Robert Silverberg - Kingdoms of the Wall

Suddenly Hendy grabbed my wrist. “Poilar! Poilar, are you awake?”

“Of course I am.”

“Look there, then!”

“What? Where?” I blinked and shook my head. My mind seemed wrapped in cobwebs, and half dead of frost.

Hendy pointed. I followed the line of her pointing arm.

A figure stood sharply outlined in the icy light of Malibos high atop a rock midway out in the plain. It was Thissa. Her left arm was upraised and both her thumbs were outstretched in the stabbing gesture of accusation.

“I see the traitor!” she cried, in a high ringing voice that must have carried from one side of the Summit to the other. “Do you see him? Do you all see him?” And she stabbed her hand into the air three times, very fiercely, aiming it in the direction of the ancient ruined starship. “Do you see him? Do you see him? Do you see him?”

I saw no one, nothing.

Then out of the grayness of the distance came a twisted distorted form that limped toward her at a furious pace: a man with a monstrous elongated crooked leg, who nonetheless was running so quickly that he seemed almost to be flying. Thrance, of course. He leaped up on the rock beside Thissa with the kind of agility that I remembered from the Thrance of old, the master athlete of my childhood. Three swift bounds and he was beside her. I heard her cry his name in a ringing tone of denunciation. Thrance said something in return, low and muffled and threatening. Once again Thissa cried out his name. And he raised his cudgel to her and struck her such a blow as would have broken a tree in half. I heard the sound of it, and saw her crumple and fall.

I stood rigid for a moment, frozen in my place, unable to move. There was a dead hush on the Summit, with only the rushing sound of the wind sweeping against my ears.

Then I was on my feet and running.

Thrance fled before me like a hawk through the sky; but I followed him like lightning itself. Across the plain I sped, around the rock where Thissa’s bloodied fallen body lay, past the slender starship of the three Irtimen. Thrance was racing toward the older starship, the gaunt dark ruin at the far side of the Summit. I thought I saw shaggy figures lurking about it, the skulking forms of the bestial “gods” of this place. Was he going toward them? What alliance had Thrance concocted with them in the night?

There was a terrible roaring sound all around me. I realized, after a time, that it was coming from my own throat.

Thrance was nearly at the ruined starship now, and the “gods” seemed to be welcoming him to it. It struck me that he must have been to them earlier that evening, and had secretly arranged with them to lead them down upon us and kill us as we slept.

But I was closing the gap quickly between him and me; for, swift as Thrance was, I was running with the fury of the Avenger in my soul and my feet scarcely troubled to touch the ground. Unexpectedly Thrance turned to the left just as he was approaching the wrecked ship, and sprinted around the vessel to its far side. I followed him there, and saw more of the “gods” gathered there, by a place of stacked twigs and painted stones that must have been the altar that the debased Irtimen had constructed. Thrance ran right through the midst of it, scattering “gods” on every side, and up a craggy staircase of rock just beyond.

That was a great mistake on his part, for there was nothing on the other side of that rocky pile but the abyss. He had trapped himself.

He ran up right to the top, where he must surely have been able to look down into the realm of fog and realize that there was only a great emptiness below him. There he halted; and turned; and looked toward me, waiting for me to come to him.

“Thrance,” I muttered. “Thrance, you bastard!”

He was smiling.

To the end, nothing mattered to him. Or maybe one thing did: perhaps he had come up here with us because he had wanted his death to find him in this most sacred of places. Well, I would give it to him. I jumped up alongside him and he was ready for me, balanced and braced like the wrestler he was, and he grinned right into my face. Then we seized each other in a grip from which only one could emerge alive.

He was strong. He always had been, an athlete of athletes; and I felt the power of him still, the old Thrance within this twisted hideous thing, the Thrance who had excelled in every game, who had hurled the javelin farther than anyone in memory, who had vaulted the tall hurdles as though he had wings. And for a moment I was the wide-eyed boy of long ago who in such awe had watched the great hero at his games. That moment of remembering weakened me; and Thrance was able to twist me and turn me so that I was leaning outward and my face was turned into the abyss and I saw the white fog below me glistening in the moonlight. It seemed to me that I could almost make out the great clefts and spires of the distant slopes beneath the fog. Smiling still, he forced me backward—backward—

But I had not forgotten the sight of Thrance striking down the slender delicate Thissa atop that rock; and the thought of that vile crime brought back my strength. I planted myself firmly, wedging my good foot tightly into a crevice in the rock and pressing the crooked one against an upraised slab behind me, so that Thrance was unable to push me further toward the edge. We were stalemated for a time, gripping each other, neither capable of budging the other.

Then I began to turn him.

I swung him around and with both my arms around his hips lifted him so that his normal leg was off the ground and only the deformed, grotesquely extended one was still in contact with it. As I held him above me he looked down at me, grinning even now, defying me to do my worst. Shifting my grip so that my arms were around his chest, I pulled him up higher.

He still had his longer leg dug into a crack in the rock to anchor him. I kicked at it with my good foot, putting all the force I had into it, and knocked it free. Then, pivoting off my crooked leg, I threw him from the mountain. A single sound came from him as I lifted him and flung him, but whether he was laughing or crying out in rage or fear, I could not say. He seemed to hover in midair an instant or two, his eyes staring right into mine, and it seemed to me that he looked more amused than afraid, and then I saw him begin to fall. Down he dropped like a falling star, plummeting through the fog. A kind of brightness sprang up about him, so that I could see him descending the first journey of the way, striking the rock face here and there, two or three times or more, and rebounding from it. Then the layers of fog closed around him and I lost sight of him for good as he fell through the misty depths far below. I imagined him falling all day, from dawn to noon to eve, dropping down the entire height of the Wall, bursting into flames as he dropped, until at last the final cinder of him came to rest at its base, at Roshten milepost, at the boundary of our village itself. And I crouched there by the edge of the Wall’s highest point, looking out over it as though I could see Thrance falling, falling, falling all the way.

At length I rose and looked around, breathless, half dazed, astounded by what I had done.

Three or four of the stumbling animal things that I still somehow thought of as “gods” were visible nearby in the rising light of dawn. They were coming slowly toward me, though it was impossible for me to make out their purpose, whether it was to do harm to me or simply to see what sort of creature I was.

And as I stood there looking at them, at those whom I had hoped were my gods, I knew that I had profaned the holiest of all places, that I had committed an act of murder at the Summit itself. No matter that Thrance had merited death for his crime against Thissa: it had not been my right to impose it on him.