Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

At first Saban did not recognise his brother. Camaban was still as thin as a sapling and gaunt as a flint blade, but his face was now terrifying for he had scarred his cheeks and forehead with deep vertical cuts into which he had rubbed soot so that his face was barred black. He had plaited his long hair into a hundred narrow braids that writhed like vipers and were hung with a child's knuckle bones. Leir and Lallic shrank from the stranger who sat by Saban's fire and said nothing and who did not even respond when Aurenna offered him food.

He sat there all night, saying nothing, eating nothing, awake.

In the morning Aurenna revived the fire and heated stones to put in the broth and still Camaban did not speak. The wind fidgeted the thatch, plucked at the moored boats and drove rain across the settlement where the crew of Camaban's boat had found shelter.

Saban offered his brother food, but Camaban just stared into the fire. A single tear once ran down a black scar, but that could have been the wind-whirled smoke irritating an eye.

It was not till mid-morning that he stirred. He frowned first, pushed hair from his face, then blinked as if he had just been woken from a dream. 'They have a great temple in the land across the sea,' he said abruptly.

Aurenna stared at Camaban in a trance, but Saban frowned, fearing that his brother would demand that this new temple be fetched by boat.

'A great temple,' Camaban said with awe in his voice, 'a temple of the dead.'

'A temple to Lahanna?' Saban asked, for Lahanna had ever been reckoned the guardian of the dead.

Camaban shook his head. A louse crawled from his hair down into his beard, which was braided like his hair and decorated with more small knuckle bones. He smelt of brine. 'It is a temple to Slaol,' he whispered, 'to the dead who are united with Slaol!' He smiled suddenly, and to Saban's children the smile looked so wolfish that they shrank from their strange uncle. Camaban made the shape of a low mound with his hands. 'The temple is a hill, Saban,' he said enthusiastically, 'circled by stone and hollowed out, with a stone house of the dead in its heart. And on the day of Slaol's death the sun pours down a rock-lined shaft into the very centre of the house. I sat there. I sat among the spiders and the bones and Slaol talked to me.' He frowned, still gazing into the fire. 'Of course it's not built to Lahanna!' he said irritably. 'She has stolen our dead, and we must reclaim them.'

'Lahanna has stolen the dead?' Saban asked, puzzled by the concept.

'Of course!' Camaban shouted, turning his eerily striped face to Saban. 'Why did I never see it before? What happens when we die? We go the sky, of course, to live with the gods, but we go to Lahanna! She has stolen our dead. We are like children without parents.' He shuddered. 'I met a man once who believed the dead go to nothing, that they are lost in the chasm between the stars, and I laughed at him. But maybe he is right! When I sat in that house of the dead with the bones all about me I heard the corpses of Ratharryn calling to me. They want to be rescued, Saban, they want to be reunited with Slaol! We have to save them! We have to bring them back to the light!'

'You have to eat,' Aurenna said.

'I must go,' Camaban said. He looked again at Saban. 'Have they started building the temple at Ratharryn?'

'So Lewydd says,' Saban confirmed.

'We have to change it,' Camaban said. 'It needs a death house. You and I will rebuild it. No mound, of course. The people across the sea are wrong about that. But it must be a place to pull the dead back from Lahanna.'

'You can rebuild it,' Saban said, 'but I shall stay here.'

'You will go!' Camaban shouted, and Aurenna scurried to comfort Lallic who had begun to weep. Camaban pointed a bony finger at Saban. 'How many stones must still be delivered?'

'Eleven,' Saban said. 'Just those you see on the river.'

'And you shall go with them,' Camaban said, 'because it is your duty to Slaol. Carry the stones to Ratharryn, and I shall meet you there.' He frowned. 'Is Haragg here?'

Saban jerked his head to show that the big man was in his hut. 'His son died,' he told Camaban.

'Best thing for him,' Camaban said harshly.

'And Haragg himself was wounded,' Saban went on, 'but he recovered, though he still mourns Cagan.'

'Then he must be given work,' Camaban said, then stood and ducked out into the wind and rain. 'It is your duty to go to Ratharryn, Saban! I spared Aurenna's life for you! I spared your life! I didn't do it so you could rot on this river bank, I did it for Slaol and you will repay him by building his temple.' He went to Haragg's hut and pounded a fist on the mossy thatch. 'Haragg!' he shouted. 'I need you.'

Haragg came from the door with a startled expression. He was completely bald now and unnaturally thin, so that he looked old before his time. The arrow's strike had left him sick for a long time and there had been days when Saban was sure the breath would die in the big man's throat, but Haragg had survived. Yet it seemed to Saban that he was wounded in his spirit far more grievously than in his body. Haragg now stared at Camaban and, for a heartbeat, did not recognise the man with a striped face, then he smiled. 'You've come back!' he said.

'Of course I've come back!' Camaban snapped. 'I always said I would, didn't I? Don't just gaze at me, Haragg, come! You and I have much to discuss and far to travel.'

Haragg hesitated an instant, then abruptly nodded and, without even looking back at his hut, let alone fetching anything he might need, followed Camaban towards the trees.

'Where are you going?' Saban called after them.

'To Ratharryn, of course!' Camaban said.

'You're walking?' Saban asked.

'I never wish to see another boat,' Camaban said fervently, 'so long as I live,' and with that he walked on. To make his new temple even greater. To tie Slaol to the living and the dead to Slaol. To make a dream.

—«»—«»—«»—

'Camaban is right,' Aurenna said that evening.

'He is?'

'Erek saved us,' she said, 'so we must travel where he wishes. It is our duty.'

Saban rocked back and forth on his heels. It was night, the children were sleeping and the fire was burning low to fill the hut with smoke. The wind had dropped and the rain had ended, though the eaves of the thatch still dripped. 'Camaban said nothing of you going to Ratharryn,' Saban said.

'Erek wants me there,' Aurenna retorted.

Saban groaned inwardly for he knew he must now argue with the god. 'My brother Lengar would want nothing more than for me to take you to Ratharryn. He will see you, lust after you and then take you. I shall fight for you, of course, but his warriors will cut me down and you will be forced onto his pelts and raped.'

'Erek will not permit it,' Aurenna said placidly.

'Besides,' Saban said petulantly, 'I don't want to go to Ratharryn. I'm happy here!'

'But your work here is done,' Aurenna pointed out. 'There are no more boats to be made and no more stones to be fetched down the mountain. Erek's work moves to Ratharryn and he saved our lives, so that is where we shall go.' She smiled. 'We shall go to Ratharryn and we shall wind the world back to its beginning.'

It was an argument Saban could not win for Erek was against him, and so Aurenna readied herself and the children for the voyage. Yet the sea winds would not abate and still the great waves broke white and ragged on the headland and day after day passed until the summer brought bramble blossom and bryony, bindweed and speedwell, and still Lewydd would not risk the journey. 'The gods,' Lewydd said one night, 'they are holding us back.'

'It's the missing stones,' Aurenna said. 'The two that we lost in the river and the one that broke on the mountain. If we don't replace those stones the temple will never be complete.'