When he came to himself, he could not at first remember what had happened. He was hanging in midair while a rough gray wall moved by jerks past his face. He was uncomfortable, and tried to move his limbs to ease them, but could not. His face hurt; one eye would not open. Jerk; up he went again. His arms were behind him, bent over a stick that came out under his armpit on either side, and his wrists were tied to his ankles. Voices were muttering somewhere overhead. Jerk; a dark leafy twig passed, and the gray wall became a tree-trunk, lumpy, scarred, fissured, and immense. It swung around, this way and that. Thorinn craned his head back. He saw now that a cord, attached to him somewhere behind, rose over the edge of a giant limb just above. A gray face with luminous green eyes peered down at him briefly, and was gone. Up he went again, swinging. The stick that protruded under his arm touched the tree-trunk and caught; he revolved slowly until his body was pointing out away from the tree. More voices. He rose another span and stopped; now the stick was caught under the limb. After a moment something gray and supple came over the edge of the limb and dropped toward him. He had barely time to flinch before the thing was on his back. Its legs clasped him around the hips; its arms appeared over his shoulders and pushed him away from the tree. The arms were gray and hairy; the hands were like a man's. Thorinn fell into despair, for now he knew he had been captured by demons.
He revolved again as the demon freed one end of the stick. The other end was still caught, and he swung slowly around that, then the demon freed it in turn, and he rose, swinging inward until his head struck the limb and he checked again. Then the demon leaped off his back, and in a moment he began to rise, scraping his face and chest against the wrinkled bark. Two of the creatures stood above, pulling on the cord, and others hung from the openings in the tangle nearby. They were smaller than men, their arms grotesquely long, legs short. When they had brought him within reach, two demons seized him and pulled him up level with them; the cord, meanwhile, had disappeared into a dark hole above, and they thrust him up headfirst into it. The cord tightened, he rose, and a dark passage swallowed him. He swung as he went up, first this way, then that. The wall of the passage, when he bumped it with his head or feet, seemed dry and yielding. After a time a faint glow appeared; it was less than the nightlight outside, but he could see the two demons who pulled him up out of the passage, and beyond them a deep chamber. The demons lifted him and propped him carelessly against a wall. His head and feet touched the wall, but his knees hung clear of the floor, and he realized that besides the stick under his arms, there was another set crosswise to it. It occurred to him for the first time that his pack was gone, and the box with it; whether his wallet and sword were there he could not tell.
Such light as there was came from dimly luminous patches on walls and floor, as if sky-moss had been rubbed there. In the gloom, the demons came and went. The chamber was immensely tall; although his open eye was uppermost, Thorinn could not see the top. The demons went up and down with great swiftness, using cords that hung from the upper part of the chamber and poles that stood across it. In going up, they sometimes leaped from one pole to the next, but most often climbed the cords, so lightly that they hardly seemed to touch. In coming down, they used the poles, leaping head downward from one to another until they reached the last, when they swung around and dropped to the floor. None came near Thorinn.
He tried to break or loosen the cords around his wrists, without success. Then he thought that if he could work his way upward along the one stick, the other stick, being attached to the first, would move downward along his back, and he might get some freedom for his arms. But although he was able to grip the stick between his thighs, he could not move his legs enough to accomplish anything. After a time there was a stir above, and a swarm of demons dropped into view. Three of these were females, as large as Thorinn, a head or more taller than the other demons, and he realized dimly that the others must be their young. The females crowded close around him, muttering and grunting; they took turns fingering his garments, tugging at his belt, prodding him. Their eyes were big and green. Two or three of the small demons dived down the hole in the floor, followed after a moment by the rest. Two of the big females turned, sprang up, and were lost to view in the gloom; the third went across the chamber and, hanging by one hand from some protuberance, took something out of a sack there and began to eat it.
The strain on Thorinn's shoulders and hips grew painful. He tried to ease it by flexing his body, but his legs were drawn back so tightly that he could hardly move. The female demon finished whatever she was eating and took another piece. Thorinn found that he could push outward with his feet against the wall; it meant pulling his arms even tighter against the stick, but anything was better than lying still, and he did it again and again, rocking farther out each time, until he overbalanced and fell on his face. Now he was entirely helpless; the most he could do was rock from side to side a little. The muscles of his legs and buttocks began to cramp.
After a long time the demon came back and lifted him by the stick, propping him against the wall again. She had something round in her hand; she took a bite of it, and bright juice ran down her chin. She held the thing out; its pungent smell made Thorinn swallow. He opened his dry mouth. Quickly, with her other hand, she thrust a wad of dirt and trash into his mouth. Thorinn spat it out—dry leaves, filth—and spat, and spat. Across the room the demon was grunting in a slow rhythm, and he realized at length that the creature was laughing.
More time passed. The demon left off eating and picked up a half-finished mat from the floor. She began working at it, holding it with her feet while she braided the long strips together. Thorinn remembered the sound of the river purling down endlessly against the stones, dropping away, spurting, trickling, falling in sheets below. Cool and clean, clean and cool. He saw the demon put her work away and get up. The wall shook, then small demons were erupting into the room, dozens of them, followed after a moment by bigger ones—bigger even than the females. The room was full of them, they were hanging from the walls and the climbing poles. They were all around him, they jerked him away from the wall and stood him up on his stick, crowding close, turning him this way and that, rumbling and grunting to each other. They were a head taller than Thorinn, wider but thinner than the females. Their spindly arms were stronger than they looked. One of them tugged impatiently at Thorinn's belt, then fumbled with the buckle until he got it open and dragged off the belt, which another immediately snatched away from him. A third pulled down Thorinn's breeks; a fourth yanked his head back, pulled his jaw open and stared into his mouth. The uproar was stunning; all the males grunting at once, the children and females leaping back and forth overhead, and Thorinn shoved this way and that until his head spun. He felt a sharp tug at his wrists, then a slackening. His legs were released, and a moment later one of the males was pulling off his breeks and holding them up for the others to see. Thorinn's feet trailed on the floor like dead things; it was only the stick and the demons' hands that held him upright. After a moment he felt someone working at his wrists too; then they were released, the crossed sticks pulled away and he began to fall. But the demons hauled him upright again and tugged his shirt off over his head. Someone held him up by his hair while the rest examined him minutely, feeling his skin, pressing muscles, poking fingers into ribs. Thorinn could not prevent this; he could move his arms a little, but not his legs, and his hands felt like lumps of meat. At some point they had got his shoes off, too, and were passing them around. Thorinn saw one huge male holding up the belt and pointing to it, his mouth opening and closing. In the general din he could not hear anything, but others could; they crowded toward the demon with the belt, then dispersed again, and the commotion spread. A knot of struggling figures formed halfway up the wall, broke and dropped to the floor. Other demons crowded in, wedging Thorinn tighter, but those approaching from the rear forced their way through. In the midst of these were two demon children, gripped by their hair and squalling. One of the old demo
ns barked at them, pointing to Thorinn and then to the belt which he shook in their faces. Thorinn could see that he was pointing first to one place on the belt and then another, and guessed that they were the worn places where his wallet and sword had hung. The children answered; the old demon cuffed them. The children disappeared into the crowd, followed by some of the adults.
Thorinn's arms and legs now felt as if a thousand needles were in them. Heedless of the pain, he began trying to open and close his fingers. The crowd was thinning a little; sounds of scuffling broke out on the other side of the chamber. Thorinn saw demon children dancing up the walls with gobbets of meat in their hands. A few adults followed, and squatted on the poles munching. Now Thorinn could see that the women were cutting up the carcass of some large animal; it must have been fresh-killed, for he could see the flesh steaming.
The demon who was holding Thorinn suddenly turned him about and brought his arms together behind his back. Thorinn tried to resist, but was still too weak; the demon wrapped a cord around his wrists and knotted it. Then, holding Thorinn propped casually in one elbow, he unfastened another cord from around his waist and made a loop in the end. He dropped the loop over Thorinn's head, tightened it a little, then flung the other end of the cord to a demon who sat overhead. Thorinn felt the cord tighten under his chin, then he was rising. He stopped, hung swaying; he tried vainly to touch the floor with his good foot. The noose was too stiff for his weight alone to tighten it as long as he hung still, but at the slightest movement it crept inward across the underside of his jaw. Rather than be throttled, he held himself motionless and kept his head back.
A demon, crossing the room on his way back to the carcass, casually wiped his hand on Thorinn's body. The push set him swinging; the room lurched around him. A demon child threw down a squalid lump of something that splattered on his ribs. In a moment another missile took him on the ear, and then he was being bombarded from every side. Each blow altered the direction of his swing and made him rotate more erratically. A demon came from the shadows carrying a long stick. He poked it at Thorinn's side; the pain made him writhe in spite of himself, and the movement tightened the noose. Another demon with a stick came forward from the opposite side. Facing each other, without excitement, the two began jabbing Thorinn by turns as he swung. The sticks pierced him in the chest, the side, the buttocks, the chest again.
After a time the thrusts stopped. Thorinn opened his good eye and saw that there had been an interruption: a crowd had formed again around the old demons who sat against the wall nearby. He saw two children leaping away, then the glint of metal. It was his sword; the demons were passing it from hand to hand, and his wallet too, and now he saw a square shape that could only be his talking box. He was not sure whether he could speak. He uttered a croak, then tried again: "Box!"
"I am here."
Relief almost unmanned him. He said, "Box, tell them to untie my hands." Demons were leaning over in surprised attitudes, peering at the box. There was a flicker of color in the crystal, almost too faint to see. Now demons came leaping across the room, falling from the shadows above. The two demons with the sticks had gone with the rest. In the uproar, Thorinn cried again to the box, but could not tell if it had heard.
After a time the crowd began to disperse. Thorinn saw an old demon holding the box, and two other old ones beside him. The din of voices had died away a little, and Thorinn called, "Box, did you tell them?"
"I told them."
The two demons with the sticks were back, and now one of the old ones came forward carrying the sword. He stopped and thrust the sword several times toward Thorinn's belly without touching him, all the while carrying on a grunted exchange with the other two demons. "Box, what are they saying?" Thorinn asked.
"I do not know what they are saying."
"Then how did you talk to them?"
"I talked to them in pictures."
Thorinn went cold. "What else did you tell them?"
"They asked about the sword, and I showed them it was better than a stick for cutting." The old one with the sword stepped back; the two with sticks ranged themselves on either side of Thorinn. A fourth demon came up behind; Thorinn felt its hands on the cord around his wrists, and his heart grew big.
The cord fell away. Thorinn reached for the noose; one of the stickmen promptly leaned forward and pierced his hand. The shock was so great that Thorinn lost his wits and reached with his other hand for the noose. The stickman on the other side pierced that hand also.
The demons had gathered in a ring. The old one with the sword exchanged several remarks with the stickmen; then, apparently satisfied, he stepped forward, put the tip of the sword against Thorinn's belly and cut downward. Blood began to crawl down Thorinn's leg. In spite of himself, his hand jerked toward the noose, and again the stickman pierced it. "Box," he cried.
"Here am I."
The old demon stepped up, raising the sword. Thorinn's body writhed forward in desperation; the noose closed hard on his neck, but he seized the demon's wrist. A blow took him in the side. He kicked the demon's dim face, and the sword was in his hand. Another blow spun him around. He cut at the stickmen, making them leap back; strangling, he seized the cord above his head. The demon on the pole stood and reached for him as he flew up, the cord slackening. Air rattled into his throat. He raised the sword and smote through the demon's leg and the knotted cord and half the pole, still rising, and touched the pole to push himself still higher, the demon toppling now below him and screaming as it slowly fell in a cloud of blood (the world an uproar of grunting voices, fangs in open mouths, green eyes), and now he was at the next pole, a demon reaching for him, and he smote off its arm; then clutching the pole he climbed up and feeling the wall springy and fibrous under his hand he struck and opened a long gash, the cool night air entering, and dived through and was outside. He caught a curving branch, swung back, and glimpsed the chamber he had left as a dark sack bulging between two limbs. In his mind was a picture: Thorinn drops dwindling through the branches, the demons pursue, swarm around him, and their sticks pierce his body, limbs, face... No. He sprang for the demons' house again, clung to the fibrous wall just above the opening he had made, and waited, trembling with fear and hate. When the first gray head emerged, he struck it with the hilt of his sword. The head dropped, the body followed it and with a thrust of his foot Thorinn helped it downward. He dealt with the second in the same way, then groped for a better hand-hold and sprang upward, wedging himself between wall and limb. There was a crashing of leaves far below just as the next pair of demons emerged; they dived for it unhesitatingly and were gone. Three more followed them, then two, then many; the wall trembled as they surged out, diving in their turn. Their voices called back and forth, far below. When the tree was still except for the rattle and click of small things in the branches, Thorinn dropped to the opening again, slipped through and stood upon the pole inside. The chamber was empty except for two females who stared at him, then climbed the opposite wall with grunts of alarm. His clothing and possessions lay strewn on the floor. Thorinn descended, picked up the wallet first and put his hand in to make sure of the magic jug, light-box, and fire stick. His shoes and the cloth he had wrapped the box in were nowhere to be seen. He pulled on his shirt and breeks hastily, looped the wallet over his belt and buckled it on, thrust the sword through the belt—the scabbard was gone—then pulled out the light-box and uncapped it. Across the chamber, there were shrieks and scrambling sounds. He turned the light that way: out of their dark mystery, the walls of the chamber sprang up brown and ordinary; he glimpsed the females clinging to each other on a high pole; then he lowered the light beam, played it across the floor, saw his shoes at once and put them on. He could not find the cloth or scabbard, although he looked into some woven baskets and turned over half a dozen of the mats that covered the floor. The carcass of the half-slaughtered animal lay on thought and had a blunt muzzle. From a peg on the wall hung some cords of the kind that had bee
n used to tie him. He took one and looped it over his shoulder. High above, the light-beam showed a platform. He leaped for it, found it empty except for baskets and mats. Above it was another, and here he found a mass of demon bodies huddled together along the wall, all females, some with children clinging to them. One of the children was holding something long and brown; Thorinn leaned closer, saw that it was his missing scabbard. He eased it out from between the demon child's fingers, little by little. When he plucked it away at last, the child sighed and turned over, but did not waken.
Thorinn leaped again, and at last came to the top of the chamber, where a row of wrapped bundles hung from a crosspole. Clinging to this, he cut a slit in the brown dome overhead. He capped the light-box and put it away, then thrust himself out into the breathing night again. Around him the topmost branches of the tree lifted themselves against a sky that seemed almost close enough to touch. Thorinn leaped to the nearest branch and began to climb. As he drifted upward, he could see that the topmost branches did indeed touch the sky, and some disappeared into it. Now the pure green was close overhead; squinting against it, he put up a hand and felt the moss cool and moist. He pulled off handfuls and stuffed them into his wallet. In the hole he had made he felt a matted fibrous substance like coarse-woven straw. He could force his fingers through it, but when he tried to pull a hank of it free, it resisted; it was all tangled together like the stalks of last season's grass. The branch trembled. He looked down and saw gray shapes leaping toward him; more were erupting from the dome below. He rose almost without thinking, gripped the sky with one hand, and swung himself out. He probed through the moss for another grip, swung again. A thrown stick went past him, struck the sky and spun silently into the void. He looked back. The demons had clustered at the end of a branch, which bending under their weight had left them ells short of the sky. Another stick slid into the moss with a tearing sound. Feeling light-headed, Thorinn plucked it out and threw it back. From a little distance, he looked back again. The demons were still clustered on the branch. He moved farther away, having an impulse to get clear of the tree: but could he survive a drop to the ground? While he hesitated, looking about him, he noticed a dark line in the sky not far ahead. He set out toward it; as he approached, the line expanded slowly to a narrow oval. When he was almost there, he turned and looked back again. Two demons were hanging under the sky, and as he watched, another leaped up. They came swinging toward him, and now he could see their eyes glinting under the green sky. He tried to move faster; his fingers slipped and he almost fell. In his mind, the sky blazed. His breath caught; he gaped with excitement. Here was the opening, a hole in the sky three spans wide. Hanging beside it, Thorinn plunged his free hand into his wallet, found the light-box and pushed the cap off with his thumb, made sure that it was the broken end, the lighted one. He drew it out and aimed the light-beam into the faces of the demons, saw their eyes clench and their bellies contract. Then he jammed the open end of the box into the sky. Brightness exploded around him. Blinking, dazzled, he looked down and saw the tree-tops green in daylight; a hurrying shadow flickered at the edge of vision and was gone. Shrieks echoed below the treetops. The demons hung from the sky, unable to move. Thorinn turned. The shaft was beside him, with a disk of brown metal at the top. He reached up, felt the shield rotate under his fingers. The opening came into view, an eye of darkness expanding until it filled the circle. Thorinn leaped up, blood drumming in his ears. He had just strength enough to pull himself through and roll aside in the darkness. The floor was as soft as goose down. He slept, and woke to drink from the magic jug, and slept again.
World and Thorinn Page 10