Helliconia, page 11
‘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.
For a while, they stood staring across the gulf, not looking at one another. Iskador was the first to move. Bending, she set her bag down and pulled her bow from it. She tied a thread to an arrow of a kind she had used when Yuli saw her prize-winning performance, a long time ago. Without a word, she placed herself at the edge of the chasm, a foot firm on the edge, and raised the bow. She drew back her arm as she did so, squinting along it almost casually, and let fly.
The arrow seemed to curl through the spray-laden light. It reached its zenith over an outcrop of rock, glanced against the rocky wall above the waterfall, and fell back, its power spent, until it clattered at Iskador’s feet.
Usilk clapped her shoulder. ‘Brilliant. Now what do we do?’
For answer, she tied stout cord to the end of the thread, and then picked up the arrow and drew in the thread. Soon the leading end of the cord ran over the projecting ledge, and travelled back down to nestle in her hand. She then produced a rope on which she made a noose, drew that over the projection too, slipped the other end of the rope through the noose, and pulled the whole thing tight.
‘Do you wish to go first?’ she asked Yuli, passing him the rope end. ‘Since you are our leader?’
He looked in her deepset eyes, wondering at her cunning, and the economy of her cunning. Not only was she telling Usilk that he was not the leader, she was telling him, Yuli, to prove that he was. He chewed this over, finding it profound, then grasped the rope and squared up to the challenge.
It was alarming but not too dangerous, he estimated. He could swing across the chasm and then, walking against vertical rock, climb to the level of the lip over which the waterfall poured. As far as they could see, there was space to climb in and avoid being swept away by the water. The possibilities that followed could be assessed only when he was up there. He certainly was not going to show fear in front of the two prisoners – or Iskador.
He launched himself rather too hurriedly across the abyss, his mind in part on the girl. Striking the opposite cliff rather clumsily, his left foot slipped on green slime, he jarred against the wall with his shoulder, swung into spray, and lost his grip on the rope. Next second, he was falling down the chasm.
Amid the roar of water came their united cry – the first time they had genuinely done something in unison.
Yuti struck rock, and clung there with every fibre of his being. He squeezed his knees up under his body, fought with his toes, and gripped the rock.
His fall had been no more than two metres, though it jarred every bone in his body, and had been broken by a boulder protruding from the cliff. It afforded him little more than a foothold, but that was enough.
Gasping, he crouched in his awkward position, scarcely daring to move, his chin almost on a level with his boots.
His anguished gaze fell on a blue stone lying below his eyes. He focused on it, wondering if he was going to die. The stone would not come sharp. He felt that he might have reached out over the ledge where he crouched and picked it up. Suddenly his senses told him the truth of the matter – he was not looking at a nearby stone but a blue object far below. Vertigo seized him, paralysing him; accustomed to the plains, he had no immunity against such an experience.
He closed his eyes and clung. Only Usilk’s shouts, coming from a long way off, forced him to look again.
Distantly below lay another world, to which the fissure in which he crouched served as a kind of telescope. Yuli had a view no bigger than his hand into an enormous cavern. It was illuminated in some way. What he had taken for a blue stone was a lake, or possibly a sea, since he had a glimpse only of a fragment of a whole whose size he could not attempt to guess. On the shore of the lake were a few grains of sand, now interpretable as buildings of some kind. He lay in a cataplexy, staring senselessly down.
Something touched him. He could not move. Someone was speaking to him, clutching his arms. Without will, he allowed himself to cooperate in sitting up with his back against the rock, and locking his arms about his rescuer’s shoulders. A bruised face, with damaged nose, slashed cheek, and one closed black and green eye, swam before his vision.
‘Hang on tight, man. We’re going up.’
He managed then to hold himself against Usilk, as the latter worked his way slowly upwards and eventually hauled them, with enormous labour, over the rock lip from which the waterfall poured. Usilk then collapsed, flat out, panting and groaning. Yuli looked down for Iskador and Scoraw, just visible on the other side of the fissure, faces upturned. He also looked more sharply down, into the fault; but his vision of another world had disappeared, eclipsed by spray. His limbs trembled, but he could control them sufficiently to help the others to join him and Usilk.
In silence, they clutched each other thankfully.
In silence, they picked their way amid the boulders on the side of the rushing stream of the waterfall.
In silence, they went on. And Yuli kept silence over the vision of the other world he had glimpsed. But he thought again of old Father Sifans; could it have been a secret fortress of the Takers, momentarily revealed to him amid the wilderness of rock? Whatever it was, he took it inside himself and was mute.
The warrens in the mountain seemed endless. Without light, the party of four went in fear of crevasses. When they judged it to be night, they found a suitable nook to sleep, and huddled together for warmth and company.
Once, after climbing for hours along a natural passage strewn with boulders from a long-vanished stream, they found a niche at shoulder height, into which all four could scramble, to tuck themselves away from the chill wind that had been blowing in their faces all day.
Yuli went to sleep immediately. He was roused by Iskador shaking him. The other men were sitting up, whispering apprehensively.
‘Can you hear?’ she asked.
‘Can you hear?’ Usilk and Scoraw asked.
He listened to the wind sighing down the passage, to a distant trickle of water. Then he heard what had disturbed them – a continuous rasping noise, as of something moving fast against the walls.
‘Wutra’s worm!’ Iskador said.
He clutched her firmly. ‘That’s just a story they tell,’ he said. But his flesh went cold, and he grasped his dagger.
‘We’re safe in this niche,’ Scoraw said. ‘If we keep quiet.’
They could only hope he might be right. Unmistakably, something was approaching. They crouched where they were, peering nervously into the tunnel. Scoraw and Usilk were armed with staves, stolen from the warders of Punishment, Iskador had her bow.
The noise grew louder. Acoustics were deceptive, but they thought it came from the same direction as the wind. There was a rasping element to the noise now, and a rumble as of boulders being thrust heedlessly aside. The wind died, blocked perhaps. A smell assailed their nostrils.
It was a ripe aroma of festering fish, of scumble, of rotten cheese. A greenish fog permeated the passage. Legend said Wutra’s worm was silent, but now it approached with a roar, whatever it might be.
Moved more by terror than courage, Yuli peered from their lair.
There it was, coming fast. Its features could hardly be discerned behind the bank of green luminescence it pushed along in front of it. Four eyes, banked two and two, whiskers and fangs gigantic. Yuli pulled his head back in horror, choking. It was approaching irresistibly.
Next moment, they all four had a sight of its face in profile. It plunged by, eyes glaring insanely. Stiffish whiskers brushed their furs. Then their vision was blocked by scaley ribs, rippling by, blue-lit, scouring dust in upon them, choking them with filth and stink.
There were miles of it, then it was past. Clutching each other, they peered out of their hiding place to see the end of it. Somewhere at the beginning of the boulder-strewn passage was a wider cave through which they had come. A convulsion was taking place down there; the green luminescence, still visible, rippled.
The worm had sensed them. It was turning round and coming back. For them. Iskador stifled a cry as she realised what was happening.
‘Rocks, fast,’ Yuli said. There was loose rock they could throw. He reached towards the sloping back of the niche. His hand struck something unsuspected and furry. He drew back. He struck his chert wheel. A spark flew and died – living long enough for him to see that they were keeping company with the mouldering remains of a man, of which only bones and his enveloping furs remained. And there was a weapon of sorts. He struck a second spark.
‘It’s a dead shaggy!’ Usilk exclaimed, using the prisoner’s slang for phagor.
Usilk was right. There was no mistaking the long skull, from which the flesh had dried, or the horns. Beside the body was a staff capped by a spike and a curved blade. Akha had come to the aid of those threatened by Wutra. Both Usilk and Yuli reached out and grabbed the shaft of the weapon.
‘For me. I’ve used these things,’ Yuli said, wrenching at it. Suddenly, his old life was back, he recalled facing a charging yelk in the wilderness.
Wutra’s worm was returning. Again the scraping noise. More light, livid and green. Yuli and Usilk ventured a quick look out of the niche. But the monster was unmoving. They could see the blur of its face. It had turned and was facing back in their direction, but did not advance.
It was waiting.
They chanced a look in the other direction.
A second worm was bearing down on them from the direction the first had come. Two worms … suddenly, in Yuli’s imagination the cave system was crawling with worms.
In terror, they clung to each other, as the light grew brighter and the noise nearer. But the monstrous creatures would be concerned only with each other.
Following a wave of foetid air, the head of the monster plunged by, four eyes glaring as it stared to its front. Bracing the lower half of his newly acquired spear against the side of the niche, Yuli thrust the point out beyond the rock, hanging on with both hands.
It pierced the churning side of the worm as it charged forward. From the long opening tear in its body, a thick jamlike substance gushed, and flowed down the full extent of its body. The monster was slowing before its whiskered tail had passed the shelf where the four humans sprawled.
Whether the two worms had been intending to fight or mate would never be determined. The second worm never reached its target. Its forward motion petered out. Waves of crudely telegraphed pain caused the body to ripple, the tail to lash. Then it was still.
Slowly, its luminescence died. All was quiet, save for the sough of the wind.
They dared not move. They scarcely dared change their position. The first worm was still waiting somewhere in the darkness, its presence indicated by a faint green glow, scarcely discernible over the body of the dead monster. Afterwards, they agreed that this was the worst part of their ordeal. Each supposed in his or her private thoughts that the first worm knew where they were, that the dead worm was its mate, and that it was only waiting for them to stir to plunge forward and be revenged.
