Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Scathel shrieked in agony and in his fury he seized a spear from one of the warriors and advanced on Camaban. 'It was you!' he shouted. 'It was your doing! You brought the storm! You were seen in Malkin's shrine last night! You brought the storm!' With that a dozen of the warriors joined the high priest and advanced on Camaban with murder in their faces.

Saban had dropped his spear to help Aurenna and now she clung to him so he could do nothing to save his brother — but Camaban needed no help.

He simply lifted one hand.

In the hand was a golden lozenge. The large lozenge that had come from Sannas's hut.

Scathel stopped. He stared at the scrap of gold, then held up a hand to stop the spearmen.

'You want me to throw the treasure into the sea?' Camaban asked. He opened his other hand to show eleven of the small lozenges. 'I don't mind!' He laughed suddenly, a mad laughter. 'What is Erek's gold to me? What is it to you?' he asked in a shriek. 'You let it go, Scathel! You could not even guard your treasures! So let it go again! Give it back to the sea.' And he turned and made as if to hurl the treasures into the lessening wind.

'No!' Scathel pleaded.

Camaban turned back. 'Why not? You lost it, Scathel! You miserable piece of dried-up lizard dung, you lost Erek's gold! And I have brought some back.' He held the scraps of gold high in the air. 'I am a sorcerer, Scathel of Sarmennyn,' he said in a strong voice, 'I am a sorcerer and you are dirt beneath my feet. I made the spirits of the air and the spirits of the wind travel to Cathallo to rescue this gold, gold which has come to Sarmennyn even though you would break the agreement your chief made with my brother. You, Scathel of Sarmennyn, you have defied Erek! He wants his temple moved and his glory restored, and what does Scathel of Sarmennyn do? He stands in the god's way like a drooling hog before a stag. You oppose Erek! So why should I give you this gold that Erek took from you? It will go to the sea.' He stood on the cliff above the broken fire and once again threatened to hurl the gold into the seething waves.

'No!' Scathel shouted. He was gazing at the gold as though it were Erek himself. Tears were running down his gaunt face and a look of pure wonder was in his eyes. He dropped to his knees. 'Please, no!' he begged Camaban.

'You will move a temple to Ratharryn?' Camaban asked.

'I will move a temple to Ratharryn,' Scathel said humbly, still kneeling.

Camaban pointed northwards. 'In your madness, Scathel,' he said, 'in the mountains, you built a double ring of stone. That is the temple I want.'

'Then you shall have it,' Scathel said.

'It is agreed?' Camaban asked Kereval.

'It is agreed,' Kereval said.

Camaban still held the large lozenge high. 'Erek rejected the bride because you rejected his ambition! Erek wants his temple at Ratharryn!' Folk had crept out of shelter and were listening to Camaban who stood tall and terrible on the dark cliff's edge where the wind lifted his long black hair and rattled the bones tied to its ends. 'Nothing is done for nothing,' he shouted. 'Losing your gold was a tragedy, but a tragedy with meaning, and what does it mean? It means Erek would increase his power! He would spread his light to the world's centre! He will reclaim his proper bride, the earth itself! He will bring us life and happiness, but only if you do what he wishes. And if you move his temple to Ratharryn then you will all be like gods.' He slumped, exhausted. 'You will all be like gods…' he said again.

'Thank you for saving her,' Saban said, an arm about Aurenna.

'Don't be absurd,' Camaban said wearily. Then he walked forward and knelt in front of Scathel. He laid the gold, all twelve pieces of it, on the grass between them, and the two men embraced as though they were long-lost brothers. Both wept and both swore to do the sun god's bidding.

So Aurenna lived, Camaban had won and Ratharryn would have its temple.

Scathel did not know what to do with Aurenna: she had walked the path to the fire and lived, and no bride had ever done that. Scathel's first instinct was to kill her, while Kereval wanted to take her as his own bride, but Camaban, whose authority now stood almost unchallenged in Sarmennyn, decided she must go free. 'Erek permitted her to live,' he told the tribe, 'and that means he must have a use for her. If we kill her or if we force her to a marriage, then we defy Erek.'

And so Aurenna walked north to where her own folk lived and she stayed there through the winter, but in the spring she came south again and brought two of her brothers with her.

The three came down the river on a boat made from willow branches that had been bent into a bowl and covered with hides. Aurenna was dressed in deerskins and had her golden hair tied at the nape of her neck. She landed at Kereval's settlement in the evening, and the sinking sun glowed on her face as she walked through the huts where the folk shrank from her. Some believed she was still a goddess, others thought her rejection by Erek had turned her into a malign spirit; all feared her power.

She stooped at the entrance of Haragg's hut. Saban was alone inside, chipping flints into arrow-heads. He liked the task, for it was satisfying to see the sharp slivers emerge from the knobs of rough stone, but then the light by which he was working was blotted out and he looked up, irritated, and did not recognise Aurenna for she was merely a shape against the light outside. 'Haragg is not here,' he said.

'I came to see you,' Aurenna answered, and that was when Saban recognised her and his heart was suddenly too full for him to speak. He had dreamed of seeing her again but had feared he never would; now she had come. She bent to enter the hut and sat opposite him while her two brothers squatted beyond the door. 'I have prayed to Erek,' she said gravely, 'and he has told me to help you move the temple. It is my fate.'

'Your fate? To move stone?' Saban almost smiled.

'To be with you,' Aurenna said and gazed at him anxiously as though he might refuse her help.

Saban did not know what to say. 'To be with me?' he asked nervously, wondering exactly what she meant.

'If you will have me,' she said, and blushed, though it was too dim in the hut for Saban to see it. 'I prayed to Erek all last winter,' Aurenna went on in a small voice, 'and I asked him why he had not taken me. Why had he shamed my family? And I spoke with our priest and he gave me a cup of liquid to drink and I dreamed the wild dream and Erek told me that I am to be the mother of the guardian of his new temple at Ratharryn.'

'You are to be a mother?' Saban asked, hardly daring to believe what she so calmly proposed.

'If you will have me,' she said humbly.

'I have dreamed of little else,' Saban confessed.

Aurenna smiled. 'Good,' she said, 'then I will be with you and my brothers can move your stones.' She explained that the brothers, Caddan and Makin, were accustomed to bringing great lumps of rock from the splintered mountain tops to the lower land where the families broke the boulders and made the axe-heads. 'And I hear,' she went on earnestly, 'that you are finding the task of moving the stones difficult?'

It was not Saban who was finding the task difficult, but Haragg, for Kereval had placed the trader in charge of moving the temple and the big man seemed perplexed by the problems. He had spent all the previous summer and autumn travelling back and forth between Scathel's temple and the chief's settlement and he had still not decided how the stones were to be shifted or, indeed, whether they could be moved at all. He worried at the problem, listened to suggestions, then fell into indecision. Lewydd and Saban were sure they knew how it could be done, but Haragg was nervous of taking their advice. 'It can be done,' Saban now told Aurenna, 'but only when Haragg decides to trust Lewydd and me.'