Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

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.

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.