“And there were drugs, too,” I murmured.
“Certain drugs, yes, cherished for their ability to bring the taker momentarily to a sensation of oneness with the universe. These starstones, Tomis, are only the latest in a long sequence of devices for overcoming the greatest of human curses, that is, the confinement of each individual soul within a single body. Our terrible isolation from one another and from the Will itself is more than most races of the universe would be able to bear. It seems unique to humanity.”
Her voice grew feathery and vague. She said much more, speaking to me out of the wisdom she had learned with the Rememberers, but her meaning eluded me; I was always quicker to enter communion than she, because of my training as a Watcher, and often her final words did not register.
That night as on other nights I seized my stone and felt the chill and closed my eyes, and heard the distant tolling of a mighty gong, the lapping of waves on an unknown beach, the whisper of the wind in an alien forest. And felt a summons. And yielded. And entered the state of communion. And gave myself up to the Will.
And slipped down through the layers of my life, through my youth and middle years, my wanderings, my old loves, my torments, my joys, my troubled later years, my treasons, my insufficiencies, my griefs, my imperfections.
And freed myself of myself. And shed my selfness. And merged. And became one of thousands of Pilgrims, not merely Olmayne nearby, but others trekking the mountains of Hind and the sands of Arba, Pilgrims at their devotions in Ais and Palash and Stralya, Pilgrims moving toward Jorslem on the journey that some complete in months, some in years, and some never at all. And shared with all of them the instant of submergence into the Will. And saw in the darkness a deep purple glow on the horizon—which grew in intensity until it became an all-encompassing red brilliance. And went into it, though unworthy, unclean, flesh-trapped, accepting fully the communnion offered and wishing no other state of being than this divorce from self.
And was purified.
And awakened alone.
5
I knew Afreek well. When still a young man I had settled in the continent’s dark heart for many years. Out of restlessness I had left, finally, going as far north as Agupt, where the antique relics of First Cycle days have survived better than anywhere else. In those days antiquity held no interest for me, however. I did my Watching and went about from place to place, since a Watcher does not need to have a fixed station; and chance brought me in contact with Avluela just as I was ready to roam again, and so I left Agupt for Roum and then Perris.
Now I had come back with Olmayne. We kept close to the coast and avoided the sandy inland wastes. As Pilgrims we were immune from most of the hazards of traveclass="underline" we would never go hungry or without shelter, even in a place where no lodge for our guild existed, and all owed us respect. Olmayne’s great beauty might have been a hazard to her, traveling as she was with no escort other than a shriveled old man, but behind the mask and robe of a Pilgrim she was safe. We unmasked only rarely, and never where we might be seen.
I had no illusions about my importance to Olmayne. To her I was merely part of the equipment of a journey—someone to help her in her communions and rituals, to arrange for lodgings, to smooth her way for her. That role suited me. She was, I knew, a dangerous woman, given to strange whims and unpredictable fancies. I wanted no entanglements with her.
She lacked a Pilgrim’s purity. Even though she had passed the test of the starstone, she had not triumphed—as a Pilgrim must—over her own flesh. She slipped off, sometimes, for half a night or longer, and I pictured her lying maskless in some alley gasping in a Servitor’s arms. That was her affair entirely; I never spoke of her absences upon her return.
Within our lodgings, too, she was careless of her virtue. We never shared a room—no Pilgrim hostelry would permit it—but we usually had adjoining ones, and she summoned me to hers or came to mine whenever the mood took her. Often as not she was unclothed; she attained the height of the grotesque one night in Agupt when I found her wearing only her mask, all her gleaming white flesh belying the intent of the bronze grillwork that hid her face. Only once did it seem to occur to her that I might ever have been young enough to feel desire. She looked my scrawny, shrunken body over and said, “How will you look, I wonder, when you’ve been renewed in Jorslem? I’m trying to picture you young, Tomis. Will you give me pleasure then?”
“I gave pleasure in my time,” I said obliquely.
Olmayne disliked the heat and dryness of Agupt. We traveled mainly by night and clung to our hostelries by day. The roads were crowded at all hours. The press of Pilgrims towards Jorslem was extraordinarily heavy, it appeared. Olmayne and I speculated on how long it might take us to gain access to the waters of renewal at such a time.
“You’ve never been renewed before?” she asked.
“Never.”
“Nor I. They say they don’t admit all who come.”
“Renewal is a privilege, not a right,” I said. “Many are turned away.”
“I understand also,” said Olmayne, “that not all who enter the waters are successfully renewed.”
“I know little of this.”
“Some grow older instead of younger. Some grow young too fast, and perish. There are risks.”
“Would you not take those risks?”
She laughed. “Only a fool would hesitate.”
“You are in no need of renewal at this time,” I pointed out. “You were sent to Jorslem for the good of your soul, not that of your body, as I recall.”
“I’ll tend to my soul as well, when I’m in Jorslem.”
“But you talk as if the house of renewal is the only shrine you mean to visit.”
“It’s the important one,” she said. She rose, flexing her supple body voluptuously. “True, I have atoning to do. But do you think I’ve come all the way to Jorslem just for the sake of my spirit?”
“I have,” I pointed out.
“You! You’re old and withered! You’d better look after your spirit—and your flesh as well. I wouldn’t mind shedding some age, though. I won’t have them take off much. Eight, ten years, that’s all. The years I wasted with that fool Elegro. I don’t need a full renewal. You’re right: I’m still in my prime.” Her face clouded. “If the city is full of Pilgrims, maybe they won’t let me into the house of renewal at all! They’ll say I’m too young—tell me to come back in forty or fifty years—Tomis, would they do that to me?”
“It is hard for me to say.”
She trembled. “They’ll let you in. You’re a walking corpse already—they have to renew you! But me—Tomis, I won’t let them turn me away! If I have to pull Jorslem down stone by stone, I’ll get in somehow!”
I wondered privately if her soul were in fit condition for one who poses as a candidate for renewal. Humility is recommended when one becomes a Pilgrim. But I had no wish to feel Olmayne’s fury, and I kept my silence. Perhaps they would admit her to renewal despite her flaws. I had concerns of my own. It was vanity that drove Olmayne; my goals were different. I had wandered long and done much, not all of it virtuous; I needed a cleansing of my conscience in the holy city more, perhaps, than I did a lessening of my years.
Or was it only vanity for me to think so?
6
Several days eastward of that place, as Olmayne and I walked through a parched countryside, village children chattering in fear and excitement rushed upon us.
“Please, come, come!” they cried. “Pilgrims, corne!”