Warlock

minutes.”
        
        The sweet, lilting, quiet voice of the Shaker began, humming like the wind in trees, punctuated now and then by occasional amplifying spell songs in Gregor's deeper, less consistent tones.
        
        “There!” Mace said, leaning forward, pointing at the silver reading plate.
        
        Again, two faces began to appear, slimed over with a film, their features indistinct.
        
        “More concentration!” Gregor gasped.
        
        The Shaker and his apprentice made the spell songs swell, though their voices remained whispered, reserved, in order that those on the cleft beyond might not hear and be drawn.
        
        On the reading plate, the faces began to solidify, though no more completely than they had previously. And even as the three men watched the shimmering images, the strange network of wires and transistors began to spread through the flesh of the two ghost forms, fanning downward from their eye sockets, winding through their cheeks, heavily coring their necks and the brain pans within their skulls.
        
        The Shaker relaxed without bothering to put forth more energy. “They remain as they were.”
        
        “Then let us move out of here before we draw anyone suspicious. We are in a dead end-a good place to be made dead,”
        
        “Hold a moment, Mace,” the Shaker said. “We have one more tact to try. We shall try to summon up the images of various members of this expedition whom we know. If one of them should appear as a wired ghost, we will know we have our man. Rather than move from the general to the specific, we will move from the specific to the general”
        
        “I know none of that,” Mace said. “But move swiftly, please.”
        
        “Richter and Belmondo first,” the Shaker said to Gregor. And with the names came concentration again. Beads of perspiration appeared on the assistant's brow, though his master remained cool and unperturbed.
        
        “Something there,” Mace noted.
        
        Indeed, the outlines of Richter and Belmondo shimmered on the silver plate, growing in detail until-
        
        -over both faces a hatchwork of wires spread!
        
        Gregor gasped, partly with surprise and partly in triumph. “It's them!”
        
        The Shaker released control of the surface molecules of the reading plate, and a blank mirror finish returned. The only light now was from the guttering candle which had sent streamers of melted wax running down over the boulder it perched upon.
        
        “What do you propose now?” Gregor asked. “Something should be done quickly, lest they have the opportunity to turn their strength against the men once more.”
        
        “I propose a control reading first,” the Shaker said, looking somewhat worried. He rubbed at his dark eyes with the tips of his fingers. The whites of those eyes were bloodshot now, both from the exertion of the day and from the tiring energy expension of this reading.
        
        “Control?” Gregor asked.
        
        'It seems likely that our assassins, if they have the power to block my readings of themselves, may cast some aura which impedes my powers over other minds as well. It would make a fine curtain of deceit.”
        
        “But who shall we read?” Gregor asked.
        
        “Mace,” the Shaker said, smiling ruefully. “I believe we can at least be certain of Mace, if no one else.”
        
        Again, the Shaker and the neophyte-Shaker turned their attention to the smooth sheen of the plate lying on the rocky floor between them. The chants began, sweet and pleasant to the ear, and light returned once again to that magic metal. With the light came the features of Mace, the square, rugged face, the mass of untrained hair-and the core of wires underneath it all.
        
        The picture faded and Gregor spoke immediately it was gone: “Foul! If they use deceit even to black out a Shaker's arts, we will never know just who they are. Quite foul indeed!”
        
        “In games of treachery, there are no fouls. The rules may be bent to the whims of any player,” the Shaker said. “In such a thing as espionage, where not even friends and priests are sacrosanct, a Shaker must expect no amenities.”
        
        “Someone comes!” Mace said, crouching toward the entrance to the tiny cavern, his hand