“In that case, we’ll go some other way,” I replied at once. “There are more routes than one to the top.”
“No. No, you have no choice but to go this way. Believe me. I know. I’ve traveled all these roads again and again, boy. If what you want is to reach the Summit, this is the only path, and it passes through the Kingdom of the Kavnalla. And the Sembitol beyond it, and then the Kingdom of the Kvuz.”
Sembitol—Kvuz—those names were only noises to me. And I realized once more that they had taught us nothing, in the village. Nothing.
“How can I be sure that there’s no safer route?” I asked him.
“Because I’ve been everywhere and seen everything, and I know which way you must go.”
“And what if you’re lying? What if you’ve come to us as an agent of the Kavnalla, who has sent you to win our trust and lead us right into its hands?”
At that he blazed up in anger; and for the first time he seemed to drop all masks and reveal the true man beneath, anguished, furious, tormented. He spat and threw up his arms and got to his feet, and went stomping away in that lurching crooklegged walk of his, which made my own seem like a dance-step, and when he swung around to face me again his eyes were glinting with rage. “What a fool you are, boy! What folly all your niggling little suspicions are! Well, if you think I’m a spy, then go up there without me! Stroll into the Kavnalla’s cave, kiss it on the cheek, whisper to it that Thrance sends his love! See what becomes of you then! See what wondrous transformations overwhelm you when the change-fire rises up! Or—no, no, take some other route entirely, if you’d rather avoid the land of the Kavnalla. Go up that slope to the east, where the boiling lake is waiting for you. Go up to the west, into the land of the darkness-drinkers. Do whatever you want, boy. Do whatever you want!” He laughed bitterly. “An agent of the Kavnalla? Yes! Yes, of course that’s what I am! How shrewd of you to find me out! Do you see how beautiful the Kavnalla has made me? And out of gratitude, I mean to deliver all of your people to it, so that you can be made beautiful too!” With a contemptuous wave of his misshapen hand he said, “Do whatever you want, boy,” and turned his back on me.
After a long while I said, very quietly, “What do you want with us, Thrance?”
“You’ve already asked me that. And had your answer.”
“To climb the mountain with us? That’s all?”
“Nothing more than that. I’ve been wandering here at this level more years than I can remember. I’ve lived in my own company so long that the sound of my own breathing is disgusting to my ears. I want to move on. I can’t tell you why, but I do. Take me with you and I’ll share with you what I know about the Kingdoms that lie ahead. Or leave me behind and make it on your own, if you can, and I will take my own route, and so be it. I don’t care. Do you understand that? I’m beyond all caring, boy!” And he shook his head. “An agent of the Kavnalla, he says!”
“It will have to be put to a vote,” I told him.
The debate was a hard and heated one. Thrance lurked at the edge of the cliff, out of earshot and scarcely even glancing toward us, while we fought it out. At first we were nearly equally divided. Naxa and Muurmut and Seppil and Kath spoke out most vigorously against letting Thrance join us, and Marsiel and Traiben and Tull and Bress the Carpenter were for him, and the rest seemed to swing back and forth according to the arguments of whichever among us had been the most recent speaker. Muurmut, the strongest voice of the opposition, said that Thrance was a madman and a demon who would create turmoil among us and distract us from our task. Traiben, who in his quiet way led the other side, conceded the possibility that Thrance was mad, but pointed out that unlike any of us he had seen the country beyond this level of the Wall and it behooved us to make use of any information he might provide about those regions that were unknown to us.
During all this I played the role of a mere moderator, calling on the others but voicing no view of my own. This was in part because my mind was uncertain: to a considerable extent I inclined toward Muurmut’s point of view, though I saw some wisdom in Traiben’s, and it was so odd for me to be favoring any argument of Muurmut’s over one of Traiben’s that I did not know what to say. Also I had consulted Thissa before the outset of the meeting, and she had said, perplexed, that her witchcraft was of no use here: she found Thrance so strange and frightening that she had great difficulty reading his soul. That in itself was an argument for banning him from our midst, but Thissa didn’t raise it in the debate.
I called for a preliminary vote, not binding but just an indication of feelings, and it was eight to eight, with more than half the group abstaining.
Then Grycindil, who had been silent, spoke up and said, “We’d be fools not to take him with us. As Traiben says, he knows things that we need to learn. And how much harm can one man do against so many of us?”
“Yes,” said Galli, another who had taken no part up till now. “If he makes trouble, we can always kill him, can’t we?”
There was general laughter. But I saw that the voices of these two strong and strong-minded women had done much to shift the balance. Muurmut saw it too; he scowled and paced, and glared at Grycindil, who after all was Muurmut’s lover now and nonetheless had spoken out for Thrance.
Then Hendy looked toward me and said, “What do you think, Poilar? You’ve said nothing. Shouldn’t you be sharing your ideas with us?”
A few people gasped. It was bold of her to have challenged me that way, especially since they all knew that Hendy and I had lately become lovers. I was annoyed that she had forced my hand, and glanced at her in irritation; but I saw her eyes shining with love for me. She had meant me no harm. She was simply looking to me as our leader, urging me to fulfill my responsibilities to the group.
Every eye was on me. Slowly I said, groping my way through the confusion of my thoughts, “I agree with Muurmut that he may be troublesome. I agree with Traiben that he may be useful. Balancing one against the other, I take into account what Galli says, that if he creates problems for us, we always have the option of getting rid of him. Therefore I vote for taking him in.”
“And I,” said Grycindil. “And I,” said Galli and Maiti and some others who had abstained before. I had swayed them all. Hands were going up all around the group. Muurmut growled and went stalking dourly away, taking his followers Seppil and Talbol with him; but of the others every vote went for Thrance, except that of Thissa, who held both her hands palm outward as if to say that she could not decide. So it was done. I went across to Thrance, who sat looking out the other way, across the great dark gulf of the lands that lay below us.
“The vote ran for you,” I told him. “You are one of us now.”
He seemed not to be greatly moved by that news.
“Am I?” he said. “Well, then. So I am.”
17
We climbed, and the world itself altered as we ascended, flattening and broadening behind us, drawing itself together into a needle’s point before us, while strange new lands rose about us and flowed past as though we were a rock sitting motionless in a river. And all the while two potent new forces exerted themselves upon us. One was the call of the Kavnalla, which was not long in making itself known to us, and the other was the presence of Thrance among us.
We had entered a new and darker phase of our Pilgrimage with his coming, and even the least thoughtful among us knew that. Perhaps Thrance was no demon—I quickly ceased thinking, even in jest, that he was—but his transformation in the land of the Kavnalla had turned him into some kind of elemental being, black and fierce of soul, who walked in our midst like a creature out of nightmare. His towering twisted form, so strange and monstrous in hue and shape, rose above us like the Wall itself.