Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

A pale slim figure stood alone in the temple's dark. She beckoned, and Rallin, obedient to the summons, stood aside and Saban walked towards the woman who waited for him where the paired stones of the western avenue met the temple's embankment. It was Derrewyn and Lahanna was shining on her to make her beautiful. She wore a simple deerskin tunic that fell to her ankles and which appeared almost white in the moonlight, while round her neck was a chain of bones. But as Saban drew nearer he saw that her beauty was the moon's reflection, little more, for she was thinner now and her face was angrier and lined and bitter. Her black hair was scraped back into a tight knot, while her mouth, which had once been so quick to smile, was a thin-lipped slit. In her right hand was the thigh bone that Sannas had once carried and Derrewyn raised it as Saban reached the avenue's last pair of stones. 'You dared to come here?' she asked.

'To bring you a gift,' Saban answered.

She looked at the bundle, then gave an abrupt nod and Saban untied the tunic and shook its contents onto the bare moonlit ground between them.

'Jegar,' Derrewyn said, recognising the head despite the blood which matted its beard and smeared its skin.

'It is Jegar,' Saban said. 'I cut off his head with his own sword.'

Derrewyn stared at it, then grimaced. 'For me?'

'Why else would I bring you the head?'

She looked at him, and it seemed that a mask dropped away for she gave him a tired smile. 'Is it Saban of Sarmennyn now?'

'It is.'

'And you have a wife? A lover of Slaol?'

Saban ignored the sourness of the question. 'All the Out-folk love Slaol,' he said.

'Yet now you come to me,' Derrewyn said, the mask of anger back in its place, 'you crawl to me with a gift! Why? Because you need protection from Lengar?'

'No,' Saban protested.

'But you do,' Derrewyn said. 'You killed his friend, and you think he won't return that favour? Touch one of those maggots of Ratharryn, and the rest pursue you.' She frowned at him. 'You think Lengar won't kill you? You think he won't take your wife as he took me? You've hurt him!'

'I came to bring you this,' Saban said, gesturing at Jegar's head, 'and nothing more.' In truth he had thought little of Lengar's reaction to Jegar's death. His brother would be filled with rage, of that Saban was sure, and he would probably want revenge, but Saban believed he would be safe in Sarmennyn.

'So you brought me your gift, nothing more,' Derrewyn said. 'What were you hoping for, Saban? My gratitude?' She hoisted her deerskin skirts, lifting them almost to her waist. 'Is that what you want?'

Saban turned away to look across the dark fields. 'I wanted you to know that I had not forgotten.'

Derrewyn dropped the skirts. 'Forgotten what?' she asked sourly.

'That we were lovers,' Saban said, 'and that I knew happiness with you. And since that time to this there has not been one day in which I have not thought of you.'

Derrewyn gazed at him for a long time, then sighed. 'I knew you had not forgotten,' she said, 'and I always hoped you would come back.' She shrugged. 'And now you are here. So? Will you stay? Will you help us fight your brother?'

'I shall go back to Sarmennyn,' Saban said.

Derrewyn sneered. 'To move your famous temple? The temple that will draw great Slaol to Ratharryn! Scorching the sky as he comes to do your bidding? Do you really believe he will come?'

'Yes,' Saban said, 'I do.'

'But to do what?' This time Derrewyn spoke without scorn.

'What Camaban promises,' Saban said. 'There will be no more winter, no more disease, no more sadness.'

Derrewyn stared at him, then put her head back and laughed, and her mockery echoed from the farther side of the great chalk embankment, which shone white in the twilight. 'No more winter! No more sadness! You hear that, Sannas? You hear it? Ratharryn will banish winter!' She had been dancing as she mocked, but now she stopped and pointed the thigh bone at Saban. 'But I don't need to tell Sannas that, do I? She knows what Camaban wants because he stole her life.' She did not wait for an answer, but spat and strode forward to pick up Jegar's head by its bloody crown. 'Come with me, Saban of Sarmennyn,' she said, 'and we shall find out whether you will conquer winter with your rattling stones from the west. If only you could! We could all be happy again! We could be young and happy, with no pains in our bones.'

She led him into the shrine. There was no one else there, just the rising moon shining on the huge boulders in which tiny flecks of starlight seemed to be embedded. Derrewyn took Saban to Sannas's old hut, which was still the only building inside the embankment, and there she tossed Jegar's head beside the entrance before pulling up her tunic and tugging it over her head. She dropped the bone necklace on the tunic. 'You too,' she said, indicating that he should take off his own tunic. 'I'm not going to rape you, Saban, I merely want to talk with the goddess. She likes us naked, just as your priests go naked so that nothing lies between them and their gods.' She ducked under the door.

Saban took off his tunic and boots, then followed her into the hut. Someone, presumably Derrewyn, had placed a baby's skull above the door. It had been a very young baby when it died for the crevice in the skull's dome still gaped. The interior of the hut had not changed. There were the same bundles hanging in the shadowed roof and the same jumbled piles of furs and baskets of bones and pots of herbs and ointments.

Derrewyn sat cross-legged on one side of the fire and indicated that Saban should sit opposite. She fed the fire, making it burn bright to flicker ominous shadows among the bat wings and antlers suspended from the roof pole. The flames lit her body and Saban saw she had become cruelly thin. 'I'm not beautiful any more, am I?' she asked.

'Yes,' Saban said.

She smiled at that. 'You tell lies, just like your brothers.' She reached into a big pot and brought out some dried herbs, which she threw onto the fire. She threw more, handful after handful, so that the small pale leaves first flared brilliant, and then began to choke the flames. The light dimmed and the hut began to fill with a thick smoke. 'Breathe the smoke,' Derrewyn ordered him, and Saban leaned forward and took in a breath. He almost choked and his head span, but he forced himself to take another breath and found there was something sweet and sickly in the harsh smoke's touch.

Derrewyn closed her eyes and swayed from side to side. She was breathing through her nose, but every now and then she let a sigh escape, and then, quite suddenly, she began to weep. Her thin shoulders heaved, her face screwed up and the tears flowed. It was as though her heart was broken. She moaned and gasped and sobbed, and the tears trickled down her face, and then she doubled forward as though she would retch, and Saban feared she would put her head into the smouldering fire, but then, just as suddenly, she arched her body back and stared into the peaked roof as she gasped for breath. 'What do you see?' she asked him.

'I see nothing,' Saban said. He felt light-headed, as though he had drunk too much liquor, but he saw nothing. No dreams, no visions, no apparitions. He had feared he would see Sannas, back from the dead, but there was nothing but shadow and smoke and Derrewyn's white body with its protruding ribs.

'I see death,' Derrewyn whispered. The tears still ran down her cheeks. 'There will be so much death,' she whispered. 'You are making a temple of death.'

'No,' Saban protested.

'Camaban's temple,' Derrewyn said, her voice no more than the sigh of a small wind brushing a temple's poles, 'the winter shrine, the Temple of Shadows.' She rocked from side to side. 'The blood will steam from its stones like mist.'