Robert Silverberg - Kingdoms of the Wall

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Kingdoms of the WallKingdoms of the Wall

Robert Silverberg

An [e - reads ] Book

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning

or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in

writing from the Author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are

products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance

to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely

coincidental.

First e-reads publication 1999

www.e-reads.com

ISBN 0-7592-2570-2

Author Biography

Robert Silverberg was born in New York City in 1935. He tends to keep his

personal life to himself, but has made allusions to being a lonely and bitter

child who found a release of a sort in science fiction and fantasy.

In 1956, he graduated from Columbia University, having majored in Comparative

Literature, and married Barbara Brown. His literary background would surface

eventually in his writing, but for a time, he seems to have kept the

“straight”

separate from the science fiction he wrote, as it was pure adventure stuff

with

little that would indicate interests beyond the typical science fiction of the

day.

In 1959, Robert Silverberg announced that he was retiring from science

fiction.

In spite of this retirement, books and stories continued to appear, mostly

anthologies of collected stories written during the earlier days and

expansions

of previous short works into novels. However, after much pleading from editors

and fans, he held out until 1978, when he found himself working on what became

Lord Valentine’s Castle.

Silverberg has won 5 nebulas and 4 Hugos.

Other works by Robert Silverberg also available in e-reads editions

Tom O’ Bedlam

Hot Sky at Midnight

F O R

URSULA K. LE GUIN

And yet all the time, below the fear and the irritation, one was aware of a

curious lightness and freedom … one was happy all the same; one had crossed

the boundary into country really strange; surely one had gone deep this

time.

— GRAHAMGREENE

Journey without Maps

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Kingdoms of the Wall

THIS IS THE BOOKof Poilar Crookleg, I who have been to the roof of the World

the top of the Wall and have felt the terrible fire of revelation there. I

have

seen the strange and bewildering gods that dwell there, I have grappled with

them and returned rich with the knowledge of the mysteries of life and of

death.

These are the things I experienced, this is what I learned, this is what I

must

teach you for the sake of your souls. Listen and remember.

If you are of my village, then you know who I am. But I want the story I am

about to relate to be heard and understood far beyond our own village, and so

will tell you that my father was Gabrian son of Drok, my House is the House of

the Wall, and my clan within that House is Wallclan. So I come from a noble

line.

I never knew my father when I was growing up, because he set forth on the

Pilgrimage when I was only a small boy and never returned. So there was only a

hole in my spirit where others have fathers to guide them. All that he left me

with to carry me through childhood and boyhood was the memory of a tall man

with

bright eyes and strong arms, sweeping me up and tossing me high overhead and

laughing in a deep, rich voice as he caught me. It may not be a trustworthy

memory. It may have been some other man entirely who lifted me and tossed me

like that; or maybe it never happened at all. But for many years that was all

had of my father: bright eyes, strong arms, a ringing peal of laughter.

My father’s father had gone to the Wall also in his time. That is the

tradition

of my family. We are folk of restless soul, Pilgrims by nature. We always have

been. The Pilgrimage is the high custom of our people, of course, the great

defining event of one’s life: either you become a Pilgrim or you do not, and

either way it leaves its mark upon you forever. And we are of the Pilgrim

sort.

We claim descent from the First Climber; we take it for granted that we will

Pilgrims ourselves when we come of age, and will go up into the fearsome

heights

where one’s body and one’s soul are placed at dread risk of transformation by

the forces that dwell there.

Like my father, my father’s father failed to return from his god-quest in the

realms above.

As for me, I never gave the Pilgrimage a thought when I was young. I looked

upon

the Pilgrimage then as some thing that concerned older folk, people in the

second half of their second ten of years. It was always certain to me that

when

my time came I would be a candidate for the Pilgrimage, that I would be

chosen,

that I would undertake it successfully. Taking the Pilgrimage for granted in

that way allowed me not to think about it at all. That way I was able to make

unreal.

I suppose I could pretend to you that I was a child of destiny, marked from my

earliest years for supreme achievement, and that holy lightnings crackled

about

my brow and people made sacred signs when they passed me in the street. But in

fact I was an ordinary sort of boy, except for my crooked leg. No lightnings

crackled about me. No gleam of sanctity blazed on my face. Something like that

came later, yes, much later, after I had had my star-dream; but when I was

young

I was no one unusual, a boy among boys. When I was growing up I wasn’t at all

the sort to go about thinking heavy thoughts about the Pilgrimage, or the Wall

and its Kingdoms, or the gods who lived at its Summit, or any other such

profundities. Traiben, my dearest friend, was the one who was haunted by high

questions of ultimate destinies and utmost purposes, of ends and means, of

essences and appearances, not I. It was Traiben, Traiben the Wise, Traiben the

Thinker, who thought deeply about such things and eventually led me to think

about them too.

But until that time came, the only things that mattered to me were the usual

things of boyhood, hunting and swimming and running and fighting and laughing

and girls. I was good at all those things except running, because of my

crooked

leg, which no shapechanging has ever been able to heal. But I was strong and

healthy otherwise, and I never permitted the leg to interfere with my life in

any way whatever. I have always lived as though both my legs were as straight

and swift as yours. When you have a flaw of the body such as I have, there is

other course, not without giving way to feelings of sorrow for yourself, and

such feelings poison the soul. So if there was a race, I ran in it. If my

playmates went clambering across the rooftops, I clambered right along with

them. Whenever someone mocked me for my limp — and there were plenty who did,

shouting “Crookleg! Crookleg!” at me as though it were a fine joke — I would

beat him until his face was bloody, no matter how big or strong he might be.

time, to show my defiance of their foolish scorn, I came to take Crookleg as

surname, like a badge of honor worn with pride.

If this world were a well-ordered place, it would have been Traiben who had

had

the crooked leg and not me.

Perhaps I ought not to say so cruel a thing about one whom I claim to love.

But

what I mean is that in this world there are thinkers and doers; doers must

have

agility and strength of body, and thinkers need agility and strength of mind.

had agility and bodily strength aplenty, but my leg was a handicap all the

same.

As for Traiben, the thinker, there was no strength in his frail body anyway,

why shouldn’t the gods have given him this limp of mine as well, instead of

me?

One more physical drawback, among so many, would not have made his life any

worse, and I would have been better fitted to be the person I was meant to be.

But the gods are never so precise in parceling out our gifts.

We were an odd pair: he so small and flimsy and fragile, with no more strength

to him than a gossamer, and me so sturdy and unwearying. Traiben looked as

though you could break him with a blow, and you could. Whereas I have made it

clear throughout all my days that if there is any breaking to be done, I will

the breaker rather than the broken. What drew us together, then? Though we

belonged to the same House and the same clan within that House, that in itself

would not necessarily have led to friendship between us. No, I think the thing

that linked us so tightly, different though we were in so many respects, was

the

fact that each of us had something about him that set him apart from the

others

of our clan. In my case it was my leg. In Traiben’s, it was his mind, which

burned with such fierce brilliance that it was like a sun within his skull.

Traiben it was who first set me on the path that leads to the summit of the

Wall, when he and I were twelve years old.

THE NAME OF MYvillage is Jespodar, which the Scribes and Scholars say is a

word

in the old Gotarza language that once was spoken here, meaning, “Those Who

Cling

to the Wall.” I suppose we do. Our village, which is really not a village at

all

but a vast conglomeration of villages all tangled together, containing many

thousands of people, is said to lie closer to the perimeter of the Wall than

any

other — right up against its flank, as a matter of fact. It is possible to

take

a road that runs out of the center of Jespodar that will put you on the Wall

itself. If you were to make the great journey around the base of the Wall, you

would come to scores of other villages — hundreds, maybe — along its

perimeter;

but none, so the Scholars tell us, actually abuts the flank of the Wall the

way

Jespodar does. Or so we are taught in Jespodar, at any rate.

The day of which I want to tell you, that day when my friend Traiben first lit

the fire of Pilgrimage in my twelve-year-old mind, was the day of the

departure

of that year’s Pilgrims. You know what great pomp and splendor that involves.

The ceremony of the Procession and Departure has not changed since ancient

times. The clans of every House that make up our village gather; the sacred

things of the tribe are brought forth, the batons and scrolls and talismans;

the

Book of the Wall is recited, every last verse of it, which requires weeks and

weeks of unceasing effort; and finally the forty successful candidates emerge

from the Pilgrim Lodge to show themselves before the village and take their

leave. It is a profound moment, for we will never see most of them again —

everyone understands that — and those who do return will come back transformed

beyond all knowing of them. That has ever been the way.

To me in that innocent time it was all just a grand festival, nothing more.

For

many days, now, people from the outlying districts of the village had been

arriving at our House, which lay closer to the Wall than any other in

Jespodar:

we were the House of the Wall, the House of Houses. Thousands had come,

thousands of thousands, so that the whole unthinkable swarm of festival-goers

was crammed elbow to elbow all the time, packed so close together that often

found ourselves changing shape involuntarily, just from the heat and

congestion

of it all, and we had to struggle to get back to the forms that we preferred.

Wherever you looked, our Housegrounds overflowed with mobs of people. They

were

everywhere and they got into everything: they trampled our lovely powdervines,

they crushed and flattened our handsome daggerfern bushes, they stripped the

gambellos of all their ripe, heavy blue fruits. It had happened that way every

year for more dozens of years than anyone can remember: we expected it and

were

resigned to it. The longhouses and the roundhouses were filled, the meadows

were

filled, the sacred groves were filled. Some people even slept in trees. “Have

you everseen so many people?” we all kept asking each other, though of course

had, only the year before. But it was the thing to say.

We even had a few of the King’s men in town to see the ceremony. They were

swaggering thick-bodied men who wore robes of red and green, and they went

striding through the crowds as if there was no one in their way. People

stepped

aside when they passed. I asked my mother’s brother Urillin, who had raised me

in my father’s absence, who they were, and he said, “They are the King’s men,

boy. They sometimes come here for the Festival, to enjoy themselves at our

expense.” And he muttered a bitter curse, which surprised me, because Urillin

was a mild and quiet man.

I stared at them the way I might have stared at men with two heads, or six

arms.

I had never seen King’s men before; and, in fact, I have never seen them

since.

Everyone knows that there is a King somewhere on the other side of Kosa Saag

who

lives in a grand palace in a great city and holds dominion over many villages,

ours among them. The King owns the magic that makes everything work, and so I

suppose we are dependent on him. But he is so very far away and his decrees

have

so little direct bearing on our everyday life that he might just as well live

some other planet. We dutifully pay our tribute but otherwise we have no

dealings with him or the government he heads. He is only a phantom to us. I

scarcely thought about him from one end of the year to the other. But the

sight

of these men of his service, who had come such a great distance to attend our

Festival, reminded me how huge the world is, and how little I knew about any

it except our own village lying in the shadow of the Wall; and so the King’s

men

awakened awe in me as they went strutting by.

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Robert Silverberg - Kingdoms of the Wall

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