Jack Whyte - The Skystone

"Now, what can you see?"

They looked at each other, and then back at me, and Luceiia said,

"Nothing, Publius. "

"The ground, Luceiia! Look at the ground. Meric, I'm standing in the middle of the ring. Do you notice anything about it? Anything different?

Anything at all?" Meric's brow furrowed in concentration, and then I saw astonishment spread as he saw what I wanted him to see.

"It's bowl-shaped! As though it has been dug, hollowed out. There's a dip. "

"Yes, Meric. Luceiia? Can you see it now?" She nodded wordlessly.

"Good! Now you can come back. "

They rejoined me on foot, leaving their horses outside the circle. Both of them still looked distinctly puzzled.

"Don't you know where you are yet?" I asked them. Meric frowned. "We Druids have a circular temple to the sun on the great plain, but this is too small for such a place. "

"Hah!" I shouted. "Temple to the sun? Nothing so tame, Meric! It's a dragon's nest! We're standing in a dragon's nest!"

It was an unkind thing to say to them, and I almost choked with laughter when the colour drained abruptly from their faces and they immediately and instinctively looked around as if expecting to be seized and devoured. I could see instant, total belief in their eyes, and still laughing, I drew my sword and stuck it into the ground at my feet, probing for bedrock. There was practically no soil, except at the centre of the depression, where my blade sank almost to the hilt. I straightened up and sheathed the sword again.

"Come, " I said. "It's late. Next time we come back, we'll bring shovels and dig out the dragon's egg. "

There was still fear on their faces and wild laughter in my belly as I gathered some stones to build a cairn in the middle of the ring. After that, I helped Luceiia to mount before vaulting onto my own horse, and we headed for the crest of the hill with the sun now far down on our left. I had marked the site well. The cairn thrust upward, a finger for tomorrow, marking the location of the skystone that every instinct in my body told me lay buried beneath it.

"We'll be travelling a long way in the dark tonight, " I said, feeling again, for the first time in over an hour, the keen bite of the wind.

"Publius! Look!" It was Luceiia, and I heard awe in her voice as I reined in and turned. The sun was almost gone now, and, shadowed by its dying light, the outlines of five more circles were clearly visible on the hillsides and on the floor of the valley itself. I stared in astonishment and spoke into an almost religious silence.

"Dragons, my friends. " I said. "The place is a colony of dragons. "

XX

I had quizzed Luceiia about the distance facing us on our trip to the Mendips, long before the time came to set out. Her response had been that, according to Meric, the round trip was easily achievable in the space of a day.

It occurred to neither of us that Meric, being a Druid, looked on things like weather, time and distance from a perspective different to most people's. He would walk all night and all day and all night again, to get where he was going, and still not count it a two-day journey if he arrived before the sun rose again.

We had been on the road out for several hours, borne up on the excitement of the journey, before I began to have misgivings about the distance involved, and the length of time it might require. My doubts were fired by Meric's optimistically imprecise answers to such questions as,

"How much further do you think we have to go now?" It became clear to me eventually that the distance — despite the old Druid's protestations — was simply too great to permit an easy return journey in one day. By the time I realized it fully, however, we had been too far from the villa to return for extra supplies. It became a matter of returning home and starting again the next day, or suffering the inconvenience of a long, one-day, two-way trip on this single occasion. Luceiia's had been the final decision. At that time, it had still been a beautiful morning, with not a cloud in sight in the December sky. That changed within the next two hours. The weather grew gloomy and overcast, and on top of that we began to realize that we had underestimated the hardships of the excursion. For myself, I would have minded little, but Luceiia could hardly have been described as a hardened veteran of overland journeys. Meric, of course, was oblivious to all of this. Even so, knowing what we knew, we had still allowed ourselves to overstay our time in the valley, caught up in the hunt. Darkness began to fall quickly as we turned for home, and the rain that had been threatening all afternoon began to fall in earnest, adding to the chill of the biting wind. Meric's sense of direction failed him at one point and we spent almost an hour floundering around on the hillside, leading our horses and in grave danger of falling down inclines that were far steeper than any we had faced on the way up.

By the time we finally made it down from the flank of the last hill, it had been pitch-dark for hours and we were all three soaked to the skin and chilled, it seemed, to the marrow. The rain had become a steady downpour and the wind howled in gusts so violent that our world was reduced to nothing but Stygian blackness and dementing noise. There could not have been three more miserable people on the face of Britain that night, and we were still at least twelve miles from the Villa Britannicus.

Luceiia grasped me by the arm and leaned close to me to shout something into my ear, but so strong and loud was the wind that her words flew off into the darkness without reaching me. I waved and shook my head to indicate that I had not heard her and leaned even closer, angling my plodding horse so close to hers that our legs were pressed together. This time her lips almost touched my ear and I felt her warm breath on my skin, stirring that entire side of my body to goose-flesh, in spite of my chill.

"Shelter, " she shouted. "We have to find shelter quickly! We're hours away from home. "

"I know, " I yelled back. "But where? Do you know where we are?" I could tell from her headshake that she did not, and we must have ridden for another three miles, sodden and sore and half frozen, before Meric suddenly appeared right beside me, waving wildly to indicate a change of direction. The suddenness with which I became aware of his closeness told me that I had been dozing, and the knowledge flared in my mind like a signal-fire warning of danger. I shook my head hard, trying to clear my thoughts, and began paying more attention to what was going on around me.

I had never been out on a more hostile night in all my years with the legions. The blackness was absolute, unrelieved by any gleam of light or any break in the solid cloud above us, and the lancing rain was still being driven relentlessly by a buffeting, icy wind that howled like a pack of hungry wolves. I thought about how long we had been travelling like this and felt a leaden fear grow in me with the realization that any or all of us could die of exposure on a night such as this, in the middle of nowhere without warmth or shelter of any kind. And suddenly, just as that thought occurred to me, the wind died away for the first time in hours, and I could hear again.

"What is it, Meric?" I screamed too loud into the sudden stillness.

"I think I know where we are, but I cannot see enough to be sure. If I am right, there should be a hut close by that will shelter us from the wind, at least. It has no roof. "

"Where? How far?" My heart leaped at the realization that I could see the outline of his shape and the motion of a quick headshake.

"I don't really know. Can't really be sure. If I could see the hills I'd be able to be more certain. " The outline of his shape was growing plainer. I turned and looked at where Luceiia should be and, sure enough, there she was, faint and indistinct but visible. As I saw her outline, the rain began steadily to lessen. I lifted my eyes to the sky and saw the shapes of cloud masses roiling above me.