Kingdoms of the Wall

  He never spoke of his life in the village, or of the fate of the Forty with whom he had set out upon the Wall so many years before, or indeed of any aspect of himself or of his past. The majestic Thrance of my childhood, whom I had watched so often racing in the winter games or casting javelins or winning the high leap, was dead and buried somewhere within his altered and deformed body. His conversation was all banter and gibe and wild mockery, or sarcasm and riddle. Perhaps the most mysterious thing about him was the volatility of his moods; for he was often fiery and outgoing, capering along the trail despite his limp and calling jubilantly to us to keep up with him, and then abruptly he would become sullen and ashen-souled and distant. It was as if a god sometimes would possess him, or some evil spirit; and when the god was gone from him, or the spirit, nothing remained but a husk. The change could happen three times in five minutes: you never knew which Thrance it was that you would be dealing with a moment from now.

  When we had been on the trail with him for a week or so, he dismissed Muurmut from our midst.

  I never knew precisely what happened. Grycindil was at the heart of the matter, that much was sure. Evidently she had gone to Thrance’s sleeping-place in the night, and he had taken her in; so much for my theory that he was beyond the need or desire for making the Changes. And then — so Kath believed, for he had been sleeping nearby and heard a little of the dispute — Muurmut had gone to them to bring her back.

  That was a childish thing to do, for although Muurmut and Grycindil had become lovers, they weren’t sealed to each other — sealings are unthinkable on Kosa Saag — and Grycindil was free to sleep wherever she chose. But Muurmut would not have it. And so in the night there were words between Muurmut and Thrance. I heard them myself, angry sounds far away, but I was too tired from that day’s march to give them much thought, and Hendy drew me down into her arms, sleepily telling me that it was nothing, that I should pay no attention. And in the morning Muurmut was gone.

  “Where is he?” I asked, because his bulky presence was always conspicuous and so was his absence. “Who has seen him?”

  Thrance gestured toward the steep slope behind us. “He has resigned from our company.”

  “What?”

  “He fears the high country. He told me so. He thinks his soul will be devoured there. And I said, ‘So it will be, Muurmut. You should go home. Slink down the hill to the village, Muurmut, and tell them to take you in.’ He saw the wisdom in what I was saying to him. And so he is gone. He will be a Returned One, and he will be very good at it.”

  Thrance’s words bewildered me. I had never known Muurmut to take orders from anyone, nor could any threat I was capable of imagining have frightened him into such a capitulation. “What nonsense is this?” I said, looking around. “Where’s Muurmut? Who has seen Muurmut?” But no one had. We searched for his tracks, and Ment the Sweeper, who was skillful at such things, thought he saw a trail leading downward from our camp. I told Gazin and Talbol and Naxa to follow it and search for him. Thrance laughed and stood with folded arms, saying that Muurmut was gone and no one would find him. Some hours went by, and the searchers returned. We waited there all day, but Muurmut did not return. There was nothing to do but to go on. I took Grycindil aside and asked her to tell me what had happened, but all she could say was that Muurmut had come to her where she was sleeping with Thrance, and that Thrance and Muurmut had spoken in the night, and then Thrance had returned to her side. It had been a night of no moons. She had no idea which way Muurmut had gone, or why. Nor did we ever learn those things. What Thrance had said to Muurmut, or what enchantment he had worked on him, is something I do not know. I never will.

  Strangely, I felt a great empty place in my spirit at Muurmut’s disappearance. I hadn’t ever liked him; he had been nothing but trouble for me; I should have rejoiced that he was no longer with us. But I am not like that. He had been a nuisance but he was of our Forty, and I mourned his going for that reason, and also because he was strong and sometimes valuable to the group. In a curious way I would miss him. It occurred to me that in trading Muurmut for Thrance I had not improved my situation. Muurmut, negative force though he had been in the group, had been easy enough for me to outflank and control. Thrance was a different matter: older, shrewder, with that strange burned-out quality that made him indifferent to ambition but highly dangerous all the same, since by his own admission he no longer cared about anything at all. When most of us act, it is usually with some thought for the consequences of what we are doing. Not so with Thrance. For him every moment was an independent thing, born with neither antecedent nor successor. In Thrance, I realized, I had acquired a much more complicated and deadlier rival than Muurmut ever had been. I would need to keep close watch on him.

  DURING THESE DAYS, ALSO, we were drawing nearer and nearer to the Kingdom of the Kavnalla.

  We had all begun feeling its pull almost as soon as we left our camp in the place of the red spires. Dorn was the first to come to me complaining of it: he spoke of a strangeness in his head, like an itching or a tickling within his skull, and on his heels came two of the women, Scardil and Pren, and then Ghibbilau, to tell me the same. They were relieved to find that they weren’t the only ones afflicted that way, that in fact we all were. I called the group together and told them that what we were experiencing was a phenomenon particular to this sector of the Wall and that there was nothing to fear from it, at least not yet.

  “Is that the Kavnalla that we feel?” I asked Thrance. And he nodded and pointed up the slope, grinning almost as though he were looking forward to a rendezvous with an old friend.

  The force of it grew stronger hour by hour. At first it was as Dorn had said, no more than a kind of tickling inside our skulls, a barely perceptible feather-stroke, odd and a little disturbing, but light, very light. Then it grew more powerful and it became as Traiben and I had experienced it on our preliminary reconnoitering march: a clear voice within our heads, articulate and unmistakable, saying to us,Come, come, this is the way, come to me, come. There was a definite pull, but not an unpleasant one, nothing troublesome or alarming: something was beckoning to us like a mother opening her arms to her children.

  And if something was beckoning, we were responding. We were in a steep land now, heavily wooded, where the hills were of a grayish-white stone deeply pockmarked by caves, and though the path was difficult, we made our way up the ever more rugged incline with such frantic zeal that we outstripped our own strength, and from time to time had to halt and drop to the ground, laughing and gasping, until we could catch our breath. And then we were onward again, furiously slashing through brambles, scrambling over boulders, clawing our way upward, upward, upward, moving faster than we would have thought possible. The higher we went, the more urgent became the call.Come to me! Come! Come!

  Traiben spoke to me and expressed his concern. I shared it. “We’re starting to lose control of ourselves,” I said uneasily to Thrance. “You said that you would guard us against the Kavnalla’s song.”

  “And so I will.”

  “Shouldn’t we be taking some precautions by this time, then?”

  “Soon. Soon. There’s no need at this point.” Nor would he say more than that, however hard I pressed him.

  And upward we sped, willy-nilly. We were all but running up the slope now. The thought came to me once again that despite his protestations Thrance might indeed be the creature of the Kavnalla, and was merrily leading us toward our doom.

  Others now were beginning to wonder, not just Traiben. Our ever-swifter pace was taking its toll on their bodies and stirring troublesome questions in their minds. Where were we going in such a hurry? they asked. What is this thing that speaks in our heads? Is there danger? Tell us, tell us, tell us, Poilar!

  But there was nothing I could say. I knew no more than they did.

  I felt that it was my responsibility to take some action. But what? Thrance was elusive. Often he walked ahead, moving with remarkable swiftness for one whose body
was so transformed into twistedness and deformity. Watching him striding so swiftly, I was reminded again of the shining young Thrance of years ago, bursting from Pilgrim Lodge and running ahead of all his Forty up the road that led to Kosa Saag. So there is still some of Thrance within that ruined body, I thought. I pushed myself to catch up with him. He moved serenely, his breathing utterly normal, as though this pace were nothing for him.

  I said, “We can’t go on like this. The voice grows louder and louder, and people are speaking out. We have to know what we’re getting into, Thrance.”

  “Wait. There’s time yet for you to learn.”

  “No. Now.”

  “No, not now. The time will come.” And with a new burst of speed he streaked ahead. I followed him, but it was hard for me to match his pace, and my bad leg began to ache. How did he do it? Therehad to be a demon in him. Again I caught up with him, and again I pressed him, and again he eluded me with grinning evasions, putting me off, telling me the time was not yet.

  I felt a burst of rage. I should kill him, I thought. And take us all away from this place. Unless he is killed he will never let us alone, and ultimately he will destroy us. For he is a demon, or else he has one in him.

  But the thought of killing Thrance appalled me. I tried to sweep it from my mind. Another day, I told myself, or two or three, and then I would confront him once again, and this time I wouldn’t let him wriggle from my grasp. It was a weak decision, and I had no illusions about that. But Thrance baffled me. I had never had to deal with anyone like him before.

  My companions were growing even more restless now. After dark one night a delegation came to me, troubled and angry, when we had halted after a day of wild climbing that left us all exhausted: Galli, and Naxa, and Talbol, and Jaif. The pull was so strong now that we were climbing virtually from dawn to dusk; but finally we had stopped from sheer weariness, despite the insistent booming in our minds, and were camped in a place of little shallow caverns against the pitted and eroded Wall.

  Hendy was with me in the small dank cavern I had chosen. Galli said, very brusquely, “Send her out.”

  “What is this?” I asked. “Am I to be murdered?”

  “We want to speak with you. What we have to say is between you and the four of us, and no one else.”

  “Hendy shares my sleeping-place, and much else of mine besides. Whatever you have to say you can say in front of her.”

  “It makes no difference to me,” said Hendy softly, and began to get up to go.

  “Stay,” I said, catching her by the wrist.

  “No,” Galli said. She seemed gigantic, standing there in the mouth of my shallow little cave. Her face was fierce. I had never seen her with such a look as she had now. “Send her outside, Poilar.”

  I was eager for sleep, and I suppose I had the doing of the Changes on my mind also, and the voice of the Kavnalla was louder than ever, like the beating of a drum in my brain.Come, come, come, making me short-tempered and impatient. I turned my back and said, “Let me be, will you? I’m in no mood for discussing anything with any of you now. Talk to me about it in the morning, Galli.”

  “We’ll talk now,” Galli replied.

  Then Talbol said to her, “What difference does it make if Hendy hears this or not? Let her stay while we speak.”

  Galli grunted and shrugged, but offered no objection.

  “Will you hear us?” Talbol asked.

  “Go ahead,” I said grudgingly.

  Talbol swung around toward me. I remembered that he had been Muurmut’s man. Just as well Muurmut was gone, I thought: I could imagine how much difficulty Muurmut would be making for me if he had been a member of this delegation too. I studied Talbol’s broad flat face, brown as the leather that is the trade of his House. This was a strange alliance, I thought, my friends Galli and Jaif with Talbol and Naxa, who never had had much love for me.

  He said, “What we want to know is simply this, Poilar: Why are we rushing forward in this lunatic way, when we don’t know where we’re going or what we’re heading toward?”

  “We’re going into the Kingdom of the Kavnalla,” I replied. “And through it, and beyond.”

  “Into it, yes,” said Naxa, stepping forward to stand at Talbol’s side. “But beyond it? How do you know? What if Thrance means only to deliver us up to this unknown thing that we hear speaking in our minds?”

  “Not so,” I said, looking away from Naxa in discomfort, for the fear that Naxa had voiced was of course one that I shared. But I couldn’t say that to him. “He has a way of protecting us against it.”

  “Ah, and what may that be?” Galli asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But he intends to teach it to us, sooner or later?”

  “When the time comes, is what he told me.”

  “And when is that?” she asked me. “What is he waiting for? It seems to us that the time is very close. He protected his own Forty so well that of them all he’s the only one who still survives. My brother was a member of his Forty, Poilar. And now we fly toward your Kavnalla day by day, and its voice grows stronger and stronger within us, and Thrance tells us nothing.”

  “He will. I know he will.”

  “You know? You think? You believe? You hope? Which is it, Poilar?” Great heavy-set Galli rose up before me like a tower, her eyes ablaze in the dimness of the little cave. “Why don’t you demand that he tell you right now? Are you our leader, or is he? When will he teach us what we need to know in order to defend ourselves?”

  “He will,” I said again, with less conviction than before. “In the proper time.”

  “Why do you trust him, Poilar?” Galli asked.

  I had no answer for that.

  “What I think is that we should throw him over the cliff,” said Talbol abruptly. “And make our way down from this place and take some other route upward, before we discover that there’s no longer any turning back for us. There is change-fire here, somewhere nearby. We are in great danger. And he brings us ever closer to it.”

  “Just so,” said Jaif, who had hung back until this moment, saying nothing. “Kill him now, while we still can.”

  “Kill him?” I said, astounded. This from Jaif, the kindest of men?

  “Kill him, yes,” Jaif said again. He looked a little stunned at his own audacity. But then Galli nodded vehemently and said, “There’s something to the idea, Poilar. I took Thrance’s side when he first came to us, but also I said then that we should kill him if he made problems for us. I didn’t really mean it then, but now I do. He’s rotten through and through. He’s nothing but trouble, don’t you see?” Naxa too spoke up in favor of our ridding ourselves of Thrance, and Talbol also, and suddenly they were all talking at once, crying out for an end to him and an immediate descent from this hill of voices, while beneath all their hubbub I heard the Kavnalla’s urging louder than ever, pounding like the beating of a drum in my brain.Come, come, come.

  My head was whirling. There was a great roaring in my ears.

  “Quiet, all of you!” I cried out over the turmoil, and there must have been such madness in my tone that it awed them all into silence. They stood in the opening of the cave, gaping at me. Then in a quieter voice I said, “There’ll be no talk of killing Thrance, or anyone else, unless it comes from me. I’ll speak again with him tomorrow, and tell him that the time has arrived for him to teach us how to ward off the song of the Kavnalla. And he will give me the answer we need to have him give, or he’ll regret it, I promise you that. And now good night to you all. Go. Go.”

  They looked at me and went, without another word.

  My skull throbbed as though someone had been drumming on it. My thoughts raced in circles.

  Hendy said, after a long while, “What if they’re right, Poilar? What if Thrance is really our enemy?”

  “If that is so, then I’ll deal with him as he needs to be dealt with.”

  “But if we’re already caught in the snare of the Kav —”

  “Yo
u too?” I asked. “Gods! I see there’s to be no peace for me tonight.” I lay stiff and trembling. Her fingers crept along my shoulders, trying to give me some ease. But my every muscle was tight and my forehead ached dismally. The voice behind it seemed louder and louder.Come to me. Come to me. Come to me. The Kavnalla wasn’t merely beckoning any longer, but commanding. Despair engulfed me. How could we ever resist that urgent pull? I have led us all into the serpent’s jaws, I told myself. We will be swept up in the change-fire that blazes in its lair, and our forms will be lost and we will become as monsters. And why have I brought us to this dire place? Because Thrance had once been a glorious hero whom I revered; because I had allowed myself to be deceived for the sake of the Thrance that once had been, when I was a boy. I should have thrust him away when he first approached us in the land of the red spires. Instead I had taken him into our Forty, and this was how he had repaid us. In that moment I could have killed Thrance with my own hands.

  Hendy rubbed against me and I felt the soft swelling of a breast. She had begun to enter the Changes. But pleasure now was far from my mind, or even the higher unity that the Changes give us. I murmured an apology to her and got up, and went out into the night.

  A light rain was falling, more of a mist. The blurred light of several moons glimmered faintly through it. I saw a figure moving about not far away, and thought at first it was one of the sentries of the watch, Gazin or Jekka; but a moment later, when my eyes were better adjusted to the darkness, I recognized the grotesque elongated form of Thrance, outlined like a bizarre nightmare wraith against the darkness.

  He waved to me. “You want to kill me?” he said. He sounded almost cheerful. “Well, then, here I am. How do you want to do it? A knife? A cudgel? Or with your bare hands, Poilar? Do it and be done with it, if you like.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked him. My voice was like a rasp in my own ears. Thrance made no immediate reply, but sauntered toward me in his lopsided way, his head bobbing and weaving and lurching about with every awkward step he took.