Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'Derrewyn is not dead,' Kilda said stubbornly on the night of the temple's completion. The stones were deserted and Saban and Kilda walked hand in hand through the dark pillars that were touched with moonlight so that the tiny flecks embedded in the grey rock glinted like reflections of the uncountable stars. Somehow the stones seemed taller at night, taller and closer, so that when Saban and Kilda edged between two of the sun house's pillars it was as though they were enclosed by stone. Haragg's bones were shadowed, but the sour smell of blood lingered in the cold air.

'It seems smaller when you're inside,' Kilda said.

'Like a tomb,' Saban said.

'Maybe it's a temple of death?' Kilda suggested.

'Which is what Camaban wants,' a harsh voice said from the shadows that shrouded Haragg's stinking bones. 'He thinks it will give life, but it is a temple of death.'

Kilda had gasped when the voice interrupted them and Saban had put an arm around her shoulders as they turned to see a hooded figure stand up from beside the bones and walk towards them. For an instant Saban thought it was Haragg coming back to life, then Kilda suddenly released herself from his grip, ran to the dark figure and dropped at its feet. 'Derrewyn!' she cried. 'Derrewyn!'

The figure pushed back the hood and Saban saw it was indeed Derrewyn. An older Derrewyn, white haired and with a face so thin and skull-like that she resembled Sannas. 'You left the lozenge, Saban?' she asked.

'My son and your daughter left it,' Saban said.

Derrewyn smiled. Kilda was embracing her legs and Derrewyn gently disentangled herself and walked towards Saban. She still had a small limp, a legacy of the arrow that had pierced her thigh. 'Your son and my daughter,' she said, 'are they lovers now?'

'They are.'

'I hear your Leir is a good man,' Derrewyn said. 'So why did you send for me? Is it because your brother will kill all the slaves? I knew that. I know everything, Saban. Not a whisper is uttered in Ratharryn or Cathallo that I do not hear.' She stared around her, gazing up at the tall stones. 'It already has the stench of blood, but he will give it more. He will feed it blood till his miracle happens.' She laughed scornfully. 'An end to winter? An end to sickness? An end, even, to death? But suppose the miracle doesn't happen, Saban, what will your brother do then? Make another temple? Or just feed this one with blood, blood and more blood till the very earth is red?'

Saban said nothing. Derrewyn stroked the flank of the mother stone, which reflected the moon more brightly than the stones from Cathallo. 'Or perhaps his miracle will work,' Derrewyn went on. 'Perhaps we shall see the dead walking here. All the dead, Saban, their bodies white and gaunt, walking from the stones with creaking joints.' She spat. 'You'll dig no more graves in Ratharryn, eh?' She crossed to the outer stones from where she stared at the glow of the fires from the slave huts in the small valley. 'In two days, Saban,' she said, 'your brother plans to kill all those slaves. He will pretend he is giving them a feast, but his warriors will surround the huts with spears and drive them to these stones to kill them. How do I know? I heard it, Saban, from the women at Cathallo where your brother goes to lie with your wife. They rut together, only of course they don't call it that. Rutting is what you and I did, what you and Kilda do, what your son is probably doing to my daughter even as you stand there with your jaw hanging. No, Camaban and Aurenna rehearse the wedding of Slaol and Lahanna. It is their sacred duty,' she sneered, 'but it's still rutting, however you decorate it with prayers, and when they have finished, they talk, and do you think the women of Cathallo do not pass on to me every word they overhear?'

'I sent the lozenge so you would help me,' Saban said. 'I want the slaves to live.'

'Even if that means Camaban's miracle does not work?'

Saban shrugged. 'I think Camaban is frightened that it will not work, which is why he is touched by madness,' he said quietly. 'And that madness will not end until he has dedicated his temple. And perhaps Slaol will come? I wish he would.'

'And if he doesn't?' Derrewyn asked.

'Then I have built a great temple,' Saban said firmly, 'and when the madness is over we shall come here and we shall dance and we shall pray and the gods will use the stones as they think best.'

'And that is all you've done?' Derrewyn asked sourly. 'Built a temple?'

Saban remembered what Galeth had said so shortly before his death. 'What did the folk of Cathallo believe they were doing when they dragged those great boulders from the hills?' he asked Derrewyn. 'What miracle were those stones going to work?'

Derrewyn stared at him for a heartbeat, but had no answer. She turned to Kilda. 'Tomorrow,' she said, 'you will tell the slaves that they are to be killed on midwinter's eve. Tell them that in my name. And tell them that tomorrow night there will be a path of light to take them to safety. And you, Saban' — she turned and pointed at him with a bony finger — 'tomorrow night you will sleep in Ratharryn and you will send Leir and my daughter back to the island. If Hanna stays in Ratharryn she will likely die, for she is still a slave of this temple even if she does rut with your son.'

Saban frowned. 'Will I see my son again?'

'We shall come back,' Derrewyn confirmed. 'We shall come back, and let me promise you something, and I promise it on my life. Your brother is right, Saban. On the day this temple is dedicated the dead will walk. You will see it. In three days' time, when night falls on Ratharryn, the dead will walk.'

She pulled the hood over her head and, without a backward glance, walked away.

Kilda would not go with Saban to the settlement. 'I am a slave,' she told him. 'If I stay in Ratharryn I shall be killed.'

'I wouldn't permit it,' Saban said.

'The temple has made your brother mad,' Kilda responded, 'and what you will not permit will give him delight. I shall stay here and walk Derrewyn's path of light.'

Saban accepted her choice, though without any pleasure. 'I am getting old,' he told her, 'and my bones ache. I could not bear to lose a third woman.'

'You will not lose me,' Kilda promised. 'When the madness is over we shall be together again.'

'When the madness is over,' Saban promised, 'I shall marry you.'

With that promise he walked to Ratharryn. He was in a nervous mood, but so, he discovered, was the settlement, which was filled with an uneasy anticipation. Everyone was waiting for the temple's dedication, though no one other than Camaban seemed certain what change would come in two days' time, and even Camaban was vague. 'Slaol will return to his proper place,' was all he would say, 'and our hardships will vanish with the winter.'

Saban ate that night in Mereth's hut where a dozen other folk had gathered. They brought food, they sang and they told old tales. It was the kind of evening Saban had enjoyed throughout his youth, yet this night the singing was half-hearted for all in the hut were thinking of the temple. 'You can tell us what will happen,' a man demanded of Saban.

'I don't know.'

'At least your slaves will be happy,' another man said.

'Happy?' Saban asked.

'They are to have a feast.'

'A feast of liquor,' Mereth interjected. 'Every woman in Ratharryn has been told to brew three jars and tomorrow we are to carry it to the temple as a reward to your slaves. There's no honey left in Ratharryn!'

Saban wished he could believe that Camaban really intended to offer the temple's builders a feast, but he suspected the liquor was only intended to stupefy the slaves before the spearmen assaulted their encampment. He closed his eyes, thinking of Leir and Hanna who even now should be following the River Mai northwards. He had embraced them both, then watched them walk away with nothing except Leir's weapons. Saban had waited till they vanished in the winter trees and he had thought how simple life had been when his father had worshipped Mai, Arryn, Slaol and Lahanna, and when the gods had not made extravagant demands. Then the gold had come and with it Camaban's ambitions to change the world.

'Are you sick?' Mereth asked, worried because Saban looked so pale and drawn.

'I'm tired,' Saban said, 'just tired,' and he leaned back on the hut wall as the folk sang the song of Camaban's victory over Rallin. He listened to the singing, then smiled when Mereth's Outlander wife began a song from Sarmennyn. It was the tale of a fisherman who had caught a monster and fought it through the wind-stinging foam all the way to shore, and it reminded Saban of the years he had lived beside Sarmennyn's river, Mereth's wife sang in her own tongue and Ratharryn's folk listened from politeness rather than interest, but Saban was remembering the happy days in Sarmennyn when Aurenna had not aspired to be a goddess, but had taken such delight in the making of the boats and the moving of the stones. He was thinking of Leir learning to swim when there was a sudden shout from the darkness outside and Saban twisted to the hut entrance to see spearmen running south towards a glow on the horizon. He stared and for a mad instant he thought the vast glow of fire meant that the stones themselves were on fire, then he shouted to Mereth that something strange was happening at the temple and scrambled into the night.

Derrewyn, it could be no one else, had fired the great piles of kindling and sledge timbers that had been waiting for the dedication. She had done more, for when Saban reached the sacred avenue he saw that the slave huts were also burning, indeed his own hut was in flames and the crackling fires lit the stones, making them beautiful in the darkness.

Then a warrior shouted that the slaves were gone.

Or most were. A few, too scared to run away, or not believing the rumour that Kilda had assiduously spread all day, were huddled by the sun stone, but the rest had fled southwards along Derrewyn's path of light. Saban climbed the crest south of the temple to see the path, which had been made by ramming torches into the turf, then lighting them so that their flames marked a path to safety. The torches burned low now as they snaked across the hills to disappear among the trees beyond the Death Place. The path of light was empty, for the slaves had long gone. By now, Saban thought, they would be deep in the forest and, even as he watched, the guttering torches began to flicker out.

Camaban raged amidst the astonishment. He shouted for water to extinguish the fires, but the river was too far away and the fires were too fierce. 'Gundur!' he shouted, 'Gundur!' and when the warrior came to him Camaban ordered that every spearman and every hunting dog in Ratharryn be sent on the fugitives' trail. 'And in the meantime take them to the temple and kill them.' He pointed his sword towards the handful of surviving slaves.

'Kill them?' Gundur asked.

'Kill them!' Camaban screamed, and set an example by hacking down a man who was trying to explain what had happened in the night. The man, a slave who had stayed at the temple expecting gratitude, looked astonished for a moment, then fell to his knees as Camaban chopped blindly down with his sword. Camaban was splashed with the man's blood by the time he had finished, and then, his appetite unslaked, he looked around for another slave to kill and saw Saban instead. 'Where were you?' Camaban demanded.

'In the settlement,' Saban said, staring at his blazing hut. What few possessions he had were in that hut. His weapons, clothes and pots. 'There is no need to kill any slaves,' he protested.

'I decide the need!' Camaban screamed. He drew back the bloody sword. 'What happened here?' he demanded. 'What happened?'

Saban ignored the threatening sword. 'You tell me,' he said coldly.

'I tell you?' Camaban kept the sword raised. 'What would I know of this?'

'Nothing happens here, brother, unless you decide it. This is your temple, your dream, your doing.' Saban fought his rising anger. He looked at the flickering red flame-light where it touched the stones to fill the temple's interior with a quivering tangle of locking shadows. 'This is all your doing, brother,' he said bitterly, 'and I have done nothing here except what you have told me to do.'

Camaban stared at him and Saban thought the sword must swing forward for there was a terrible madness in his brother's fire-glossed eyes, but then, quite suddenly, Camaban began to cry. 'There has to be blood!' he sobbed. 'None of you understands! Even Haragg did not understand! There has to be blood.'

'The temple is soaked in blood,' Saban said. 'Why does it need more?'

'There must be blood. If there's no blood the god won't come. He won't come!' Camaban screamed this. Men watched him with appalled faces for he was now writhing as if his belly were gripped with pain. 'I don't want there to be death,' he cried, 'but the gods want it. We must give them blood or they will give us nothing! Nothing! And none of you understands it!'

Saban pushed the sword down, then gripped his brother's shoulders. 'When you first dreamed of the temple,' he said quietly, 'you did not see blood. There is no need for blood. The temple lives already.'

Camaban looked up at him, puzzlement on his striped face. 'It does?'

'I have felt it,' Saban said. 'It lives. And the gods will reward you if you let the slaves go.'

They will?' Camaban asked in a frightened voice.

'They will,' Saban said, 'I promise it.'

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.