The castle was partly built of stone and partly hacked out of the rock. Its eaves were wide, to allow snow to avalanche from its roofs to the road below. Before the castle stood an armed guard of four men, drawn up before a wooden barrier which barred the road.
Yuli halted as a guard, his furs decorated with shining brasses, marched up.
“Who’re you, lad?”
“I’m with my two friends. We’ve been out trading, as you see. They’re away behind with a second sledge.”
“I don’t see them.” His accent was strange: not the Olonets to which Yuli was accustomed in the Barriers region.
“They’ll be along. Don’t you recognise Gripsy’s team?” He flicked the whip at the animals.
“So I do. Of course. Know them well. That bitch is not called Gripsy for nothing.” He stepped to one side, raising his sturdy right arm.
“Let her up, there,” he shouted. The barrier rose, the whip bit, Yuli hollered, and they were through.
He breathed deep as he got his first sight of Pannoval.
Ahead was a great cliff, so steep that no snow clung to it. In the cliff face was carved an enormous representation of Akha the Great One. Akha squatted in a traditional attitude, knees near his shoulders, arms wrapped round his knees, hands locked palms upward, with the sacred flame of life in his palms. His head was large, topped with a knot of hair. His half-human face struck terror into a beholder. There was awe even in his cheeks. Yet his great almond eyes were bland, and there was serenity as well as ferocity to be read in that upturned mouth and those majestic eyebrows.
Beside his left foot, and dwarfed by it, was an opening in the rock. As the sledge drew near, Yuli saw that this mouth was itself gigantic, possibly three times taller than a man. Within, lights could be seen, and guards with strange habits and accents, and strange thoughts in their heads.
He squared his young shoulders and strode forward boldly.
That was how Yuli came to Pannoval.
Never would he forget his entry into Pannoval, and his passing from the world under the sky. In a daze, he steered the sledge past guards, past a grove of beggarly trees, and stopped to take in the roofed expanse before him under which so many people lived out their days. Mist compounded with darkness, as he left the gate behind, to create a sketchy world with forms but no outlines. It was night; the few people moving about were wrapped in thick clothes which in their turn were wreathed by nimbi of fog, encircling them, floating about their heads, moving after them in slow swirls like threadbare-cloak trails. Everywhere was stone, stone carved into walls and divisions, stalls, houses, pens, and flights of steps—for this great mysterious cave tipped away up towards the interior of the mountain, and had been hewn over the centuries into small level squares, each separated from the next by step and flanking walls.
With forced economy single torches fluttered at the head of each flight of steps, their flames oblique in a slight draught, illumining not the concourse but the misty air, to which their smoke contributed further opacity.
Ceaseless action of water through long eons had carved out a number of linked caves in the rock, in various sizes and on various levels. Some of these caves were inhabited, and had become regularised by human endeavour. They were named, and furnished with the necessities of rudimentary human life.
The savage halted, and could proceed no farther into this great station of dark until he found someone to accompany him. Those few outsiders who, like Yuli, visited Pannoval, found themselves in one of the larger caves, which the inhabitants knew as Market. Here much of the necessary work of the community was carried out, for little or no artificial light was required, once one’s eyes had become accustomed to the dimness. By day the place rang with voices, and with the irregular knock of hammers. In Market, Yuli was able to trade the asokins and the goods on the sledge for things necessary to his new life. Here he must stay. There was nowhere else to go. Gradually he became accustomed to the gloom, to smoke, to smarting eyes, and to the coughing of the inhabitants; he accepted them all, along with the security.