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.
The air was less damp at this height, and he was able to approach within twenty ells or so of the cataract. He was halfway up the cavern wall now; the boulders would take him no higher. He raised the torch. The dim light glimmered back from a hole in the rocky ceiling, from which the torrent sprang out greenish-white and curved into space.
One look confirmed what he already knew: he could never get back up the way he had come down. As he sat on a boulder, his eye was caught by a tiny glimmer of brightness under the dark water, far off toward the middle of the lake. He stared at it under his hand, and in a moment was almost sure that it was his lost sword: but it might as well have been at a thousand leagues' distance for all the good it was to him.
Weariness took him as he sat, and he began to think how good it would be to lie and rest, near the fire for comfort, though indeed, except for his wet shoes and breeks, he was comfortable enough. The air in this cavern was cool and fresh; there was no wind... Here he began confusedly to imagine that the cavern had the ceaseless wind of Hovenskar blowing through it, and that the gray-maned horses were lifting their heads beyond Goryat's stone-roofed house, which somehow was all mingled with the wall of the cavern, and the smoke as it rose from the smokehole leaning crooked in the air... He came to himself with a start, to realize that he had all but dropped the smoldering torch. The torch was half out, a black stub crawling with fire-worms, and the thin, acrid smoke drifted aslant. Thorinn's head rose to follow it. Since the air was fresh, there must be some way for it to come and go. The two holes that he knew of were both filled by the moving water.
Stung to wakefulness, he rose and began to climb, following the motion of the air and the dim path of the smoke from his torch. In a few minutes, questing along the top of the heap of boulders, he found a crevice in the wall into which a faint current of air was moving. But the crevice was no bigger than his fist. At the lower end of the cavern, where great slabs of the ceiling had fallen and lay heaped all anyhow, the thin smoke of his torch eddied and drifted. Stooping to peer between two slabs, Thorinn felt cool air breathing on him. He held the torch nearer, singeing his hair in his excitement. Behind the rock slabs, an irregular passage ran away into the earth; it was two ells high at the opening, and seemed to grow larger as it went. Thorinn put one arm in, tried to follow it with his head, but could not.
He drew back and examined the boulders. The smaller of the two was half buried by a clutter of other stones; the larger lay almost free on the slope, supported at its lower end by another slab. Thorinn got his fingers around the edge of the large stone, braced himself and pulled, without effect. He tried again, nearer the top, but it was no use; the stone weighed as much as a horse. He rested, feeling weak from hunger and exertion. If he only had a lever, a pole, anything, to pry the larger slab up and out, away from its support at the bottom!