by Brian Aldiss
“If you weren’t stupid, you’d keep quiet. Who do you think has power here? The priesthood, of course. If you speak out against them—”
“But that’s Akha’s power—”
The grey man had slipped away into the dark. And there in that dark, that ever watchful dark, could be felt the presence of something monstrous. Akha?
One day, a great sporting event was to be held in Reck. It was then that Yuli, acclimatised to Pannoval, underwent a remarkable crystalisation of emotion. He hurried along to the sports with Kyale and Tusca. Fat lamps burned in niches, leading the way from Vakk to Reck, and crowds of people climbed through the narrowing rock passages, struggled up the worn steps, calling to one another, as they filed into the sports arena.
Carried along by the surge of humanity, Yuli caught a sudden view ahead of the chamber of Reck, its curved walls flickering with light. He saw but a slice of the chamber to begin with, trapped between the veined walls of the passage along which the rabble had to pass. As he moved, so into that framed distant view moved Akha himself, high above the heads of the crowd.
He ceased to listen to what Kyale was saying. Akha’s gaze was on him; the monstrous presence of the dark was surely made visible.
Music played in Reck, shrill and stimulating. It played for Akha. There Akha stood, broad and horrible of brow, its large stone eyes unseeing yet all-seeing, lit from below by flares. Its lips dripped disdain.
The wilderness held nothing like this. Yuli’s knees were weak. A powerful voice inside him, one he scarcely recognised as his own, exclaimed, “Oh, Akha, at last I believe in you. Yours is the power. Forgive me, let me be your servant.”
Yet alongside the voice of one longing to enslave himself was another, speaking simultaneously in a more calculating manner. It said, “The people of Pannoval must understand a great truth which it would be useful to get to comprehend by following Akha.”
He was astonished at the confusion within himself, a war that did not lessen as they entered the chamber and more of the stone god was revealed. Naab had said, “Humans have a role in the war between Sky and Earth.” Now he could feel that war alive within him.
Tle games were intensely exciting. Running races and spear throwing were followed by wrestling between humans and phagors, the latter with their horns amputated. Then came the bat shoot, and Yuli emerged from his pietistic confusions to watch the excitement. He feared bats. High above the crowd, the roof of Reck was lined with the furry creatures, dangling with their leather wings about their heads. Archers came forward and shot in turn at the bats with arrows to which were attached silken threads. The bats, when hit, fell fluttering down, and were claimed for the pot.
The winner was a girl. She were a bright red garment tight at the neck and long to the ground, and she pulled back her bow and shot more accurately than any man. And her hair was long and dark. Her name was Iskador, and the crowd applauded her wildly, none more so than Yuli.
Then there were the gladiatorial combats, men against men, men against phagors, and blood and death filled the arena. Yet all the time, even when Iskador was tensing her bow and her lovely torso—even then, Yuli thought in terms of great joy that he had found an amazing faith. The confusions within would be banished by greater knowledge, he assumed.
He recalled the legends he had listened to round his father’s fire. The elders had spoken of the two sentinels in the sky, and of how the men on earth had once offended the Cod of the Skies, whose name was Wutra. So that Wutra had banished the earth from his warmth. Now the sentinels watched for the hour when Wutra returned, to look again with affection on the earth, and see if the people behaved better. If he found they did, then would he remove the frost.
Well, Yuli had to acknowledge that his people were savages, just as Sataal claimed; how else would his father have allowed himself to be dragged away by phagors? Yet there must be a germ of truth in the tales. For here in Pannoval was a move reasoned version of the story. Wutra was now merely a minor deity, but he was vengeful, and he was loose in the skies. It was from the skies that peril came. Akha was the great earth god, ruling underground, where it was safe. The Two Sentinels were not benign; being in the sky, they belonged to Wutra, and they could turn against mankind.
Now the memorised verses began to make sense. Illumination shone from them, so that Yuli muttered with pleasure what had previously given him pain, gazing upon Akha’s face as he did so:
“Skies give false prospects,
Skies shower extremes:
Against all such schemes
Akha’s earth overhead protects.”
Next day, he went humbly to Sataal and told the man that he had been converted.
The pale heavy face of his priest regarded him, and Sataal drummed his fingers on his knees.
“How were you converted? Lies fly about the livings these days.”
“I looked at Akha’s face. For the first time I saw it clear. Now my heart is open.”
“Another false prophet was arrested the other day.”
Yuli smote his chest. “What I feel inside me is not false, Father.”
“It’s not so easy,” said the priest.
“Oh, it is easy, it is easy—now everything will be easy!” He fell at the priest’s feet, crying his delight.
“Nothing’s so easy.”
“Master, I owe you everything. Help me. I want to be a priest, to become as you.”
During the next few days, he went about the lanes and livings noticing new things. No longer did he feel himself encased in gloom, buried underground. He was in a favoured region, protected from all the cruel elements that had made him a savage. He saw how welcome the dim light was.
He saw too how beautiful Pannoval was, in all its chambers. In the course of their long habitation, the caves had been decorated by artists. Whole walls were covered with painting and carving, many of them illustrating the life of Akha and the great battles he had fought, as well as the battles he would fight when again enough humans had faith in his strength. Where the pictures had grown old and faint, new ones had been painted on top of them. Artists were still at work, often perched dangerously on top of scaffolding that reached towards the roof like the skeleton of some mythical long-necked animal.
“What’s the matter with you, Yuli? You attend to nothing,” Kyale said.
“I’m going to be a priest. I’ve made up my mind.”
’They’ll never let you—you from outside.”
“My priest is speaking to the authorities.”
Kyale pulled at his melancholy nose, slowly lowering his hand until the tugging operations were taking place at one end of his moustache, as he contemplated Yuli. By now, Yuli’s eyesight had so adjusted to the dimness that every nuance of expression on his friend’s face was clear. When Kyale moved without a word to the back of his stall, Yuli followed.
Again grabbing his moustache for security, Kyale placed his other hand on Yuli’s shoulder. “You’re a good lad. You remind me of Usilk, but we won’t go into that… Listen to me: Pannoval isn’t like it was when I was a child, running barefoot through the bazaars. I don’t know what’s happened, but there’s no peace any more. All this talk of change—nonsense, to my mind. Even the priests are at it, with wild men ranting about reform. I say, let well enough alone. Know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean, yes.”
“Well, then. You may think that it would be soft, being a priest. So it might. But I wouldn’t recommend it at present. It’s not as—as secure as it used to be, if you follow me. They’ve become restive. I hear they often execute heretical priests in the Holies. You’d do better here indentured to me, making yourself useful. Understand? I’m speaking to you for your own good.”
Yuli looked down at the worn ground.
“I can’t explain how I feel, Kyale. Sort of hopeful … I think things ought to change. I want to change myself, I don’t know how.”
Sighing, Kyale removed his hand from Yuli’s shoulder. “Well, lad,
if you take that attitude, don’t say I didn’t warn you…”
Despite Kyale’s grumpiness, Yuli was touched that the man cared about him. And Kyale passed on the news of Yuli’s intentions to his wife. When Yuli went to his little curved room that evening, Tusca appeared in his doorway.
“Priests can go anywhere. If you become an initiate, you’ll have the run of the place. You’ll come and go in the Holies.”
“I suppose so.”
“Then you may find what has happened to Usilk. Try to, for my sake. Tell him I still think of him. And come and tell me if you can find any news of him.”
She put a hand on his arm. He smiled at her. “You are kind, Tusca. Don’t your rebels who want to bring down the rulers of Pannoval have any news of your son?”
She was frightened. “Yuli, you will change in all ways when you’re a priest. So I’ll say no more, for fear of injury to the rest of my family.”
He lowered his gaze. “Akha strike me if I ever harm you.”
On the next occasion when he appeared before the priest, a soldier was also present, standing behind Sataal in the shadows with a phagor on a leash. The priest asked Yuli if he would give up everything he possessed to walk in the path of Akha. Yuli said that he would.
“Then it shall be done.” The priest clapped his hands, and off marched the soldier. Yuli understood then that he had now lost his few possessions; everything but the clothes he wore and his knife which his mother had carved would be taken by the military. Speaking no further word, Sataal turned, beckoning with one finger, and began to walk towards the rear of Market. Yuli could do nothing but follow, pulse beating fast.
As they came to the wooden bridge spanning the chasm where the Vakk leaped and tumbled, Yuli looked back, beyond the busy scene of trade and barter, out through the far archway of the entrance, catching a glimpse of snow.
For some reason, he thought of Iskador, the girl with the dark hair flowing. Then he hurried after his priest.
They climbed the terraces of the worship area, where people jostled to leave their sacrifices at the feet of the image of Akha. At the back were screens, intricately painted. Sataal whisked past them, and led into a narrowing passage, up shallow steps. The light became rapidly dimmer as they turned a corner. A bell tinkled. In his anxiety, Yuli stumbled. He had reached the Holies sooner than he had bargained for.
Just for once in crowded Pannoval, nobody else was about. Their footsteps echoed. Yuli could see nothing; the priest ahead of him was an impression, nothing, blackness within blackness. He dared not stop or reach out or call—blind following was what was now demanded of him and he must treat all that came as a test of his intentions. If Akha loved chthonic darkness, so must he. All the same, the lack of everything, the void that registered itself on his senses only as a whispered noise, assaulted him.
They walked forever into the earth. So it seemed.
Softly, suddenly, light came—a column of it appearing to strike down through a stagnant lake of darkness, creating on its bed a circle of brightness towards which two submerged creatures advanced. It silhouetted the heavy figure of the priest, black and white garb swirling about him. It allowed Yuli some sense of where he was.
There were no walls.
It was more frightening than total darkness. He had already grown so accustomed to the confines of the settlement, to having a cliff, a partition, a fellow’s back, a woman’s shoulder, always within jostling distance, that agoraphobia seized him. He went sprawling, uttering a gasp as he fell to the paving.
The priest did not turn. He reached the place where the illumination fell and marched steadily on, shoes clack-clacking, so that his figure was lost almost immediately behind the misty shaft of light.
Desperate at being left, the youth picked himself up and ran forward. As the shaft of light impaled him, he stared up. High above him was a hole through which ordinary daylight shone. Up there were the things he had known all his life, the things he was renouncing for a god of darkness.
He saw ragged rock. Now he could comprehend that he was in a chamber larger than the rest of Pannoval, and higher. At a signal—perhaps the tinkling bell he had heard—someone somewhere had opened a high door onto the outside world. As warning? As temptation? Or merely as a dramatic trick?
Maybe all three, he thought, since they were so much more clever than he, and he hurried on after the priest’s disappearing figure. In a moment, he sensed rather than saw that the light behind him faded; the high door had closed. He was again in unbroken darkness.
They at last reached the far side of the gigantic chamber. Yuli heard the priest’s steps slow. Without faltering, Sataal had reached a door, on the panel of which he rapped. After some delay, the door opened. A fat lamp floated in the air, borne above the head of an ageing woman who sniffed continuously. She allowed them to pass into a stone corridor before fastening the door behind them.
Matting covered the floor. Several doors confronted them. Along both walls, hip high, ran a narrow band of carving, which Yuli wanted to look at more closely but did not dare to; otherwise the walls were undecorated. The sniffing woman knocked at one of the doors. When response came, Sataal pushed it open and motioned Yuli in. Bowing, Yuli passed his mentor’s outstretched arm and marched into the room. The door closed behind him. That was the last he saw of Sataal.
Tle room was furnished with detachable furniture of stone, covered with coloured rugs. It was lit by a double lamp standing on an iron holder. Two men sat at a stone table, and looked up without smiling from some documents. One was a militia captain, his helmet with its wheel insignia resting on the tabletop by his elbow. The other was a thin grey priest with a not unfriendly face, who blinked as if the mere sight of Yuli’s face dazzled him.
“Yuli of the Outside? Since you have come this far, you have taken one step on the way to becoming a priest of Great Akha,” the priest said in a reedy voice. “I am Father Sifans, and first of all I must ask you if you have any sins that destroy your peace of mind, to which you wish to confess.”
Yuli was disconcerted that Sataal had left him so abruptly, without even a whispered farewell, though he understood that he must now give up such worldly things as love and friendship.
“Nothing to confess,” he said sulkily, not looking the thin priest in the eye.
The priest cleared his throat. The captain spoke.
“Youth, look at me. I am Captain Ebron of the North Guard. You entered Pannoval on a sledge teamed by asokins called Gripsy’s team. It was stolen from two renowned traders of this city named Atrimb and Prast, both of Vakk. Their bodies were found not many miles from here, with spears through them, as if they had been done to death in their sleep. What say you about this crime?”
Yuli stared at the floor.
“I know nothing of it.”
“We think you know everything… Had the crime been committed within the territory of Pannoval, it would carry the penalty of death. What do you say?”
He felt himself shaking. This was not what he had expected.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Very well. You cannot become a priest while this guilt lies on you. You must confess the crime. You will be shut up until you speak.”
Captain Ebron clapped his hands. Two soldiers entered and grasped Yuli. He struggled for a moment, to test their strength, had his arms sharply wrenched, and allowed himself to be led away.
Yes, he thought, the Holies—full of priests and soldiers. They’ve got me properly. What a fool I am, a victim. Oh, Father, you abandoned me…
It was not even as if he had been able to forget about the two gentlemen. The double murder still lay heavy inside him, although he always tried to rationalise it by reminding himself that they had attempted to kill him. Many a night, as he lay on his cot in Vakk, staring up at the distant vault, he saw again the gentleman’s eyes as he sat up and tried to pull the spear from his entrails.
The cell was small and damp and dark.
When he recov
ered from the shock of being alone, he felt cautiously about him. His prison was featureless except for an ill-smelling gutter and a low shelf on which to sleep. Yuli sat on it and buried his face in his hands.
He was given plenty of time to think. His thoughts, in the impenetrable darkness, took on a life of their own, as if they were the figments of delirium. People he knew, people he had never seen, came and went about him, engaged in mysterious activities.
“Mother!” he exclaimed. Onesa was there, as she had been before her illness, slender and active, with her long serious face that readily broke into a smile for her son—though it was a guarded smile with lips scarcely parted. She bore a great bundle of twigs on her shoulder. A litter of little horned black piglets walked before her. The sky was a brilliant blue; both Batalix and Freyr shone there. Onesa and Yuli stepped along a path out of a dark larch forest and were dazzled by the brightness. Never had there been a blue like that; it seemed to tint the piled snow and fill the world.
Ahead was a ruined building. Although it had been solidly built in the long past, weather had broken it open like an old tree fungus. Before it stood a flight of shallow steps, now ruined. Onesa flung down her twigs and sprang so eagerly up the steps that she almost skipped. She raised her gloved hands as she went, and even offered a snatch of song to the crisp air.
Rarely had Yuli seen his mother in such spirits. Why did she feel like that? Why not more often? Not daring to put these questions direct, yet longing to have some personal word from her, be asked, “Who built this place, Mother?”
“Oh, it’s always been here. It’s as old as the hills…”
“But who built it, Mother?”
“I don’t know—my father’s family, probably, long ago. They were great people, with stores of grain.”
This legend of his mother’s family’s greatness was well-known to him, and the detail of the store of grain. He marched up the ruined steps, and pushed open a reluctant door. Snow scattered in a cloud as he shouldered his way inside. There was the grain, golden, piles of it, enough for them all for ever more. It started running towards him in a river, great piles of it cascading down, over the steps. And from under the grain, two dead bodies heaved to view, struggling blindly towards the light.