The Lioness

Over hours of walking, Ayensha brought them into a maze of gorges, winding and zigzagged, and all the while the walls grew higher. In some places they could not go dry-shod for there was room only for water, and they had to hold on to the damp stony sides for balance. A deep, distant roaring came to them from ahead.

The walls of the gorge grew closer, stone reaching for them, and the sides grew higher as the floor dropped. The two women came to the font of the water running through the gorge, a sudden spring burbling up from a crack in the stony floor.

Ayensha dipped up a handful of water and then another. “A river racing below the ground.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ve never seen it, but it’s said there are places in part of the forest where there is more water below than above.”

“Is that what we hear?”

Ayensha shook her head. “Lightning’s voice. A waterfall.”

Listening to Lightning, they walked until the passage became so narrow Kerian had to turn sideways simply to fit through. The rumbling became louder, the sky more distant, the gorge darker, the passage but a slit. Kerian’s muscles cried for rest. She had none. They ate walking, following the brightness in the distance that seemed never to come closer.

At last, the voice of the falls grew louder again, deeper. Above, the slit of blue that had been the sky suddenly widened. The brightness made Kerian squint.

“Noon-bright,” Ayensha said.

Only noon!

“Now put your back into it. We’re almost—”

The gorge turned, daylight opened up ahead. With startling suddenness, they stood at the mouth of the gorge, practically at the stony lip of a shining lake.

“—there.”

The falls known to elves as Lightning for its flash, to dwarves as Thunder for the roar of its voice, sped from such a height as to seem poured out of the sky. Silvery sheets of water flung over a cliff, headlong and heedless as a madman running. Thunder! Its voice bellowed so loudly that it pressed against Kerian’s ears as a physical weight. In the presence of the cascading brightness and the furious roar, she found it difficult to breathe.

“There,” said Ayensha, again smiling. “Nearly where we want to be.”

Blinking, Kerian said, “Where? All I see is water falling.”

Ayensha nodded. She set out around the edge of the lake, Kerian following. Little grew on that shore, only tufts of tough grass between the cracks in the stone.

“Years past count,” Ayensha said, “the world erupted in volcanoes, fire spewing up from the belly of the world. The earth cracked, and the ground dropped down right here, so hard the river that runs must fall into this pool. Under the water, there is a vast bowl of stone made from the hot lava that hardened.”

“The Cataclysm,” Kerian said, her eyes on the falling water.

“No. This was before then, before anyone started naming ages or gods had much to do with Krynn. My people—” She slid Kerian a sidelong glance. “Our people have had this legend for as long as we have been.”

Water fell roaring, and no conversation now was possible as Kerian followed Ayensha to the far edge of the lake. In silence, filled with awe before this wonder of the forest, the two stood beside the bellowing falls, soaked in mist and spray. Ayensha pointed downward, Kerian saw the rock dipping into shallow levels, like stairs. Water had done that, and water had done more. Behind the falling water she saw a depth, a passage running between the thunderous curtain of water and face of the cliff over which it raced.

Ayensha gestured. Kerian took her meaning and followed carefully down the steps, around through a cloud of spray and into sudden darkness broken by silvery bending of light through water.

Spray made the stony way slick as though it were iced. It rose by a narrow path, requiring that they hold tight to rough cracks in the stone, sometimes pulling themselves up, sometimes obliged to press themselves tight to the wall and inch along. Kerian looked once over her shoulder and froze. They were perhaps a third of the way to the cliffs height. Below the water hit stone in a madness of splash and foam.

Firmly, she turned back to the climb and saw Ayensha standing above. The woman did not cling to stone but stood at perfect ease within a dark crevice carved into the face of the cliff. Laughing, she beckoned. Kerian leaned her forehead against the rock wall, breathed as well as she could, gathered wit and strength, and climbed again. Ayensha caught her by the wrist and pulled her quickly inside to bellowing darkness.

Kerian sensed walls and ceiling, depth and height.

Behind her, Lightning fell with the voice of Thunder, shining silver ribbons twined in the darkness of shadow. She put her back to a rough, wet stone wall, every muscle in every limb complaining with weariness. Shivering, she closed her eyes just as a golden light flared behind her lids.