Because our clan within the House of the Wall was Wallclan, from which the heads of our House are always elected, Traiben and I had a privileged position for the Procession. We were seated in the main viewing stand just opposite the stone roundhouse of the Returned Ones, which is just adjacent to Pilgrim Lodge, from which the chosen Forty would soon emerge. So we were at the very center of things. That was truly dizzying, to know that such a great multitude was arrayed around the central point that was us, spreading outward and outward to the borders of the village and far beyond, all the teeming thousands and thousands of people of all the clans of every House of our village, the highborn and the lowly, the wise ones and the fools, the strong and the weak, packed elbow to elbow in the grassy streets under the shadow of the great mountain that is Kosa Saag.

Then came the words that changed my life. Traiben turned to me while we were waiting and said in an odd and somehow belligerent way, in a voice that had an edge on it, “Tell me, Poilar, do you think that you’re likely to be chosen for the Pilgrimage?”

I gave him a strange look. As I have said, that was something I had never bothered to think about at all. I took it for granted, a given of my life. In every generation going back to time’s first dawn someone of my family has been selected. I had no brothers or sisters; therefore I would be the one to go in my time. My limp would be no obstacle. Of course I would be chosen. Of course.

Hotly I said, “The blood of the First Climber runs in my veins. My father was a Pilgrim and so was his father before him. And I will be too, when my time comes. Do you think that I won’t?”

“Of course you will,” said Traiben, staring at me very intently. His eyes were like huge dark saucers with slits of light at their centers.