Cautiously, he began crawling up the steps like a toddler. Slowly and painfully he made it to the top, all the while his eyes adjusting to the strengthening light, the strange indescribable loudness of the rushing noise fading away behind him. Eventually he stood on the last step, facing the jagged hole he had broken in the wall when he had fallen through. Lifting his foot over the crumbling stones, he stepped back into the clearing, glad for the second time that day to be alive. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but squinting at the sun, he estimated at least two hours to have gone by. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Pilgrim, still tied to the tree where he had left him.
When the prince reached his horse, Pilgrim immediately rubbed the length of his face against his master’s shoulder and whinnied softly, as if impatient to be untied.
Tristan smiled. But even smiling hurt.
“No, I won’t let you run free again,” he said softly into the stallion’s ear. “Not keeping you tied up is the cause of all my troubles today. You’re staying here.”
Ignoring his aching body, he returned to the hole in the wall and began to loosen more stones, allowing additional light to enter the depths below. After a good half hour, he very gingerly stepped back through the hole and onto the first of the stone steps. He couldn’t see much, but thought he could make out a shape near the bottom.
He loosened a few more stones and peered down again, trying to make out the shape. It looked as if it was mounted on the wall near the bottom of the steps.
A torch!
Carefully, slowly, he made his way back down, not knowing whether he was doing the right thing. His mind and body had certainly had enough punishment for one day, but his curiosity was overpowering him. The great rushing noise filled his ears again, hammering his senses with all its fury. It seemed always to go onward, unabated and unrelenting. And yet the sound was frustratingly familiar.
When he reached the bottom step, he could see that his discovery was indeed a wall torch. Tristan never traveled into the woods without flint, which he now produced from his pants pocket. Reaching up, he was barely able to take down the torch from the wall. He could tell it had not been lit in a long time, but it still smelled of oil. Leaning it up against the stone steps by its wooden handle, he struck his flint, and the torch erupted into flame. He turned the torchlight toward the darkness.
What he saw made the breath leave his lungs in disbelief.
He was standing on the floor of a huge, oddly shaped underground cavern, at least several hundred feet long in each direction, as well as high. Stalactites of every color and description hung from the ceiling, some so long they almost reached the floor. Some of their older brothers had in fact already found the floor some time long ago, creating here and there the impression of marvelously beautiful stone columns connecting the floor and ceiling. But it was still too dark to see very far. And the noise went on and on, roaring in his ears.
Looking to the wall at his left he saw another torch, and then another and yet another, their shadows extending like fingers along the murky lengths of the cavern walls. He lit many of them in a row, the noise growing louder all the time as he walked farther into the depths of the cave, until finally he extinguished and dropped the torch in his hand, and turned from the now-illuminated wall to face the interior of the chamber.
It was the most arresting example of nature he had ever seen. The waterfall was about the same height as the steps he had fallen down—about forty feet. It was at least an equal distance wide. Springing from a tunnel in the opposite wall of the cavern, the water traveled about twenty feet across a smooth horizontal stone precipice before finally falling gracefully into a large stone pool at the bottom. Tristan immediately realized that the waterfall was the source of the noise, and that he had been prevented from identifying the sound because of the way it bounced randomly from wall to wall across the cavern. He shook his head. Had the falls been outdoors, he would have recognized the sound instantly.
At the opposite end of the pool, the water ran out through a low tunnel in the rock. It occurred to him that the water’s exit tunnel would ensure that the pool would never overflow, leading him to wonder whether the waterfall was man-made. But who could have made this? he wondered. He stood transfixed.
Looking around at the walls, he noticed a great variety of plants and flowers that he had never seen before; the floor itself was covered with thick, green foliage. Every plant was huge, and the colors were incredibly vibrant. He began to walk closer to the falls, but suddenly stopped himself in midstride.
How have these things grown here without sunlight? he asked himself. So much of this is impossible. Yet here they are.
Looking further, he saw that high upon the walls near the ceiling there were words carved into the rock in a language that was completely foreign to him. The strangely oblique writing completely encircled the rim of cavern.
Making his way back to the stone steps, he saw that they ended not far from the edge of the pool. His foot struck against something hard. Hard and sharp. He jumped back instinctively, only to realize that he had found his dirks and quiver, which he’d lost when he fell. Relieved, he began to collect the dirks, eventually finding all of them and returning them to the quiver, which he buckled on in its usual place across his right shoulder.
Suddenly, he felt dizzy. Slowly, he sat down upon the bottom step to try to clear his mind. Mesmerized, he watched as the water seemed to dance and play in the flickering light of the torches, turning and undulating strangely as if it were alive. A sudden, intense curiosity about the water came to him. He looked to the top of the falls where the water fairly jumped off the precipice, falling downward, ever downward, separating itself on the way to the pool into drops that looked more like sparkling crystals than liquid. And, oddly, each drop seemed to have a pink cast. He reasoned it must be because of the torchlight and the many reflected colors of the plants. The longer he sat looking, the more intrigued he became, almost as if the pool of water was calling to him, beckoning him to join it as it cascaded into the pool. And the longer he watched, the more inviting the water became.
Its allure was becoming irresistible.
Without thinking, he rose and began to remove his clothes. His leather knee boots, trousers, black vest, quiver, and undergarments soon all lay in a dirty pile at his feet. Serenely detached, he watched himself walk forward. It was as if in a dream that he saw his feet go to the edge of the dark, rolling water. He was at the far end, near the steps, where the water seemed the calmest, and he stood there naked for a moment, calmly looking down at his reflection as if he were looking at someone else. He saw his longish black hair, the high cheekbones, what some would describe as the cruel mouth, and the slim, muscular body all dancing in the reflected light of the torches. Then he tilted his face toward the ceiling, closed his eyes, and calmly jumped feetfirst into the pool.
This part of the pool was deep. When he surfaced, he swam a little distance over to shallower water. He laid his head back against the cool, slick side of the stone pool and closed his eyes.
The effect was unexpected, but far from unpleasant. Despite the fact that the stone wall surrounding the pool was quite cool, the water itself was warm, much warmer in fact than he would have guessed water from an underground spring to be. It seemed to surround and caress his naked body of its own will. As inexplicably as it had arrived, his dizziness began to fade, along with all of the other aches and pains he had garnered this day. The longer he lay in the warm pool, the better he felt. In time not only did his pains completely vanish, but he also began to feel a resurgence of energy and strength, and with it a lightening of his mood and an increase in his confidence. Mixed with the wonderful sensations of warmth and strength was the ever-present sound of the falls tumbling into the pool. He was becoming used to the sound—in fact, he was starting to find it reassuring and actually quite beautiful.