Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

'Yes,' Saban said, and wondered why he had never realised that the moon stones could as easily point to the limits of Slaol's wanderings as to Lahanna's.

'What you'll do, Saban,' Camaban said enthusiastically, 'is dig me a ditch and bank round the two pillars. They're the watching stones. You'll make me two earth rings, and the priests can stand in the rings and watch Slaol across the slabs. Good!' He began to walk briskly back towards the settlement, but stopped by the sun stone which lay farthest from the shrine. 'And another ditch and bank round this stone.' He slapped the stone. 'Three circles round three stones. Three places where only priests can go. Two places to watch the sun's death and Lahanna's wanderings and one place to watch Slaol rise in glory. Now all we have to decide is what goes in the centre.'

'We have more than that to decide,' Saban said.

'What?'

'Cathallo is short of food.'

Camaban shrugged as if that were a small thing.

'Dead slaves' — Saban grimly echoed Camaban's own words — 'can't work.'

'Gundur will look after them,' Camaban said, irritated by the discussion. He wanted to think of nothing except his temple. 'That's why I sent Gundur to Cathallo. Let him feed them.'

'Gundur is only interested in Cathallo's women,' Saban said. 'He keeps a score of the youngest in his hut, and the rest of the settlement starves. You want the remnants of the tribe to rebel against you? You want them to become outlaws instead of slaves?'

'Then you go and rule Cathallo,' Camaban said carelessly, walking away through the thin snow.

'How can I build your temple if I'm in Cathallo?' Saban shouted after him.

Camaban howled at the sky in frustration, then stopped and stared at the darkening sky. 'Aurenna,' he said.

'Aurenna?' Saban asked, puzzled.

Camaban turned. 'Cathallo has ever been ruled by women,' he said. 'Sannas first, then Derrewyn, so why not Aurenna?'

'They'll kill her!' Saban protested.

'They will love her, brother. Is she not be beloved of Slaol? Didn't he spare her life? You think the people of Cathallo could kill what Slaol spared?' Camaban danced some clumsy steps, shuffling in the snow. 'Haragg will tell the folk of Cathallo that Aurenna was the sun's bride and in their minds they will think she is Lahanna.'

'She's my wife,' Saban said harshly.

Camaban walked slowly towards Saban. 'We have no wives, brother, we have no husbands, we have no sons, we have no daughters, we have nothing till the temple is built.'

Saban shook his head at such nonsense. 'They will kill her!' he insisted.

'They will love her,' Camaban said again. He limped close to Saban and then, grotesquely, he fell on his knees in the snow and held up his hands. 'Let your wife go to Cathallo, Saban. I beg you! Let her go! Slaol wants it!' He gazed up at Saban. 'Please!'

'Aurenna might not want to go,' Saban said.

'Slaol wants it,' Camaban said again, then frowned. 'We are trying to turn the world back to its beginnings. To end winter. To drive sadness and weariness from the land. Do you know how hard that is? One wrong step and we could be in darkness for ever, but sometimes, suddenly, Slaol tells me what to do. And he has told me to send Aurenna to Cathallo. I beg you, Saban! I beg you! Let her go.'

'You want her to rule Cathallo?'

'I want her to draw Lahanna back! Aurenna is the sun's bride. If we are to have joy in the world, Saban, we must have Slaol and Lahanna united again. Aurenna alone can do it. Slaol has told me so and you, my brother, must let her go.' He held out a hand so that Saban could pull him to his feet. 'Please,' Camaban said.

'If Aurenna wishes to go,' Saban said, reckoning his wife would have no wish to be isolated so far from the new temple, but to his surprise Aurenna did not reject the idea. Instead she talked a long time with Camaban and Haragg, and afterwards she went to Slaol's old temple where she submitted herself to the widow's rite by having her long golden hair hacked short with a bronze knife. Haragg burned the hair, the ashes were placed in a pot and the pot was broken against one of the timber poles.

Saban watched horrified as Aurenna walked from the temple with her once beautiful hair ravaged into crude clumps smeared with blood where the knife had grazed her scalp, yet on her face was a look of joy. She knelt to Saban. 'You will let me go?' she asked.

'If you really want to,' he said reluctantly.

'I want to!' she said fervently. 'I want to!'

'But why?' Saban asked. 'And why the widow's rite?'

'My old life is gone,' Aurenna said, climbing to her feet. 'I was given to Slaol, and even though he rejected me I was ever his worshipper. But from today, Saban, I am a priestess of Lahanna.'

'Why?' he asked again, his voice filled with pain.

She smiled calmly. 'In Sarmennyn we used to offer the god a human bride each year, but in a year's time the god demanded another bride. One girl after another, Saban, burning, burning! But the girls didn't satisfy Slaol. How could they? He wants a bride for ever, a bride to match his glory in the sky and that can only be Lahanna.'

'The Outfolk have never worshipped Lahanna,' Saban protested.

'And we were wrong,' Aurenna said. 'Lahanna and Slaol! They are made for each other as a man is made for a woman. Why did Slaol spare me from the fire at the Sea Temple? He must have had a purpose and now I see what it is. He rejected a human bride because he wants Lahanna and my task will be to draw her to his embrace. I shall do it by prayer, by dancing, by kindness.' She smiled at Saban, then cupped his face in her hands. 'We are to do a great thing, you and I. We are to make the marriage of the gods. You will make the shrine and I shall bring the bride to Slaol's bed. You cannot forbid me that task, can you?'

'They will kill you in Cathallo,' Saban growled.

Aurenna shook her head. 'I shall comfort them, and in time they will worship at our new temple and share in its joy.' She smiled. 'It is why I was born.'

She left next day, taking Leir and Lallic with her, and Gundur returned to Ratharryn, but left a score of his warriors behind. Aurenna had those men hunt the forests for boar and deer to feed the settlement.

Saban stayed in Ratharryn. Camaban wanted him there, for Camaban was intent on his temple's design and needed his brother's advice. What was the largest stone that could be raised as a pillar? Could one stone be piled on another? How were the stones to be moved? Could the stone be shaped? The questions did not end, even if Saban had no answers. Winter ended and the spring touched the trees with green and still Camaban brooded.

Then one day there were no more questions for the doorway of Camaban's hut stayed curtained and no one, not even Saban or Haragg, was allowed inside. A mist hung across Ratharryn, hiding the skulls on the embankment's crest. There was no wind that day and the world was silent and white. The tribe, sensing that the gods were close about the settlement, kept their voices low.

At sunset Camaban screamed, 'I have found it!'

And the wind blew the mists away.

Haragg and Saban were summoned to Camaban's hut where a patch of the earthen floor had been swept clean and smooth. Saban expected to see the finished model, but instead the wooden blocks had been pushed into a jumbled heap beside which Camaban squatted with eyes so bright and skin so sheened with sweat that Saban wondered if his brother had a fever, but the fever was no sickness, it was excitement. 'We shall build a temple,' Camaban greeted Saban and Haragg, 'like none that is now or ever will be again. We shall make the gods dance with joy.' Camaban was naked, his skin reddened by the glare of the fire which warmed and lit the hut. He waited until Saban and Haragg had settled, then he placed a single wooden pillar very close to the centre of the cleared space. 'That is the mother stone,' Camaban said, 'reminding us that we are of the earth and that the earth is at the heart of all that exists.' The bones hanging from his hair and beard clicked together as he rocked back on his heels. 'And around the mother stone,' he went on, 'we shall build a death house, only this death house will also be Slaol's house. It will remind us that death is the passage to life, and we shall make Slaol's house with stones as tall as any wooden temple pole.' He took the longest two blocks and placed them just behind the mother stone. 'We shall touch the sky,' he said reverently, then took a smaller piece of wood and put it across the two pillars' tops so that the three stones formed a tall and very narrow archway. 'Slaol's arch,' he said reverently, 'a slit through which the dead can go to him.'