Robert Silverberg: Kingdoms of the Wall

“Kosa Saag!” we all cried in one voice, gesturing with tremendous excitement. “Kosa Saag!”

Yes. The Wall was coming into view in all its immensity. It had, of course, been hidden by the murkiness of the morning air, but now it appeared above us, climbing and climbing and climbing. It pierced the sky and disappeared into the immeasurable heights. People fell trembling to their knees and began to weep and pray, stricken as they were by fear and humility at the sight of that gigantic mountain suddenly revealing itself.

Certainly Kosa Saag is always a mighty sight, even when the usual low-hanging clouds hide most of it from view and just the squat reddish base can be seen. But that morning it exceeded itself in awesomeness. It had never seemed so huge to me before. That day I imagined that I could see all the way to the home of the gods. Its endless slope went up and up, a colossal pink thing of unimaginable height and length and breadth lying upon the land like some enormous slumbering beast. I stared in wonder at its great intricate bulk, its pocked and pitted surface, its million spires and pinnacles, its uncountable caverns and crevices, its multitude of subsidiary peaks, its myriad turrets and parapets, its hundreds of spiny ridges and incomprehensible twisting trails leading to unknown lofty realms. And it seemed to me, even then, that in that moment of revelation I could feel the power of the mighty forces that dwell there beating down on me, the invisible fires that emanate from every stone face of the mountain, every rock, every grain of soil—the forces that seize so many of those who venture into those heights, transforming the weak and the unwary into things that can no longer be reckoned as human.

Because our clan within the House of the Wall was Wallclan, from which the heads of our House are always elected, Traiben and I had a privileged position for the Procession. We were seated in the main viewing stand just opposite the stone roundhouse of the Returned Ones, which is just adjacent to Pilgrim Lodge, from which the chosen Forty would soon emerge. So we were at the very center of things. That was truly dizzying, to know that such a great multitude was arrayed around the central point that was us, spreading outward and outward to the borders of the village and far beyond, all the teeming thousands and thousands of people of all the clans of every House of our village, the highborn and the lowly, the wise ones and the fools, the strong and the weak, packed elbow to elbow in the grassy streets under the shadow of the great mountain that is Kosa Saag.

Then came the words that changed my life. Traiben turned to me while we were waiting and said in an odd and somehow belligerent way, in a voice that had an edge on it, “Tell me, Poilar, do you think that you’re likely to be chosen for the Pilgrimage?”

I gave him a strange look. As I have said, that was something I had never bothered to think about at all. I took it for granted, a given of my life. In every generation going back to time’s first dawn someone of my family has been selected. I had no brothers or sisters; therefore I would be the one to go in my time. My limp would be no obstacle. Of course I would be chosen. Of course.

Hotly I said, “The blood of the First Climber runs in my veins. My father was a Pilgrim and so was his father before him. And I will be too, when my time comes. Do you think that I won’t?”

“Of course you will,” said Traiben, staring at me very intently. His eyes were like huge dark saucers with slits of light at their centers. “You’ll go up there the way so many others have before you, and you’ll climb and climb and climb, and suffer and suffer and suffer. And more likely than not you’ll die somewhere up there, the way most of them do, or come back a babbling madman. Well, what’s the good of it, then? What’s the point? What value is there going to be in all your hard work, Poilar? If all you do is go up there and die. Or come back crazy.”

Even for Traiben, this was going a little far. It sounded like blasphemy to me.

“How can you ask such a thing? The Pilgrimage is a holy task.”

“So it is.”

“Then what are you saying, Traiben?”

“That it’s nothing at all just to be a Pilgrim. All it is is a lot of walking, that’s all. On and on and on, up and up and up. You move one foot and then the other and before long you’re higher up the mountain than you were before. Any stupid animal can do that. It’s only a matter of endurance. Do you understand me, Poilar?”

“Yes. No. No. I don’t understand you at all, Traiben.”

A little smile appeared on his face. “I’m saying that being picked for the Pilgrimage is no big thing in and of itself. It’s a nice honor, yes. But in the long run honors don’t mean a great deal.”

“If you say so.”

“And neither does simply gritting your teeth and making the climb, if you’re doing it without any real sense of why you’re putting yourself through such an ordeal.”

“What does matter, then? Surviving until you get to the Summit, I suppose.”

“That’s part of it.”

“Part of it?” I said. I blinked at him. “It’s the whole idea, Traiben. That’s why we go. Climbing all the way up to the Summit is the entire point of making the Pilgrimage.”

“Yes. Exactly. But once you reach the Summit, what then? What then, Poilar? That’s the essential question. Do you understand?”

How difficult Traiben could be, how bothersome!

“Well,” I said, “then you go before the gods, if you can find them, and you perform the proper rites, and then you have to turn around and make your way down.”

“You make it all sound very trivial.”

I looked at him and said nothing.

He said very quietly, “What do you think the actual purpose of the Pilgrimage is, Poilar?”

“Why—” I hesitated. “Everybody knows that. To present ourselves before the gods who live atop Kosa Saag. To find them and ask their blessing. To maintain the good fortune of the village by paying homage to the holy ones.”

“Yes,” he said. “And what else?”

“What else? What else can there be? We climb up, we pay homage, we come down. Isn’t that enough?”

“The First Climber,” said Traiben. “Your great ancestor. What did He achieve?”

I hardly had to think. The words came rolling out automatically, straight from the catechism. “He offered himself to the gods as an apprentice, and they taught Him how to use fire and how to make the tools that we needed for hunting and building, and how to raise crops, and how we could clothe ourselves in the skins of animals, and many other valuable things. And then He descended from the mountain and taught these things to the people below, who had been living in savagery and ignorance.”

“Yes. Therefore we revere His memory. And you and I, Poilar—we can do just as He Who Climbed did. Climb the Wall, find the gods, learn from them the things we need to know. That’s the real reason why we go: to learn. To learn, Poilar.”

“But we already know everything that anybody needs to know.”

He spat. “Stupid! Stupid! Do you really believe that? We’re still savages, Poilar! We’re still ignorant! We live like beasts in these villages. Like beasts. We hunt and we raise our crops and we tend our gardens. We eat, we drink, we sleep. We eat, we drink, we sleep. Life goes on and on and nothing ever changes. Is that all that you think there is to being alive?”

I stared. He was utterly bewildering.

He said, “Let me tell you something. I intend to be a Pilgrim too.”

I laughed right in his face. “You, Traiben?”

“Me. Yes. Nothing can stop me. Why do you laugh, Poilar? You think they’ll never choose anyone as weak as I am? No. No, they will. They’ll choose you despite your crooked leg and they’ll choose me even though I’m not strong. I’ll make it happen. I swear it by He Who Climbed. And by Kreshe and all the sacred ones of Heaven!” His eyes began to blaze, bright with that hot eerie Traiben-brightness of his that made him so mystifying and even frightening to all who encountered him. There was a Power about Traiben. If he had been born a Witch instead of into the House of the Wall, he would have been a santha-nilla with great magic at his command, of that I’m sure. “There’s work for us to do up there, Poilar. There are important things that need to be learned and brought back. That’s why the Pilgrimages began—so that we could sit at the feet of the gods and learn the things they know, the way the First Climber did. But for a long time now nothing useful’s been brought down from the mountain. We make no progress. We live as we’ve always lived, and when you stay in the same place, you start to slide backward, after a time. The Pilgrimages still go forth, yes, but either the Pilgrims don’t return or they come back crazy. And they bring us nothing useful, so we stay forever in the same place. What a waste, Poilar! We have to change all that. We’ll go up there together, you and I, side by side, rising through Kingdom after Kingdom just as the First Climber did. We’ll meet the gods, just as He did. We will have their blessing. We’ll see all the wonders and learn all the mysteries. And together we will return, with new knowledge that will change the world. What kind of knowledge that is, I can’t begin to say. But I know it’s there. I know it without any question. We have to find it. And so we have to make it happen that we become Pilgrims, you and I. Are you following me? We have to make it happen. ”