbling tar, and you term that power. What is gained?”
Reinheiser stared at him blankly.
“Annihilation is not power,” Thalasi went on, “but the antithesis of true power.” He clenched a fist and raised his eyes to the ceiling, and Reinheiser shuddered at the sheer evil reflected in those smoldering orbs.
“Control!” Thalasi hissed. “Bending another’s will to do your bidding. Dominating his every move. That, you fool, is power!”
Still terrified, but also intrigued, Reinheiser forced himself to sit straighten Here was the master who held the key to the secrets he desired, and his craving demanded attention even above the threat to his life. “And what of knowledge?” he asked with urgency. “Does knowledge play a part?”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Thalasi replied, suddenly sounding more excited than angry. It wasn’t often that the Black Warlock found a man who could converse with him on such a level, and they were talking about his favorite subject. “Knowledge of the secrets of the universe and of the absolute powers that exist within it is the first necessity.
“The second part,” the Black Warlock went on, his fists clenched and his eyes squinting evilly to accentuate his point, “is desire. Desire to possess, to own… everything. The courage to dare to be a God!” he shouted. “And the unceasing determination to see it through.”
“Do we speak of power, or of evil?” Reinheiser asked.
“They are one,” Thalasi retorted. “Oh, the powers of the universe are absolute, and they are there for those who are good and for those who are neither good nor evil, but their strength becomes limited by the restrictions of the conscience of the first, and the lack of purpose of the second. Only the power of evil runs unleashed and unabated.”