Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'A sky ring,' Saban said quietly. He did not know how it could be done, but he felt a surge of excitement as he stared at the wooden blocks. It would be magnificent, he thought, and then he told himself that these were mere playthings, and the temple was to be made of boulders that Camaban assumed could be moved and shaped as easily as timber.

Camaban took a last block which he placed a long way from the others, putting it where, on the hillside, the sacred avenue had been dug. That,' he said, tapping the final block, 'is our sun stone, and at midsummer its shadow will reach into the sun's house, and at midwinter the sun's light will go through the tall arch and strike the stone. So when Slaol dies his last light will touch the stone that marked his greatest power.'

'And Slaol will remember,' Haragg said.

'He will remember,' Camaban agreed, 'and he will want his power again and so he will fight against winter and thus come closer to us. Closer and closer until his ring' — he touched the sky ring of stones — 'matches Lahanna's twelve seasons. And then Slaol and Lahanna will be wed and we shall have bliss. We shall have bliss.' He fell silent, gazing at his model temple of wood, but in his mind's eye he was seeing it made of stone and standing on the hill's green slope where it would be ringed by the bank and ditch of whitest chalk. A circle of chalk and a ring of stone and a house of arches to call the far gods back to their home.

Saban stared at the wooden blocks. Their shadows made a complex pattern that flickered black and red. Camaban was right, Saban thought. There was nothing like it in all the land, nothing like it under the sky or between the grey seas. Saban had never dreamed of a temple so splendid, so clean, and so difficult to build.

'It can be done?' Camaban asked with a trace of nervousness in his voice.

'If the god wants it done,' Saban answered.

'Slaol wants it done,' Camaban replied confidently. 'Slaol demands that it be done! He wants it done in three years.'

Three years! Saban grimaced at the thought. 'It will take longer than that,' he said mildly, expecting an angry retort.

Camaban dismissed the pessimism with a shake of his head. 'Whatever you need,' he said, 'demand. Men, timber, sledges, oxen, whatever you want.'

'It will need many men,' Saban warned.

'We shall use slaves,' Camaban decreed, 'and when it is done you will be reunited with Aurenna.'

So Saban began the work. He did it gladly for he had been inspired by Camaban's vision and he longed for the day when the gods would be restored to their proper pattern and so bring an end to the world's afflictions. He had Mereth take a team of men to cut oaks in the forests around Maden for it was in that settlement that the oaks would be trimmed, cut and made into sledges. Each sledge would have two broad runners joined by three massive beams on which a stone could rest, and a fourth beam at the front to which oxen would be harnessed. Men might pull some of the smaller stones, but the great stones, the ten tall ones which would make the sun house and the thirty that would hold the sky ring aloft, would need teams of oxen, so oxen had to be counted. And the ox teams would need harness ropes, which meant more oxen had to be killed, their hides tanned and then cut and twisted into strong lines. There were not enough oxen in Ratharryn and Cathallo so Gundur and Vakkal led their warriors on long raids to find more. Saban made other ropes by soaking stripped lime bark in water-filled pits and, when the strands separated, weaving them into long lines that were curled down in a storehouse.

Camaban laid out the temple's plan in the turf where the stones of Sarmennyn had stood. He scribed a circle in the earth with a plough stick attached by a line to a peg at the shrine's centre and the scratched ring showed where the stones of the sky ring would be planted. He marked the places for its thirty pillars, then banged pegs into the ground where his tall sun house would be built. The shrine's centre was now bare of grass for so many feet trampled the space each day while the chalky rubble that had been used to fill the old holes where the stones from Sarmennyn had stood got kicked all across the circle.

Camaban had given Saban six willow wands, each cut to a precise length, and careful instructions how many stones were needed of each length. The longest pole was four times the height of a man, and that merely represented the length of the stone that needed to be above the turf. Saban knew that a stone needed a third of its length sunk in the ground if it were to resist the storms and winds. Camaban was demanding two such massive stones and when Saban visited Cathallo he could only find one boulder that was big enough. The next longest was too short, though if it was buried shallowly it might just stand. It was simple enough to select the shorter stones, for plenty were scattered across the green hills, but time and again Saban wandered back to the monstrous rock that would form one pillar of the sun's high arch.

It was indeed monstrous. It was a piece of stone so huge that it looked like a rib of the earth itself. It was not thick, for its lichened top barely reached to his knee, though much of the rock's bulk was buried in the soil. Yet at its widest it stretched more than four paces and it was over thirteen paces long. Thirteen! If it could be raised, Saban thought, then it would indeed touch the sky, but how to raise it? And how to lift it from the earth and move it to Ratharryn? He stroked the stone, feeling the sun's warmth in its lichened surface. He could imagine how the smaller stones might be prised from their turf beds and eased onto the beams of an oak sledge, but he doubted there were enough men in all the land to lift this great boulder from the ground.

But however he lifted the stone he knew he would need a sledge that was three times bigger than any he had made before, and he decided the sledge must be made in Cathallo from oak timbers that he would place in a long and narrow hut so that the timber could season. Dry wood was just as strong as green timber, but weighed much less, and Saban reckoned he must make the sledge as light as possible if the big boulder were to be shifted off the hill. He would let the timbers dry for a year or more and in that time he would worry at the problem of how to lift the stone.

He found Aurenna in Cathallo's shrine. She was wearing a strange robe made of deerskin cut with a myriad tiny slits into which she had threaded jays' feathers so that the garment seemed to shiver blue and white whenever a breeze blew. 'The people expect a priestess to be different,' she said, explaining the robe, and Saban thought how beautiful she looked. Her pale skin was still unflawed, her gaze was firm and gentle, while her ravaged hair was growing back so that it now enclosed her face like a soft golden cap. She looked happy, radiantly so, and laughed off Saban's worries that the defeated folk of Cathallo would burn his drying timbers. 'They'll work hard to make our temple a success,' she promised.

'They will?' Saban asked, surprised.

'When the temple is finished,' Aurenna explained, 'they will be free again. I have promised them that.'

'You promised them freedom?' Saban asked. 'And what does Camaban say?'

'Camaban will obey Slaol,' Aurenna said. She walked Saban through the settlement and though she proclaimed a blithe belief in the goodness of Cathallo's people, to Saban they looked sullen and resentful. Their chief was dead, their sorceress had vanished and they lived under the spears of Ratharryn's warriors, and Saban feared they would try to burn the long timbers. He also feared for Aurenna's life, and for the life of his two children, but Aurenna laughed at his worries. She explained how she refused the protection of Ratharryn's warriors and how she walked unguarded in the humiliated settlement. 'They like me,' she said simply, and told Saban how she had fought to keep the shrine unviolated. Haragg had wanted to pull down the temple's boulders and move them to Ratharryn, but Aurenna had persuaded Camaban to leave the stones alone. 'Our job is to entice Lahanna, not to offend her,' she said, and so the temple had remained and the folk of Cathallo took some comfort from that.

They evidently took more comfort from Aurenna. She had proclaimed herself a priestess of Lahanna and though, obedient to Haragg, she would not permit the sacrifice of living things, she had taken care to learn the tribe's ritual prayers. Each night she sang to the moon and in each dawn she turned thrice to lament Lahanna's fading. She consulted Cathallo's priests, rationed the settlement's food so that none starved and, best of all, she was proving to be a healer as effective as either Sannas or Derrewyn. Indeed, she was reckoned better than Derrewyn, for Aurenna loved all children and when the women brought her their sons and daughters Aurenna would soothe away their pain with a kindness and patience that Derrewyn had never shown. A dozen small children lived in Aurenna's hut now, all of them orphans whom she fed, clothed and taught, and the hut had become a meeting place for Cathallo's women. 'I like it here,' Aurenna said as she and Saban walked back to the shrine. 'I am happy here.'

'And I shall be happy with you,' Saban said cheerfully.

'With me?' Aurenna looked alarmed.

Saban smiled. He had not seen his wife since midwinter and he had missed her. 'We shall start moving stones very soon,' he told her. 'The small ones first, then the bigger, so I shall be spending time here. A lot of time.'

Aurenna frowned. 'Not here,' she said, 'not in my hut.' A gaggle of children spilled from the hut, led by Leir. Saban lifted his son, whirled him round and tossed him in the air, but Aurenna, when Leir's feet were safe on the ground, pushed the boy away and took Saban's arm. 'We cannot be together as we used to be. It isn't proper.'

'What isn't proper?' Saban growled.

Aurenna walked a few paces in silence. The children followed, their small faces watching the adults anxiously. 'You and I have become servants of the temple that you will build,' Aurenna said, 'and the temple is Lahanna's bridal shrine.'

'What has that to do with you and me?'

'Lahanna will struggle against the marriage,' Aurenna explained. 'She has tried to rival Slaol, but now we will give her to his keeping for ever and she will resist it. My task is to reassure her. That is why I was sent here.' She paused, frowning. 'Have you heard the rumour that Derrewyn still lives?'

'I heard,' Saban grunted.

'She will be encouraging Lahanna to oppose us, so I am to oppose Derrewyn.' She smiled placidly, as if that explanation must prove satisfying to Saban.

He gazed into the shadowed ditch where the pink and brown blossoms of bee orchids grew so thick. The children crowded round Aurenna who broke off scraps of honeycomb to put into their greedy hands. Saban turned back to look at her and, as ever, was dazzled by her startling beauty. 'I can live here,' he said, gesturing towards Sannas's old hut. 'It's a better place to live than Ratharryn, at least while we're moving the stones.'

'Oh, Saban!' She smiled chidingly. 'Don't you understand anything I've said? I cut my hair! I turned away from my other life! I am now dedicated to Lahanna, only to Lahanna. Not to Slaol, not to you, not to anyone but Lahanna! When the temple is built then we shall come together, for that is the day Lahanna will be coaxed from her loneliness, but till then I have to share the loneliness.'

'We're married!' Saban protested angrily.

'And we shall be married again,' Aurenna said placidly, 'but for now I am Lahanna's priestess and that is my sacrifice.'

'Camaban told you this?' Saban asked bitterly.