“What fastens you to this gloomy world?”
“The search for Thire.”
“Then it’s still a search?”
“Let us walk on.”
As they resumed their journey across the dim, gradually rising plain, the conversation became even more earnest in character than before. “Although I was not born here,” proceeded Corpang, “I’ve lived here for twenty-five years, and during all that time I have been drawing nearer to Thire, as I hope. But there is this peculiarity about it—the first stages are richer in fruit and more promising than the later ones. The longer a man seeks Thire, the more he seems to absent himself. In the beginning he is felt and known, sometimes as a shape, sometimes as a voice, sometimes an overpowering emotion. Later on all is dry, dark, and harsh in the soul. Then you would think that Thire was a million miles off.”
“How do you explain that?”
“When everything is darkest, he may be nearest, Maskull.”
“But this is troubling you?”
“My days are spent in torture.”
“You still persist, though? This day darkness can’t be the ultimate state?”