Warlock

him.
        
        “And there is much ahead,” Richter promised. “For all of us. More than we ever could have expected.”
        
        But Sandow no longer required reassurances, for he had control of himself once more. “Remember,” he asked, “that I told you how each of us has learned something about the other on this trip? Well, I have also learned something new about myself, I had always thought that I held no claim on any superstition, as other Shakers do, that I was above such childish faiths. Yet, deep inside me somewhere, I had secretly nourished superstitions. Secretly, I half believed my mother had been snatched away by demons or condemned by angels. All the while that I professed to enlightened judgment, I harbored primitive fears. But that thread, at last, has been snapped. And because of this journey, I know myself better than I ever have.”
        
        Berlarak poured more wine.
        
        It was drunk.
        
        “And now,” the white-furred giant said, “we must prepare ourselves for the battles ahead. We will spend the day resting, learning about each other, and planning our attack. When darkness settles over the upper reaches of the city and the lights are automatically lowered in most corridors, it will be time for us to take the holdings of the enemy and to cast him out.”
        
        “To tonight,” Richter said, toasting them with the last droplets of his liquor.
        
        They repeated the toast, and then they fell to serious deliberations.
        

----

    24
        
        
        
        Berlarak had removed the heavy metal grate which covered the accessway to the air-conditioning system on this lowest floor of the great metropolis. Inside, there was darkness and the almost inaudible hum of powerful machinery; the air was somewhat stale here in the midst of the machines which made it cool everywhere else. They went inside the walls, using electric torches which they had charged on wall outlets earlier. Dark, inscrutable machinery cluttered the walk spaces here, humping up like queer animals, great snails with many appendages. On all sides, gleaming pipes disappeared through partitions, so clean and unpitted that they looked as if they had been installed no earlier than a week ago; wide, hollow ducts which carried fresh, cool air into the chambers and corridors which they had just departed boomed as they accidentally stumbled against them while squeezing through places that had not been well designed to permit passage. The only sign of life here was a single spider which hung before them on a silken thread, halfway finished with the chore of spinning itself a new web; it started at their light and movement, its fat body quivering in the flat air, then scampered up its own silk cord, disappearing in the impenetrable shadows overhead.
        
        “The architects did not design much comfort into the access walks, because they expected the machinery to go on running smoothly for as long as was foreseeable. And they were correct. It still runs as it did in the early days, with but a few exceptions.” Berlarak's voice was low, whispered, yet contained that rumbling strength the Darklanders had come to expect of it.
        
        In time, they found the stairs which Berlarak said were there. These were not moving risers like those in the main corridors which were now sealed off with rubble, but stairs not unlike those in Shaker Sandow’s own house in Perdune, though constructed of concrete rather than wood. They had been tucked into a dark corner of a dead-end walkway, further proof that the architects had never expected them to be used. Here, there was dust for the first time, half an inch of grayish powder on the stairs, the only proof of the centuries which had passed since their construction. Their feet made senseless patterns on top of the patterns made by the white-furred mutants when they had escaped downward in flight from the Oragonians.
        
        Two landings later, they left the stairs and worked through another level of air-conditioning equipment, of softly thrumming lines of power (and two more spiders), Half an hour after they had begun, they reached another access grill facing a second level corridor.
        
        Berlarak switched on his hip-slung radio and spoke his name.
        
        “Clear,” the voice from the bottom level answered. It was Karstanul, another mutant who had been left