Strangely, there was no wind. But the air was bitterly cold, so cold I could not possibly make you imagine it. It stung our nostrils and bit our throats and fell into our lungs like molten metal. We had done all the adapting to the conditions of these heights that we could, and now we had no choice but to endure in silence whatever hardship descended on us. I imagined that my skin was turning hard and flaking away, my eyeballs becoming rock, my fingers and toes breaking off when I flexed them.
I gave myself up to the cold as though it were a warm blanket. I embraced it as though it were a lover. I strode on ever deeper into it as though it were the one thing I had come here to find. There was no gradation to it: it was absolute cold, complete cold, the perfect achievement of coldness. That was comforting, in its way. No matter how much higher we went it would not get any colder for us, for here at the top of the World we had found the utter bottom of coldness. And so we went on, calmly, almost unfeelingly, up the invisible stone ramp that was taking us to the final point of our Pilgrimage.
How long that last stage of the climb lasted, I could not tell you. A minute, a year, a hundred tens of years—it would all have been the same. You are in a time outside of time as you approach the top of Kosa Saag.
The whiteness thickened. I could see nothing now, not even Thissa just in front of me. And I halted, not out of fear—we were in a realm beyond the possibility of fear now—but simply because it seemed wise to halt. I stood motionless, and it was a time out of time, so that I might have been standing there a thousand tens of years.
But then I felt a pressure against my right hand, as though the air had closed itself around it. Gradually, I realized that Thissa had reached back and taken my hand in hers; and because it somehow seemed the right thing to do I put my other hand behind my back, and groped through the woolly air until I found Hendy’s. So it went down the line until we must all have been linked like a chain of the spider-men of the Sembitol. Thissa tugged gently, and I took a step forward; and she tugged again and I took another; and again, and yet again.
All this while I saw only whiteness.
One more step and everything changed. The whiteness broke open around me. Bright sunlight came smashing in, as if the gods had dropped Ekmelios at my feet. Thissa pulled me forward, and I pulled Hendy, and Hendy pulled Traiben, and so on and so on, and one by one we came out of the fog into a flat open place that was surrounded on all sides by narrow gray spears of rock.
Thissa released my hand and swung about so that she was facing me, and we stared face to face; and I saw her eyes wide as moons, and saw gleaming tear-tracks running down her cheeks, and she was smiling in a fashion that I had never seen before. She said something which the wind carried away before it reached my ears, for there was wind again here that ripped across us in savage battering gusts. I nodded as if I understood and felt the tears go coursing down my own face like water breaking through a dam, and I said to Hendy what Thissa had said to me, though I had not heard Thissa and could not even hear my own voice as it spoke the words. “Yes,” Hendy said. She nodded too; she understood. We all understood. We needed no words. We had passed through every Kingdom of the Wall and now we were on the roof of the World; we were in the abode of the gods; we were at the Summit of Kosa Saag.
In those first few dazzled moments we shuffled about like dreamers who had awakened into yet another dream. The light was so bright that it beat against our eyes with the force of a flail, and the air, dry and sharp and clear and unthinkably cold, was almost like no air at all.
Gradually, I became able to see more clearly.
It was a smaller place than I had expected, the Summit. I suppose one could cross it from one side to the other in a couple of hours. I had imagined a single tapered point of rock here at the tip of the Wall, like an auger or an awl, and from below it might indeed seem that way; but to us who stood upon it it was more like a plateau than a needle-point. It was more or less circular in shape, and all around its rim was a rocky palisade of rough sharp-edged crags. The sky was more black than blue: the stars were shining at midday, and even two of the moons. Below us lay the vast blank cloud-barrier, sealing off the World from us so that we were left in a solitary realm of barrenness and chill.
But we were not alone up here.
To our right, close by, stood a strange gleaming house—more like a machine than a house, I should say, for it was all of metal and rose on curious jointed struts, as though it were some giant insect making ready to walk away. There were windows of a sort in this house and we saw faces peering through. Far to the left, virtually at the opposite side of the plain, was a second such house; or the ruins of one, rather, for it was corroded and decayed, an ancient twisted shattered thing with great openings torn in its metal sides. This one was much larger than the newer one that lay close beside us.
Could these be the palaces of the gods?
And if they were, where were the gods themselves? I saw no gods here.
That puzzled me greatly. For surely this was the Summit: there could be no other. And at the Summit was the home of the gods. So we all had been taught our whole lives; so we believed with passionate force. But I saw no gods here.
What I did see, moving about in the open space between these two houses, was a roaming band of a dozen or so wild uncouth creatures, strange howling beasts who had the semblance, but only the semblance, of men. They seemed more like apes, and ugly, shambling, clumsy apes at that. They had arrayed themselves in a wide loose ring around the newer metal house, the shining one, and appeared to be laying siege to it. With tremendous vehemence and ferocity they capered about it, screaming madly and grimacing and pelting it with stones, while whoever was within looked on in apparent dismay but took no action to defend themselves.
They were frightful degenerate bestial things, these creatures of the Summit. Their arms were too long and their legs were too short and they were ugly in all their other proportions as well. Their bodies were covered with hair, thick and coarse and shaggy, but not so thick that it succeeded in concealing the myriad blisters and ulcerations and scars that sprouted everywhere on their skin. Their eyes were dull and blank and their teeth were mere broken snags and their shoulders were slumped and rounded. Despite the cold they were naked, or nearly so. And they all seemed to be in a state of Change, for I could see breasts on some, and the dangling complexity of male organs on others. The thought came to me that these strange savage beings must be some primitive creatures ancestral to us, perpetually in a state of sexual readiness, incapable of assuming the neuter form.
I had no time just then, though, for further speculations. For these apish Summit-dwellers, having noticed finally that a group of strangers had come over the horizon of their little domain, were turning their attention to us. Suddenly we were under attack. Shrieking shrilly, prancing and cavorting, they shook their fists at us, spat into the wind, scooped up handfuls of pebbles and flung them at us. Nor did they throw only pebbles. A fair-sized rock struck Maiti in the shoulder and knocked her down. Another hit Narril in the cheek, and he dropped into a crouch, covering his face with his hands. I spun around quickly as a sharp three-sided chunk of stone went whizzing past my ear, but as I did a second one caught me in the flat of the back and made me gasp for breath.
For a moment I was too stunned to think. Then I heard outcries from my left—Thrance’s voice, shouting something above the wind—and an answering whoop from Kilarion—and when I looked up I saw the two of them charging fiercely forward, waving their cudgels as though they were flaming swords. Behind them came Galli, Grycindil, Talbol, shouting and brandishing their cudgels also; and then most of the others, all but Thissa and Traiben and Hendy.