“No,” he said, and his face curled to one side in an expression that might have been a smile. “No demon. Not a god, either. I’m an Earthman.”
That word was meaningless to me. I glanced puzzledly at Traiben, but he shook his head.
“An Irtiman?” I said.
“An Irtiman, yes.”
“Is that some kind of Transformed One?”
“No.”
“Nor any sort of demon, nor a god? You swear?”
“Not a demon, absolutely not. I swear it. And if I were a god, I wouldn’t need any help getting back up the mountain, would I?”
“True,” I said, though of course gods can always lie, if they so choose. But I preferred not to think that. “And these friends of yours that are waiting for you above?” I asked him. “They are Irtimen also?”
“Yes. People like me. Of my kind. There are four of us altogether.”
“All Irtimen.”
“Yes.”
“And what may Irtimen be?” I asked.
“We came here from—well, from a place very far away.”
Indeed it must be, I thought: very far away and very different. I tried to imagine a whole village full of people who looked like this. Wondered about their Houses, their rites, their customs.
“How far away?” I asked.
“Very far,” he said. “We come here as visitors. As explorers.”
“Ah. Explorers. From a place very far away.” I nodded as though I understood. I thought I did, almost. These Irtimen must be one of the unknown peoples who are said to live on the other side of the Wall, beyond even the lands subject to the King, in the remote regions where no one of our village has ever gone. That was why this being looked so strange, I thought. But I was wrong about that. He came from much farther away even than the far side of the Walclass="underline" farther than any of us could conceive.
He said, “The highlands were all that we really intended to explore, just the uppermost zone of the mountain. But then I decided to go part way down, in order to find out a little of what conditions were like down below, and now I can’t get back up to the top, because this cliff here is too much for me. And my friends tell me that they’re not able to come down and help me. Having problems of their own, they say. Not possible just now for them to offer assistance.” He paused a little, as though the effort of so much talking was a great strain for him and he needed to catch his breath. “You’re Pilgrims, aren’t you? Coming up from the lowlands?”
“Yes. That is what we are.” Then I hesitated, for I was almost afraid to ask the next question that had come into my mind. “You say that you’ve been to the top?” I said, after a moment. “The Summit, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“And have you seen the gods, then? With your own eyes?”
Now it was the stranger’s turn to hesitate, which made me wonder. For a time I heard no sound other than that of his hoarse wheezing breath. But then he said very quietly, “Yes. Yes, I’ve seen the gods.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“At the Summit, in their palace?”
“At the Summit, yes,” the Irtiman said.
“He’s lying,” said Thrance sharply, a harsh voice out of nowhere. He had come hobbling up alongside us while we spoke and I had not seen him arrive.
I signaled to him angrily to be silent.
“What are they like, the gods at the Summit?” I asked the Irtiman. I leaned forward eagerly to him. “Tell me. Tell me what they’re like.”
The Irtiman grew restless and uneasy. He paced about to and fro, he scratched with the toe of his boot in the sand, he shifted his little speaking-box from one hand to the other. Then he looked at me with those strange deep-set eyes of his and said, “You’ll need to go and discover that for yourselves.”
“You see?” Thrance cried. “He knows nothing! Nothing!”
But the Irtiman said, calmly speaking over Thrance’s outburst, “If you are Pilgrims, then you have to experience the great truths yourselves, or your Pilgrimage will be without meaning. You must already know that, having come this far. What good is it to you if I tell you what the gods are like? You might just as well have stayed in your village and read a book.”
I nodded slowly. “This is so.”
“Good. Then let’s not talk of the gods down here. Do you agree? Finish your Pilgrimage, my friends. Go onward to the Summit. You’ll find out what the gods are when you get to the top and stand in their presence at last.”
“Yes,” I said, for I knew that what he was telling me was right. “We must finish our Pilgrimage. To the Summit—to the home of the gods—”
“And you’ll take me with you, then?” the Irtiman asked.
Once more I was slow to reply. His unexpected request baffled me. Take him with us? Why should I? What was this Irtiman to me? He had no place in our Forty. He wasn’t even of our kind. We have an obligation to help our own kind, yes, but it does not extend to those of other villages and surely not to those of an alien race. And this Irtiman looked half dead, or more than half; he would be so much helpless baggage on the way up. It would be challenge enough just getting our own weakest Pilgrims up this cliff, Bilair and Ijo and Chaliza and ones like that.
And there was Thrance pressing up against my side like a dark angel, hissing at me the very things that were already in my own mind: “Leave him! Leave him! He has no strength; he’ll only be a burden. And he means nothing to us, nothing at all!”
I think it was that poisonous hiss of Thrance’s and the hateful glare in his eyes that turned me in the Irtiman’s favor. That and a sense that if I left this weary creature here he would not be likely to survive for long, for he was almost at the end of his strength. His death would be on my conscience, then. And who was Thrance to tell me what I should do, he who was not even a member of our Forty himself? He too had asked us to take him in, and we had; how could he now deny the same kindness to another? I looked quickly about the group, at Traiben, at Galli, at Jaif: people of good will, whose souls were clean, whose spirits were free of the venom that had corrupted Thrance. And I saw nothing on their faces but assent.
“Yes,” I told the Irtiman. “We’ll take you. Yes.” Sometimes you must make a gesture of this sort out of pure charity’s sake, with no regard to whether there is wisdom in it. Thrance, who had small understanding of such things, grunted and turned away, muttering. I glowered at his broad twisted back in contempt and anger. But then it seemed to me that I felt some pity for him mingled with my contempt.
Before we began to climb I took out the tiny image of Sandu Sando the Avenger which I had had unwillingly from the madwoman Streltsa at Denbail milepost, and which I had carried with me all this way in my pack. It seemed like a thousand tens of years ago that she had given it to me as we were leaving the uppermost precincts of the village, and I had rarely thought of it since. But I wanted the special protection of the gods now in the ordeal that lay just ahead, and although the Avenger is perhaps not the appropriate one to invoke for such a reason, the little idol was the only thing of that sort that I had with me. So I looped a bit of cord between its legs and anchored it over its little erect penis and fastened it around my neck. Also I asked Thissa to cast a climbing-spell for us, and ordered everyone down to kneel and pray. Even Thrance knelt, though I would not want to guess what sort of prayer went through his mind, or to whom. Only the Irtiman stood to one side, not kneeling; but I thought I saw his lips moving silently. And then we commenced our ascent.
It was a long time since we had faced any such climb of this kind, on a bare rock face, and though our long march through tier after tier of Kosa Saag had hardened us beyond all measure it had also taken some measure of resilience from our muscles. And as I have said we were without most of our ropes and climbing-hooks and other such gear.