Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

“A human sacrifice, Father, did you say a human sacrifice?”

“The body is precious, the spirit expendable. One who has spoken against the priesthood, saying they should be more frugal to aid Akha … You are far enough on with your studies to attend his execution. … Ritual from barbarous times …”

The nervous eyes, two tiny points of orange, flickered in the dark like a signal from a remote distance.

When the time came, Yuli walked through the lugubrious galleries, nervously trying to wall-read with his fingers. They entered the largest cavern in the Holies, called State. No light was allowed. Whispering filled the air as the priesthood assembled. Yuli surreptitiously took hold of the hem of Father Sifans’ gown in order not to lose him. Then a voice of a priest, declaiming the history of the long war between Akha and Wutra. Night was Akha’s, and the priests were set to protect their flock through the long night’s battle. Those who opposed the guardians must die.

“Bring forth the prisoner.”

There was much talk of prisoners in the Holies, but this one was special. The tramp of the militia’s heavy sandals could be heard, a shuffling. Then brightness.

A shaft of light blazed down. The novices gasped. Yuli recognised that they stood in the vast chamber through which Sataal had led him, a long while ago. The light source was as before, high above the multitude of heads; it appeared blinding.

At its base stood a human figure, tied to a wooden framework, legs and arms spread. It was in the upright position, and naked.

Even as the prisoner gave a cry, Yuli recognised the dense impassioned face, square, and framed by short-cropped hair. It was the young man he had once heard speak in Prayn—Naab.

His voice and message were also recognisable. “Priests, I am not your enemy, though you treat me like one, but your friend. Generation by generation, you sink into inaction, your numbers grow less, Pannoval dies. We are not just passive votaries of Great Akha. No! We must fight with him. We must also suffer. In the great war between Sky and Earth, we must play our part. We must reform and purify ourselves.”

Behind the bound figure were militiamen in gleaming helmets, guarding him. Others arrived, bearing smoking brands. With them marched their phagors, checked by leather leads. They halted. They turned inward. They hoisted their brands high above their heads, and the smoke rose in leisurely braids upwards. Forward creaked a stiff cardinal, bowed under black-and-white garb and an elaborate mitre. He struck a golden staff against the ground three times, crying shrilly in the Priestly Olonets, “Have done, have done, have done… O Great Akha, our Warrior God, appear to us!” A bell tinkled.

A second pillar of the brilliant white light, solidifying rather than banishing the surrounding night. Behind the prisoner, behind the phagors and the soldiers, Akha appeared, reaching upwards. A murmur of expectation came from the crowd. It was a skeletal scene, the militia and the massive white beasts all but transparent, Akha chalky in the column of fight, the whole embedded in obsidian. In this representation, the semihuman head of the god thrust forward, and his mouth was open. The eyes were as sightless as ever.

“Take this unsatisfactory life, O Great Akha, and use it for Thy satisfaction.”

Functionaries moved smartly forward. One began to crank at a handle set in the side of the frame holding the prisoner. The frame began to creak and shift. The prisoner cried softly once, as his body was forced to bend backwards. As the hinges on the framework opened, his body arched back, exposing his helplessness.

Two captains marched forward with a phagor between them. The great beast’s blunted horns had been capped with silver and reached almost to the height of the soldiers’ eyebrows. It stood in the ungainly customary stance of a phagor, head and prow of chest thrust forward, its long white hair stirring slightly in the draught that blew through State.

Music sounded again, drum, gongs, vrachs, drowning out Naab’s voice, and the sustained warble of a fluggel rising high above them. Then everything stopped.

The body was bent double now, legs and feet twisted somewhere out of sight, head right back, exposing throat and thorax, gleaming pale in the column of light.

“Take, O Great Akha! Take what is already Thine! Eradicate him.”

At the priest’s scream, the phagor stepped a pace forward and bent down. It opened its shovel mouth and applied rows of blunt teeth to either side of the proffered throat. It bit. It raised its head, and a great morsel of flesh came up with it. It moved back into place between the two soldiers, swallowing noncommittally. A trickle of red ran down its white front. The rear column of light was cut off. Akha disappeared back into his nourishing darkness. Many of the novices fainted.

As they jostled out of State, Yuli asked, “But why use those devilish phagors? They’re man’s enemy. They should all be killed.”

“They are the creatures of Wutra, as their colour shows. We keep them to remind us of the enemy,” said Sifans.

“And what will happen to the—to Naab’s body?”

“It will not be wasted. Every item is of some application. The whole carcass may go for fuel—perhaps to the potters, who always need to fire their kilns. I really don’t know. I prefer to keep myself aloof from administrative details.”

He dared say no more to Father Sifans, hearing the distaste in the old priest’s voice. To himself, he said over and over again, “Those evil brutes. Those evil brutes. Akha should have no part of them.” But the phagors were all over the Holies, padding patiently along with the militia, their noctilucent eyes peering here and there under their craggy brows.

One day Yuli tried to explain to his charge-father how his father had been caught and killed by phagors in the wild.

“You do not know for sure they killed him. Phagors are not always entirely evil. Sometimes Akha subdues their spirit.”

“I’m sure he’s dead by now. There’s no way of being certain, though?”

He heard the father lick his lips as he hesitated, and then leaned towards Yuli in the blackness.

“There is a way of being sure, my son.”

“Oh, yes, if you mounted a great expedition from Pannoval north—”

“No, no … other ways, more subtle. You will one day understand the complexities of Pannoval more fully. Or perhaps you won’t. For there are entirely other orders of the priesthood, warrior mystics, of which you do not know. Perhaps I had better say no more…”

Yuli urged him on. The priest’s voice sank still lower, until it was almost lost under the splash of a water drip near at hand.

“Yes, warrior mystics, who forswear the pleasures of the flesh and in return gain mysterious powers …”

“That’s what Naab advocated, and was murdered for it.”

“Executed after trial. The superior orders prefer us, the administrative orders, to remain as we are… But they … they communicate with the dead. If you were one of them, you could speak with your father after death.”

Into the dark, Yuli stammered his amazement.

“There are many human and divine capacities which can be trained, my son. I myself, when my father died, fell into a fast through sorrow, and after the passage of many days saw him clear, suspended in the earth which is Akha’s as if in another element, with his hands over his ears, as if he heard some sound he disliked. Death is not an end, but our extension in Akha—you recall the teaching, my son.”

“I’m still angry with my father. Perhaps I have difficulty because of that. He was weak at the end. I wish to be strong. Where are these—these warrior mystics of whom you speak, Father?”