Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Saban took off his tunic and boots, then followed her into the hut. Someone, presumably Derrewyn, had placed a baby's skull above the door. It had been a very young baby when it died for the crevice in the skull's dome still gaped. The interior of the hut had not changed. There were the same bundles hanging in the shadowed roof and the same jumbled piles of furs and baskets of bones and pots of herbs and ointments.

Derrewyn sat cross-legged on one side of the fire and indicated that Saban should sit opposite. She fed the fire, making it burn bright to flicker ominous shadows among the bat wings and antlers suspended from the roof pole. The flames lit her body and Saban saw she had become cruelly thin. 'I'm not beautiful any more, am I?' she asked.

'Yes,' Saban said.

She smiled at that. 'You tell lies, just like your brothers.' She reached into a big pot and brought out some dried herbs, which she threw onto the fire. She threw more, handful after handful, so that the small pale leaves first flared brilliant, and then began to choke the flames. The light dimmed and the hut began to fill with a thick smoke. 'Breathe the smoke,' Derrewyn ordered him, and Saban leaned forward and took in a breath. He almost choked and his head span, but he forced himself to take another breath and found there was something sweet and sickly in the harsh smoke's touch.

Derrewyn closed her eyes and swayed from side to side. She was breathing through her nose, but every now and then she let a sigh escape, and then, quite suddenly, she began to weep. Her thin shoulders heaved, her face screwed up and the tears flowed. It was as though her heart was broken. She moaned and gasped and sobbed, and the tears trickled down her face, and then she doubled forward as though she would retch, and Saban feared she would put her head into the smouldering fire, but then, just as suddenly, she arched her body back and stared into the peaked roof as she gasped for breath. 'What do you see?' she asked him.

'I see nothing,' Saban said. He felt light-headed, as though he had drunk too much liquor, but he saw nothing. No dreams, no visions, no apparitions. He had feared he would see Sannas, back from the dead, but there was nothing but shadow and smoke and Derrewyn's white body with its protruding ribs.

'I see death,' Derrewyn whispered. The tears still ran down her cheeks. 'There will be so much death,' she whispered. 'You are making a temple of death.'

'No,' Saban protested.

'Camaban's temple,' Derrewyn said, her voice no more than the sigh of a small wind brushing a temple's poles, 'the winter shrine, the Temple of Shadows.' She rocked from side to side. 'The blood will steam from its stones like mist.'

'No!'

'And the sun bride will die there,' Derrewyn crooned.

'No.'

'Your sun bride.' Derrewyn was staring at Saban now, but not seeing him for her eyes had rolled up so that only the whites showed. 'She will die there, blood on stone.'

'No!' Saban shouted and his vehemence startled her from her trance.

Her eyes focused and she looked surprised. 'I only tell what I see,' she said calmly, 'and what Sannas gives me to see, and she sees Camaban clearly for he stole her life.'

'He stole her life?' Saban asked, puzzled.

'He was seen, Saban,' Derrewyn said tiredly. 'A child saw a limping man leave the shrine at dawn, and that same morning Sannas was found dead.' She shrugged. 'So Sannas cannot go to her ancestors, not till Camaban releases her, and I cannot kill Camaban, for I would kill Sannas with him and share her fate.' She looked heartbroken, then shook her head. 'I want to go to Lahanna, Saban. I want to be in the sky. There's no happiness here on earth.'

'There will be,' Saban said firmly. 'We shall bring Slaol back and there will be no more winter and no more sickness.'

Derrewyn smiled ruefully. 'No more winter,' she said wistfully, 'and all by restoring the pattern.' She enjoyed Saban's surprise. 'We hear all that happens in Sarmennyn,' she said. The traders come and talk to us. We know about your temple and about your hopes. But how do you know the pattern is broken?'

'It just is,' Saban said.

'You are like mice,' she said scornfully, 'who think the wheat is grown for their benefit and that by saying prayers they can prevent the harvest.' She stared at the dull glow of the fire and Saban gazed at her. He was trying to reconcile this bitter sorceress with the girl he had known, and perhaps she was thinking the same thing for she suddenly looked up at him. 'Don't you sometimes wish everything was as it used to be?' she asked.

'Yes,' Saban said, 'all the time.'

She smiled at the fervour in his voice. 'Me too,' she said softly. 'We were happy, weren't we, you and I? But we were also children. It really wasn't so long ago, but now you move temples and I tell Rallin what to do.'

'What do you tell him?'

'To kill anything from Ratharryn, of course. To kill and kill again. They attack us all the time, but the marshes protect us and if they try to go round the marshes we meet them in the forests and kill them one by one.' Her voice was full of vengeance. 'And who started the killing? Lengar! And who does Lengar worship? Slaol! He went to Sarmennyn and learned to worship Slaol above all the gods and ever since there has been no end to the killing. Slaol has been unleashed, Saban, and he brings blood.'

'He is our father,' Saban protested, 'and loves us.'

'Loves us!' Derrewyn snapped. 'He is cruel, Saban, and why should a cruel god take away our winter? Or spare us sadness?' She shuddered. 'When you worship Slaol as just one of many gods then he is held in check — all is in balance. But you have put him at the head of the gods and now he will use his whip on you.'

'No,' Saban said.

'And I will oppose him,' Derrewyn said, 'for that is my task. I am now Slaol's enemy, Saban, because his cruelty will have to be curbed.'

'He is not cruel,' Saban insisted.

'Tell that to the girls he burns each year in Sarmennyn,' Derrewyn said tartly, 'though he spared your Aurenna, didn't he?' She smiled. 'I do know her name, Saban. Is she a good woman?'

'Yes.'

'Kind?'

'Yes.'

'And beautiful?' Derrewyn asked pointedly.

'Yes.'

'But she was shown to Slaol, wasn't she? Given to him!' She hissed those three words. 'You think he will forget? She has been marked, Saban, marked by a god. Camaban was marked! He has a moon on his belly. Do not trust people marked by the gods.'

'Aurenna was not marked,' Saban protested.

Derrewyn smiled. 'Her beauty marks her, Saban. I know, for I was once beautiful.'

'You still are,' Saban said and he meant it, but she just laughed at him.

'You would do better to make a hundred temples to a hundred gods, or make one temple to a thousand gods, but to make that temple? It would be better to make no temples at all. Better to take the stones and drop them in the sea.' She shook her head, as though she knew her advice was in vain. 'Fetch me the necklace I dropped outside,' she ordered him.

Saban obeyed, scooping up the rattling bones on their string of sinew. They were, he realised with a shock, the bones of a small baby, all tiny ribs and fragile fingers. He handed it across the smouldering remnants of the fire and Derrewyn bit through the sinew and took a single small vertebra out of the string. She reached behind her for a red-coloured pot with a wide mouth that was sealed with beeswax. She used a knife to lever off the wax stopper and immediately a terrible stench pervaded the hut, overpowering even the remnants of the pungent smoke, but Derrewyn, whose head was directly above the evil smell, did not seem to mind. She pushed the small bone into the pot, then brought it out and Saban saw it was smeared with a sticky pale gum.

She put the pot aside and dragged a flat basket towards her and rooted amongst its contents, finally bringing out two halves of a hazelnut's shell. She placed the bone inside the shell and, frowning with concentration, closed the shell and wrapped it in a length of sinew. She wound the thread repeatedly about the nut, then took a leather lace and made the sinew-wrapped nut into an amulet that Saban could wear about his neck. She held it to him. 'Put it on.'

'What is it?' Saban asked, taking the amulet nervously.

'A charm,' she said dismissively, covering the stinking pot with a scrap of leather.

'What sort of charm?'

'Lengar gave me a son,' she said calmly, 'and the bone inside the shell is a bone of that child, and the ointment is what is left of its flesh.'

Saban shuddered. 'A bone of your own child?'

'Lengar's child,' Derrewyn said, 'and I killed it as you'd kill a louse. It was born, Saban, it cried for milk and I cut its throat.' She stared at Saban, her gaze unblinking. He shuddered again and tried to imagine the hate that had been put into her soul. 'But I shall have another child one day,' she went on. 'I shall have a daughter and I shall raise her to be a sorceress like me. I will wait till Lahanna tells me the time is right and then I shall lie with Rallin and breed a girl to guide this tribe when I am dead.' She sighed, then nodded at the nutshell amulet. 'Tell Lengar that his life is trapped inside that shell and that if he threatens you, if he attacks you or if he even offends you, just destroy the amulet. Beat it flat with a stone or burn it and he will die. Tell him that.'

Saban hung the hazel shell about his neck next to the amber pendant that had been his mother's gift. 'You hate him,' he said, 'so why don't you crush the charm?'

Derrewyn smiled. 'It was my child too, Saban.'

'So…' Saban began, but could not go on.

'Crush the amulet,' she said, 'and you will hurt me too. Maybe not kill me, for it is my magic and I can make charms to counter it, but it will hurt. It will hurt. No!' She had seen that he was about to take the amulet off. 'You will need it, Saban. You brought me a gift and now you must take mine. You gave me Jegar's life so I give you your brother's life for, believe me, he wants yours.' She rubbed her eyes, then crawled past him into the open air. Saban followed.

Derrewyn pulled the deerskin tunic over her head then stooped to look at Jegar's head. She turned it over and spat into its eyes. 'I shall plant this on a stake outside this hut,' she said, 'and one day, perhaps, put Lengar's head beside it.'

Saban dressed. 'I will go at dawn,' he said, 'with your permission.'

'With my help,' Derrewyn said. 'I'll send spearmen to take you safely away.' She kicked Jegar's head inside the hut. 'We shall meet again, Saban,' she said, and then, abruptly, she turned and hugged him, burying her face in his tunic and holding him with an astonishing strength. He felt her shudder and he put his arms about her.

She immediately pulled away. 'I will give you food,' she said coldly, 'and a place to sleep. And in the morning you can go.'

In the morning, he went.

—«»—«»—«»—

Lengar had already gone back to Ratharryn when Saban returned to Sul. 'He thought you'd run away,' Lewydd told Saban.

'You didn't tell him I was coming back?'

'I told him nothing. Why should I? But the sooner you're home in Sarmennyn, the better. He wants you dead.'

Saban touched the shape of the nutshell beneath his tunic, but said nothing of it. Would it work? Would he even need it? If he stayed in distant Sarmennyn he would never need face Lengar again and so he was glad when, on the day after his return from Cathallo, Kereval at last tore himself away from the hot spring in which he had been soaking himself, claiming that it cured the aches in his bones. The westwards sea journey home was much harder for the wind was against the boats and though the tides still carried them for half of the time, the voyage took much paddling and a whole day longer than the outward journey. At last, though, the boats turned about the headland and the crews sang as the tide carried them upriver to Kereval's settlement.