Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

A great sea tore itself into oblivion at the foot of the cliff and the spray whipped over the cliff's summit to drench the temple stones. On the ledge just below the cliff top, where there should have been a raging fire, there was nothing but wisps of steam or smoke. Priests and spearmen crouched in the stone ring and, as Saban ran closer, he saw Aurenna's white robe among them.

She still lived.

Spearmen carried wood to the cliff's edge and dropped the damp timber on to the failing fire. Scathel was standing and shouting, his robe stripped of its feathers by the wind's rage, and if he saw Saban's arrival he took no notice. Kereval looked aghast, fearing what this omen meant.

Camaban saw Saban, and it was then that Camaban performed the rites. He dragged Aurenna to the beginning of the avenue that led to the fire and he drew a knife from his belt and cut off the pieces of gold that Kereval had bought to replace the lost treasures of Erek. Aurenna seemed in a trance. Scathel pushed against the wind to bellow a protest at Camaban, but Camaban shouted back and it was Scathel who stepped away, and then Saban was beside his brother. 'She must go to the fire!' Camaban shouted.

'There is no fire!'

'She must go to the fire, fool!' Camaban shouted, and he seized the neck of Aurenna's drenched white robe and slashed at it with his knife.

Saban grabbed his brother's hand to stop him, but Camaban shook him off. 'This is how it is done!' Camaban called above the seething fury of the gale. 'And it must be done properly! Don't you understand? It must be done properly!'

And suddenly Saban did understand. Aurenna must do her duty and walk to the fire, and if there was no fire then that was not of her doing. So Saban stepped away and watched as his brother slit down Aurenna's long robe. The heavy wool flapped wildly as it was cut away and then Camaban tugged at the soaking cloth and tugged again so that it fell to Aurenna's feet and she was naked.

She was naked because that was how a bride went to her husband and now was the time for Aurenna to go to Slaol. Camaban shrieked at her, 'Walk! Walk!' And Aurenna did walk, though it was hard because the elements were fighting against her slender body, but still, and still as if in a trance, she forced herself forward, and Camaban followed a pace behind, urging her on as the horrified priests watched from the temple's stone ring.

Some smoke or steam still came over the cliff top to be snatched into instant nothingness. Saban walked alongside Aurenna, but keeping outside the stones marking the sacred avenue, and the wind seemed fiercer still as she neared the edge. Her feet slipped on the wet turf, her soaked hair streamed behind her, but she obediently bent forward and thrust into the storm. 'Go on!' Camaban screamed at her. 'Go on!'

At the cliff's edge Saban saw that there was still a remnant of fire lurking in the timber. The pile of wood had been huge, and it would have been lit at midday and fed with fuel so that the heat grew ever more intense, but the wind and spray and rain had cowed the fire, had beaten it down and reduced it to wet, black and charred logs, but at its heart, deep down, some embers still fought against the tempest.

'There!' Camaban shouted exultantly. 'There!' And Saban and Aurenna both lifted their heads to see that the south-western horizon was not all black, but was slit with one small wound of red. The sun god was there. He was watching and his blood was showing against the clouds. 'Now jump!' Camaban screamed at Aurenna.

A hammer of thunder deafened the world. Lightning flickered along the cliffs. 'Jump!' Camaban shouted again, and Aurenna screamed with fear or perhaps with triumph as she stepped off the cliff's edge to fall among the rain-and sea-soaked remnants of the fire. She staggered as she landed, her balance upset by the gale and the black timbers that shattered under her feet, and then she fell against the cliff face and Saban saw a last eddy of smoke and suddenly there was no fire. Aurenna had done as she was supposed to do, and the god had rejected her.

Saban jumped down to the ledge. He pulled off his tunic and forced it over Aurenna's head. She seemed incapable of raising her arms and so he dragged the tunic down her body to cover her from the rain. It was then she looked up into his face and he put his bare arms around her and held her tight, and she, exhausted, sobbed on his shoulder above the storm-flayed sea.

But she lived. She had done what she was supposed to do, and disaster had come to Sarmennyn.

—«»—«»—«»—

The tempest began to lose its force. The sea still pounded on the cliffs and shattered white into the darkening air, but the storm settled into mere gusts, and the rain fell instead of flew.

Saban helped Aurenna to the cliff top. She had pushed her arms into the tunic's sleeves and now clung to him as if in a dream. 'She walked!' Camaban was shouting at the priests.

Haragg had come down from the hill and he added his voice to Camaban's. 'She walked!'

Kereval looked heartbroken. The fate of the sun bride was reckoned to foretell the tribe's fortune in the coming year and no one had ever seen a bride walk to the fire, then walk away.

Scathel shrieked in agony and in his fury he seized a spear from one of the warriors and advanced on Camaban. 'It was you!' he shouted. 'It was your doing! You brought the storm! You were seen in Malkin's shrine last night! You brought the storm!' With that a dozen of the warriors joined the high priest and advanced on Camaban with murder in their faces.

Saban had dropped his spear to help Aurenna and now she clung to him so he could do nothing to save his brother — but Camaban needed no help.

He simply lifted one hand.

In the hand was a golden lozenge. The large lozenge that had come from Sannas's hut.

Scathel stopped. He stared at the scrap of gold, then held up a hand to stop the spearmen.

'You want me to throw the treasure into the sea?' Camaban asked. He opened his other hand to show eleven of the small lozenges. 'I don't mind!' He laughed suddenly, a mad laughter. 'What is Erek's gold to me? What is it to you?' he asked in a shriek. 'You let it go, Scathel! You could not even guard your treasures! So let it go again! Give it back to the sea.' And he turned and made as if to hurl the treasures into the lessening wind.

'No!' Scathel pleaded.

Camaban turned back. 'Why not? You lost it, Scathel! You miserable piece of dried-up lizard dung, you lost Erek's gold! And I have brought some back.' He held the scraps of gold high in the air. 'I am a sorcerer, Scathel of Sarmennyn,' he said in a strong voice, 'I am a sorcerer and you are dirt beneath my feet. I made the spirits of the air and the spirits of the wind travel to Cathallo to rescue this gold, gold which has come to Sarmennyn even though you would break the agreement your chief made with my brother. You, Scathel of Sarmennyn, you have defied Erek! He wants his temple moved and his glory restored, and what does Scathel of Sarmennyn do? He stands in the god's way like a drooling hog before a stag. You oppose Erek! So why should I give you this gold that Erek took from you? It will go to the sea.' He stood on the cliff above the broken fire and once again threatened to hurl the gold into the seething waves.

'No!' Scathel shouted. He was gazing at the gold as though it were Erek himself. Tears were running down his gaunt face and a look of pure wonder was in his eyes. He dropped to his knees. 'Please, no!' he begged Camaban.

'You will move a temple to Ratharryn?' Camaban asked.

'I will move a temple to Ratharryn,' Scathel said humbly, still kneeling.

Camaban pointed northwards. 'In your madness, Scathel,' he said, 'in the mountains, you built a double ring of stone. That is the temple I want.'

'Then you shall have it,' Scathel said.

'It is agreed?' Camaban asked Kereval.

'It is agreed,' Kereval said.

Camaban still held the large lozenge high. 'Erek rejected the bride because you rejected his ambition! Erek wants his temple at Ratharryn!' Folk had crept out of shelter and were listening to Camaban who stood tall and terrible on the dark cliff's edge where the wind lifted his long black hair and rattled the bones tied to its ends. 'Nothing is done for nothing,' he shouted. 'Losing your gold was a tragedy, but a tragedy with meaning, and what does it mean? It means Erek would increase his power! He would spread his light to the world's centre! He will reclaim his proper bride, the earth itself! He will bring us life and happiness, but only if you do what he wishes. And if you move his temple to Ratharryn then you will all be like gods.' He slumped, exhausted. 'You will all be like gods…' he said again.

'Thank you for saving her,' Saban said, an arm about Aurenna.

'Don't be absurd,' Camaban said wearily. Then he walked forward and knelt in front of Scathel. He laid the gold, all twelve pieces of it, on the grass between them, and the two men embraced as though they were long-lost brothers. Both wept and both swore to do the sun god's bidding.

So Aurenna lived, Camaban had won and Ratharryn would have its temple.

Scathel did not know what to do with Aurenna: she had walked the path to the fire and lived, and no bride had ever done that. Scathel's first instinct was to kill her, while Kereval wanted to take her as his own bride, but Camaban, whose authority now stood almost unchallenged in Sarmennyn, decided she must go free. 'Erek permitted her to live,' he told the tribe, 'and that means he must have a use for her. If we kill her or if we force her to a marriage, then we defy Erek.'

And so Aurenna walked north to where her own folk lived and she stayed there through the winter, but in the spring she came south again and brought two of her brothers with her.

The three came down the river on a boat made from willow branches that had been bent into a bowl and covered with hides. Aurenna was dressed in deerskins and had her golden hair tied at the nape of her neck. She landed at Kereval's settlement in the evening, and the sinking sun glowed on her face as she walked through the huts where the folk shrank from her. Some believed she was still a goddess, others thought her rejection by Erek had turned her into a malign spirit; all feared her power.

She stooped at the entrance of Haragg's hut. Saban was alone inside, chipping flints into arrow-heads. He liked the task, for it was satisfying to see the sharp slivers emerge from the knobs of rough stone, but then the light by which he was working was blotted out and he looked up, irritated, and did not recognise Aurenna for she was merely a shape against the light outside. 'Haragg is not here,' he said.

'I came to see you,' Aurenna answered, and that was when Saban recognised her and his heart was suddenly too full for him to speak. He had dreamed of seeing her again but had feared he never would; now she had come. She bent to enter the hut and sat opposite him while her two brothers squatted beyond the door. 'I have prayed to Erek,' she said gravely, 'and he has told me to help you move the temple. It is my fate.'

'Your fate? To move stone?' Saban almost smiled.

'To be with you,' Aurenna said and gazed at him anxiously as though he might refuse her help.

Saban did not know what to say. 'To be with me?' he asked nervously, wondering exactly what she meant.

'If you will have me,' she said, and blushed, though it was too dim in the hut for Saban to see it. 'I prayed to Erek all last winter,' Aurenna went on in a small voice, 'and I asked him why he had not taken me. Why had he shamed my family? And I spoke with our priest and he gave me a cup of liquid to drink and I dreamed the wild dream and Erek told me that I am to be the mother of the guardian of his new temple at Ratharryn.'