an instant she thought she had misjudged and was plunging to destruction. Then her fingers touched the hook, clutched it, and she crashed against Krasno.

They swung together, pendulum fashion, carried in an arc by the force of Eldyn's leap. Out away from the platform, toward the other side of the Vat. Out, and then back again.

Eldyn's legs reached, feeling for the narrow rim at the platform's edge. Her toes touched it, slipped, held. Her body stretched on a slant between hook and platform, every muscle strained. Krasno, shorter than she and unable to touch the ledge, dangled vertically over the Vat, but above the surface.

Above them something in the Gateway glared, malevolently down. Its silent call reached the high priest who stood encrimsoned in the lurid glare withBut Sassa was the greater evil. With all her Thin World knowledge, Eldyn knew that the instant of balance was at hand, the time to strike and disrupt that balance of bound charges.

Marion leaped forward as her swing carried Eldyn and Krasno back toward the platform. He slashed with Victoria's knife, slashed at Eldyn's fingers.

The thrust was true. The edge bit into bone and severed cleanly. Eldyn's mutilated hand slipped from the chains. And she and Krasno fell toward the Vat.

But even as she fell Eldyn's hand drove down—what was left of it—and snatched the blast rod Marion had placed in her belt. Falling, she aimed at the lurid flaming thing that was Sassa.

The Sassa-creature sensed her intention, turned its force into Marion's receptive mind and drove his