Kingdoms of the Wall (5 page)

"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 my sixteenth 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 merit 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 Climber help me. There are very few members of the House of the Wall who
don'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!

What was the criterion? Casting Ellitt aside I could understand, for her mind was like a child's, and she would perish quickly on the Wall. But why tap splendid Moklinn? Why tap Baligan, whose soul was as pure as a mountain stream? So it went, the tap falling upon some obvious choices for culling and on some of the finest young people of the village. I watched the tapped ones drift away, looking stunned. And I waited in a chill of fright as the Master who was tapping in our line made his unhurried way down the rank toward me. He was Bertoll, my mother's oldest brother. All the Masters were men of my own family: it could not be helped, I was a member of Wallclan. And so they all knew of my obsession with the Wall. Unwisely, rashly, boyishly, I had told everyone again and again that I meant to see the Summit. They had merely smiled. Had I angered them with my boastfulness? Had they decided to teach me a lesson?

I died a thousand deaths in those few minutes. I wished a million million times that I had been born into any other House, that I had been a Carpenter, a Musician, even a Sweeper, so that none of the Masters would have known what was in my soul. Now Bertoll was going to tap me, purely to cut me down for my brashness. I knew he would. I was certain of it. And I vowed then and there that if he did I would kill him and then myself, before the moons rose that evening.

I stood still as stone, eyes rigid, staring forward.

Bertoll passed me by without even looking at me, and went on down the row.

Tears of relief ran down my cheeks. All my fearful sweaty imaginings had been for nought. But then I thought: What of Traiben? I had been so concerned with my own fate that I hadn't bothered to think about him. I swung around and glanced behind me, down the line next to mine, just in time to see that line's Master go past little scrawny Traiben as though he hadn't been there at all and reach out to tap a great sturdy boy behind him.

"It makes no sense," I said to him when the Winnowing was over. A hundred and eighty had been tapped; the rest of us were free to continue our candidacies. "My leg is crooked, and I irritate people because I seem so sure of myself. You can't run a hundred paces without getting dizzy and you scare people because you're so shrewd. Yet they let you and me pass, and tap someone like Moklinn, who's better fitted for climbing the Wall than any three of us. Or Baligan, the kindest, most thoughtful person I know. What standards do they use?"

"That is a mystery," said Traiben. "But one thing I know: Winnowings are meant not to punish but to reward."

I stared at him, baffled. "What does that mean?"

"That some of us are deemed too good to be sent to the mountain."

"I still don't understand."

Traiben sighed, that terrible patient sigh of his. "Look," he said. "We send forth our Forty every year knowing that most of them are going to die on the Wall, and that those few who eventually do come back are going to be changed the way Returned Ones always are, and will simply skulk around meditating and praying forever afterward, having as little to do with the rest of us as possible. It's a gamble that we always lose. We send them up there to learn something useful from the gods, and for one reason or another they don't succeed. Nobody who makes the Pilgrimage is ever again going to play an important role in the life of the village. Hardly anyone has since the First Climber Himself. Agreed?"

"Of course." We had been through all this before.

He said, "If we give our forty finest to the mountain each year, what will become of the village? Who'll lead us? Who'll inspire us with new ideas? We'll lose our most talented people, year after year. We'll breed their abilities out of the race until we're nothing but a tribe of dullards and weaklings. And therefore certain candidates have to be held back. They have to be saved to meet the future needs of the village."

I thought I saw where he was heading now, and I didn't like it.

"Undertaking the Pilgrimage is the most important deed any of us can do," I said. "The Pilgrims are our greatest heroes. Even if they don't manage to learn the things that you think they're supposed to be learning up there. By sending them up the Wall, we pay our debt to the gods, as He Who Climbed taught us that we must, and so we insure their continued blessing." You can see that I was quoting catechism again.

"Exactly," Traiben said. "Pilgrims are heroes, no doubt of that. But they are sacrifices, also."

I stared. I had never seen it that way.

He said, "And so the Masters choose people like you, who are strong and determined, or people like me, who are clever and resourceful. That's what heroes are like. But you and I are troublesome in other ways. We may be heroes, yes, but we're too odd and too prickly to make good leaders down here, you and I. Can you imagine yourself as the head of the House? Or me? And so we can be sacrificed. We can be spared for the Pilgrimage. Whereas Baligan obviously will head his House some day. And Moklinn has a perfect body: it mustn't be wasted on the Wall."

"Thrance had a perfect body too," I said. "But he was chosen."

"And has failed to return, isn't that so? Thrance was selfish and proud. Perhaps the Masters thought the village was well rid of him."

"I see," I said, though I wasn't quite sure that I did.

I was shaken by what Traiben had said. In just a few minutes he had once again turned my world upside down. I had been so very pleased that I had managed to last through the First Winnowing. I wondered now: Was my surviving the Winnowing really something to be proud of, or was it merely the sign of how willing the village was to dispense with me?

But just as quickly I recovered my equilibrium. Becoming head of my House had never been part of my plan. To make the Pilgrimage was. I had passed the first of my many tests: that was all that really mattered.

* * *

And so my candidacy began.

The early days of it saw a surprisingly gradual onset of the demanding discipline of the selection process. We were divided into forty groups of about a hundred each—Traiben and I landed in different groups—and from then on we moved as a group from one House to the next for our instruction and our examinations. But at first everything was deceptively easy.

We were asked at the beginning to write short essays on why we wanted to be Pilgrims. I remember mine almost to the word:

"1. Because I believe that undertaking the Pilgrimage is the finest thing anyone could possibly do. It is our duty to go to the gods above and worship them and learn from them the things they have to teach us. Of all the traditions of our people, it is the holiest and noblest, and I have always wanted to be obedient to our great traditions.