Read Online Warlock by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

canyon.
        
        
        
        “One of us simply must remain with our baggage,” Gregor said firmly. “And they say the luggage must go last, after the men. So I'll just stand here until it's across. They can send me over after it. Then the four men weighting down the pulley platform, and the two on the drawing team can pack up and make the climb down and up like Richter did.”
        
        “Why don't I stay?” Mace asked.
        
        The Shaker will be over there, and that is where the muscle must be, you lummox. I am small game compared to the Shaker. Now, no more arguments.”
        
        “I guess you're right,” Mace said.
        
        “You know I am.”
        
        He gripped the smaller boy's shoulder, looked at Gregor with what passed for love between them. “Be cautious. It is a long way down to the bottom of the canyon and no cushions when you get there.”
        
        “That I see,” Gregor said. “I will be quite careful indeed.”
        
        
        
        Gripping the lower rope with both big, thick-fingered hands, Mace looked down at the shattered floor of the canyon seven hundred feet below. He had been told not to look down, but the temptation was too great. He was glad, now, that he had ignored that order, for the whirling, slowly turning spires of rock below were truly lovely from such an improbable viewpoint. His blood, too, sang with a rare excitement.
        
        Excitement.
        
        Not fear.
        
        For Mace, there truly was no such thing as terror. He had never experienced anything which had brought him to the frazzled ends of his nerves. And that, despite the fact that being the assistant of a Shaker provided a goodly number of hair-raising experiences. And as he was never terrified, he was seldom even given to fear. It was as if he had been born without that portion of his soul, as if all the fear he had never felt was transformed into extra inches of height, extra pounds of muscle.
        
        Once, Shaker Sandow had explained to Mace just why he was so fearless. “Mace,” the Shaker bad said, “you are a very small magician. You have within you just the barest stirrings of a Shaker's power. That glimmer of power makes you faster on your feet than other men, quicker to react, more clever to understand, more cunning to perceive that which others wish not perceived. But there the power ends. It will never be great, nor even moderate within you. You will never do readings, never tell the future, never read minds. Such is your lot, and there is a danger in it. The minor magician, such as yourself, feels superior to other men and knows he can best them no matter what the odds-and he is only honest. But the minor magician never learns to fear, and that may one day trip him up. The major magician, in his wisdom, understands the value of fear. The major magician sees more deeply into life and realizes that fear is a most expedient emotion at the proper times. So you must always make an effort to know terror, to be afraid when the time requires fear. It is something you must culture, since it does not come naturally to you.”
        
        But Mace never had learned it. And culturing it was far too much bother.
        
        Watching the scenery, he made his way happily across the gorge as men toiled on either side to draw him to safety.
        
        
        Well, Shaker Sandow thought, it has been a good life. I have led sixty years of it, sixty years of sunrises and sunsets, of which I have watched perhaps more than two thirds. Sixty years of thunder and lightning and storms, sixty years without ever knowing want and without ever suffering bodily injury. If I am to die now, so be it. But please, please, make my heart stop before I reach the stones below.
        
        The good Shaker was not making the journey across the canyon with the same stoic good humor that young Mace had