The Ladder in the Sky (3 page)

IV

Night lay over the fortress and the lake. The sky was as clear as crystal, and every now and again Kazan found himself glancing up at it, noting that the stars were organized in groups, noting that they cycled slowly, diagonally towards the horizon, so that there were now different stars behind the fortress from those that had been showing when the sun set.

He had never seen a night like this. He had never looked at the stars except from beneath the constant haze of the city. Up on the hill, around the homes of the haughty, the sky might be as clear as it was here. But not over the Dyasthala, from which the fumes of a thousand coarse fires and the reek of decaying rubbish oozed forever upward, a miasma fit to foul even the stars.

He had not yet made up his mind whether he liked the sky to be so naked over the world. But it was a new thing, and very interesting.

Out there in the louring bulk of the fortress a few lights gleamed; one in particular, directly facing them, was the window of Prince Luth’s apartment. Almost anything might be going on there. It was too far to hear, and too dark to see.

But the night was not silent by any means. Something fearful was hunting in the lake; you could track it by the succession of splashes and howls that marked its victims’ deaths. And to the right and left of the fortress other beasts, perhaps mating, frequently uttered a rasping hoot that rose to an ear-splitting whistle before its end.

Kazan was aware of a curious detachment from himself, although when he had to act or give orders he did not feel that it was something else in him working through him. Rather, the sensation each time it happened was like being struck by a transparently obvious, but brilliant, notion. He thought now that he ought to be afraid of it, but it was too enjoyable.

He had never had such subtle thoughts about himself before. Now, reclining in comfort, overlooking the lake and waiting for the moment which was sure to come, he was able to recognize that if the problem had been put to him to consider as happening to somebody else, he would have expected to be scared and worried and looking for an escape. Instead, he was full of buoyant confidence. Maybe he’d caught some of Yarco’s fatalism.

Apparently from nowhere, Yarco’s voice came softly to him. The stout man was sitting just beyond arm’s reach, shrouded in one of the light, portable radiation deflectors that concealed all the watchers round the lake from the suspicious fortress guards.

“How do you feel, Kazan?”

“Confused,” Kazan said. “But otherwise well.”

“I’ve noticed,” Yarco said, and after a moment’s pause went on. “You’re enjoying yourself. You’ve tasted power for the first time. Don’t get the habit.”

Kazan turned the idea over. Yarco was probably right. Since the moment when the stout man had shown his exact understanding of what passed in Kazan’s mind, Kazan had had the healthiest respect for him. Almost, he had begun to like him. After all, to have been pledged before birth to the whims of the royal family was in its way a fate like being born into the Dyasthala, with so little hope of ever climbing out.

“You puzzle me,” Yarco said. “I know quite well that you have not the slightest idea of what you’re doing, that Prince Luth is nothing to you, nor is Lady Bryda, that your world yesterday was the Dyasthala and today still is. And yet, something moves you. Like an invisible hand. Have you ever believed in devils, Kazan?”

There was a note of mockery in the voice. It wasn’t quite sincere, as though he were pretending to laugh at what he was speaking of for fear that he might otherwise scream. Kazan said shortly, “All I’ve ever believed in is hunger. And cold. And disease. And the inevitability of death.”

“Have you added to the list lately?” Yarco pressed him.

“I guess not,” Kazan said stonily. He glanced down towards the lakeside, and stiffened, everything else forgotten. There went the first stage of his plan.

His?

He choked the thought back, concentrating on the details of what must be happening. Lately, they told him, Prince Luth’s captors had decided that there was now small chance of his followers trying to rescue him, and reduced their guards somewhat, so that the lakeside patrol now consisted of a mere four men—or rather, twenty in all. But at any time only four were actually patrolling; the remainder were in four watch-houses. Four men would search their quarter of the shore, then relieve the men in the watch-house they came to and send them off in turn.

Then, Kazan had said, send four men down a few minutes before the patrol is expected. Let them go to the watch-house as though they were the patrol, overcome the men inside, and then overcome the real patrol when it arrived. Let them make any necessary report by phone to the next watch-house, and it would be an hour or so before suspicions were aroused.

He waited tensely. From here he should be able to catch any slight sounds of scuffling. Yes, and there was something which fell dry upon the ear—feet on solid earth, not the noise of a thing out in the lake.

“Hear that?” he whispered to Yarco.

“I hear nothing,” Yarco returned curtly.

A few minutes later, the shadows slipped down the hillside to where he was waiting. One of them, he thought, was Bryda, but it was hard to tell, for they were all draped in the necessary radiation deflectors.

“It’s done,” a harsh whisper informed him. “Move now!”

Kazan chuckled and rose lazily to his feet. The cream of the jest, he thought, was that none of them knew what he was going to do. And the cream of the cream—which Yarco, he thought, might suspect—was that he knew no more than they did. He was merely utterly confident that he would know.

He walked down to the edge of the water and looked about him. The pallid gray beach was partly mud, partly rock, partly sand; where he had come was sandy. A dozen paces distant something cast up out of the sluggish waves squirmed and writhed. Even in the darkness it seemed incomplete—a torn-off limb continuing to move blindly by itself.

The others who had come down clustered around him, impatient but not daring to cross Kazan. He savored the sensation for a moment. Then he went to the very edge of the water and bent down, feeling in the air. It did not seem that he was doing anything else.

At a level slightly higher, he did the same. And then a foot higher still.

He turned and walked back to the others, leaving nothing behind that could be seen. With ironical grace he bowed to the shape of darkness that he took to be Bryda.

“Will it please the Lady Bryda to come with me?” he said.

She hesitated. After a moment he put his hand out and seized hers, drawing her down after him to the same spot on the beach where he had been a moment ago.

“There!” he said. “There, in front of you! The window of Prince Luth’s apartment! Are you not going to it?”

Alarmed that he spoke aloud, the others hurried forward. Just before they came up with him, he seemed to lose patience. Catching Bryda around the waist, he whirled her off her feet into mid-air.

And stood her there.

Time hesitated for a moment. A little murmer of disbelief welled from the people on the beach. As for Bryda, she swayed, standing on the air, and gave a soft moan. But in a few seconds she had recovered herself.

“Will it go so all the way?” she said. Her voice shook.

“Of course,” Kazan said.

“It’s a miracle,” someone said flatly. “I don’t like it at all.”

“A serviceable miracle is better than nothing,” someone else cut in. “I’ll pray only that I keep my footing.”

“None of you need go,” Kazan said. “None but myself, and the lady here. One to guide the prince, one to be an earnest that this is no deceit.”

“And I,” another voice spoke up, “I, Yarco. The prince will expect me.”

“I beg to differ,” Kazan said. “He will expect no one.”

“He will expect it
of
me, then,” Yarco said, sounding unruffled. He picked his way to the edge of the water and felt about him for the invisible steps. For a moment he shook his head in wonderment. Then he climbed up beside Bryda and bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, wheezing a little.

“What is your causeway made of, Kazan?” he said.

“Air,” Kazan said. He knew it was so, but only in the moment after Yarco had spoken. For an instant his confidence wavered. To walk on air, over this dreadful lake, when mouths snapped almost at their feet? And then, why not? He could do this, and he would do it.

He leaped on the first of his steps, the second, and the third, and began to build his arch of air out across the menacing water.

Once—they must have been over the point where the lake-bed shelved—a lashing tentacle swept up at them, passing so close that it sprayed them with the tacky slime it used to cling to its prey. Bryda cried out; Yarco said something brisk and reassuring, and Kazan built higher. After that, they were well beyond the reach of anything in the lake.

The sheer splendor of what he was doing then took possession of him. Who would think to look for three unprotected people, walking through the air towards the prince’s window? They looked for aircraft; they looked for boats. Indeed, as he came nearer Kazan could see the two armed vessels which by day patrolled the lake, lying at a wharf alongside the fortress wall.

But this they would not look for.

He placed the last few steps carefully, at the right height for a man to step on to when he climbed out of the window. As he worked, he could see into the room beyond. It was well lit, but apparently empty. The casement stood open, and hardly a sound could be heard.

For himself, Kazan thought, studying the luxurious fittings the other side of the window, he would be fairly happy in such captivity.

He stood aside and again made a mocking bow to Bryda, who stripped off her radiation deflector and tossed it at him so violently that he almost stepped back off the airy support on which they now all three were poised. But he said nothing, only left her to think for a moment of what she had done.

Then she turned to the window. For this great event she had put on her most gorgeous clothing, aglitter with color now in the light from the window and changing its hue with every movement. The skirt of the gown went from gold through green to purple as she put her legs over the sill of the window and clambered inside.

“Luth!” she said. “Luth!”

A door flung aside. In the opening a tall man stood, wearing a blue suit crusted with gold, his dark hair foppishly waved, a narrow dark moustache laid down over his rather sensual mouth. For a second he stared, not believing his eyes. Then Bryda had flung her arms about him and was babbling of what Kazan had done.

No; of what Bryda had done. As he might well have expected, Kazan reflected in annoyance. But the annoyance did not last. After all, it would become clear to the prince soon enough to whose credit his freedom must be placed. What mattered now was to bring him safe to shore and—

To whose credit?

Like a worm cankering a flower, the nagging doubt began to gnaw at Kazan’s mind. Perhaps it was triggered by the look on Yarco’s face, visible now by the light from the window, because he had pushed back the hood of his radiation deflector.

Kazan stared down between his feet. He stood on air. They had walked out on air to this window. Down there the evil life of the lake seethed and perhaps yearned up at them. Who had the power to make a man walk safe on air? Not Bryda. Not Kazan, who was a thief from the Dyasthala. But a devil speaking in a voice like a bitter gale playing on a mountain for an organ pipe.

At the back of his mind he heard again the dreadful words: “There is only one price. Service for a year and
a
day.”

He began to tremble. When the prince came out to join him on his invisible platform he scarcely noticed the fact. All he wanted was to place his feet again securely on the ground.

V

To walk on air was not to the prince’s taste. It took him a long moment to decide that he could plant both feet together outside the window, another that he could safely let the window ledge go. Even then, in quick suspicious tones, he ordered Kazan to go ahead of him, and Bryda next. Meekly Yarco fell in behind. Kazan wondered dully whether the prince would trust even Yarco at his back, but seemingly he did.

He went quickly down the steps of air. He knew, in the same unaccountable way he had known how to make them, that they would dissolve in another few minutes. Part of his mind was occupied in trying to recall the trick of them; he had felt—felt? No, it was clearer than thinking, but it was not as clear as remembering. He had been aware of something about the movement of the individual particles of the air and how to organize it in a direction opposed to gravity. But the knowledge was fading. Too much of his mind was busy with his footing, and long before he was back on firm ground it had gone as a dream goes when you try to recall it among the distractions of the daytime.

There was no one on the shore now. Everyone else had faded back among the rocks and shrubs of the hillside beyond. Rut once they left the stretch of sand and started to hurry up the slope the night seemed to come softly alive with murmurs of congratulation.

Bryda, darting ahead, led the prince into a little sheltered hollow, the same one where Kazan had earlier issued his instructions. There for a minute or two she spoke with him under her breath; after that, dark-clad men came out of the night and spoke with him also. Only brief phrases were exchanged. Kazan was glad enough to hang back at the side of the hollow, trying not to think of what he had done. He caught some words here and there—names of cities elsewhere in Berak, mention of the transport waiting for the prince, the route to be taken, the hiding-places arranged while the news of his escape was being passed to the royalist underground.

None of this concerned him, Kazan felt. Prince Luth was rightful ruler of Berak, perhaps. But of the Dyasthala, no. If anyone ruled there, it was Death himself. Or the wyrds of whom Yarco spoke so often, the mystical controllers of human destiny.

Suddenly the night was riven by a shrieking blast overhead, and instinctively everyone ducked for cover. Then, turning their faces to the sky, they saw that it was not an alarm on the fortress which had started them, but a spaceship broaching atmosphere and braking hard as it swooped down on the port.

By tacit consent they waited till the racket died away; then they rose and scattered into the darkness again. “If you’ll follow me,” Kazan heard someone say deferentially to Prince Luth, and took it for an instruction for himself as well. He got to his feet.

He could just make out Bryda, laying her hand on the prince’s arm and turning her pale face in his direction. Some words passed, too low for him to catch; then the prince gave a brusque answer.

“Wait there, fellow,” he said, and turned to go.

An intuition of danger pierced Kazan’s strange lethargy. He took three paces forward to confront Bryda and the prince, and snapped at them.

“Wait here?” he said. “When but for me you’d be waiting yourself, in that prison of yours for a rescue that would never come?”

“Mind whom you talk to!” Bryda hissed. “And remember—you did not offer your service to the prince, as a loyal citizen of Berak should! You were haled off the streets, a thief and a wastrel and you cannot say you’ve not been paid for what you’ve done.”

“You price the prince low,” Kazan retorted. “Some clothing and meals for one man for one month. What says he to that valuation of him?”

“I say you’re an insolent fool,” the prince gritted between his teeth.

“This insolent fool”—delicately, out of the darkness, the voice of Yarco with an apologetic edge—“has nonetheless been the instrument of the prince’s freedom.”

“You also are a fool, Yarco,” Bryda said, rounding on him. “Did you not see what he did? Did you not walk the steps he made of the air? He’s sold to a devil, and we cannot keep him in the prince’s company! A man with power like that? The service promised to us is over. Now the service promised to the devil begins. Therefore let the devil look to his own. Hego! Axam! Do it now!”

Something vastly heavy crashed between Kazan’s shoulders. His arms were snatched up behind him and manacles were forced over his wrists. A gag so thick and tight it almost choked him was slapped over and into his mouth. He kicked out, but strong arms were clapped around his shins and pinned his legs together. The two bullies were experts at their work; he had already known this of Hego, but the other, Axam, seemed still more practiced and ruthless.

“Let your devil take care of you,” Bryda said. It was plain that she meant the words to sound sneering. Somehow, though, she failed, and a tremolo of fear broke through them. For a long moment she hesitated, as though about to say more. Then she caught Prince Luth by the arm and vanished with him over the lip of the hollow, down the hillside to the transport awaiting them.

Like a layer of ice on the surface of a river beneath which the current still ran strong, a skin of calm overlaid the raging terror in Kazan’s mind. Even as they walked him to the beach he was casting about for a chance of tricking them.

But none offered itself.

Each of the bullies had his power-gun in his hand, leveled unwavering at Kazan’s back; although his feet were unhobbled it would be suicide to run. He had no wish to be cast as a corpse into the lake, food for the monsters. He had still less wish to be cast alive in the water, which seemed the intention. Yet he felt obscurely certain that to stay alive as long as he could must be his immediate purpose.

“Stop there,” Axam said from behind him. Obediently Kazan halted, his feet sinking a little into the loose sand. “Hego! Find the steps he made!”

Out of the corner of his eye Kazan saw Hego take a hesitant pace forward, then change his mind. “It’s devil’s work,” he said finally. “I will not.”

“Oh, for—!” Axam said, exasperated. He walked forward to the edge of the water and felt about him for a moment; he found solidity and leaned on it. “All right,” he said. “Get him down here.”

As though to make up for his moment of reluctance, Hego gave Kazan such a blow in the small of the back that it almost knocked him flying. He barely managed to keep his balance as he stumbled forward.

Could he make more steps? How? Already the knowledge was leaking away! Already it was dreamlike and unreal. And in any case he had known how to shape the steps of air only by making certain movements with his hands, which were manacled behind him.

“Get
up there!” Axam snarled, cuffing the side of his head. “Go on!”

How soon would they dissolve, these steps? Kazan felt a rubberiness under the first foot he placed above the water. Could he break into a run, running on nothing all the way to the fortress in the middle of the lake? Sweat was springing out all over his body now. He had expected that some new knowledge would come to his mind and save him. He did not want to die!

“Up!” Axam ordered. “Up—quickly!”

Yes, what they proposed to do was clear. Wait until he had climbed well out over the lake, then fire one silent power-blast, and—an open mouth in the water below. No trace. No hope.

The blood seemed to be draining away from Kazan’s head, leaving his mind giddy and empty of ideas. He began to climb numbly, his eyes fascinated by the way the black mirror of the water sometimes broke apart in ripples to reveal a hump-backed shape or a whipping tentacle. Someone had mentioned to him—Yarco, perhaps—that these creatures had lived in many places all over this world before the coming of man, and that this had once been the private hunting lake of the royal family.

Glancing back, he thought he saw one of the bullies raising his power-gun. Perhaps it was a flinching in anticipation of the impact that made him slip; perhaps the step on which he had placed his weight a second earlier was failing faster than the rest; the air sagged beneath him and struggled to be more than air and was only air and he was plummeting headlong to the hungry water, thirty feet below.

In the bright, warm room—sealed utterly from the outer world so that no whisper of sound or ray of light might attract a passer-by—Yarco shivered and shivered again. Now and then his teeth escaped his control and chattered aloud.

From his endless succession of consultations with visitors who came through the door with backward glances and scrutinized the prince carefully before making obeisance, as if suspecting deceit, Luth looked up in irritation.

“For the love of life, Yarco!” he snapped. “Will you keep your foolishness to yourself?”

These matters of how strong sentiment is in such a town, what weapons lie in secret armories … Yarco flinched and muttered something which did not carry. Proud beside Luth, Bryda tossed back her dark hair.

“What’s the matter, you dodderer?” she said. “Speak up if you’ve anything to say!”

“I feel you have done something evil and dangerous,” Yarco said. “The young Kazan—”

“Enough!” Bryda cut in. “Have you not heard before from Hego how he fell to his death, manacled and helpless among the beasts of the lake? What are you afraid of?”

“He made steps in the air,” Yarco said.

“And could not make them to save himself,” Bryda retorted. But in her fiery eyes Yarco thought he could detect a lurking, shame-faced fear as great as his own. To cover this, she gestured across the room to where Hego stood, his loose-lipped mouth working a little, his huge hands nervously locking and unlocking with each other.

“I keep thinking of a beak like a giant’s scissors,” Yarco said. “Strong enough to shear through a steel shackle. I keep thinking of a tentacle that could whip a man through the air like a ball batted in a children’s game, to land him bruised and panting in soft mud, but alive. I keep thinking of the hate that a man could bear you for condemning him to such a death. And the power that a black devil could give him to wreak his vengeance.”

“If there was that power,” Prince Luth said, “the devil would have saved him directly, not by this chain of fantasy you’ve pictured.” But his eyes were shadowed. “Go, he said after a pause. “Your mind is wandering.”

Yarco pulled his plump body up from his seat. He gave a formal bow to Luth and started towards the door. On the point of leaving, he turned back.

“It will go badly with this plan,” he said. “I can feel how the wyrds are working.

“Get out!” Luth roared, half-rising. The door slammed. He sank back in his place, adding with a sidewise glance at Hego, “And no nonsense from you, either. Hear? The man is dead, a worthless Dyasthala thief!”

He went back to his business of available vehicles, codes, signals for action and means of assembling troops. It was not until near morning that he needed Yarco to answer a question for him and sent Hego up the stairs.

So it was Hego who found the stout man, lying back on the bed which Kazan had used during his stay in this house, a look of frozen terror on his face and a tiny vial of poison clasped with death’s rigidity in his plump left hand.