The Ladder in the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

heard again the dreadful words: “There is only one price. Service for a year andaday.”
    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