From the Ocean from teh Stars (42 page)

ahead a line of horses galloping along the road. He pressed forward eagerly, wondering if Sherval would be there to greet him, and was a
little disappointed when he saw that Grayle was leading the procession.

Shervane halted as the old man rode up to his horse. Then Grayle
put his hand upon his shoulder, but for a while he turned away his head
and could not speak.

And presently Shervane learned that the storms of the year before
had destroyed more than the ancient bridge, for the lightning had brought
his own home in ruins to the ground. Years before the appointed time, all the lands that Sherval had owned had passed into the possession of
his son. Far more, indeed, than these, for the whole family had been
assembled, according to its yearly custom, in the great house when the fibre
had come down upon it. In a single moment of time, everything between the mountains and the sea had passed into his keeping. He was
the richest man his land had known for generations; and all these things
he would have given to look again into the calm gray eyes of the father
he would see no more.

Trilorne had risen and fallen in the sky many times since Shervane took leave of his childhood on the road before the mountains. The land
had flourished in the passing years, and the possessions that had so suddenly become his had steadily increased their value. He had husbanded
them well, and now he had time once more in which to dream. More
than that—he had the wealth to make his dreams come true.

Often stories had come across the mountains of the work Brayldon
was doing in the east, and although the two friends had never met since
their youth they had exchanged messages regularly. Brayldon had
achieved his ambitions: not only had he designed the two largest buildings
erected since the ancient days, but a whole new city had been planned by him, though it would not be completed in his lifetime. Hearing of
these things, Shervane remembered the aspirations of his own youth, and
his mind went back across the years to the day when they had stood to
gether beneath the majesty of the Wall. For a long time he wrestled with
his thoughts, fearing to revive old longings that might not be assuaged. But
at last he made his decision and wrote to Brayldon—for what was the
use of wealth and power unless they could be used to shape one's dreams?

Then Shervane waited, wondering if Brayldon had forgotten the past
in the years that had brought him fame. He had not long to wait: Brayldon could not come at once, for he had great works to carry to
their completion, but when they were finished he would join his old
friend. Shervane had thrown him a challenge that was worthy of his skill

—one which if he could meet would bring him more satisfaction than
anything he had yet done.

Early the next summer he came, and Shervane met him on the road
below the bridge. They had been boys when they last parted, and now
they were nearing middle age, yet as they greeted one another the years
seemed to fall away and each was secretly glad to see how lightly Time
had touched the friend he remembered.

They spent many days in conference together, considering the plans
that Brayldon had drawn up. The work was an immense one, and would
take many years to complete, but it was possible to a man of Shervane's wealth. Before he gave his final assent, he took his friend to see Grayle.

The old man had been living for some years in the little house that
Shervane had built him. For a long time he had played no active part in
the life of the great estates, but his advice was always ready when it was
needed, and it was invariably wise.

Grayle knew why Brayldon had come to this land, and he expressed
no surprise when the architect unrolled his sketches. The largest drawing
showed the elevation of the Wall, with a great stairway rising along its
side from the plain beneath. At six equally spaced intervals the slowly
ascending ramp leveled out into wide platforms, the last of which was
only a short distance below the summit of the Wall. Springing from the stairway at a score of places along its length were flying buttresses which
to Grayle's eye seemed very frail and slender for the work they had to
do. Then he realized that the great ramp would be largely self-supporting,
and on one side all the lateral thrust would be taken by the Wall itself.

He looked at the drawing in silence for a while, and then remarked
quietly:

"You always managed to have your way, Shervane. I might have
guessed that this would happen in the end."

"Then you think it a good idea?" Shervane asked. He had never gone
against the old man's advice, and was anxious to have it now. As usual
Grayle came straight to the point.

"How much will it cost?" he said.

Brayldon told him, and for a moment there was a shocked silence.

"That includes," the architect said hastily, "the building of a good
road across the Shadow Land, and the construction of a small town for
the workmen. The stairway itself is made from about a million identical
blocks which can be dovetailed together to form a rigid structure. We
shall make these, I hope, from the minerals we find in the Shadow Land."

He sighed a little.

"I should have liked to have built it from metal rods, jointed to-

gether, but that would have cost even more, for all the material would
have to be brought over the mountains."

Grayle examined the drawing more closely.

"Why have you stopped short of the top?" he asked.

Brayldon looked at Shervane, who answered the question with a trace
of embarrassment.

"I want to be the only one to make the final ascent," he replied. "The
last stage will be by a lifting machine on the highest platform. There may
be danger: that is why I am going alone."

That was not the only reason, but it was a good one. Behind the
Wall, so Grayle had once said, lay madness. If that were true, no one else
need face it.

Grayle was speaking once more in his quiet, dreamy voice.

"In that case," he said, "what you do is neither good nor bad, for it
concerns you alone. If the Wall was built to keep something from our
world, it will still be impassable from the other side."

Brayldon nodded.

"We had thought of that," he said with a touch of pride. "If the need should come, the ramp can be destroyed in a moment by explosives at
selected spots."

"That is good," the old man replied. "Though I do not believe those
stories, it is well to be prepared. When the work is finished, I hope I shall
still be here. And now I shall try to remember what I heard of the Wall
when I was as young as you were, Shervane, when you first questioned
me about it."

Before the winter came, the road to the Wall had been marked out
and the foundations of the temporary town had been laid. Most of the
materials Brayldon needed were not hard to find, for the Shadow Land
was rich in minerals. He had also surveyed the Wall itself and chosen the
spot for the stairway. When Trilorne began to dip below the horizon,
Brayldon was well content with the work that had been done.

By the next summer the first of the myriad concrete blocks had been
made and tested to Brayldon's satisfaction, and before winter came again
some thousands had been produced and part of the foundations laid.
Leaving a trusted assistant in charge of the production, Brayldon could
now return to his interrupted work. When enough of the blocks had been
made, he would be back to supervise the building, but until then his
guidance would not be needed.

Two or three times in the course of every year, Shervane rode out to
the Wall to watch the stockpiles growing into great pyramids, and four

years later Brayldon returned with him. Layer by layer the lines of stone
started to creep up the flanks of the Wall, and the slim buttresses began
to arch out into space. At first the stairway rose slowly, but as its summit narrowed the increase became more and more rapid. For a third of every
year the work had to be abandoned, and there were anxious months in
the long winter when Shervane stood on the borders of the Shadow Land,
listening to the storms that thundered past him into the reverberating
darkness. But Brayldon had built well, and every spring the work was
standing unharmed as though it would outlive the Wall itself.

The last stones were laid seven years after the beginning of the
work. Standing a mile away, so that he could see the structure in its
entirety, Shervane remembered with wonder how all this had sprung
from the few sketches Brayldon had shown him years ago, and he knew something of the emotion the artist must feel when his dreams become
reality. And he remembered, too, the day when, as a boy by his father's
side, he had first seen the Wall far off against the dusky sky of the Shadow
Land.

There were guardrails around the upper platform, but Shervane did not care to go near its edge. The ground was at a dizzying distance, and
he tried to forget his height by helping Brayldon and the workmen erect
the simple hoist that would lift him the remaining twenty feet. When it was ready he stepped into the machine and turned to his friend with all
the assurance he could muster.

"I shall be gone only a few minutes," he said with elaborate casual-
ness. "Whatever I find, I'll return immediately."

He could hardly have guessed how small a choice was his.

Grayle was now almost blind and would not know another spring.
But he recognized the approaching footsteps and greeted Brayldon by
name before his visitor had time to speak.

"I am glad you came," he said. "I've been thinking of everything you
told me, and I believe I know the truth at last. Perhaps you have guessed
it already."

"No," said Brayldon. "I have been afraid to think of it."

The old man smiled a little.

"Why should one be afraid of something merely because it is strange?
The Wall is wonderful, yes—but there's nothing terrible about it, to those
who will face its secret without flinching.

"When I was a boy, Brayldon, my old master once said that time
could never destroy the truth—it could only hide it among legends. He

was right. From all the fables that have gathered around the Wall, I can
now select the ones that are part of history.

"Long ago, Brayldon, when the First Dynasty was at its height, Tri
lorne was hotter than it is now and the Shadow Land was fertile and inhabited—as perhaps one day the Fire Lands may be when Trilorne is
old and feeble. Men could go southward as they pleased, for there was
no Wall to bar the way. Many must have done so, looking for new lands
in which to settle. What happened to Shervane happened to them also,
and it must have wrecked many minds—so many that the scientists of the First Dynasty built the Wall to prevent madness from spreading through the land. I cannot believe that this is true, but the legend says
that it was made in a single day, with no labor, out of a cloud that en
circled the world."

He fell into a reverie, and for a moment Brayldon did not disturb
him. His mind was far in the past, picturing his world as a perfect globe
floating in space while the Ancient Ones threw that band of darkness around the equator. False though that picture was in its most important
detail, he could never wholly erase it from his mind.

As the last few feet of the Wall moved slowly past his eyes, Shervane
needed all his courage lest he cry out to be lowered again. He remem
bered certain terrible stories he had once dismissed with laughter, for he
came of a race that was singularly free from superstition. But what if,
after all, those stories had been true, and the Wall had been built to keep
some horror from the world?

He tried to forget these thoughts, and found it not hard to do so once
he had passed the topmost level of the Wall. At first he could not interpret
the picture his eyes brought him: then he saw that he was looking across
an unbroken black sheet whose width he could not judge.

The little platform came to a stop, and he noted with half-conscious
admiration how accurate Brayldon's calculations had been. Then, with a
last word of assurance to the group below, he stepped onto the Wall and
began to walk steadily forward.

At first it seemed as if the plain before him was infinite, for he could
not even tell where it met the sky. But he walked on unfaltering, keeping his back to Trilorne. He wished he could have used his own shadow as a
guide, but it was lost in the deeper darkness beneath his feet.

There was something wrong: it was growing darker with every foot
step he took. Startled, he turned around and saw that the disk of Trilorne
had now become pale and dusky, as if seen through a darkened glass.
With mounting fear, he realized that this was by no means all that had
happened—
Trilorne was smaller than the sun he had known all his life.