Warlock

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        In his cluttered study on the west end of the house, Sandow sat at a desk which was strewn with archaic texts whose pages had yellowed and cracked with the passage of much time. He had not been reading them, nor did he intend to read them in the near future, since he knew every word by heart. There were always books opened on Shaker Sandow's desk, partly to present the air of industry to visitors and partly because he liked the smell of aged and dying paper. There was a romanticism in that odor which induced moods of reverie: lost times, lost secrets, lost worlds.
        
        Sandow stirred his cup of chocolate, a rare drink in these latitudes, with a spoon whose handle was formed as a drawn, vicious wolf baring its fangs. While he stirred, he looked across the sleepy village of Perdune as the morning fog quietly parted to reveal it to him. The stone houses with their over-slung second stories were not yet abustle with life. The chimneys only breathed lightly with the vaporous residue of banked fires, or they did not smoke at all. In the eaves over the deepset gables, a few birds stirred and poked at their nests, making the sounds of morning. There was not much to see, but it contented Shaker Sandow, a man of simple tastes and much patience.
        
        More would be happening as the day progressed. Now was the time to relax and gain the strength to meet whatever travails the gods put down.
        
        There was a break in the mist to the west, and the towering Banibal Mountains rose into view as if marching toward Perdune from the sea. The sunlight made them a strange green color, and the emerald peaks made to stab the sky, the second highest range of mountains in this hemisphere.
        
        Behind Perdune, to the east, lay the Cloud Range, the only other peaks to put the Banibal to shame. Fully half their great height was lost in the clouds, and that hidden expanse of ground contained the skeletons of many Perdune adventurers who had thought to scale the giants and see the land beyond, to the east. Only two expeditions had ever succeeded in that undertaking, and even one of them had followed the mountains several hundred miles south to a point where they were somewhat less impressive than here.
        
        As Shaker Sandow considered the beauty of the sun tipping the great Banibal Mountains with dazzling colors, the sound of Mace's feet on the roof broke his moment of peace and made him sit forward in his chair, more intent now. He could hear Mace, that great lummox, clumping to the roof trap and nearly falling down the ladder from his lookout post. Next, there was the sound of the great feet slamming along the third floor corridor, then booming down the stairs past the second floor to the first level guest hall. A moment later, one of Mace's huge hands thundered against the door so insistently that the portal looked sure to snap loose of its hinges.
        
        “Enough, enough!” Shaker Sandow called. “Come in, Mace.”
        
        The door opened, and the giant young man came into the study, his bluster suddenly replaced with reverence. He gazed at the books on the desk, the tables and racks of paraphernalia behind the Shaker, aware that he would never know the intimate contact of these exotic devices. Mace was not a Shaker and never would be.
        
        “Did you leave your tongue on the stairs?” the Shaker asked, trying not to smile, but finding it difficult to be stern so early in the morning and with one so basically good-humored and comical as Mace.
        
        “No, sir,” Mace said, shaking his burly head, his mane of shoulder-length locks flying with each movement. “I have it here, sir.”
        
        “Then tell me exactly where on the Banibal ridge the General's men are.”
        
        Mace looked astonished and slapped at his head as if to jar his ears to better reception. “But how do you know they come?” he asked.
        
        “It isn't my magics,” the Shaker said. “Mace, my boy, the sound of your horse's hooves rebounding off the stairs gave me the clue. I suppose you have not charged down from your station merely to say the sun has risen or that the birds start to sing.”
        
        “Of course not!” Mace said, rushing to the desk by the great bay window. He hunkered down, still taller than the seated Shaker, and pointed to Cage's Pass, some three miles