After a time Thorinn threw in another stone and again saw the pause, the sudden leap of water, the crown of droplets twisting and wavering as they slowly fell, the spreading rings like magical moving fortifications. In the tall ring-waves, suspended particles streamed up one side and down the other. The waves kept the same precise distance one from another: how did they do it? Thorinn tried throwing in two stones at once, and saw to his amazement that the water rings passed through each other without resistance, throwing up a rounded peak at each crossing-point, and as the crossing-points moved, the peaks effortlessly moved with them and then disappeared. He had seen all this before, in the spring above Hovenskar, but there the waves had been so shallow and quick that he had never thought how mysterious they were.
A little farther downstream he found a shallow backwater where he stripped and bathed himself. The water leaped around him, stinging cold; afterward, he made a small fire at the water's edge, using bits of the driftwood that was heaped at the bend of the river. The flames curved out, blunt and pale, and although he added more fuel, they never rose much higher; it was as if some of the virtue had gone out of the wood.
A light rain began. He put on his clothes, covered the remains of his smoldering fire, and wandered abstractedly up the river bank, pulling himself along from one sapling to another. Presently the rain stopped and the city came into view, nearer than he had yet seen it, across the next reach of the river. Thorinn climbed a tree to look at it. Perhaps, he thought, the city was inhabited by nocturnal demons, like those who had tormented him in the other cavern, but he doubted it. It was something else: something was wrong. A brown bird passed overhead, almost invisible in the sky-glare. Below, the river was too wide to leap across. Thorinn climbed down and looked at it. Farther upstream the river might be narrow enough to jump, but it would take him too long to find out. He cut a long pole from a sapling and went looking for a log of deadwood.
He found one in a tangle of brush, a bare section of trunk two ells long with a smaller limb projecting at a narrow angle, like a big finger and a little finger. The limb, he thought, would make the log less likely to roll over and would save him the trouble of finding some way to lash two logs together. He dragged it into the shallows where it floated barely out of water; but as the trunk was curved there was a portion of it that stood higher than the rest, and Thorinn stepped aboard there with his pole. The log dipped majestically, lurched, rose again while a wave surged out knee-high all around him. He planted the pole on the bottom and pushed cautiously; the log seemed to move, but in the wrong direction, and Thorinn found himself toppling forward. He straightened up and tried again, and presently found that by leaning back against the pole he could make the log move in the direction he wished. The bottom sloped away until he was using half the length of the pole. Presently the current took him, but he had got the hang of it now—the trick was to keep the log moving against the water, for it was easiest to push when it was moving. With each stroke the forward end of the log rose and dipped, making a tall arrow-shaped wave and scattering a few balls of water the size of his fist that wabbled away bright in the skylight. A breeze sprang up, and gentle wavelets began to march past the log one after another. As the breeze freshened, the waves grew taller and farther apart. Thorinn realized with alarm that the log was already pitching dangerously. Up it went, standing almost upright, then tilted back as the next wave thrust under it. Now each wave had a white crest, and the air was full of water-balls that burst cold against his face. Desperately he kept his balance on the log, knowing that if he fell off he must drown. The pole hampered him and he let it go; the wave swung it back across his chest. It was not a heavy blow, but he realized that he could no longer feel the log with his feet. Half-blinded by spray, he saw the log lifting past him and clutched at it. Then he was in the water, with the slippery dead weight twisting in his arms. His head went under; cold water filled his ears, his nose, his mouth. He struggled, somehow found himself atop again, clutching the limb with one hand and the trunk with the other. He had time for one breath before the log tilted headlong down the next wave, down, down, until he thought it must go over; then he realized with horror that it was going over. The cold water strangled him; he clawed his way out of it up the trunk as it rose to the crest, pitched, began to slide down. Through the pelting drops of spray he had a blurred glimpse of the river and something gray-brown that moved overhead; then he was sliding down the wave again. A cross-wave tilted the log again and he was half in the water, choking. A lurch took them up again. Cold thoughts came into his head: if he let go the log he sank; if he clung to it he drowned. At the top of the surge, he balanced himself desperately atop the log, let go, and leaped away. The river dropped below him, the whitecaps like the tops of spears. He could see the far shore, still a hundred ells distant. Now the river rose toward him again; through the flying spray he saw the log lurch upward, reached, grasped it, swung around with agonizing slowness, and went under. He came up drenched and half-blinded; he balanced himself again somehow on the plunging log and leaped once more, this time at an angle.
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
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 spring from and return to this shell. The upper portion of the shell, or lucilacunar, is by turns bright, that men may see, and dark, that they may rest. The lower portion, or solum, is covered with a layer of earth, from which all rooted and crawling things arise; in which they are nourished in their season; and to which they return so that others may be engendered.
The Abiotic Period. In the Abiotic Period, which endured immensurably until the beginning of Eobiotic 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 before the present era, the smooth shell of the Egg became porous and pitted; this took six great gross years. Following this, the porous stone exuded vapors which became the air; this took eight great gross years. Next the stone crumbled and formed the solum, a process which took four great gross years; then angiosperms appeared both in the solum and in the lucilacunar; from these all other rooted and crawling things developed by anabasis and phylogeny. These processes consumed still another 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 as we know it, but there was no higher life. Higher life now emerged in the form of coelelminthes which perfused from the vesicles of the homunculolilium, or man-lily. According to tradition, one of these coelelminthes, a worm named Rambatnib, declared himself ruler of the Egg. Taking as his consort another worm named Dola, he reigned for two great gross years. Among his many descendants were the helminthes, the coelenterates, and the rodents, one of whom, Palak by name, slew and deposed Rambatnib in the year 14,361. Palak and his consort Eula are credited with introducing the arts of music and weaving; hence the term palqu't for a brief garment or clout, 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 to the palace. Palak, who loved luxury, was surprised and slain in his bath by Cletus, who thereupon assumed the throne and declared a Great Gross Year. It was during Cletus's reign that the Nine Books and Three Oracles were composed and the Cletian Games instituted. In 16,153 Cletus awarded himself an epithet, "the Golden, " by which he is still known in some chronicles, and in 16,790 he died under mysterious circumstances of which nothing is now known. After an interregnum, during which a flood carried away the treeposts of the Palace and its outworks, a convocation known as the Broad Meadow Assembly chose as their new monarchs a kingfisher called Wise and his wife, known as Yellow Hands.