Warlock

the exotic. Those pages held a fascination for him that most children found only in the discovery of what adults called common place, in the discovery of snow and sunrises and storybooks. But he had accepted the common quite early, before other children even noticed it, and had immediately gone on to the more complex. Through the diary, he came to know and love his mother.
        
        And, sadly, to loathe his father by comparison. Jim, his old man, had early settled on the boy as the cause of his wife's death, and he had not once exhibited a moment of fondness or love for the child. Where other men might have doted on the boy as the last vestige of the dead woman, he looked upon Gregor as a curse.
        
        And when he caught Gregor one day, levitating a pencil from the top of a table, holding it there without hands, he exploded in fury. A demon, he called his boy. A sorcerer who had spelled the mother's death nine months before the birth. He battered the boy severely, knocked him against the kitchen door. In terror, Gregor had lunged for the door, gotten through and outside. Jim had chased him, drunk and cursing, and had presented a spactacle for the entire town.
        
        If they had not chanced across the Shaker Sandow in their mad chase, Gregor might well have been killed. He had always been a frail boy, and his body was now bruised and bleeding from even the light cuffing the old man had given him. But the Shaker had been there, had seen, and somehow had understood. Whether Jim had skidded over the edge of Market Street and into the abyss by accident, or whether the mild Shaker had propelled him with some quick but forceful piece of magic, no one ever knew for certain, though there was a great deal of speculation in the years to come.
        
        And he had gone to the great house of the Shaker, with its books and magic implements. Mace had been there, some six years older than his three, and the strange relationship of brotherhood had built between them, though they were not brothers at all.
        
        Now the mountain. And the east beyond. He had little hope that they would survive the entire trek, but he would never verbalize such thoughts to Shaker Sandow. His life was his master's life, and he would go anywhere the older man deigned they should. His own lust for knowledge from the east was small; but he understood Sandow's lust, and he was willing to help the Shaker gain his understanding.
        
        Nestled between a father and a brother better than any he might really have possessed, Gregor drifted into sleep, to conserve the heat energy in him against the bitter, sapping strength of the Cloud Range night…
        
        
        Shaker Sandow looked through the slits of his weather mask, at the swirling snow, at the flickering flames of the campfires, at the odd shadows and the odder brightnesses. He wanted to stay awake all night, though he knew he was no longer young enough for that. He supposed Mace would wake Gregor at the proper time to finish the night's watch, although the giant could not be trusted. He might take the entire night's watch upon himself if he felt fit for it. And that could not be allowed. Tomorrow, Mace would need his strength to survive, for the downward slopes might be every bit as treacherous as the other side they had finally scaled. Snow swept from left to right in a thick sheet; flames danced before it; the shadows changed, moved, as if they were alive, and the brightnesses offered hope that tomorrow would be met with success.
        
        Have I been a fool? the Shaker asked himself. Have I lead myself and my loved ones into a maze of traps, a puzzle of disasters?
        
        And for what?
        
        The wind howled.
        
        The cold had reached his bones, and he shivered a little with it even while he perspired under the weight of all their coverings.
        
        As he wondered over his foolishness or lack of it, his mind was drawn to what might lie beyond the Cloud Range, out there in the darkness where the Darklands and Oragonia had never extended land claims. Far, far to the east, the ships of the Salamanthe nation had docked on the distant shore of this great continent, to be sure. The Salamanthes, living as they did in a cluster of a thousand islands, had long ago learned the vagaries of the sea well enough to ride it with impunity; where the Salamanthe's sailors had not