I was lost. What did he mean, a special way of traveling? Magic of some sort, I supposed. A spell that brought them flashing across the sky in a twinkling. Well, then, what else could they be but gods? No one other than a god could work such a miraculous magic. But if they were gods the question arose again: How was it possible for a god to become weary unto death, as this Irtiman surely was? And I realized that I did not understand at all.
He told me more, much more, things which I understood even less.
For he said, as we sat together on a moist bank of blue grass beside a cool swift-flowing stream under the mighty fortress that was the last and highest pinnacle of Kosa Saag, that he and his three friends were not the first Irtimen to have traveled from his world to ours, that others had come long ago, many of them, traveling in a great ship—had come here, in fact, to found a village of their own on our world; and they had settled on the high slopes of Kosa Saag, because the air of the lowlands was too hot and dense for their lungs and it would choke them to breathe it.
He said they were still up there at the Summit, those long-ago voyagers who came from the world called Earth; or rather their descendants were, to be more accurate. They had a village there, a settlement of some sort. It puzzled me to hear this, because it was hard for me to see why the gods would tolerate having travelers from another world living amongst them at the Summit, that holiest of places—and why did we ourselves know nothing about the continued presence of these strangers atop the Wall? Nothing I had ever heard had hinted at such a thing.
So I could comprehend little or none of this. I said, “And the gods, then? The Creator, the Shaper, the Avenger? Do they still dwell at the Summit too? And did you see them there?”
The Irtiman was silent a long while. His eyes closed, and his breathing became very slow, and then I could hardly detect it at all, so that once more I began to wonder whether he might have died. But at last he said, “I was there only a little while, you understand.”
“You didn’t see them, then?”
“No. I didn’t see them. Not the Creator, not the Shaper. Not the Avenger.”
“But they must be there!”
“Perhaps that’s so,” he said, in a very remote voice.
“Perhaps?” His tone of doubt made me so angry that I could easily have struck him. But of course I did not. This stranger was weak from exhaustion, he was gravely ill, he had already entered into the sickness unto death. His mind might be deranged by fever. He was speaking madness. It would be a sin to lift my hand against anyone in his condition.
So I put aside my wrath. “But surely the gods are to be found at the Summit!”
He shrugged. “For your sake I hope so, Poilar. All I can say is that I saw no gods while I was there. If there are gods at all, it may be that they live in a place beyond the range of our vision.”
“ If there are gods?” I cried. “If?”
Once more I saw a red haze before my eyes. I had to fight back my anger all over again. It was a killing anger; but this Irtiman was doomed already. I could not allow myself to do him harm, no matter what.
He saw me struggling with myself and said to me mildly, “I meant no sacrilege. I can only tell you that so far as the gods of Heaven are concerned, I have no more knowledge of their whereabouts than you do. On my world as on yours, men have searched for them since the beginning of time, and some, I think, have found them, but most have not.” The voice from the machine came to me now as if across an immense distance. “I wish you well, Poilar. I hope you find what you are seeking.” And then he said that he was too tired to speak of these things with me any longer. I could see that that was so. Simply to draw breath was becoming a great chore for him. His lips were quivering with fatigue and his eyes had a deathly glassy sheen.
I went to Traiben afterward and told him everything that the Irtiman had said, as well as I could, praying that I wasn’t garbling any of it. Traiben listened in silence, nodding to himself and now and then sketching a little diagram in the soft earth. From time to time he would ask me to repeat something. But he didn’t sound particularly confused or troubled or upset. That strange mind of his, that was so much like a sponge, seemed to be taking it all in easily and happily. “Very interesting,” was all he said, when I was done. “Very, very, very interesting.”
“But what does it mean?” I asked him.
“It means what it means,” he said, and grinned a mischievous Traiben-grin at me.
“That a settlement of Irtimen lives among our gods?”
“That the gods may be Irtimen, for all we know,” said Traiben.
I shook my head at that in bewilderment and amazement.
“How can you say such a thing, Traiben? Even to admit the possibility of it is blasphemy!”
“He’s been to the Summit. We haven’t. He saw no gods, only Irtimen.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“We need to go up there and see for ourselves, don’t we?” he said. “Don’t we, Poilar?”
The things the Irtiman had said had reawakened my desire to attain the Summit, so that I might show him the gods he had failed to find: that and Traiben’s renewed eagerness to finish the climb, for he was aflame now with all his old curiosity. So I gave the order to break camp and resume the climb within the hour.
Maiti the Healer came to me as we were filling our water-jars and said, “Poilar, your Irtiman is very weak.”
“I know that,” I told her.
“We can’t possibly bring him with us. He’s not strong enough to walk. He has difficulty taking food. It’s obvious that he can’t last much longer.”
“What are you saying, Maiti? Is he going to die today?”
“Not today, no. But soon. A few days, a week at most, perhaps. There’s no way we can heal him. He’s too feeble; and in any case we don’t understand the way his body is put together. If you really want to set out up the mountain this afternoon, Poilar, we should leave some food with him and go on without him. Or else stay here another few days to see him out, and give him a decent burial before we move on.”
“No,” I said. “We’ve stayed here too long already. We leave today. And I’ve promised him that I’ll take him up to the Summit and deliver him to his Irtimen friends. If we have to carry him all the way, we will.”
She shrugged and went away. A little later I visited him. He was in a bad way, looking even worse than he had before, much worse. His skin was like paper now and fine beads of sweat were standing out on his brow. He seemed to be trembling from head to toe. His eyes would not focus and he kept looking past me, as though I were standing behind myself. But he told me how glad he was that we were going onward at last, and thanked me again very warmly for all I had done for him. He hoped that he would last long enough, he said, to be reunited with his companions at the Summit. That was the only thing he wanted now, to see them again before he died.
We adapted the sling with which we had hauled him up the cliff face into a hammocklike litter that two strong people could carry between them. Thissa cast a spell of sky-magic that might let him hold his spirit in his body a little longer, and Jekka and Maiti, after a long conference, offered him a potion of certain herbs they had gathered nearby, which they said could perhaps do some good and in any event were unlikely to make matters any worse for him. It must have been bitter stuff, for he made ghastly grimaces as he drank it down; but he said he felt better afterward, and possibly that was so.