Free Kingdoms of the Wall by Robert Silverberg

often wrong-headed and rash—would he be any asset to a group such as ours? But Traiben's words of years before still burned in my mind. We Pilgrims were not necessarily the finest that the village had to offer. Some of us might have been sent to the Wall simply to get rid of us. I might be one of those myself, for all I knew.
    During our time in Pilgrim Lodge we twenty men were kept apart, as always, from the twenty women in the adjoining chamber. That was hard, going so long without mating: since my fourteenth year I hadn't known more than a few days of abstinence, and here we were condemned to half a year of it. But the years of training had so annealed my soul that I was able to handle even that.
    At first we had no idea who our female counterparts in the other chamber might be. But then Kath found a speaking-hole that linked one chamber to the other, high up on the wall in the dark storeroom in the rear of the lodge, and by standing three men high, Kilarion with Jaif on his shoulders and Kath on Jaif's, we were able to make contact with the women on the other side. Thus I learned that my robust old friend Galli was among the Forty, and delicate narrow-eyed Thissa, she whose skill was for witchcraft, and the remote and moody woman called Hendy, who fascinated me because in childhood she had been stolen away to our neighbor village of Tipkeyn and had not returned to us until her fourteenth year. And the sweet Tenilda of the Musicians, and Stum of the Carpenters, and Min the Scribe, all of them old friends of mine, and some others, like Grycindil the Weaver and Marsiel the Grower, who I did not know at all.
    We waited out our time. It was like being in prison. We did some things of which it would not be proper for me to speak, for only those who are about to be Pilgrims may know of them. But most of the time we were idle. That is the nature of the time in Pilgrim Lodge. Mainly it is a time of waiting. We had exercise rungs in Pilgrim Lodge, and used them constantly. To amuse ourselves in the long dull hours we speculated on the nature of the meals that came through the slots in the doors twice a day, but it was always the same, gruel and beans and grilled meat. There was never any wine with it, nor gaith-leaves to chew.
    We sang. We paced like caged beasts. We grew restless and listless. "It's the final test," Traiben explained. "If any of us snaps during this period of confinement, someone from the Thirty will be brought in to replace him. It's the last chance to see whether we are worthy of making the climb."
    "But anyone brought in now would have to know that he's a replacement," I objected. "So he'd be a second-class Pilgrim, wouldn't he?"
    "I think it rarely happens that anyone is brought in," said Traiben.
    And in fact we held our own, and even went from strength to strength, as the final weeks of our time in Pilgrim Lodge ticked away. Impatient as I was to begin my Pilgrimage, I remember attaining at the same time a kind of cool serenity that carried me easily through the last days, and if you ask me how one can be impatient and serene at the same time I can give you no real answer, except to say that perhaps only one who is a member of the Forty is capable of such a thing. I even lost track of the days, toward the end. So did we all, all but Naxa, who was marking out the time in some private Scribe-like way of his, and who announced at last, "This is the ninth day of Elgamoir."
    "The eighth, I make it to be," said Traiben mildly.
    "Well, then, so even the brilliant Traiben can be wrong once in a while," said Naxa in triumph. "For I tell you by the beard of Kreshe that this is the ninth, and tomorrow we will be on Kosa Saag."
    Traiben looked disgruntled, and muttered something to himself. But that night when the slots in the doors opened and our dinner-trays were pushed through, we saw bowls of steaming hammon and great slabs of roasted kreyl and tall pitchers of the foaming golden wine of celebration, and we knew