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forever unsealed. But it hurt me; it hurt me terribly.
    Turimel and I spent one last night together, a night when all the moons were overhead, two in their full silver brilliance and three as shining crescents, and the air was clear as the King's crystal goblets. We lay closely entwined on a soft mossy bed on the north saddle of Messenger Slope, and softly I told her that I was bound for the Pilgrimage and would accept no possibility of failure, and for an instant I saw pain pass across her face; but then she put it away and smiled gently and nodded, with tears glistening in her eyes. I think she had known the truth all along, but had hoped it was not so. Then we made all the Changes one by one until we had spent the last of our passion. It was a sad and wonderful night and I was sorry to see it end. At dawn a gentle rain began to fall, and hand in hand we walked naked back to town under pearly morning-light. Three days later she announced her sealing to some young man of the House of Singers, whom she must already have been holding in reserve, knowing that sooner or later I would forsake her for Kosa Saag.
    After Turimel there was this one and that one and the other one, but my soul had hardened from its wound and I never spoke of sealing with any of them, and I never stayed with any of them long enough for them to hatch the idea themselves. Very likely they all knew I was bound for the Wall anyway. In every year-group there are certain ones whose Wallward destiny is known to all. Thrance was one such, the year when I was twelve. And I was another. People said they could see the mark of the Wall on me. It was the star-dream that had shown it to them, the dream which the whole village dreamed the same night. I searched for the mark in my mother's reflecting-glass, but I could never find it. I knew it was there, though. I had no doubt.
     
    * * *
     
    The beginning of my sixteenth year arrived. On the tenth of Orgulet a messenger of the House of the Wall brought me the traditional sheet of elegantly lettered parchment, ordering me to report, along with all the other members of my year-group, to the assembly-place known as the Field of Pilgrims. At last my candidacy was at hand.
    I remember the day well. How could I not? Four thousand two hundred fifty-six of us: not the biggest year-group that had ever been, but not the smallest, either. Ekmelios was so hot that day that the sky sizzled. We formed forty-two lines of one hundred on the velvety red grass of the Field of Pilgrims, and those who were left over made up a line of just fifty-six. I was in the short line: I took that as a somber omen. But Traiben, standing not far away in another line, winked and grinned at me as if to tell me that everything was going to be all right.
    Now came the terrifying hour of First Winnowing, which I dreaded more than death itself.
    Of all my four years as a candidate, nothing was worse than First Winnowing. I trembled like a leaf in the wind as the Masters of the House of the Wall moved silently among us, pausing here and there in the rows to tap candidates on the shoulder and thus to tell them that they were dismissed from the competition.
    Winnowing can fall on anyone, like a lightning-bolt, and there is no more appeal from it than there is from lightning. The Masters alone know the reasons why they decide to end a candidacy, and they are under no obligation to reveal them.
    That was why I feared this moment so much. Because I was young and ignorant I thought of First Winnowing as a process controlled by sheer whim and impulse, or even by private grudge, and therefore one that took no account of the merit that I was certain I possessed. Had I done something years ago to annoy or offend a Master, which had stuck in his memory like a cinder in the eye? Why, then, he would tap my shoulder and all would be over for me with that tap: no Pilgrimage for Poilar, no ascent of the Wall, no view of the mysteries of the Summit. Not even the omen of my