After a time I stood up. We had reached a broad plateau, so deep and wide that I thought at first that we had reached the Summit itself, the very top of Kosa Saag, for everything seemed flat in all directions. Then my eyes focused on the distance and I saw how wrong I was: for I could see now, so far away to the southwest that it was almost at the limits of my vision, the next stage of the Wall rising above the floor of the plateau.
It was a numbing sight. What I saw out there was a great shining mass of pale red stone, shrouded at the base by a swirl of misty morning air and disappearing overhead in thick clouds. It tapered upward to infinity in a series of diminishing stages. It was like one mountain rising upon another. The whole Wall must be like that, I realized: not a mountain but a mountain range, immense at the base, narrowing gradually as you went higher. No wonder we couldn’t see the Wall’s upper reaches from our valley: they lay hidden from our view within the natural fortress formed by the lower levels. I came now to understand that in truth we had only begun our ascent. By reaching this plateau we had simply completed the first phase of the first phase. We had merely traversed the outer rim of the foothills of the tremendous thing that is Kosa Saag. My heart sank as I began to comprehend that our climb thus far had been only a prologue. Ahead of us still lay this vast mocking pink staircase outlined against a dark, ominously violet sky.
I turned away from it. We could deal with that awesome immensity later. Sufficient unto the day is the travail thereof, says the First Climber; and He is right in that, as He is in all other things.
“Well?” Kilarion asked. “Do you think the others can get themselves up here?”
I glanced back over the edge of the rock face we had just ascended. The trail at the base of the vertical cliff was incredibly far below us; at this distance it seemed no wider than a thread. It was hard to believe that Kilarion and I had scrambled up such a height of inhospitable stone. But we had. We had. And except for a couple of troublesome moments it had been a simple steady haul, or so it seemed to me in retrospect. The climb could have been worse, I told myself. It could have been very much worse.
“Of course,” I said. “There’s not one of them who couldn’t manage it.”
“Good!” Kilarion clapped me on the back and grinned. “Now we go down and tell them, eh? Unless you want to wait here, and I go down and tell them. Eh?”
“You wait here, if you like,” I said. “They’ll need to hear it from me.”
“We both go down, then.”
“All right. We both go down.”
WE DESCENDED BOLDLY, EVENrashly, quickly swinging ourselves from ledge to ledge with our ropes, hardly pausing to secure our holds before we were off again. The mountain air does that to you, that and the exhilaration of knowing that you have conquered fear and attained your goal. I suppose in our exuberance we might well have levered ourselves right off the face of the cliff into the abyss beyond the trail ledge. But we did not; and quickly we were down again and trotting back to camp with the news of what we had achieved.
Muurmut said at once, “That way is impossible. I saw it myself last night. It goes straight up. Nobody could climb it.”
“Kilarion and I have just climbed it.”
“You say that you have, anyway.”
I looked at him, wanting to kill. “You think that I’m lying?”
Kilarion said impatiently, “Don’t be a fool, Muurmut. Of course we climbed it. Why would we lie about that? Climbing it isn’t as hard as it looks.”
Muurmut shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I say that it’s impossible and that if we try it we’ll die. You’re stronger than any two of us, Kilarion. And you, Poilar, you can climb anything with your tongue alone. But will Thissa be able to climb it? Or Hendy? Or that darling little Traiben of yours?”
Clever of him to pick the three who mattered most to me. But I said sharply, “We’ll all be able to climb it.”
“I say no. I say it’s too dangerous.”
I hated him for inspiring doubt in us when what we needed now was sublime self-confidence. “What are you suggesting, then, Muurmut? That we sprout wings and fly ourselves to the top?”
“I’m suggesting that we retrace our steps until we find a safer way.”
“There is no safer way. This is our only choice. Short of simply creeping back to the village like cowards, that is, and I don’t choose to do that.”
He gave me a scowling look. “If we all die on this rock-climb of yours, Poilar, how will that get us to the Summit?”
This was opposition purely for the sake of opposition, and we both knew it. There were no paths to follow but this one. I wanted to strike him and break him; but I kept calm and said indifferently, “As you wish, Muurmut. Stay right here and live forever. The rest of us will continue the climb and take our chances on dying.”
“Will they?” he asked.
“Let them decide,” I said.
So we had what amounted to a second election. I asked who would come with Kilarion and me up the face of the rock, and immediately Traiben and Galli and Stum and Jaif and about half a dozen others raised their hands — the usual dependable ones. I could see doubt on the faces of Muurmut’s henchmen Seppil and Talbol, and on Naxa’s face also, and on a few of the women’s. More than a few, in fact, and some of the other men. For a moment I thought the vote would run against me, which would end my leadership of the climb. Some of the waverers, the most timid ones, edged toward Muurmut as though they intended to remain behind with him. But then Thissa put her hand up high and that seemed to be a turning point. By twos and threes the rest hastened to vote for the climb. In the end Seppil and Talbol were the only ones remaining in Muurmut’s camp, and they looked at him in confusion.
“Shall we say farewell to the three of you now?” I asked.
Muurmut spat. “We climb under protest. You risk our lives needlessly, Poilar.”
“Then I risk my own as well,” I said. “For the second time this day.” I turned away from him and went to Thissa, whose decision had swung the vote. “Thank you,” I said.
The quickest flicker of a smile crossed her face. “You are welcome, Poilar.”
“What a pain Muurmut is. I’d like to throw him over the edge.”
She stepped back, gaping at me in shock. I could see that she had taken me seriously.
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t mean that literally.”
“If you killed him it would be the end of everything for us.”
“I won’t kill him unless he forces me to,” I said. “But I wouldn’t weep for very long if he happened to have some terrible accident.”
“Poilar!” She seemed sick with horror.
Perhaps Galli was right. Thissa was terribly frail.
FOR THE GENERAL ASCENTwe divided ourselves into ten groups, all of them groups of four except for one, which consisted only of Kilarion, Thissa, and Grycindil, because Stapp’s death at the lake of pitch had left us with an unequal number. My own group was Traiben, Kreod, and Galli. Mainly we roped ourselves with the men going first and last and the women in between, for most men are stronger than most women and we knew it would be best to have a man below to hold the group if anyone fell. But in my group I took care to have Traiben climb just below me and Galli to have the important bottom spot, for Traiben was weak and Galli was as strong as any man among us but Kilarion. I let Muurmut go up with his friends Seppil and Talbol and Thuiman, even though they were all strong men and would better have been used to bolster some of the women. But I thought, if any of them should fall, let them all fall together, and good riddance.
Once again Kilarion led the way. He was very much more cautious in the climb now with Thissa and Grycindil than he had been with me, and I understood that on our earlier climb he had been deliberately challenging me to keep up the pace. When his group had gone far enough up the cliff so that Grycindil had begun her climb, I started up alongside them, keeping a little to the left to avoid any pebbles that might be scraped loose from climbers above me.
Ghibbilau the Grower took the next group up, with Tenilda and Hendy and Gazin. After them went Naxa, Ment the Sweeper, Min, and Stum, and then Bress the Carpenter, Hilth of the Builders, Ijo the Scholar, Scardil the Butcher. And so we all went, group after group. Now and then I heard brittle nervous laughter from below me; but I knew better this time than to look back and see how they were doing.
Midway up, Traiben found himself in difficulties.
“I can’t reach the next hold, Poilar!”
“Twist your hips. Angle your body upward.”
“I’ve done it. I still can’t reach.”
Cautiously I glanced toward him, focusing my vision so that I saw Traiben and only Traiben, nothing below him. He was awkwardly wedged into a barely manageable foothold a few paces to the side of the route I had been taking, and he was straining desperately to get a grip on a jagged knob of red rock that was well beyond his grasp.
“I’ll go a little higher,” I told him. “When the rope goes taut, it’ll pull you closer to it.”
I forced myself upward. Lines of fire were running across my chest and back now from the effort of this second climb of the morning. But I pulled myself as far as I could go without making Traiben’s weight an impossible burden on me that would rip me loose and send me plunging past him. Galli, far down the rock, saw what I was doing and called up to me that she had a good grip, that she would anchor me while I pulled. But I doubted that even she could hold us all if I fell, bringing Traiben down with me.
“I can’t reach it,” Traiben muttered. He spoke as if every word cost him a great price.
“Change!” Thissa called, from somewhere far above us. I looked up and saw her peering down at us over the cornice of the plateau. She was feverishly making witchery-signs at us, thrusting both thumbs of each hand at us like little horns. “Can you? Make your arm longer, Traiben! Make it stretch!”
Of course. Make it stretch. Why else were we given shapechanging by the gods?
“Do it,” I said.
But controlling your Changes is not such a simple thing when you are in terror of your life. I watched as Traiben, trembling below me, struggled to adjust the proportions of his frame, shifting his shoulders about, loosening the bones of his back and arms to achieve the greater reach. I would have gone to him to stretch him myself, if I could. But I had to hold us in our place. His fumbling went on and on, until my own arms began to tire and I wondered how long I could stay where I was. Then I heard an odd little giggle come from him and when I glanced at him again I saw him weirdly distorted, with his left arm far longer than the right and his whole body bent into a tortured curve. But he had hold of the knob he needed. He hauled himself up; the slack returned to the rope; I pressed myself against the rock until I was limp, and let my lungs fill gladly with air.
After that the rest was almost easy. For the second time that morning I came to the top of that wall of rock. I pulled Traiben over the cornice, and Kreod, and then came Galli on her own, looking as unwearied as if she had been out for a stroll.
One by one the other groups followed, until we were reunited on the plateau. I saw everyone blinking and looking about in wonder, astounded by the size of this great flat place that Kilarion had brought us to.
“Where do we go now?” Fesild asked. “Where’s the Wall?”
“There,” I said, and pointed to that remote rosy bulk in the southwest, dimly visible behind its screen of wispy white clouds and congested haze.
The others began to gasp. I think they had mistaken the pink gleam of it on the horizon for the sky; but now the comprehension was breaking upon them, as earlier it had broken upon me, that we were looking at last upon the true Wall — the Wall of the many Kingdoms of which the fables told, the Wall within the Wall, the immense hidden core of the mountain sheltered here in these interior folds and gorges, that great thing which still remained for us to conquer.
“So far away?” she murmured, for the plateau was vast and anyone’s soul would quail at the distance we had to travel across it in order to resume our climb. The magnitude of the climb that awaited us afterward took another moment to register itself upon her soul. Then she said, very softly: “And so high!”
We all were silent in the face of that colossal sun-shafted thing that lay before us. Such pride as we felt in having scaled the rock face below us shriveled to dust in the contemplation of what still must be done.
|Go to Table of Contents |
10
ICOULD NOT TELLyou how long we spent in crossing that broad plateau. Many weeks, it must have been: but each day melted into the next and we kept no count. It was a rough, barren, scrubby place, sun-baked and stark and not nearly so flat as it had appeared from its edge, with dips and ridges and valleys and chasms to bedevil us every day. Even where it was level, the land was rocky and difficult to traverse. The vegetation was coarse and, for the most part, useless to us: woody, stringy, thorny, all but leafless, offering little but bitter roots and dry tasteless fruit. The only animals we saw were small gray furry creatures, ugly and scrawny and lopsided, which scuttered before us as we marched. They were too quick for us to catch nor would they come near the traps we set, but it was just as well: we would not have had much nourishment from them, I think, nor any pleasure. The occasional shallow streams we found were sparsely inhabited also, though by patient hours of fishing we came up with netfuls of bony silvery wrigglers out of which we made meals of a sort.
From the second day of the crossing, or maybe it was the third, I felt myself beginning to hate the plateau. I had never felt such hatred in my life as the hatred I felt for that plateau. It was a wasteland that gave us no upwardness, and the upwardness was all I desired. Yet it had to be crossed. So in its way it was part of the upwardness, a necessity of the route; but I hated it all the same. There was no grandeur here. The great peaks of the rift were behind us, hidden from our view by tricks of the land; and the great peak that was Kosa Saag, the peak of peaks, lay impossibly far in front of us across the plateau; and so I hated it, because it must be crossed.
We marched from dawn to dusk, day upon day upon day, and the mountain seemed to remain at the same distance all the time. I said as much one afternoon when I had grown very weary.
“The same distance? No, worse, it moves backward as we approach,” said Naxa dourly. “We’ll never reach it even if we march for a thousand years.”
And voices came from behind us, grumbling and muttering to much the same purpose. Muurmut’s, of course, was prominent among them.
“What do you say, Poilar?” Naxa asked me. His voice was like an auger, drilling into my soul. “Should we give up the climb and build ourselves a village here? For surely we gain nothing by going forward and I doubt very much that we could ever find our way back.”
I made no reply. Already I regretted having spoken in the first place, and it would be folly to let myself be drawn into a debate on whether we should abandon our Pilgrimage.
Grycindil the Weaver, who had grown very sharp-tongued on the plateau, turned to Naxa and said, “Be quiet, will you? Who needs your gloom, you foolish Scribe?”
“I need my gloom!” Naxa cried. “It keeps me warm by night. And I think you need something from me, Grycindil, to keepyou warm.” He nudged her arm and pushed his face close to hers, grinning evilly. “What about it, Weaver-girl? Shall you and I weave a few Changes tonight?”
“Fool,” answered Grycindil. And she poured out such a stream of abuse that I thought the air would burn.
“You are both of you fools,” said Galli, but in a good-humored way. “In this thin air you should save your breath for some better use.”
Kath, who was walking beside me, said in a low voice, “Do you know, Poilar, I wouldn’t mind drowning Naxa at the next stream, if only so that I would never have to hear that whining voice of his again.”
“A good idea. If only we could.”
“But I confess it troubles me also that the mountain grows no closer.”
“It grow
s closer with every step we take,” I replied sharply. I was getting angry now. Perhaps I had doubts of my own that were causing a soreness in my soul. Naxa was only a nuisance but Muurmut had the capacity to make real trouble, and I knew that very shortly he would, if this kind of talk continued. I had to cut it off. “It onlyseems to stay at the same distance, is what I told Naxa. And we’re in no hurry, are we, Kath? If we spend all the rest of our lives on this Pilgrimage, what harm is there in that?”
He looked at me for a long moment, as though that was a new thought to him. Then he nodded, and we went onward without speaking again. The grumblers behind us ceased their chatter, after a time.
BUT THERE HAD BEENpoison in Naxa’s words, and all that day it seeped deeper into my soul. That night when we camped I sank into such a dark brooding and despondency that I scarcely knew myself. All I could think was, This plateau has no end, this plateau has no end, we will spend all the years of our lives attempting to cross it. And I thought, Naxa is right. Better to turn back, and build a new village for ourselves somewhere on the lower slopes, than to expend ourselves in this interminable and futile quest.
The urge to make an end to this Pilgrimage came on me in wave after wave. Naxa was right. Muurmut was right. All the faint-hearted ones were right. Why struggle like this, in hope of finding gods who might not even exist? We had thrown away our lives in this foolish Pilgrimage. Our only choices now were the disgrace of an early return to the village and the death that waited for us in this wilderness.
Such thinking was terrible blasphemy. At another time I would have fought it away. But this night it was too much for me; it overwhelmed me; I could not help but yield to its power and temptation; and in yielding I felt my soul beginning to freeze, I felt my spirit becoming encased in ice.
This was all strange to me, this embracing of defeat and despair. It was the dreariness of the plateau that did it to me, that and Naxa’s insidious poisonous words. While the others sprawled about the campfire that night singing village songs and laughing at the antics of Gazin the Juggler and Dorn and Tull, our two lively Clowns, I went off by myself and sat bleakly in the saddle of a gray rock encrusted with dry moss, and stared empty-eyed at the miserable distances that still confronted us. Two moons were aloft, the cheerless Karibos and Theinibos, and by the harsh light that comes from their pockmarked faces I saw only sorrow and grief in this withered eroded landscape. I think it was the worst hour of my life, the hour that I sat there watching spiny-backed night-beasts scampering across that desolate waste; and by the end of it I was ready to strike camp and slink back down the side of the Wall that very evening. For me the Pilgrimage was at an end then and there. It had lost all meaning. It had ceased utterly to make sense. What was the good of it? What was the good of anything? There was nothing to gain in this place but pain, and then more pain; and the gods, in their eyrie far above, were looking down at our struggles and laughing.