Now that the Jules Verne was complete and had set off to begin its mission, Pondar Walton was free to return to his own studies and had done so with enthusiasm. The few days of free time his assistants had thought they'd have was cut short as he began a new series of experiments and they were rushed off their feet coping with the workload he set them. Thomas and Tassley Kimber were especially hard hit because of their continuing involvement with the ship of space, Tassley working to complete the ship's magics and Thomas training to be a member of its crew.

     The gossip circulating among the research buildings had it that the man-hungry blonde was sleeping alone for the first time since returning to the University, and if she was too tired for 'entertaining' she must be almost dead! The benefit of this, though, was that the two junior wizards were able to work together without the full bodied blonde continually trying to get his clothes off. She was so tired that she completely failed to notice even when he accidentally touched her breast while handing her a jar of powdered basilisk blood.

     Without the constant lingering eye contact, suggestive innuendoes, 'accidental' hand contacts and shoulder bumps, Thomas was surprised to find that the young woman was a capable and effective wizard. Patient and meticulous in her work. If anything, the fatigue lines around her eyes made her even more desirable and attractive. It awoke the protective, supportive side of his nature.

     After a couple of days of this, Thomas was sent to relieve Gunther Fugh on the Jules Verne, and he spent the next week helping to search the moons of Rama for any sign of occupation, past or present. The strange frozen landscapes held him in fascination at first. He was awed by the water volcanoes on Rama two, overwhelmed by the canyons of Rama three and stunned to silence by the polar tunnel of Rama six; a perfectly smooth shaft that ran through the centre of the small moon from pole to pole as if it were a bead from a giant necklace. Before the week was half over, though, he felt himself growing bored by the endless procession of novel geological features. It seemed he'd finally found a subject immune to his insatiable curiosity.

     He found himself looking forward to his off duty hours, therefore, when he could examine his acquired memories and place as many as possible down on paper. They seemed to be mainly coming in chronological order, with the memories of Tak's childhood and teenage years virtually complete while he had as yet only fragments from the wizard's adulthood.

     One adult memory, though, was particularly vivid. A Tak well advanced into his middle age, with greying temples and the lines of sleepless nights around his eyes. He and a group of other wizards were standing in a circle, their right hands meeting in the centre as they swore a solemn oath. They each wore robes of a different colour. A stern looking man in red. A woman in white. A dark skinned woman in black. A bald man in green. A stunningly beautiful woman in yellow and a black man whose robes were streaked with many colours who seemed to be the most senior. The most powerful of them. A corona of scintillating magic danced about them as they swore the oath that bound them together, but Thomas had no idea who the others were or what was going on. That memory, presumably, would come later.

     He spent his spare time jotting down notes; whatever he could remember of Tak's apprentice years. He put each incident on its own sheet of paper, as before, so he could shuffle them around as he tried to place them in their correct chronological order, and by the time his tour of duty was over he'd collected a fat stack of them. There was more, a whole lot more, but it lurked maddeningly just out of reach, refusing to come close enough for him to get a firm grasp of it. All he could get were isolated images and disjointed fragments. A soldier waving a sword at him as he demanded an explanation for something. A dark night in which he ploughed his way through gale force winds and drenching, stinging, freezing rain, trying desperately to find his way somewhere. An amber coloured jewel that spoke to him in his head until the grey wizard dashed it furiously out of his hands.

     Often, even the things he did remember clearly had no connection with anything else. While his memories of Tak's childhood were clear and continuous (as far as he could tell), his memories of Tak's apprenticeship were like shards of a pane of glass that had been smashed into a thousand pieces. The grey wizard himself was mostly responsible for that, he knew. His one time master hadn't wanted him to remember much, but there were other factors involved. He had the impression that the adult Tak had used amnesia spells on himself to wipe out the most horrific memories, especially the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of the grey wizard. He remembered the aftermath of those incidents. He remembered the shame and humiliation, the pain, but the incidents themselves were gone, much to Thomas’s relief.

     Nevertheless, he gathered up what he'd been able to recall and took it back to the dwelling tree, where Lirenna greeted him with delight. "I've been called up for a tour of duty starting tomorrow," she explained, "so we've got two weeks of married life to squeeze into one night."

     She looked excited by the prospect and eager to begin. So was Thomas, and so Tak's story had to wait until the demi shae returned.

☆☆☆

     "The first few weeks he spent as the grey wizard's apprentice were spent in an almost continuous hypnotic trance," Thomas explained.

     The evening meal had been cleared away, they'd changed out of their wizards' robes and into the casual clothing they preferred and the yellow sun was still high in the sky, filtering through the whispering canopy of the shaewoods. They'd arranged things so that they'd have the whole evening to themselves, plenty of time for storytelling, but now that he'd started he found it hard to concentrate as his wife's bright, clear eyes stared expectantly into his own. Being stared at like that was very arousing. He wanted to forget about Tak, tear her clothes off and carry her into the bedroom. After an hour or so, when he'd gotten it all out of his system, maybe he'd be able to concentrate. Gods, he thought in wonder. I'm well into my forties and she can still make my blood boil like a teenager with his first warm tit in his hand! How does she do it to me? He forced himself to ignore her eyes and concentrate on his acquired memories. Story first, love later.

     "The only real memories I have of that period of his life come from those rare moments when his master allowed him to regain full consciousness, or when the hypnosis spells lapsed unexpectedly, as any magic spell is liable to do, even today. Despite this, though, Tak learned magic quickly and well. His master must have given him a hypnotic command to learn.

     Tak would probably have acquired the art anyway, though. He was naturally curious about everything. He couldn't pass a book without pausing to leaf through the pages. Couldn't pass a doorway without craning his neck to see what was inside. He also had brilliant insights. He had the knack for seeing to the very heart of a problem and unraveling it like a knot to find the solution. I have the impression that his master valued him very highly for this talent, although I can't exactly remember. There’s so much I can’t remember. My memories of his apprentice years are like an old book rescued from a fire. A few parts are still readable, but whole chapters have been lost forever.

     "Anyway. He spent those years living in the wizard's castle, along with his other apprentice and a small staff of domestic servants. The wizard's name, I can almost remember it. It was... was..."

☆☆☆

     "My name is Molos Gomm," the grey man said.

     He was holding Tak's hand as they walked through the forest. Tak didn't want his hand held. The feel of the old man's cold, bony fingers made him want to shudder with revulsion, but he was unable to pull free. All he could do was walk beside his new master as if his body was under the old man's control.

     What made it worse was that the old man was clearly enjoying the feel of the boy's calloused but still pudgy hand in his own. He could feel it in the way the old man's thumb gently caressed the smooth skin of the back of his hand, in the way the rough, sandpapery tips of his fingers repeatedly pressed themselves to the soft pads of his palm.

     Despite this, though, and despite the fact that he'd just witnessed the brutal murder of his family, despite the fact that his beloved sister might have been captured alive and might even now be suffering torments beyond his ability to imagine, Tak was surprised to find that he was remarkably calm and relaxed. His family had already come to seem not quite real to him, as if they were part of a dream he'd woken up from, and over the coming years this fading of everything he'd known of his previous life would continue until it would seem that he'd always been the grey wizard's apprentice. As if he'd been born in the wizard's castle.

     About half a mile from where the bodies of his parents still lay, a pair of giant eagles stood side by side. One seemingly asleep, the other preening itself under a huge, outstretched wing. They looked up as the man and boy approached, glaring at them with fierce black eyes, but Tak felt no fear. Only a mild, interested curiosity as the grey wizard helped him up into the saddle strapped onto the back of the smaller of the two birds.

     The saddle fitted him perfectly, and as the old man pulled himself up onto his own mount a thought managed to fight its way through the lethargic trance that had enveloped his mind. If the wizard had brought a spare mount then he must have been expecting to pick up a passenger. Just one passenger, because he'd only brought one spare mount. Part of him wanted to fly into a rage as he contemplated the wizard's cold blooded calculations. The brutally indifferent way in which he'd plotted the butchery of his family. The greater part of him was numbed by the wizard's spell, though, leaving him incapable of any great emotion, and as time went by it slowly came to seem even less important to him. It never quite went away, though, and as he approached adulthood the hatred and rage would return and become a source of strength for him in his struggle to free himself from his monstrous master.

     Molos Gomm gave a tug on the reins fastened around the eagle's head and the giant bird fought its way into the air with sweeping beats of its wings. Tak's eagle followed without needing a command of its own, and the two birds spiraled up about the trunks of the great ceenar trees. As they approached the canopy, smaller leaf bearing branches closed in around them and Tak crouched down in the saddle, fearing a whipping blow to the head, but then they flashed through a gap and suddenly there was clear blue sky around them and an undulating carpet of green below.