Kingdoms of the Wall

21

Though we were dwindling swiftly now, the core of my Forty still remained to me—the ones I loved best, Traiben and Galli and Thissa and Jaif and of course Hendy. Kilarion stayed with us, and Kath, and Naxa, the Healers Maiti and Kreod did not leave, nor Grycindil, nor Marsiel.

We went higher. The air grew colder and colder, and it was so thin we had to make our chests expand like balloons to draw any sustenance from it. When we glanced back we found ourselves looking down at the tips of the surrounding peaks, far below us. It was like making our way up the side of a needle that pierced the sky. The roof of cloud that hid the Summit from our sight seemed almost to be pressing against my shoulders now, though in fact it was still far ahead.

Scardil left us, and Pren, and Ghibbilau. I regretted those losses but I did nothing to reclaim them. Then Ijo the Scholar came back, looking somewhat changed from what he had been, but he would not say where he had been or what had befallen him. On the day of his return we lost Chaliza and Thuiman, and in a Kingdom where gusts of pale flame spurted from the ground we lost two more: Noomai the Metalworker and then Jaif the Singer, whom I had not expected to leave. That was hard, losing Jaif. We had never been close friends but we had been good allies. In the days just afterward Hendy said that she felt his presence still with us, hovering in the air: she could hear his song, she said. Perhaps so. But I could not.

Then one night the sky throbbed with bands of pink light from dusk to dawn, as happens sometimes rarely when Marilemma rises at twilight and remains overhead all during the hours of darkness. That is usually an omen. And the next day we went on into a place where I found myself confronted with a great and wonderful strangeness, which went beyond anything I had experienced thus far in my entire ascent.

This was a small Kingdom set into a stony ridge that was like a bowl with a high sharp rim, on an outlying breast of the mountain. Gray wisps of old snow surrounded its rock-girt border, for at these heights we were in cold territory indeed, with hard winds and frequent gales of sleet. I suppose we could have gone past this Kingdom without entering it, since it lay a little distance off the main road; but we were weary from the day’s bleak oppressive march through this chilly country, and now I saw dark storm-clouds gathering. It seemed a good idea to seek shelter for the night, though it was still only a little past midday.

Kath and Kilarion were the first two to go over the rim, and I heard whistles of surprise from them. When I came up over it myself I saw why. We were looking down into a lush peaceful garden where the air was soft and warm and heavy, as though we had been returned in a moment’s twinkling to our village at the base of the Wall. We heard the singing of birds and we smelled the fragrance of a thousand kinds of flowers, and in the distance rose a giant grove of thick-trunked gollacundra trees heavy with purple fruit amidst their brilliant sheaves of dangling golden foliage. This, in the cold and snowy upper reaches of Kosa Saag! And moving about in it were graceful and elegant people with strands of gold about their breasts and garments of woven scarlet at their loins, who seemed without exception to be in the finest flush of youth and beauty. Truly it was as if we had come stumbling into the home of the gods.

I stood dazed and awed atop the rocky ridge, with ice and chill behind me and this dazzling paradise glowing before me. Thissa said softly to me, “Careful, Poilar. Everything you see here is illusion and magic.” And Hendy, at my other side, nodded and added her own words of caution.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I will take care.”

But Kath and Kilarion were already moving down the inner slope of the bordering rim into this Kingdom of ease and plenitude, and Marsiel also, and Maiti, and Grycindil, and Thrance. They walked like those who walk in sleep. So the decision was taken from my hands, and I followed them on down, passing from a realm of snow to one of flowers and birdsong. The people of this Kingdom turned and looked up at us gravely as we approached, but showed neither alarm nor displeasure, as though it was the most usual thing in the world for some band of ragged frostbitten wanderers to come straggling down into their land.

“Come,” they said to us. “You must go before our King.”

They were all perfect, every one: sleek and beautiful and glistening with strength and vitality, and no one, seemingly, more than eighteen or twenty years old. There was no flaw to be seen on them, no sign of blemish or defect or disfigurement. They seemed all to have come from a single mold, for only their faces differentiated them one from another, and otherwise they all had the same long-limbed slender-bodied perfection of form. I had never seen such people as these; and as I looked at them I felt bitter shame for my own lack of perfection, the angry chilblains on my skin and the dust and dirt of the journey in my hair and on my clothing and the scars of the long climb everywhere on my body, and above all my leg, my leg, my twisted loathsome crippled leg, for which I had never felt a moment’s embarrassment before but which now seemed to me a blazing mark of dishonor and sin.

They conveyed us to their King, whose royal seat was a crystal dome at the very center of this Kingdom. He stood on its portico, arms folded, awaiting us calmly: as flawless as any of his subjects, and as young, a boy-king, a magnificent youthful prince, serene and potent, wonderfully arrayed in gold and scarlet, with a high tiara of bright metal set with glittering gems.

As we drew near him Hendy suddenly gasped, and she dug her fingers deep into the flesh of my arm as though in fear.

“What is it?” I said.

“His face, Poilar.”

I looked. There seemed something familiar about it. But what? “He could be your brother!” Hendy cried.

Was it so? I looked again in growing confusion. Yes, yes, there was something about the shape of his nose, the set of his eyes, the way he drew his lips back in a smile of welcome. A certain resemblance, yes, an odd superficial similarity of expression and even of appearance—

A coincidence, only. That was what I told myself.

“I have no brother,” I said to her. “I’ve never had one.”

Thissa, behind me, was whispering Witch-words.

The young King of this magical land regarded us placidly, benevolently. “Welcome, Pilgrims. Who is your leader?”

“I am,” I said. My voice was thick and husky. I came limping forward, inordinately conscious of my crooked leg in this place of perfection. “We are from Jespodar village, and my name is Poilar, son of Gabrian, son of Drok, of Wallclan of the House of the Wall.”

“Ah,” he said, and gave me one of the strangest smiles I have ever seen. “Then you are surely welcome here.” He took a step or two toward me, holding out his hand for me to take it. “I am Drok of Jespodar,” he said. “Of Wallclan of the House of the Wall.”

Of course I refused to believe it at first. It was too much to accept, that I should meet my father’s father here beneath the shadow of the Summit of Kosa Saag in this transformed guise. Thissa had said it rightly, all was illusion and magic here, and this must surely be some deception, the King of this place slyly borrowing my own features so that he could pretend that he and I were kin, as a kind of mocking game.

But he took us within his royal home, where the floors were soft with thick rugs and the crystal walls were hung with crimson draperies and the air was heavy with sweet perfume, and his people bathed us and fed us and gave us sharp new wine to drink. If all of that was illusion and magic, well, it was skillful magic and pleasing illusion, and afterward we felt rested and comforted, illusion or not. Indeed we had not known such comfort since the day we left our village. It was almost enough to make one weep.

Then the King came to me and sat with me and spoke with me of Jespodar, while I stared intently at his face, clearly seeing mine now in his. He mentioned many names, few of which I knew, but when he uttered those of Thispar and Gamilalar, I told him that they were still alive, that the gods had granted them double life, and he seemed genuinely astonished and delighted at that, for he said that he had known them when he was young. That was an odd phrase for him to use— when he was young —for he seemed much younger than me at this moment, a youth, a stripling. But I sensed the great age of him all the same, behind that unlined face. I told him that in our company was the son of the son of the son of Thispar Double-Lifer, Traiben by name, and he nodded and a far-away look came into his eyes, as if he was thinking of the passage of so many years.

He spoke then of our clan and family, and he knew the names. He asked of his brother Ragin, and I said he was dead, but that Ragin’s son Meribail was the head of our House. He seemed pleased at that. “Meribail, yes. I remember him. A good boy, Meribail. I saw the promise in him even then.” He asked me of his sister, next, and of his sister’s children, and of his own two daughters and their children, and again he knew all the names, so that I became more and more certain I was in the presence of my father’s father. There was always the possibility, I realized, that this was all some enchantment and he a demon, and that he was drawing these names from my own mind and passing them back to me by way of laying claim falsely to kinship with me. But once you begin believing such things, there’s no end to what you are free to doubt: it was easier for me to think that this was indeed my father’s father, alive on Kosa Saag after so many years, wearing this youthful body by virtue of the transformations he had undergone.

He had said nothing about my father Gabrian in all this time. So finally I introduced his name myself, and said, “I never knew him, not really, for he went to the Wall when I was just a small child.” He offered no response to that, which left me a moment for thinking, and I added, “But you wouldn’t have known him well either, I suppose; for you yourself began your Pilgrimage when he was still a little boy, is that not so?”

Still he was silent, and his eerily youthful face became furrowed, as if the thought of the three generations of interrupted families, of fathers who had gone to the Wall and left young sons behind, must sadden him immeasurably. But that was not it. For after a little while he said, in a somber voice he had not used before, “Gabrian, yes. A handsome child, he was. And he became a handsome man. We encountered each other once, here on the Wall.”

“What?” And I leaned forward, tensely, like a hungry animal about to pounce. My heart was leaping in my breast. “You and my father met each other on Kosa Saag?”

He nodded. He seemed lost in dark reverie.

“Where?” I asked. “When? Is he still alive? By all the gods, is my father in this very Kingdom right now? ”

“Not here, no, not now.” He closed his eyes and sat rocking gently, but I felt that he was still seeing me all the same through his closed lids. As though speaking to me through a dense mist he said, “It was a long time ago, when I had been here only a few years, perhaps five or six. And his Forty arrived, looking much as you and yours, all tattered and shabby and worn, for they had been a long while on the Wall. Of course there weren’t forty of them any longer, but only seven. Seven, exactly, and no more. The others had died along the way, or gone off to live among the Transformed Ones, as I suppose some of your people have done as well. There’s never been a Forty to make it to these heights intact, you know, or even anything close to intact, although I’ve heard it said that some Pilgrimages have nearly—”

“My father,” I said. “I want to hear about my father.” It was hard for me to be patient with him. I was sure beyond any doubt now that there must be an old man behind this youthful facade, from the wandering way in which he was telling the tale.

“Your father, yes. I’m coming to him. He and his Forty of seven drifted in, just as you did, and we put them up and let them have baths and something to eat, for they were in a terrible way. I knew right away who he was: I saw his face and I said to myself, in much amazement, This is my own son who has come to me here, this is Gabrian, this really is Gabrian. I hadn’t seen him since he was three years old, of course, but there are certain things you know no matter what, and with him I knew. Just as I knew with you. But Gabrian didn’t tell me his name at first, as you did. Nor did he seem to recognize a family resemblance in us. So I kept my name from him as well. There we were, father and son, and he not knowing. I asked him things about the village, and he told me that, and then he spoke of his Pilgrimage, and the places he had been and what had happened to him along the way—a hard Pilgrimage, far worse than mine, traveling along false trails, years of delay on the way up, endless suffering, deaths, some murders, even—terrible, terrible, terrible. But at last the threshold of the Summit had come into view. He had endured everything anyone could imagine and now, he told me, now he was going to see the gods at last. There was a look of utter determination on his face. I could see it clearly: nothing would stop him. Nothing.”

My eyes widened. “And did he get to the Summit, then?”

“I don’t know. I think he did. But who can say?”

“He must have reached it. If he swore that nothing would stop him, and the Summit is very close to here—”

“Not as close as all that. It’s close, at least, in comparison with what lies behind us on Kosa Saag. But not very close. And there are great difficulties along the way. I do think he got to it, though. And then, on the way back—”

He halted, and frowned, and stared off beyond me as though I were not there.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Yes. Yes, I will, since you want to know. Your father and his six companions left here without his ever having learned who I was, and set out for the Summit. He went on to the next Kingdom, and the next, and the next: this I know, for I asked after him later, and they said he had been there, passing through. Then he went up higher and vanished into the land of fogs, and no one ever saw him again or any of those who went with him. He was bound for the Summit, and it is my belief that he reached it and saw what there was to see there, and then began to make his descent.”

Again there was a painful silence, which went on and on, like a scream.

“And what happened then?” I prompted finally.

My father’s father looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, and moistened his lips and said quietly, “It was during the course of his descent, I think, that he visited the Well of Life and underwent a transformation there, and perished there in the process of being changed.”

I caught my breath. “He’s dead?”

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

“You know this to be so?”

“I saw his body at the rim of the Well. I buried it with my own hands.”

For a moment I was unable to speak. The gift that had been offered me had been snatched away almost in the moment of giving. After a time I said, “What is this? Well of Life, which is so badly named, since it seems rather to be a Well of Death?”

“It is the place where we are made young again,” my father’s father said. “We go to it every five years, or more often if we wish, and we enter it and come forth as you see us. But we enter and leave very quickly. To remain in it more than an instant or two is deadly. Do you understand?”

“And my father? He stayed in it too long?”

“We can only guess what he did, or why. Or whether it happened on the way up to the Summit, or on the way down. But I think I know. The Well lies in the last zone before the very top—in a place of perpetual storm, of wind and rain and fog. Whoever would go to the Summit must pass that way. What I think is that he passed the Well by and went quickly onward, to the top, and looked upon the gods in the place where they dwell; and then he came down again, and for the second time he and his people arrived at the vicinity of the Well—and this time—this time—”

As he spoke I could see it all in the eye of my mind, and I was sure that it was almost as it must have happened: the fog and mist, the whirling crescents of wind-blown snow, the black jagged peaks, the narrow path so difficult to follow, the dark abyss just beyond the edge. The seven weary, gaunt marchers struggling down from the Summit, exalted by what they had beheld there, but now at the last limits of their endurance. And the Well of Life lying shrouded in the darkness before them, a secret menace, a foaming pit of transformation. One by one they stumble unknowingly into it, blinded by the snow, which the wind hurls in their faces with diabolical force. A moment’s immersion is enough to bring immense change; beyond that point the Well offers death, not life. Shouts in the mist: sounds of terror: figures thrashing in the darkness, sliding, falling, arising and falling again. My father groping for his companions’ hands, finding them, losing them, grasping one now, seeking desperately to pull someone from the Well and being pulled in himself—or perhaps it was my father who had blundered in first, and the others had tried to rescue him and been lost with him—

So I imagined it, from what my father’s father said and what I wanted to have heard. But the truth of what had taken place was somewhat different.

“Some days later,” my father’s father went on, “two people of my Kingdom who lately had been to the Well came to me, and said they had seen something strange and terrible along its margin. I knew at once what it must be, and set out right away. We found the seven heaps of discarded clothing first, and the packs they had been carrying, half covered by the snow. And then there they were, on the rim of the Well, hand in hand: fleshless now, and tiny, the pliant and delicate bones of seven newborn infants, linked in a dreadful chain in the hot mud. We scooped them out with long poles and buried them nearby. You’ll see the seven tiny cairns as you go past. If you go past.”

“If?” I said. “You told me it was the only way to the Summit.”

“Forget the Summit. Stay here.”

His words startled me. “I am pledged to it by oath,” I said with a touch of heat in my tone.

“So were we all,” he said. “Your father was. So was I. He kept that oath, I think. It cost him his life. I also went to the Summit. It brought me no benefit. Forget the Summit, child.”

“You’ve seen it, you say?”

“Yes. And returned. And will never go there again. It is a loathsome place. Forget the Summit.”

He closed in upon himself as though he did not want to speak of these things any more. Confusion swept over me in hot waves. The grim tale of the manner of my father’s dying oppressed me and numbed me. And now this coyness on my father’s father’s part about the Summit itself. The Irtiman too had been elusive and vague when we spoke of the Summit. Why? Why? What were they hiding from me? I felt my anger beginning to rise, and I reached toward him as though to pull the answers from him with my hands. “Loathsome? What are you saying? Why loathsome? Tell me what the Summit is like. Tell me!”

“Never,” he said. The calmly spoken word fell around me like an iron band.

I protested again, to no effect.

With a kind of sublime patience that I found maddening he raised his hand to silence me, and said, as calmly as before, “I’ll offer you this, and no more: Whatever it is you hope to find, you won’t find it there. There’s nothing there but horror. Forget the Summit, child. Stay here with me.” I was shaking with fury. “How can I do that? You know that I’ve sworn—”

“Stay,” he said, unmoved. “And live forever.”

I stared at him, speechless, trembling. And he told me once more how he and all his people went periodically to the Well of Life, and immersed themselves in it for a fraction of a moment, and became smooth and young again as the Well turned back time for them. I could do that also, he said. And be eternally young, here in this enchanted Kingdom on the highest slopes of the Wall, where the air was ever sweet and mild and the snows were held at bay by magic. Why climb any higher? Why seek mysteries not worth finding? Stay, he said. Stay. Stay.

It was as if he had turned a key in my mind. To my astonishment my rage fell away from me and I found myself yielding to his will.

He spoke, and all my bold resolve melted in a moment. He spoke, and everything toward which I had worked for so long seemed to be without meaning. Stay, he said. Stay and live forever. Why not? Yes, I thought, amazed. Why not? It seemed so simple. Give up this bitter Pilgrimage, which had taken the life of your father and so many others; step away from the upward path and let your weary body rest. Stay here. Stay. Yes, I thought. Why not? Suddenly I was open to the sort of temptation that seems to be a quality of these uppermost lands of the Wall. Stay, he said. Stay. Stay. Stay. And as he said it, it was like a spell being cast on me, or so I thought in that moment: for to my surprise and bewilderment I felt everything changing within me, felt the rigidities of my spirit loosening their hold in this easy place, heard myself thinking. Yes, Poilar, why not? Stay. Stay.

Stay? How could I stay? We were bound by oath.

But my oath had not prevented me from idling for weeks or perhaps months in the valley of the blue grass at the base of this final peak, though there had been no reason to stay so long. It is the nature of those heights, I suppose, to weaken the resolve even of the strongest; for the air is thin and gives only poor nourishment, and where we may be vulnerable, that vulnerability will be made manifest. And now we were higher still and once again I began to drift away, for a time, from my own inner nature, from the ceaseless striving toward the goal to which Traiben and I had dedicated ourselves when we were twelve years old.

That night there were hot baths for us, and sherbet, and rich wines and fine meats. We slept under soft robes on comfortable piles of furs. And I thought: I could have this forever. Forever, Poilar, forever.

It was like a sickness that had come over my mind between one moment and the next. Why go to the Summit? There was only great hardship to endure throughout the remainder of the way, and grief at journey’s end. The Summit? What use was the Summit? It is a loathsome place, my father’s father had said. You will find only horror there. He had seen it; he knew. Again and again I felt the dark tale of my father’s death coursing through me like a river, leaving me shaken and weakened. What struck me with great force was not so much the image of those tiny bones, though that was terrible enough, but rather the question of what it was that had driven those seven Pilgrims to choose so frightful a death. I could not bring myself to face that question squarely, for it opened abysses in my mind. Therefore I told myself that all this questing was folly. Give it over, I told myself. You’ve struggled long enough, toward something not worth attaining. Settle here in your father’s father’s realm, and surrender to ease. Or move on a little way upward, maybe, and found a Kingdom of your own, and live there happily forever, and let the gods go about their business undisturbed. I do confess it: those were my thoughts. There is no one so strong that he does not falter again and again on the path that leads to the Summit of the Wall.

And so we stayed in the Kingdom of my father’s father for a day or two, three, four, another day beyond that. From time to time I would step outside and see the path rising above me, and the snowy crags, and the roof of cloud that marked the Summit off from the lands just below it, and I knew that we should be on our way. There was our goal; and it was almost within reach. But I gave no order to make ready for departure.

Condemn me as you will. The fact is that some demon within me was encouraging me to remain in this soft place of everlasting life, and I found it difficult to resist. It was a kind of paralysis. I had not formally accepted my father’s father’s offer; but I was remaining, all the same. I will pause here another few days, I told myself each day. I have to gather my strength for the final assault.

What hurry is there? I asked myself. The Summit will wait. The gods can do without me a little longer.

And so the time passed.

“We need to move along,” Hendy said to me, after a few days more of idleness.

“Yes. Yes.”

“We swore an oath, Poilar,” said Traiben some days later.

“Yes,” I said. “So we did.”

They were all looking at me, watching me, wondering. Some were eager to continue the ascent, some were not, but no one could understand why I held back from issuing the order to resume our march. Even Thrance, skulking crooklegged through the splendors of this Kingdom as though they were nothing but ashes and mud, turned his mocking grinning gaze at me and asked me coolly, “Are you afraid to go on to the Summit, Poilar? Is that it? Or is it just a sudden attack of laziness that keeps you here so long?”

I scowled at him and said nothing.

He said, “It’s on account of a woman, perhaps. Eh? One of these sleek little girls with nice golden skin comes crawling into your bed at night, is that it? And you can’t bear to leave her.” Thrance pushed his piebald face close up against mine and laughed, with great gusts of stinking breath. “She’s six tens old, Poilar! She’s old enough to be Hendy’s mother’s mother’s mother, and you think she’s just a girl!”

“Get away from me,” I told him.

“Six tens of years!”

“Away,” I said. “Or I’ll break you in two.”

He laughed again. But he went limping away.

Indeed there was a little truth to this notion of Thrance’s, but only a little; for I had in fact had some sport with the glittering women of this Kingdom here and there during this time. I know that I was not the only one who did that. The citizens of my father’s father’s realm swarmed over us as though we were new toys brought for their amusement, and they were not easy to resist. Very likely all the members of my Forty had lovers while we were in this land, the men and women both. In particular I took a fancy to one called Alamir, who was lithe and quick and had the sparkling sheen of a girl half my age. How old she might be in reality was something I didn’t care to consider, though the question did cross my mind unbidden now and again, to my dismay. It was she who had put the notion of founding a Kingdom of my own into my head, with herself as Queen. And I played with the idea for a few days; but all it was was play.

It was not Alamir, though, who kept me tied to this place, nor laziness. But Thrance had hit upon the truth with his first hypothesis.

It was fear.

I knew now that my father’s father had not cast any spells upon me. He had merely made a tempting offer, which the Poilar of an earlier time would have quickly refused out of hand with a shrug and a shake of the head Even now, weary of the long climb as I was, I still was capable of refusing it.

But my mind would not let go of the tale of my father’s strange death upon the heights of the Wall. It brimmed in my memory, and cascaded and overflowed, and the more I considered it, the more powerful was its impact. A thousand times I asked myself: What was it that my father had seen at the Summit, so horrible that he could purge himself of the knowledge of it only by casting himself into the Well of Life?

It was dread of that revelation that held me back, not anything so simple as the fear of dying. Death itself held no terrors for me; it never has. But that I might discover something in the abode of the gods that could drive me to take my own life, as my father and his six companions had done before me—that was what I feared. It paralyzed me utterly; and I found myself unable to share that fear with any of my friends. For a long while I concealed it even from myself, and believed that it was some newfound love of comfort that held me here, or some magic that my father’s father had wantonly cast upon my mind. That was not it. That was not it at all.