Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Camaban leaned against Saban and wept on his shoulder like a child. Saban comforted him until at last Camaban straightened. 'All will be well?' he asked, cuffing at his tears.

'Everything will be well,' Saban said.

Camaban nodded, looked as if he would speak, but instead just walked away. Saban watched him go, let out a breath, then went to the temple and told Gundur the remaining slaves could live. 'But run away,' he told the slaves grimly, 'run now and run far!'

Gundur spat into the stones' shadows. 'He's mad,' he said.

'He's always been mad,' Saban said, 'from the day he was born crooked he has been mad. And we have followed his madness.'

'But what happens when the temple is dedicated?' Gundur asked. 'Where will his madness go then?'

'It is that thought which makes the madness worse,' Saban said. 'But we have followed him this far so we can give him the next two nights.'

'If the dead don't walk,' Gundur said grimly, 'then the other tribes will turn on us like wolves.'

'So keep your spears sharp,' Saban advised.

The wind changed in the night to blow the smoke northwards, and the wind brought a heavy rain that doused the fires and washed the last stone dust from the circle. When the skies cleared before dawn an owl was seen circling the temple and then flying towards the rising sun. There could be no better omen.

The temple was ready and the gods lingered close. The dream had become stone.

—«»—«»—«»—

Aurenna came to Ratharryn in the morning, bringing Lallic and a dozen slaves with her. She went to Camaban's hut and stayed there. It was a strangely warm day so that men and women walked about without cloaks and marvelled at the new southern wind that had brought such weather. Slaol was already relenting of winter, they said, and the warmth reassured folk that the temple truly had power.

Many strangers were now at Ratharryn. None had been invited, but all came from curiosity. They had been arriving for days. Most were from neighbouring peoples, from Drewenna and the tribes along the southern coast, but some came from the distant north and others had braved a sea journey to see the miracle of the stones. Many of the visitors were from tribes that had suffered cruelly from Ratharryn's slave raids, but they all came in peace and brought their own food and so were allowed to build shelters among the berry-rich bushes of the nearby woods. On the day after the slaves fled Lewydd arrived with a dozen spearmen from Sarmennyn and Saban embraced his old friend and made room for him in Mereth's hut.

Lewydd was chief of Sarmennyn now and had a grey beard and two new scars on his grey-tattooed cheeks. 'When Kereval died,' he told Saban, 'our neighbours thought we would be easily conquered. So I have fought battles for years.'

'And won them?'

'Enough of them,' Lewydd said laconically. Then he asked about Aurenna and Haragg, and about Leir and Lallic, and he shook his head when he heard all Saban's news. 'You should have come back to Sarmennyn,' he said.

'I always wished to.'

'But you stayed and built the temple?'

'It was my duty,' Saban said. 'It is why the gods put me on the earth, and I am glad I did it. No one will remember Lengar's battles, they might even forget Cathallo's defeat, but they will always see my temple.'

Lewydd smiled. 'You built well. I have seen nothing like it in any land.' He held his hands towards Saban's fire. 'So what will happen tomorrow?'

'You must ask Camaban. If he'll talk to you.'

'He doesn't talk to you?' Lewydd asked.

Saban shrugged. 'He talks to no one except Aurenna.'

'Folk say that Erek will come to earth,' Lewydd suggested.

'Folk say many things,' Saban said. 'They say that we shall become gods, that the dead will walk and that the winter will vanish, but I do not know what will happen.'

'We shall discover soon enough,' Lewydd said comfortingly.

Women prepared food all that day. Camaban had revealed no plans for the temple's dedication, but midwinter had ever been a feast day and so the women cooked and beat and stirred so that the whole high embankment was filled with the smells of food. Camaban stayed in his hut and Saban was glad of that, for he feared his brother would miss Leir and demand to know where he had gone, but neither Camaban nor Aurenna questioned his absence.

Few slept well that night for there was too much anticipation. The woods were bright with the visitors' fires and a new moon hung in the west, though at dawn the moon faded behind a fog as the people of Ratharryn dressed themselves in their finest clothes. They combed their hair and hung themselves with necklaces of bone, jet, amber and sea-shells. The weather was still strangely warm. The fog cleared and a sudden rain shower made the people dash for their huts, but when the rain ended there was a magnificent rainbow hanging in the west. One end of the rainbow swooped down to the temple and folk climbed the embankment to marvel at the good omen.

The clouds slowly drifted northwards to leave a sky scraped bare and pale. By midday there were hundreds of folk from dozens of tribes up on the grassland about the temple and though there were scores of liquor pots no one became drunk. Some danced, some sang and the children played, though none ventured across the ditch and banks except for a dozen men who drove the cattle from among the stones then cleared the dung from inside the sacred circle. People stood beside the low outer bank and gazed at the stones, which looked splendid, clean, placid and filled with mystery. Folk complimented Saban, and he had to tell and retell the tales of the temple's making: how some pillars were too short; how he had raised the lintels; and how much sweat had gone into every single stone.

The wind dropped and the day became oddly still which only sharpened the air of expectancy. The sun was sinking in the southern sky and still no procession came from Ratharryn, though folk said there were dancers and musicians gathering about the temple of Mai and Arryn. Saban took Lewydd through the entrance of the sun and told him how the stones had been sunk in the ground and raised into the sky. He stroked the flank of the mother stone, the only stone of Sarmennyn remaining in the ring, and then he picked up some chips of rock that still lay on the grass about Haragg's bones. The rain had washed away the blood of the last sacrifice and the temple smelt sweet. Lewydd gazed up at the arches of the sun's house and seemed lost for words. 'It is…' he said, but could not finish.

'It is beautiful,' Saban said. He knew every stone. He knew which ones had been difficult to erect, and which had gone easily into their holes. He knew where a slave had fallen from a platform and broken a leg, and where another had been crushed by a stone being turned for shaping, and he dared to hope that all life's hardships would end this day as Slaol seared to his new home.

Then someone shouted that the priests were coming and Saban hurried Lewydd out of the temple, leaving it empty. They pushed through the crowd to see that the procession was at last coming from the settlement.

A dozen women dancers came first, sweeping leafless ash branches across the ground, and behind them came drummers and more dancers, and then came the priests who had their naked skins chalked and patterned and wore antlers or rams' horns on their heads. Last of all came a great band of warriors, all with foxes' brushes woven into their hair and hanging from their spears. Saban had never seen weapons carried to a temple's dedication, but he supposed that nothing about this evening would be the same for the crooked child was setting the world straight.

One of the approaching priests carried the tribe's skull pole and Saban saw the white bone start and stop as the priests placated the spirits. They prayed at the place where a man had fallen dead, wailed to the bear god where a child had been mauled to death, then stopped at the tombs to tell the ancestors what great thing was being done at Ratharryn this day. The sight of the skull reminded Saban of his false oath and he touched his groin and prayed to the gods to forgive him. Beyond the approaching priests the smoke from the settlement rose vertically into the sky, which was still clear of clouds, though the first faint shadow of night was dimming the north.

The procession came on again, dropping into the valley then climbing between the banks of the sacred path. The crowd had begun to dance to the approaching drum beats, shuffling left and right, advancing and retreating, beginning the steps that would not end until the drums ceased.

Camaban and Aurenna had not come with the priests who now spread themselves into a ring about the temple's ditch while the dancers swept their ash branches all about the chalk circle to drive away any malevolent spirits. The warriors, once the circle had been swept, made a protective ring about the chalk ditch.

The women of Ratharryn sang the wedding chant of Slaol. They danced to their own voices, stopping when the song stopped, then stepping on again when the beautiful lament resumed. The music was so plangent and lovely that Saban felt tears in his eyes and he began to dance himself, feeling the spirit inside him, and all about him the great crowd was swaying and moving as the voices swelled and stopped, swooped and sang. The sun was low now, but still bright, not yet touched with the blood-red of its winter dying.

A murmur sounded from the back of the crowd and Saban turned to see three figures had emerged from Ratharryn. One was all in black, one all in white and one was dressed in a deerskin tunic. It was Lallic who wore the tunic, and she walked between Camaban and Aurenna who were arrayed in feathered cloaks. Camaban's cloak was thick with swan feathers while Aurenna, her hair as bright as the day Saban had first seen her, was swathed in ravens' feathers. White and black, Slaol and Lahanna, and Aurenna's face was transfigured by a look of ecstatic delight. She was unaware of the waiting crowd or of the silent priests or even of the towering stones because her spirit had already been carried to the new world that the temple would bring. The crowd fell silent.

Camaban had ordered two new piles of wood to be made on either side of the temple, but well away from the stones, and a hundred men had laboured all the previous day to rebuild what Derrewyn had burned. Now those new heaps of timber were set on fire. The flames climbed hungrily through the high stacks in which whole trees had been placed so that the fires would burn through the whole long midwinter night. The fires hissed and crackled, the loudest noise of the evening, for the drumming, singing and dancing had all stopped as the three figures came up the sacred path.

Camaban stopped by the sun stone, and Lallic, obedient to his muttered order, stood in front of the stone and stared towards the temple. 'Your daughter?' Lewydd asked in a murmur.

'My daughter,' Saban confirmed. 'She is to be a priestess here.' He wanted to walk closer to Lallic, but two spearmen immediately stepped into his path. 'You must be still,' one said and lowered his spear blade so that it pointed at Saban's chest. 'Camaban insisted we must all be still,' the spearman explained. Aurenna was walking on into the long shadow of the stones and then she disappeared into the temple itself.

The crowd waited. The sun was low now, but the shadows of the temple did not yet stretch to the sun stone. There was a faint pinkness in the sky and the southernmost stones were touched with that colour while the inside of the temple was already dark. The pattern of shadows was becoming clear as the stones took on depth when, from the temple's darkened heart, Aurenna sang.