Kingdoms of the Wall (8 page)

Seventy was a critical number: it brought on the Final Winnowing, the Silent Winnowing, when the actual Forty would be chosen. So once again we stood in the field, just a handful of us where more than four thousand had been three years earlier, and the Masters moved among us. The curious thing about this last Winnowing was that there was no tap: thirty were to be eliminated, but they would not be told. That is why this was called the Silent Winnowing. We were to be left in the dark another six months, not knowing whether we had been dismissed or not, but still undergoing all the trials and hardships of the training.

"Why do you think it's done this way?" I asked Traiben.

And he said, "Because there's always the chance that some of the chosen Forty will die during the final months of the training, and then they can be replaced from among the Thirty. But the replacements, if they should be needed, won't ever know that they were replacements: everyone who goes up on the Wall must think that he was one of the elect."

"So you and I might be among the Thirty ourselves, then?"

"We are of the Forty," said Traiben calmly. "Our task now is simply to survive until the Closing of the Doors."

Indeed he was right. The day of reckoning came, the tenth of Slit, which is exactly half a year prior to the day of the start of the new year's Pilgrimage. And at dawn of that day the Masters came to us where we slept and woke some of us, including Traiben and me, and took us to Pilgrim Lodge, and thereby we knew that we had been chosen. I felt none of the ecstatic joy that my boyhood self would have expected, only a mild flicker of satisfaction. I had worked too long and too hard for this to be capable of reacting with any great emotion now. One phase of my life had ended, the next was beginning, that was all. Once those great wickerwork doors had closed behind us, we would not go out into the sunlight again nor see any living person other than ourselves until the tenth of Elgamoir, when we would begin our ascent.

I was not surprised to see that Kilarion the Builder had been chosen. He was the biggest of us by far, and the strongest: a little slow-witted except when it came to his own trade, but a good man to have with you in a difficult spot. The selection of Jaif the Singer pleased me also, for he was calm-natured, steadfast, and reliable. But why had the Masters given us sly, slippery little Kath, of the House of Advocates? Kath was good at talking, yes, but what use would a glib tongue be on the slopes of the Wall? Or someone as hot-blooded and impulsive as Stapp of Judges, in such a dangerous environment? Naxa the Scribe too: why had they picked him? He was clever, nearly as clever as Traiben, but he was pedantic and obnoxious and there was no one who liked him. And then there were a few others—Thuiman of the Metalworkers, Dorn of the House of Clowns, Narril the Butcher—who were decent enough sorts but of no particular distinction or merit, and they would not have been among my first choices if I had been a Master. And Muurmut of the Vintners, a tall, stubborn, red-faced man, tough-willed and full of strong opinions but often wrong-headed and rash—would he be any asset to a group such as ours? But Traiben's words of years before still burned in my mind. We Pilgrims were not necessarily the finest that the village had to offer. Some of us might have been sent to the Wall simply to get rid of us. I might be one of those myself, for all I knew.

During our time in Pilgrim Lodge we twenty men were kept apart, as always, from the twenty women in the adjoining chamber. That was hard, going so long without mating: since my fourteenth year I hadn't known more than a few days of abstinence, and here we were condemned to half a year of it. But the years of training had so annealed my soul that I was able to handle even that.

At first we had no idea who our female counterparts in the other chamber might be. But then Kath found a speaking-hole that linked one chamber to the other, high up on the wall in the dark storeroom in the rear of the lodge, and by standing three men high, Kilarion with Jaif on his shoulders and Kath on Jaif's, we were able to make contact with the women on the other side. Thus I learned that my robust old friend Galli was among the Forty, and delicate narrow-eyed Thissa, she whose skill was for witchcraft, and the remote and moody woman called Hendy, who fascinated me because in childhood she had been stolen away to our neighbor village of Tipkeyn and had not returned to us until her fourteenth year. And the sweet Tenilda of the Musicians, and Stum of the Carpenters, and Min the Scribe, all of them old friends of mine, and some others, like Grycindil the Weaver and Marsiel the Grower, who I did not know at all.

We waited out our time. It was like being in prison. We did some things of which it would not be proper for me to speak, for only those who are about to be Pilgrims may know of them. But most of the time we were idle. That is the nature of the time in Pilgrim Lodge. Mainly it is a time of waiting. We had exercise rungs in Pilgrim Lodge, and used them constantly. To amuse ourselves in the long dull hours we speculated on the nature of the meals that came through the slots in the doors twice a day, but it was always the same, gruel and beans and grilled meat. There was never any wine with it, nor gaith-leaves to chew.

We sang. We paced like caged beasts. We grew restless and listless. "It's the final test," Traiben explained. "If any of us snaps during this period of confinement, someone from the Thirty will be brought in to replace him. It's the last chance to see whether we are worthy of making the climb."

"But anyone brought in now would have to know that he's a replacement," I objected. "So he'd be a second-class Pilgrim, wouldn't he?"

"I think it rarely happens that anyone is brought in," said Traiben.

And in fact we held our own, and even went from strength to strength, as the final weeks of our time in Pilgrim Lodge ticked away. Impatient as I was to begin my Pilgrimage, I remember attaining at the same time a kind of cool serenity that carried me easily through the last days, and if you ask me how one can be impatient and serene at the same time I can give you no real answer, except to say that perhaps only one who is a member of the Forty is capable of such a thing. I even lost track of the days, toward the end. So did we all, all but Naxa, who was marking out the time in some private Scribe-like way of his, and who announced at last, "This is the ninth day of Elgamoir."

"The eighth, I make it to be," said Traiben mildly.

"Well, then, so even the brilliant Traiben can be wrong once in a while," said Naxa in triumph. "For I tell you by the beard of Kreshe that this is the ninth, and tomorrow we will be on Kosa Saag."

Traiben looked disgruntled, and muttered something to himself. But that night when the slots in the doors opened and our dinner-trays were pushed through, we saw bowls of steaming hammon and great slabs of roasted kreyl and tall pitchers of the foaming golden wine of celebration, and we knew that Naxa's count of days had been right and Traiben for once was in error, for this was the feast of Departure that they had brought us and in the morning our Pilgrimage would at last commence.

5

The final rite of our stay in Pilgrim Lodge took place at dawn: the Sacrifice of the Bond. We were all awake and waiting when the slots opened for the last time and a beautiful young grezbor came wriggling through, a sleek pink-hoofed one with dazzling white wool, not your ordinary farm grezbor but one of the prized purebred ones of the temples. After it, on a golden tray, came the silver knife of the Bond.

We knew what we were supposed to do. But in the face of the actual fact we looked uneasily at each other. The grezbor seemed to think it was all a game, and went trotting around from one of us to another, nuzzling against our knees, accepting our caresses. Then Narril picked up the knife and said, "Well, considering that it's a skill of my House—"

"No," said Muurmut brusquely. "Not a Butcher, not for this. We need some style here."

And he took the knife from Narril before Narril realized what was happening, and held it aloft, and waved it solemnly toward this side of the room and that one.

"Bring me the animal," he said in a deep, dramatic tone.

I gave him a contemptuous look. Muurmut seemed both foolishly pompous and grandly impressive, but rather more pompous than grand. Still, the Sacrifice had to be carried out, and he had taken possession of the rite, and that was all there was to it. Kilarion and Stum grabbed the poor beast and brought it to Muurmut, who stood very tall in the center of the room. Muurmut turned the knife so that it glinted in the light of the window overhead and said in a rich formal voice, "We offer up the life of this creature now as a bond between us, that we should all love one another as we set forth in our high endeavor." Then he spoke the words of the slaughtering-prayer as any Butcher might have done and made a swift cut with the knife. A line of crimson blossomed from the throat of the grezbor. It was a good clean killing: I give Muurmut credit for that much. I saw Traiben look away; and I heard a quick little gasp of dismay from Hendy.

Then Muurmut held the body forward and we came toward it one by one, and dipped our fingers in the blood and smeared it on our cheeks and forearms as the tradition required, and we swore to love one another in the ordeal ahead. Why must we do this? I wondered. Did they fear we would become enemies on the mountain, without the oath? But we rubbed the blood on each other as though it was really needed. And in time I would come to see that indeed it had been.

"Look," Jaif said. "The doors—"

Yes. They were swinging open now.

I felt nothing, nothing at all, as I came forth from Pilgrim Lodge that morning and stepped forward into the Procession. I had spent too much of my life waiting for this moment; the moment itself had become incomprehensible.

Of course there was plenty of
sensation.
I remember the blast of hot moist air as I came through the doorway, and the fierce light of Ekmelios jabbing me in the eyes, and the sharp bitter smell of thousands of damp sweaty bodies. I heard the singing and the chanting and the music. I saw the faces of people I knew in the viewing-stand just opposite the roundhouse of the Returned Ones, where Traiben and I had been sitting eight years before on that day when we first vowed that we would achieve the Pilgrimage. But though a million individual details struck my senses and engraved themselves permanently upon my memory, none of it had any meaning. I had been locked up; now I was coming out into town; and I was about to go for a walk.

A walk, yes.

Because I was of the House of the Wall, I was the first one out of the Lodge and I was the one who would lead the group of Pilgrims in the Procession: naturally Wall always goes first, Singers second, then Advocates, Musicians, Scribes, and so on in the prescribed order that was set down thousands of years ago. Traiben, because he was of the Wall also, walked just behind me: he had felt too shy at the last to want to be first. Beside me on the right was the only woman of my House who had been chosen, Chaliza of Moonclan. I had never liked her much and we didn't look at each other now.

Procession Street in front of me was empty. Everyone else had passed through already, the heads of the Houses and the double-lifers and the Returned Ones and the jugglers and musicians and all the rest. I put one foot in front of the other and set out down the street toward the center of town, toward the plaza with the bright-leaved szambar tree, toward the road to Kosa Saag,

My mind was empty. My spirit was numb. I felt nothing, nothing at all.

* * *

The heads of all the Houses were waiting in the plaza, ringing the szambar tree. As tradition required, I went to each one in turn, touching the tips of my hands to theirs and getting little smudges of blood on them: first Meribail, the head of my own House, and then Sten of Singers, Galtin of Advocates, and so on in the proper order. Our kinsmen were there to pay their farewells, also. I embraced my mother, who seemed to be very far away. She spoke vaguely of the day when she had stood by the same scarlet-leaved tree to say goodbye to my father as he was about to set out on the Pilgrimage from which he did not return. Beside her was my mother's brother, he who had raised me like a father, and all he had to say to me now was, "Remember, Poilar, the Wall is a world. The Wall is a universe." Well, yes, so it is, Urillin; but I would have preferred some warmer words than those, or at least something more useful.

When we had finished the circuit of the szambar tree and had spoken with all those who waited there to see us off, we were far around to the other side of the plaza, looking toward the mountain road. The golden carpets had been laid, stretching on and on and on like a river of molten metal. The sight of them broke through my trance at last: a shiver went down my middlebone and I thought for a moment I would start to weep. I looked toward Chaliza. Her face was wet with the shining streaks of tear-trails. I smiled at her and nodded toward the mountain.

"Here we go," I said.

And so we went upward into the land of dreams, into the place of secrets, the mountain of the gods.

Step and step and step and step. You take one, and another, and another and another, and that is how you climb. From all sides we heard cheers of encouragement, shouts of praise, the clangor of jubilant music. The shouts came even from behind us, where the candidates who had not stayed the course humbly walked, as the tradition requires, carrying our baggage. I glanced back once and was amazed to see how many of them there were. Thousands, yes. Eyes gleaming with our reflected glory. Why were they not bitter and envious? Thousands of them, whose candidacies had failed: and we alone, we few, had won the prize that all had sought.