th's having noticed it before, a silent crowd had gathered.
He did not wonder at the sound. The sentence was the longest in the
history of the tribe.

Not that it really meant anything. No one had ever come back from as
little as one hundred days in Hell. No one had ever come back from Hell
at all.

"Unlash the Elevator. All shall go together."

* * * * *

The basket swayed. The last of the attic world that Honath saw was a
circle of faces, not too close to the gap in the vine web, peering down
after them. Then the basket fell another few yards to the next turn of
the windlass and the faces vanished.

Seth was weeping in the bottom of the Elevator, curled up into a tight
ball, the end of his tail wrapped around his nose and eyes. No one else
could make a sound, least of Honath.

The gloom closed around them. It seemed extraordinarily still. The
occasional harsh screams of a lizard-bird somehow distended the silence
without breaking it. The light that filtered down into the long aisles
between the trees seemed to be absorbed in a blue-green haze through
which the lianas wove their long curved lines. The columns of
tree-trunks, the pillars of the world, stood all around them, too
distant in the dim light to allow them to gauge their speed of descent.
Only the irregular plunges of the basket proved that it was even in
motion any longer, though it swayed laterally in a complex, overlapping
series of figure-eights.

Then the basket lurched downward once more, brought up short, and tipped
sidewise, tumbling them all against the hard cane. Mathild cried out in
a thin voice, and Seth uncurled almost instantly, clawing for a
handhold. Another lurch, and the Elevator lay down on its side and was
still.

They were in Hell.

Cautiously, Honath began to climb out, picking his way over the long
thorns on the basket's rim. After a moment, Charl the Reader followed,
and then Alaskon took Mathild firmly by the hand and led her out onto
the surface. The footing was wet and spongy, yet not at all resilient,
and it felt cold; Honath's toes curled involuntarily.

"Come on, Seth," Charl said in a hushed voice. "They won't haul it back
up until we're all out. You know that."

Alaskon looked around into the chilly mists. "Yes," he said. "And we'll
need a needlesmith down here. With good tools, there's just a chance--"

Seth's eyes had been darting back and forth from one to the other. With
a sudde