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 demons 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 been 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.