“That would be a happy day; great is the wisdom of my sister Mhor-gan! But tell me more…” He gazed into her eyes, probing. “You introduced me to uncles and cousins, and to my younger sister, Gwyar. But there is one more, isn’t there? One who is not as the rest. What of our older half-sister, Morigau?”
Mhor-gan toyed uncomfortably with a clay amulet around her neck. “Our half-sister…I suppose you had best know, for knowledge can give protection. Morigau hates us both, Ardhu. You for ‘stealing;’ her father and her mother; me, for being gifted with the shaman’s art. She has powers too, perhaps even greater than mine, but Morigau is blighted, Ardhu, cursed. All she touches goes awry, bringing grief to her and those around her.”
“I feel pity for her,” said Art. “I would not see her sundered from us if a friendship can be forged.”
Mhor-gan shook her head vigorously. “Hatred is what she lives on, Ardhu; it is her life’s blood. She will never be your friend. She is about to be married, even as you are... to your enemy, Loth of Ynys Yrch.”
Art spluttered in range. “Loth! How did this come about?”
“The moment Morigau heard that he disputed your claim to kingship, she travelled the length and breadth of the land, risking her life in hostile territories to reach his lonely isle. Obviously Loth was impressed by her tenacity…and other things.” She laughed bitterly. “Like our mother, Morigau has many charms that certain men find irresistible!”
Ardhu shook his head. “Bitterness between kin is an evil thing. If she is so twisted that no hand of friendship can be offered, then I am glad she will be in the cold north with that bastard, Loth. I have sworn to kill him if he should ever cross into Albu, and I make no idle threats.”
“But dare you ban Morigau from the south, too? How the tribes would laugh—the great king Ardhu fearful of a woman, and his sister, no less! Morigau is clever; she is well aware of how things stand, and will use it to her advantage.”
Ardhu frowned and stroked his chin. “You speak troubling words, sister.”
“Forgive me,” Mhor-gan said. “But you need to know the truth. But come, smile again, is it not true your bride is on the way to Suilven? Soon you shall be together. Surely that thought will help dispel the gloom brought by Morigau’s hate!”
Ardhu reached forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “You are a wise woman indeed. I will turn my thought to what will be, rather than what may be. For all we know, once Morigau weds Loth, she may never again set foot beyond the frigid north!”
“We can hope,” said Mhor-gan, lady of the Khorrig-han. “Hope is the best we have.”
*****
Later that night, Ardhu emerged from the tent and went alone into the great circles that made up the Crossroads-of-the-World. Fires roared between jagged sarsens, and the figures of frenzied dancers cast strange shadows over the trampled grass. In the far circle, wailing women were carrying skulls and jawbones in and out of the three-stoned cove. A priestess hunkered down, naked, head lolling and eyes rolling as she invoked spirits she alone could see. Around her other revellers danced, reaching their hands up to the great Cross-of-Stars that was rising over distant Hakh-pen hill.
Ardhu glanced around, hoping to spot some of his men, or the Merlin, but he had not seen any of them since he had gone to speak with Mhor-gan. No matter—they had served him well these past months, and it was their right to join the great feast of the Harvest as much as any other.
Ardhu noticed a flurry of people leaving the main circles and processing down a secondary avenue of stones that branched out toward the night-shrouded West. The revellers chanted and waved torches, and a hot, smoky lust burned in the eyes of both men and women, repelling and yet intriguing the young chieftain. He let himself be carried along with the flow of people, the river of humanity streaming out along the row of sarsens.
At the end of the avenue the surging crowd slowed, pooled. Art threaded his way through the heaving mass to see what was happening. Dimly lit by the torches, he spotted another mighty stone cove, and beyond it the dark hump of a large, ponderous long barrow.
In the heart of the cove a rite of the harvest was taking place. A figure wrapped round with wheat-sheaves danced wildly in the flickering torchlight, weaving and winding between the sarsens, casting handfuls of grain over the onlookers. A man, naked except for a bull’s head mask, pursued the figure. He was painted with stripes, and in his hand he brandished a flint sickle, honed and deadly, an ancient relic handed down from generations past. He chased the Dancer-of-the-Wheat-Sheaves in a rough, clumsy dance of his own, hewing at the air with his sickle and stamping and bellowing like a real bull.
Art sat down cross-legged in the grass alongside other onlookers. A huge drinking vessel was being passed around. Ardhu drank deeply, mimicking those around him. The mead in the brimming pot rushed to his head almost instantly, and in a flash he realised it was drugged.
His stomach contracted. He was a king, not a priest…he did not seek to get closer to the gods by the taking of potions. He went to rise, to make his way back to the encampment, but hands reach out to pull him down.
Two young men about his own age were tugging on his cloak. “You…you’re Ardhu of Khor Ghor, are you not?” one asked. “The Young King? Surely you won’t leave before the dance is over? Your blessing would surely make the crops grow stronger next year.”
Art flopped clumsily back into the grass. “Who are you?”
“Friends. Admirers. We have heard much about you. I am Ack-olon.” A youth of middling height with a broad, confident face stepped forward and gave a short bow. “And this is my friend, La’morak.” He gestured to the other youth, smaller and less stocky, his tawny curls braided with feathers. “Would you care to share our drink and food? It would be an honour.”
Ardhu did not know how he should respond. His head was light from the draught of tainted mead, and the thought of not being quite himself made him uneasy, but if he refused the lads’ hospitality, it might be bandied about that he was high-handed and thought himself too good for people outside of his band. He wished now that he had consulted Merlin before blundering off and joining in the celebrations. Or maybe taken An’kelet with him.
A brimming beaker was being pushed into his hands by La’morak. “Drink, my King! First taste to you, the wielder of the sword from the stone, who has so bravely fought our enemies.”
Ardhu drank, the thick, cloying mead running down his chin.
“And more!”Ack-olon shoved another beaker his way, this one full of frothy ale.
Again, he downed it, all too aware of the hot eyes of the youths on him. Surely, this was some sort of a test by these two young warriors—seeing if he, younger than they, could compete with them in the man’s world of the feast.
A sudden shout from the cove drew his attention away from his companions. The Dancer-of-the-Wheat-Sheaves was twirling within reach of the vicious flint sickle, and the bull-headed man was hewing frenziedly at the golden coat. Suddenly he nicked a strand of twine binding the sheaf and the whole casing tumbled away, showering onto the onlookers, who grasped at the tendrils and took them for luck.
Where the Wheat-Dancer had been was a young girl, naked save for her streaming red hair. Her eyes were huge, the pupils swollen with mushroom-potion, looking inwards to otherness and emptiness. Her lips moved faintly in invocations as she reached towards the bull-masked man.
A priest in a conical bronze headdress emerged from the crowd and tied plaited strands of wheat around the two, binding them together. The masked man cast away his sickle and grabbed the girl to him, all lust and fury, with no gentleness. She met him in like passion, clawing his bare back with her nails, crying out wordlessly toward the hag-face of old Mother Moon as She soared overhead, a bent crescent heading West to the land of the Dead.
Together they fell onto the trampled ground, coupling like beasts before the assembled celebrants. The priest with the tall bronze hat and seven acolytes danced wild rings around them, offering up the ja
wbones of those whose spirits they hoped would be reborn and casting down carved chalk balls that symbolised the fertility of man and beast. The onlookers cried out, moaning and shrieking along with the pair on the ground; men and women started to pair off and run out into the darkness, tearing at their clothes, their eyes full of Moon-madness and unbridled desire.
Hot blood rushed to Ardhu’s face. He had never seen rites like this before. He knew of course how it was between the sexes; he was not ignorant. But he had grown up in a small homestead of a widower, and if Ech-tor had women, he had met with them on his trading journeys when Ka’hai and Ardhu were left at home to mind the forge and tend the animals. Then, since his coming of age he had been in the Merlin’s care, and until he met Fynavir had hardly so much as spoken to a girl…
The youth called Ack-olon nudged him in the ribs. “Surely that should be you there with the Corn-Maiden, since you are King,” he said, his voice an insidious whisper. “That’s how it was in the old days. The King mates with the Lady who is the Land.”
“I have a woman…I am to be married during the feast,” said Ardhu. He cursed himself inwardly even as he spoke. He had been foolish, naive. His companions’ behaviour had gone beyond harmless testing; their eyes were glittered with amused malice, and their whole demeanour reeked of arrogance and impudence. They had some grudge with him. He knew the sensible thing to do would be to retreat into the milling crowds before any more trouble found him.
But La’morak had hold of his arm, his fingers like a vice. “Surely you should have her here, this night. It is only right that you, as King, should make the great marriage with your Queen.”
Ardhu groped at his left boot, seeking Carnwennan in its hidden sheath, and then remembered, with a sinking feeling, that he had left it at the encampment along with Caladvolc, obeying the rule that forbade weapons in the circles of Suilven. He began to struggle, but the drugs in his first bowl of mead and the alcohol in the second and third made his head whirl and his knees and arms jelly-like and weak. He struck out at La’morak and missed, plummeting forward onto his belly on the ground.
He could hear the two young men laughing, and he tensed, half expecting to feel fists rain down on him, or even weapons…but then a figure came drifting out of the darkness, as if from some shadowy dream, a figure that swayed towards him, hands beckoning, dancing on delicate feet, bringing welcome memories and a shiver of both fear and desire.
The dancer was wearing a heavy wooden mask carved into the semblance of a raven with a long bone beak and eyes of glittering jet. A vast cloak made of hundreds of shining black feathers floated around the figure, rustling in the rising breeze.
Leaning over Ardhu, the dancer tapped him sharply on the shoulder with the beak of the bird-mask. The feather cloak briefly parted and he caught a tantalising glimpse of white flesh beneath.
Art started to grin, a silly, lecherous, drunken grin. Surely, surely no girl would know to dance for him in such a way…except Fynavir. Fynavir the White Phantom, who had danced in her foster-father’s halls for him and awoken the fires in his loins. She must have arrived sooner than expected and devised this strange meeting, though he had no idea why she would play such games with him. He knew so little of women! Maybe this teasing game of courtship was part of her people’s tradition; in foreign parts tribes did things differently—in Fynavir’s homeland of Ibherna, he’d heard it was even usual for a king to mate with a white mare, which was then sacrificed and boiled into a broth. He was glad such an act would not be required of him; he fancied girls not horses!
La’morak smirked and pulled Ardhu roughly to his feet, pushing him in the direction of the masked woman. “Your Queen awaits, King Ardhu," he said, his voice husky, harsh, tense with excitement. “The one bound to you in life, in death. Go to her, the Great Queen, and know your destiny.”
Ardhu stumbled toward the raven-woman. He tried to lift off her heavy mask, but she caught his hand, and instead drew it under her cloak, pressing it against hot, bare flesh, a conical breast that, oddly, made him think of the shape of a grave-mound.
He almost cried out with surprise at the jolt of fire that ran from head to crotch, but she laid a calming finger against his lips. “Come, come with me,” she whispered, and she drew him away from the firelight illuminating the cove, and out into the shadows of the darkened fields, away from La’morak and Ack-olon, away from the celebrating people of Suilven.
Beyond the firelight, there was total darkness save for the stars. To the left Ardhu could see the vague silhouette of a mighty stepped hill, an earthen pyramid shaped like a barrow but much larger than the tomb of any man. It was the Hill of Suil, the Wise Eye, one of the wonders of Prydn, and a Tomb of Tombs that held no mortal bones. Some said it was the sepulchre of the Sun in Winter, others that it was mighty Ahn’ ann’s own body, from which she birthed the holy springs that rose nearby to join the Head River Khen. Some gave the Winter Sun a name; they called him Zhel, and said he was Ahn’ann’s son, and that when he died on the shortest day he was buried in a golden coffin in his Mother’s earth-womb to await rebirth as young, virile Bhel, the Sun of Summer.
But to Ardhu, wandering through that dead land with the raven-cloaked woman, he could think only that it resembled one thing—the great white breast of a goddess, caressed by the four winds and the wavering starlight. A giant replica of the warm, living flesh his questing hand had touched. Cold chills ran down his spine, but fire leapt up in him too, a primal heat that matched that of the man who played the corn-king at the Cove.
“Where are we going?” he asked his companion, trying once again to get a look under her concealing mask.
“You’ll see, my king,” came the muffled voice. “Not far now and then…” She swirled her feather cloak, revealing for one second the pointed hills and dark valleys of the tempting flesh beneath. “Your desire and your destiny will become one!”
They walked further and the night deepened. The noise from the great henge was a mere buzzing on the wind. Rounding the flanks of the Hill of the Eye, the raven-woman set off across country, crossing the sacred stream of Suil and hastening for the hilltop above. Ardhu followed silently, wanting to rip away that cloak, to fall with her into the furrows of the fields, and to give up the last vestiges of his childhood in her arms. To become one with her as the Sun became one with the Earth, quickening the crops and all nature to life.
Nearing the top of the rise, he spotted a finger of stone, a dark hummock with the fading Moon hanging over its end.
A long barrow.
It was the mightiest structure of its kind that Art had ever seen. On the Great Plain most of these early burial mounds, some already two thousand years old, were mere earthen piles, their wooden mortuary houses, once draped with the hides of oxen, long collapsed and decayed. But here, the barrow had chambers and forecourt of stone, and at the front of all was a great, wide, sealing stone, its threatening bulk seeming to shout ‘I forbid!” into the darkness.
The lust in him almost died away in the presence of that stern, frowning Ancestor-stone. This was a place of haunts and shadows, not a bed for lovers to lie in.
The woman at his side noted his hesitation and slid her arms around his waist, rubbing herself against him. “Don’t be afraid!” she whispered in his ear, nipping the lobe with sharp little teeth. “Here the spirits can bless our union. Here a great Ancestor might come into me even as you will, and breathe soul into a child in making.”
Ardhu flushed. He had not even thought of that possibility. But how good would that seem to the people, not only leader and conqueror, but founder of a new dynasty of kings…!
He let himself be led around the stony fangs of the forecourt to the blocking stone. There was a gap between it and the arched roof of the cairn, and Raven-woman wriggled into it effortlessly, again giving him a tantalising glimpse of white legs and smooth buttocks.
He followed all too eagerly.
The night wind shrieked over the hill as if laughing at the foll
y of a lust-blinded young man.
*****
Ardhu awoke early the next morning in a tangle of bones…and living arms and legs. Daylight was filtering dully through gaps around the blocking stone. He stared. On either side in niches were stacks of bones, skulls in one place, long bones in another. Empty eyeholes regarded him. Their owners were long dead, but the air smelt damp, foul, still retaining the hint of death and decay.
Tearing his gaze away, he stared at the woman sprawled next to him. She lay curled on her side, naked on the feather cloak, but still wearing the bird-mask. She had refused to take it off during their love-making, and he supposed, as before, that this was some strange custom of her people, so he dared not press her too far.
But now, the union was done…morning had come and she need not hide any longer. He crawled closer to her, taking in the curve of her hips, the small but perfect breasts which had been painted with ritual signs, now smudged by hands and lips. She was thinner than he had imagined she would be, and darker-skinned, though it was hard to tell through the paint and dirt from the floor of the cairn.
Lovingly he reached out to remove the clumsy mask, to free the Moon-white hair and kiss the pale full lips of Fynavir…
A lock of midnight-black hair tumbled over his hand.
His heart began to thud against his ribs. What madness was this?
Less gently, he pulled the mask away.
And looked into a dark, fine-featured face that was a feminine copy of his own visage. Greenish eyes, wide-set and knowing, regarded him with amusement. A small but sensual mouth, red and languid, smiled.
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 23
