Free Kingdoms of the Wall by Robert Silverberg Page A

that Naxa's count of days had been right and Traiben for once was in error, for this was the feast of Departure that they had brought us and in the morning our Pilgrimage would at last commence.
     
     

 
     
    5
     
     
    The final rite of our stay in Pilgrim Lodge took place at dawn: the Sacrifice of the Bond. We were all awake and waiting when the slots opened for the last time and a beautiful young grezbor came wriggling through, a sleek pink-hoofed one with dazzling white wool, not your ordinary farm grezbor but one of the prized purebred ones of the temples. After it, on a golden tray, came the silver knife of the Bond.
    We knew what we were supposed to do. But in the face of the actual fact we looked uneasily at each other. The grezbor seemed to think it was all a game, and went trotting around from one of us to another, nuzzling against our knees, accepting our caresses. Then Narril picked up the knife and said, "Well, considering that it's a skill of my House—"
    "No," said Muurmut brusquely. "Not a Butcher, not for this. We need some style here."
    And he took the knife from Narril before Narril realized what was happening, and held it aloft, and waved it solemnly toward this side of the room and that one.
    "Bring me the animal," he said in a deep, dramatic tone.
    I gave him a contemptuous look. Muurmut seemed both foolishly pompous and grandly impressive, but rather more pompous than grand. Still, the Sacrifice had to be carried out, and he had taken possession of the rite, and that was all there was to it. Kilarion and Stum grabbed the poor beast and brought it to Muurmut, who stood very tall in the center of the room. Muurmut turned the knife so that it glinted in the light of the window overhead and said in a rich formal voice, "We offer up the life of this creature now as a bond between us, that we should all love one another as we set forth in our high endeavor." Then he spoke the words of the slaughtering-prayer as any Butcher might have done and made a swift cut with the knife. A line of crimson blossomed from the throat of the grezbor. It was a good clean killing: I give Muurmut credit for that much. I saw Traiben look away; and I heard a quick little gasp of dismay from Hendy.
    Then Muurmut held the body forward and we came toward it one by one, and dipped our fingers in the blood and smeared it on our cheeks and forearms as the tradition required, and we swore to love one another in the ordeal ahead. Why must we do this? I wondered. Did they fear we would become enemies on the mountain, without the oath? But we rubbed the blood on each other as though it was really needed. And in time I would come to see that indeed it had been.
    "Look," Jaif said. "The doors—"
    Yes. They were swinging open now.
    I felt nothing, nothing at all, as I came forth from Pilgrim Lodge that morning and stepped forward into the Procession. I had spent too much of my life waiting for this moment; the moment itself had become incomprehensible.
    Of course there was plenty of sensation. I remember the blast of hot moist air as I came through the doorway, and the fierce light of Ekmelios jabbing me in the eyes, and the sharp bitter smell of thousands of damp sweaty bodies. I heard the singing and the chanting and the music. I saw the faces of people I knew in the viewing-stand just opposite the roundhouse of the Returned Ones, where Traiben and I had been sitting eight years before on that day when we first vowed that we would achieve the Pilgrimage. But though a million individual details struck my senses and engraved themselves permanently upon my memory, none of it had any meaning. I had been locked up; now I was coming out into town; and I was about to go for a walk.
    A walk, yes.
    Because I was of the House of the Wall, I was the first one out of the Lodge and I was the one who would lead the group of Pilgrims in the Procession: naturally Wall always goes first, Singers second, then Advocates, Musicians, Scribes, and so on in