Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [20]
Such ceremonials were a mystery to Yuli. He asked Kyale about them, and received a lecture that left him more confused than before. No man can explain his religion to a stranger. Nevertheless, Yuli received a strong impression that this ancient being, represented in stone, fought off the powers raging in the outer world, particularly Wutra, who ruled the skies and all the ills associated with the skies. Akha was not greatly interested in humans; they were too puny for his concern. What he wanted was their regular offerings, to keep him strong in the struggle with Wutra, and a powerful Akhan ecclesiastical body existed to see that Akha’s desires in this respect were carried out, in order that disaster did not descend on the community.
The priesthood, in alliance with the militia, had the governance of Pannoval; there was no one overall ruler, unless one counted Akha himself, who was generally supposed to be out prowling the mountains with a celestial club, looking for Wutra and such of his dreadful accomplices as the worm.
This was surprising to Yuli. He knew Wutra. Wutra was the great spirit before whom his parents, Alehaw and Onesa, offered prayers in time of danger. They had represented Wutra as benevolent, the bringer of light. And, as far as he recalled, they never mentioned Akha.
Various passages, as labyrinthine as the laws issued by the priesthood, led to various chambers adjoining Market. Some of these chambers were accessible, some forbidden of entry to common folk. About the forbidden regions, people were reluctant to talk. But he soon observed wrongdoers being dragged off there, hands tied behind their backs, winding up dark stairways into the aularian shadows, some to the Holies, some to a punishment farm behind Market called Twink.
In due course of time, Yuli traversed a narrow passage choked with steps which led to a large regularised cave called Reck. Reck also contained its enormous statue of Akha, here seen with an animal hanging on a chain about his neck, and dedicated to sport; Reck was the site at which mock battles, displays, athletic contests, and gladiatorial combats were held. Its walls were painted crimson and sang-de-boeuf, with swirling decorations. Much of the time Reck was almost empty, and voices boomed through its hollow spaces; then citizens with an especial bent for holiness came and wailed up into the high-vaulted dark. But on the glowing occasions of the games – then music sounded, and the cavern was crowded to overflowing.
Other important caverns opened from Market. At its eastern side, a nest of small squares or large mezzanines led up between flights of steps impeded by heavy balustrades to an extensive residential cavern called Vakk, after the stream that surfaced here, sunk deep in its gurgling ravine. Over Vakk’s great entrance arch was much elaborate carving, with globular bodies entwined between flowing waves and stars, but much of it had been destroyed in some forgotten roof-fall.
Vakk was the oldest cavern after Market, and was filled with ‘livings’, as they were called, dating back many centuries. To one arriving on its threshold from the outer world, viewing – or rather, guessing at – its mounting and confused terraces that climbed back into obscurity, Vakk in the uncertain light was a daunting dream where substance could not be distinguished from shadow, and the child of the Barrier felt his heart quail in his chest A force like Akha was needed to save anyone who trod in such a thronged necropolis!
But he adapted with the flexibility of youth. He came to look on Vakk as a prodigal town. Falling in with guild apprentices of his own age, he roamed its muddle of livings which were clustered on many floors, often leading one from another. Cubicle was stacked on cubicle in profusion, the furniture in each fixed because carved from the same rock as floors and walls, all in one flowing line. The story of rights of ways and