Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'And when it is dedicated,' Leir went on grimly, 'we are promised that all the dead, not just Haragg, will find new life through the stones.'

'Are we?' Saban asked. He had thought that the dead were supposed to be taken from Lahanna's keeping and sent to Slaol's care, but the temple's effects were constantly subject to rumour and tales. Indeed, the closer the dedication came, the less anyone was certain what the temple would achieve. All knew that winter would be banished, but much more was expected. Some folk declared that the dead would walk while others claimed that only the dead who were placed in the temple would have their lives given back.

'And to give the dead life,' Leir went on, 'Camaban wants more blood.' He stopped beside the sun stone and looked back. Some slaves were polishing the standing pillars while a score of women were grubbing the ditch of weeds. 'Those slaves will not be going home when the temple is finished.'

'Some will stay,' Saban said. 'They've all been promised their freedom, but most will want to go home if they can remember where home is.'

Leir shook his head. 'Camaban became drunk last night,' he said, 'and told Gundur that he wants an avenue of heads to lead from the settlement to the temple. It is to be a path of the dead to show how we go from death back into life.' He was looking into Saban's face. 'He says he dreamed it and that Slaol demands it. Gundur's men are to kill the slaves.'

'No!' Saban protested.

'They are to be killed in the temple so their blood soaks the ground, then their heads are to be cut off and placed on the avenue's banks,' Leir said remorselessly, 'and we spearmen are expected to do the killing.'

Saban flinched. He looked at his hut where Kilda was tending a fire and he saw Hanna come through the low doorway with dry firewood. The girl saw Leir, but she must have sensed that he wanted to be alone with his father for she stayed at the hut with Kilda. 'And what do you think of Camaban's idea?' Saban asked Leir.

'If I liked it, father, would I have come to you?' Leir paused and glanced towards Hanna. 'Camaban wants to kill all the slaves, father, all of them.'

'And what would you have me do about it?'

'Talk to Camaban?'

Saban shook his head. 'You think he listens to me? I might as well talk to a charging boar.' He stroked the sun stone. In time, he supposed, all the temple's stones would lose their pristine greyness and go dark with lichen. 'We could talk to your mother,' he suggested.

'She won't talk to me,' Leir confessed. 'She talks to the gods, not to men.' He sounded bitter. 'And Gundur says there's another reason to kill the slaves. He says that if they are allowed to go to their homes then they will take the secrets of the temple's construction with them and then others will build like it and Slaol will not come to us, but go to them.'

Saban stared at the grey dust that smothered the ground. 'If I tell the slaves to run away,' he said softly, 'then the spearmen will just gather more.'

'You can do nothing?' Leir sounded indignant.

'You can do something,' Saban said. He turned and beckoned to Hanna and as she ran eagerly towards Leir she looked so like her mother that the breath caught in Saban's throat. A dozen spearmen had asked Saban if they could marry Hanna and Saban's rejection of their requests had caused resentment. Hanna, they said, was only a slave, and a slave should be flattered to be courted by a warrior, but there was only one warrior whom Hanna liked and that was Leir. She smiled shyly at him, then looked obediently to Saban and bowed her head as a girl would to her father. 'I want you to take Leir to that island in the river,' Saban told her, 'the island I showed you a year ago.'

Hanna nodded, though she looked puzzled for she had never before been given the freedom to go with a young man into the forest. Saban felt in his pouch and brought out the small patch of worn leather that was folded about the golden lozenge. 'You are to take this,' Saban said to Leir, unwrapping the lozenge, 'and you are to place it in the fork of a willow tree. Hanna will show you which tree.' He put the gold into his son's hand.

Leir frowned at the bright scrap. 'What will this do?'

'It will change things,' Saban said, and hoped it was true for he did not even know if Derrewyn was still alive, yet the gold had always changed things. Its coming to Ratharryn had changed everything, and now he would let the sun-filled metal work its magic again. 'Hanna will tell you what the gold will do,' Saban told his son, 'for it is time that Hanna told you everything.' He kissed the girl on the forehead, for Saban knew that with those last words he had released Derrewyn's daughter from his care. He was giving her and Leir to the truth and he hoped his son would not be aghast when Hanna told him she was the daughter of Ratharryn's bitterest enemy. 'Hanna will tell you everything,' he said. 'Now go.'

He watched them walk towards the river and remembered how he had walked that same path with Derrewyn so many years before. He had thought then that his happiness would never end, and later he had believed his happiness would never return. He saw Hanna reach out and take Leir's hand and Saban's eyes filled with tears. He turned to look at the temple and saw how intricately the light and the shadows mixed on the soaring stones, and he knew his brother had dreamed a wondrous thing, but he understood now how that soaring dream was curdling into madness.

He walked back to the stones. There were only two to raise before the temple would be finished and it would be then, and only then, Saban reckoned, that he would discover why the gods had wanted it made.

—«»—«»—«»—

The very last stone was placed just three days before midwinter. It was the capstone which rested on the smallest pillar of the outer circle. Saban had worried about that pillar for Camaban had insisted it should be only half as wide as the others because it represented the half-day of the moon's journey and it also left a wider gap in the outer stones through which folk could file into the temple's centre, but there was scarce room on its narrow summit to make the knobs for the two capstones which Saban feared would rest precariously.

He had the wrong fears. It was not the space that was inadequate, but the stone itself, for when the platform of timbers was built, and after the final capstone had been levered up layer by layer to its full height, and after it had been edged across until its tongue was above the slit in the neighbouring lintel, and when it was released to drop into place, the pillar cracked.

The capstones always fell into place with a jarring crash, and Saban always feared the moment, worrying that either the lintel itself or the pillars beneath would shatter under the impact. The hard stone contained faults that Saban had sometimes used to shape the boulders and he knew that some of those flaws must be hidden deep in the rock, though none had ever betrayed itself till now. The five lintels of the sun's house and twenty-nine capstones of the sky ring had all been safely raised, each had been levered across to its position so that the holes on its base lined up with the knobs on the pillars, and all had been released to fall with a crash, yet every stone had stayed whole until this final capstone was dropped. It did not fall with a crash, but with a flat cracking sound that echoed ominously from the circle's far side.

Saban went very still, waiting for disaster, but the silence stretched. The capstone was in its proper place and the pillar stood, but when he climbed down the stacked layers of timber he saw that the narrow pillar had a deep crack running diagonally across its face. The crack started at the stone's top and ran halfway down one flank. A slave jumped down beside Saban and put a finger into the crack. 'If that gives way…' he said, but did not finish the statement.