“A message from the mountain? A pulling—a calling?”
“So you do feel it!”
“And you also.”
“For some time now,” he said. “A voice in my mind, urging me onward.”
“Yes. Exactly so. A voice from the gods, do you think, telling us that we’re on the right path?”
“You have gods on the brain today, Poilar. Who knows what that calling means? Gods—demons—more Melted Ones—another Kingdom ahead—?”
“We should turn back, I think. See whether the others have felt it too. And call a council, and discuss what action we ought to take.”
“Yes,” he said. “A good idea.”
So we hurried along the rocky trail, returning the way we had come. The voice in my mind grew less distinct with every step we took. It was the same for Traiben. By the time we reached the camp we were unable to perceive it at all.
In my absence a stranger had come into the camp, and he was a very strange stranger indeed.
He stood in the midst of the group, and they were all crowding tight around him, as though vying with one another for the closest look. Only Thissa stood to one side, in that brooding way of hers, watching somberly from afar. The stranger rose head and shoulders above nearly everyone: he was taller even than Muurmut and Kilarion. It appeared that he was laughing and joking with them, and that they were hanging on his every word. At first glance it seemed that he had no hair, but then he moved a little and I saw that he had hair only on one side of his head, hair of a very odd sort, white as mountain mist and thick as rope, hanging down in long strands almost to his waist. He was gaunt and hard—virtually fleshless, so you could almost see the outlines of his bones beneath the tight-drawn skin, which was mottled and piebald, black as night in some places and a glaring shiny white in others. His shoulders, though very broad, were oddly wrenched and skewed, as if he had been midway through some change of shape and had become stuck in it; and when I drew near I became aware that he was a crookleg like me, but to a horrifying extreme, for his left leg was far longer than the other one, reaching out at an angle and curving back in like a sickle’s blade. His whole body was gnarled and distorted down its long axis, one hip higher than the other and turned at an odd angle to its mate, which was what caused that leg to jut out the way it did.
When he saw me approaching, he turned to me and grinned. It was meant as a grin, at any rate, but it was cold and cheerless and more like a demon’s grimace than a grin, a two-faced smirk, showing me a mouth of blackened snags, smiling on the one side and scowling on the other. The color of his left eye was different from that of the right, and both his eyes were small and glittering, but glittering in a dull way as though the fire that burned behind them had almost gone out; and the left side of his face was drawn up in a puckered twisted way that reminded me of Min’s, but the thing that had happened to Min seemed like nothing in comparison with this man’s mutilation. Here was surely another who had come in contact somewhere on the Wall with change-fire; but if Min had had a melted look when she came forth from the cave of the Source, this strange lopsided creature looked baked: baked dry, a parched man, baked down to some irreducible minimum.
I could find no words, for a moment.
Then Kath came forward out of the group and said, with something sly in his look, “Do you remember this man, Poilar?”
“Remember? From where?”
“From the village, long ago,” Kath said.
“No.” I peered close, and shook my head. “Not at all.”
The stranger stepped toward me and offered me a hand that was as gnarled and twisted as the rest of him.
“My name is Thrance,” he said. I gasped as though I had been struck a blow in the belly. Thrance? Thrance?
Into my mind at once, with the mention of that name, leaped a dazzling unforgettable image out of my boyhood. I was twelve, and it was the Day of Procession and Departure, and Traiben and I were in the main viewing stand, waiting for the new Pilgrims to emerge from the Lodge. And the great wickerwork doors swung open and the Pilgrims came forth, and there was Thrance, Thrance the magnificent, Thrance the flawless, the athlete of athletes, famous for his feats of strength and valor, that man of shining beauty and perfect body, erupting from the Lodge like a force of nature, pausing only a moment to smile and wave before running off in that famous high bounding stride of his toward the Wall. How splendid he had looked that day, how fine! How like a god! And this was Thrance, now? This? This?
16
They were all staring—at me, at him, at him again. They wanted to see how I would handle him. And I knew from the brightness of their eyes and the eager look of expectation on their faces that in some magical way this repellent stranger had charmed them, had won them to him in the short while I had been gone. There was something dark and frightening and fierce about him that drew them to him. The fascination of darkness can be irresistible.
My skin crept, as though it sensed a storm heavy with lightning rushing toward us. If this in truth was Thrance, and not some demon wearing his name, then he had been deeply damaged indeed. But despite that damage I could see that there was great strength in him even now, though perhaps it was strength of some kind other than the strength he had had before. It might even be that he was strong because of the damage he had suffered. Which made him unpredictable, and therefore dangerous.
For a moment we eyed each other like two wrestlers preparing to begin a match. Looking into those lightless mismatched eyes of his was like peering into an abyss.
I knew that unless I acted without hesitation, he would move somehow to seek the advantage. So I took his dry scaly hand in mine and gripped it firmly, and said very formally, “Poilar is my name, son of Gabrian, son of Drok. I am the leader of this Forty, which comes from Jespodar bound on Pilgrimage. What is it that you want among us?”
“Why,” he replied, speaking in a drawl as though he had found something humorous in what I had said or in the way I had said it, “I think I remember you. Poilar, yes. A little skinny crookleg child, forever scuttling around doing as much mischief as he possibly could, am I right? And now you lead a band of Pilgrims! What changes time will bring, eh?”
I heard the nervous laughter of my companions. They weren’t accustomed to hearing me mocked. But I kept myself in check and held my eyes on his.
“I am that Poilar, yes. And are you really Thrance?”
“I said that was my name. Why would you doubt me?”
“I remember Thrance. I saw him come out of the Pilgrim Lodge and go running up the street. He gave off light, like a sun. He was as beautiful as a god.”
“Whereas I’m not?”