Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'And no more girls will leap into the flames,' Haragg said quietly.

'And you' — Camaban ignored Haragg's words as he turned to Saban — 'will not be a warrior.' He took the yew bow from Saban's shoulder and, with an effort that made him grimace, snapped the stave across his knee. He flung the broken bow across the cliff top so that it fell into the sea. 'You will be a builder, Saban, and you will help Haragg move the temple from Sarmennyn to Ratharryn and so bring the god back to us.'

'If my brother permits it,' Haragg said, speaking of Scathel.

'In time,' Camaban said confidently, 'Scathel will join us. because he will understand that we have seen the truth.' He dropped to his knees and bowed to the sun. 'We have seen the truth,' he said humbly, 'and we shall change the world.'

Saban felt the excitement. They would change the world. At that moment, poised above the sea, he knew that they could.

—«»—«»—«»—

Aurenna, in the time between her elevation to a goddess and her death in the sun's fire, was expected to tour the country and hear the people's prayers that she would carry to her husband. She left Kereval's settlement escorted by four spearmen to guard her, two women to attend her, three priests to guide her and a dozen slaves to serve her, as well as by a crowd of other folk who just wanted to follow the footsteps of the sun bride.

Kereval ruled a land greater in size than Ratharryn's holdings, though it was more thinly settled for Sarmennyn's soil was hard; it was Aurenna's duty to show herself to all the tribe and to the dead in their communal mounds. Each night a hut was cleared of its folk and animals so that the sun bride could sleep in privacy and each morning there was a huddle of petitioners waiting outside the hut. Women begged her to grant them sons, parents pleaded with her to heal their children, warriors asked her to bless their spears and fishermen bowed as she touched their boats and nets. The priests led her from temple to temple and from grave mound to grave mound. They opened the graves, shoving their vast entrance stones aside so that Aurenna could stoop into their cave-like interiors and talk to the dead whose bones lay jumbled in the damp shadows.

Camaban and Saban also accompanied her, following the golden girl to the sheltered valleys on Sarmennyn's south coast where the people farmed and took their long wooden fishing boats out to sea, and then up into the high, bare land of the north where cattle, sheep and the making of stone axes gave a poor living to scattered homesteads. And wherever they went Camaban inspected the temples, looking for the one he wanted moved to Ratharryn. The people, recognising him as a sorcerer, bowed. 'Can you make magic?' Saban asked him one day.

'I turned you into a slave, didn't I?' Camaban retorted.

Saban looked at the scar on his hand. 'That was cruel,' he said.

'Don't be absurd,' Camaban said wearily. 'How else was I to keep you alive? Lengar wanted to kill you, which was entirely the sensible thing to do, but I hoped you might prove useful to me. So I fed him a nonsensical tale about the gods taking revenge on those who killed their half-brothers, then gave him the idea of enslaving you. He liked that. And I wanted you to meet Haragg.'

'I like him,' Saban said warmly.

'You like most people,' Camaban said scornfully. 'Haragg is quite clever,' he went on, 'but you can't trust all his ideas. He's absurdly influenced by his daughter's death! He distrusts ritual, but there's nothing wrong with ritual. It shows the gods that we recognise their power. If we took notice of Haragg's ideas we wouldn't burn Aurenna to death and what is the point of the girl's existence if it isn't to burn?'

Saban looked ahead to where Aurenna walked between her attendant priests. He hated Camaban at that moment, but he said nothing, and Camaban, who knew exactly what his brother was thinking, laughed.

That afternoon they came to another temple, this one a simple circle of five stones that was typical of the shrines in the northern part of Sarmennyn. A few, very few, had as many as a dozen stones, but none of the boulders was as large as those that stood within Cathallo's walls. Sarmennyn's stones were rarely taller than a man nor any thicker than a man's waist, but nearly all of them were squared into trim pillars.

Camaban liked none of the shrines they saw. 'We want a temple that will astonish,' he told Saban. 'We have to find a temple that will tell Slaol we have made a great effort on his behalf. What's the achievement in moving four or five little rocks to Ratharryn?'

Saban reckoned that moving just one stone would be an achievement, and he had begun to doubt that Camaban would ever find the temple he wanted. 'Why don't you just pick any temple?' he asked one night. 'Slaol will know how much effort we made to move it.'

'If I wanted the job done quickly and carelessly,' Camaban said, 'I would have let you find a temple rather than waste my own time searching. Don't be absurd, Saban.' They were eating in a crowded hut where Aurenna's attendants had been greeted with gifts of fish, meat, pelts and pots of liquor. One pot of the liquor could steal a man's brains and legs, though Camaban always seemed unaffected. He drank it like water, belched, drank more, and never slurred his words nor staggered; in the morning, when Saban's head was throbbing and sour, Camaban would be full of energy.

That night they were in the hut of a clan chief, the lord of all his kin whose huts were huddled in the lee of a mountain. The chief was a toothless old man who, in honour of Aurenna's coming, wore a circle of gold about his scrawny neck. His wives had stirred a foul mess of seaweed and shellfish over a smoky fire and when the meal was eaten one of his sons, who looked as old and toothless as his father, took down the polished shell of a sea-turtle that hung from a rafter and used it to beat out a rhythm while he chanted an apparently endless song about his father's exploit in crossing to the land across the western sea where he had slaughtered many enemies, taken many slaves and brought home much gold. 'What it probably means,' Camaban said to Saban, 'is that the old fool wandered up the beach for three days and came back with a couple of striped pebbles and a gull's feather.'

Folk came from the other huts while the chant continued. More and more packed themselves in until Camaban and Saban were crammed against the hut's low stone wall. The people must have heard the tale many times, for they often joined in the chant and the old man nodded happily whenever such a chorus sounded, but then, quite suddenly, the drumbeat and the chanting ended. The old man opened his eyes and looked indignant at the silence until he saw that Aurenna, who had eaten in the privacy of her own hut, had just entered. The clan chief smiled and indicated that the sun bride could sit beside him, but Aurenna shook her head, peered about the hut, then stepped delicately through the press of bodies to sit beside Saban. She nodded to the chanter, indicating he could begin again, and the man tapped his turtle-shell, closed his eyes and picked up his story's thread.

Saban was acutely conscious of Aurenna's proximity. He had spoken to her a few times while they walked Sarmennyn's rough paths, but she had never sought his company and her arrival at his side made him clumsy, shy and tongue-tied. It hurt him even to look at Aurenna for the thought of what must happen to her in a brief time. Her fate and Derrewyn's had become tangled in his mind so that it seemed to him that Derrewyn's soul had entered Aurenna's body and now must be snatched from him again. He closed his eyes and bent his head, trying to will away the thoughts of Derrewyn's rape and Aurenna's impending death.

Then Aurenna leaned close to him so that he would hear her voice above the chanter's song. 'Have you found your temple?' she asked.