Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'No,' he said, shaking with nervousness.

'Why not?' Aurenna asked. 'You must have seen a new temple every day?'

'They're too small,' Saban answered, blushing. He did not look at her for fear that he would stammer.

'And how will you move your temple?' Aurenna asked. 'Will you have the god make it fly to Ratharryn?'

Saban shrugged. 'I don't know.'

'You should talk to Lewydd,' she said, indicating one of her guardian spearmen who was squatting beside the hut's central post. 'He says he knows how it can be done.'

'If Scathel ever lets us take a temple,' Saban said gloomily.

'I shall defeat Scathel,' Aurenna said confidently.

Saban dared to look into her eyes then. They were dark, though the flicker of firelight was reflected in them, and he suddenly wanted to weep because she was going to die. 'You'll defeat Scathel?' he asked.

'I hate him,' she said softly. 'He spat at me when I was first taken to my temple. That's why I wouldn't let him put you in the pit. So when I go to the fire I shall tell my husband that he is to let you take a temple to Ratharryn.' She looked away from Saban as another man took the turtle-shell drum and started another song, this one in praise of the sun bride herself. Aurenna listened intently as a compliment to the singer as he began by describing the sun god's loneliness and his yearning for a human bride, but when he moved on to describe the sun bride's beauty Aurenna seemed to lose interest for she leaned close to Saban again. 'Is it true that in Ratharryn you do not send the god a bride?'

'No.'

'Nor in Cathallo?'

'No.'

Aurenna sighed, then gazed at the fire. Saban stared at her, while her guards watched him. 'Tomorrow' — Aurenna swayed close to Saban again — 'I must start back towards Kereval's settlement, but you should climb the hill behind this place.'

'Why?'

'Because there is a temple there,' she said. 'The folk here told me of it. It is Scathel's new temple, the one he built when he was recovering from his madness. He says he will dedicate it when the treasures are returned.'

Saban smiled, thinking how angry Scathel would be if he knew that his own new temple might go to Ratharryn. 'We shall look at it,' Saban promised her, though he would rather have stayed with Aurenna — to what purpose, he could not tell. She would be dead soon, dead and gone to her glory in the blazing sky.

Next morning, as a thick fog rolled in from the sea, Aurenna began her southward journey, but Camaban and Saban went north, climbing the hill through the fog's thick whiteness. 'It will be a waste of time,' Camaban grumbled, 'just another tawdry ring of stones,' but he still led Saban up the steep grass and across scree-covered slopes until at last they emerged from the cloud into glorious sunlight. They were now above the fog that lay all about them like a white and silent sea in which the mountain's peak was an island of splintered rock, as tangled and jagged as if a god had hammered the summit in a rage. Saban saw now why all the pillars of Sarmennyn's temples were alike for the rock, shattering from the peak, fell in naturally square shafts and all a man needed to make a temple was to carry the split rock down the mountainside.

There was no temple in sight, but Camaban guessed it lay somewhere in the thick fog beneath and so he sat on a stone ledge to wait. Saban paced up and down, then asked Camaban, 'Why would we want Scathel's temple if Scathel is an enemy?'

'He's no enemy of mine.'

Saban sneered at that. 'Then what is he?'

'He's a man like you, brother,' Camaban said, 'a man who hates things to change. But he is a good servant of Slaol and in time he will be our friend.' He turned and looked eastwards where the peaks of other mountains stood like a line of islands above the whiteness. 'Scathel wants Slaol's glory, and that is good. But what do you want, brother? And don't say Aurenna,' he added, 'for she'll be dead soon.'

Saban blushed. 'Who says I do want her?'

'Your face says so. You stare at her like a thirsty calf gazing at an udder.'

'She's beautiful,' Saban said.

'So was Derrewyn, but what does beauty matter? In a dark hut at night, how can you tell? Never mind, tell me what you want.'

'A wife,' Saban said, 'children. Good crops. Plentiful deer.'

Camaban laughed. 'You sound just like our father.'

'And what's wrong with that?' Saban asked defiantly.

'Nothing is wrong with that,' Camaban said wearily, 'but what a little ambition it is! You want a wife? Then find one! Children? They come whether you want them or not, and half will break your heart and the other half will die. Crops and deer? They're there now.'

'So what do you want?' Saban asked, stung by his brother's scorn.

'I told you,' Camaban said calmly. 'I want everything to change, and then nothing will change, for we shall reach the point of balance. The sun won't wander and there will be no more winter and no more sickness and no more tears. But to do that we must make Slaol a proper temple, and that is what I want. A temple that does Slaol honour.' With those words he suddenly fell silent and stared, wide-eyed, into the fog beneath, and Saban turned to see what had attracted his brother's attention.

At first he could only see fog, but then, slowly, as the land appears when the night drains, a shape emerged in the whiteness.

And what a shape. It was a temple, but unlike any Saban had ever seen. Instead of one circle of stones it had two, one set inside the other, and at first Saban could only see the dark tips of those stones in the vapour. He tried to count the pillars, but there were too many, and at the double circle's farther side, looking towards the place on the skyline where the winter sun would set, there was an entrance made from five pairs of stone pillars that had other stones laid crosswise on their tops to make a row of five doorways for the dying sun. Saban stared, and for a magical time the whole temple seemed to float in the vapour and then the fog drained from the high valley to leave the stones rooted in the dark earth.

Camaban was standing now, his mouth open. 'Scathel was not mad,' he said quietly, then he gave a cry and leaped off the rocks and hurried down the hill, scattering dark-fleeced sheep as he went. Saban followed more slowly, then edged between the twin rings of stone to find Camaban crouched at the temple's north-eastern side where he was peering into the tunnel made by the lintelled stones. 'Slaol's gates,' Camaban said in wonder.

The temple was built in a high hanging valley that overlooked the low country to the south and, at midwinter, when the sun was on that far horizon, it would shine across the sea and land to pierce the gates of stone. 'All else would be dark,' Camaban said softly, 'all would be shadowed by the stones, but in the shadow's centre would be a shaft of light! It's a temple of shadows!' He hurried to the stone opposite the entrance and there, facing the sun's gateway, he spread his arms and flattened himself against the rock as though the light of the dying sun was pinning him to the boulder. 'Scathel is magnificent!' he cried. 'Magnificent!'

The pillars, naturally square, were not large. Those in the sun's gate were a little taller than Camaban, but the rest were shorter than a man and some were no higher than a toddling child. All the rocks had been prised or lifted from the shattered mountain top and slid down the steep slope to this flat patch of high hanging land where they had been shallowly rooted in the thin soil. Saban pushed against one stone and it rocked dangerously. The stone against which Camaban stood was actually two pillars, both too thin, but they had been joined together by carving a groove in one long side and sculpting a tongue in the other so that the two stones fitted like a man fits to a woman. 'Two halves of the circle,' Camaban said reverently, noticing the jointed stones. 'The sun side' — he gestured to the south, indicating the stones over which the sun would travel in its daily path — 'and the night side, and they're joined here, and the joint must be sealed with blood at the sun's dying.'