They crawled about us, oozed, flopped, hopped or stumbled, by every means of locomotion and by none. Some had one leg and some had none, or three, or six. Some were one-headed, some had two, or none, or four. There were blobs which lay while features chased themselves across their surfaces; some attached to mechanisms which made the Fatwagon seem a model of simplicity. There were howlers, moaners, silent ones whose thoughts beat at me in a tide of agony. The place stank of refuse, and excrement, and blood. Some things, dead and half eaten, lay against the walls of the place. Instinctively Mavin and I moved to the wall and put our backs against it. I looked up to see the hooded heads of the Tallmen peering down at us. I had never seen a Tallman’s face, and I wondered in that instant if they had faces. Some of the creatures around us did not. Something crawled across my feet and lay there, rippling at me. Deep within, I heard Didir recoil. “Wrongness, Peter. Wrongness. Beware, beware.”
The walls of the pit were pierced with black arches, screens behind which we could discern faint shadows, black on black. A bell rang somewhere, and the creatures began to edge toward these arches. There were troughs beneath them which began to flow with half liquid soup. The creatures fed. I watched, feeling the place with my skin. It was like being in a waking dream, a dream from which one knows one should be able to waken. The cage rattled upward, then down once more. Inside it was a Tallman and great bundles of solid food, stinking sides of meat, sacks of beaten grain. The Tallman came from the cage before it tipped to spill the food upon the floor. When the cage rattled upward again, the monsters broke from the arches, howling, to descend upon the scattered food. The Tallman kept away from them, turning, turning until glittering eyes from beneath the concealing hood met mine.
“Fatman,” he breathed. “I will kill you.” He moved toward me. I let him come close, close enough that he could not be seen from above. Then Wafnor reached out and held him, bound him about with arms of steel, held him fast while I looked under that hood at his eyes. Tallmen had faces, of a sort. At least, this one did. The face burned hatred at me and at Dupey behind me. “Who are you?” it asked at last. “You are not Fatman.”
“No,” I admitted. “I am not Fatman. I am one who will hear you talk, Tallman. Tell me of this place, of these magicians, of these pits.” He was not willing to do so, but it did not matter. Didir Read him; Wafnor shook words out of him; Trandilar entranced him. The bell rang again. The creatures assembled before the arches once again, and I looked with a Shifter’s eyes through that dark glass to the shadows beyond. Pale, moon faces were there under their square hats; younglings were there, dressed in black but with soft caps covering their heads, eyes wide and fingers busy as they wrote on little pads of paper, wrote and peered, wrote and peered.
“What are they doing?” I demanded.
“Monster watching,” Tallman gasped. “It is what they do. It is why they say they are here.”
I thought this a lie, and yet Didir said Tallman believed it to be true. Since they were watching us, we behaved as monsters should, howled, bubbled, rocked and capered, all the while holding Tallman fast so that he could not move. Those watching would have only seen him stand, head down, face obscured. After a time the bell rang once more, the monsters left the arches to resume their endless movement in the pit.
We questioned. At last, we knew all the Tallman knew and let him go. He backed away from us to the center of the pit, staring about him with wild, glittering eyes, maddened by shadows. They were not shadows who came after him, however, but things of the pit which seemed to bear Tallmen some malice. He had a weapon of some kind, and he did some damage to them before he was buried beneath their bodies. Mavin and I did not watch. We were intent upon those other Tallmen who hovered at the edge of the pit, far above.