Warlock

and at last he was prepared to strike upward with his mind, to sail above the stalks of bamboo and seek out the nature of the landscape to all sides of them.
        
        His eyes remained open.
        
        They saw nothing.
        
        His mouth went slack.
        
        His hands hung uselessly at his sides.
        
         A bead of drool appeared on his lips.
        
        It was as if he had vacated his body. And he had.
        
        And then he was back, blinking his eyes, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. He drew a very deep breath and settled his strained nerves with a last relaxative chant that took his voice down through all the registers of the musical range until he was singing a low base that made the words almost unintelligible.
        
        When he was finished, Commander Richter leaned forward and said, “What have you seen?”
        
        The city is but a mile ahead,” Sandow affirmed. “We are very close indeed. There are great black ramparts, walls easily eighty foot high. I could see no stone marks, no seams in all that encircling masonry, and odd substance indeed. Upon the walls are stationed soldiers in the colors of the Oragonian Empire, and they are armed with devices which they have mined from the storehouse of the dead city. I did not see any way in which we could breach those walls in our small numbers and with the meager bows and arrows we possess. To complicate matters, I found that they have chosen a much more dangerous method of dealing with us than sending searchers in our path.”
        
        “That is?” Richter asked.
        
        They have encircled the bamboo field with torch-bearers, and they have lighted the dry reeds at the perimeter. Even now, the fires burn in toward us, leaving black ash and little else in their wake. We should soon smell the smoke-and feel the heat.”
        
        “But this stuff will go up like well-cured kindling!” Richter gasped. “When it has finished and the smoke has cleared, they would find nothing but our bones!”
        
        “I doubt they desire to find anything more than that,” Shaker Sandow said, smiling grimly.
        
        Commander Richter was about to speak when his face changed from fury and confusion, slipped on an expression of graveyard humor. “Aye, and you wouldn't be sitting there so smugly if you expected all of us to die,” the old officer said. “Out with it now, friend. What else did you discover?”
        
        “An escape,” Sandow said. He smiled the same smile that Richter used. “And perhaps a way into the city. Not far from here, but twenty feet ahead, there is the foundation of an ancient house which is now filled with dirt Part of the earth filling the ruins has caved in, and there is a pathway into rooms beneath the ground, into what seem to be tunnels. The tunnels, in turn, stretch long dark fingers toward the walls of the city, as if-perhaps and the gods be willing-they go under the mighty black walls which the Oragonians guard.”
        
        Richter grinned with sheer delight now. “I knew that luck must come our way sometime, friend. And now it has!”
        
        “Perhaps, but please speak softly. Luck is a sadistic woman, and she likes nothing more than to see a man brought to ruin after climbing the walls of false hopes.”
        
        The men were summoned quickly to their feet, and the situation was quickly outlined to them. Not worried now about the size and the clarity of the trail left behind them, they hacked their way into the growth, desperately seeking the broken mold of the old house, the cellars that would protect them.
        
        Barrister was almost entirely black and blue, and as they jostled his body through the torturous path, his flesh seemed to grow even darker, his limbs to swell, the veins on his head standing out fiercely as if they would burst in the instant.
        
        Mace had slung Gregor over a shoulder and was moving with the ease he always exhibited. The boy's leg thumped against Mace's buttocks, and the lad gurgled thickly, painfully in his sick sleep.
        
        Don't let him die, the Shaker thought. Don't let him die, whatever you do, Mace.
        
        He did not know why he should be exhorting Mace to maintain Gregor's well-being. Perhaps it was that, after watching the extremely capable giant, he had ceased to think of him merely