The World and Thorinn

1 How Thorinn Goryatson learned he was not the son of his father, and descended into theUnderworld without wishing to do so.

In the days of King Alf there was a house in windy Hovenskar at the hub of the world, where the sky turns round the Pipe of Snorri. The house was of sods, with a stone roof, for no other sort of roof can stand against the winds that blow, this way and that way, over cold Hovenskar as the sky turns.

Now Hovenskar is like a yellow bowl, and from this side of it to that side is three days' journey.Long is the spoon with which the gods eat porridge from that bowl! Northward can be seen the half of Snorri's Pipe, a gray-green column three leagues in thickness, yet so tall that it seems to prick the sky like a needle; and around it the sky swings, half light and half dark. Therefore at high noon there is an eye of darkness peering over the rim of Hovenskar, and at midnight an eye of brightness. And the wind blows from the dark to the light, this way and that way over Hovenskar.

In this unlucky place, in the days of King Alf, lived a man called Goryat and his three sons, who were outlaws driven out of Kjelsland. Goryat and the two elder sons were gray-skinned Lowlanders, four ells tall, with tusks like daggers; but the youngest son was pink as a Highland man, and stood no taller than Goryat's belt-buckle. Though he had a withered leg, he was sturdy and quick, and could jump higher than his own head. Thus he was called Thorinn, which is a kind of flea.

Now it happened on the last day of King Alf (when a roof-tile dashed his brains out) that for thousands of leagues, even unto the land of the Skryllings, the earth became flat where it had formerly risen, and arose where it had been flat. Rivers left their banks, lakes became marshes,the air was one black scream of birds, and everywhere cook-pots rolled out of kitchens, while the cooking-wenches tumbled after.

But of all this the four of Hovenskar knew nothing. They knew only that Snorri's Pipe had begun to roar, with a sound that thrummed in the bones and could not be shut out, though they stopped their ears with their fingers; that their bodies had turned light, as in a dream; that there was an earth-shock that made men and horses dance on the ground like lice on a griddle; and that bits of the sky were falling like frostflakes.

Before they could gather their wits about them, one of the horses, a mare with foal, had broken her leg in the peat bog, and the rest were scattering up the high curve of the valley, from whence it was half a day's work to drive them home again.

Now this was a weighty matter, and it grew weightier still on the second day, when the other four mares went dry. Goryat took the finest of the remaining horses, a stallion of two summers, and sacrificed him to Snorri. But the demon did not leave off roaring: instead, as Goryat finished his prayers, there was a second earth-shock, and from the well nearby came the crack of stonebreaking, and all the water ran away into the Underworld, leaving the well dry as a skull.Then the two elder sons urged their father to leave Hovenskar and fare southward, but the old man, whose hand was still heavy though his mane had turned white as frost, would have none of it. "In all the Midworld there is no safety for me or those of my blood save in Hovenskar," said Goryat to his sons. "Nor may Thorinn leave, for I have sworn by Wit and Bal to keep him." Thus did the two sons learn from their father's lips for the first time, though in truth it was plain to be seen, that Thorinn was no blood brother of theirs.

"But if we sacrifice another horse, we may go empty-bellied through the winter," said Withinga, the eldest son.

"Moreover, it's plain enough that Snorri wants no horses." Thus spoke Untha, the second son. "Ishe the demon of waters, or not? When the horse was offered, he was vexed and broke our well. "

"We must give him something better, " said Withinga.

"Idle is boasting when the hands are empty," Goryat answered. "What, must we fare to Skryllings land and bring back a sacrifice?"

"Not so far as that, " Withinga said. And he pointed his chin toward the hillside, where Thorinn was leading the horses to the spring.

Goryat said then, "Would you make me an oath-breaker? I tell you, I swore to keep the boy until Snorri takes him. "

Untha rose, and pointed to the black mouth of the well. "Then give him to Snorri. "So it was agreed. When Thorinn came down, suspecting nothing, they said to him, "Go into the well, see whether it can be mended." Then when he was in the well, they pulled up the bucket and covered the well-mouth with a great stone, and prayed over it.

The Flea lay upon his back, hands behind his head, the knee of his good leg cocked over the other. His left leg was shorter than the right and had always been so; he could grip a horse with his thighs well enough, but when he was afoot, the bad leg was too feeble to bear his weight for more than a moment, and so he hopped everywhere (though Goryat's sons always said the short leg was good for walking on the hillside, so long as he took care to go withershins).

The blades of yellow grass formed a wall close around him, shielding his body from the wind that rustled overhead. Through half-shut eyes he could see the wavering patch of brightness that was the sky. Drowsy scents of grass and blossoms were in his nostrils, mingled with the faint but pungent smell of horse that clung to his leather garments. He could hear the stiff grass-blades crackling as insects crawled among them; the snort and stamp of the horses farther up the hillside; and, more distantly, the unending drone of Snorri's Pipe.

Deliciously hidden and at ease, more than half asleep, he was daydreaming of distant mountains and brightly-dressed people when a new sound roused him.

He started up on one elbow, listened: there it came again. He pivoted with one hand on the matted grasses, sprang up. Far below, over the thousand moving waves of yellow grass, he could see Goryat's steading in the bright half of the valley—the house with its roof of gray stone and its thread of smoke bent by the wind, the horse-barn, the meathouse, the tanyard, the well, all tiny as pebbles. Near the house a mannikin stood; its mane was only a dot of yellow. The arms were lifted; it shook a fist. After a second the hail came again:... ooorriii... Thorinn waved his arms in answer. The tiny figure gestured with one hand, then turned away. It was already loping slowly toward the house when the sound arrived... ooom doww... They had thought of some other task for him; that was only to be expected. Breathing the keen wind, Thorinn forgot all disappointment as he raised his head. It was mid-morning, and where the tip of the Pipe touched the sky beyond the valley rim, the dome was split by a clean arc that soared high over Thorinn's head, dividing the sky into pale light and greenish darkness. Half the valley below was daylit; the other half lay still in deep night, pricked here and there by the witchfires of fallen sky-stuff. Over in the peat bog, wisps of night mist were rising like ghosts; dew still sparkled in the grass along the daylight edge.

As the day wore on, the arc in the sky would creep around the rim of the valley. One could almost see it move; Thorinn had lain many an hour on the windswept hill, watching it, until he fell fast asleep, and the horses roamed where they would.

Tits and fieldfares were busy in the cropped grass around the spring, quarreling and chirruping over the bits of grain they found in the horse droppings. Hawks were awheel over the high rim; but in the dark side, Thorinn knew, owls and nightjars were stirring. Northward from Hovenskar, it was said, there were night creatures that never ventured into daylight, but followed the darkness eternally, around and around. Someday Thorinn would go and hunt them; Gory at would give him leave when he was a man. The world was good, though Snorri rumbled.

Above him near the outcrop and the spring, the eleven giant horses turned their heads alertly. Thorinn filled his lungs and shouted. "Ho, Biter! Ho, Stonehead!" The horses snorted, tossed their manes; Stonehead, the old stallion, showed his wicked teeth. Thorinn bent his knee, leaped over the grasstops, alighted two ells higher on the slope, leaped again. The horses, pretending fright, wheeled and lumbered away. Thorinn's leg pumped furiously; he bounded, leaped like a grasshopper after the soaring horses. He passed two stragglers, nervous young colts. The earth trembled, bouncing him higher. Blood burned in his veins; the wind whipped his cheeks, made his eyes smart with tears. Head down, his massive hindquarters bunching like fists, old Stonehead flew before. Stones and clots of turf spattered Thorinn like hail. He was flying, lungs afire. Into—the yellow—sea—and out. Ahead, the stallion's round eye glinted; the old horse turned, laboring upslope. In two breaths Thorinn was beside him; a final leap, and the rough mane was against his face, his arms and thighs gripping the shaggy neck, while the world wheeled.

Winded and utterly happy, Thorinn clung to the stallion's neck. After a plunge or two, earth and sky steadied around him; obedient to his will, the old stallion, who could have flung him five ells if he chose, stood snorting and trembling. Thorinn reached up, grasped a thick hairy ear at the root, pulled gently. The stallion dipped his huge head, turned and sprang.

The other horses, standing at gaze a few hundred ells away, fell upward into distance. The steep yellow bowl of the valley came plunging up, the wind whined in his ears—down, with a bone-breaking jolt, another leap—down, another. Bounding below, the tiny shapes of the houses grew larger with each dizzy arc. The stallion's neck strained against Thorinn's cheek; they were flying like the wind, they would leap and never come down!

The descent grew shallow, the hillside was behind them; now they were bounding across the level earth toward the stone-roofed house, and the gray figure beside it. Thorinn recognized Withinga, tall as the house-eaves, in his stained leather jerkin and his belt studded with metal bosses. Obedient to Thorinn's touch, Stonehead planted his hooves, slid to a bone-jarring halt. While Withinga watched sourly, Thorinn vaulted to the ground, slapped the old stallion's rump. Stonehead snorted, wheeled and bounded away toward the distant shapes of the other horses high on the hill.

"Do you want to break your neck, Flea?" Withinga asked, taking a stride forward.

"When Snorri calls, man must answer," said Thorinn. He hopped back, expecting a blow, but Withinga only stared at him for a moment, then said: "So it is. Come, the Old Man has a task for you." Thorinn followed him around the moss-grown sods of the house. Under the weight of the roof, the sod walls had bulged year by year until the house had lost all its squareness and was shaped like a cheese. Beyond in the dooryard, Untha and old Goryat squatted at the well-curb, beside the empty leather horse trough. They looked up as Withinga and Thorinn approached; Untha, who had been scratching the bare earth idly with his dagger, gaped witlessly, showing tusks as long as Thorinn's thumb. His yellow eyes, slitted like a goat's, stared at Thorinn as if he were a stranger.

Without speaking, Withinga sank down beside the other two. Squatting in a row, the three stared at Thorinn. Their massive, yellow-maned heads were on a level with his. Beyond them, the split sky arched over the rim of Hovenskar. At last Goryat spoke. "The well is broken."

"Did you call me down here to tell me that?" asked Thorinn in honest surprise.

"Hold your tongue and listen," said Goryat. "It is in my mind that the well may be mended. Therefore, jump into it and see."

Thorinn hopped to the well-curb and looked down. The deep shaft receded into darkness, past the leather thong and the dim round shape of the bucket; he could not see the bottom.

"How shall we mend it?" he asked.

"With stones," grunted Withinga. "The fool asks, wise men must answer. Go down, Flea." Thorinn bent toward the dark receding shaft, from which a faint cool breath arose; then a new thought struck him. "If this should be long in the doing," he said, "who will cook the dinner?" The two brothers glanced at each other again, and Withinga stroked his chin with a taloned gray hand.

"Well asked," he said grudgingly. "Also, who will fetch peat for the fire, and tend the horses?"

"And milk the mares, supposing they turn fresh again, and make cheese?" put in Untha, scowling and toying with his dagger. "That is no work for a man."

Thorinn stared from one to another, for their words made little sense; but Goryat said, "Peace," and gave them a hard look under his frosty brows. "Witlings have I for sons. The thing is decided." In his hands was a little framework of yellowed ivory carved with runes, a magical implement which Thorinn had seen only twice before. "Go down."

Thorinn hesitated, but he felt a pressure as if an invisible hand had been laid along his back, and he realized that the old man had put a spell on him, a geas: go down he must. He bent and picked up the bucket thong. He tugged at the end of it, where it was knotted around one of the stones of the curb, found it secure, and backed over the rim of the well-mouth, lowering himself hand under hand. The three white-and-yellow-maned heads turned to watch him. They disappeared over the rim of the well, but a moment later, as he descended, they came back into view, peering down. The three silhouetted figures seemed to rise and become foreshortened, the horizon sank, the ground bulged upward like water closing over his head. Clods and an occasional pebble, scraped loose by his feet, rebounded below. After a moment or two he heard something strike the bottom. Cold air breathed up past him. The edge of the leather bucket touched his thighs. Holding the thong with one hand, he pulled the bucket up free of his legs, hung a moment, and dropped.

The bottom drifted nearer. Dimly he saw it, bent his knees, took the shock. But the bottom of the well was tipped beyond his expectation, and it threw him against the side, making his head ring. He straightened himself and breathed deep. How cold it was down here! and no wonder, for the water they got from the well, before it went dry, had been cold as ice. That was natural, for the deeper you went, the farther from the warmth-giving sky. Thus it was colder here on the floor of the ancient ocean than it was in the Highlands; colder again at the bottom of the well; and if you could dig deeper still into the earth, eventually you would come to the land of eternal ice, the Underworld, where Snorri ruled. Go down.

Thorinn crouched and felt for the source of the steady slow current that breathed up around his legs. Oddly, although the air was cool, it seemed warmer than the earth and stones around him. His hands found an opening, half choked with mud. So far as he could tell, the rock table under the well had broken, and he was now crouching on a tilted slab of it that had fallen and stuck. He heard a sound, twisted to look up. The mouth of the well was a disk of brightness, surrounded by concentric half-circles of gray reflected light. The sound was repeated, and Thorinn saw a tiny black dot rise to the well-mouth, bob and disappear.

For a moment he could not believe it; then he stood hastily and shouted, "Hi! Don't pull up the bucket!

How am I to get up again?"

A maned head appeared, in silhouette against the sky, and looked down at him silently. It vanished; another appeared at a different place; then it, too, was gone. "Ho!" shouted Thorinn, hearing his voice boom up the shaft.

He listened. Over the slow sighing of the wind, a sound so familiar in Hovenskar that it was heard only when it changed, he caught the grumbling voice of Goryat.

"Lift your end!"

Footsteps scraped on the pebbles beside the well-curb. Then something dark came into view and hung suspended in the middle of the disk. The broken circle of brightness around it flickered and vanished, the light on the walls turned gray and went out. A stony clang echoed down. The black air pressed close to Thorinn's eyes, and seemed as heavy to breathe as water. There was a long pause, then another clang. Thorinn's heart was leaping, but he reached for his wallet calmly enough, found the wooden light-box and uncovered the window of mica at the end. The pale witchfire of the sky-stuff inside brought his arms back in ghostly dimness, and a vague circle of the dirt wall; but though he shielded it with his hand, it would not reach the top of the shaft.

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.