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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