“No doubt that I am.”
“And any fool can tell you that the World is flat.”
“Any fool can, yes,” he said. “Certainly that is true. But all the same, saying so doesn’t make it flat.”
I looked toward the horizon. Perhaps the land did curve away a little out there. A little, perhaps. But what Traiben was saying was blasphemy, and it made me uncomfortable. The World is the Boat of Kreshe, floating on the surface of the Great Sea. Boats are longer than they are wide, and not round anywhere. A ball will float on water also, yes. But the World is not a ball. Still, I had to admit to myself that I could see a slight curvature far off near the horizon.
A trick of my vision, I told myself. The floor of the World is as flat as a carpet and it continues in that flatness until one comes to the edge, where the land drops off into the Great Sea. Traiben is too intelligent for his own good, I told myself: sometimes he sees things that are not there and builds strange theories about them, and then he treats you with condescension because you will not agree with him that things are the way he tells you that they are.
I shrugged and we began to talk of other matters. Otherwise I might have been tempted after a time to throw him over the side of the Wall, which is no way to treat your closest friend.
9
We wondered, as we climbed, why we saw no sign of the myriad others who must have come this way before us over the centuries: no campsites, no discarded trash, no lost tools, no burial cairns. After all, our village had sent its Forty up the mountain every year for more years than anyone could reckon, and as I understand it, we are not the only village at the base of the Wall that keeps the custom of Pilgrimage. It seemed to us also that there had been very few choices of route facing us during our ascent: that everyone who had come in earlier years from our village, at least, must of necessity have taken the same path we had, more or less. So where were their traces?
But that was a sign of how innocent of the realities of the Wall we still were. Even now, having been on Kosa Saag for so many weeks and—so we thought—having come to an appreciation of its vastness, we had no serious understanding of its true size. We continued to think of it in terms of the little road that runs up its flank out of our village, which at that level is the only route that a sensible person would follow in going upward: the familiar milestones, Roshten, Ashten, Glay, Hespen, Sennt, and so forth. We imagined that the path we were taking now was the only logical extension of that road, and that everyone who had come before us must have done as we had done. But what we were not taking into account was that our village road is to the Wall as a raindrop is to a mighty river. Beyond Hithiat milestone the village road goes on to Varhad of the ghosts, yes, but there were other ways to ascend beyond Hithiat that we had not bothered to consider, and each of those ways forks outward into a dozen other ways, each of which would lead you back and forth in its own fashion across the face of the Wall and through the twisted and crumpled maze of interior routes, so that it is probably the case that no two parties of Pilgrims have ever taken the same way up Kosa Saag after the first few days of their climb. I should have kept in mind my mother’s brother Urillin’s parting words to me, that the Wall is a world, the Wall is a universe. But I did not arrive at an understanding of that until much later.
It was not to be long now, though, before we would find some sign of those who had undertaken the ascent of Kosa Saag before us.
We had slipped into a steady rhythm of climbing. Rise at dawn, bathe and eat, walk until midday. A meal; some singing; a time to relax; and then on the trail again until nightfall neared and it seemed wise to find a place to camp. We knew that we were gradually gaining elevation as we went, but this part of the climb seemed almost static, so gentle was the advance. It lulled us into a false sense of ease. Even Muurmut, who throughout the climb had been quick to dissent with any decision of mine that troubled him, was quiet. Most days the weather was fair, cooler than we were accustomed to but not at all unpleasant. Some days there was rain, occasionally even cold sleet; but we endured it.
Occasionally at night we heard the roaring of demons or monsters from the desolate hills above us. It was fearsome stuff, but we told ourselves that their roaring might be the worst part of them and they might well flee at our approach. Even the awareness that we now had exhausted all the food we had carried with us from the village did not trouble us. We foraged for our provender along the way, each of us taking a turn at sampling the strange berries and roots we found as Traiben had done that early time in the grove of the breast-fruit trees. Once in a while someone became ill for a few hours that way, and so we learned which things not to eat; but in general we ate well. The hunting was good and there was fresh meat to roast every evening.
Some couples formed but didn’t last. I mated with sweet pretty Tenilda the Musician a few times, with Stum, and once with Min, who did whatever her friend Stum did, and with Marsiel the Grower. I would have mated with Thissa again also, but she was ever shy and uneasy, and I knew better than to approach her. But I looked longingly after her. And then there was the dark, quiet woman called Hendy, she who had been stolen and kept in the village of Tipkeyn from her tenth year to her fourteenth and so was like a stranger to us all. I desired her greatly and I knew I was not the only one. I spoke with her a few times, but it was like speaking with water, like speaking with the wind. Hendy went her own way, saying little to anyone, making her own camp at a distance from ours, and though I was tempted now and then to venture over to her in the darkness and see if she would receive me, I had a good idea of what the reception was likely to be.
Galli, who long ago had been my lover and now was my friend, saw what I was doing. “You should leave both those women alone, Poilar,” she said to me one afternoon as we trudged along an unchallenging trail.
“Which women?” I said.
“Thissa. Hendy.”
“Ah. You’ve been watching me?”
“With half an eye. I need no more than that. Sleep with Stum, if you like. Sleep with Tenilda. Not those two.”
“Those two are the only ones who truly interest me, Galli.”
She laughed. “Even I interested you once.”
“Once,” I said. “Yes.”
“But I’m too fat for you now? You prefer your women more slender, I think.”
She sounded amiable and playful, but she was serious behind the sportiveness.
“I thought you were beautiful when we were young. I think so now. I’ll spend tonight with you, if you like, Galli. You are ever a dear companion.”
“A companion, yes. I take your meaning.” She shrugged. She was not easily wounded in these matters. “As you wish. But if you want a mate, stay away from those two. No good will come of your bothering them. Thissa’s frail and too easily harmed, and she’s a Witch besides. Hendy is so very strange. Choose Stum, Poilar. She’s a good woman. Strong, like me.”
“Too simple, though. And too much the friend of Min. I think you take my meaning. Friendship between women is a good thing but it makes a man uneasy when his mind is on the Changes and her mind is with her friend.”
“Then Tenilda. Beauty and intelligence there, and a good heart besides.”
“Please,” I said. “Enough of your help, Galli!”
I did indeed spend that night with her, for in truth I had never lost my fondness for her, even if the strong desire had long since abated. It was like spending the night with a favorite cousin, or even a sister. Galli and I lay together and laughed and told stories of old times and finally we made the Changes, in an easy, halfhearted way, and she fell quickly asleep beside me, snoring. Her great warm bulk nearby was comforting. But her words kept me awake. Thissa frail and too easily harmed, Hendy so very strange. Was that what attracted me to them? Was Galli right that I should put them from my mind?