Kingdoms of the Wall by Robert Silverberg Page A

draw blood.
    "For luck!" she cried. Her eyes were wild. She had drugged herself with gaith.
    I spat at her. She had forced me to step back onto the carpet, which was anything but lucky. But Streltsa only laughed again and made a kiss at me in mid-air. I snatched my pack from her and she air-kissed me again. Then she reached down into her bodice and pulled something out and tossed it to me. By reflex I snatched it with a quick grab before it fell.
    It was a little carved idol made of white bone: Sandu Sando the Avenger. His eyes were bright green jewels and he was in full Change, with his penis rising erect out of his thighs like a tiny hatchet. I glared at Streltsa and started to hurl it over the side of the parapet, but then I heard her little cry of shock and fear and I stopped myself before I had thrown it. I saw her trembling. She was gesturing to me: take it, keep it. I nodded, suddenly afraid amidst my anger. Streltsa turned and ran back down the path. Then the anger returned and I would have run after her and flung her down the mountain if I had not been able to gain control of myself in time.
    Thissa the Witch had seen the whole thing. She dabbed at the blood on my neck.
    "She loves you," Thissa whispered. "She knows she will never see you again."
    "She will," I said. "And when I come back, I'll tie her down naked in the plaza and put her through the Changes with her own filthy little idol."
    Color rose in Thissa's delicate cheeks. She shook her head in horror and made a quick Witch-sign at me, and took the Avenger from my nerveless hands and tucked him deep into my pack.
    "Take care not to lose it," she said. "It will protect us all. There are many evils ahead of us." And she kissed me to calm me, for I was shivering with fury and with fright.
    It was not a good way to have begun the journey.
    Our bearers now were gone, and only we of the Forty remained. The uncarpeted road here was far rougher than it had been just outside town—the paving-stones had been laid down an immensely long time ago and they were cracked and tilted at crazy angles—and I knew from my climb long ago with Galli that it would get rougher yet, very soon. The packs were crushingly heavy: we carried in them enough food to last for weeks and as much camping equipment as we could manage to haul, aware that there would be no way to obtain any as we climbed. Beyond Denbail too, the road doubles back into a fold of the Wall and curves around to a side from which the village is no longer visible, which gave us all a powerful sense of having broken the last tie with our home and gone floating off into the empty sky. But it was at Hithiat milepost that the real strangeness began.
    We reached it in late afternoon and by common unspoken decision halted to consider the thing that was next to be done.
    It was time to choose a leader. We all knew that. They had told us in the training sessions that we were to elect a leader as soon as we were beyond Hithiat, because without one we would be a serpent with many heads, each yearning to go in the direction it preferred and no two agreeing.
    There was an uneasy moment, just as there had been at the time of the Sacrifice of the Bond, when no one was quite sure of how to go about doing what was necessary to do. I remembered how Muurmut had seized the moment and made himself its master, and I was not going to let him do that again here.
    "Well," I said. "My House is the House of the Wall. This is the place of my House. I've waited all my life to reach this place. Stay with me and I'll take you to the Summit."
    "Are you nominating yourself, Crookleg?" Muurmut asked, so I knew right away there would be trouble with him.
    I nodded.
    "Seconded," said Traiben.
    "You're of his House," said Muurmut. "You can't second him."
    "Seconded, then," said Jaif the Singer.
    "Seconded," said Galli, who was of the Vintners, Muurmut's own House.
    Everyone was silent a moment.
    Then Stapp of Judges said, "If Poilar can nominate himself,