Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'I don't know, uncle.'

'You should stay,' Galeth said softly, 'stay and be chief.'

'You already have a chief.'

'We have a tyrant,' Galeth said fiercely, his hands on Saban's shoulders. 'We have a man who loves war more than peace, a man who thinks every woman is his own.' He looked at Aurenna. 'Take her away, Saban,' he added, 'and don't bring her back until you have become chief here.'

'Has Lengar built the temple?'

'It is being built,' Galeth said, 'but Camaban came in the spring and he and Lengar argued. Camaban came with Haragg, and they both said the temple must be changed, but Lengar insisted it must be finished just as it is for it will give him power, and so Camaban and his companion went away.' Galeth looked at Aurenna again. 'Take her away, Saban! Take her away! He'll see her and he will take her for himself!'

'I want to see the temple first,' Saban said and he led Aurenna up the hill on a wide path that had been worn into the turf by the passage of the sledges carrying the stones from the river. Kereval and his men followed, wanting to see how their temple looked in its new home.

'Lengar assures us it is a great war temple,' Galeth said, hobbling beside Saban. 'He believes Slaol is not just the god of the sun, but the god of war too! We already have a god of war, I told him, but Lengar says Slaol is the great god of war and of slaughter. He believes he will finish his temple, Saban, then rule all the world.'

Saban smiled. 'The world may not agree.'

'What Lengar wants, Lengar takes,' Galeth said grimly, giving Aurenna another anxious glance.

Saban touched the nutshell. 'We shall be safe, uncle,' he said, 'we shall be safe.'

The path led north at first, climbing between harvested fields and skirting the high trees where the Death Place was hidden, then turned westwards and now Saban could see the great earthen wall of Ratharryn off to his right. He showed the embankment to Leir, telling him that that was the place where he had grown up. On either side now were the ancestors' grave mounds and Saban dropped to his knees and bent his head to the grass in thanks for their protection over the years.

Once past the mounds the path turned south to drop into a small valley, then joined the sacred path that Gilan had ordered made when the first stones came from Cathallo. The hill bulged, serving like the double bend in Cathallo's sacred path to hide the temple until the last moment of the approach, and Saban felt a growing excitement as he climbed between the ditch and chalk banks. He had last seen the Temple of Shadows in the high valley at Sarmennyn, but now he would see it again, though wondrously moved across a whole wide land and a cold green sea. He took hold of Aurenna's hand and she smiled at him, sharing his anticipation.

The first they saw of the temple was the sole remaining sun stone that stood high in the sacred path, and after it the twin pillars at the shrine's gateway of the sun came into view, and then at last they breasted the hill's slope and the temple was in front of them.

It was more than half built. The entrance corridor of lintelled stones was finished and the double circle of pillars was almost two-thirds complete, standing around the temple's centre and flanked by the four moon stones. Saban guessed that only thirty more stones needed to be placed and he saw that the holes for those pillars had already been dug, while off to one side of the temple, beyond the ditch and banks, a pile of Sarmennyn's stones waited to be placed. All that was needed now was for those pillars to be carried across the entrance causeway and for the last stones to be brought up from the river and the temple would be finished. But already it was near enough complete so that a man could see how the shrine would look when the last stone was planted. Saban stopped by the lichen-covered sun stone and gazed at what he and Lewydd and so many others had achieved over the last five years. 'Well?' Galeth asked.

Saban said nothing. He had been waiting for this moment, and he was remembering the awe he had felt when he had first seen the double ring emerging from Sarmennyn's fog, yet somehow, here at Ratharryn, there was no awe. He had thought he would be overwhelmed by the temple, that he might even fall to his knees in spontaneous worship, yet somehow the two rings looked smaller here and their stones appeared shrunken. In Sarmennyn, cradled by the dark valley and poised above the gulf of air, the stones had snatched an awesome power from the windy sky as they had stared across a whole land to where the sun died in a distant sea. In Sarmennyn the stones had formed a snare to capture a god, but here the dark pillars were dwarfed by the wide grassland. Dwarfed, too, by the seven taller and paler stones from Cathallo.

'Well?' Galeth asked again.

Saban did not want to answer the query. 'We were attacked last night,' he said instead.

Galeth touched his groin. 'By outcasts?'

'We don't know who attacked us,' Saban said, remembering the black-fledged arrows.

'The outcasts have become bold,' Galeth said. He laid a hand on Saban's arm and lowered his voice. 'People have fled.'

'From the outcasts?'

'From Lengar!' Galeth leaned closer. 'There are rumours, Saban, that the spirits of the dead have gathered to kill Lengar. Folk are frightened!'

'We saw no dead last night,' Saban said, then went to stand between the entrance pillars that had come from Cathallo. He had to look steeply up to the tops of those stones, while the tallest stones of the new rings were not much higher than Saban himself and most were much shorter. 'What did Camaban say of the temple?' he asked Galeth.

'He wanted it remade,' Galeth said, then shook his head. 'I do not know what else he wanted, but he did not seem pleased and Lengar shouted at him and they argued and Camaban and his companion walked away.'

'This is how it was in Sarmennyn,' Saban said, still gazing at the stones.

'You're disappointed?' Aurenna asked.

'It's not my disappointment that matters,' Saban said, but what Slaol thinks.' He was looking beyond the temple now, to the southern grave mounds that clustered so thick on the brow of the hill. There were new mounds there, their chalk flanks white in the sun, and he supposed one of those newer graves belonged to his father. 'Where is Camaban now?' he asked Galeth.

'We haven't seen him all summer,' the old man said.

'He wanted me here to finish the temple,' Saban said.

'No!' Galeth insisted hotly. 'You must go away, Saban. Take your woman, go!' He turned to Aurenna. 'Don't let him keep you here. I beg you.'

Aurenna smiled. 'We are supposed to be here. Erek' — she corrected herself — 'Slaol wants us to be here.'

'Camaban insisted we come,' Saban added.

'But Camaban is gone,' Galeth said. 'He has not been here in four moons. You should follow him.'

'Where to?' Saban asked. He led Aurenna around the temple's margin, following the low bank that lay outside the ditch until he came to the place where he had sat on the grass with Derrewyn on that far-off day after his ordeals. She had made a daisy chain, he remembered, and he was suddenly overcome with sadness for it seemed that five years of work had been for nothing. The temple had been moved, but Slaol would never be drawn to these little stones. Most were scarce as tall as a child! The temple was supposed to call the god to earth, but this little pattern of stones would pass under Slaol's gaze like an ant beneath a hawk's eye. No wonder, Saban thought, that Camaban had fled, for all their labour had been for nothing. 'Maybe we should just go home,' he said to Aurenna.

'But Camaban insisted—' she began.

'Camaban has gone!' Saban said harshly. 'He is gone, and we have no need to stay if he is gone. We shall go home to Sarmennyn.' The music of Sarmennyn had become his music, the tales of its tribe his tales, its language his tongue, and he felt no kinship with this frightened place with its shabby temple. He turned and walked to where Kereval was standing beside the sun stone. 'With your permission,' Saban said to the chief, 'I would return home with you.'