His eyes slid from the men back to Ardhu, his lord, his friend, and a sudden chill went through him. He had honoured Ardhu before, as a man, and a valorous leader, but here in Khor Ghor he was more than that. Here he was a god, a sacred king, bound to the land, his destiny entwined with the very fate of Prydn. His destiny was in his face, suddenly both old and young; it was in his eyes, the green of the wildwood and the darkness of the tomb.
Awed, An’kelet sank to his knees on the bone-white chalk, his head bowed and his hands pressed to his face in supplication.
Ardhu approached him, his deerskin shoes making no sound on the packed chalk floor of the inner sanctum. “An’kelet of Ar-morah, you come here this day before the Ancestors and powers that move the world of men. Do you swear to renounce all others and follow my path, and join the Comrades of Albu from this day forth and ever after?”
“Lord, I do,” An’kelet said hoarsely.
“And do you swear to be loyal to me, to protect me with the strength of your arm, to honour my wife and any heirs as if they were your own kin, forsaking your own rank or any desire for status of your own?”
“I…I swear it, lord.”
An’kelet hesitated a moment as Ardhu mentioned his ‘wife.’ Fynavir. Briefly her image filled his mind, snow hair and glacier-green eyes, the hint of sadness that always lingered in the girl who had been bartered so many times by her ambitious mother. The maiden said to be a goddess’s child, herself a manifestation of the sacred Land. The White Phantom of birth and death. The Full Moon.
But he must not think of her as anything but Queen. She was Ardhu’s, and he had sworn his oaths to his mother long ago. Shutting his eyes, he sighed then murmured, "You will be as my god, Lord Ardhu, and your lady I will love above all other women—my goddess to worship and protect.”
Ardhu lifted Caladvolc, its long incised blade incarnadine in the failing light. “Then I confer upon you the title of champion of the Circle of Khor Ghor, hero of Prydn. Arise, Lord An’kelet.”
The sword descended, touching briefly the kneeling warrior’s broad shoulders, and then it was taken away and swiftly sheathed.
An’kelet rose, and Art embraced him, suddenly a youth again and not the stern-faced being, lord of life and death, that stood beside the Stone of Adoration, and the men came in and clapped him on the back, and were merry and encouraging indeed.
But Merlin, standing between the tallest two bluestones, looked bleak and wan. He had pushed for this oath-taking, hoping it would deflect the disaster he had read in the bones, but he had heard something in An’kelet’s voice that made him quail anew. //Your lady I will love above all women…//
“I will not let it happen,” he muttered, hands clawing the dark rough side of the stones. “Ancestors, give me strength to stick a dagger through both their hearts should they betray us as I have foreseen!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ardhu and his men reached the outskirts of the great and ancient place known as the Crossroads of the World a few days after the three-week-long feast of Bron Trogran had begun. They had travelled overland from Khor Ghor to Marthodunu, where they rested for several days before journeying onwards, their numbers swelled by locals eager to celebrate the harvesting of the crops. Leaving the huge protective walls beside the gurgling Abona, they continued North, following a line of green ridges where ancient long barrows and abandoned camps kept watch over the changing landscape and the ancient paths that led to Suilven, Crossroads-of-the-World.
Riding along a worn trade-track that had brought men to this area for a thousand years or more, the company first spotted a circular wooden building perched high on the edge of a steep escarpment. It had a vast thatched roof and was circled by a ring of weathered grey stones. Next to it, a line of barrows stretched out along the horizon, ominous against the bright sky. The afternoon was warm and golden, the air thick as honey and shimmering eerily around stones and posts. A fire was burning by one of the stones, casting up a greasy smoke, and people in masks were spiralling in and out, in and out.
One of the lead dancers was a young man who, to Ardhu’s surprise, wore women’s garb: a crescentric jet necklace and big hooped earrings of gold, each with a dangling blue star-bead. Tumbling to his bare feet was a long gown painted with odd symbols—rutting stags, phallic signs, the terrible Mouth of Mother-Watcher as Devourer who all men desire yet fear. His lips were ochred and so too his cheeks, while ashes made his deep eyes smoky and emphasised his brows. People were bowing to him, and touching his robes as if for luck.
Ardhu glanced at Merlin, who rode beside him, rather uneasily, on a small fat pony chosen for its placid nature. “What is this place we can see?” he questioned. “And what are those people doing with that strange half-man? We do not celebrate in this way at Khor Ghor.”
“The temple is the Sanctuary,” replied Merlin. “It is said it was a bone-house in the old times, where the Ancestors would be laid out while the flesh fell from their bodies. It has changed its function many times. Now the priests and priestesses of Suilven use it as a gateway to that hallowed place the Golden-Men called the Crossroads of the World. As for the beautiful boy, he is the Fhir-Vhan, the man-woman. He is both outcast, set apart from the tribe, and holy—he brings both good and bad luck. He embodies the dual nature of all things: day and night, Sun and Moon, male and female.”
The warband approached the Sanctuary and dismounted their horses, bowing before the mighty stones and laying down offerings of meat and drink for the spirits and the priests and priestesses of the temple.
The Fhir-Vhan danced up to the party, waving a rattle made of an infant’s skullcap. He held out his free hand, its fingernails of unseemly length, and gestured to himself. “A cowry shell or amber bead for blessing of the Fhir-Vhan on the Rage of Trogran,” he wheedled.
Ill at ease with this unsettling figure, Ardhu pulled on Lamrai’s reigns, drawing her away. “I don’t want your blessing!” he snapped.
The man/woman’s beautiful face turned ugly, malign. “Then you shall not have it. Nor shall you have children of your loins that will live to come after you, just as I, the Fhir-Vhan, have no living progeny!”
Merlin flung up his hand, making a symbol to avert evil and curses. An’kelet, Bohrs and Per-Adur drew their daggers. The Fhir-Vhan stared scornfully down his long, straight nose at them. “I fear no knife. No Fhir-Vhan lives to see more than one lunar year—death means nothing to me. I already belong to the gods.”
Merlin was the first to make peace. “I crave your forgiveness, Fhir-Vhan. The King…” he stressed the word, "is not worldly in some matters, for he is very young.”
The Fhir-Vhan gave a haughty sniff and turned his back on the party before resuming his mad dance around a cairn of flints that marked, deep below, the ashes of a hundred Fir-Vhans spread over the skeleton of the very first—a young male with the pelvis of a girl placed over his hips.
“No damage was done,” Merlin said to Art, who gestured for his men to sheathe their weapons. “My avert sign shielded you. But by the Sun, Ardhu, keep your mouth in check when you are far from home or you won’t live long enough to bed that fair woman who has bewitched you! Discretion is a lesson you still must learn!”
The warband left the Sanctuary and continued toward the heart of the Crossroads-of-the-World, following a sacred avenue that snaked, serpent-like, across the countryside. It was vastly different from the earthen avenue at Khor Ghor, being lined with rough-hewn sarsen stones, some long and phallic, others broad and shaped like diamonds. Celebrants flitted up and down the line of stones, bowing and praising them, pouring libations at their bases.
At last the Avenue ended. A bank and ditch became visible, immense and glowing white. Cresting its height, Ardhu gazed into a chalk ditch that fell away to such a depth it was as if he gazed down into the very underworld. Beyond was a raised earth platform, and on it three immense circles of unhewn stones similar to those in the adjacent Avenue. In the heart of the far ring stood a setting of t
hree enormous menhirs that represented the mouth of a chambered barrow, its function much like the trilithon arches of Khor Ghor—a place where the spirits could enter or leave the world of the living under proper intercession from the priests and shamans. In the centre of the nearest circle loomed a single mighty obelisk with a tapered point, taller than the Great Trilithon by a man’s height, and garlanded by flowers and fronds. Girls were dancing around it, arms raised to the Sun, and wheat sheaves bound in their hair. Some were naked or partly clad; many seemed to have worked themselves up into a trance as they whirled and writhed to the steady beat of a drum.
The comrades rode back down the bank at Ardhu’s command and began pitching tents amid the other temporary dwellings that sprawled for a mile across the field beyond the sacred space. Once the encampment was made, and the horses and ponies safely tethered in a makeshift corral, Ardhu, accompanied by Merlin, returned to the activities in the great circle. The rest of the men, freed from warriors’ obligations at this happy festival, mingled with the crowds both within and without, some seeking the solace of drink and some of women.
Merlin drew Ardhu toward the entrance of the south circle, fronted by two cyclopean stones, one with a large cleft in it, forming a natural seat. On it sat the most grotesque woman Art had ever set eyes upon. She was short, nearly a dwarf, and old, almost impossibly so, maybe sixty summers. Her face bore ritual scars that deformed mouth and nose, and her wide mouth, distended by a clay plug, was void of teeth. She wore only a loincloth and a swathe of perforated shells that dangled between pendulous breasts heavy as great stones themselves. She was bloated, edemous, her skin painted a livid shade of grey-blue. In one hand she held a sheaf of wheat and in the other a serpent that circled her wrist like a living bracelet.
“Who…or what… is this?” Ardhu hissed to Merlin. He had heard that the Crossroads-of-the-World, especially under its older name of Suilven, Stones of the Eye, was highly attuned to women’s magic, dark and primal. Most men feared this magic, for it was one they would never understand—how women bled but did not die, and how the Moon drank this sacred blood, and how the women let spirits come into them with a man’s seed to be reborn as new babies for the tribes.
“She is Odharna the high priestess,” replied Merlin. “The Old Woman of Suilven, the greatest Old Woman of them all. In her flesh is the spirit of the one we call Ahn'ann, whose paps are the hills, whose Womb is also the Barrow-hill. Mother of Life, bestower of Death.”
The priestess Odharna had spotted Merlin and gave a crowing cry of greeting. “Merlin, Merlin of Khor Ghor, long has it been! Come closer; let me see how many new grey hairs I can count upon your head.”
“Too many I fear, Lady Odharna.”Merlin walked towards her and bowed. “I have had my hands full these many years guiding my young friend here toward his life’s destiny. Among other duties of course.”
“Aye, aye, the boy-king!” Odharna rocked back and forth with mirth. “News has come here of his deeds, the Eye of Suilven is ever watchful across Prydn! Here, bring him closer, let me see him!”
Merlin shoved Ardhu forward; the young man hesitated, disconcerted by this strange figure, who seemed half of the very stone she sat upon. “Ah, don’t be afraid.” She grinned toothlessly, gums flapping. They were stained green-black from some leafy substance she had been chewing. “I shan’t eat you…it’s not the season to eat pretty young men, I am not the blade-toothed Hag till winter!”
Ardhu forced himself to bow to her, using the depth of his bow to avoid looking at her lumpen, clay-coloured body, which reminded him of a bloated corpse. “I like the look of you,” the priestess was saying, while stroking the head of her snake as it coiled about her arm. “Like U’thyr, your father, but without his petulance. Still green though; still a boy in many ways, that much I can see by your demeanour—the fact you cannot bear to gaze into my face. But you will learn in time, you are bright enough.” Her small, fat-enfolded eyes raked over him. “You come here to marry at the feast, do you not?”
“Yes!” he burst out, surprised. “How did you know?”
“There is little I do not know,” she grinned. “I have heard of the party from Ibherna that comes with cattle and gold—but, more precious than that, a woman white as snow. ‘White Phantom’ is her name, and her mother rumoured to be a goddess, and men now say that the daughter is a goddess too, embodiment of the very soul of the land. You’ll have to keep a good eye on her when you get her, lad…for many men would kill to lay with the Sovereignty of Prydn, and gain mastery of this isle.”
Ardhu’s face darkened with sudden apprehension. What a fool he’d been! He should have sent the warband to greet Fynavir and her attendants…
Odharna laughed. “Don’t look so stricken. I have sent out my bowmen to guide the marriage-party safely to the Crossroads-of-the-World. They are still a few days away, but fear not, my men shall see your white lady arrives unmolested.”
Art bowed again, truly grateful. “I am in your debt, High One.”
“I dare say by the end of all things we at Suilven shall be in yours,” the priestess retorted. “So let us say we are even, Terrible Head. Go now, and join the festivities—the games of Trogran have begun this day and there are races and archery, wrestling and the hurling of stones. The fields will come to life, and the corn-woman will walk in her golden dress beneath the dancing Stars …and all will be blessed for another year.”
“But…” She leaned forward, lank hair coiling like black serpents around her enormous mottled bosom, “a warning—most come here for blessing but some for less noble purposes. Darkness walks among us. I can feel its presence. One comes whose heart is black with hate. Milk will sour and the corn fail and women grow barren where this cursed one walks. And it is you she seeks, and hates, above all.”
With that, her great flat head fell forward onto her chest and she drooped against the stone, her mind winging into some great Otherness.
Ardhu and the Merlin walked away toward the city of tents that had sprung up beyond the banks of Suilven. “Merlin, do you think I am in danger?” asked Art.
“You are always in danger,” replied Merlin dryly. "It is a requirement of your position. But yes, there may be added peril here at Suilven. I know the danger that Odharna saw, and hence it is time to tell you… that your family is here at the Crossroads-of-the-World. I saw the colours of Belerion on their tents.”
“Family?” Ardhu’s eyes widened. He had never asked Merlin about any living relatives. He had assumed that, like U’thyr, they were dead.
“Yes, boy, you surely didn’t think you had no kindred at all? I will take you to meet them, and I can assess the situation.”
“I don’t understand. You want me to meet them, yet imply they might be dangerous. Why would they seek to harm me?”
Merlin sighed. “Not all of them wish you ill. Just one. One who is jealous of you and all you have attained. I gazed into her eyes long ago and saw something I feared. She is touched by the spirits, boy; a powerful woman of magic—to be feared more than any man. She is your half-sister, Morigau.”
“My half-sister! I wish you had told me earlier, Merlin. I could have tried to make amends!”
Merlin shook his head. “You cannot make amends. You cannot bring her father back from the dead or restore her position in her mother’s heart.”
Merlin stopped before a tent painted with flanged axes, and gestured to a servant wandering about with a water-jug in her hands. “Fetch your masters and mistresses,” he ordered. “Ardhu Pendraec would meet with his family.”
The woman scuttled away, and Art could hear voices behind the skin flaps of the tent. A few minutes later the hangings were swept aside, and several figures emerged into the summer afternoon. Foremost was a girl who Ardhu immediately guessed must be close kin to him. Her eyes were the same brown-green shade as his, and the planes of her heart-shaped face had a familiar cast. A golden band topped her long near-black hair and she wore woollen robes dyed a rich green—colour o
f death, of the Ancestors in their mounds. Several men and youths of varying heights and sizes emerged from the tent behind her, along with a second young woman holding a crying baby in her arms. She alone of the group had blue eyes, and her hair held the warm hue of an autumn leaf.
“Hail, Ardhu Terrible Head, lord of Stones and hammer of our foes,” said the first woman formally, bowing to Ardhu with utmost grace. “I am Mhor-gan, daughter of U’thyr Pendraec and Y’gerna of Belerion—and your sister. Behind me are your uncles and cousins on our mother’s side, Emys, Baradir, Yltid, and your other sister, Gwyar, who is married to Gorangon of Brig-ahn.”
Ardhu clasped her hands and looked into Mhor-gan’s greenish eyes, filled with sudden joy at this acknowledgement of their kinship. “The Sun’s Face shines on this day of our meeting, sister!” he cried. “Has our mother come with you to the feast?”
Mhor-gan laughed and shook her head. “No, she seldom travels. She has a third husband in Belerion, and prefers to keep away from the intrigues and feuds of her children! Ardhu, lord, come into the tent and all the questions you have shall be answered in time!”
Art let Mhor-gan lead him into her tent. It was cosy and warm, with sheepskins on the floor and bed-spaces laden with furs. An incense-cup burned in a corner, releasing a heady perfume. Mhor-gan offered her brother a beaker of ale and he drank it gratefully in token of their new friendship.
“So, tell me, sister," he said, when he had placed the mug back on the floor. “How have you fared these long years of our separation? Are you wed? Betrothed? And why do you wear the colour of the grave-mound? “
Mhor-gan smiled, long lashes veiling her eyes. “Can you not guess, Ardhu? I am like your friend Merlin, I see beyond the veil into the spirit world. I can speak with the Ancestors, and I know the movements of Moon and Stars and Sun. I can make potions to heal or to kill. I have danced on the hill with the Korrig, the shining ones; hence the folk call me Mhor-gan of the Korrig-han, the faerie, and it is their colour I wear. It is my desire to join the Ladies of Afallan, sisters in my art, and learn more of my craft. Hence I will marry no man. We may well end up as neighbours, brother, for I believe I shall be put under the tutelage of the revered Nin-Aeifa, who dwells in the lake-lands near Khor-Ghor.”
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 22
