Kingdoms of the Wall (13 page)

On the other hand, the water in this high country was far purer and more pleasing than village water. It had a magical clarity and sparkle, and it was always cold and fresh. But there was very little of it. Streams and springs were few and far between on these slopes. Whenever we found one we dropped our packs and knelt and drank greedily, and then we would fill our storage jars, for who knew how long it would be before the next fresh water?

We were cut off now from all view of our home territory. Below us everything was buried under thick white fog. It was as if a great swath of white fur lay upon our familiar valley. Now and again it would break a little, giving us a glimpse of greenness, but there was nothing there that we could recognize. So there was no longer any down for us, only up, up, up, up.

Kosa Saag was our entire world: our universe. We had begun to discover that the great mountain that we called the Wall was actually not one mountain but many, a sea of mountains, each one rising on the backs of those around it the way high waves rise in the midst of stormy waters. We had no idea where the summit was. Sometimes it seemed that we had already attained the highest peak, for we saw clear sky above it, but we were always wrong, because when we got to the top of that one we would find that there were new summits rising beyond it. One peak led to another, and another, and another. When we looked up we saw only an infinite perplexing complexity of pink rock: spires, parapets, shields, gorges. It seemed to go on all the way to Heaven. There was no summit. There was only the endless mountain above us, forever sloping away out of sight above us while we crossed its interminable lower reaches like a file of patient ants.

8

From the start of our climb we had been ascending the outer rim of the Wall, making our way through the gulleys and pathways and outcroppings that jutted from its great face. So it was easy for me to choose each day's route: it stretched before us like a narrow continuing highway winding along the face of the Wall and there was no question about the best way to go, for there was only one. But we were unable now to proceed any further in that fashion, because we had arrived at a place where an impassable overhanging barrier of unscalable rock rose straight up in front of us to a height that was beyond the limit of our vision. We studied it a long while and there was not one of us who saw any way that we could master it. No route seemed to lead around to the side of it and to climb it was unthinkable.

So we followed the only route that was possible to take, which sent us turning eastward, into an interior valley of Kosa Saag. There we camped for a little while in a sort of forest, cool and shadowy, on this inner arm of the Wall. I say "a sort of forest" because the plants that grew in that place, though they were as tall as trees, were not anything at all like any tree of the lowland we had ever seen. They had no woody structure, but were more like giant blades of grass, or, rather, like bunches of grass stuck together, for each trunk seemed to be made up of a dozen or more thin, narrow shafts sprouting from a single base. Sticking out all along their sharp-angled sides, in place of leaves, were scores of wedge-shaped shoots that looked like hatchetheads.

When you touched one of these trees, it made your hand tingle. If you held on very long after the tingling started, your skin began to burn.

There were small green birds of an unfamiliar kind in these trees, perching by twos and threes on the edges of the hatchetheads. Their bodies were round and plump, with tiny comical scarlet legs barely visible beneath their bellies, and their wings were short and so weak that it was all they could do to flutter from one hatchethead to another. It would be hard to conceive of birds that were more unlike the terrible Wall-hawks. And yet these clownish little birds were not to be taken so lightly, for their eyes were very fierce, strange white orbs that burned like miniature suns in their foreheads. There was bitter hatred in those eyes, and deep menace. Indeed, when Gazin the Juggler stood beneath one of those trees and called out laughingly to the birds above him, because their roundness and fatness amused him so, they responded with a downpouring of sticky spittle that brought howls of pain from him, and sent him rushing across the forest floor to plunge into the stream that ran through its middle.

The water of that stream was red as blood, very curious to behold. I feared for Gazin. But he sprang up out of it unharmed by that strange-colored water, rubbing at his arms and chest where the bird-spittle had struck him. There were welts and blisters all over him. We kept away from those trees thereafter.

Because I felt uneasy in this alien place, I asked Thissa of the Witch House to cast a spell for our safety before we settled in for the night Camping on the Wall's edge, we had spent our nights in narrow, secluded places, easily defended; but in this relatively flat terrain we were at the mercy of any wandering denizen of the Wall's interior districts.

She said, "I want something of Gazin's, for he was the first one injured here."

Gazin gave her one of his juggling-balls. Thissa drew something magical on it with the tip of her finger and buried it in a soft place in the ground beside the stream, and lay down to press her cheek against it. Then, still lying that way, she recited the spell for the safety of travelers. That is a long and very costly spell, which draws much energy from the Witch who utters it, because it is earth-magic and she must send some piece of her soul into the soul of the spirit of the place where it is recited. As she spoke it I saw her amber eyes lose their brightness and her slender body go slack with fatigue. But she gave unstintingly of herself to ensure our safety here.

I knew the spell would be a good one. I had had faith in Thissa's powers ever since that dark time in the third year of my training as a candidate, when I had begun to fear I would not be chosen for the Pilgrimage, and had gone to Thissa in her charm-seller's shop to ask her to cast a spell for my success. Surely the charm that she gave me then must have played a powerful role in my being selected. It was comforting to know that we had a Witch of her capability among us.

We pitched our bedrolls in an open place, far from the hatchethead trees and their unpleasant little birds. Stum and Narril were posted as the first guards in case Wall-hawks or rock-apes or other troublemakers should arrive in the night, and I appointed Min the Scribe and Aminteer the Weaver as the second shift on watch.

The stars were unusually bright in the clear cool air that prevailed here, and had a hard sheen. Someone began calling off their names: there is Ysod, that one is Selinune, that is Myaul. From Naxa the Scribe came a chilly little laugh. "Stars of ill omen," he said. "Ysod is the star that crushes other stars and devours them. Myaul ate her own worlds. The light of Selinune is light that screams."

"Save your wisdom for some other time, Naxa," came a woman's voice, perhaps Fesild's or Grycindil's. "Don't frighten us with your filthy tales while we're trying to fall asleep."

"And there is Hyle among them," continued Naxa, unperturbed. It was in Naxa's nature never to let up, when there was knowledge he wanted to share with you. Scribes are worse even than Scholars when it comes to giving lectures; for everyone understands that the Scholar is learned, but the Scribe, who has picked up his knowledge while copying the texts of Scholars, is eager to impress you with what he has absorbed. "Hyle is the worst demon-star of them all," Naxa said. "Why, I could tell you stories of Hyle—"

"Good night, Naxa."

"The gods were walking among the stars," Naxa said, "and they came to Hyle, and Kreshe put out his hand—"

"I'll put out my hand and break your head," a new voice said. Kilarion's, it was. "Shut up and let us sleep, will you?"

This time Naxa relented. There was no more talk of demon-stars out of him that night.

I drifted off to sleep soon afterward. But in a little while I felt someone getting in beside me.

"Hold me, Poilar. I'm freezing. I can't stop shivering."

It was Thissa. The traveler-spell had drained her more deeply perhaps than she had expected and her entire body was trembling. I took her in my arms and almost at once, because I had gone so long without a mating, I began to slip into the Changes. In mating there is comfort; in mating there is unity and harmony, the transcending of self into something higher and deeper, and in a time of dark fear or of great stress we turn naturally to one another and enter the sexual state. It happened without my willing it, without my even wanting it. I felt the familiar stirring at the base of my belly, the shifting of the flesh as my hard maleness emerged from its dormancy.

Thissa felt it too. Softly she said, "Please, not now—I'm so tired, Poilar."

I understood. She had not come to me for Changes. She had a strange self-sufficiency, that woman: many Witches do. I forced myself back toward the neuter state, but it was difficult for me. My control kept breaking; my body slid again and again toward readiness. But I could tell that Thissa was in the state without breasts just now and I knew that if I touched her between the thighs I would find no aperture waiting for me. She was utterly neuter and intended to stay that way. I had no choice but to respect that. I struggled for control, and attained it, finally. We lay together calmly. Her head was against my chest, her legs were entwined with mine. She sobbed from weariness, but it was a soft, easy sobbing.

She said, after a time, "Someone here will die tomorrow."

"What? Are you sure?"

"I saw it in the fire."

I was silent a moment. "Do you know who it will be?"

"No. Of course not."

"Or how?"

"No," she said. "The fire was too low, and I was too weary to conjure it up again."

"We've only begun our climb. It's too soon for deaths."

"Death comes whenever it pleases. This will be only the first of many."

I was silent again for a long time. Then I said, "Will it be me, do you think?"

"No. Not you."

"You're sure of that, are you?"

"There's too much life in you, Poilar."

"Ah."

"But it will be one of the men."

"Jaif? Dorn? Talbol?"

She put her hand over my lips. "I told you, I wasn't able to see. Not clearly. One of the men. Let's sleep now, Poilar. Just hold me. Hold me. I'm so cold."

I held her. After a time I felt the tension leave her body as she drifted off into sleep. But I remained wide awake myself, thinking of the death that was marching toward us even at this moment. Perhaps the gods had chosen Muurmut: I would shed no tears for him. But what if it was Traiben, despite all his hunger to see things and understand them? I would not be able to bear the death of Traiben. Then I thought of this one, and that one, and still another. I lay like that for hours, or so it seemed. Overhead the stars grew even brighter and harder. I feared them: poison-stars, demon-stars, death-stars. Ysod, Myaul, Selinune, Hyle. I felt myself shriveling beneath their furious light

Then Thissa was awake again.

"Go ahead," she said, in a soft voice different from the one she had used before. "You can if you want to."

She had become fully female. Her slim body, which had been nothing but cool smooth skin and fragile bones, was fuller, more womanly now. I felt soft round breasts against my chest. My hand slipped downward and there was an aperture, and it was warm and moist and throbbing.

Why this act of kindness? Thissa was altogether exhausted, and I knew from years gone by that she was not fond of mating even at the best of times. Had she lied to me, and was I the one who would die tomorrow, and this her way of sending me off to my death with a warm tender memory fresh in my mind? That was a somber thought, almost somber enough to discourage me from the mating. Almost. But my desires were stronger than my fear. She opened to me and our bodies joined; and though I could feel that disconcerting strangeness which her body emanated, as I had on earlier occasions when we had been lovers—an odd troubling tingling sensation which came from her in moments like this, somewhat like the throbbing sensation which certain strange fishes give off when you graze against them in the river—she brought me quickly to pleasure, quickly, quickly.

Afterward she said, "You are not the one who will die, Poilar. I'm certain of that."

Had she read my mind?

No, not even the House of Witches can do that, I told myself. Except for those Witches who are also santha-nillas, and santha-nillas are very few and far between.

I lay awake a little while longer, staring up at Hyle and Selinune. Then one of the moons—I think it was Tibios— came into the sky and its brightness dulled the terrible glare of the stars, for which I was grateful. I closed my eyes and fell into a troubled sleep, and then, I suppose, into a much deeper one: when I awoke we were long into morning and everyone else was up and about. Thissa smiled shyly at me from the other side of the stream. I realized they had not wanted to wake me; and I felt more and more certain that I was the one who had been singled out for death this day, and that all of them knew it, and that was why I had been allowed to sleep. But of course that was not so.

* * *

The death—our first death on Kosa Saag—came with great suddenness when it came. That was about midmorning, when we were well up above our campsite of the night before, crossing a narrow plateau that was bordered on one side by what looked like a lake of pitch and on the other by a steep shoulder of the Wall. The day was very warm. Ekmelios blazed right into our faces and there was no hiding from him. In places the ground was cracked open and narrow little columns of yellow and green light, something like marshlight, were rising from it. The air in these places had a dark, oily smell. Some of these small lights had broken free of the ground and were wandering about by themselves, easy as ghosts. We kept well away from them.