Kingdoms of the Wall

23

I had imagined a seething pit of hot effervescent waters, bubbling and churning and spuming and giving forth a hiss of fervent power. But no: this was an unexpectedly tranquil place. All that lay before us was a quiet gray oval surrounded by a narrow rim of pale mud. The single indication of anything unusual was the soft orange radiance that rose like a mist from its surface.

Seven small mounds, like little blisters, lay in a straight line along the shore of the Well.

At the sight of them I was overtaken by such fear as I have rarely felt in my life. It was like an earthquake in my soul. I saw in my mind’s eye the one image of my father that I possessed, that tall strong man with bright eyes, gaily flinging me aloft and catching me in his arms. Then I looked toward those tiny cairns and wondered which one of them covered his grave, and I shivered with dread. I could hardly bear to look upon this place of his terrible transformation. A chill ran along my legs as though they had been plunged into ice. Behind me I heard whisperings, and I knew what they must be saying.

But I went quickly forward. That is the only way with fear: attack it before it can vanquish you. I knelt beside the seven cairns, and let my hand rest lightly on the one closest to the Well, thinking that it was the first of the group and therefore must be my father’s. What did it matter if I was wrong? The moment I touched it a great calmness came over me. He was here somewhere. I knew that I must be near him.

A faint warmth was coming from the cairn. It seemed harmless. I closed my eyes and said a few words without speaking aloud. Then I scooped a few pebbles and some bits of sandy sod from the ground nearby and scattered it over the cairn I took to be my father’s, and over the others as well, as an offering. I prayed for his continued peaceful repose. I prayed for peace for myself too as I faced the ordeal ahead.

Rising then, I walked across the muddy rim to the edge of the Well and looked down into it. It was just a pool of gray water, dull-looking, unreflective. This close, the orange radiance that came from it was wispy and indistinct, a mere thin veil.

Involuntarily I made the signs that guard one against magic; and yet I knew that there was no magic here, any more than the change-fire that throbs in the lower reaches of the Wall is a force of magic. No, this was a natural place, I was sure, where some power in the fabric of the region existed that could strip away the passage of the years from one’s body. In our snug village we are safe from such powers; but here on the Wall the mighty forces of the universe have full play, and our mutable bodies are subject to their impact in a hundred ways.

I was eerily calm. Here is life, I thought. Here is death. You take your choice: a second or two returns you to youth, a minute kills. That seemed strange to me, and yet I felt little awe or wonder. I wanted neither youthfulness nor death from this place; I wanted only to have done the thing that I had done here at my father’s cairn, and move on. Perhaps I had been too long on Pilgrimage. Awe and wonder, I suspected, were things that I had left behind me somewhere along the trail, I suspected.

“So?” a rough voice said. “Shall we jump in and make ourselves prettier?”

Thrance. I turned to him, glaring. I could have killed him then. My little moment of serenity was shattered and it angered me that he had broken it. But I forced my anger back.

“Aren’t you pretty enough already?” I asked him.

He laughed and made no reply.

“Go on,” Galli called to him. “Have a nice little swim, Thrance! Show us what the Well can do!”

Thrance bowed to her. “Let’s swim in it together, lovely lady.”

There was nervous laughter and some that seemed downright hearty, and even some applause. That astounded me. Each word of this banter was cutting ragged tracks through my soul; and yet my companions seemed amused.

Tension and dread came flowing back into me. I could not believe that I had managed to be so tranquil here, even for a moment or two. This was a hateful perilous place.

“Enough,” I said. “I find this comedy distasteful. We need to move on.” I pointed up toward the place where the cloud layer cut across the sky like an iron band and said, “There’s the Summit, just beyond. Let’s be on our way.”

But no one moved. There was more whispering and a little uneasy giggling. Kilarion pretended to be dragging Naxa toward the edge of the Well, and Naxa pounded his fists on Kilarion’s chest in mock outrage, and Kath made some cheerful silly quip about taking some of the water back to peddle when we returned to Jespodar. I glanced around in astonishment. Had they all lost their minds? Never have I felt so alone as in that moment when I saw how my companions were looking toward the Well. I saw fascination on some faces, a kind of eagerness on others, a playful excitement on still others. The seven little cairns appeared to signify nothing to any of them. Traiben’s eyes were bulging with fierce curiosity. Gazin and Marsiel and two or three others were pondering the Well frowningly, as though in another moment or two they intended to dip themselves in it. Even Hendy seemed tempted. Only Thissa showed any awareness of the dangers that the Well posed, but she too had an odd glitter of speculation in her look.

Pushing and yelling and shoving, I got them all out of there. We went back up the narrow path toward the main trail. Once we were away from the Well its spell seemed to dissipate: there was no more foolish laughter, no more clumsy joking.

Yet we had lost two more of our number to it.

I thought at first that we had lost three; for when I halted to count up, there were just fifteen of us left, and Thrance. One woman was missing—Hilth the Carpenter, I realized—and two men. Which? I called off names. “Kath? Naxa? Ijo?” They were accounted for. Someone said that Gazin the Juggler was not with us. And then it struck me that Traiben was nowhere in sight either.

Gods! Traiben! That was hard to bear. Not caring what the others might say, I turned and ran in frenzy back toward the Well, hoping it might not be too late to pull him free of its deadly waters.

But there he was, trudging cheerfully up the path.

“Poilar?” he said, as I rushed toward him.

I came close to colliding with him and managed to keep from bowling him over only by swerving at the last instant and stumbling up against a boulder that rose beside the trail like a great jagged tooth. The impact knocked the wind out of me and I clung to the rock, wrapping my arms tight around it, until I could breathe again.

Traiben said, “Did you think I had gone in, Poilar?”

“What did you suppose I was thinking?” I asked him furiously.

He smiled. I had never seen him look so disingenuous. “You know I would never have done that. But Gazin did, and Hilth.”

I had half expected that, but the news shook me nevertheless. “What?” I cried. “Where are they?” I saw from Traiben’s face that they had not come out of the Well, that they had used it not for rejuvenation but for obliteration. And then I realized that Traiben must have stood there watching it happen, studying it in that cold-blooded thoughtful way of his, looking on with aloof scholarly interest while a man and a woman to whom he had been bonded by oath were letting their bodies dissolve before his eyes. In that moment a gulf opened between Traiben and me that had not been there before and I was flooded with an immense sadness; and yet I knew that he had always been this way, that there was no reason for me to be surprised.

Together he and I went back to the Well. I envisioned us pulling the diminished bodies out and building two new little cairns over them to go with the other seven; but there was no trace of Gazin and Hilth at all. From the shore we poked in the water with poles that we found nearby, in all likelihood the same ones that my father’s father had used to draw the skeletons of my father and his six companions from the Well. But we found nothing.

I realized then that my father and his friends, though dwindled back to the size of infants, must have changed their minds at the end in some twisting of their tormented souls and tried to come forth from the Well, and had perished on its rim, each one holding another’s hand. But Gazin and Hilth had yielded themselves up completely. I did not even try to understand why. We built cairns in their memory, and then Traiben and I returned to the rest. I told them what had occurred. Later in the day, as we marched along a tongue of rock that seemed to be carrying us straight into empty air, Traiben offered to describe for me the scene he had witnessed. I gave him so terrible a look that he shrank away from me, and it was hours before he would come near me again.

We were into the fog zone now. It lay all about us like a thick woolen cloak, and we walked as though we were traveling ever deeper into a dream.

This was the end of all our striving, the last stage of our long journey. We all knew it; and no one spoke, no one violated the sanctity of the moment. Indeed we were as calm as dead men as we made our way up the final fang of the great mountain.

Behind us everything was white. Nothing could be seen. We were at the roof of the World and perhaps part of the way into the vault of the Heavens, and all that we had traveled through had vanished as though it no longer existed.

We could see nothing ahead, either. Nor was there any visibility to right or left. For all we knew we were moving along an upthrust strip of rock no wider than our two feet, with fathomless abysses on either side. We might even have been walking on nothing but air, following a path that traveled in the midst of utter nothingness. It did not matter. Nothing did. This was journey’s end. In single file we went steadily forward. Thissa led the way, now, for in this ultimate realm, where we were all of us as good as blind, her santha-nilla powers were our only guidance. I walked behind her and Hendy behind me, and then Traiben. In what order the others followed I could not say, for they were invisible to me; but I think that Thrance must have been the last in line, capering along well behind the rest, since that was often his style when he did not choose to run far ahead of everyone.

Strangely, there was no wind. But the air was bitterly cold, so cold I could not possibly make you imagine it. It stung our nostrils and bit our throats and fell into our lungs like molten metal. We had done all the adapting to the conditions of these heights that we could, and now we had no choice but to endure in silence whatever hardship descended on us. I imagined that my skin was turning hard and flaking away, my eyeballs becoming rock, my fingers and toes breaking off when I flexed them.

I gave myself up to the cold as though it were a warm blanket. I embraced it as though it were a lover. I strode on ever deeper into it as though it were the one thing I had come here to find. There was no gradation to it: it was absolute cold, complete cold, the perfect achievement of coldness. That was comforting, in its way. No matter how much higher we went it would not get any colder for us, for here at the top of the World we had found the utter bottom of coldness. And so we went on, calmly, almost unfeelingly, up the invisible stone ramp that was taking us to the final point of our Pilgrimage.

How long that last stage of the climb lasted, I could not tell you. A minute, a year, a hundred tens of years—it would all have been the same. You are in a time outside of time as you approach the top of Kosa Saag.

The whiteness thickened. I could see nothing now, not even Thissa just in front of me. And I halted, not out of fear—we were in a realm beyond the possibility of fear now—but simply because it seemed wise to halt. I stood motionless, and it was a time out of time, so that I might have been standing there a thousand tens of years.

But then I felt a pressure against my right hand, as though the air had closed itself around it. Gradually, I realized that Thissa had reached back and taken my hand in hers; and because it somehow seemed the right thing to do I put my other hand behind my back, and groped through the woolly air until I found Hendy’s. So it went down the line until we must all have been linked like a chain of the spider-men of the Sembitol. Thissa tugged gently, and I took a step forward; and she tugged again and I took another; and again, and yet again.

All this while I saw only whiteness.

One more step and everything changed. The whiteness broke open around me. Bright sunlight came smashing in, as if the gods had dropped Ekmelios at my feet. Thissa pulled me forward, and I pulled Hendy, and Hendy pulled Traiben, and so on and so on, and one by one we came out of the fog into a flat open place that was surrounded on all sides by narrow gray spears of rock.

Thissa released my hand and swung about so that she was facing me, and we stared face to face; and I saw her eyes wide as moons, and saw gleaming tear-tracks running down her cheeks, and she was smiling in a fashion that I had never seen before. She said something which the wind carried away before it reached my ears, for there was wind again here that ripped across us in savage battering gusts. I nodded as if I understood and felt the tears go coursing down my own face like water breaking through a dam, and I said to Hendy what Thissa had said to me, though I had not heard Thissa and could not even hear my own voice as it spoke the words. “Yes,” Hendy said. She nodded too; she understood. We all understood. We needed no words. We had passed through every Kingdom of the Wall and now we were on the roof of the World; we were in the abode of the gods; we were at the Summit of Kosa Saag.

In those first few dazzled moments we shuffled about like dreamers who had awakened into yet another dream. The light was so bright that it beat against our eyes with the force of a flail, and the air, dry and sharp and clear and unthinkably cold, was almost like no air at all.

Gradually, I became able to see more clearly.

It was a smaller place than I had expected, the Summit. I suppose one could cross it from one side to the other in a couple of hours. I had imagined a single tapered point of rock here at the tip of the Wall, like an auger or an awl, and from below it might indeed seem that way; but to us who stood upon it it was more like a plateau than a needle-point. It was more or less circular in shape, and all around its rim was a rocky palisade of rough sharp-edged crags. The sky was more black than blue: the stars were shining at midday, and even two of the moons. Below us lay the vast blank cloud-barrier, sealing off the World from us so that we were left in a solitary realm of barrenness and chill.

But we were not alone up here.

To our right, close by, stood a strange gleaming house—more like a machine than a house, I should say, for it was all of metal and rose on curious jointed struts, as though it were some giant insect making ready to walk away. There were windows of a sort in this house and we saw faces peering through. Far to the left, virtually at the opposite side of the plain, was a second such house; or the ruins of one, rather, for it was corroded and decayed, an ancient twisted shattered thing with great openings torn in its metal sides. This one was much larger than the newer one that lay close beside us.

Could these be the palaces of the gods?

And if they were, where were the gods themselves? I saw no gods here.

That puzzled me greatly. For surely this was the Summit: there could be no other. And at the Summit was the home of the gods. So we all had been taught our whole lives; so we believed with passionate force. But I saw no gods here.

What I did see, moving about in the open space between these two houses, was a roaming band of a dozen or so wild uncouth creatures, strange howling beasts who had the semblance, but only the semblance, of men. They seemed more like apes, and ugly, shambling, clumsy apes at that. They had arrayed themselves in a wide loose ring around the newer metal house, the shining one, and appeared to be laying siege to it. With tremendous vehemence and ferocity they capered about it, screaming madly and grimacing and pelting it with stones, while whoever was within looked on in apparent dismay but took no action to defend themselves.

They were frightful degenerate bestial things, these creatures of the Summit. Their arms were too long and their legs were too short and they were ugly in all their other proportions as well. Their bodies were covered with hair, thick and coarse and shaggy, but not so thick that it succeeded in concealing the myriad blisters and ulcerations and scars that sprouted everywhere on their skin. Their eyes were dull and blank and their teeth were mere broken snags and their shoulders were slumped and rounded. Despite the cold they were naked, or nearly so. And they all seemed to be in a state of Change, for I could see breasts on some, and the dangling complexity of male organs on others. The thought came to me that these strange savage beings must be some primitive creatures ancestral to us, perpetually in a state of sexual readiness, incapable of assuming the neuter form.

I had no time just then, though, for further speculations. For these apish Summit-dwellers, having noticed finally that a group of strangers had come over the horizon of their little domain, were turning their attention to us. Suddenly we were under attack. Shrieking shrilly, prancing and cavorting, they shook their fists at us, spat into the wind, scooped up handfuls of pebbles and flung them at us. Nor did they throw only pebbles. A fair-sized rock struck Maiti in the shoulder and knocked her down. Another hit Narril in the cheek, and he dropped into a crouch, covering his face with his hands. I spun around quickly as a sharp three-sided chunk of stone went whizzing past my ear, but as I did a second one caught me in the flat of the back and made me gasp for breath.

For a moment I was too stunned to think. Then I heard outcries from my left—Thrance’s voice, shouting something above the wind—and an answering whoop from Kilarion—and when I looked up I saw the two of them charging fiercely forward, waving their cudgels as though they were flaming swords. Behind them came Galli, Grycindil, Talbol, shouting and brandishing their cudgels also; and then most of the others, all but Thissa and Traiben and Hendy.

The Summit-dwellers appeared amazed to see this unexpected phalanx rushing toward them. They were thrown into confusion. Halting their onslaught at once, they stood still, looking toward one another and uttering high-pitched chattering cries of alarm; and then they turned and ran, scampering like rock-apes across the flat open space. In no time at all they vanished on the far side of the ruined structure, disappearing into invisible lairs set in crevices of the bordering rocks.

We stared at each other in surprise and relief, and then we began to laugh. It had been so easy, driving them off! Who would have thought they would turn and flee at the first sign of resistance? I called out my thanks to Thrance for his quick wit and my congratulations to all for their courage.

Traiben stood silent beside me, his face stricken with horror.

“What is it?” I asked him. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head. Then he pointed off into the distance, toward the rocks where the Summit-dwellers had taken refuge. His hand was trembling.

“Kreshe and Thig, man! What is it?”

“The gods,” Traiben said, in a voice that sounded more dead than alive. “There they are, Poilar. Kreshe and Thig, Sandu Sando and Selemoy. There. There. We’ve just seen them. Those are our gods, Poilar! The creatures of the Summit!”

My head ran in circles. What monstrous madness was this that Traiben was spouting? I felt an abyss opening beneath my feet. Those beasts the gods? What was he saying? What was he saying? I was bewildered at first and then I was furious, and I came close to striking Traiben for his blasphemy. Even at this moment, here on the bleak and rocky Summit of Kosa Saag, I still felt an abiding certainty that Kreshe and Thig and Selemoy and the rest, Sandu Sando and Nir-i-Sellin and the others of that golden band, must be waiting for us somewhere nearby in their gleaming palace, the one I had seen in my vision that night as I lay under the stars beside Hendy. But I held my hand, out of love for him, and struggled to understand what he was trying to say.

“Do you remember,” he asked me, “what the dead Irtiman said? About the ship that came from the world called Earth, and landed here at the top of Kosa Saag, and the settlement that was founded here?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I do.”

“What can these animals be,” Traiben said, “if not the fallen remnants of that Irtiman settlement of long ago?”

I considered that. And realized that something of what Traiben had said must be true. These debased creatures looked nothing much like Irtimen, and yet in form they were much more like the Irtiman we had found than they were like us. There was a similarity of outline, at least. The Irtiman had been nowhere near as disagreeable in appearance as these creatures, but his proportions indeed had been very much like theirs, the long arms, the short legs, the odd set of the head against the shoulders. And there was one other thing in common, for he had never entered a neuter form that I had ever noticed, but had always remained male, as the males of this tribe seemed also to do.

So these capering animals were more likely the Irtiman’s kin than ours, the pitiful hideous descendants, I supposed, of those Irtimen who had come to the Summit to found a village long ago. Yes, I thought: they must surely be Irtimen of some sort. But that did not make them gods. Wild decadent Irtimen, that was all they were, who had slipped into barbarism during the thousands of years of their settlement here.

I said as much to Traiben.

“And where are the gods, then?” he asked me, in a hard sharp-edged tone that seemed not like his voice at all. “Where, Poilar? Where are they? We are at the Summit—is there any doubt of that? But I don’t see the shining palaces. I don’t see the golden courtyards. I don’t see the feasting-hall of Kreshe. The First Climber said, He found gods here when He finally reached this place. Well, where are they?” He waved his hand once again toward the rockbound lairs of the savage Irtimen. “Where are they, Poilar?”