Bernard Cornwell - Stonehenge

Saban stared at the high arch. 'How tall are the stones?' he asked.

'They are the same height as the tallest of the two poles at the temple,' Camaban answered and Saban flinched as he remembered the height of the slender wands that his brother had planted in the cleared temple. Camaban was demanding that the arch should stand more than four times the height of a man, taller than any stone Saban had ever seen, so tall that he could not imagine how such stones were to be raised, let alone how the capstone was to be lifted onto their summits, but he said nothing. He just watched as Camaban placed eight more pillars to flank the first two, not in a straight line, but curved sharply forward in the shape of an ox's horns to make a bay that wrapped about the mother stone. He put blocks on each pair of pillars so that the sun's house was now made of five archways. The central arch was tallest, but the flanking four would all soar high above the ground. 'These arches' — Camaban tapped the four lower arches — 'point towards the moon stones. They will let the dead escape from Lahanna's grip. Wherever she goes, north or south, east or west, the dead will find a gateway into Slaol's house.'

'And from Slaol's house,' Haragg said, 'the dead will escape through the tallest arch?'

'And thus we shall take the dead from Lahanna and give them to Slaol,' Camaban agreed, 'and it is Slaol who gives life.'

'Gateways of the moon,' Haragg said approvingly, 'and an archway of the sun.'

'It isn't finished,' Camaban said, and he took thirty blocks of wood and placed them in a wide circle of pillars all around the sun's house. All but one of the stones were the same size, all were neatly squared and all were shorter than any of the central arches, but the last of the pillars, though as tall as the others, was only half as wide. 'These pillars show the days of the moon,' Camaban explained, and Haragg nodded for he understood that the thirty stones represented the twenty nine and a half days in which the moon travelled from nothingness to fullness, 'So Lahanna will see that we recognise her.'

'But Slaol -' Haragg began, meaning to protest that Camaban had surrounded Slaol's house with a ring dedicated to the moon.

Camaban hushed him and picked up thirty more wooden blocks that he laid one by one on top of the ring of pillars until he had completed a circle of lintels. 'We shall make a ring of stone,' he explained, 'to reflect Slaol. Lahanna will carry the ring and will understand that her duty is to be subservient to Slaol.'

'A sky ring,' Saban said quietly. He did not know how it could be done, but he felt a surge of excitement as he stared at the wooden blocks. It would be magnificent, he thought, and then he told himself that these were mere playthings, and the temple was to be made of boulders that Camaban assumed could be moved and shaped as easily as timber.

Camaban took a last block which he placed a long way from the others, putting it where, on the hillside, the sacred avenue had been dug. That,' he said, tapping the final block, 'is our sun stone, and at midsummer its shadow will reach into the sun's house, and at midwinter the sun's light will go through the tall arch and strike the stone. So when Slaol dies his last light will touch the stone that marked his greatest power.'

'And Slaol will remember,' Haragg said.

'He will remember,' Camaban agreed, 'and he will want his power again and so he will fight against winter and thus come closer to us. Closer and closer until his ring' — he touched the sky ring of stones — 'matches Lahanna's twelve seasons. And then Slaol and Lahanna will be wed and we shall have bliss. We shall have bliss.' He fell silent, gazing at his model temple of wood, but in his mind's eye he was seeing it made of stone and standing on the hill's green slope where it would be ringed by the bank and ditch of whitest chalk. A circle of chalk and a ring of stone and a house of arches to call the far gods back to their home.

Saban stared at the wooden blocks. Their shadows made a complex pattern that flickered black and red. Camaban was right, Saban thought. There was nothing like it in all the land, nothing like it under the sky or between the grey seas. Saban had never dreamed of a temple so splendid, so clean, and so difficult to build.

'It can be done?' Camaban asked with a trace of nervousness in his voice.

'If the god wants it done,' Saban answered.

'Slaol wants it done,' Camaban replied confidently. 'Slaol demands that it be done! He wants it done in three years.'

Three years! Saban grimaced at the thought. 'It will take longer than that,' he said mildly, expecting an angry retort.

Camaban dismissed the pessimism with a shake of his head. 'Whatever you need,' he said, 'demand. Men, timber, sledges, oxen, whatever you want.'

'It will need many men,' Saban warned.

'We shall use slaves,' Camaban decreed, 'and when it is done you will be reunited with Aurenna.'

So Saban began the work. He did it gladly for he had been inspired by Camaban's vision and he longed for the day when the gods would be restored to their proper pattern and so bring an end to the world's afflictions. He had Mereth take a team of men to cut oaks in the forests around Maden for it was in that settlement that the oaks would be trimmed, cut and made into sledges. Each sledge would have two broad runners joined by three massive beams on which a stone could rest, and a fourth beam at the front to which oxen would be harnessed. Men might pull some of the smaller stones, but the great stones, the ten tall ones which would make the sun house and the thirty that would hold the sky ring aloft, would need teams of oxen, so oxen had to be counted. And the ox teams would need harness ropes, which meant more oxen had to be killed, their hides tanned and then cut and twisted into strong lines. There were not enough oxen in Ratharryn and Cathallo so Gundur and Vakkal led their warriors on long raids to find more. Saban made other ropes by soaking stripped lime bark in water-filled pits and, when the strands separated, weaving them into long lines that were curled down in a storehouse.

Camaban laid out the temple's plan in the turf where the stones of Sarmennyn had stood. He scribed a circle in the earth with a plough stick attached by a line to a peg at the shrine's centre and the scratched ring showed where the stones of the sky ring would be planted. He marked the places for its thirty pillars, then banged pegs into the ground where his tall sun house would be built. The shrine's centre was now bare of grass for so many feet trampled the space each day while the chalky rubble that had been used to fill the old holes where the stones from Sarmennyn had stood got kicked all across the circle.

Camaban had given Saban six willow wands, each cut to a precise length, and careful instructions how many stones were needed of each length. The longest pole was four times the height of a man, and that merely represented the length of the stone that needed to be above the turf. Saban knew that a stone needed a third of its length sunk in the ground if it were to resist the storms and winds. Camaban was demanding two such massive stones and when Saban visited Cathallo he could only find one boulder that was big enough. The next longest was too short, though if it was buried shallowly it might just stand. It was simple enough to select the shorter stones, for plenty were scattered across the green hills, but time and again Saban wandered back to the monstrous rock that would form one pillar of the sun's high arch.

It was indeed monstrous. It was a piece of stone so huge that it looked like a rib of the earth itself. It was not thick, for its lichened top barely reached to his knee, though much of the rock's bulk was buried in the soil. Yet at its widest it stretched more than four paces and it was over thirteen paces long. Thirteen! If it could be raised, Saban thought, then it would indeed touch the sky, but how to raise it? And how to lift it from the earth and move it to Ratharryn? He stroked the stone, feeling the sun's warmth in its lichened surface. He could imagine how the smaller stones might be prised from their turf beds and eased onto the beams of an oak sledge, but he doubted there were enough men in all the land to lift this great boulder from the ground.