Raindrops were descending in long silver chains blown awry by the wind and mingled with the spray. The river rose again below him. The log was gone, and the shore. Now he saw the pebbled beach, but he would fall a dozen ells short of it. Down he went helplessly; the water sprang up over his chin and nose, then his good foot touched something and he leaped up, fighting for breath, down again, and he was in the shallows. He strove against the waves and in a moment staggered up alive onto the wet pebbles. The wind slackened and died; the waves subsided. Presently the river was glassy smooth as before. 10
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How Thorinn entered a town of seven towers, and dissolved its enchantment by accident.The Egg has a shell of stone which is coexistent and immensurable. All other substances springfrom and return to this shell. The upper portion of the shell, or lucilacunar, is by turns bright, thatmen may see, and dark, that they may rest. The lower portion, or solum, is covered with a layer ofearth, from which all rooted and crawling things arise; in which they are nourished in theirseason; and to which they return so that others may be engendered.The Abiotic Period. In the Abiotic Period, which endured immensurably until the beginning ofEobiotic times, the Egg was empty, bare and dark. There was no life nor motion in it, nor was anylife or motion conceivable, possible or prefigurable.
The Eobiotic Period. At the opening of the Eobiotic Period, nine dozen great gross years beforethe present era, the smooth shell of the Egg became porous and pitted; this took six great grossyears. Following this, the porous stone exuded vapors which became the air; this took eight greatgross years. Next the stone crumbled and formed the solum, a process which took four great grossyears; then angiosperms appeared both in the solum and in the lucilacunar; from these all otherrooted and crawling things developed by anabasis and phylogeny. These processes consumed stillanother eight great gross years. In all, the Eobiotic Era lasted twenty-six great gross years.The Paleobiotic Period. At the beginning of the Paleobiotic Period, the Egg was substantially aswe know it, but there was no higher life. Higher life now emerged in the form of coelelmintheswhich perfused from the vesicles of the homunculolilium, or man-lily. According to tradition, oneof these coelelminthes, a worm named Rambatnib, declared himself ruler of the Egg. Taking as hisconsort another worm named Dola, he reigned for two great gross years. Among his manydescendants were the helminthes, the coelenterates, and the rodents, one of whom, Palak byname, slew and deposed Rambatnib in the year 14,361. Palak and his consort Eula are creditedwith introducing the arts of music and weaving; hence the term palqu't for a brief garment orclout, and Palak-Eulalian Mode for a kind of music no longer played. They reigned until 15,350,when one of Palak's grandsons, a water-vole named Cletus, gathered an army and laid siege tothe palace. Palak, who loved luxury, was surprised and slain in his bath by Cletus, who thereuponassumed the throne and declared a Great Gross Year. It was during Cletus's reign that the NineBooks and Three Oracles were composed and the Cletian Games instituted. In 16,153 Cletusawarded himself an epithet, "the Golden, " by which he is still known in some chronicles, and in16,790 he died under mysterious circumstances of which nothing is now known. After aninterregnum, during which a flood carried away the treeposts of the Palace and its outworks, aconvocation known as the Broad Meadow Assembly chose as their new monarchs a kingfishercalled Wise and his wife, known as Yellow Hands.
The Archaeobiotic Period. After reigning for seven great gross years, Wise determined to becomea man, and henceforward was called Lembepatkin. He begged Yellow Hands to become a womanand remain his wife, but she refused and went down into the bullrushes, where her descendantshunt fish to this day. Lembepatkin took another wife, and ruled for three great gross years. Heinstituted the art of writing, reformed the Four Directions, and founded the Great College. Hewas succeeded by his son, Tilvebegarengen.
The Historical Period. The first persons of whom authenticated written records have survived tothe present day are two brothers named Om and Hem, who in the year 63,794 disputed therulership of the entire Egg, Om being then the monarch of the East Kingdom and Hem of theWest. For a time the struggle was equal, but Om had an artificer called Firebringer who made forhim certain devices, one of which was said to be a flame-breathing bladder, and another anartificial mole, which tunneling under the enemy's outworks caused great destruction. Seeing thatthe contest went against him, Hem called on the services of another artificer, Redbird, who madefor him comparable devices, and together the brothers and their armies wrought such devastationin the Egg that after their final battle, in the autumn of 63,797, both kings and all their captainslay slain and all their works leveled to the ground. After another interregnum, the survivors andtheir descendants agreed never to use such instruments again in war or peace. An early religiouspoem of this period, the Song of Closing, movingly depicts the moral earnestness of the survivorsby means of an allegory in which they seal up the walls of the Egg forever. In 63,893 the GreatCollege was reconstituted and the treeposts erected for the present corpus of knowledge. Thenames of the Masters of the Great College, from that day to this, are Lobeck, Morblen, Binton,Winsin, Tenwin, Ponsin, Tenlon, Mistwin, Benlob, Finmor, Kinten, Tabeck, Vennkin, Windesh,Remten, Benrosh, Bistfin, Sinpast, Roshkin, Pongass, Sinmar, Pastwin, Tetheck, Wishchin,Deshton, Gasstab, Mistmass, Rishten, Bretlob, Friteck, Blenkot, Findesh, Klanchet, Bretsin,Gassplan, Menchet, Lobnet, Niteck, Finplan, Pastchet, Sinzet, Mistklan, Votmass, Lesteck,Dretbrin, Remfret, Tremnet, Winchet, Deshfin, Eckrosh, Tethdret, Wetklan, Findesh, Brinsin,Findesh, Gasstlin, Netmist, Lestnet, Wishteth, Roshnet...
Thorinn crawled under a bush, untied his bundles with shaking fingers, and slept. When he awoke, it was full green dark; he was wet and cold, and the wind was shaking droplets of water from the bush onto his face. For a moment he thought himself back in the cave behind the cataract; then he remembered, and sat up, shivering. He tied his bundles around him and crawled out from under the bush. The green skylight was too faint for walking, and he climbed the nearest tree instead. From its tip, a hundred ells above the ground, he could make out the clustered towers not, far off in the bend of the river. They were dark and still.
As he watched, a sudden bar of gold appeared at the end of the cavern. It widened, swelled, grew paler; then it was sweeping overhead, and as it passed Thorinn glimpsed a brown bird wheeling above, head cocked, one bright black eye looking down. The skylight dazzled him, and when he could see again the bird was gone.
He followed the river bank eastward awhile, then climbed the slope and found himself in a plowed field. It had been planted to beans, or some other garden vegetable, and the young shoots were coming up half-covered by weeds. Nearer now, the towers were surrounded by a huddle of smaller buildings. As he approached, he could see that they were built around the trunks of young trees; they appeared to be made of withy, and sometimes the green branch of a tree peeped out to show that it was still there. Some of the curving walls were plastered with a substance like pale mud, others daubed with bright color in stripes and circles. Grasses and weeds were sprouting in the earth around the buildings; there were a few marks of hoofs and clawed feet, but none that looked recent, and none that were human. The byres were vacant, doors standing open.
The seven towers clustered in a crescent around a great courtyard overgrown with vines and grass. After the first two hundred ells or so each tower was capped with a conical roof, but from this roof sprang another, smaller tower, not from the peak of the roof but to one side of it, and sometimes the roof of this tower, too, sprouted still another tower. Buttresses joined the towers; some of these had windows or even balconies in them.
Thorinn went on into the empty courtyard. He listened: not a sound. From the balconies overhead hung vines with yellowed leaves; there was a sweetish smell of decay in the air. Among the litter between the buildings he found several jugs and drinking vessels, a tunic of red woven cloth, curiously made with bone fastenings at the sides; a broken framework of wood with some parchmentlike substance stretched over it; a mi
rror of polished silver in a bone frame; and a little idol or godlet made of soft cloth, with a gray button-eyed face and long naked wings like those of a wingmouse.
He sprang up to the first balcony and peered within. The floor was resilient, loosely woven of cords; there were a few low carved tables, but no chairs or beds. The ceiling seemed extraordinarily high; below it were rods that might have been perches for birds.
Beyond was a maze of other rooms, gloomy even by day. Thorinn found a light-box on the wall, divided into two compartments like his own, the moss in one compartment still feebly alight. He transferred a pinch of it to the other compartment and carried it into the next room, then set it down again; it made him uneasy to be surrounded by such a bubble of light with darkness beyond it. A few moments later, when he turned to look behind, he saw the translucent partition dully glowing. The rooms were arranged in a ring around a vast well in the center of the tower, thirty ells across and at least two hundred deep. Dim chinks of light, far up, illuminated it. The silence was murmurous. Thorinn retreated into the rooms again.
Litter was everywhere, but no more than you would expect to find in any household—clothing, scraps of this and that, things that might have been children's toys carved of wood. In closets and chests he found more clothing, all with the same curious side-fastenings, hanging neatly or carefully folded; also cabinets full of curious little wooden and bone implements, of whose use he had no notion. The feeling was strong on him that the people who lived here had only gone away for a while—but where could they have gone?
Over most of the valley, the tall trees grew toward the tops of the slopes, along the cavern walls; farther down there was scrub and then meadow, with a few coppices here and there. Occasionally he found a tangle of brush and vines, compacted into a single whorled mass with tunnels all through it, some of them large enough to admit a man. He ventured into one of these, and had crawled a dozen ells into a pleasant leafy gloom, when, as he pulled himself around a bend, he heard a "Whuff!" and found himself staring into a furry, big-eyed face almost as big as his own. He was too astonished to think of drawing his sword, even if there had been room in the tunnel; the beast turned and vanished, and Thorinn, with some difficulty and many scratches, backed out again.
Droppings were plentiful, from pellets the size of millet-grains to chalky lumps the size of his fist. In the soft turf of the meadows and along the river bank he found the prints of sharp hooves or claws, angled backward. One early morning he surprised a thing like a large hare, and knocked it over with a stone. It got up and leaped off into the bushes, but not before he had seen that its hind legs had blunt spiky claws, and that it leaped by thrusting its toes into the ground.
Birds' eggs there were in plenty, in the treetops and in the reeds along the river. The water birds mocked him with scornful honks, a few ells away in the stream, but when they went ashore with their webbed feet they were almost helpless; he lay in wait for them in the rushes, caught them, and wrung their necks. Three times more he climbed a tree just before dawn or nightfall, and three times he saw the same brown bird.
To pass the time, Thorinn let the box tell him more of its stories about how the world was made. There were little bits of matter, too small to see, and these bits themselves were made up of smaller bits, and so on. Then there were things that were not solid at all and could not be seen either, and with these things it was possible to keep time from passing in certain places, so that, for instance, the weight of the earth above a cavern in the Underworld could not crush it, and also the heat of the lower parts of the earth could be drawn off and kept until it was needed. For all these things the box had outlandish words of its own, and it always told the same stories concerning them, but it could not give any proof that they were true, and Thorinn could not see what use it was to know them.
As for the world itself, the box maintained that it was a great ball, the Midworld being its surface, with a sort of tent all around it to keep the air in. When Thorinn asked what was beyond that, the box replied that it was a vast space like a cavern with no walls, which nevertheless did not go on forever but had an end somewhere; and when Thorinn inquired what was beyond that, the box replied that the question was senseless.
The box further maintained that the world was pushing itself about in this enormous cavern by means of tubes which pierced the tent and from which invisible particles were expelled. Snorri's Pipe, it appeared, was one of these tubes, but just when Thorinn thought he had understood this, and asked why the tubes had only now begun to make the world go faster, the box replied that on the contrary, they were slowing it down.
He tried to teach the box a game of insults, which Withinga and Untha had often played in the evenings (though with them the game had never lasted long before one player lost his temper); but he could not seem to explain to the box what an insult was, and having to play both sides took the fun out of it. Weary of walking on his toes and crawling in the underbrush, he cut a piece of deadwood with a projecting stub, flattened it with his sword and tied it to one shoe so that the stub was angled backward under the ball of his foot. Now he could leap as the hares and other animals did, though he could never catch them.
After the first few days he grew tired of sleeping in the wet forest, and moved into one of the tower rooms, a small chamber directly under the peak of the roof, where, he reasoned, he would have the most warning if the owners came back; it had a window through which he could escape quickly into the trees if necessary. He slept poorly here, and had bad dreams.
He awoke one morning with the fantastic notion that there were cellars under the city, with hidden trap doors, and that the tower people with all their children and livestock were hiding below. The feeling was so strong that he went and looked at the floors of the central shaft, and the byres and workshops, but they were solid packed earth, as he had known before. Yet, if the people and their animals were still in the cavern, they must be hidden underground. He felt them there, by day and night, dumb eyeless presences.
He explored the valley, first downstream, then up. Twice he found small steadings tucked away between the forest and the meadows, but they were as deserted as the city. At the far end of the valley, the river turned into a labyrinth of more and more sluggish waterways. Wading with poles in the marsh, Thorinn found that the water flowed under the cliff through a slot too narrow for a man. For sport and to vary his diet, he took a bow and some arrows he had found in the city, and practiced shooting at a mark until he had lost all but two of the arrows in the brush. He had a tendency to shoot high, and supposed that was because the arrow, not being as heavy as it ought to be, fell too slowly in flight.
He fetched more arrows and continued to practice outdoors; he also hung a mark at the top of one of the inner wells in the city and shot at it from below. When he could hit this target more often than not, he threw it into the air and practiced shooting at it as it soared. He kept on, day after day, until he seldom lost an arrow, and could hit the target in flight nine times out of ten. Then one morning he got up before dawn and climbed a tree. Balancing himself on a limb just below the tip, he unbuckled his belt, passed it around the stem and refastened it. Now, leaning back against the belt, he could look upward without losing his balance or risking a sore neck.
In the treetops all around him, birds were making their morning noises. He waited. The golden bar appeared at the end of the cavern, and he found time to wonder where the light came from that turned the dark sky-moss bright—did the sky of one cavern join that of another, all around the Underworld? He took an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, drew the bowstring back. The light swept overhead, and in the instant of its passage he clearly saw the brown bird. He released the arrow; it vanished silently into the glare, but he knew it had been truly aimed. He put another arrow to the bow and squinted upward. There! A dark shape gliding down, turning, crippled. He let fly, missed, nocked another arrow, released it, and this time saw it strike. The bird was pinwheeling slowly into th
e trees. Thorinn marked the spot where it vanished and scrambled down.
A rhythmic thrashing in the underbrush led him to his quarry. Transfixed by two arrows, in the body and in the wing, it lay tangled in spiky bushes, still trying to fly. One wing was crippled; the other flapped, flapped, flapped.
Thorinn bent nearer. It was a large bird, bigger than a hawk, but having a short, straight bill. Its feathers were dark brown above, buff below. Its bright eye stared fixedly past him; the beating of its wing neither quickened nor faltered. Thorinn drew his sword and struck. The blade rebounded; the bird's neck was bent but not cut through, and there was no blood. The rhythmic flapping continued. Thorinn struck again, with no better result. Finally, conquering his revulsion, he pulled the thing out into a clear spot, where, holding it against a fallen log, he chopped with his sword until he had cut the neck half through and opened a gash in the body beneath the crippled wing. Cut feathers drifted away in the wind of his blows, but still the bird did not bleed. At last the flapping stopped. Inside the body Thorinn saw unfamiliar dry shapes, unlike the entrails of any bird or beast. He carried the carcass back to the clearing outside the city and there, on a flat stone, gutted and dismembered it. In all its outer parts, feathers, skin, eyes, talons, it was like a bird. Inside were bulging strands, some dun color, some yellowish, that were flexible and soft to the touch but so resistant that his Yen-metal sword could barely cut them; here were networks and skeins of red threads and blue; here clusters of white balls. "Box, what sort of bird is this?"
World and Thorinn Page 14