Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'No,' Camaban said, 'I am no priest, but a sorcerer.'

'A sorcerer who does not know the brother magic?' Scathel jeered. 'What kind of sorcerer is that?' He laughed, then turned Saban around so that all the hall could see him. Lengar of Ratharryn will never yield the treasures!' he shouted. 'Not if we give him every temple in Sarmennyn! Not if we take every stone from every field and lay them at his feet! But if I take his eyes, his hands, his feet and his manhood, then he will yield.'

The listening men beat their hands on the floor in approval and Camaban, watching silently, saw how much opposition there was in Kereval's tribe to the agreement with Lengar. They did not believe Ratharryn would ever yield the gold. They had agreed to the bargain for, at the time, there had seemed no alternative, but now Scathel had come roaring from the hills and proposed using magic, torture and sorcery. 'We shall dig a pit,' Scathel said, 'and drop this louse inside, and there he shall stay shut up until his brother yields us the treasures!' The feasters shouted their approval.

'Put my brother in a pit,' Camaban said when there was silence, 'and I shall fill your bladder with coals, so that when you piss you will writhe from the agony of liquid fire.' He leaned over and took a morsel of fish from Kereval's bowl and calmly ate it.

'You? A crippled sorcerer? Threaten me?' Scathel gestured at Camaban's left foot, which was still misshapen, though no longer grotesquely clubbed. 'You think the gods listen to things like you?'

Camaban took a fishbone from his mouth, then delicately bent it between a thumb and forefinger. 'I will make the gods dance on your entrails,' he said quietly, 'while dead souls suck your brains out of your eye-sockets. I shall feed your liver to the ravens and give your bowels to the dogs.' He snapped the bone in two. 'Let my brother go.'

Scathel leaned down to Camaban, and Saban, watching, thought how alike the two men were. The Outfolk sorcerer, Haragg's twin brother, was the older man, but like Camaban he was lean, gaunt and powerful. 'He will go in the pit tonight, cripple,' Scathel hissed at Camaban, 'and I will piss on him.'

'You will let him go!' a woman's voice commanded, and there was a gasp in the hall as the men turned to look at Aurenna. She was standing, pointing a finger at the angry priest. 'You will release him,' she insisted, 'now!'

Scathel quivered for a heartbeat, but then he swallowed and reluctantly released his grip on Saban. 'You risk losing everything!' he said to Kereval.

'Kereval does Erek's will,' Camaban said, still quietly, answering for the chief, and then he leaned forward and dropped the two scraps of fishbone into the fire. 'I have long wanted to meet you, Scathel of Sarmennyn,' he went on, smiling, 'for I had heard much of you and thought, fool that I am, that I might learn from you. I see, instead, that I will have to teach you.'

Scathel looked into the fire where the two slivers of bone lay on a burning log. For a heartbeat he stared at them, then he reached down and carefully picked them up, one after the other; the hairs on his arm shrivelled in the flames and there was a rank smell of burning flesh that made men wince, but Scathel did not flinch. He spat on the bones, then pointed one at Camaban. 'You will never take one of our temples, cripple, never!' He flicked the bone scraps at Camaban, plucked the damp wolf pelts close about his thin body and walked away leaving the feast hall in silence.

'Welcome to Sarmennyn,' Camaban said to Saban.

'What am I doing here?' Saban demanded.

'I will tell you tomorrow. Tomorrow I give you a new life. But tonight, my brother, if you can, eat.' And he would say no more.

—«»—«»—«»—

Next day, in the fresh swirling wind that followed the night's rain, Camaban led Haragg, Saban and Cagan to the Sea Temple. It lay a fair walk west of the settlement on a low rocky headland where the sea broke white. Cagan would not go near the temple where his sister had died, but cowered in some nearby rocks, whimpering, and Haragg soothed his huge son, patting him like a small child and crooning to him even though Cagan could hear nothing. Then Haragg left Cagan in his cleft of stone and followed the brothers to the deserted temple, which was loud with the plaintive calls of the white birds.

The temple was a simple ring of twelve stones, each about a man's height, while from the ring a short corridor flanked by a dozen smaller stones led to the cliff's edge. The cliff was neither high nor sheer and just beyond its upper edge, and not far beneath it, was a wide ledge heaped with timber. 'They've already begun stacking the fire,' Haragg said in disgust.

'Kereval tells me they're making the fire bigger this year,' Camaban said. 'They want to make sure this girl dies quick.' The wind lifted his hair and rattled the small bones tied to the fringes of his tunic. He looked at Saban. 'The girl is stripped inside the circle, then waits till the sun touches the sea when she must walk the stone avenue and leap into the flames. I watched it last year,' he went on, 'and the girl took fright. Tried to jump straight through the fire.' He laughed at the memory. 'What a death she had!'

'So they don't go willingly?' Saban asked.

'Some do,' Haragg said. 'My daughter did.' The big man was weeping now. 'She walked to her husband as a bride should and she smiled every step of the way.'

Saban shuddered. He looked at the cliff's edge and tried to imagine Haragg's daughter stepping into the blazing fire. He heard her scream, saw her long hair flare brighter than the sun she would marry, and suddenly he wanted to cry for Aurenna. He could not shake her face from his thoughts.

'And Miyac's burned bones were pounded to powder and scattered on the fields,' Haragg went on. 'And for what? For what?' He shouted the last two words.

'For the good of the tribe,' Camaban replied sourly, 'and you were a priest then, and you'd burned other men's daughters without scruple.'

Haragg flinched as if he had been struck. He was much older than Camaban, but he bowed his head as if accepting the younger man's authority. 'I was wrong,' he said simply.

'Most people are wrong,' Camaban said. 'The world is stuffed with fools, which is why we must change it.' He motioned for Haragg and Saban to squat, though he stayed standing like a master addressing his pupils. 'Lengar has agreed to return Erek's gold if Sarmennyn gives him a temple. He made that agreement because he believes no temple can be moved to Ratharryn, but we are going to prove him wrong.'

'Take this temple,' Haragg said, nodding at the Sea Temple's stark pillars.

'No,' Camaban said. 'We shall find Sarmennyn's best temple and take that one.'

'Why?' Saban asked.

'Why?' Camaban snapped at him. 'Why? Slaol sent Ratharryn his gold. That is a sign, fool, that he wants something of us. What does he want? He wants a temple, of course, because temples are where the gods touch the earth. Slaol wants a temple, and he wants it in Ratharryn, and he sent us gold from Sarmennyn to show us where the temple must come from. Is that so very hard to understand?' He gave Saban a pitying look, then began pacing up and down the short turf. 'He wants a temple from Sarmennyn because here Slaol is worshipped above all the other gods. Here the people have glimpsed part of the truth, and that truth we must carry to the heartland. But there is a greater truth.' He stopped his pacing and stared at his two listeners with a fierce expression. 'I have seen to the heart of all things,' he said softly, then waited for either man to challenge him, but Haragg was just watching him with a worshipful face and Saban had nothing to say.

'The priests believe the world is fixed,' Camaban went on scornfully. 'They believe that nothing changes and that if we obey their rules and make our sacrifices, then nothing will ever change. But the world is changing. It has changed. The pattern is broken.'