“You would forfeit these.”
The cave returned to dimness as he pulled the door to.
“Then I cannot.”
“Are you certain?”
Iliff looked at his hand that still held to the door handle.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“As you wish.”
The door disappeared, and Iliff found himself in the pitch dark. He began to reach for the wall before him, then stopped and pressed his hand to his heart. Skye’s gentle presence filled him. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was beneath the blanket, Tradd beside him. The mouth of the cave showed gray.
Morning had come.
* * *
By late morning, they were almost through the foothills, and they stopped on the verge of a boulder field to rest. Above them the Mountain ascended in great thrusts, the stone walls becoming taller and cleaner, more sheer. The final thrust pierced the clouds. Breath fogged from Iliff’s trembling lips. He worked himself deeper into his coat and returned his gaze to the terrain before them.
“An old river must have run here,” he said, pointing out a wending course of faint, flattened stones. “It will be easier to walk along, in any case. We’ll follow it up as far as we can.”
On his first step, Iliff nearly fell. He caught himself before Tradd could.
“Iliff…”
“I’m all right.”
“Please, you must eat.”
Iliff resumed walking, holding his knees stiff now so his gait became stilted.
“You need your strength.”
Iliff paused and turned. He looked on Tradd’s concerned face. “When your father and I set out,” he said, nodding to the stones at their feet, “when we followed our own river upstream, all I could think about was food and what we would eat. It consumed our days and nights. But I haven’t that hunger now. I can’t explain it, Tradd, but it’s as though I’m being sustained in some other way. Please, do not worry for me.”
His companion frowned. “Well, at least let me carry the bag.”
Iliff ran his hand along the rope that hugged his chest. He remembered donning Salvatore’s bag for the first time outside the five-pointed crevice at the bottom of the prison. It was silly, perhaps, but he always imagined it being on his back when he arrived at the Sun.
“No, no, it’s not heavy,” he said, turning once more to the old riverbed. “I can manage it.”
Tradd made a sound as though he were going to insist, but then only sighed and began crunching along behind him.
Near dusk they found another rent in another cliff face. Tradd helped Iliff inside and built a fire. Iliff lay very still, his eyelids low. Tradd did not speak, but Iliff could see the worry across his companion’s brow every time he stooped toward him. Late in their walk, Tradd told him that he had begun weaving and reaching for things that were not there. Iliff did recall stumbling once or twice, but Tradd insisted that he had stumbled many times.
Iliff closed his eyes now. The truth was he was becoming less aware of the lands over which they tread. Less aware of his own body, even. Increasingly, his awareness was with the great Mountain above them.
Adramina called to him again that night. At the rear of the cavern, Iliff found another door from her dwelling, its blue-gray edges soft with light.
“You may open it now,” she said from beside him.
When he pushed the door, he found the township again. Except now it was surrounded by stone walls. A solid fortress rose from the bluff. Fythe guards stood at high towers and marched in flawless formations behind the battlements.
“I have already been here,” Iliff said.
“Yes, but these walls are impenetrable. Nothing would pass that you did not bid enter. It is your Kingdom, Iliff. Yours and Skye’s. It will never fall to darkness or ruin.”
An old longing stirred in Iliff.
“You could make this so?” he asked.
“You have but to step through,” she replied.
He felt the truth of her words.
“And the quest? The Sun?”
“You would forfeit these.”
He felt the truth in these words as well. His gaze lingered beyond the door as he pulled it to.
“Then I cannot,” he said.
“Are you certain?”
Though he had not seen him, he had felt his presence haunting the basement levels of the keep. A man divided against himself. A mind warped and at last broken. His former adversary and ally, Lucious.
“Yes,” he said.
“As you wish.”
* * *
At noon the following day, the old riverbed disappeared beneath a great stone wall that rose before them. The wall was not so sheer as it had appeared from a distance. Cracks scarred its face, and shelves erupted in deep slants, some of them large enough to walk along. The stone wall rose up and away from them. Iliff followed it with his eyes, surprised when he encountered the clouds, heavy in their gray drift. It was the closest he had ever seen them.
“Can you climb?” Tradd asked.
Iliff nodded and lifted himself onto the first shelf, though it required all of his effort. Tradd pulled himself up easily. Suddenly he shot his arms forward, seizing Iliff before he fell over. Iliff felt insubstantial in Tradd’s hold, as though his companion had become his body, his strength. Slowly the spots in his vision receded and he could feel his legs beneath him again. Tradd set him against the wall.
“Well, here,” he said with a huff.
Tradd removed a coiled rope from Iliff’s bag and secured an end around each of their waists. It was only when Tradd pulled the knots tight that Iliff realized how hollow his stomach had become.
“And no arguing,” Tradd said.
Tradd took the lead now, Iliff shuffling behind him, holding the rope with both hands.
“Perhaps it’s not a bad idea,” Iliff murmured. “Thank you, Troll.”
Tradd peered over his shoulder, one eyebrow cocked, but said nothing.
For the next two days, they made their way up the steep stone face. Iliff helped where he could, but as was happening more and more, his awareness was aligning with the Mountain, with its mighty ascension and convergence. Now and again he heard Tradd’s voice. He would return to himself long enough to find his companion’s face before his, asking if he were all right, if he needed to rest. Iliff would squint into the wind around them, always surprised at the coldness and closeness of the clouds.
Both nights, Adramina returned to him. On the first night, she stood beside a brown door, another one from her dwelling. Iliff pushed it open to find a wet mist. Beyond the mist he saw an island, a sodden hillock that struggled from an expanse of stagnant water. Beneath the hillock’s lone tree stood a shelter. And beneath the shelter squatted a young man, mud-coated and alone.
“I have already been here,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Apart from the world, responsible to no one.”
Iliff recalled his old numbness.
“Had you pain there?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Had you fear?”
“No.”
“Longings?”
“No.”
“I can make it so you never know such things again.” The voice near his ear was both maternal and seductive.
Iliff recalled his time in the swamp, when he had but to rise and eat, sit beneath his shelter, sleep. He recalled his challenges in the forest with Troll. Recalled his trials in the township with the Garott. So much hurt and uncertainty just beyond the swamp’s edges. So much death.
“Never again?” he asked.
“Never again,” she said. “You have but to step through.”
Perhaps it was why he had come this far, he thought from far away. To undo what he had done. To put it right again. His right foot explored the threshold. Perhaps it would be better for all concerned. The decay of the swamp rose and wrapped him round, drawing him forward.
But now something appeared through the
mist, almost too small to see.
Iliff leaned toward it. Upon recognizing it, he struggled against the swamp, but it had him. It pulled him forward and down like a great weight. Iliff grunted and, with a final effort, stumbled backward and beyond the swamp’s hold.
He drew the door firmly to.
“I cannot,” he said, gasping.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
For it was a white petal he had seen. A white petal guiding him from the swamp, recalling his quest once more.
“As you wish.”
On the next night, another familiar door stood before him, this one a verdant green. It opened onto the same forest that he had experienced upon his emergence from the underworld.
Beyond its threshold, Iliff beheld vivid swells of grass and ferns. He smelled the flowering understory as well as the leaves of the high canopy that looked like many waving hands. Small creatures emerged before him: squirrels and colorful birds that dipped and trilled in their flight. Iliff laughed, unable to contain his old delight. And then Troll appeared, one hand to his eyes, and when Iliff saw how small and vulnerable he looked beneath the tall trees, his old love for him surged.
Iliff watched them set out together to explore the world.
“I have already been here,” Iliff said slowly, not taking his eyes from the scene.
“Yes,” she said. “And behold your joy, your earnestness. Behold your camaraderie with your shadowed half. Everything is rich and new. This is how most quests begin. But they do not remain so, do they?”
Iliff looked on Troll, whose pale body had yet to become disfigured by fire.
“No,” he said.
“I can preserve these things, Iliff.”
“You can?” he asked.
“You have but to step through.”
“And the quest?” he asked. “The Sun?”
“They will remain ever before you. Ever in the distance.”
“Ever in the distance…”
“Yes, where they are most attractive.”
Iliff remained looking through this door longer than he had the others. He watched himself staring up into the trees and at the low plants around them, watched himself stopping to smile at a bird’s song. The joy he witnessed—indeed, that moved through him now—was special and unlike any he had known before or since. All the time, he guided Troll by the hand.
To know that place again…
He leaned forward and pulled the door closed.
“I cannot,” he said.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
To know that place again would be to remain ever in adolescence, naïve to the greater world, naïve to the Sun. Yes, to know that place again would mean never coming to realize the Sun’s nature.
“As you wish,” she said. “Only once more will I return to you.”
And for the fourth time in as many nights, the door disappeared, and it felt to Iliff as though the darkness were swallowing him whole.
Chapter 27
The next morning, Iliff rested on a tapering shelf. It was the final shelf before the Mountain became nearly sheer in its ascent. Tradd climbed up a short distance, wedging his blunt fingers into crevices and over small ledges of stone. Mist fallen from the lowest clouds drifted over him. He used the toes of his boots to feel his way back down and dropped the last few feet, landing beside Iliff.
“Can we climb it?” Iliff asked.
“Yes, but I’m going to carry you.”
“No, no, Tradd, I’m too big. Your back wouldn’t support me.”
“Too big?” Tradd’s laugh sounded forlorn. “You’re scarcely anything at all.”
But Iliff did not respond to this, for the mist had blown off and he suddenly found himself looking over the lands far below, the lands they had traveled. He could see the gray foothills beneath them and the expanse of fallen trees, and beyond these, the forest that had bordered the Far Place. Beyond the dark sweep of forest was the Great Sea, and on the far verge of the Sea, scarcely visible…
Tradd turned his head and followed Iliff’s outstretched arm. “Is that…?” he started to ask, then stopped and stared.
“Yes, the same lands we sailed from.”
The distant lands of the township showed as little more than a blue line, thin and pale. Iliff followed the line with his eyes, not quite believing that he had once dwelled there, and having dwelled there, that he might never return.
“If we can see that from up here,” Tradd said, “why couldn’t we see the Mountain from down there?”
“So long as we remained in the world,” Iliff said, “we could perceive nothing beyond death. It was the wall Adramina spoke of. The one we could not see with our eyes. But we are through now.”
Tradd nodded, appearing to understand.
Now both of their eyes turned back to the Mountain. Tradd stooped before Iliff, and Iliff, forgetting for the moment that he was too big, climbed onto his back just as he used to do with Troll. Tradd secured Iliff’s arms and legs with rope. He then drew a large breath and began pulling himself up the rock wall. The fine mist of the lowest clouds wafted past them, and Iliff yielded to the powerful motion and rhythm of their climb. He closed his eyes and became the Mountain once more.
* * *
When Iliff drew his awareness back into himself, they were stopped and he was no longer holding to Tradd’s neck. Evening had fallen. Tradd had found another cleft for them, this one so small and shallow that even though Tradd pulled his knees in, the toes of his boots peeked out over the cliff side. Iliff found himself curled beside Tradd against the back wall. The blanket had been tucked around him and his coat bundled under his head.
Tradd craned his neck at the sound of Iliff sitting up. The yellow crescents of his eyes swelled through the darkness. There was no fire this evening, and Iliff realized that even had their space been large enough, they had used the last of their firewood the night before. No trees grew this high.
“You’re awake,” Tradd said.
“Yes, have we been climbing?”
“All day,” Tradd answered. “But it’s been slow. I had to backtrack a few times.”
“I know I haven’t been much help.”
The night wind swirled through their enclosure, and Iliff shivered beneath the blanket. Tradd’s eyes continued to peer back at him.
“I’m afraid for you,” Tradd said.
“Whatever for?”
“You should see yourself, Iliff. You’re so wasted and weak. You hardly feel like anything on my back. Why, I have to check to make sure you’re still there sometimes. When I ask if you’re all right, you mumble near my ear, not making any sense. And when I do get you to answer me, you call me Troll.”
“Indeed?”
This sounded strange to Iliff because all day he had felt larger and more lucid than ever.
“Please,” Tradd said, holding open Salvatore’s bag. “Please eat something. I’ve saved you food.”
Iliff’s hands trembled as he placed them over Tradd’s. “I know you have,” he said.
Tradd turned himself until he was beside Iliff, then hung his arm around him. Tradd’s body was warm and smelled strong, like stone. Tradd pulled Iliff beneath his tangle of hair, beneath his breathing.
“I don’t want you to die,” he said. “I don’t want to be left alone.”
“I’ll never leave you alone,” Iliff said.
* * *
That night Iliff rose and followed the song of Adramina’s voice. He felt his way back and back, for this dream cavern receded far deeper than the others. At last he found himself before a red door.
“You may open it,” she said.
The door handle in Iliff’s grasp felt familiar. When he looked, he saw that it fit the contours of his fingers and palm perfectly, as though it were a part of him. And then he realized it was the handle of his old trowel. He gripped it tenderly as he cracked the door open.
The sounds emerged first. Sounds of i
ndustry. Pouring and sifting. Water spilling. Wet scrapes and clinks. Dry scouring. Next came the smells, and Iliff smiled as he inhaled them. They were the simple smells of sand and gravel, the hardier smells of clay and crushed limestone. Familiar smells. He closed his eyes. Mixed together, they smelled solid and safe.
He pushed the door open wider, as far as it would go. When he opened his eyes, there they were. His old repair crew. Not as the crew had become, crowded and cumbersome with the walls’ fracturing, but as it had always been. Five men to prepare the mortar; five more to seal the fissures with trowels; one apiece to stir the fresh mortar, ferry it to and fro, and manage the lantern stands; and, at last, three to scour the repaired fissures with metal wool, blending the dried mortar with the stone it sealed. Iliff knew these men. He knew them all.
He watched them move and work. He had forgotten how seamless it had all been once, how neat and efficient. He listened to the red-faced mixer shouting directions from the mortar box.
“I have been here,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said. “Our earliest walls are the ones for which we remain most fond.”
Iliff spied a young man, a boy in fact. He held his mortarboard near his shoulder, where locks of midnight hair fell down. Iliff watched him press his trowel into a fissure before him, his motions simple and certain, watched him scrape away the excess mortar. And Iliff knew the boy to be himself, for he felt his old contentment. He felt it swimming up from deep inside, placating everything in its widening wake.
“You have but to step through,” she said.
What of the quest? What of the Sun?
But already these were beginning to feel distant to Iliff. As distant as his own thoughts.
“You would have no knowledge of these,” she replied. “You would never have knowledge of these.”
What would I do?
“You would become a troweler again. You would maintain the walls in perfect contentment.”
Beyond the doorway, the porter exchanged the young troweler’s empty board of mortar for a fresh one. The lantern bearer moved the lantern stand nearer as the boy turned back to his work. Still holding to the door handle, Iliff caught his own wrist cocking and turning.
Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3) Page 17
