Kingdoms of the Wall (39 page)

He had said nothing about my father Gabrian in all this time. So finally I introduced his name myself, and said, "I never knew him, not really, for he went to the Wall when I was just a small child." He offered no response to that, which left me a moment for thinking, and I added, "But you wouldn't have known him well either, I suppose; for you yourself began your Pilgrimage when
he
was still a little boy, is that not so?"

Still he was silent, and his eerily youthful face became furrowed, as if the thought of the three generations of interrupted families, of fathers who had gone to the Wall and left young sons behind, must sadden him immeasurably. But that was not it. For after a little while he said, in a somber voice he had not used before, "Gabrian, yes. A handsome child, he was. And he became a handsome man. We encountered each other once, here on the Wall."

"What?" And I leaned forward, tensely, like a hungry animal about to pounce. My heart was leaping in my breast. "You and my father met each other on Kosa Saag?"

He nodded. He seemed lost in dark reverie.

"Where?" I asked. "When? Is he still alive? By all the gods,
is my father in this very Kingdom right now
?"

"Not here, no, not now." He closed his eyes and sat rocking gently, but I felt that he was still seeing me all the same through his closed lids. As though speaking to me through a dense mist he said, "It was a long time ago, when I had been here only a few years, perhaps five or six. And his Forty arrived, looking much as you and yours, all tattered and shabby and worn, for they had been a long while on the Wall. Of course there weren't forty of them any longer, but only seven. Seven, exactly, and no more. The others had died along the way, or gone off to live among the Transformed Ones, as I suppose some of your people have done as well. There's never been a Forty to make it to these heights intact, you know, or even anything close to intact, although I've heard it said that some Pilgrimages have nearly—"

"My father," I said. "I want to hear about my father." It was hard for me to be patient with him. I was sure beyond any doubt now that there must be an old man behind this youthful facade, from the wandering way in which he was telling the tale.

"Your father, yes. I'm coming to him. He and his Forty of seven drifted in, just as you did, and we put them up and let them have baths and something to eat, for they were in a terrible way. I knew right away who he was: I saw his face and I said to myself, in much amazement, This is my own son who has come to me here, this is Gabrian, this really is Gabrian. I hadn't seen him since he was three years old, of course, but there are certain things you know no matter what, and with him I knew. Just as I knew with you. But Gabrian didn't tell me his name at first, as you did. Nor did he seem to recognize a family resemblance in us. So I kept my name from him as well. There we were, father and son, and he not knowing. I asked him things about the village, and he told me that, and then he spoke of his Pilgrimage and the places he had been and what had happened to him along the way—a hard Pilgrimage, far worse than mine, traveling along false trails, years of delay on the way up, endless suffering, deaths, some murders, even—terrible, terrible, terrible. But at last the threshold of the Summit had come into view. He had endured everything anyone could imagine and now, he told me, now he was going to see the gods at last. There was a look of utter determination on his face. I could see it clearly: nothing would stop him. Nothing."

My eyes widened. "And did he get to the Summit, then?"

"I don't know. I think he did. But who can say?"

"He must have reached it. If he swore that nothing would stop him, and the Summit is very close to here—"

"Not as close as all that. It's close, at least, in comparison with what lies behind us on Kosa Saag. But not very close. And there are great difficulties along the way. I do think he got to it, though. And then, on the way back—"

He halted, and frowned, and stared off beyond me as though I were not there.

"Tell me," I said.

"Yes. Yes, I will, since you want to know. Your father and his six companions left here without his ever having learned who I was, and set out for the Summit. He went on to the next Kingdom, and the next, and the next: this I know, for I asked after him later, and they said he had been there, passing through. Then he went up higher and vanished into the land of fogs, and no one ever saw him again or any of those who went with him. He was bound for the Summit, and it is my belief that he reached it and saw what there was to see there, and then began to make his descent."

Again there was a painful silence, which went on and on, like a scream.

"And what happened then?" I prompted finally.

My father's father looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, and moistened his lips and said quietly, "It was during the course of his descent, I think, that he visited the Well of Life and underwent a transformation there, and perished there in the process of being changed."

I caught my breath. "He's dead?"

"Oh, yes. Yes."

"You know this to be so?"

"I saw his body at the rim of the Well. I buried it with my own hands."

For a moment I was unable to speak. The gift that had been offered me had been snatched away almost in the moment of giving. After a time I said, "What is this Well of Life, which is so badly named, since it seems rather to be a Well of Death?"

"It is the place where we are made young again," my father's father said. "We go to it every five years, or more often if we wish, and we enter it and come forth as you see us. But we enter and leave very quickly. To remain in it more than an instant or two is deadly. Do you understand?"

"And my father? He stayed in it too long?"

"We can only guess what he did, or why. Or whether it happened on the way up to the Summit, or on the way down. But I think I know. The Well lies in the last zone before the very top—in a place of perpetual storm, of wind and rain and fog. Whoever would go to the Summit must pass that way. What I think is that he passed the Well by and went quickly onward, to the top, and looked upon the gods in the place where they dwell; and then he came down again, and for the second time he and his people arrived at the vicinity of the Well—and this time—this time—"

* * *

As he spoke I could see it all in the eye of my mind, and I was sure that it was almost as it must have happened: the fog and mist, the whirling crescents of wind-blown snow, the black jagged peaks, the narrow path so difficult to follow, the dark abyss just beyond the edge. The seven weary, gaunt marchers struggling down from the Summit, exalted by what they had beheld there, but now at the last limits of their endurance. And the Well of Life lying shrouded in the darkness before them, a secret menace, a foaming pit of transformation. One by one they stumble unknowingly into it, blinded by the snow, which the wind hurls in their faces with diabolical force. A moment's immersion is enough to bring immense change; beyond that point the Well offers death, not life. Shouts in the mist: sounds of terror: figures thrashing in the darkness, sliding, falling, arising and falling again. My father groping for his companions' hands, finding them, losing them, grasping one now, seeking desperately to pull someone from the Well and being pulled in himself—or perhaps it was my father who had blundered in first, and the others had tried to rescue him and been lost with him—

So I imagined it, from what my father's father said and what I wanted to have heard. But the truth of what had taken place was somewhat different.

"Some days later," my father's father went on, "two people of my Kingdom who lately had been to the Well came to me, and said they had seen something strange and terrible along its margin. I knew at once what it must be, and set out right away. We found the seven heaps of discarded clothing first, and the packs they had been carrying, half covered by the snow. And then there they were, on the rim of the Well, hand in hand: fleshless now, and tiny, the pliant and delicate bones of seven newborn infants, linked in a dreadful chain in the hot mud. We scooped them out with long poles and buried them nearby. You'll see the seven tiny cairns as you go past.
If
you go past."

"If?" I said. "You told me it was the only way to the Summit."

"Forget the Summit. Stay here."

His words startled me. "I am pledged to it by oath," I said with a touch of heat in my tone.

"So were we all," he said. "Your father was. So was I. He kept that oath, I think. It cost him his life. I also went to the Summit. It brought me no benefit. Forget the Summit, child."

"You've seen it, you say?"

"Yes. And returned. And will never go there again. It is a loathsome place. Forget the Summit."

He closed in upon himself as though he did not want to speak of these things any more. Confusion swept over me in hot waves. The grim tale of the manner of my father's dying oppressed me and numbed me. And now this coyness on my father's father's part about the Summit itself. The Irtiman too had been elusive and vague when we spoke of the Summit. Why? Why? What were they hiding from me? I felt my anger beginning to rise, and I reached toward him as though to pull the answers from him with my hands. "Loathsome? What are you saying? Why loathsome? Tell me what the Summit is like. Tell me!"

"Never," he said. The calmly spoken word fell around me like an iron band.

I protested again, to no effect.

With a kind of sublime patience that I found maddening he raised his hand to silence me, and said, as calmly as before, "I'll offer you this, and no more: Whatever it is you hope to find, you won't find it there. There's nothing there but horror. Forget the Summit, child. Stay here with me."

I was shaking with fury. "How can I do that? You know that I've sworn—"

"Stay," he said, unmoved. "And live forever."

I stared at him, speechless, trembling. And he told me once more how he and all his people went periodically to the Well of Life, and immersed themselves in it for a fraction of a moment, and became smooth and young again as the Well turned back time for them. I could do that also, he said. And be eternally young, here in this enchanted Kingdom on the highest slopes of the Wall, where the air was ever sweet and mild and the snows were held at bay by magic. Why climb any higher? Why seek mysteries not worth finding? Stay, he said. Stay. Stay.

It was as if he had turned a key in my mind. To my astonishment my rage fell away from me and I found myself yielding to his will.

He spoke, and all my bold resolve melted in a moment. He spoke, and everything toward which I had worked for so long seemed to be without meaning. Stay, he said. Stay and live forever. Why not? Yes, I thought, amazed.
Why not?
It seemed so simple. Give up this bitter Pilgrimage, which had taken the life of your father and so many others; step away from the upward path and let your weary body rest. Stay here. Stay.
Yes,
I thought.
Why not?
Suddenly I was open to the sort of temptation that seems to be a quality of these uppermost lands of the Wall. Stay, he said. Stay. Stay. Stay. And as he said it, it was like a spell being cast on me, or so I thought in that moment: for to my surprise and bewilderment I felt everything changing within me, felt the rigidities of my spirit loosening their hold in this easy place, heard myself thinking,
Yes, Poilar, why not? Stay. Stay.

* * *

Stay? How could I stay? We were bound by oath.

But my oath had not prevented me from idling for weeks or perhaps months in the valley of the blue grass at the base of this final peak, though there had been no reason to stay so long. It is the nature of those heights, I suppose, to weaken the resolve even of the strongest; for the air is thin and gives only poor nourishment, and where we may be vulnerable, that vulnerability will be made manifest. And now we were higher still and once again I began to drift away, for a time, from my own inner nature, from the ceaseless striving toward the goal to which Traiben and I had dedicated ourselves when we were twelve years old.

That night there were hot baths for us, and sherbet, and rich wines and fine meats. We slept under soft robes on comfortable piles of furs. And I thought: I could have this forever. Forever, Poilar,
forever.

It was like a sickness that had come over my mind between one moment and the next. Why go to the Summit? There was only great hardship to endure throughout the remainder of the way, and grief at journey's end. The Summit? What use was the Summit? It is a loathsome place, my father's father had said. You will find only horror there. He had seen it; he knew. Again and again I felt the dark tale of my father's death coursing through me like a river, leaving me shaken and weakened. What struck me with great force was not so much the image of those tiny bones, though that was terrible enough, but rather the question of what it was that had driven those seven Pilgrims to choose so frightful a death. I could not bring myself to face that question squarely, for it opened abysses in my mind. Therefore I told myself that all this questing was folly. Give it over, I told myself. You've struggled long enough, toward something not worth attaining. Settle here in your father's father's realm, and surrender to ease. Or move on a little way upward, maybe, and found a Kingdom of your own, and live there happily forever, and let the gods go about their business undisturbed. I do confess it: those were my thoughts. There is no one so strong that he does not falter again and again on the path that leads to the Summit of the Wall.