"It is not any sort of bird. It is an engine." Thorinn fingered a skein of blue threads. "I thought engines were made of metal, or wood."
"Engines can be made of anything, even flesh."
Thorinn absorbed this in silence; the box had told him so many fantastic things that he no longer thought it worthwhile to argue with it; but at length he said:
"Well, why would anybody want to make an engine that looks like a bird?"
"Perhaps to watch over you, Thorinn."
Thorinn dug a hole slowly with his sword, dropped the bird in and kicked dirt over it until the last dusty feather vanished. If the bird had been set to watch him by other engines, what would happen now that he had killed it?
He climbed to his tower room by leaping from one outside balcony to another, a quicker and more direct route than going up the well inside. He ate a chunk of dried meat and drank from the magic jug, then stretched himself on the floor with his hands over his head. Close to his ears there was a muted scrabbling and scratching, the sounds of the insects that lived on the false floor beneath the woven cords. He glimpsed them sometimes, gray and brown beetles, long colorless wrigglers. His eye fell on the wooden pole that spanned the peak of the roof over his head. These poles were everywhere in the city; they must be perches for birds that preyed on the insects. As for the people of the city, Thorinn imagined them as winged too—tall men with dazzling white feathers like an eagle's, women soft as doves.
Perhaps he drowsed; at any rate, he came to himself with a start. Under him the floor vibrated in a short, sharp jolt; a distant sound came up the well below.
Thorinn leaped up, saved himself from floating away by grasping the floor cords with one hand, then with his toes. In a moment he had slung his belongings over his shoulders, and in another he was out the window and into a tree.
He clung to the branch and listened. At first he heard nothing unusual. A waterfowl squawked somewhere; then there was a faint, distant bawling. These sounds and others grew in a few moments to a babble of voices; Thorinn had never heard anything like it.
The wooded area around him was deserted; from where he was, he could not see into the courtyard or the fields beyond. He leaped back to the roof of the tower he had just left; clinging to the smooth bark, he thrust his head over and looked down.
Below him, the courtyard was full of dust and confusion. Broad pink and gray backs of beasts, small as beetles from this height, plunged toward the exit from the courtyard; there were dozens of them, no, hundreds, and beside them, flapping along close to the ground, were gray birds; they were goading the animals along with sticks held somehow beneath them. Now here came a sudden explosion of fowl, all nodding heads and yellow feet, and then after that a cluster of white animals with curved horns, all driven by the gray flapping creatures; they all passed out between the towers, and still more came from one of the ground-floor exits.
Thorinn could bear no more; he turned and slid down the roof head-foremost, leaned in, grasped the windowframe, pulled himself inside. The only other exit was a hole in the floor through which he passed into another empty room, and so on until he reached the top of the larger tower below. Here he leaned over the low railing of a balcony and peered down into the hall. It was dark and silent. He swung himself over and dropped from one balcony to another, pausing often to listen, until he had reached the floor two hundred ells down. Skylight, entering through the broad courtyard doorway, was full of yellow dust-motes. Thorinn leaped to the wall at one side of the entrance and cautiously put his head out. In the courtyard, fat grunting beasts and squawking fowl were being herded by flapping gray things—not birds, but men and women with wings like those of wingmice. They were shorter than he, with broad chests and bandy legs. Their long arms ended in three-fingered hands; their wings, which were like gray cloaks when they were folded, became taut membranes when they flew. The sticks they used to goad the animals were clutched in their long toes.
Thorinn withdrew into the darkness and said in a low voice, "Box, are they men or demons?"
"Some are beasts and some are fowl."
"I mean the ones with the gray wings."
"They are engines, Thorinn."
"Engines too—like the bird? Wait a minute." The sounds outside had changed; there were squawkings, screeches, the flapping of wings. Bursting with curiosity, Thorinn put his head out again, and found himself staring straight into the face of a wingman who was pursuing half a dozen ducks escaped from the flock. The wingman's gray-furred face did not change; his dull eyes passed over Thorinn expressionlessly, and in a moment he was pursuing his ducks in the other direction. After a moment Thorinn stepped out into the doorway, exposing himself fully. No one paid the slightest attention to him, even when he began moving across the courtyard toward the doorway from which the beasts and fowl were still issuing. The herdsmen's bodies were covered with short gray fur; their skin was a darker gray, their eyes brown. Their nails, on both hands and feet, were curved and horny. They wore tunics, kirtles, and caps of knitted wool, some plain, others with vivid designs in red, ocher, and blue. Between their thighs was a gray membrane anchored by a short tail, and all their garments were made with slits to accommodate the tail and wings.
As Thorinn drew near the doorway, a last explosion of ducks and other fowl burst out of it, followed by two wingmen; now he could see the floor of the central well inside, and he hopped in that direction, thinking the procession was over; but another wingman appeared, then four more, then another four, leaping up in the dimness out of what Thorinn now perceived was a huge oblong hole in the floor, with a lid tilted above it. Some sprang toward the outer doorway and were gone; others went flapping upward. The great well was murmurous with their wings, but otherwise they made no sound. Thorinn knelt beside the opening and put his head down. For a moment he could not understand what he saw. On the floor of the chamber below, several ells back from the opening, were stacked bundles of silvery translucent material like those he had seen in the treasure cave. Wingmen were pulling these off the stacks, setting them upright, and then doing something to them which he could not make out, whereupon the silvery film vanished like water and another wingman sprang forth out of each. Wide as it was, the chamber was packed full of these bundles. The chamber itself was walled and floored with some glassy yellow-gray material that looked slippery but was not; the lid, which was held open at an angle in some way that Thorinn could not make out, was covered with the same stuff underneath but was packed dirt on the upper side.
The stacks were dwindling visibly, but still there was no end to them. To pass the time, Thorinn began counting the wingmen as they were revived; he got to five hundred and still they came; he had never imagined that there could be so many people in one place.
Now something new was happening. The wingmen and women as they were revived were not leaping to the exit but standing in a cluster as if waiting for something. Now he saw them stoop, and here came three or four of them in a line, each carrying a small bundle with exaggerated care. When they came near enough, he saw that each bundle was a child, sleeping or dead. They were perfect miniatures of the wingmen, with tiny gray-furred faces and closed eyelids as delicate as the ears of mice. Each was wrapped in a sort of pouch, with only its head exposed; the pouches were woven in bright geometric patterns. Each wingman leaped up out of the underground chamber with his burden, then grasped it with his toes, spread his wings, and went flapping up into the darkness.