The Tower of Fear by Glen Cook

development and suggested that it might be wise for him to stay home.
    The old man told him to get his butt out of the house and down to the waterfront.
    *   *   *
    Zouki was awake but pretending otherwise. It was morning now. He was all cried out but was still so scared he was numb. All he could think of was his mother. Some of the other kids were talking. He wanted to yell at them to shut up. But he just lay there, being as small as he could, somehow hoping no one would notice him.
    The others fell silent. He could not help opening his eyes to see what was happening.
    The biggest man he’d ever seen was fumbling with the lock on the cage door. Behind him were two women with a shelved cart about six feet long. The shelves were burdened with deep, covered dishes. He smelled it then. Food. Hot food. It smelled good. He was hungry.
    He sat up without considering what he was doing. He looked around. His surroundings surprised him. They were not nearly as awful as he had imagined last night. By the light of day he saw that the cage was huge. The children, while spread out, were all near the entrance. The cage was at least a hundred feet across and fifty feet high. There were all kinds of trees and bushes and stuff in it. And birds in the trees, up high, almost to where the sunlight came in through giant windows.
    Down lower, he saw the curious faces of several rock apes peeking out of the bushes. The apes were as big as some of the kids. Maybe they were hungry, too.
    The giant man got the door open. He came inside, started pointing his finger around like he was counting kids. When he was satisfied he beckoned the women, who rolled the cart through the entrance. The big man stepped in behind to block the exit.
    The women began handing dishes to children. Zouki noted that no one went to them. Also, no one refused to take one of the deep stoneware dishes, or whatever they were. The little girl nearest him whispered shyly, “You have to eat. Or they’ll make you.”
    Now there was another cart coming, this one managed by four men. Zouki accepted a dish from one of the women. It was square, a little over a foot to a side, five inches deep, and elaborately decorated in designs in royal blue. It was warm. He raised the heavy cloth covering.
    There was a cup of something brown. There were two very small bread loaves, what looked like honey, and some orange segments. He did not recognize anything else, but it all looked good, smelled good, and had to be expensive, the kind of stuff they had at home only on the most important holy days.
    He started eating.
    He felt better immediately.
    The men from the second cart carried a thing like a trunk into the cage and set it down beside another exactly like it. It sloshed. So did the other when the men picked it up to take it away. That one was a kind of giant chamber pot. Zouki had seen the other kids use it and had gone to urinate into it himself once he knew. There was another like it thirty feet along.
    The men came back to exchange that. Then they hauled in a taller case and exchanged it for its twin. This one contained fresh drinking water.
    The women had finished passing out food. They stepped away from the children and waited. The four men got shovels and bags and went back into the foliage, apparently to clean up after the rock apes. None of the adults said a word.
    Some of the children finished quickly. What they did then seemed to depend on the child. Some took their dishes to the women, who scraped the remains of their meals onto one of several metal trays sitting atop their cart. When one of those was full one of the men took it into the foliage for the rock apes. He brought a dirty pan back.
    Most of the children were not bold enough to approach the women. They just left their plates where they were and moved away. The men collected them for the women.
    The giant man never left the entrance.
    The adults all went away.
    Zouki spent a long time in a bubble of fear,