World and Thorinn

by Damon Francis Knight

  He waited, saying to himself, "It was a joke," but in his belly he knew better. Not for any prank would glum Goryat or his lazy sons have lifted those two great stones, the broken slabs left over from the roofing, which had lain half sunken in the earth beside the house for as long as Thorinn could remember, and laid them one atop another across the mouth of the well.

  He listened. Dimly from above, vibrating through the slabs of stone, came the deep rising and falling tones of Goryat's voice. Though he could not make out the words, the rhythm was familiar. What was it? Then he knew: the invocation to Snorri, the one Goryat had chanted when they had sacrificed the horse. The men of Hovenskar lived by their horses; for the mares to go dry was a disaster. A prudent man does not offend the gods; therefore Goryat had sacrificed a stallion. When Snorri refused the gift, what more natural than to offer a boy instead?

  Fear was a cold knot in his stomach. He took a deep breath, another. The walls of stone around him were like a shirt laced too tight. He felt half smothered already, and yet he knew there was no lack of air. It was thirst that would kill him—that would take days. To die of thirst in a well! Never mind, he had time, a precious gift—three or four days, perhaps, before he grew too weak. What else? He had his short sword, really an old Yen-metal dagger of Goryat's, in its leather scabbard; the broad leather belt it hung from, which might be useful in climbing; his wallet and its contents, which he now examined—light-box, fire stick and tinder, a few crumbs of cheese, a strip of dried horse-meat, and a few odds and ends, colored pebbles and the like, which he had picked up because they were pretty. Then there were the clothes he wore, shirt and breeks of buckskin, horsehide shoes, and the thongs that wrapped his calves: a rope of sorts might be made of all these things together. Thorinn sat down on the floor of the well and hugged his knees for warmth. In the glow of the light-box, which he had placed on a stone beside him, he saw a sudden flutter in the air: something small and gray had darted up zigzag to vanish in the darkness.

  Thorinn stared upward, mouth open, then snatched the light and raised it over his head. At first he saw nothing. Then a small gray creature detached itself from the wall, spread a pair of membranous wings, and swooped erratically to the other side. It was a wingmouse, one of the darkness-loving creatures that sometimes flew out of the cave on the valley slope two leagues above. Where had it come from?

  He turned the light on the opening at his feet. This was a narrow black gash at the side of the well, no more than a span in width, but he saw now that it widened below.

  Kneeling with his forehead pressed against the mud and pebbles, he was able to see a shelf of muddy earth a few ells away. It did not extend all the way under the opening, however, for he could just make out an edge of blackness on the near side—a second, deeper hole. Mud and pebbles cascaded slowly down into the darkness. The current of moist air was feeble but steady against his fingers; it seemed to rise straight toward him.

  Thorinn sat up, feeling his heart beat. Who cannot take the short way home must take the long, as the saying was. If he could somehow reach the cave of the wingmice... Go down, agreed the voice in his head. He pulled out his sword, jabbed the point into the lip of earth over the opening. A wedge of dirt and stones came away and drifted down into the darkness; he listened, but did not hear it strike. He pried loose another wedge, and another. When he had made the opening large enough to admit his body, he paused and again looked in. This time, in the dim glow of the light-box, he could see a tumbled mass of muddy earth and stone, sloping like a funnel. After a moment's thought, Thorinn unwrapped the thong from one leg of his breeks and tied it securely around the light-box. Kneeling again over the hole, he carefully lowered the box and let it drop. In darkness now except for the glow that came up through the hole in the well-bottom, he stood and listened. Goryat's voice still rambled overhead. He stared upward a moment silently in the darkness, then turned and lowered himself feet first into the hole.

  The dim-lit cavern rose around him. He landed, staggered, caught his balance. Crouching, for there was little headroom here, he picked up the light-box and brushed away the clods and gravel that had fallen on it. He held his breath to listen. The silence was so deep that he could hear the thud of his own heart. The low dirt ceiling, porous and stained reddish-brown in places, formed an irregular dome. Ceiling, walls and floor were mud-splashed; stones bigger than his head lay as if tossed about. The mound of mud and stones sloped away channeled and rutted. In one direction it disappeared under a great tilted stone, leaving an opening no more than a span high; in the other it went almost level into the darkness. Thorinn untied the thong from his light-box and wrapped it around his calf again. A faint current of air blew in his face as he moved down the slope.

  Just over his head, tongues of some crusty reddish material hung from the ceiling. Thorinn tugged at one curiously, and found that it was metal, rusted so thin that it broke in his hand. Below, the runneled mound grew shallower and seemed to end in a level floor, with a few scattered boulders. As he descended, the ceiling rose, forming an arch overhead, as if he were in the bore of some giant earthworm. The patches of rusty metal grew larger and closer together; he recognized others, twisted and broken, among the heaped earth and stones at his feet. Farther away, the arched roof of the tunnel glinted silvery through the rust. Thorinn moved along one wall, examining it as he went, and at last stopped in wonder: between the dots and patches of rust, wall and ceiling alike gleamed with silver-gray luster. The tunnel was lined with Yen-metal, the incorruptible; yet it had rusted away to nothing in places. With each long step he took, another yellow segment of the tunnel bloomed out of the darkness; presently it seemed to him that he was not moving at all, but the tunnel was leaping toward him. The tunnel was like a yellow eye with a vast black pupil at its center, and Thorinn began to feel a terror of it because it was so huge and so close. When he turned, he saw another yellow eye behind. After each step the silence pressed in on his head like a sound too loud to hear. He stopped when he was tired, gnawed a bit of his horsemeat and lay down to sleep. When he awoke, the yellow eyes of the tunnel were staring at him as before. He gnawed the strip of horsemeat again, but that only increased his thirst. He put two small pebbles in his mouth and sucked at them as he went, and that helped a little.

  Now the tunnel began to change; there were slight irregularities in the even curve of the ceiling and walls: yellow glassy knobs, in shape like candlewax, but hard as stone. As he went on, these irregularities made the tunnel even more unpleasant; they were like blinking eyelashes around the great staring eye. He had lost all account of the distance he had traveled; he knew that it must be ten leagues or more, and yet he could not escape the sense that he was only leaping up and down, while the stone danced toward him.

  He smelled the water before he heard it, a distant rushing sound in the tunnel ahead. Moment by moment it came nearer, and the breeze freshened: now he saw that the tunnel floor was broken by a great hole, ten ells across, that went down out of sight in undulating level stripes of brown and cream-colored stone. Great blocks of rubble were heaped on either side of it, and above them he could make out a black cavity vanishing into the ceiling. It would be no great matter, he thought, to leap from the boulders into the shaft above, and it was narrow enough to climb without a rope: but he would need both hands free. He unwrapped the thong from one leg and used it to tie the light-box to his forearm. He climbed the blocks and turned the light-box downward; he could not see the bottom, but the sound of the water dinned in his ears. As he gathered himself to leap, something curious happened: he took a step he had not intended. Beneath him, the water roared.

  He struggled in terror, but the stones dropped away and he was falling. Go down, said the voice in his head.

  2

  “ ^”

  How Thorinn lost his sword in a lake, and became a stonemason to get it back. It was the distant, thunderous roaring of the water that brought him up out of darkness. He was sprawled on wet stone,
retching feebly. His legs were still in the water, which lapped at his middle rhythmically and insistently, over and over in the same place. When he tried to crawl out of its reach, he found his legs too heavy to move. He belched up a watery surge of vomit against the stone. After a while, groaning, he managed to drag himself an ell or so away from the water, and rolled onto his back. The light-box was still bound to his arm, but its glow was so feeble that he could barely see it. When he looked up, the darkness pressed close against his eyes. The sound of the water roared endlessly, off in the darkness. He could remember the water plunging up over his head, the helpless motion, the falling...

  There had been an unaccustomed freedom when he rolled over on the stone; something was missing. He felt for the scabbard at his belt; it was there, but it was limp; the sword was gone. After an interval, some faint sound in the darkness brought him struggling up on one elbow. He listened, but the sound was not repeated: he heard only the steady, tumultuous roaring of the water. On his right cheekbone there was a thumb-sized lump, still welling blood, and his shoulder felt as if someone had clubbed it.

  A touch told him that the light-box was ruined. One end was split, the mica missing and all the sky-stuff washed out of the compartment except for a few shreds clinging to the soaked wood. The dim glow came from these.

  The knots in the wet thong were too much for his fingers, and at last he attacked them with his teeth, jerking at them stubbornly until they loosened enough to slip the light-box free. Holding it with care in both hands, he pried the wooden cap off the other end. The mica there was still whole. He unlatched the lid, raised it, and probed delicately in the second compartment. It was half full of chill water, in which he could feel the sodden sky-stuff afloat.

  Thorinn let out the breath he had been holding. He fumbled over the stone with his free hand until he found a hollow place, then tilted the box over it, pressing the sky-stuff against the inside of the compartment and straining the water out between his fingers.

  He remembered that he must put aside a portion of the dark sky-stuff. He unfastened his wallet and tipped the water out of it, then pinched up a good lump of sky-stuff between thumb and finger, and laid it carefully at the bottom of the wallet.

  Now, if there was enough of the bright sky-stuff left... Thorinn scraped the inside of the ruined compartment with his forefinger, brought it up with the fingernail dimly glowing, and touched it to the sodden mass in the other half of the box. The sky-stuff bloomed into pale light, dim but beautiful to his eyes.

  He shut the lid carefully upon it, then aimed the mica end of the box this way and that around him. He was sitting on a smooth flat rock that sloped gently to the water, and ran away featureless into the darkness on every other side.

  Now that he had light, his first care was to recover the few strands of sky-stuff that had escaped between his fingers when he poured the water out. He dipped them up out of the puddle one by one, dried them as best he could by shaking them gently, and deposited them in the box again. Next he thought of his hurts. Dark sky-stuff, moistened and bound to a wound, was said to be healing; but he had none to spare, nor any other simples. As for magic, he knew none; he could cast runes, and find lost objects sometimes, but that was all.

  He climbed stiffly erect. His sopping garments clung to him, his shoes squelched when he took a step; even his hair dripped cold down the back of his neck. He turned toward the distant roaring sound and slowly began to hop along the edge of the water, holding the light-box before him. After ten steps a black wall of rock gleamed out of the darkness. It went nearly to the water and rose overhead farther than his little light would reach. He turned away from the water, up the slope. After a few steps the stone on which he had been walking ended and gave way to other slabs, more uneven, higher and of a smaller size, while the wall curved gradually back, away from the roaring sound, until it ran parallel with the water.

  In thirty paces more, Thorinn came to a head-high shelf on which some leathery fans of fungus grew. He pulled them down, found them white and doughy inside, with a strong stale odor. He nibbled at one, found it palatable, then ate all the rest and looked for more. But he found no others of that size, only a mass of larger ones joined together in long rows, dead and as hard as spearwood. He turned away in disappointment, but after a moment, thinking better of it, went back and broke loose some of the dead fungus. It came away in a long staff, like a loaf of bread. He examined the inner surface closely in the glow of the light-box: it was porous and tinder-dry. Insects had tunneled through it, leaving portions of the mass so eaten away that they collapsed under his thumb. Thorinn knelt on the cold stone, opened his wallet and got out his fire stick. The tinder was a sodden mass of fiber. Thorinn untied it and spread it out on the stone: it might dry enough to be of use, he supposed, but that would take days.

  He dried his hands as well as he could by rubbing them along the rock, then picked up the staff of fungus again and began to break off small pieces. But his touch dampened them in spite of all he could do, and at last he broke the staff into two parts and began rubbing the ends together to grind off chunks and fragments. When he had a pile of these, he laid the rest of the fungus aside and picked up his fire stick. It was wet, but the plunger still slid freely enough in the cylinder. Thorinn took it apart, shook a few drops of moisture out of it, then, holding it braced against the stone between his legs, sat patiently driving the plunger in, over and over, until the cylinder grew warm to the touch and the inside was dry. He opened the fire stick then, wedged the cylinder upright into a crack in the stone, and used the shreds of fungus to pick up other shreds, preserving their dryness, and drop them into the fire stick. He put the plunger in, drove it down smartly, removed it: the shreds of fungus were glowing bright orange. He tipped them out carefully into a pile of the finest fragments and dust of the fungus; they glowed for a moment more, then went out.

  On the third try, the little fire caught. Thorinn protected it with his cupped hands, blew gently on it, fed it sparingly with tiny splinters, then with bigger ones, and at last had whole chunks and staves of fungus blazing.

  The yellow light danced high, reflecting glints from the rock wall for a distance of five or six ells, before it vanished into shadow. Peering up between his hands, Thorinn thought he could make out a vague glimmer that might be the ceiling.

  He crouched to the fire, soaking up the warmth with hands and face, then stripped off his soaked clothing and stood near the flames, turning himself like meat on a spit until at length he was dry and warm. The blood that welled slowly from the wounds in his cheek and shoulder began to clot. Feeling stronger, Thorinn walked along the wall of rock collecting more staves of fungus, which he piled near the fire; then he turned his shirt and breeks inside out and sat down to dry them. He emptied his wallet, putting the lump of sky-moss carefully aside in a cranny of the rock, and examining the rest of his belongings for the first time to make sure they were safe. He laid his possessions out carefully on the rock, and propped the wallet open to dry along with his shoes.

  The leather of his shirt steamed, turned a lighter brown. He pulled it right side out again and put it on, then the breeks. They were not thoroughly dry, but they were warm inside, and would do. He chose a long, heavy staff of fungus, laid one end of it in the heart of the fire. His shoes were as wet as ever, but he put them on, gathered his possessions into the wallet and hung it from his belt. By this time the end of the fungus staff was blazing; he lifted it out of the fire. Yellow flames continued to curl around its tip, and when he held it overhead, shading his eyes, it cast a ruddy light that made the cavern visible for a dozen ells or more on every side.

  The rock wall rose in one receding shelf after another back into the shadows. Tipping his head back now, Thorinn could make out the broken rock surface of the cavern ceiling. But although he walked down to the edge of the water and held the torch high, he could not see the other side—only the dark, glassy, faintly moving surface of the water and the dim
slope of the bottom under it, shelving down into darkness.

  He turned away from the roaring sound and followed the edge of the water in the other direction. The rock wall curved closer, became broken and covered with gray nodules of fungus; the stone shelf underfoot narrowed until there was barely room to walk, then gave way to heaped boulders. The thunderous roaring receded behind him, but another water-sound rose ahead. Holding his light out over the water, he saw the gleam of a swift current.

  Now the ceiling began to dip lower. Thorinn was picking his way from one water-rounded boulder to another at the foot of the sheer face of rock. The ceiling curved down, the shelf broadened out again into two flat stones... and between them the water ran in a curved dark torrent, brilliant as glass, into a narrow slot of darkness under the wall.

  On the other side of the outlet the shelf broadened again, and behind it was a tumbled mass of boulders. Thorinn leaped, landed safely.

  As well as he could judge, the cavern at this end was some twenty or thirty ells broad, and the ceiling might be as much as thirty ells high in the center. On this side, the ceiling slanted sharply down to the talus slope of boulders at the base of which he stood. Fungi grew here and there on the stones. Thorinn picked all the smaller ones he saw, ate some and put the rest into his wallet. He found another long staff of dead fungus and tore it down for a spare torch.

  The roaring grew louder as he circled the lake. Out across the dark water, an orange spark leaped into view: it was his fire, on the other side. He watched it for what seemed a long time, until it abruptly winked out again, and he realized he had passed the wall of rock that jutted out to the water. His torch was burning low. He paused to light the second one, and in its brighter flare, something white and vast rose out of the darkness. The roaring filled the cavern now as he moved closer; it stuffed his ears with noise. He shouted and could not hear himself. The air was full of flying droplets, drifting in faery arcs, winking and vanishing. The white water dropped thunderously into the lake and burst into white mounds of spray. Thorinn could dimly make out the shapes of rocks like giants' skulls behind the curtain of water. He could not see the top of it, and his torch was smoking and dimming now as he tried to move nearer; the wet air was putting it out. Thorinn retreated until the torch burned brightly again, then began to climb the heaped boulders, working his way toward the waterfall.