The Ladder in the Sky Read Online Free PDF

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