Robert Silverberg - Kingdoms of the Wall

But i would not have you believe that the climb I would someday make was the only thing on my mind in those years, however dedicated I might have been in my soul to the great adventure that lay ahead. I thought of the Pilgrimage often; I dreamed of it frequently, and of the mysteries that waited for me atop the Wall; but I still had to get on with the business of growing up.

I had my first mating, for one thing, when I turned thirteen. Her name was Lilim, and as is usual she was a woman of my mother’s family, about twenty-five years old. Her face was round and rosy, her breasts were full and comforting. The lines of age were evident on her face but she seemed very beautiful to me. My mother must have told her that I was ready. At a gathering of our family she came over to me and sang the little song that a woman sings when she is choosing a man, and though I was very startled at first, and even a little frightened, I recovered quickly and sang the song that a man is supposed to make in reply.

So Lilim taught me the Changes and led me down the river of delight, and I will always think kind thoughts of her. She showed me how to bring my full maleness forth, and I reveled in the size and stiffness of it. Then in wonder I touched her body as the hot, swollen female parts emerged. She drew me to her then, and led me into that place of moisture and smoothness of which I had only dreamed up till that moment, and it was even more wonderful than I had imagined it to be. For the time that our bodies were entwined—it was only minutes, but it felt like forever—it seemed to me that I had become someone other than myself. But that is what making the Changes means: we step away from the boundaries of our daily selves and enter the new, shared self that is you-and-the-other together.

When it was over and we had returned to our familiar neuter forms, we lay in each other’s arms and talked, and she asked me if I meant to be a Pilgrim, and I said yes, yes, I did. “So that is what the dream meant,” she said, and I knew which dream she was speaking of. She herself was a failed candidate, she told me, but her lover Gortain had been chosen for the Forty in their year. He had gone up the Wall and, like most Pilgrims, had never been heard of again. “If you see him there when you go up,” Lilim said to me, “carry my love to him, for I have never forgotten him.”

I promised her that I would, and said I would bring Gortain’s love back to her when I returned, if I found him on the Wall. And she laughed at that, amused by my cockiness. But she laughed gently, because this was my first mating.

I had many other matings after that, more than most boys my age, more than was reasonable to expect. The act lost its novelty for me but never its wonder or power. When I went up into Changes I felt that I was going among the gods, that I was becoming like a god myself. And I hated to return from the place where Changes took me; but of course there is no staying there once the high moment is past.

I remember the names of all but a few of my partners: Sambaral, Bys, Galli, Saiget, Mesheloun, and another Sambaral were among the first ones. I would have mated with Thissa too, of the House of Witches, whose strange elusive beauty appealed to me greatly, but she was shy and coy and I had to wait another two years for that.

It was easy for me to speak with girls and easy indeed to fall into matings with them. Behind my back it was whispered, I know, that they were attracted to me on account of my bad leg, girls oftentimes being perversely drawn to flaws of that sort. Perhaps that was so in a few cases, but I think there were other reasons besides. Poor Traiben’s luck with girls was not so good, and now and again I would take pity on him and send one of mine to do a mating with him: I sent Galli that way, I recall, and one of the Sambarals. There may have been others.

When I was almost fifteen and the time of my candidacy was drawing near, I fell seriously in love with a girl of the House of Holies whose name was Turimel. I bought a love-charm from an old Witch named Kres, so that I might have her, and later I learned that quite by coincidence Turimel had bought a charm from Kres also, in order she might have me; and therefore our coming together must have been foreordained, not that much good came out of it for either of us.

Turimel was dark and beautiful, with shimmering hair that tumbled in long cascades, and when we made the Changes together she carried me on such a journey that I would altogether lose my mind, forget even my name, forget everything but Turimel. In the moment when her breasts came forth it was like the revealing of Kosa Saag through the clouds; and when I entered the sweet hot female cleft that the Changes opened to me, I felt that I was walking among the gods.

But there was a doom on our love from its first moment, since those who are born to the House of Holies are forbidden to undertake the Pilgrimage. They must remain below, guarding the sacred things, while others perform the task of climbing to the gods who live at the Summit. Nor is there any way that one of the Holies can resign her birthright and enter some other House. So if I were to choose to seal myself to Turimel, I would certainly lose her when I set out on my Pilgrimage. Or if I wanted to remain by her side I would be compelled to renounce the Pilgrimage myself; and that seemed just as dire.

“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.