"The door must be shut," said the box outside. Thorinn closed it, got himself upright, and pressed his feet against the perforated floor. At once jets of water spurted from the walls, wetting him all over below the chin, while a strong suction held his feet down. Thorinn's stomach knotted. He bent forward, vomited into the stream.
When it was over he felt a little better. He rinsed his face, then drew his feet up. The jets stopped; the water swirled away past him into the floor, and warm air began to play over his body. In a few moments he was dry; he opened the door and came out.
The light in the room was steady and even. He looked at his body, felt himself. Here was the puckered scar on his shoulder where he had been injured in falling into the dark cavern; here the pink, shiny wounds where the demons had pierced his hands. He was the same, he was himself, and yet he felt that he was not. Had he really died?
Beside the washing-box, behind the half partition, he found a thing shaped like a curved flower growing up out of the wall, with an egg-shaped hole in the seat that formed its top. He pulled himself out into the room again, but there was little there that he had not noticed before. In front of the center crystal there was a circular platform, raised less than a finger's breadth from the floor. There was a hole in the ceiling, and there were two closed doors, one in each of the flat walls. He tried them in turn; they had handles but he could not open them. "Box, where do these doors go?"
"They go to other rooms."
Thorinn pulled himself to the opening in the floor, put his head down it, and saw a circular room four times bigger than the one he was in; it was like the whole cheese of which this one was a quarter. The room was partly divided by short partitions to which man-sized boxes with crystal covers were attached. A few ells away, the spidery shape of the engine that had carried him hung motionless against the wall. The sight of it disturbed him, and he turned away to investigate the hole in the ceiling. He found himself looking into another circular room of the same size, but this one was empty except for a pole in the center that ran from floor to ceiling. In the ceiling, a few ells away, were three other circular openings. Drawn by curiosity, Thorinn pulled himself through, grasped the central pole, drew himself along it, rose to the ceiling. He tried one of the holes at random, and found himself in a room identical to the quarter-cheese one he had left, except that the doorways in the walls were open. He pulled himself to them in turn, and found that one led to still another quarter-cheese room, the other to a half-cheese, with more poles and more crystals in the curved wall. It had no washing-box or dunghole. There was one piece of furniture that might have been meant for a table, but no benches. From this room he rose through another hole into still another circular room. It was the same as the one below, and it also had an engine sleeping against the wall. As far as he could see, there was no exit in the ceiling.
Descending again, Thorinn went through the half-cheese room, then the empty whole-cheese; then a half-cheese room which he had not seen before, but it was exactly like the other. It had two doorways, one closed, the other open: the latter led him into another quarter-cheese room with a closed door. Counting in his head, Thorinn found that there were five circular sections, first a whole cheese with partitions in it, then a like space divided into a half-cheese and two quarters, then the empty whole cheese, then another half-and-two-quarters section, and finally a whole cheese with partitions. This door, then, if it were open, would let him into the room where he had started. He went down headfirst into the circular room with the partitions, found a yellow hand-grip in the ceiling, pulled himself over and up through the other hole, and found that it was so: he was back in the room with his bundles. He went to examine these, and found that the mouth of the net was against the wall, so that in order to take anything out he had to put his feet on either side of it, then bend over and reach around behind the net. He got the bundles out, and the box, and his clothing; all his weapons were missing, even his sword.
"Box, where is the sword?"
Drifting in the air behind him, the box said, "The engines kept it." Surrounded by drifting bundles, Thorinn put on his breeks. The room began to revolve slowly around him. The shirt and belt, which he had left hanging in the air, were drifting away, each in a different direction.
When he had caught them and put them on, he opened a bundle, took out some cheese, and began to eat. The contents of the bundle were slowly dispersing about the room.
"Box," he said, "tell me again what happened and where we are."
"You went into the falling water and were killed. Engines took you from the water." As the box turned, Thorinn saw a glint of light in the crystal. He planted his feet against a pole, sprang, caught the box, and came to rest against another pole. In the crystal he saw spidery shapes looming, caught a glimpse of a pale body tangled in their arms. "Is that me?"
"Yes, Thorinn. The engines put you in a skin like the ones around the children in the cavern, to keep you just as you were. They gathered up all your things and put them in the skin also." The crystal had gone dark. "They took you to this place and brought you to life."
"Why?"
"They want to ask you questions."
"When will they ask?"
"Now."
Another voice spoke from across the room. It was thin, without resonance; he could not tell whether it was a man's voice or a woman's. "What is your name?"
"Thorinn Goryatson. Who are you?"
"This is an engine. Where were you born?"
"I don't know."
"Who were your father and your mother?"
"I don't know. Goryat Temuson kept me, but he was not my father."
"Where did you live?"
"In Hovenskar."
"Who else lived there?"
"Only Goryat and his two sons, Withinga and Untha."
"How did you come to be in the Underworld?"
"They sent me into the well, and Goryat put a geas on me to go down."
"What is a geas?"
"A geas is—well, it's something that makes you do whatever the geas tells you, whether you want to or not."
"Is a geas a kind of magic?"
"Yes. Are you inside the wall, or what?"
"This engine is in another part of this place. Is that Hovenskar?" On the curved wall, one of the crystals lighted; Thorinn saw, as if from a vantage point high in the air, the great yellow bowl of Hovenskar. He could see the stone-roofed hut, and the thread of smoke rising aslant. Two horses lumbered up the hillside; he thought he could even make out which ones they were—Alder and her foal, the one that had died four summers ago.
The pain had returned to his chest; he swallowed hard and blinked. Suddenly he felt the weight of the world hanging over his head. The voice was speaking again, but he said, "I don't want to hear any more," and turned away. The voice fell silent. Thorinn kicked himself away from the nearest pole, caught the next, and so to the pole in the corner. He squirmed in past the white bands, and after a moment they closed around him. The lights dimmed to a faint glow, and he shut his eyes. When he awoke the lights were bright again and the things he had left floating in the air were back in the net; otherwise everything was the same. He got the cheese out again and ate, drank water from the tube, used the dunghole.
Presently the crystal in the wall lighted up and he saw again the yellow bowl, the house, the horses on the hill. "Is that Hovenskar?" asked the voice.
"Yes," said Thorinn unsteadily. "Why am I here? What are you going to do with me?" The picture vanished. "You are here to answer questions. You will be kept here until you have answered them, and then you will be taken to another place. What did you find when you went down the well?"