Stonehenge (36 page)

Oxen hauled the boats and the sledges over the hills to the east-flowing river where the boats were relaunched and the stones reloaded, and Lewydd then took the fleet east until they came to Mai’s river up which he poled the stones to Ratharryn.

And there he had left the stones. He had split his big boats into their three hulls and had retraced his steps, dragging the boats across the watershed and relaunching them in the Sul, but when he reached that river’s mouth the winter had struck cold and hard and he had not dared come home across the bitterly turbulent sea and so he had waited at the Sul’s mouth until the weather relented.

Now he and all his men were home. The first stones were in Ratharryn. And Saban wept because Cagan was dead and burned, but also because there would be joy on earth. The temple was being moved.

Aurenna’s second child was a girl, and Aurenna called her Lallic, which meant “the Chosen One” in the Outfolk tongue. Saban was not happy with the name at first, for it seemed to impose a destiny on the child before fate had had a chance to decide her life, but Aurenna insisted and Saban became used to it. Aurenna never again conceived, but her son and her daughter grew healthy and strong. They lived by the river and Leir could swim almost before he could walk. He learned to paddle a boat, draw a bow and spear fish in the river shallows. And as the brother and sister grew they watched the stones go past their hut toward the sea.

It took five years to move them all. Lewydd had hoped to do it in less, but he would take his cumbersome fleet to sea in nothing less than perfect weather, and one year no stones were moved at all and the year after it was only possible to make one voyage, but when the boats did set out the gods were kind and no more stones were lost and not one man was drowned.

Lewydd brought news back from Ratharryn, telling how the temple was being remade and how the war between Lengar and Cathallo went on. “Neither side can win,” Lewydd said, “and neither side will give in, but your brother believes that the temple will bring him good fortune. He still thinks it’s a war temple.”

One year he brought news that Derrewyn had given birth to a child.

“A daughter,” Saban said.

“You heard?” Lewydd asked.

Saban shook his head. “I guessed. And she’s well?”

Lewydd shrugged. “I don’t know. I just heard that your brother’s priests put a curse on mother and child.”

That night Saban went to the sun-bride’s temple in Kereval’s settlement and buried his mother’s amber pendant beside one of the stones. He bowed to Slaol and asked the god to lift Ratharryn’s curses from Derrewyn and her daughter. His mother, he knew, would forgive him, though whether Aurenna would be as understanding he did not know: when she asked him what had happened to the amulet he pretended its sinew had broken and that the amber had fallen in the river.

It was in springtime of the fifth year that the very last stones of the Temple of Shadows were brought down the river. There were only eleven of the dark pillars left and all were hoisted on to their triple-hulled boats and floated downstream to a mooring off Aurenna’s settlement. Lewydd was eager to carry the final cargo eastward, but both Scathel and Kereval wanted to accompany the stones because, with the safe delivery of the last boulders, Sarmennyn’s side of the bargain would be fulfilled and Lengar must yield the rest of Erek’s treasure. Scathel and Kereval wanted to be present when the treasures were restored to their tribe and they insisted that a small army of thirty spearmen travel with them and it took time to collect the food that those men would need.

No sooner had the extra boats been provisioned than the wind turned sharply into the east to bring cold squalls and short, steep seas. Lewydd refused to risk the boats and so they waited in the river, bucking on their moorings under the impact of the gusting wind and changing tides. Day after day the wind stayed cold and when at last it turned into the west it blew too hard and still Lewydd would not take the fleet to sea.

So they waited, and one day toward the end of spring, on a day in which the wind howled at the tree tops and broke white in shattering spume against the cliffs, a boat appeared in the west, coming from the land across the sea. The boat was manned by a dozen paddlers who fought the storm. They shrieked at it, bailed their boat, paddled again, cursed the wind god and prayed to the sea god and somehow brought their fragile boat safe past the foam-shredded headland and into the river. They drove their hull upriver against the tide’s ebb, too angry to wait for the flood, and they
chanted as they paddled, boasting of their victory over the storm.

The boat brought Camaban back to Sarmennyn.

He alone had showed no fear at sea. He alone had not bailed, paddled, cursed, nor chanted, but had sat silent and serene, and now, as the boat grounded at Aurenna’s settlement, he stepped ashore with apparent unconcern. He staggered slightly, still expecting the world to pitch and rock, then walked to Aurenna’s hut.

At first Saban did not recognize 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 midmorning 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 center 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 recognize 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 toward 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.”

Saban said nothing, though he did glance at Lewydd to see how he would respond to the thought of fetching more stones from the mountains.

Aurenna closed her eyes and swayed back and forth. “It is a temple to Erek,” she said softly, “but it is being built to draw him
back to Modron” – Modron was the Outfolk name for Garlanna – “so we should send one stone for her. One great stone to replace the three that were lost.”

“We could fetch one more stone from the mountain,” Lewydd said grudgingly.

“Not from the mountain,” Aurenna said, “but from here.” In the morning she showed Lewydd the greenish boulder beside the river where she and Saban liked to sit, the great stone with shining flecks and pink sparkles embedded in its heart. The mother stone, Aurenna called it, for it lay in mother earth’s dark grip while the rest of the boulders had been plucked from the hanging valley in Erek’s sky.

It was vast, that mother stone, twice the weight of the heaviest of the temple’s pillars, and it lay deeply embedded in the grassy bank. Saban stared at the stone for two days, trying to work out how to shift it, then he and Mereth went into the woods and found six tall trees that they chopped down. They trimmed the trunks into smooth poles, then cut them into eighteen shorter lengths.

Next day they lifted the mother stone from the earth with levers of oak. Saban dug deep on either side of the stone, scraping holes like badgers’ setts far under the rock, and the levers were thrust down into the earth and then, with six men on either side, the front end of the rock was heaved up. It came reluctantly, and men had to scrabble the earth away from beneath the boulder to free it from the soil’s grip, but at last it lifted and Mereth could thrust one of the short rollers under the stone.