by Brian Aldiss
Her father’s living had several compartments and was part of a small factory for making bows; he was the grand bowmaster of his guild.
Rather haughtily, she allowed the priest in. He sat on the floor and drank a cup of water, and slowly managed to tell her his tale.
Iskador was a sturdy girl of no-nonsense appearance. Her flesh was milky white, contrasting with her flowing black curly hair and her hazel eyes. Her face was broad, with high cheekbones, and her mouth wide and pale. All her movements were energetic, and she folded her arms over her bosom in a businesslike way as she listened to what Yuli had to say.
‘Why doesn’t Usilk come here and tell me all this rigmarole?’ she asked.
‘He is collecting another friend for the journey. He could not come into Vakk – his face is a bit bruised at present, and would excite unwelcome attention.’
The dark hair hung down on either side of the face, framing it with two wings. Now the wings were flicked impatiently aside with a toss of the head, as Iskador said, ‘Anyhow, I have an archery contest in six days, which I want to win. I don’t want to leave Pannoval – I’m happy enough here. It was Usilk who was always complaining. Besides, I haven’t seen him for ages. I’ve got another boyfriend now.’
Yuli stood up, flushing slightly.
‘Fine, if that’s how you feel. Just keep quiet about what I’ve told you. I’ll be off and take your message to Usilk.’ His nervousness before her made him more brusque than he intended.
‘Wait,’ she said, coming forward with extended arm, a well-shaped hand reaching out towards him. ‘I didn’t say you could go, monk. What you tell me is pretty exciting. You’re meant to plead on Usilk’s behalf, begging me to come along with you.’
‘Just two things, Miss Iskador. My name is Yuli, not “monk”. And why should I plead on Usilk’s behalf? He’s no friend of mine, and besides …’
His voice tailed off. He glared angrily at her, cheeks colouring.
‘Besides what?’ There was a hint of laughter in her question.
‘Oh, Iskador, you’re beautiful, that’s what besides, and I admire you myself, that’s what besides.’
Her manner changed. She put her hand up so as to half-hide her pale lips. ‘Two “that’s what besides” … both rather important. Well, Yuli, that does make a bit of difference. You’re not unpresentable yourself, now I come to look at you. How did you get to be a priest?’
Sensing the turn of the tide, he hesitated, then said boldly, ‘I killed two men.’
She seemed to spend a long while regarding him from under her thick eyelashes.
‘Wait there while I pack a bag and a strong bow,’ she said at last.
The collapse of the roof had sent an anxious excitement through Pannoval. The event most dreaded in popular fancy had occurred. Feelings were somewhat mixed; with dread went a relief that only prisoners and warders and a few phagors had been buried. They probably deserved everything that Great Akha sent them.
At the rear of Market, barriers were drawn up, and the militia were out in force to keep order. Rescue teams, men and women of the physician’s guild, and workers, were moving back and forth at the scene of the disaster. Throngs of onlookers pressed forward, some quiet and tense, others merry, where an acrobat and a group of musicians encouraged them to be cheerful. Yuli pushed through the melée with the girl behind him, and people gave way to a priest out of long custom.
Twink, where the disaster had occurred, had an unfamiliar look. No onlookers were allowed, and a line of brilliant emergency flares was set up to assist the rescuers. Prisoners fed powder into the flares to maintain their brightness.
The scene was one of grim action, with prisoners digging and other ranks behind waiting to take over when they rested. Phagors had been set to hauling away the rubble carts. Every so often, a shout went up; then digging became more feverish, and a body would emerge from the earth, to be passed to waiting physicians.
The scale of the disaster was impressive. With the collapse of a new boring, part of the roof of the main cave had fallen in. There had been more than one subsidence. Most of the floor was piled high with rock, and the fish and fungus farm had largely been obliterated. The source of the original weakness that led to the disaster was a subterranean stream, which now gushed from its course, adding a flood to the other difficulties.
The rock fall had almost buried the rear passages. Yuli and Iskador had to scramble over a pile of debris to get there. Fortunately, this action was concealed from enquiring eyes by a still larger pile of debris. They climbed through without being stopped. Usilk and his comrade Scoraw were waiting in the shadows.
‘The black and white suits you, Usilk,’ Yuli commented sarcastically, referring to the priestly disguise both prisoners wore. For Usilk had come eagerly forward to clutch Iskador. Perhaps displeased by his battered face, she kept her distance, appeasing him by holding his hands.
Even in his disguise, Scoraw still looked the prisoner. He was tall and thin, with the droop to his shoulders of a man who has spent too long in a cell too small. His hands were large and scarred. His glance – at least during this encounter – was indirect; flinching from meeting Yuli’s eyes, he took little sips of sight when Yuli’s attention was elsewhere. When Yuli asked him if he was prepared for a difficult journey, he merely nodded, grunted, and shrugged a bag of possessions further on to his shoulder.
It was an inauspicious start to their adventure, and for a moment Yuli regretted his impulse. He was throwing away too much to consort with two characters like Usilk and Scoraw. First, he perceived, he must assert his authority, or they would meet nothing but trouble.
Usilk evidently had the same thought in mind.
He pushed forward, adjusting his pack. ‘You’re late, monk. We thought you’d backed out. We thought it was another of your tricks.’
‘Are you and your mate up to a hard journey? You look ill.’
‘Best to get going and not stand about talking,’ Usilk said, squaring his shoulders and pushing forward between Iskador and Yuli.
‘I lead, you cooperate,’ Yuli said. ‘Let’s get that clear, then we’ll all agree together.’
‘What makes you think you’re going to lead, monk?’ Usilk said jeeringly, nodding to his two friends for support. With his half-closed eye, he looked both sly and threatening. He was feeling pugnacious again, now that the prospect of escape was offered.
‘Here’s the answer to that,’ Yuli said, bringing his bunched right fist round in a hard curve and sinking it into Usilk’s stomach.
Usilk doubled up, grunting and cursing.
‘Scumb you, you eddre …’
‘Straighten up, Usilk, and let’s march before we’re missed.’
There was no more argument. They moved after him obediently. The faint lights of Twink died behind them. But at Yuli’s fingertips went a wall-scroll, serving as his sight, teasingly formed of beads and chains of tiny shells, spinning out like a melody played on a fluggel, leading them down into the enormous silences of the mountain.
The others did not share his priestly secret, and still relied on light to get about. They began to beg him to go more slowly, or to let them light a lamp, neither of which he would do. He seized on the opportunity to take Iskador’s hand, which she gave gladly, and he walked in a steady delight to feel her flesh against his. The other two contented themselves with clinging to her garment.
After some while, the passages branched, the walls became rougher, and the repeating pattern gave out. They had reached the limits of Pannoval, and were truly alone. They rested. While the others talked, Yuli kept clear in his mind the plan that Father Sifans had sketched for him. Already, he regretted that he had not embraced the old man and bidden him farewell.
Father, you understood much about me, I believe, for all your odd ways. You know what a lump of clay I am. You know that I aspire to good but cannot rise above my own dull nature. Yet you did not betray me. Well, I did not knife you either, did I? You must keep tryin
g to improve yourself, Yuli – you’re still a priest, after all. Or am I? Well, when we get out, if we get out … And there’s this wonderful girl … No, no, I’m not a priest, old father, bless you, never could be, but I did try and you helped. Fare you well, ever …
‘Get up,’ he called, jumping to his feet and assisting the girl to hers. Iskador rested a hand lightly on his shoulder in the dark before they set off again. She did not complain about being tired when Usilk and Scoraw began to do so.
They slept eventually, huddled together at the foot of a gravelly slope, with the girl between Usilk and Yuli. Night fears got to them; in the dark, they imagined that they heard Wutra’s worm slithering towards them, its jaws open and its slimy whiskers trailing.
‘We’ll sleep with a light burning,’ Yuli said. It was chill, and he held the girl tight, falling asleep with one cheek against her leather tunic.
When they woke, they nibbled frugally on the food they had brought. The way became much more difficult. There had been a cliff fall, and they crawled for hours on their bellies, nose to toe, each calling to the other unashamedly, in order to keep in touch in the overmastering night of the earth. A freezing wind whistled through the slot they had to work their way through, icing their hair to their heads.
‘Let’s go back,’ Scoraw begged, when at last they could stand, bent-backed, and draw in breath. ‘I prefer imprisonment to this.’ Nobody answered him, and he did not repeat the suggestion. They could not go back now. But the great presence of the mountain silenced them as they proceeded.
Yuli was hopelessly lost. The rock collapse had thrown him out of his reckoning. He could no longer remember the old priest’s map and was almost as helpless without the repeating pattern at his fingers as the others. A whispering noise grew and he strove to follow it. Bars of evil and unidentifiable colour drifted before his staring eyes; he felt that he was pressing through solid rock. His breath broke from his open mouth in sharp gasps. By mutual consent, they rested.
The way had been leading downhill for hours. They staggered on, Yuli with one hand to the side, one arm raised above his face, so that he did not strike his head against rock, as he had already done on several occasions. He felt Iskador clutching his habit; in his present state of fatigue, the touch was merely an annoyance.
With his mind rambling, he began to believe that the way he breathed controlled the diseased colours he saw. Yet that could not be entirely correct, for a kind of luminosity was creeping into view. He plunged on, ever down, squeezing his swollen lids tight together and then releasing them. Blindness was descending upon him – he was seeing a faint milky light. Looking round, he seemed to see Iskador’s face as in a dream – or a nightmare, rather, for her eyes were staring, her mouth gaping, in the ghostly disc of her face.
At his gaze, her awareness returned. She stopped, clutching at him for support, and Usilk and Scoraw barged into them.
‘There’s light ahead,’ Yuli said.
‘Light! I can see again …’ Usilk grasped Yuli’s shoulders. ‘You scumbing villain, you have brought us through. We’re safe, we’re free!’
He laughed greatly, and rushed ahead, arms outstretched as if to embrace the source of the light. In joy, the others followed, stumbling down the rough ground through a light that never was before, unless over some unknown northern sea where icebergs swam and clashed.
The way levelled out, the roof withdrew. Pools of water lay at their feet. They splashed through, and the path led up again steeply, until they were reduced to a walk, and the light grew no stronger, though there were now fierce noises all round.
Suddenly, they were at the end of the way, and stood daunted on the lip of a fissure. Light and noise surrounded them.
‘Akha’s eyes,’ gasped Scoraw, and stuck a fist between his teeth.
The fissure was like a throat, leading down into the belly of the earth. They could look up at the gullet, some way above. From the brink of the gullet, a river burst, and plunged down into the fissure. Just below where they stood, the force of the falling water struck rock for the first time. Its energy created the intense drumming they had heard. It then cascaded into depths where it was lost to view. The water was white even where it did not foam, and shot through with livid greens and blues. Although it radiated the dim light in which they rejoiced, the rocks behind it seemed no less bright: they were coated in thick whirls of white and red and yellow.
Long before they had finished gazing upon this spectacle, and looking at the white ghosts of each other, they were drenched by spray.
‘This isn’t the way out,’ Iskador said. ‘This is a dead end. Where now, Yuli?’
He pointed calmly to the far end of the ledge on which they stood. ‘We go by that bridge,’ he said.
They made their way carefully towards the bridge. The ground was slimy with ropey green algae. The bridge looked grey and ancient. It had been built of chunks of stone carved from the rock nearby. Its arch curved up, then stopped. They saw that the structure had collapsed, and was no more than a stub of a bridge. Through the milky light, another stub could be seen dimly on the far side of the chasm. There had once been a way across, but no more.
For a while, they stood staring across the gulf, not looking at one another. Iskador was the first to move. Bending, she set her bag down and pulled her bow from it. She tied a thread to an arrow of a kind she had used when Yuli saw her prize-winning performance, a long time ago. Without a word, she placed herself at the edge of the chasm, a foot firm on the edge, and raised the bow. She drew back her arm as she did so, squinting along it almost casually, and let fly.
The arrow seemed to curl through the spray-laden light. It reached its zenith over an outcrop of rock, glanced against the rocky wall above the waterfall, and fell back, its power spent, until it clattered at Iskador’s feet.
Usilk clapped her shoulder. ‘Brilliant. Now what do we do?’
For answer, she tied stout cord to the end of the thread, and then picked up the arrow and drew in the thread. Soon the leading end of the cord ran over the projecting ledge, and travelled back down to nestle in her hand. She then produced a rope on which she made a noose, drew that over the projection too, slipped the other end of the rope through the noose, and pulled the whole thing tight.
‘Do you wish to go first?’ she asked Yuli, passing him the rope end. ‘Since you are our leader?’
He looked in her deepset eyes, wondering at her cunning, and the economy of her cunning. Not only was she telling Usilk that he was not the leader, she was telling him, Yuli, to prove that he was. He chewed this over, finding it profound, then grasped the rope and squared up to the challenge.
It was alarming but not too dangerous, he estimated. He could swing across the chasm and then, walking against vertical rock, climb to the level of the lip over which the waterfall poured. As far as they could see, there was space to climb in and avoid being swept away by the water. The possibilities that followed could be assessed only when he was up there. He certainly was not going to show fear in front of the two prisoners – or Iskador.
He launched himself rather too hurriedly across the abyss, his mind in part on the girl. Striking the opposite cliff rather clumsily, his left foot slipped on green slime, he jarred against the wall with his shoulder, swung into spray, and lost his grip on the rope. Next second, he was falling down the chasm.
Amid the roar of water came their united cry – the first time they had genuinely done something in unison.
Yuti struck rock, and clung there with every fibre of his being. He squeezed his knees up under his body, fought with his toes, and gripped the rock.
His fall had been no more than two metres, though it jarred every bone in his body, and had been broken by a boulder protruding from the cliff. It afforded him little more than a foothold, but that was enough.
Gasping, he crouched in his awkward position, scarcely daring to move, his chin almost on a level with his boots.
His anguished gaze fell on a blue sto
ne lying below his eyes. He focused on it, wondering if he was going to die. The stone would not come sharp. He felt that he might have reached out over the ledge where he crouched and picked it up. Suddenly his senses told him the truth of the matter – he was not looking at a nearby stone but a blue object far below. Vertigo seized him, paralysing him; accustomed to the plains, he had no immunity against such an experience.
He closed his eyes and clung. Only Usilk’s shouts, coming from a long way off, forced him to look again.
Distantly below lay another world, to which the fissure in which he crouched served as a kind of telescope. Yuli had a view no bigger than his hand into an enormous cavern. It was illuminated in some way. What he had taken for a blue stone was a lake, or possibly a sea, since he had a glimpse only of a fragment of a whole whose size he could not attempt to guess. On the shore of the lake were a few grains of sand, now interpretable as buildings of some kind. He lay in a cataplexy, staring senselessly down.
Something touched him. He could not move. Someone was speaking to him, clutching his arms. Without will, he allowed himself to cooperate in sitting up with his back against the rock, and locking his arms about his rescuer’s shoulders. A bruised face, with damaged nose, slashed cheek, and one closed black and green eye, swam before his vision.
‘Hang on tight, man. We’re going up.’
He managed then to hold himself against Usilk, as the latter worked his way slowly upwards and eventually hauled them, with enormous labour, over the rock lip from which the waterfall poured. Usilk then collapsed, flat out, panting and groaning. Yuli looked down for Iskador and Scoraw, just visible on the other side of the fissure, faces upturned. He also looked more sharply down, into the fault; but his vision of another world had disappeared, eclipsed by spray. His limbs trembled, but he could control them sufficiently to help the others to join him and Usilk.