I stood dazed and awed atop the rocky ridge, with ice and chill behind me and this dazzling paradise glowing before me. Thissa said softly to me, “Careful, Poilar. Everything you see here is illusion and magic.” And Hendy, at my other side, nodded and added her own words of caution.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I will take care.”
But Kath and Kilarion were already moving down the inner slope of the bordering rim into this Kingdom of ease and plenitude, and Marsiel also, and Maiti, and Grycindil, and Thrance. They walked like those who walk in sleep. So the decision was taken from my hands, and I followed them on down, passing from a realm of snow to one of flowers and birdsong. The people of this Kingdom turned and looked up at us gravely as we approached, but showed neither alarm nor displeasure, as though it was the most usual thing in the world for some band of ragged frostbitten wanderers to come straggling down into their land.
“Come,” they said to us. “You must go before our King.”
They were all perfect, every one: sleek and beautiful and glistening with strength and vitality, and no one, seemingly, more than eighteen or twenty years old. There was no flaw to be seen on them, no sign of blemish or defect or disfigurement. They seemed all to have come from a single mold, for only their faces differentiated them one from another, and otherwise they all had the same long-limbed slender-bodied perfection of form. I had never seen such people as these; and as I looked at them I felt bitter shame for my own lack of perfection, the angry chilblains on my skin and the dust and dirt of the journey in my hair and on my clothing and the scars of the long climb everywhere on my body, and above all my leg, my leg, my twisted loathsome crippled leg, for which I had never felt a moment’s embarrassment before but which now seemed to me a blazing mark of dishonor and sin.
They conveyed us to their King, whose royal seat was a crystal dome at the very center of this Kingdom. He stood on its portico, arms folded, awaiting us calmly: as flawless as any of his subjects, and as young, a boy-king, a magnificent youthful prince, serene and potent, wonderfully arrayed in gold and scarlet, with a high tiara of bright metal set with glittering gems.
As we drew near him Hendy suddenly gasped, and she dug her fingers deep into the flesh of my arm as though in fear.
“What is it?” I said.
“His face, Poilar.”
I looked. There seemed something familiar about it. But what? “He could be your brother!” Hendy cried.
Was it so? I looked again in growing confusion. Yes, yes, there was something about the shape of his nose, the set of his eyes, the way he drew his lips back in a smile of welcome. A certain resemblance, yes, an odd superficial similarity of expression and even of appearance—
A coincidence, only. That was what I told myself.
“I have no brother,” I said to her. “I’ve never had one.”
Thissa, behind me, was whispering Witch-words.
The young King of this magical land regarded us placidly, benevolently. “Welcome, Pilgrims. Who is your leader?”
“I am,” I said. My voice was thick and husky. I came limping forward, inordinately conscious of my crooked leg in this place of perfection. “We are from Jespodar village, and my name is Poilar, son of Gabrian, son of Drok, of Wallclan of the House of the Wall.”
“Ah,” he said, and gave me one of the strangest smiles I have ever seen. “Then you are surely welcome here.” He took a step or two toward me, holding out his hand for me to take it. “I am Drok of Jespodar,” he said. “Of Wallclan of the House of the Wall.”
Of course I refused to believe it at first. It was too much to accept, that I should meet my father’s father here beneath the shadow of the Summit of Kosa Saag in this transformed guise. Thissa had said it rightly, all was illusion and magic here, and this must surely be some deception, the King of this place slyly borrowing my own features so that he could pretend that he and I were kin, as a kind of mocking game.
But he took us within his royal home, where the floors were soft with thick rugs and the crystal walls were hung with crimson draperies and the air was heavy with sweet perfume, and his people bathed us and fed us and gave us sharp new wine to drink. If all of that was illusion and magic, well, it was skillful magic and pleasing illusion, and afterward we felt rested and comforted, illusion or not. Indeed we had not known such comfort since the day we left our village. It was almost enough to make one weep.
Then the King came to me and sat with me and spoke with me of Jespodar, while I stared intently at his face, clearly seeing mine now in his. He mentioned many names, few of which I knew, but when he uttered those of Thispar and Gamilalar, I told him that they were still alive, that the gods had granted them double life, and he seemed genuinely astonished and delighted at that, for he said that he had known them when he was young. That was an odd phrase for him to use— when he was young —for he seemed much younger than me at this moment, a youth, a stripling. But I sensed the great age of him all the same, behind that unlined face. I told him that in our company was the son of the son of the son of Thispar Double-Lifer, Traiben by name, and he nodded and a far-away look came into his eyes, as if he was thinking of the passage of so many years.
He spoke then of our clan and family, and he knew the names. He asked of his brother Ragin, and I said he was dead, but that Ragin’s son Meribail was the head of our House. He seemed pleased at that. “Meribail, yes. I remember him. A good boy, Meribail. I saw the promise in him even then.” He asked me of his sister, next, and of his sister’s children, and of his own two daughters and their children, and again he knew all the names, so that I became more and more certain I was in the presence of my father’s father. There was always the possibility, I realized, that this was all some enchantment and he a demon, and that he was drawing these names from my own mind and passing them back to me by way of laying claim falsely to kinship with me. But once you begin believing such things, there’s no end to what you are free to doubt: it was easier for me to think that this was indeed my father’s father, alive on Kosa Saag after so many years, wearing this youthful body by virtue of the transformations he had undergone.
He had said nothing about my father Gabrian in all this time. So finally I introduced his name myself, and said, “I never knew him, not really, for he went to the Wall when I was just a small child.” He offered no response to that, which left me a moment for thinking, and I added, “But you wouldn’t have known him well either, I suppose; for you yourself began your Pilgrimage when he was still a little boy, is that not so?”
Still he was silent, and his eerily youthful face became furrowed, as if the thought of the three generations of interrupted families, of fathers who had gone to the Wall and left young sons behind, must sadden him immeasurably. But that was not it. For after a little while he said, in a somber voice he had not used before, “Gabrian, yes. A handsome child, he was. And he became a handsome man. We encountered each other once, here on the Wall.”