Kingdoms of the Wall Read online

  Certainly Kosa Saag is always a mighty sight, even when the usual low-hanging clouds hide most of it from view and just the squat reddish base can be seen. But that morning it exceeded itself in awesomeness. It had never seemed so huge to me before. That day I imagined that I could see all the way to the home of the gods. Its endless slope went up and up, a colossal pink thing of unimaginable height and length and breadth lying upon the land like some enormous slumbering beast. I stared in wonder at its great intricate bulk, its pocked and pitted surface, its million spires and pinnacles, its uncountable caverns and crevices, its multitude of subsidiary peaks, its myriad turrets and parapets, its hundreds of spiny ridges and incomprehensible twisting trails leading to unknown lofty realms. And it seemed to me, even then, that in that moment of revelation I could feel the power of the mighty forces that dwell there beating down on me, the invisible fires that emanate from every stone face of the mountain, every rock, every grain of soil — the forces that seize so many of those who venture into those heights, transforming the weak and the unwary into things that can no longer be reckoned as human.

  Because our clan within the House of the Wall was Wallclan, from which the heads of our House are always elected, Traiben and I had a privileged position for the Procession. We were seated in the main viewing stand just opposite the stone roundhouse of the Returned Ones, which is just adjacent to Pilgrim Lodge, from which the chosen Forty would soon emerge. So we were at the very center of things. That was truly dizzying, to know that such a great multitude was arrayed around the central point that was us, spreading outward and outward to the borders of the village and far beyond, all the teeming thousands and thousands of people of all the clans of every House of our village, the highborn and the lowly, the wise ones and the fools, the strong and the weak, packed elbow to elbow in the grassy streets under the shadow of the great mountain that is Kosa Saag.

  THEN CAME THE WORDSthat changed my life. Traiben turned to me while we were waiting and said in an odd and somehow belligerent way, in a voice that had an edge on it, “Tell me, Poilar, do you think that you’re likely to be chosen for the Pilgrimage?”

  I gave him a strange look. As I have said, that was something I had never bothered to think about at all. I took it for granted, a given of my life. In every generation going back to time’s first dawn someone of my family has been selected. I had no brothers or sisters; therefore I would be the one to go in my time. My limp would be no obstacle. Of course I would be chosen. Of course.

  Hotly I said, “The blood of the First Climber runs in my veins. My father was a Pilgrim and so was his father before him. And I will be too, when my time comes. Do you think that I won’t?”

  “Of course you will,” said Traiben, staring at me very intently. His eyes were like huge dark saucers with slits of light at their centers. “You’ll go up there the way so many others have before you, and you’ll climb and climb and climb, and suffer and suffer and suffer. And more likely than not you’ll die somewhere up there, the way most of them do, or come back a babbling madman. Well, what’s the good of it, then? What’s the point? What value is there going to be in all your hard work, Poilar? If all you do is go up there and die. Or come back crazy.”

  Even for Traiben, this was going a little far. It sounded like blasphemy to me.

  “How can you ask such a thing? The Pilgrimage is a holy task.”

  “So it is.”

  “Then what are you saying, Traiben?”

  “That it’s nothing at all just to be a Pilgrim. All it is is a lot of walking, that’s all. On and on and on, up and up and up. You move one foot and then the other and before long you’re higher up the mountain than you were before. Any stupid animal can do that. It’s only a matter of endurance. Do you understand me, Poilar?”

  “Yes. No. No. I don’t understand you at all, Traiben.”

  A little smile appeared on his face. “I’m saying that being picked for the Pilgrimage is no big thing in and of itself. It’s a nice honor, yes. But in the long run honors don’t mean a great deal.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And neither does simply gritting your teeth and making the climb, if you’re doing it without any real sense of why you’re putting yourself through such an ordeal.”

  “What does matter, then? Surviving until you get to the Summit, I suppose.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Part of it?” I said. I blinked at him. “It’s the whole idea, Traiben. That’s why we go. Climbing all the way up to the Summit is the entire point of making the Pilgrimage.”

  “Yes. Exactly. But once you reach the Summit, what then? What then, Poilar? That’s the essential question. Do you understand?”

  How difficult Traiben could be, how bothersome!

  “Well,” I said, “then you go before the gods, if you can find them, and you perform the proper rites, and then you have to turn around and make your way down.”

  “You make it all sound very trivial.”

  I looked at him and said nothing.

  He said very quietly, “What do you think the actual purpose of the Pilgrimage is, Poilar?”

  “Why —” I hesitated. “Everybody knows that. To present ourselves before the gods who live atop Kosa Saag. To find them and ask their blessing. To maintain the good fortune of the village by paying homage to the holy ones.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And what else?”

  “What else? What else can there be? We climb up, we pay homage, we come down. Isn’t that enough?”

  “The First Climber,” said Traiben. “Your great ancestor. What did He achieve?”

  I hardly had to think. The words came rolling out automatically, straight from the catechism. “He offered himself to the gods as an apprentice, and they taught Him how to use fire and how to make the tools that we needed for hunting and building, and how to raise crops, and how we could clothe ourselves in the skins of animals, and many other valuable things. And then He descended from the mountain and taught these things to the people below, who had been living in savagery and ignorance.”

  “Yes. Therefore we revere His memory. And you and I, Poilar — we can do just as He Who Climbed did. Climb the Wall, find the gods, learn from them the things we need to know. That’s the real reason why we go: to learn. To learn, Poilar.”

  “But we already know everything that anybody needs to know.”

  He spat. “Stupid! Stupid! Do you really believe that? We’re still savages, Poilar! We’re still ignorant! We live like beasts in these villages. Like beasts. We hunt and we raise our crops and we tend our gardens. We eat, we drink, we sleep. We eat, we drink, we sleep. Life goes on and on and nothing ever changes. Is that all that you think there is to being alive?”

  I stared. He was utterly bewildering.

  He said, “Let me tell you something. I intend to be a Pilgrim too.”

  I laughed right in his face. “You, Traiben?”

  “Me. Yes. Nothing can stop me. Why do you laugh, Poilar? You think they’ll never choose anyone as weak as I am? No. No, they will. They’ll choose you despite your crooked leg and they’ll choose me even though I’m not strong. I’ll make it happen. I swear it by He Who Climbed. And by Kreshe and all the sacred ones of Heaven!” His eyes began to blaze, bright with that hot eerie Traiben-brightness of his that made him so mystifying and even frightening to all who encountered him. There was a Power about Traiben. If he had been born a Witch instead of into the House of the Wall, he would have been a santha-nilla with great magic at his command, of that I’m sure. “There’s work for us to do up there, Poilar. There are important things that need to be learned and brought back. That’s why the Pilgrimages began — so that we could sit at the feet of the gods and learn the things they know, the way the First Climber did. But for a long time now nothing useful’s been brought down from the mountain. We make no progress. We live as we’ve always lived, and when you stay in the same place, you start to slide backward, after a time. The Pilgrimages sti
ll go forth, yes, but either the Pilgrims don’t return or they come back crazy. And they bring us nothing useful, so we stay forever in the same place. What a waste, Poilar! We have to change all that. We’ll go up there together, you and I, side by side, rising through Kingdom after Kingdom just as the First Climber did. We’ll meet the gods, just as He did. We will have their blessing. We’ll see all the wonders and learn all the mysteries. And together we will return, with new knowledge that will change the world. What kind of knowledge that is, I can’t begin to say. But I know it’s there. I know it without any question. We have to find it. And so we have to make it happen that we become Pilgrims, you and I. Are you following me?We have to make it happen .”

  And he stretched his hand toward me and encircled the thick part of my arm with his fingers, three above and three below, digging his fingertips into my flesh so that I had to gasp with the pain of it: and this was little Traiben, who had no more strength than a fish! Something leaped from him to me in that moment, something of the strange fire that burned within him, something of the fever of his soul. And I felt it burning within me too, an utterly new thing, the passionate yearning to find my gods on that mountain, and stand before them, and say to them, “I am Poilar of Jespodar, and I am here to serve you. But you must serve me too. I wish you to teach me all that you know.”

  He held me like that for a long moment, so that I thought he would never let go. Then I brushed at his hand, gently, as one might brush at a glitterfly hovering around one’s head that is too lovely to hurt, and he released me. But I heard him breathing hard beside me, in hot excitement. It was a troublesome thing for me, this frenzy of Traiben’s that had come over him so passionately and that he had passed over into my spirit.

  “Look,” I said, desperate to step back from the intensity of the moment, for passion of that kind was something new to me and it was making me tremble, “the Procession is going to start.”

  INDEED EVERYONE WAS UTTERINGlittle hsshing noises to silence his neighbor, for the grand march was beginning. The Sweepers in their purple loincloths went dancing by, whisking dangerous spirits out of the roadway with their little brooms, and then, in silence, came the heart of the Procession out of the heavy morning mists that lay at the lower end of town. My father’s father’s brother’s son Meribail led the way, all bedecked in a shining and magnificent cloak of scarlet gambardo feathers woven tightly together. Beside him on the one side was Thispar Double-Lifer, the oldest man of the village, who had lived seven full tens of years. Traiben’s father’s father’s father, he was. On the other side of Meribail was another of our old ones, the double-lifer Gamilalar, who had lately celebrated the beginning of his seventh ten. Following these three in the Procession came the heads of all the Houses, walking grandly two by two.

  But my mind wasn’t on the Procession. It was full of Traiben’s words, which had set me aflame with new and consuming ambitions. He had put an urgent need into me that had never been there before.

  And so I made my vow. I would climb the Wall to its utmost point. I would attain the Summit. I would stare into the eyes of the gods, from whom all wisdom flows, and I would absorb all that they could give me. Then I would return to our lowland home, which only a few had ever succeeded in doing, and most of those no longer in their right minds. And I would teach to others everything that I had mastered on high.

  So be it. From that moment on my life’s goal was graven in stone.

  And it was Traiben’s goal too. How strange! That frail awkward boy had dreams of being a Pilgrim? It seemed almost comical. They would never choose him, never,never. And yet I understood that when Traiben desired a thing, Traiben was capable of attaining it.

  Together we would achieve the Pilgrimage, Traiben and I. We were twelve years old, and our lives were irrevocably set from that moment forth.

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  2

  THE EVENTS OF THATday’s Procession passed before me as though I were watching them in a dream. The heads of all the Houses went past me, stiff with their own importance. Then came the Musicians, filling the air with the sounds of their thunbors and gallimonds and bindanays, and after them the Jugglers, prancing and leaping and turning handsprings and changing shape with careless frenzy as they tossed their sharp-bladed sepinongs high and deftly plucked them from the air. The sacred things were brought forth next, carried on cushions of bronzy green by solemn-faced Holies; and then, walking by themselves to no rhythm or beat whatever, came five or six Returned Ones, moving in worlds of their own, honoring the Procession by their presence but not a part of it any real way. After they had passed Pilgrim Lodge they drifted off into the throng and would not be seen again that day, or, for all anyone knew, that year.

  The dancing was next. Each House’s dancing-clan appeared in turn, richly arrayed, doing the special dance of that House. The Weavers did the hawk dance, the Scribes did the shambler dance, the Butchers did the bear dance, the Vintners did the rock-ape dance. The Witches danced the conjuring dance, the Carpenters danced the hammer dance. And so on and so on through the wind-sprite dance of the Jugglers, the waterfall dance of the Growers, the fire dance of the Healers, the sky-wolf dance of the Judges. And finally, masked and robed in the most splendid way of all, came the dancers of the House of the Wall, enacting the slow and majestic steps of the Wall dance.

  There was more, much more: you know the pomp and splendor of the Pilgrim Procession as well as I. The hours floated by in dazzlement.

  And Traiben’s words continued to burn in my soul’s heart.

  For the first time in my life I had some glimmering of who I was.

  Do you know who you are? “I am Mosca,” you say, “I am Helkitan,” “I am Simbol Leathermaker,” or whatever your name may be. But your name is not you. “I am Poilar Crookleg,” I would tell people, and yet I had no real idea who or what Poilar Crookleg might be. Now I began to see. Traiben had turned a key in my mind and I started to understand myself a little. Who was Poilar? Poilar is He-Who-Will-Be-a-Pilgrim. Well, yes, but I knew that already. What kind of Pilgrim will Poilar be? One who understands the purpose of the Pilgrimage. Yes. Yes. Because I was born into the House of the Wall, I might have looked forward to a lifetime of performing rites and ceremonies, but that had never seemed to be a thing I was going to do. So I remained unformed and undirected. My future life had no shape. But now I knew — I knew, I reallyknew , not simply assumed — that I had been born to be a Pilgrim. Very well. For the first time I understood what that meant.

  “Look,” Traiben said. “The doors of the Lodge are starting to open.”

  So they were, the two great wickerwork doors embellished with heavy bronze bands that are opened only on this one day of the year. They swung back slowly, protesting on their thick stone hinges, and the chosen Pilgrims came forth, the men issuing from the left-hand chamber, the women from the right one. Out into the sunlight they came, pale and blinking, because they had not been seen in the open since the day the chosen ones’ names had been announced, half a year ago. Blood streaked their cheeks and hands and forearms and clothing: they had just performed the Sacrifice of the Bond that is the last thing they do before leaving the Lodge. They were lean and hard from all the training they had undergone. Their faces, mainly, were somber and drawn, as though they were marching not to glory but to their deaths. Most of the new Pilgrims looked that way every year, I had already noticed. Why, I wondered, was that? They had striven so hard to be chosen; and after much travail they had gained what they sought: why then look so downcast?

  But a few, at least, seemed transfigured by the honor that had come to them. Their eyes were turned rapturously toward Kosa Saag and their faces were shining with an inner light. It was wonderful to see those few.

  “Look at Galli’s brother,” I whispered to Traiben. “Do you see how happy he is? That’s the way I’m going to be when my time comes.”

  “And so will I.”

  “And look, look, there’s Thrance!” He was our gr
eat hero then, an athlete of legendary skill, flawless of shape and tall as a tree, a godlike figure of wondrous beauty and strength. Everyone around us stirred in excitement as Thrance emerged from Pilgrim Lodge. “He’ll run straight up to the Summit, I’ll bet, without ever stopping to catch his breath. He won’t wait for the others — he’ll just take off and keep going.”

  “He probably will,” said Traiben. “Poor Thrance.”

  “Poor Thrance? Why do you say a strange thing like that? Thrance is someone to be envied, and you know it!”

  Traiben shook his head. “Envy Thrance? Oh, no, Poilar. I envy him his broad back and long legs, and nothing else. Don’t you see? This moment right now is the finest moment of his life. Everything can only get worse from here on for him.”

  “Because he’s been chosen to be a Pilgrim?”

  “Because he’ll run ahead of the others,” said Traiben, and turned away, wrapping himself in a cloak of silence.

  Thrance went trotting past us down Procession Street, a jubilant figure, head upraised toward the mountain.

  We were almost at the end of the Procession now.

  The last of this year’s Pilgrims had passed by, and had taken the turn past the huge scarlet-leaved szambar tree in the plaza, the place where all roads meet, the spindle marking the point from which everything in our village radiates. They swung sharply around the tree and went to the right: that would put them on the road toward Kosa Saag. Behind them came the final group of marchers, the saddest ones of all — the great horde of defeated candidates, whose humiliating task it was to carry the equipment and baggage of the winners as far as the village boundary.

  How sorry I felt for them! How my heart ached for their shame!

  There were hundreds and hundreds of them, marching five abreast past me for what seemed like forever. These, I knew, were merely the ones that had survived the long ordeal of training and selection; for many die during that time. Even after those deaths there were still, I suppose, eighty or ninety defeated ones for each of the chosen Forty. It has always been like that. Many come forward, but few succeed. In my year, which was a large one though not unusually so, there were four thousand two hundred and fifty-six candidates: each of us had less than one chance out of a hundred to be chosen.