“He shouldn’t have said such things,” a grey man muttered, as the crowd dispersed.
Yuli followed the man on impulse, and grasped his sleeve.
“The man Naab said nothing against Akha—why should the militia take him away?”
The man looked furtively about. “I recognise you. You’re a savage, or you wouldn’t ask such stupid things.”
For answer, Yuli raised his fist. “I’m not stupid or I would not ask my question.”
“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.