So we would have to rely on shrewdness as we climbed, and of course agility, and luck, and beyond all else the kindness of the gods. We would need to calculate every move we made on this unforgiving rock with unusual care: the angle at which we leaned to meet the tilted stone slabs, the way we balanced the backward push of one foot against the forward stride of the other as we climbed, the shifting of our weight in every step, the placement of our fingers in the little crevices on which our lives depended. To deal with the Irtiman required special measures that we had to devise on the spot: with some of our remaining rope we fashioned a kind of sling, and I took one end of it around my waist and sturdy uncomplaining Kilarion took the other, with the Irtiman lashed to its center. This meant that Kilarion and I would have to climb in close parallel tracks, however different the rock formations we each might encounter; but I saw no other way. Kilarion would have carried the Irtiman on his back if I had asked him, but I would not do that. The presence of the Irtiman among us was my doing, and therefore I must share in the risk and effort involved in transporting him to the top.
We gave what remaining rope we had to the least proficient climbers among us, who were mainly women, though Naxa was a poor climber also and so was Traiben. Naxa was glad of the help, but Traiben refused to let himself be roped, I suppose because he was weary of all the favors of this kind I had done for him along the way, or abashed by them; and in fact he was one of the first to spring up onto the rock wall, setting out with such defiant haste that I feared more than usually for him.
Yet once we were climbing we all moved with wondrous precision and excellence, so that we might almost have been so many ants, walking untroubledly straight up the stone face as though we were on a horizontal surface. Of course it was not as simple as that. But in many places the grade, though steep, was nevertheless well within the range of our abilities, and we could go forward quickly at only a slight lean, steadying ourselves with our hands on the ledge above. Where the rock was slick we found ways of holding on. And when I came to a place where the only way ahead for me was through a narrow chimney where I would have to brace myself against one side with my feet and against the other with my back, Kilarion was able to wait for me and even to ease me upward with the rope that linked us, which took some of the pressure off my crooked foot.
So we all steadily made our way. From time to time I risked a quick glance toward the others, and saw them advancing strongly, Galli here with Bilair roped to her, and Traiben there well beyond me, and Jekka and Maiti climbing side by side, and Grycindil, and Fesild, and Naxa, and Dorn. We were scattered all across the face of the cliff. Far off to my left was Thrance by himself, pivoting and twisting and wriggling up the rock like some crawling thing of the forest floor that must double itself up into a loop with every movement it makes; and when our eyes met he grinned at me fiercely, as if to say, You hope I’ll fall, don’t you, but there’s no chance of it, boy, no chance whatever! But he was wrong about what I felt. I wished him no harm.
Then I turned my gaze away from the others and lost myself totally in the effort of my own ascent. I paid no heed to anything except the need to find the next handhold, and the next, and the next.
But as I continued to climb, a terrible thought came over me, which was that the ascent had been easier than expected only because we were being beguiled to our destruction by some treachery of the governing spirits of the Wall once we were high up above the drylands; and I had a sudden vision of the mountain angrily shaking as soon as we were a little higher, throwing us off like fleas, all my bondfellows falling to their deaths, those I most loved, Traiben, Galli, Hendy, Jaif. All of them, one by one flung out into the void and tumbling into oblivion.
For an instant or two I trembled with fear and nearly lost my own grip. It was only the brooding fantasy of a bad moment, though. The Wall has no reason to want to slay us so casually; it wants only to test us, and eliminate those who are weak or unworthy, and send the best of us onward to the end of our Pilgrimage. So we would not perish here. And indeed I looked and my companions were still all about me clinging to the face of the cliff, working their way steadily upward.
So I grew calm again, for a little while. But my soul must have been disturbed in some fashion that day. Perhaps it was Streltsa’s Avenger amulet working some dark magic in me. For now a different strangeness came over me and it began to seem to me that I had done all this before: not just that I had climbed other rock faces much like this, but that I had climbed this one, that I had climbed it many times before, that I would climb it many times again, that I was doomed to spend the rest of eternity climbing this same rock again and again. When I reached the top of it I would find myself at the bottom, and have to begin again. And I felt hot bitter tears running down my face, realizing as I did that for me there was no way back and no way forward, but only this endless rock unrolling beneath me like a scroll that extends itself farther at one end even as it is rolled up at the other. I would live on this rock and I would die on it, and I would be born again, and still I would be climbing, and there would be no end to the climb.
Thus in despair and anguish and, I suppose, a kind of madness, I clambered up and up, with hot dry crosswinds raking me as I went. Then suddenly there was nothing more above me. I had fallen into such a mechanical rhythm of climbing that I could not at first understand where I was and what was happening; I groped for the next handhold, and found none, and brought my right foot a little higher on the rock and reached again, and again there was nothing. It was like falling into a dream within a dream. There was a roaring in my ears and my brain was spinning in my skull. I heard Kilarion’s voice from very far away, and it seemed that he was laughing as he spoke, but the words were indistinct, like sounds heard under water.
I realized then that I must be at the top of the cliff, that there was no place further to go except up and over; and I pulled myself across the edge of the rock face. As I did I scraped the side of my neck against some sharp place and the string that held my little amulet broke, and the amulet fell away quickly, bouncing from rock to rock and vanishing below. I felt a quick pang at the loss of it after having brought it this far; but I was already in the midst of the final levering gesture that brought me to the flat place on top, and I had to think only of what was before me, not behind.
I scrambled up and over. Kilarion, just to my right, came up at the same moment and we brought the Irtiman in his rope sling over with us.
I took a couple of steps forward, shaky-legged, as one often is after such a climb, and it was an instant or two before my eyes cleared and I could focus on my new surroundings. Then what came into view stunned me and astounded me to the roof of my soul; for there were mountains on all sides, a tremendous host of them, a ring of peaks of every shape and size stretching off as far as I could see. Often before I had felt as if this thing that was Kosa Saag was one chain of mountains piled on another on another, world without end, rising infinitely into the sky, and that we must proceed eternally from level to level, coming always into some new realm when we had left the last behind; and once again that was how it seemed to me now, at least at first glance.
But then I saw that this time one mountain stood clearly above the others in the center of the ring, a great jagged king of a mountain. Its upper reaches were streaked with rivers of white snow that glittered brilliantly in the sunlight and its very tip was shrouded in dense clouds so that it could not be seen at all, and I began to tremble as I looked toward those dazzling heights; for I knew beyond doubt that this was the final peak, the mountain of mountains, the true and only Summit of Kosa Saag.