Warlock

was impossible to distinguish between the rain and the thick mist splashed outward from the tumbling waters. Fog and mist combined with the slowly growing darkness to make the first party disappear from view when they had ascended some six hundred feet. The sound of their pitons being hammered into the stone to make supports for later teams, was lost in the first two hundred feet, so that now there was no way at all to judge their progress.
        
        Below, the men waited tensely for the sight of flailing, crashing bodies spinning downward, through the shaft, to end up eternities away, at the foot of the falls, crushed by the weight of the water or speared by the stones below or drowned in the vicious, surging currents of the Shatoga River.
        
        But, in time, a good sign came rather than a bad. The climbing rope dangled into view, sans its men, but with a red scarf tied to its end. They were all safe on the shelf above.
        
        The inexperienced climbers-the Shaker, Gregor and Mace-were taken up separately, each in the middle of a group of Banibaleers, and all reached the night's lodging place safely. Each man brought his pack on his back, but extra supplies were raised on a second rope which the first team soon established. Despite the fact that he and his step-sons had reached safety, Shaker Sandow did not rest easily until his bags of ritual devices were delivered safely to the ledge and into his slim, white hands.
        
        On the deep shelf, the sound of the falls was muted. The overhang deadened the sound from above, and the platform they rested on did much to blank the booming chaos below. Conversation was again possible, though still uncomfortable. When Commander Richter and Belmondo were secure in the cleft, brought up with the next to the last team, the older officer permitted himself a smile and a few words with Sandow. “It goes better than I hoped,” he said.
        
        “None of them dead. It would have been the perfect place for another assassin's game, eh?”
        
        “But there will be many such places,” the commander said gloomily. “And demons will be in no hurry to take advantage of them. Okay, okay. Not demons. But I wish you would provide me with some other term to think of them as. Being around young Belmondo all day, one unconsciously picks up the verbalizations of his fears.”
        
        The Shaker was about to ask the old man about such a timid officer's presence among such a hearty group as the Banibaleers, but he was interrupted by a piercing chorus of terrified screams that lasted a moment, faded, and then was gone.
        
        “Commander!”
        
        The voice was that of the private named Barrister whose duty it was to monitor the ascension of the climbing teams and help the leader of each gain the lip of the cleft more easily. He was a big youth, perhaps none too bright, but a good climber and a conscientious soldier.
        
        “What is it? Who screamed?” Richter demanded as he and the Shaker, accompanied by a number of others, reached the precipice.
        
        “The last team, sir… they're gone…”
        
        “Gone? What is this 'gone? Speak up, boy!”
        
        “I was monitoring them,” Barrister said, obviously quite shaken, rubbing his face with one hand as if unable to believe this was not a dream, not something that he could snap himself out of. “Before I could do anything about it, the lead piton, here, gave way, pulled rock with it, and was gone over the edge. They must have been relying totally on the anchor, for the scream came almost instantly.”
        
        “There were seven in the team,” Richter said. He turned to the Shaker. “He's gotten seven more of them, if he happens to be Barrister here.”
        
        Sandow looked at the boy who was staring over the edge of the cliff, his face drawn, his entire body wracked with terrible nervous spasms. “He doesn't seem the murderous sort. Could it not have been an accident?”
        
        “Perhaps,” Richter said. “The edge rock here is probably fractured invisibly inside, from the constant vibration. But it seems it should have given way before this, before all but the last team had been drawn up on it.”
        
        “Sir!” Barrister called.
        
        They turned to the boy, saw that he was bent dangerously over the lip of the ledge, staring intently into the