Brian Aldiss - Helliconia

Usilk evidently had the same thought in mind.

He pushed forward, adjusting his pack. ‘You’re late, monk. We thought you’d backed out. We thought it was another of your tricks.’

‘Are you and your mate up to a hard journey? You look ill.’

‘Best to get going and not stand about talking,’ Usilk said, squaring his shoulders and pushing forward between Iskador and Yuli.

‘I lead, you cooperate,’ Yuli said. ‘Let’s get that clear, then we’ll all agree together.’

‘What makes you think you’re going to lead, monk?’ Usilk said jeeringly, nodding to his two friends for support. With his half-closed eye, he looked both sly and threatening. He was feeling pugnacious again, now that the prospect of escape was offered.

‘Here’s the answer to that,’ Yuli said, bringing his bunched right fist round in a hard curve and sinking it into Usilk’s stomach.

Usilk doubled up, grunting and cursing.

‘Scumb you, you eddre…’

‘Straighten up, Usilk, and let’s march before we’re missed.’

There was no more argument. They moved after him obediently. The faint lights of Twink died behind them. But at Yuli’s fingertips went a wall-scroll, serving as his sight, teasingly formed of beads and chains of tiny shells, spinning out like a melody played on a fluggel, leading them down into the enormous silences of the mountain.

The others did not share his priestly secret, and still relied on light to get about. They began to beg him to go more slowly, or to let them light a lamp, neither of which he would do. He seized on the opportunity to take Iskador’s hand, which she gave gladly, and he walked in a steady delight to feel her flesh against his. The other two contented themselves with clinging to her garment.

After some while, the passages branched, the walls became rougher, and the repeating pattern gave out. They had reached the limits of Pannoval, and were truly alone. They rested. While the others talked, Yuli kept clear in his mind the plan that Father Sifans had sketched for him. Already, he regretted that he had not embraced the old man and bidden him farewell.

Father, you understood much about me, I believe, for all your odd ways. You know what a lump of clay I am. You know that I aspire to good but cannot rise above my own dull nature. Yet you did not betray me. Well, I did not knife you either, did I? You must keep trying to improve yourself, Yuli — you’re still a priest, after all. Or am I? Well, when we get out, if we get out… And there’s this wonderful girl… No, no, I’m not a priest, old father, bless you, never could be, but I did try and you helped. Fare you well, ever…

‘Get up,’ he called, jumping to his feet and assisting the girl to hers. Iskador rested a hand lightly on his shoulder in the dark before they set off again. She did not complain about being tired when Usilk and Scoraw began to do so.

They slept eventually, huddled together at the foot of a gravelly slope, with the girl between Usilk and Yuli. Night fears got to them; in the dark, they imagined that they heard Wutra’s worm slithering towards them, its jaws open and its slimy whiskers trailing.

‘We’ll sleep with a light burning,’ Yuli said. It was chill, and he held the girl tight, falling asleep with one cheek against her leather tunic.

When they woke, they nibbled frugally on the food they had brought. The way became much more difficult. There had been a cliff fall, and they crawled for hours on their bellies, nose to toe, each calling to the other unashamedly, in order to keep in touch in the overmastering night of the earth. A freezing wind whistled through the slot they had to work their way through, icing their hair to their heads.

‘Let’s go back,’ Scoraw begged, when at last they could stand, bent-backed, and draw in breath. ‘I prefer imprisonment to this.’ Nobody answered him, and he did not repeat the suggestion. They could not go back now. But the great presence of the mountain silenced them as they proceeded.

Yuli was hopelessly lost. The rock collapse had thrown him out of his reckoning. He could no longer remember the old priest’s map and was almost as helpless without the repeating pattern at his fingers as the others. A whispering noise grew and he strove to follow it. Bars of evil and unidentifiable colour drifted before his staring eyes; he felt that he was pressing through solid rock. His breath broke from his open mouth in sharp gasps. By mutual consent, they rested.

The way had been leading downhill for hours. They staggered on, Yuli with one hand to the side, one arm raised above his face, so that he did not strike his head against rock, as he had already done on several occasions. He felt Iskador clutching his habit; in his present state of fatigue, the touch was merely an annoyance.

With his mind rambling, he began to believe that the way he breathed controlled the diseased colours he saw. Yet that could not be entirely correct, for a kind of luminosity was creeping into view. He plunged on, ever down, squeezing his swollen lids tight together and then releasing them. Blindness was descending upon him — he was seeing a faint milky light. Looking round, he seemed to see Iskador’s face as in a dream — or a nightmare, rather, for her eyes were staring, her mouth gaping, in the ghostly disc of her face.

At his gaze, her awareness returned. She stopped, clutching at him for support, and Usilk and Scoraw barged into them.

‘There’s light ahead,’ Yuli said.

‘Light! I can see again…’ Usilk grasped Yuli’s shoulders. ‘You scumbing villain, you have brought us through. We’re safe, we’re free!’

He laughed greatly, and rushed ahead, arms outstretched as if to embrace the source of the light. In joy, the others followed, stumbling down the rough ground through a light that never was before, unless over some unknown northern sea where icebergs swam and clashed.

The way levelled out, the roof withdrew. Pools of water lay at their feet. They splashed through, and the path led up again steeply, until they were reduced to a walk, and the light grew no stronger, though there were now fierce noises all round.

Suddenly, they were at the end of the way, and stood daunted on the lip of a fissure. Light and noise surrounded them.

‘Akha’s eyes,’ gasped Scoraw, and stuck a fist between his teeth.

The fissure was like a throat, leading down into the belly of the earth. They could look up at the gullet, some way above. From the brink of the gullet, a river burst, and plunged down into the fissure. Just below where they stood, the force of the falling water struck rock for the first time. Its energy created the intense drumming they had heard. It then cascaded into depths where it was lost to view. The water was white even where it did not foam, and shot through with livid greens and blues. Although it radiated the dim light in which they rejoiced, the rocks behind it seemed no less bright: they were coated in thick whirls of white and red and yellow.

Long before they had finished gazing upon this spectacle, and looking at the white ghosts of each other, they were drenched by spray.

‘This isn’t the way out,’ Iskador said. ‘This is a dead end. Where now, Yuli?’

He pointed calmly to the far end of the ledge on which they stood. ‘We go by that bridge,’ he said.

They made their way carefully towards the bridge. The ground was slimy with ropey green algae. The bridge looked grey and ancient. It had been built of chunks of stone carved from the rock nearby. Its arch curved up, then stopped. They saw that the structure had collapsed, and was no more than a stub of a bridge. Through the milky light, another stub could be seen dimly on the far side of the chasm. There had once been a way across, but no more.