I asked Thissa about that. But she only shrugged and said that Thrance was speaking of matters about which he knew nothing, that he was spinning fables out of air.
That seemed very likely to me. By Thrance’s own admission he had never gone beyond the Kingdom of the Kvuz; and though he had lived a long while on these high slopes, no doubt hearing many a traveler’s tale, how could we be sure that anything they might have told him, or anything he was telling us, had any basis in reality? I was reminded of the solemn teachings that had been offered us in Jespodar village during our years of training, the stories of the dancing rocks, the demons who pulled their limbs loose and flung them at Pilgrims, the walking dead people with eyes in the backs of their heads. These tales of Thrance’s had to be like those stories which are told credulous young Pilgrims-to-be by the instructors in the village, who speak in ignorance of the very subject that they claim to teach. We had seen many a strange thing on Kosa Saag, but nothing such as we had been warned to expect, at least not yet. For the teachers know nothing; the Wall is a world unto itself and the truth of its nature is made known only to those who go and look for themselves.
The things that Thrance told us may not have been real but they were at least diverting. And diversion was what we badly needed as we made this dreary crossing. We scarcely dared to sleep at night, for fear we would wake to find some crawling denizen of the Kvuz among us, lifting its yellow fangs to strike. Or perhaps the lightning-birds would come in the darkness; or the whirling wheel would roll through our camp. None of these things happened, but they preyed on our minds.
Then at last we began to come to the end of the Kingdom of the Kvuz. But there was little comfort in that, for over the past several days a dark shadow had begun to appear ahead of us, and as we drew near to it we recognized it for what it was: a wide cliff that rose in a single great vertical sweep, a lofty barrier that cruelly terminated these somber plains, confronting us once more with a wall within the Wall. We would surely have to climb it if we meant to continue our Pilgrimage; but it seemed so steep that climbing it was unimaginable.
Well, we had faced such things before; and we were hardened now to the difficulties of our Pilgrimage. Beyond any question we were bound for the top of the Wall and, having come this far, we meant to let nothing stand in our way. But when I asked Thrance if he knew a route that would carry us up this formidable obstacle, he shrugged his familiar shrug, and said with his familiar indifference, “This is as far as I ever managed to go. For all I know there’s no way to climb it at all.”
“But the Summit—”
“Yes,” he said, as though I had uttered some meaningless sound. “The Summit, the Summit, the Summit.” And he walked away from me, laughing to himself.
When we were directly under this challenging cliff we saw to our great relief that as was often the case it had cracks and furrows and crevices and chimneys in it that would probably allow us some way of scaling it. But it was bound to be a fierce struggle for us; and also we had lost most of our ropes and other climbing gear very early on, in the rockslide that nearly had buried us on the slopes above the Kingdom of the Melted Ones.
As I stood with Kilarion and Traiben and Galli and Jaif, staring upward and contemplating the task that faced us, Jaif touched my elbow and told me quietly to turn and look. I swung quickly about.
A curious figure in a hooded robe had emerged from the shadows like some sort of apparition and was coming toward us, moving in a slow, laborious way.
When he came close he pushed back his hood, revealing a face that was like no face I had ever seen. In bodily form too he was very strange, stranger even than Thrance. He was thin and long and stiff-framed, and carried himself oddly, as though his frame were strung on a set of bones that were very little like ours. His legs were too short for his torso, and his shoulders were wrong and his eyes were set too far back in his head, and his nose and ears and lips, though I could recognize them for what they were, were nothing much like ours. Something was wrong about his hands too. From where I stood I wasn’t sure what it was, but I suspected that if I were to count the fingers the number would be unusual, four on each hand or at best only five. They had no sucker-pads on them that I could see. He had pale skin that looked like something that had been dead a long time and his hair was rank and soft, like dark string. His breath came in heavy wheezing gusts. So this must be another of the Transformed, I thought: yet one more of the grotesques with which these Kingdoms of the Wall are so abundantly populated. Automatically I drew back a little in surprise and alarm; but then I checked myself, for I saw how weak and weary the newcomer seemed, as though he had wandered in these parts a long while and was nearing the end of his strength.
In his hand he held some small device, a box with the bright sheen of metal. He lifted it and at once words came to us out of the box. But the accent was thick and odd and all but impossible to understand. At first I failed to realize even that the stranger was speaking in our language. But then he touched something on the top of his little box and repeated his words, and this time, curiously, they were somewhat easier to comprehend.
What he said to us, quietly, almost feebly, was: “Please—friends—I mean you no harm, friends—”
I stared and said nothing. There was a strangeness beyond strangeness about this being. And the voice of the box was like a voice that spoke from the tomb.
“Can you understand me?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Good,” he said. “And are you planning to climb this cliff?”
“Yes,” I told him. I saw no harm in that.
“Well, then. If you do, I ask you to take me up it with you. Can you do that? There are friends waiting for me at the top and I’m not able to manage the climb by myself.”
I looked at my companions, and they looked back at me. We were all at a loss to know what kind of creature this strange travel-worn being might be; for though he was something like us in superficial form, having two arms and two legs and a head and an upright stance, the differences seemed almost as great as the similarities, or perhaps even greater.
This was a very strange one, I thought, even for a Transformed. Unless he was not a Transformed at all but something else, a god or a demon or something that has come forth out of someone’s dream and made itself real. But in that case, why did he look so tired? Was it possible for a supernatural being to get tired? Or was his appearance of great weariness and frailty only some form of deception that he was playing on us?
He held one hand toward me. As if imploring me—begging me. “If you would be so kind,” he said. And again he said, “My friends are waiting for me. But I can’t—I’m not able—”
“What are you?” I asked, and made some of the sacred signs at him. “If you are a demon or a god, I conjure you in the name of everything holy to speak the truth. Tell me: Are you a demon? A god?”