For this crowning touch, Kalrakin took special care. His golem would be a manlike being, glowering and shelf browed, with a square rock for a jaw and two deep, lightless caves where the eyes should be. But of course the thing had no organs, no sight, no flesh. This was a guardian connected by wild magic to Kalrakin himself. Luthar stared, speechless. When it was all done, Kalrakin stationed it at the door of the tower, facing outward, standing with arms hanging at its sides. It would never sleep, never rest, never tire.
And when the wizards of three robes came calling, it would destroy them.
Later, Kalrakin stood atop the rampart of the south tower. He was alone, but his spoken word thrummed through the stonework, the flesh, of the lofty structure, reaching the ears of his cohort many hundreds of feet below. The answer returned via the same medium, tremulous but quick.
"Yes, Master? What is it?"
"How long has it been since I have slept?"
The wild mage closed his eyes, not in fatigue but in sublime ecstasy, as he awaited Luthar's reply. The power of the world pulsed in Kalrakin's veins, and his sinews felt as taut, and as strong, as steel cables. His ears tuned to the faintest sound. When he looked out he could clearly see the pattern and shape of every leaf on every tree within a mile of the tower.
The Irda Stone had become a part of him. He admired the object in his hand, flexed his fingers, saw the pulsing of his blood and the fiery veins of wild magic intertwined among the delicate pearly surface. That maze of energy flickered as, from somewhere far away, Luthar's voice reached him.
"I do not know precisely, Master. But I believe it has been many, many weeks-since shortly after we arrived in this tower."
"Yes. I know that it has been four months and five days since I became lord here. And in that time, the Tower has done my sleeping for me. It suffers, it weakens, it fades-just as the three gods do themselves-and I claim all of their collective power for myself. Luthar, this structure sustains me-and this stone is the vessel through which I now drink life!"
The mage scrutinized one of the lower platforms on the north tower, a hundred feet away. With a scream of delight, like an eagle surveying his mountaintop domain, Kalrakin sprang into the air. His powerful leap carried him across that space, his tattered robe flapping around him as he landed lightly. Approaching the north wall, where a gaping hole marked a door he had earlier smashed into kindling, the sorcerer placed his hand on the stone frame of the doorway, murmuring an incantation. Immediately the stones parted, creating a narrow gap limned in blue light. Ducking his head, the tall mage stepped into that gap, his gloved hand extended before him. In two steps he emerged-only now he was at the base of the Tower, entering one of the luxurious studies where he knew his companion awaited him.
Luthar, who had been seated before a roaring blaze in the deep fireplace, leaped to his feet in consternation.
"I wish you would stop doing that!" sputtered the shorter wizard. "I can never get used to you just popping in and out of sight like this!"
"Your wishes are insignificant," Kalrakin said, striding to the hearth, extending his hands, absorbing the warmth of the fire for just a second. Magic pulsed from the gauntlet in his hand, sucking the heat and energy of the fire, which was instantly doused into a mound of smoldering logs. When Kalrakin turned away, his body was smoking; wisps of gray vapor swirled from his filthy robe, and rose amid the tangled whiskers of his beard.
"There is something I am just beginning to understand," he added meaningfully.
Luthar knelt nervously at the hearth, putting more logs into the fireplace, casting a quick puff of wind with his own wild magic to draw yellow flames from the coals. "What have you learned, Master?" he finally ventured to ask, turning away from the once more roaring blaze.
"This tower has become the foundation of my being. It is slowly dying, and with each shattered block, each fresh hole in the wall, every blasted stone or swath of ceiling plaster, the power abandons these ancient stones and flows to me. As this structure, raised from the very bones of the world-as the wizards were once so fond of claiming-yields its power to me, it rots away, just as old bones rot. It is dissolving around us even as we grow stronger because of it. When it passes from the world of Krynn, I will take its place… strong, even indestructible, and everlasting."
"Do you mean you are becoming immortal?" In spite of his best efforts, Luthar sounded skeptical, and the shorter mage sneaked a close look at Kalrakin, wondering if he might glimpse a glimmer of derangement.
"More than immortal!" Kalrakin crowed. "I am becoming not just godlike, but mightier than the gods! Those three pathetic moons who created, who watch over this place-they are my puppets, my toys, my bread! I consume them, and they deliver me ultimate power!"
With a gesture of his hand, Kalrakin swatted at the fire and a great explosion pulsed through the room, knocking Luthar to the floor. The great force of the blast rushed outward, smashing right through the outer wall of the tower, leaving a gaping hole in the stones and sending the logs, embers, and coals plunging downward to the courtyard forty feet below.
"I am feeding, Luthar, and I grow stronger with every meal!"
The tall mage strode right into the smoldering ruins of the fireplace, placing his hand on a shattered stone, leaning outward through the hole in the wall to admire his handiwork. The larger logs, sooty and still burning, were scattered like matchsticks; a smoky cloud lingered in the air.
Abruptly Kalrakin turned and stalked from the wrecked room, heading for the main hall. All around him were shattered doors, scorched walls, and rubble. The alcoves between each apartment once were magically illuminated and once had displayed the treasures of history: a scepter from Silvanesti sparkling with gems excavated during the Age of Dreams; a vase of icy crystal, permanently chilled, reputed to have come, a dozen centuries ago, from some land far across the sea; a pair of bracers that had been worn by Huma himself when he flew against the Dark Queen. Now the alcoves were empty, the enchantments drained away, the ground was strewn with shards of broken glass and scattered jewels gleaming weakly in the sunlight that spilled through the various breaches in the outer wall.
This had once been a level of luxuriously appointed apartments, quarters for the mightiest of the wizards who had studied, taught, and convened here. Paintings from the old masters of Krynn had decorated each anteroom, with many of the canvasses predating the first Cataclysm. Now the frames were broken, the images stained and distorted and shredded by wild magic.
Kalrakin paused to admire one of the ruined paintings. Once it had been an intricate moving painting, a ritual display of elegant dancers performing their stylized steps at a grand ball in the grand manor of the Lord of Palanthas. The sorcerer snorted in amusement-the painting still moved-but now the lord in the image was dead, impaled by a decorative halberd, while the dancers moaned and writhed on the floor, their faces pocked by plague, blood running from their mouths and ears.
He placed his hand against the wall, and a blue-lit doorway opened. Two steps took Kalrakin through the outer wall of the Tower, emerging at ground level. He advanced until he stood just within the gates in the outer courtyard. Here his golem stood silent watch, its marbled brows tiered in a constant frown, the boulders of its fists dangling at its sides. Those fists, at the low terminus of two long, powerful arms, hung high above the tall sorcerer's head.
"Keep a careful watch, my stone sentry," Kalrakin said, tracing his hand over the craggy outline of one of its massive boots. "Be ready to smite the lackeys of the three gods-I know they will be here soon."