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.