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  ‘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.

  The 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 strug
gled 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 recovered 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, he 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.

  He sat up with a great cry, sprang to his feet, stood up, paced to the cell door. He could not understand where these alarming visions came from; they seemed not to be a part of him.

  He thought to himself, Dreams are not for you, dodger. You’re too tough. You think of your mother now, yet you never showed her affection. You were too afraid of your father’s fist. You know, I really believe I hated my father. I believe I was glad when the phagors carried him off – weren’t you?

  No, no … It’s just that my experiences have made me hard. You’re hard, dodger, hard and cruel. You killed those two gentlemen. What are you going to be? Better to confess to the murders and see what happens. Try and love me, try and love me …

  I know so little. That’s it. The whole world – you want to find out. Akha must know. Those eyes see everything. But me – you’re so small, dodger – life’s no more than one of those funny feelings when the childrim flies overhead.

  He marvelled at his own thoughts. Finally he cried for the guards to open his door, and found that he had been incarcerated for three days.

  *

  For a year and a day, Yuli served in the Holies as a novice. He was not allowed to leave the halls, but dwelt in a monastic nocturne, not knowing whether Freyr and Batalix swam separately or together in the sky. A wish to run through the white wilderness gradually left him, erased by the penumbral majesty of the Holies.

  He had confessed to the murder of the two gentlemen. No punishment followed.

  The thin grey priest with the blinking eyes, Father Sifans, was the charge-father over Yuli and other novices. He clasped his hands and said to Yuli, ‘That unhappy incident of the murders is now sealed behind the wall of the past. Yet you must never allow yourself to forget it, lest in forgetting, you come to believe that it never happened. Like the many suburbs of Pannoval, all things in life are interwoven. Your sin and your longing to serve Akha are of a piece. Did you imagine that it was holiness that led a man to serve Akha? Not so. Sin is a more powerful mover. Embrace the dark – through sin you come to terms with your own inadequacy.’

  ‘Sin’ was a word often on Father Sifans’ lips at one period. Yuli watched it there with interest, with the absorption pupils devote to their masters. The way the lips moved was something he imitated to himself later, alone, using the movements to repeat all that he had to learn by heart.

  While the father had his own private apartment to which he withdrew after instruction, Yuli slept in a dormitory with others of his kind, in a nest of dark within the dark. Unlike the fathers, they were allowed no pleasures; song, drink, wenches, recreation were forbidden, and their food was of the most spartan kind, selected from the offerings made by supplicants of Akha daily.

  ‘I can’t concentrate. I’m hungry,’ he complained once to his charge-father.

  ‘Hunger is universal. We cannot expect Akha to fatten us. He defends us against hostile outside forces, generation by generation.’

  ‘Which is more important, survival or the individual?’

  ‘An individual has importance in his own eyes, but generations have priority.’

  He was learning to argue the priest’s way, step by step. ‘But generations are made up of individuals.’

  ‘Generations are not only the sum of individuals. They contain also aspirations, plans, histories, laws – above all, continuities. They contain the past as well as the future. Akha refuses to work with individuals alone, so individuals must be subdued – quenched, if necessary.’

  Slyly, the father taught Yuli to argue. On the one hand, he must have blind faith; on the other, he needed reason. For its long journey through the years, the entombed community needed all defences, needed both prayer and rationality. The sacred verses claimed that at some time in the future, Akha, in his lonely battle, might suffer defeat and the world undergo a period of intense fire descending from the skies. The individual must be quenched, to avoid the burning.

  Through the entombing halls went Yuli, with all these ideas declaiming themselves in his head. They stood his understanding of the world upside down – but therein lay much of their attraction, since every revolutionary new insight only emphasised his previous ignorant state.

  Among all the deprivations, one sensory delight stole upon his bewilderment to soothe him. The priests found their way through the dark labyrinth by wall-reading, an arcane mystery in which Yuli was soon to be initiated. There was also another directional clue, intended to delight. Music. At first, Yuli in his innocence imagined that he heard the sound of spirits overhead. He could make nothing of the tickling line of melody played on a one-stringed vrach. He had never seen a vrach. If not a spirit, could it be the wail of wind through a crevice somewhere in the rock?

  His delight was so secret that he asked no one about the sounds, not even his fellow novices, until walking one day unexpectedly with Sifans into a religious service. Choirs were important, and monody even more so, with a single voice launched into the hollows of the dark; but what Yuli came to love most were the interventions by inhuman voices, thos
e of the instruments of Pannoval.

  Nothing similar was ever heard in the Barriers. The only music the besieged tribes there knew was a prolonged drumming, on a drum made of hide; clacking, of animal bones struck together; and clapping, of human hands, accompanied by a monotonous chant. It was the luxurious complication of the new music that convinced Yuli of the reality of his still awakening spiritual life. One great tune in particular took him by storm, ‘Oldorando,’ which had a part for an instrument that soared about all others, then dived into their midst, finally to retreat into a secure melodic refuge of its own.

  Music became almost an alternative to light for Yuli. When he talked to his fellow novices, he found that they felt little of his exhilaration. But they – he came to realise – all carried a much greater central commitment to Akha himself than he. Most of the novices had loved or hated Akha from birth; Akha was nature to them as he was not to Yuli.

  When he wrestled with such matters during the sparse hours allotted to sleep, Yuli felt guilt that he was not as the other novices. He loved the music of Akha. It was a new language. But was not music the creation of men, rather than of …

  Even when he choked off the doubt, another doubt sprang up. How about the language of religion? Wasn’t that also the invention of men – perhaps pleasant, ineffectual men like Father Sifans?

  ‘Belief is not peace but torment; only the great War is peace.’ That part of the creed at least was true.

  Meanwhile, Yuli kept his own counsel, and fraternised only superficially with his fellows.

  They met for instruction in a low, damp, foggy hall named Cleft. Sometimes they went in utter darkness, sometimes in the glow of wicks carried by the fathers. Each session ended with the priest pressing his hand to the novice’s forehead, gesturing at his brain, an action at which the novices laughed later in their dormitory. Priests’ fingers were rough, from the wall-reading by which they navigated briskly about the labyrinths of the Holies even in the most pitchy blackness.