Yet these defeated ones marched as proudly as though they had been winners — heads erect, eyes staring toward the mountain. It was like that every year, and I had never been able to understand why. Well, it is an honor, after all, to have been a candidate, even an unsuccessful one. But I would not have wanted to be among their number.
They went by, and suddenly Procession Street was empty.
“There should be Sweepers at the end as well as at the beginning,” said Traiben. “To clear away the spirits that come flocking in after the people have passed.”
I shrugged. Sometimes I had no patience with Traiben’s strangeness. My attention was focused on the road to Kosa Saag, off to my left on the northwest side of town. The Pilgrims were in the flat part of the road now and therefore out of sight, with their pitiful train of baggage-bearers still in view behind them. Then the baggage-bearers vanished into the dip of the road and a moment later the first of the Pilgrims reappeared, visible again on the steeper part of the road where it rises just west of the center of the village and ascends into the foothills of the Wall. The double light of brilliant white Ekmelios and blood-red Marilemma cloaked them in an eye-dazzling aura as they made their way up the golden-carpeted road.
Watching them, I felt the most powerful sort of agitation, almost to the point of sickness. I trembled; my throat went dry; my face became stiff as a mask. I had seen this moment of the Pilgrims’ departure every year of my life, but this time it was different. I imagined myself among them, going up and up and up the Wall. The village dwindled to a dot behind me. I could feel the air growing cooler and thinner as I climbed. I put my head back and stared toward the remote unknown Summit and my brain whirled with wonders.
Traiben was gripping my arm again. This time I didn’t brush him away.
Together we counted out the names of the mileposts as the Pilgrims ascended:
“Roshten … Ashten … Glay … Hespen … Sennt …”
Ordinarily the Sennt milepost was as far up the Wall-road as one could see from the lowlands. But as I have said, that day had become one of great clarity, and we were able to make out one more winding of the road, to the milepost known as Denbail. Traiben and I whispered its name together as the Pilgrims reached it. That was where the golden ceremonial carpet came to its end and the stone-paved road lay bare. Here the defeated ones had to hand over the equipment, for they were allowed to go no farther on the upward route. We stared, straining our eyes, as the Forty took their packs and gear from those who had borne them up till now. Then the defeated ones swung around and began their descent; and the Forty resumed their climb, continuing on up the road until within moments they were lost to our view in the mists and twists of the upward path.
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3
THAT NIGHT WAS THEfirst night that what I call my star-dream came to me. It was a night of many moons, when spangled light danced on the wall of our house. Some find it hard to sleep in all that brilliance, but I was tired from the day’s events, and I slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted. In the depths of the night I found myself dreaming of the worlds beyond the World.
In my dream I climbed Kosa Saag with no more effort than if I were climbing to the top of someone’s barn. Up and up I went, through each of the Kingdoms of the Wall, and it took no time at all. Traiben was with me, somewhere just behind, and other friends too, but I paid no heed to them and went on and on with tremendous ease and swiftness until I had attained the Summit. And there I stood beneath the worlds of Heaven, which are the stars. I saw those far worlds swarming in the sky like blazing fiery spirits. In some lofty place I danced beneath their cold light. I felt their force and strangeness. I sang with the gods and tasted the wisdom that they have to teach. My great ancestor the First Climber, He Who Climbed, the holiest of men, appeared and stood before me, and I became one with His spirit. And when I came down from the Wall my face was shining and I held out my hands to those who greeted me and they knelt before me and wept with joy.
That was my dream. It would come to me many times again in the years ahead, as I lay sleeping under the shadow light of the spirit sky. And those who lay with me as I dreamed it would tell me afterward that I turned and tossed and murmured in my sleep, and reached upward with my hands as though trying to grasp Heaven itself.
A curious dream, yes. But the most curious thing about it, that first time, was that everyone else in the village seemed to have had it also.
“I dreamed you climbed the Wall last night and danced at the Summit,” said my mother’s brother Urillin when I came from my sleeping-place in the morning. And he laughed, as though to tell me that it was foolish to put much stock in dreams. But within the space of a single hour three other people told me that they had dreamed the same thing; and Traiben too said that he had; and a little while afterward as I walked through the streets, thick with the litter of yesterday’s festival, I saw everyone staring at me with big eyes and pointing and whispering, as if to say, “He is the one who danced at the Summit. The mark of the gods is on him, can you see?” And it became more certain to me than ever, not that I had ever had any doubt, that I was destined to be a Pilgrim and accomplish great things.
From that day on scarcely an hour of my life passed without my giving thought to the time when I would make my ascent to the Summit. Each year on the twelfth day of Elgamoir I watched the new Forty emerge from the Pilgrim Lodge and make their way up the side of Kosa Saag until that terrible and wonderful moment when they could no longer be seen, and the only thought in my mind was that another year had gone by, and I was one year closer to the time when I would take that road myself.
BUTIWOULD NOT have you believe that the climb I would someday make was the only thing on my mind in those years, however dedicated I might have been in my soul to the great adventure that lay ahead. I thought of the Pilgrimage often; I dreamed of it frequently, and of the mysteries that waited for me atop the Wall; but I still had to get on with the business of growing up.
I had my first mating, for one thing, when I turned thirteen. Her name was Lilim, and as is usual she was a woman of my mother’s family, about twenty-five years old. Her face was round and rosy, her breasts were full and comforting. The lines of age were evident on her face but she seemed very beautiful to me. My mother must have told her that I was ready. At a gathering of our family she came over to me and sang the little song that a woman sings when she is choosing a man, and though I was very startled at first, and even a little frightened, I recovered quickly and sang the song that a man is supposed to make in reply.
So Lilim taught me the Changes and led me down the river of delight, and I will always think kind thoughts of her. She showed me how to bring my full maleness forth, and I reveled in the size and stiffness of it. Then in wonder I touched her body as the hot, swollen female parts emerged. She drew me to her then, and led me into that place of moisture and smoothness of which I had only dreamed up till that moment, and it was even more wonderful than I had imagined it to be. For the time that our bodies were entwined — it was only minutes, but it felt like forever — it seemed to me that I had become someone other than myself. But that is what making the Changes means: we step away from the boundaries of our daily selves and enter the new, shared self that is you-and-the-other together.
When it was over and we had returned to our familiar neuter forms, we lay in each other’s arms and talked, and she asked me if I meant to be a Pilgrim, and I said yes, yes, I did. “So that is what the dream meant,” she said, and I knew which dream she was speaking of. She herself was a failed candidate, she told me, but her lover Gortain had been chosen for the Forty in their year. He had gone up the Wall and, like most Pilgrims, had never been heard of again. “If you see him there when you go up,” Lilim said to me, “carry my love to him, for I have never forgotten him.”
I promised her that I would, and said I would bring Gortain’s love back to her when I returned, if I found him on the Wall. And she laughed at that,
amused by my cockiness. But she laughed gently, because this was my first mating.
I had many other matings after that, more than most boys my age, more than was reasonable to expect. The act lost its novelty for me but never its wonder or power. When I went up into Changes I felt that I was going among the gods, that I was becoming like a god myself. And I hated to return from the place where Changes took me; but of course there is no staying there once the high moment is past.
I remember the names of all but a few of my partners: Sambaral, Bys, Galli, Saiget, Mesheloun, and another Sambaral were among the first ones. I would have mated with Thissa too, of the House of Witches, whose strange elusive beauty appealed to me greatly, but she was shy and coy and I had to wait another two years for that.
It was easy for me to speak with girls and easy indeed to fall into matings with them. Behind my back it was whispered, I know, that they were attracted to me on account of my bad leg, girls oftentimes being perversely drawn to flaws of that sort. Perhaps that was so in a few cases, but I think there were other reasons besides. Poor Traiben’s luck with girls was not so good, and now and again I would take pity on him and send one of mine to do a mating with him: I sent Galli that way, I recall, and one of the Sambarals. There may have been others.
When I was almost fifteen and the time of my candidacy was drawing near, I fell seriously in love with a girl of the House of Holies whose name was Turimel. I bought a love-charm from an old Witch named Kres, so that I might have her, and later I learned that quite by coincidence Turimel had bought a charm from Kres also, in order she might have me; and therefore our coming together must have been foreordained, not that much good came out of it for either of us.
Turimel was dark and beautiful, with shimmering hair that tumbled in long cascades, and when we made the Changes together she carried me on such a journey that I would altogether lose my mind, forget even my name, forget everything but Turimel. In the moment when her breasts came forth it was like the revealing of Kosa Saag through the clouds; and when I entered the sweet hot female cleft that the Changes opened to me, I felt that I was walking among the gods.
But there was a doom on our love from its first moment, since those who are born to the House of Holies are forbidden to undertake the Pilgrimage. They must remain below, guarding the sacred things, while others perform the task of climbing to the gods who live at the Summit. Nor is there any way that one of the Holies can resign her birthright and enter some other House. So if I were to choose to seal myself to Turimel, I would certainly lose her when I set out on my Pilgrimage. Or if I wanted to remain by her side I would be compelled to renounce the Pilgrimage myself; and that seemed just as dire.
“I’ll have to give her up,” I said to Traiben one gloomy morning. “From here the road leads only to a sealing, if I stay with her. And I can’t seal with a Holy.”
“You can’t seal with anyone, Poilar. Don’t you understand that?”
“I don’t follow your meaning.”
“You are meant for the Pilgrimage. Everyone knows that. The mark of the gods is on you”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.” I liked to hear Traiben say such things, because in fact despite my dream and my family heritage I had begun to feel not at all sure that I would be chosen, and each day then I had to fight my way through a thickening forest of doubt. That was only on account of my age, for I had reached the time when a young man doubts anything and everything, especially concerning himself.
“Very well. But if you seal yourself to someone and she isn’t chosen, what becomes of your sealing?”
“Ah,” I said. “I see. But if she and I are sealed, won’t that influence the Masters to pick her also?”
“There’s no reason why it should. They don’t take sealings into account at all.”
“Ah,” I said again.
I thought of Lilim, whose Gortain had gone off to the Wall and never returned.
“If you want to get sealed,” Traiben said, “then by all means get yourself sealed. But you have to resign yourself to the likelihood of losing her when you go up the Wall. If you seal with Turimel, that’s a certainty: you already realize that. Choose a girl of some other House and the situation’s almost as bad. There’s no better than one chance out of a hundred that she’ll also be selected for the Forty. That’s essentially no chance at all, do you see? And in any case, would you want to leave a fatherless child behind, as was done to you? Better not even to think about sealing, Poilar. Think about the Wall. Think only about the Wall.”
As ever, I was unable to pick a hole in Traiben’s reasoning. And so I resigned myself to remaining forever unsealed. But it hurt me; it hurt me terribly.
Turimel and I spent one last night together, a night when all the moons were overhead, two in their full silver brilliance and three as shining crescents, and the air was clear as the King’s crystal goblets. We lay closely entwined on a soft mossy bed on the north saddle of Messenger Slope, and softly I told her that I was bound for the Pilgrimage and would accept no possibility of failure, and for an instant I saw pain pass across her face; but then she put it away and smiled gently and nodded, with tears glistening in her eyes. I think she had known the truth all along, but had hoped it was not so. Then we made all the Changes one by one until we had spent the last of our passion. It was a sad and wonderful night and I was sorry to see it end. At dawn a gentle rain began to fall, and hand in hand we walked naked back to town under pearly morning-light. Three days later she announced her sealing to some young man of the House of Singers, whom she must already have been holding in reserve, knowing that sooner or later I would forsake her for Kosa Saag.
After Turimel there was this one and that one and the other one, but my soul had hardened from its wound and I never spoke of sealing with any of them, and I never stayed with any of them long enough for them to hatch the idea themselves. Very likely they all knew I was bound for the Wall anyway. In every year-group there are certain ones whose Wallward destiny is known to all. Thrance was one such, the year when I was twelve. And I was another. People said they could see the mark of the Wall on me. It was the star-dream that had shown it to them, the dream which the whole village dreamed the same night. I searched for the mark in my mother’s reflecting-glass, but I could never find it. I knew it was there, though. I had no doubt.
THE BEGINNING OF MYsixteenth year arrived. On the tenth of Orgulet a messenger of the House of the Wall brought me the traditional sheet of elegantly lettered parchment, ordering me to report, along with all the other members of my year-group, to the assembly-place known as the Field of Pilgrims. At last my candidacy was at hand.
I remember the day well. How could I not? Four thousand two hundred fifty-six of us: not the biggest year-group that had ever been, but not the smallest, either. Ekmelios was so hot that day that the sky sizzled. We formed forty-two lines of one hundred on the velvety red grass of the Field of Pilgrims, and those who were left over made up a line of just fifty-six. I was in the short line: I took that as a somber omen. But Traiben, standing not far away in another line, winked and grinned at me as if to tell me that everything was going to be all right.
Now came the terrifying hour of First Winnowing, which I dreaded more than death itself.
Of all my four years as a candidate, nothing was worse than First Winnowing. I trembled like a leaf in the wind as the Masters of the House of the Wall moved silently among us, pausing here and there in the rows to tap candidates on the shoulder and thus to tell them that they were dismissed from the competition.
Winnowing can fall on anyone, like a lightning-bolt, and there is no more appeal from it than there is from lightning. The Masters alone know the reasons why they decide to end a candidacy, and they are under no obligation to reveal them.
That was why I feared this moment so much. Because I was young and ignorant, I thought of First Winnowing as a process controlled by sheer whim and impulse, or even by private grudge, and therefore one that took no account of the me
rit that I was certain I possessed. Had I done something years ago to annoy or offend a Master, which had stuck in his memory like a cinder in the eye? Why, then, he would tap my shoulder and all would be over for me with that tap: no Pilgrimage for Poilar, no ascent of the Wall, no view of the mysteries of the Summit. Not even the omen of my star-dream would matter, if someone wanted to tap me out. Nor would my descent from the First Cumber help me. There are very few members of the House of the Wall whodon’t claim descent from Him; and even if half of them are lying, that still leaves a great multitude in whose veins His blood flows. So Climber-blood is not an automatic ticket to the Pilgrimage. Was I standing with one shoulder higher than another, and was that bothersome? Tap. Was the glint of my gaze or the set of my jaw too arrogant? Would the fact that one of my legs was lame count against me, despite all I had done to compensate for that accident of birth? Tap. Tap. Was some Master’s knee aching that morning, making him irascible? Tap. And out goes Poilar.
As I say, I was young and ignorant then. I had no understanding of the real purpose of Winnowing.
And so I stood as stiff as a tree, trying not to tremble, as the Masters moved among us. Tap! and Moklinn was gone, the tall graceful boy who was the finest athlete the village had seen since the great days of Thrance. Tap! and the simpleton girl Ellitt was dismissed. Tap! and there went Baligan, the younger son of the head of the House of Singers. Tap! Tap! Tap!