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.