'We call it the henge. The ancestors made it when the world was younger. There's a stone in the middle—do you see it?'
'It's hard to miss it.' The stone was almost as big as the boat that had brought Farrum and his men to the island.
'They used to kill people here. They would put them on the stone and slit their throats. The blood would run out and they would drink it. In the time of ago, this was what the spirits wanted.'
'But they don't want it any more?' Bran tried to quell his anxiety. He and Talus had once had a narrow escape from a settlement where ritual sacrifice was still practised. He hoped Creyak really had left the old ways behind.
'So we believe. Nobody comes here any more. People fear it is haunted by the spirits of those who died on the stone.'
Listening to the wind sighing through the sculpted pillars, Bran could believe it. 'And this is the best place you could think of to meet?'
'The henge is my place now. The air here is just right.'
'Just right for what?'
Set between two of the standing pillars—and set partially into the ground—was a small wooden shack. Bran paused in the doorway: this was like the cairn all over again.
'Here.' Lethriel, who'd already entered, called from the darkness inside. 'There are seats.'
Bran took a deep breath and descended rotting wooden steps into a cave-like interior. It was dry and surprisingly warm.
'This way.'
Bran walked towards the sound of her voice, waving his hands in front of him. Something coarse stroked his cheek and he bit his lip to suppress a cry. Then a bony hand took his and pulled him down on to a hard surface.
'Sit down before you bump into something,' said Talus.
Gradually, Bran's eyes adjusted to the gloom. They were sitting in a square pit roofed with gnarled wooden beams. Hanging from the beams were countless bunches of herbs and winter grass, like a summer meadow turned upside-down. It was one of these bunches that had brushed his face.
'I bring my herbs here to dry,' Lethriel explained. 'The old people built it to face the rising sun. It's warm, isn't it?'
Bran looked round uneasily. Warm or not, if people said it was haunted, it probably was.
'Gantor made it safe for me,' Lethriel said. She pointed out a series of supporting columns that clearly weren't part of the original structure. 'It was his gift to me after Caltie died.'
'Caltie?'
Lethriel looked down. 'My man.'
'Did you know Gantor well?' said Talus.
'Yes.'
'Then what happened tonight must have upset you,' Talus said.
'A man has died!'
'Yes. And it has upset you.'
Lethriel picked at the edge of her fur wrap. 'It's a long story.'
'Stories are my business. Will you tell yours?'
'I suppose I will. It's why I brought you here after all. But first I want to ask you something.'
'Ask, then. If it is a question I can answer, I will do so.'
'Are you a good man?'
There was no echo in the little shack; Lethriel's voice just soaked away into the old wooden walls like water into sand.
'I do not know what you mean by "good man".'
A breeze wafted down from the entrance, cool and dry. It seemed to spin in the enclosed space, circling each of them in turn, before fleeing again into the night. Outside, the moaning of the wind grew briefly louder. Bran shivered.
Had Gantor's death been some kind of sacrifice? The thought came to him with sudden, dreadful clarity. Had Gantor known who'd killed his father, and had the killer silenced him before he could speak?
Was Gantor's abandoned spirit even now haunting this ancient wooden henge?
The breeze rustled a string of herbs hanging directly above Bran's head. He bit his lip to stifle a scream.
'I just want to be sure I can trust you,' Lethriel was saying to Talus.
'Nothing I can say will convince you of that,' the bard replied. 'But I will tell you this: I am a man who has come. I am a man who is here. I bring nothing but myself and will take away nothing but myself when I leave. But I will do my very best to leave something behind.'
'You speak strangely,' said Lethriel. 'What will you leave behind?'
'The truth. Will you tell us your story now?'
'Is that what you think this is? A story?'
'Stories are all that we have, Lethriel. All that we are. The time has now come to tell yours.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The moon rose, throwing its rays deep into the little shack. Her face glowing silver in its light, Lethriel began.
'Do you remember I mentioned my man, Caltie? He and Gantor were blood-brothers. They did everything together. I think Gantor was closer to Caltie than he was to any of his real brothers.
They looked so alike. In the last world they must have been twins. They loved each other. They loved me too, both of them.'
'But you loved only Caltie?' said Bran. He could already see where this was going.
'Caltie was my man. Gantor was not.'
'How did Gantor feel about that?'
'If you'd known Gantor, you'd know what a ridiculous question that is.' The arch of her pale eyebrows hit Bran harder than a slap to his cheek.
'How did Caltie die?' said Talus.
Lethriel hitched in a long, shuddering breath. 'It was an accident. A common, careless thing.
Caltie was a great climber. He loved it up here. I suppose that's one reason I still like to come here so much. He knew a hundred different ways up and down the cliffs. He knew them better than anyone.
But it was the cliffs that killed him in the end.
'It happened when he was collecting eggs. It was the perfect job for Caltie. He used to climb down to the gull nests on the west cliff. Each season he'd make it harder and harder for himself, seeking out more and more difficult routes. He always liked to push himself to do better. One day he pushed too hard.'
'He fell?'
Lethriel nodded. 'I was down on the beach. I saw it all. I never usually liked to watch him: it scared me to see him take such risks. But this day ... I don't know, something made me go there.' She swallowed hard. 'It just happened. I took in one breath and he was safe, climbing up to the clifftop with a pouch full of eggs. I took another breath and the rock under his feet crumbled away—the cliffs are dangerous, they always have been. He fell—just fell from the cliff on to the rocks and the sea dragged him to the bottom. He died quickly.' She paused. 'So did I.'
'I'm sorry,' said Bran. She was so like Keyli it hurt his heart to look at her: the fiery colour of her hair, the line of freckles across her nose. Her presence confused him, filled him with passions he'd thought long-forgotten.
'I was sorry too. I still am. But time passed and other men wanted to take their turn with me.
One other in particular.'
'Who?' said Talus. 'If not Gantor?'
Her eyes dropped. She hesitated. 'Fethan.'
'The king's son?' said Bran.
Up came her eyes again. 'The king had many sons, Gantor among them. But Gantor is a better man than Fethan will ever be. Was a better man. They all are. Fethan is the worst of them.'
Her voice had become a snarl.
'We thought at first that it might be Fethan who killed the king,' said Bran. 'Is that why you wanted to talk to us? Do you think that too?'
Lethriel shook her head. 'Not Fethan.'
'Tell us what you think,' said Talus.
She hugged herself. Bran glanced at Talus, but the bard's attention was fixed on Lethriel.
'I've been worried for Gantor for a long time. He is—was—not popular. Not with his brothers, at least. They all think themselves big men, dashing and heroic, hunters and runners, you know. But Gantor was different. He was a thinker, a planner, a man who liked silence and the company of his own heart.'
'May I ask a question?' said Talus. 'How many of the houses in Creyak are Gantor's handiwork?'
'What's that go
t to do with anything?' said Bran. Lethriel shrugged. 'Not the oldest, of course. Some are nearly as old as this henge. People have lived on Creyak since before the hard snows. The old people used to hunt the mammut, or so it's said. There's a sea cave on Creyak where the paintings move with a life all their own. You can get to it from the beach.'
Bran knew of the mammut: the giant tusked beasts that once walked the world but were now gone from it. He'd once seen a mammut skull, but paintings that moved by themselves? Surely Lethriel was making that part up.
'In his life, I suppose Gantor made twenty houses,' Lethriel went on. 'He was very skilled. As you saw, most of the old dwellings here stand empty. Folk would rather live in one of Gantor's houses than out here in the eastern reaches. Gantor knew how to make a home.'
'If his son was so talented,' said Talus, 'why did Hashath choose to live in a house built by someone else?'
'How do you know Gantor didn't build the king's house?' said Bran. All the houses looked the same to him.
Lethriel was smiling, just a little. 'Yes, bard. How can you know such a thing?'
Talus laced his fingers. 'We have been given a house built by Gantor. The bones in its roof have been twisted into a spiral. The spiral shape both pleases the eye and takes out the smoke.
Many of the other Creyak houses I have been able to look into are the same. The king's house is not.
In fact, the smoke does not move well in the king's house at all. Did you not notice that, Bran?'
'It was stuffy,' Bran agreed.
'The problem could be easily fixed: a simple repair to a hanging wooden screen. Something a skilled builder like Gantor could have done in a breath or two, I have no doubt. For some reason he chose not to. Or perhaps the king never asked him.'
'You see much,' said Lethriel.
'I see that Gantor was a lonely man. I see that you and Caltie were his only friends. Gantor was a stranger to his brothers, to his father, to all of Creyak.'
'You speak as if you knew him,' said Lethriel.
'I observed him briefly.'
'It amounts to the same thing,' said Bran.
'His father hated him,' said Lethriel. 'When Gantor offered to build the king a new house, Hashath laughed in his face. Gantor's brothers laughed too. They thought him ... they called Gantor an oaf with fancy ways. Only Cabarrath came close to showing him kindness.'
'You said that Gantor loved you.'
'In his way, yes.'
'But not as deeply as he loved Caltie?' Talus let his words float on the still, dry air. 'Is that why his father despised him? Because he was the kind of man whose heart turns not to women but to other men?'
Lethriel didn't answer. Bran wondered how he could have been so stupid. When Lethriel had said Gantor loved Caltie, she'd been speaking the absolute truth.
'Let us turn our attention to the night the king died,' said Talus. 'What do you believe happened?'
Lethriel took a deep, shuddering breath. 'I know they argued: Gantor and his father. That was nothing unusual. They argued all the time.'
'What was the argument about that night?'
'I don't know. Gantor came to me afterwards. He told me he was never going to speak to his father again. He was crying. But he didn't tell me what they'd said to each other.'
Bran tried to imagine tears on the face of that solid slab of a man who spent his days hewing stone and bending whalebone. It was difficult.
'When he came to me, Gantor was ... he was carrying a bonespike. One of the long ones he used to scribe the stones. He kept spinning it in his hands. I told him to go home and sleep. I told him everything would look brighter in the morning.' She looked first from Talus, then to Bran. The moonlight turned the tears on her cheeks to stars. 'But I don't think it did.' Talus slipped his hand inside his cloak. He brought out the bonespike Bran had retrieved from the cairn. The bonespike that had been used to murder the king. Bran was relieved to see Talus had cleaned the blood from it.
As soon as she saw it, Lethriel let out a cry. 'Where did you find that?'
'That is not important,' said Talus. He held it out. 'A bonespike is a common enough thing.
Do you know this one? I believe you do.'
Lethriel took the bonespike. She traced a trembling finger all the way from the weapon's blunt end to its lethal tip. She turned it in the silver light.
'Here,' she said. She pointed to an engraved mark. Bran peered at it; it looked a little like a bird in flight. 'It's a gull. One of the black ones that haunts the cliffs. It was Caltie's mark. He used to scribe this shape on the rock face whenever he raided a nest. Sometimes he would open his arms and pretend he was about to jump off. He used to boast he could fly. He used to scare me.'
'So the bonespike belonged to Caltie,' said Talus.
'Yes. After Caltie died, I gave it to Gantor. As a memory. He thanked me. It became ... very precious to him.'
'What happened last night?' Talus's voice was barely audible. Outside the shack, the wind moaned.
'I don't know for certain. But after Gantor left me, I think he went back to his father's house.
I think he used the bonespike to kill the king, then dragged his body out into the maze so it would freeze in the snow, and nobody would know who had done this dreadful thing.' Lethriel hitched in a breath, wiped her eyes. 'Gantor was a good man. He came to the feast to honour his father—the man he'd killed—but he couldn't bear it and left early. He must have roamed through Creyak in torture, unable to live with the thought of what he'd done. So he went to the place he knew best and brought those stones crashing down on himself.'
The tears had dried on her cheeks. Despite the softness of the moonlight her skin looked raw, as if the wind had burned it. Her shoulders were square and somehow proud. 'He punished himself for what he had done,' said Talus.
Lethriel showed no sign of having heard him. 'Gantor knew exactly what would be waiting for him in the afterdream,' she said. 'The ancestors, baying for him like wolves. He couldn't bear the thought of living his life in anticipation of that hell, and decided to go to it with open arms. Gantor was always the bravest of them. He had to be.'
'Brave indeed,' said Talus. He lifted the bonespike from Lethriel's limp hand and stowed it away. 'Bran—have I not said to you before that most murders are committed through passion? We should not be surprised that the killer proves to be the king's own son.'
Bran felt deflated. After all the drama he'd witnessed here, the truth seemed desperately ordinary.
'What will I do?' said Lethriel. 'Now they're both gone, what will I do?'
Talus jumped to his feet. His bald head brushed against the hanging herbs and grasses, setting them swinging to and fro. At the same time, the breeze strengthened, making his motley robes flutter around him. Its moaning transformed into a high-pitched whistle.
'You will help us, Lethriel! Tonight you have shown that you are clever. And, like Gantor, you are brave. Bran and I will need your help if we are to track down the real killer!'
Bran and Lethriel gaped at him.
'Talus, what are you talking about?' said Bran. 'She just told us ...'
'Lethriel has told us what she believes. Not what she knows. The two are not the same.'
'Do you mean you don't believe me,' said Lethriel, 'when I say the king was killed by his son?'
'On the contrary,' said Talus. 'I believe that is exactly what has happened. However, I do not believe poor Gantor is the son in question.'
'Then which one of them is?' said Bran.
Talus reached up and plucked a clump of dried grass from the ceiling. He waved it in front of Bran's face.
'The answer lies exactly where such answers always lie,' he said. 'Beneath our noses. Shall we begin?'
CHAPTER TWELVE
Talus busied himself darting from one side of the shack to the other, yanking down bundles of herbs from the ceiling and tossing them on the floor. He was only vaguely aware of the bemused looks on the faces of his companions. The buzzing of his
thoughts had elevated to a kind of screech. He knew from experience that the only way to dampen the sound was to work.
Soon he'd covered the dirt floor with herbs. He hopped among them, kicking here, scuffing there, making patterns from the debris. Every so often he stopped to survey his work. Was it good enough? He supposed it would have to do.
Clapping his hands, he ran outside into the moonlight.
'Talus?' Bran's voice floated out of the shack. 'Where are you going?'
Talus didn't reply. Speaking would only divert him from his task. He picked his way across the frozen grass, scooping up as many stones and pebbles as he could find. When his hands were full, he dashed back inside and dropped his collection in a pile just inside the doorway.
'Do we have to guess what you're up to?' said Bran.
'All will become clear,' Talus replied.
He picked a stone from the pile and placed it beside the nearest bundle of herbs. He took more stones and positioned them at different locations on the floor, some singly, some in groups.
Where necessary, he made adjustments to the arrangement of the herb bundles. When he was done, he stood back with his hands on his hips, assessing his masterpiece.
Lethriel had been watching all this with her mouth agape. Bran was shaking his head. Talus supposed his performance must strike them as odd.
'Now,' he said, 'we can make a start.'
'Talus,' said Bran, 'what you've made is a mess.'
'Be quiet, Bran. Look at the ...'
'At the mess?' Talus waved his hands, exasperated. Why did he always have to explain?
'Wait,' said Lethriel. She rose to her feet and slowly circled the pattern Talus had made on the floor. 'It's not a mess.'
'At last!' said Talus. 'Somebody who knows how to look.'
'Looks like a mess to me,' said Bran.
'No,' said Lethriel. 'It's a picture. This --' she pointed to a bundle of purple heather '-- this is the king's house. And here is where Tharn and Cabarrath live.' She looked at Talus. 'I'm right, aren't I? This is a picture, isn't it? A picture of Creyak?'
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