Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

And this temple was not slight, as the stones of Sarmennyn had been slight. It filled its proper place, no longer dwarfed by the sky and the long slope of grass. Visitors, some coming from strange lands across the seas, would often drop to their knees when they first saw the stones, while the slaves now kept their voices low as they worked. 'It's coming alive,' Kilda said to Saban one day.

The last pillar of the sky ring, which was only half as wide as the others because it represented the half-day of the moon's cycle, was erected on midwinter's day. It went up easily and Camaban, who had come to see that final pillar raised, stayed at the temple as the sun sank. It was a fine day, cold but clear, and the south-western sky was delicately banded with thin clouds that turned from white to pink. A flock of starlings, looking like flint arrow-heads, wheeled over the temple. The birds were innumerable and black against the high sky's emptiness, they all shifted together, changing direction as one, and the sight made Camaban smile. It had been a long time since Camaban had smiled with pleasure. 'It's all about pattern,' he said quietly.

The sun sank lower, lengthening the temple's shadows, and Saban began to feel the stones stirring. They looked black now, for he was standing with Camaban beside the sun stone in the sacred avenue and the shadows were imperceptibly reaching towards them. And as the sun went lower the temple seemed to grow in height until its stones were vast and black. Then the sun vanished behind the capstone of the tallest arch and the first shadows of night engulfed the brothers. Behind them, in Ratharryn, the great midwinter fires were being lit and Saban assumed Camaban would go back to preside over the day's feast, but instead he waited, staring expectantly at the shadowed stones. 'Soon,' Camaban said softly, 'very soon.'

A few heartbeats later the lower edge of the highest capstone was touched a livid red and then the sun blazed through the sliver between the tallest pillars and Camaban clapped his hands for pure joy. 'It works!' he cried. 'It works!'

The land all about them was in darkness, for the shadows of the sky ring's pillars locked together to cast a great pall across the sacred avenue, but in the centre of that great stone-cast shadow there was a beam of light. It was the sun's dying light, the last light of the year, and it lanced across the horizon, over the woods, above the grass and through the arch to dazzle Camaban as he stood beside the sun stone. 'Here!' he shouted, thumping his breast as if he were drawing Slaol's attention. 'Here!' he shouted again, then stared, entranced, as the sun slid behind the stones and the shadows of the stones melded into one great blackness that spilt across the grassland. 'Do you see what we have done?' Camaban asked excitedly. 'The dying sun will see the stone that marked his greatest strength, and he will yearn for that strength and so rid himself of his winter weakness. It will work! It will work!' He turned and clasped Saban's shoulders. 'I want it ready for next midwinter.'

'It will be ready,' Saban promised.

Camaban stared into Saban's eyes, then frowned. 'Do you forgive me, brother?'

'Forgive you what?' Saban asked, knowing full well what Camaban was asking.

Camaban grimaced. 'Slaol and Lahanna must be one.' He let go of Saban's shoulders. 'I know it is hard for you, but the gods are hard on us. They are hard! There are nights when I pray that Slaol will let go of his goad, but he makes me bleed. He makes me bleed.'

'And Aurenna gives you joy?' Saban asked.

Camaban flinched, but nodded. 'She gives me joy, and what you have made, brother' — he nodded at the temple — 'will give us all such joy. Finish it. Just finish it.' He walked away.

The entrance pillars were taken to the causeway and put back in their holes, and then all that needed to be done was to raise the last capstones of the sky ring. Saban worried that the newest pillars would not have had time to settle in the ground, but Camaban would endure no delay now. 'It must be done,' he insisted, 'it must be ready.'

But ready for what? Sometimes, when Saban gazed for a long time at the shadowed stones, it seemed to him that they did have their own life. If he was tired and the light was dim the stones appeared to shift like ponderous dancers, though if he raised his head and stared directly at the pillars they would all be still. Yet the gods were in the stones, of that he was sure. The temple was not dedicated, yet the gods had found it. They brooded over the high stones. Some nights he would pray to them; Kilda found him doing so one evening and she sat and waited for him to finish, then asked him what he had begged of the gods.

'What I always pray,' Saban said, 'that they will spare my daughter's life.'

'Your daughter is Hanna now,' Kilda said. 'Mine too.'

'You think Derrewyn is dead?'

'I think she lives,' Kilda said, 'but I think you and I will always be parents to Hanna.'

Saban nodded, yet still he prayed for Lallic. She would be a priestess here, and he was the temple's builder, so, in time, he decided, she would lose her fear of him and come to trust him, for she would surely see that this was a beautiful place, a home for the gods, and know that her father had made it.

And now it was almost finished.

—«»—«»—«»—

The bull dancers capered at midsummer. The fires scared the malevolent spirits away and in the next dawn, for the very first time, the rising sun threw the shadow of the sun stone through the completed ring of pillars to the temple's heart where Haragg's bones lay.

The last capstones were shaped. One of those stones had its sockets too close together because Camaban had insisted that it would be faster to make the holes before the lintels were raised, and Saban had to order the grinding of a third hole. It would, he prayed, be the last delay.

The harvest was cut. The women danced the threshing floors smooth and the priests husked the first grains. No more slaves came to Cathallo for there was scarce enough work for those already at the temple, but Camaban refused to release them. 'We can feed them till the temple is dedicated,' he said. 'They built it, they should see it finished, and then they will be freed.'

Winter came and folk hoped it would be the very last winter on earth. Kilda had a miscarriage and wept for days afterwards. 'I always wanted a child,' she told Saban, 'but the gods will not give me one.'

'You have Hanna,' Saban said, trying to comfort her just as she had tried to comfort him.

'She is almost grown,' Kilda said, 'and her fate is close.'

'Her fate?'

Kilda shrugged. 'She is Derrewyn's child. She has Sannas's blood. She has a fate, Saban, and it will come soon.'

It came the very next day. It was a cold day and the temple stones were frosted white. There were just two lintels left to be raised and Saban was starting the platform for the first when Leir walked up from the settlement. He was dressed in the finery of a Ratharryn warrior with foxes' brushes woven into his hair, his chest was blue from tattoos and he carried a spear hung with a rare sea eagle's feathers that had been part of the tribute brought to Ratharryn by an admiring chief from a distant coast. Leir crossed the causeway and gazed at the stones. 'The temple will be ready by midwinter?' he asked his father.

'Easily,' Saban said.

Leir offered a half-smile, then nodded towards the sacred avenue as if suggesting they should walk there. Saban, puzzled, followed his son back across the causeway. 'Camaban says Haragg's body needs blood,' Leir said flatly.

Saban nodded. 'Always.' Only that morning Camaban had come with a trussed swan that had hissed at the stones before having its neck cut. The temple stank of blood, for no sooner had the blood of one sacrifice dried than another beast or bird was brought to Haragg's bones and killed.