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as high as he could. He could bat it aside with a stick—but he had no stick or stone, and no time to fetch one.
    He did have his stalactite spear, still tied to his body. If he could stab the thing...
    No time to debate. The salamander started for him, for these creatures always attacked, never relented. He had to fight or run. He could outrun it, and ordinarily would have —but there were no tunnel loops here that would enable him to circle beyond it and escape in the direction he required. Not in time.
    He leaped toward it, stabbing with his point. The creature cooperated by opening its jaws to bite the weapon—and the point of the spear rammed right down its throat. Lucky thrust!
    Arlo threw the spear to the side. The salamander was not yet dead, but it could not dislodge itself from its impalement, or move while anchored by the heavy stone spear. The way was clear.
    Then he hesitated. He might have need of his spear again. In fact, he surely would, to balk that menace closing in on Ex. Gingerly he picked it up by the end, lifting the salamander into the air. Its beady eyes stared at him with consummate malevolence, and this gave Arlo an odd thrill. He liked the hate of this little monster!
    He moved on, carrying the spear horizontally and to the side, so that the poison would neither roll down the spear to his hand nor be carried to him in droplets on the wind. He could scrape the salamander off against a suitable rock, then rinse the spear carefully in running water. When he had time. Right now he had to carry it awkwardly.
    The corkscrew was a special problem. If he slid the spear down ahead of him, poison might drip to the stone to be picked up by his body. If he held it above him, drops could fall on him. But he found he was able to carry it behind in such a way that it was never actually above him. Drops did fall on the stone, and he knew it would be long before he dared travel this way again. Well, the Norns could wait!
    He ran on through the wider, lower tunnels. Soon he would re-enter the gardens—and he had gained on the menace. The animal was very large, he knew, now that he was closer to it. It could not take the most direct route, but had to find passage for its girth. So it was slow.
    “Arlo.” A man stood in his way. He was shorter and slighter than Arlo, and he was old: in his middle sixties, Arlo knew. This was Doc Bedside.
    Arlo knew the man was up to no good. In fact, he represented another barrier interposed by Chthon—a more formidable one than either Norn or salamander. For Bedside was not only mad, he was intelligent.
    Still, perhaps he could bluff his way past. “I have speared a stray salamander. I must dispose of it. Be careful of the poison.” And he poked it suggestively at Bedside.
    “Ah, yes, the episode of the salamander,” Bedside said, not yielding the right-of-way though his eyes seemed to glow within the sallow crinkles of his face. “Had your father but known...”
    “I killed it, not my father,” Arlo said. How could he move the man? The wolf was getting closer to the sleeping girl; now he felt both her slumbering innocence and its malice.
    Malice—what had the Norns said?
    No time for that! He had to get by, but he could not simply shove the old man aside. Bedside had peculiar power of his own, as the most cunning of all Chthon’s minions. In many cases he actually spoke for Chthon. A direct attack on him would be like a sally against Chthon: despite everything, unthinkable.
    “Aton was physically balked by the salamander,” Bedside said. “But he was emotionally balked by the minionette. His death reflected his life, could he but have read the parallels in time.”
    “Minionette? Death? My father lives,” Arlo said, perplexed.
    “All men sent to the prison Chthon are officially dead,” Bedside said. “The caverns have taken the place of capital punishment. There is no release; it is like the mythical underworld. I died in §394 by that definition; Aton died in