Circles of Stone

by Ian Johnstone

  The listeners nodded and growled their agreement.

  “But I have been watching. I have surveyed with a caring but careful eye, because I know my fellow humankind. I know that trust is rarely rewarded.” He opened his palms in resignation. “And so it has come to pass. The day has come when our enemy the Merisi and their petty followers have risen against us! When they and the last rabble of the Suhl seek to steal our peace and rob us of our blessings! When they seek to gain dominion over a united world!”

  The mightiest and blackest of the Ghor rose up with a snarl and very nearly surged out of the pool that sustained it. The rest screamed their outrage, shaking their fists with a spray of black slime.

  “Yes, my friends! Heresy!” bellowed Thoth with the terrifying voice of many. “Treason! For are they not created in our image? Do they not live by OUR borrowed light? Are they not our lesser half, our discarded half?” His hands were trembling now as he punched the air and cast his eyes upwards, to his own image. “They must bow to us! Ours shall be the Upper Kingdom, and theirs, the Lower!”

  The black figures threw their arms in the air in unison, shouting out a hacking chant, revering their master, feeding on his rage.

  “Friends, we have prepared well! You know what you must do. Return to your lands! This is our moment to take from the Other what they would take from us!”

  Then he lowered his hooded head and swept his arms wide.

  “Begin the harvest!” he growled.

  “What magic is this that forges wonders from the humble earth and raises cathedrals in the sky?”

  SCARPIA EASED HERSELF DOWN from the broken chariot, and as she did so scores of canine and feline heads bowed into the dust. She snarled and fell on to all fours, spitting at the shattered axle. One of the wheels lay on its side next to the giant stone arch. The other was still attached, spinning at an angle. She whipped around and caught it between her teeth, growling as the timber shattered in her mouth. She prowled on, brushing against the stone as she entered the arch, sniffing the dust where they had disappeared, scratching the surface with her claws. Finally she raised her head, ears back and rapier teeth bared, and screamed her fury.

  She leapt into the air, claws slashing the sides of the stone until she gained purchase, then bounded up. She mounted the top of the arch, rearing high and gazing down at the Circle of Salsimaine, searching for any sign of her quarry. There was nothing but dust and stone. The hairs bristled at the back of her neck and she began to lope along the horizontal stones, padding from one to the next, peering down at every shadow and edifice. When she was satisfied that there was nothing to be done, she accelerated to a sprint, bounding over the final stones to bring her full circle, back to her waiting commanders.

  She rose on to her hind legs and gazed down at them imperiously.

  “Where is the Ray Reaper?”

  There was a moment’s pause while eyes searched and feet shuffled, then the ranks of Ghorhund parted, bowing their heads once again as something passed between them. It was not so much a figure as a presence, an apparition. It could not be called a man, but it moved as one, its indistinct outline appearing to walk with legs that were not there, swinging arms that could barely be seen. Then the moonlight shifted slightly, catching the edges of rotten rags hanging loose from twisted limbs and a narrow, misshapen jaw. The only part of the creature that did not appear covered by these decaying bandages were gaping black holes for eyes and a mouth.

  It did not rush but took its time, clearly unaccustomed to command. As it reached the circle, it paused to look at the chariot and then up at Scarpia’s graceful figure, silhouetted by the moon.

  Scarpia seemed to shrink a little in its presence. “Hathor, reaper of rays,” she said respectfully, “now is our moment of need.”

  The shapeless form was still for a moment, then it inclined its head.

  “Speak your will,” it said in a voice of dust and flames.

  She gestured to the stone circle. “Are you able to open the way between the worlds?”

  The creature threw back its half-seen head and cackled. “Am I able? Able to do the work of a child?”

  Scarpia opened her mouth to reply, but the creature had already turned to the stones. It lowered its rag-ridden head.

  The assembled beasts were still and expectant. Scarpia turned a little to look between the stones.

  Then the Ray Reaper made a sound: a gravelly murmur that became a rasping hum. It could hardly be called a voice – it was made of the sounds of sand against rock, wind over dry grass, the crackle of flames – but somehow these sounds formed a note, and the note became a chant. It was without words or melody, but there were vowels and there was rhythm, and as the moments passed it gained pace and volume and became an incantation: a spell as old as the great circle itself.

  Something began to change. The shadows cast by the stones were moving, creeping over the dust, sliding out across the plain. They did not drift in the same direction, but separately, each shadow seeming to follow its own path as though the moon had split into many moving sources of light. And yet there the moon was, above, still shining bold and bright. Some of the Ghorhund whimpered and took a step back, but their handlers snapped their reins and barked or snarled for silence. All eyes were on the shadows, watching in wonder as they made the ground swim in shifting shades.

  Scarpia purred with delight and lifted her eyes to the heavens. She knew that it was not the shadows that were changing, nor the great circle of stones: it was the light of the moon. Its rays no longer obeyed the laws of Nature. They were a writhing mass, moving around and between one another, turning and bending until they began to gather into a single pillar of light: a deluge of moonbeams.

  There, in the centre of the Circle of Salsimaine, they merged into a pool of light: a pool that soon bubbled and spilled, splaying outwards towards the stones and as it reached them, splashed up like waves against some unseen barrier, filling the arches with a dazzling silver.

  The watching horde at first shrank away, wincing in the fierce light. But soon, as they saw the Circle of Salsimaine bathed in a magical glow even bolder and brighter than was conjured by the human child, they turned and edged forward, sniffing and growling, their pale eyes alive in the fire. Then they raised their hideous heads and howled a triumphant howl.

  Naeo and Ash stood on trembling legs, blinking into the searing light. They still held hands – clinging so tight that it hurt. That was the only way they knew the other was still there in the sudden, dazzling radiance of day. With their other hands, they steadied themselves on the cold stone of the arch.

  As their eyes adjusted they looked around them. They were still beneath the arch of stone, but it was lit by warming rays. The sky above was crystal clear and blue, with only a few scattered white clouds, some of which looked oddly long and straight, like the sweep of a celestial pen across the heavens. All about them were the great stones of Salsimaine, but they looked different. They were still in disarray but they were not shattered or broken, rather they seemed worn, tumbledown, neglected. Their edges and corners were smoothed off or coated in lichen and some had sunk into luscious green grass, as though easing themselves to sleep. Others had disappeared altogether, consumed by the elements or swallowed up by the pasture.

  They blinked and looked down at their feet. Pasture?

  Ash turned to Naeo and took her by the shoulders, his eyes wide with excitement. “I think you did it!”

  Naeo’s face was slack and pale. “I think so too,” she murmured.

  And then she smiled. It was the first time he had seen her smile: her face softened and for a moment she looked as young as she actually was.

  Suddenly there was a movement to one side and instinctively they took a step backwards, retreating between the stones. Then they saw a figure – a human figure – walking directly towards them.

  “Hey! You two!” said the man in a nasal accent. “You’re not supposed to be in here! Get back outside the cordon!”


  Before them was a tubby, stooped man who stared at them with an expression of astonishment and annoyance. He was wearing a peculiarly neat black outfit, with a matching jacket and trousers, a pristine white shirt with a stiff collar and, strangest of all, a brightly coloured strip of fabric hanging round his neck and knotted at his throat.

  Something crackled and barked, and the man coolly reached behind him, unclipped a black box from his belt and brought it up to his mouth, pressing a button on its side.

  “Yes, I’d grasped that, Tasker, I’m with them now,” he said into the box. “They look … well … lost. I’ll bring them out.” He replaced the box on his belt and beckoned to them, his eyes lingering on their rough, crudely woven clothes. “Come on, I’ll show you the way.”

  With that he marched past them and led them back through the arch. As they turned and followed, they saw to their relief no expanse of dust, no baying multitude, no Scarpia. Instead there was another stretch of grass and then a crowd of people gathered on what looked to be a walkway skirting the outside of the stones.

  The people were quite the oddest that Ash and Naeo had ever seen. They wore a startling array of colours, of all kinds of fabrics, shapes and styles. Some wore what looked like blue trousers, which looked far too tight to be comfortable, while others sported dazzling white footwear marked with garish designs. Many held up more little black boxes, but not to their ear as the young man had done, and instead to their eye or to their face. It was all quite unsettling. Naeo and Ash stayed close to one another as they followed the official.

  “You’ll have to keep to the path, like everyone else,” said the official, raising his voice so that the onlookers could hear. They parted to make room.

  As Naeo stepped between the people, many regarded her with apparent distaste. She had a cursory look at herself and saw why: next to the sharp colours and bright whites of the strangers’ garb, their own drab, ill-fitting clothes looked very strange indeed. To make matters worse, they were also splattered with mud and caked in the dust of the Barrens.

  As soon as the official moved away, Ash pulled Naeo to one side. “We should get away from here before they ask questions,” he murmured in her ear. He nodded out past the stones. “North. They said we should go North, along the river.”

  They had to push through a large gathering of children who seemed oblivious to them, largely because each seemed to be listening to some kind of contraption clamped over their head, covering both ears. As they passed they could just make out tiny little voices muttering and squeaking into the children’s heads: it was all too bizarre and they pushed through as quickly as they could. As they emerged, they had to step past a middle-aged woman who seemed to be their teacher. She wore the oddest hat, which seemed to have flowers growing from its brim, but she looked at Ash and Naeo as though they were the freakish ones and drew one of the children away, as though shielding him from barbarians. Ash instinctively smiled and nodded, but the flower-topped woman regarded him through narrow, distrustful eyes and hurried the child away.

  They rushed on, drawing clear of the last of the crowd and setting out along the pathway that curved off around the great stone circle. But just a few paces later, having checked that no one was watching, they stepped off it, heading out across the grassland. Soon they were jogging down the hill towards open fields.

  “Oi, you!” It was a male voice, somewhere behind them. “Stop!”

  Ash grabbed Naeo by the arm. “Run!”

  They sprinted off as fast as they could, bounding over the soft pasture towards a row of chest-high posts that ran across their path.

  “Hey!” came the voice again, more urgent now. “You can’t go that way!”

  In the same moment, they both pulled up, slapping their feet down in the turf. They had almost run headlong into what looked like a giant spider’s web. There were long, silvery strands between the wooden posts and whatever creature had made it had left nothing to chance: the lines were woven together with incredible precision, regular and equally spaced, with no gap large enough for a person to pass. Ash reached out and touched it tentatively, snapping his fingers away as soon as they came into contact.

  “It feels … cold,” he said, bewildered. Then he reached out again and ran his fingers along one of the pale filaments. “Like metal.”

  They both cast a dismayed glance along the web. It stretched all the way around the stone circle. At its top, two horizontal strands threw out jagged barbs to catch anyone who tried to scale the boundary.

  “What did I tell you?” came the voice again.

  Ash took a couple of paces back from the fence and threw his arms out towards it, his brow furrowed with concentration. His hands began to shake, but nothing happened.

  Naeo turned at him. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “We’ve only just got here and you’re already breaking your promise!”

  Ash showed no sign of giving up. “Just a little Urgolvane! But it’s strange. It seems … harder here.”

  In front of him the mesh bowed a little and started to glow a feint red, as though heated to an extreme temperature.

  “You can’t, Ash!” said Naeo, moving in front of the fence and pulling his arms down. “It’s not safe! Remember what Filimaya said – even Essenfayle isn’t—”

  They heard someone striding up behind them and the distinctive sound of jangling keys. “Oi! Cloth-ears! What do you think you’re up to?”

  They turned and saw their pursuer standing with his hands on his hips. He was wearing the same uniform as the other official, but his was immaculate and it was finished with shiny black shoes. He was a young man of small build, standing little taller than Naeo, but he carried himself with confidence, shoulders back, feet planted well apart. His features were equally bold, with a strong jaw, a handsome, animated face and bizarrely styled dark hair that rose in carefully arranged, architectural tufts.

  He seemed to size them up in a moment and his attention had already moved on to the fence, which was still bulging a little in the middle and retained the barest traces of a glow.

  His brow furrowed, his gaze returning to the intruders and passing quickly over their clothes, their dirty faces, their bags. “Let me see your tickets.”

  Naeo adjusted the crossed sticks in her hair. “Tickets?” she said, as if it were a strange question.

  The young official cocked his head on one side. “You don’t have tickets, do you?”

  “We got a bit lost,” said Ash, with a carefree laugh. “We didn’t mean to come here at all. We just stumbled into it, really.”

  The official raised an eyebrow. “You were just wandering around Salisbury Plain and you stumbled into Stonehenge?”

  Ash shifted his gaze past the stone circle and saw an endless rolling horizon of open grassland, as vast and open as the Barrens. He should have given that a little more thought.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he said, turning back to the young man’s forensic stare.

  For a moment the two just held each other’s gaze, weighing each other up, each refusing to look away first.

  Then, without dropping his eyes, the official reached to his belt and unclipped the little black box.

  “Wait a minute,” said Ash, panicking, “we really haven’t broken any …”

  He stopped. The young man did not raise the black oblong to his mouth, instead he swapped it between hands and clipped it on to the other side of his belt. He rummaged in a hidden pouch and brought out something small and green, which he unfolded and slipped over his fingers, pulling it up over his wrist.

  Ash and Naeo knew it in an instant.

  The young man’s face broke into a smile, revealing for the first time a bright golden tooth. He stretched out his hand in greeting – a hand clothed in a beautifully embroidered green glove.

  “You’re … Merisi?” breathed Naeo.

  The stranger grinned and nodded. “The name’s Jem Tasker,” he said, shaking her hand, “but everyone just calls me Tasker.”

&nbs
p; After all the silence, the long dark quiet, it was almost more than the man could bear. It was a deafening cacophony: a rage of noise. There was the scraping of claws against rock, the rasp of snarls and barks, the chink, chink, chink of chainmail. It seemed an endless procession, marauding down the broad passageway, some of them at an urgent march, some running and jostling, pounding the flagstones, making them shake and thunder. The echoes only made it worse, capturing the sound and throwing it back again and again and again.

  He curled into a ball and waited for it to be over.

  And eventually, it was. The rampage of an army became the lope of a trailing few, and finally there were just the echoes whispering down the empty passageway. He lay there for some time, he could not tell how long – time had long since lost its meaning. He knew only the unending dark and the silence. And what he had to do.

  He pressed his delirious mind to action, working to remember his limbs, numb and remote, as though no longer part of his body. He pushed back the tide of weariness, and he moved. He pushed an arm that was not his out of his hiding place and paused. He breathed in shallow gasps, face into the stone, collecting himself for the next push. He closed his eyes and prayed to Merimaat for hope, to Isia for courage, and then he struck out with the barest remembrance of shoulders, the dream of legs and toes.

  He felt the flagstones slide beneath him, the cold grit biting into his face, and he was glad of the pain. It meant he was on the move. It meant he was alive.

  “In the end, there is little difference between the wonders of magic and wonders scientific.”

  SUDDENLY, AFTER EVERYTHING, NAEO’S heart failed. She gazed into the tunnel entrance and it was like peering over a precipice. Her head swam and she struggled for her breath.

  “I can’t,” she said, flatly.

  Tasker regarded her coolly. “This is the way out.”

  “I won’t!” she said, closing her hands into fists.

  Ash raised his hand to stop Tasker from saying more. “Just give her a moment,” he said quietly.