Silverberg, Robert - Kingdoms Of The Wall.pdf - Robert Silverberg - chomikbob7

Table of Contents

Author Biography

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Publisher: Bantam Books

ISBN-13: 9780553565447

Kingdoms 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

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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

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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 at 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 I 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

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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 I 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 be 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 it 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 no 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. In time,

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

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