“Poor Saban,” Derrewyn said. She leaned her head against the tree. “You should have been chief of Ratharryn, then none of this would ever have happened.”
“If you go south,” Saban said, “you should be safe.”
“I doubt I will ever be safe,” she said, then began to laugh. “I should have given Camaban his stones when he asked for them. He came to me last summer, at night, secretly, and begged me for stones.” She grimaced. “Do you know what he offered me for the stones?”
“Peace?” Saban suggested.
“Peace!” Derrewyn spat the word. “He offered more than peace, Saban, he offered me himself! He wanted to marry me. He and I, he said, were the two great sorcerers and between us we would rule Ratharryn and Cathallo and make the gods dance like hares in the springtime.”
Saban stared at her, wondering if she spoke the truth, then decided that of course she did. He smiled. “How my father’s sons do love you,” he said.
“You loved me,” Derrewyn said, “but Lengar raped me and Camaban fears me.”
“I still love you,” Saban blurted out, and he was far more surprised at his words than she was. He blushed, and felt ashamed because of Aurenna, but he also knew he had spoken the truth, a truth he had never really acknowledged in all the years. He stared at her and he did not see the gaunt drawn face of Cathallo’s sorceress, but the bright girl whose laughter had once enraptured a whole tribe.
“Poor Saban,” Derrewyn said, then flinched as pain lashed up her leg. “It should have been you and I, Saban, just you and I. We would have had children, we would have lived and died and nothing would ever have changed. But now?” She shrugged. “Slaol wins, and his cruelty will be loosed on the world.”
“He is not cruel.”
“We shall see, won’t we?” Derrewyn asked, then she opened her cloak to show Saban the three gold lozenges hanging from a leather thong about her neck. She raised one of the small gold pieces to her mouth, bit through its sinew, then held the shining scrap out to Saban. “Take it,” she said.
He smiled. “I don’t need it.”
“Take it!” she insisted and waited until he obeyed. “Keep it safe.”
“I should give it back to Sarmennyn,” he said.
“For once,” she said wearily, “don’t be a fool, because in time you will want my help. Do you remember Mai’s island?”
He nodded. “Of course I remember it.”
“We lay beneath a willow tree there,” she said, “and it has a fork in the trunk just higher than a man can reach. Leave the gold piece in that fork and I shall come to your aid.”
“You will help me?” Saban asked, gently amused, for Ratharryn had won this day and Derrewyn was now nothing but a fugitive.
“You will need my help,” she said, “and I will give it when you ask. I shall become a ghost now, Saban, and I shall haunt Ratharryn.” She paused. “I suppose Camaban wants my daughter dead too?”
Saban nodded. “He does.”
“Poor Merrel,” Derrewyn said. “Camaban won’t find her, but what life can I give her now?” She fell silent and Saban saw that she was crying, though he could not tell whether it was from grief or pain. He went and cradled her head in his arms so that she sobbed on his shoulder. “I do hate your brothers,” she said after a while, and then she took a deep breath and gently pulled away from him. “I shall live like an outlaw,” she said, “and I shall make a temple to Lahanna deep in the forests where Camaban will never find it.” She held her hand out to him. “Help me up.”
He pulled her to her feet. She moaned as she put her weight on her wounded leg, but she waved away Saban’s help then called for her spearman. It seemed she would leave without saying any farewell, but then, abruptly, she turned back and kissed Saban. She said nothing, just kissed him a second time then limped southward through the trees.
Saban watched until the leaves hid her, then closed his eyes because he feared he would weep.
* * *
There would be so many tears that day. The avenue of stones was thick with bodies, many with skulls crushed by axes or clubs, and still more with missing heads. But there had been so many heads to take as trophies that, after a while, the bodies were no longer decapitated and some heads had even been discarded by the pursuers. Others of the enemy still lived, though they were horribly wounded. One man, blood dripping from his hair, clung to a stone pillar as Saban trudged past. What songs they would make of this in Ratharryn, Saban thought sourly. Ravens flapped down and dogs came to feast on dead men’s flesh. Two small boys who had followed Camaban’s men to war were trying to hack a woman’s head off. Saban chased them from the corpse, but knew they would find another. The avenue’s stones were dripping with gore and he remembered Derrewyn’s prophecy that the stones of the new temple at Ratharryn would steam with blood. She was wrong, he told himself, wrong.
The first curls of smoke were writhing from the thatch in the settlement where Camaban’s warriors, having fetched what valuables they could from within the huts, were hurling firebrands onto the roofs. While their huts were thus destroyed, the surviving folk of the defeated tribe sought sanctuary in the great shrine. It was there that Saban found Camaban. He was alone on the summit ridge of the huge encircling earthwork where he was systematically kicking the guardian skulls down into the ditch. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
“Looking for Derrewyn,” Saban said.
“You found her?”
“No,” Saban said.
“She’s probably dead,” Camaban said vengefully. “I pray she is. But I still want to piss on the bitch’s corpse.” He kicked a wolf’s skull down to the ditch bottom. There was blood on his long hair and on the bones tied to its braids, but it was not his own blood. The bronze sword, which hung from a loop on his belt, was thick with blood. “I hope Rallin’s children have been found by now,” he went on, “because I want them dead.”
“They’re no danger to us,” Saban protested.
“They’re Rallin’s family and I want them all killed. And Derrewyn’s bitch-child with them.” He kicked another skull off the embankment. “Calls herself a sorceress! Ha! See where her sorcery has left her tribe!” He grinned suddenly. “I like war.”
“I hate it.”
“That’s because you’re no good at it, but it isn’t difficult. Gundur wanted to retreat because he hadn’t thought about the problem, but I knew Rallin would lead with his best men so it was easy enough to lay a trap for them and, to give Gundur his due, he did see how it could work. Gundur fought well. Did you fight well?”
“I killed one man,” Saban said.
“Only one?” Camaban asked, amused. “I used to be so envious of you when I was a child. You were like Lengar, tall and strong, and I thought you’d be a warrior and I would always be a cripple. But it’s the cripple who has conquered Cathallo. Not Lengar, not you, but me!” He laughed, proud of his day’s work, then turned to stare at the crowd of Cathallo’s people who had gathered about Sannas’s old hut. “Time to frighten them, I think,” Camaban said, and he walked back to the causeway and then into the temple’s center. Less than a dozen of Ratharryn’s spearmen had come into the shrine, so Camaban was virtually unguarded, but he showed no fear as he walked to the very center of the temple, into the space between the twin stone circles that were girdled by the greater ring of boulders, and there he raised his arms to the sky and held them aloft until the frightened crowd had quietened. “You know me!” he shouted, “I am Camaban! Camaban the crooked child! Camaban the cripple! Camaban of Ratharryn! And I am now Camaban, chief of Cathallo. Does anyone dispute that?” He stared at the crowd. There were at least two score of men there, most of them still armed, but none of them moved.
“I am more than Camaban,” Camaban shouted, “for I came here in the night many years ago and I took the soul of Sannas with her last breath! I, Camaban, have Sannas inside me. I am Sannas! I am Sannas!” He screamed this claim, and then, suddenly, began chanting in Sannas’s old voice,
her exact voice, ancient and dry like old bones, so that if Saban closed his eyes it was as if the old sorceress were still alive. “I am Sannas come back to earth, come to save you from punishment!” And he began to writhe and dance, to leap and twist, yelping desperately as though the old woman’s soul struggled against his own spirit, and the display made terrified children hide their faces in their mothers’ clothes. “I am Sannas!” Camaban screamed. “And Slaol has conquered me! Slaol has taken me! Slaol has lain between my thighs and I am full with him! But I will fight for you!” He screamed again, and thrashed his head so that his long bloody hair whipped up and down. “You must obey, you must obey,” he said, still in Sannas’s voice.
“Kill them …” He was speaking in his own voice now, and he drew his gory sword and advanced on the crowd as he chanted the words. “Kill them, kill them, kill them.” The crowd backed away.
“Take them as slaves!” He had changed to Sannas’s voice again. “They will be good slaves! Whip them if they are not good! Whip them!” He began writhing again, and howling again, and then, very suddenly, went still.
“Slaol talks in me,” he said in his own voice. “He talks to me and through me. The great god comes to me and he asks why you are not all dead. Why should we not take your babies and dash their heads against the temple stones?” The women cried aloud. “Why not give your children to Slaol’s fire?” Camaban asked. “Why not give your women to be raped, and bury your men alive in the dung pits? Why not?” These last two words were a screech.
“Because I will not let it.” It was Sannas once more. “My people will obey Ratharryn, they will obey. On your knees, slaves, on your knees!” And the people of Cathallo went on their knees to Camaban. Some held out their hands to him. Women clung to their children and appealed for their lives, but Camaban just turned away, went to the nearest stone and rested his head against it.
Saban let out a great breath that he had not even been aware he had been holding. The folk of Cathallo stayed kneeling, terror on their faces, and that was how Gundur’s spearmen found them when they filed through the western entrance.
Gundur went to Camaban. “Do we kill them?”
“They’re slaves,” Camaban said calmly. “Dead slaves can’t work.”
“Kill the old, then?”
“Kill the old,” Camaban agreed, “but let the others live.” He turned and stared at the kneeling crowd. “For I am Slaol and these are the slaves who will build me a temple.” He raised his arms to the sun. “For I am Slaol,” he cried again in triumph, “and they are going to build my shrine!”
Camaban left Gundur to govern Cathallo. Keep the people alive, he told him, for in the spring their labor would be needed. Gundur also had orders to search the woods for Derrewyn, whose body had never been found, and for her daughter, who had also disappeared. Rallin’s wives and children had been discovered and their bodies now rotted in a shallow grave. Morthor was buried under a mound and a new high priest had been appointed, but only after the man had kissed Camaban’s misshapen foot and sworn to obey him.
So Camaban went home in triumph to Ratharryn where, all winter long, he toyed with wooden blocks. He had asked Saban to make the blocks, insisting that the timber was squared into pillar shapes, and he demanded more and more of them and then disappeared into his hut where he arranged and rearranged the blocks obsessively. At first he made the blocks into twin circles, one nested within the other like the unfinished temple that Saban was now removing, but after a while Camaban rejected the twin circles and instead modeled a temple like the existing shrine to Slaol just beyond Ratharryn’s entrance. He devised a forest of pillars, but after staring at the model for days he swept it aside. He tried to remake Slaol and Lahanna’s pattern in stone: twelve circles imposed on one greater circle; but when he stooped so that he could see the blocks with an eye close to the ground he saw only muddle and confusion and so he also rejected that arrangement.
It was a cold winter and a hungry one. Lewydd carried Erek’s gold home, taking with him a half dozen of Vakkal’s men who wanted to live out their days in Sarmennyn, but that still left a horde of mouths to be fed in Ratharryn and Lengar had never been as careful as his father in storing food which meant the grain pits were low. Camaban did not care for he thought of little except his temple. He was chief of two tribes, yet he performed none of the tasks that his father had done. He allowed other men to lead his war bands, he insisted that Haragg dispense justice and was content to let Saban worry about amassing enough food to see Ratharryn through the winter. Camaban took no wives, bred no children and did not amass treasures, though he did begin to dress in some of the finery that he discovered in Lengar’s hut. He wore the thick buckle of gold that the stranger had worn when he came to the Old Temple so many years before, he hung a cloak of wolf pelts edged with fox fur from his shoulders, and he carried a small mace that Lengar had taken from a priest of a defeated tribe. Hengall had carried a mace as a symbol of power, and it amused Camaban to ape his father and mock his memory for, where Hengall’s mace had been a bone-crushing lump of rough stone, Camaban’s mace was a delicate and precious object. Its wooden handle was circled by bone rings sculpted into the shape of lightning bolts, while its head was a perfectly carved and beautifully polished egg of black-veined brown stone, which must have taken a craftsman days of meticulous work. He had shaped the head smooth, then drilled a circular hole for its handle, and when the work was done the man had made a weapon that was good only for ceremony, for the small mace head was much too light to inflict damage on anything but the most delicate of skulls. Camaban liked to flourish the mace as proof that stone could be worked as easily as wood. “We won’t use rough boulders like those at Cathallo,” he told Haragg. “We’ll shape them. Sculpt them.” He caressed his mace head. “Smooth them,” he said.
Saban gathered the tribe’s grain into one hut, purchased more from Drewenna and doled it out through the cold days. Warriors hunted, bringing back venison and boar and wolf. No one starved, though many of the old and the sick died. And through that cold winter Saban also took away all the dark pillars that had been brought from Sarmennyn. It was not a hard task. The stones were dug out of their holes, tipped onto the grass and dragged down into the small valley that lay east of the temple. Men dug chalk rubble from the ditch and filled the stone holes so that the center of the temple was once again smooth and empty. Only the moon stones remained within the ditch, and the three pillars beyond it, but then Saban raised the mother stone close to the temple’s center. It took sixty men, a tripod of oak and seven days to raise the stone that was placed opposite the temple’s entrance so that on midsummer’s day the sun would shine down the avenue onto the pillar. The mother stone stood tall, much taller than the other pillars from Sarmennyn had stood, and in the low winter sun its shadow lay long and black on the pale turf.
Camaban spent whole days at the temple, brooding mostly and rarely taking any notice of the men who labored to dismantle the Temple of Shadows. As the days grew shorter and the air colder he went there more often, and after a time he carried spears to the temple and rammed their blades into the hard ground, then peered across the tops of their staffs. He was using the spears to judge how high he wanted his stone pillars, but the spears did not satisfy him and so he ordered Mereth to cut him a dozen longer poles and he asked Saban to dig those into the turf. The poles were long, but light, and the work was done in a day. Camaban spent day after day staring at the poles, seeing patterns in his mind.
In the end there were just two poles left. One was twice the height of a man and the other twice as long again, and they stood in line with the midsummer sun’s rising, the taller post behind the mother stone and the shorter pole closer to the shrine’s entrance, and as the winter came to its heart, Camaban went each evening to the temple and stared at the thin poles, which seemed to shiver in the icy wind.
Midwinter came. It had ever been a time when cattle bellowed as they were sacrificed to appease the sun’s weakness, b
ut Haragg would have no such killings in his temples and so the tribe danced and sang without the smell of fresh blood in their nostrils. Some folk grumbled that the gods would be angered by Haragg’s squeamishness, claiming sacrifice was necessary if the new year was not to bring plague, but Camaban supported Haragg and that evening, after the tribe had sung a lament to the dying sun, Camaban preached that the old ways were doomed and that if Ratharryn kept their faith then the new temple would ensure that the sun never died again. They feasted that night on venison and pork, then lit the great fires that would draw Slaol back in the dawn after midwinter’s day.
There was snow in that dawn: not much, but enough to coat the higher ground with white in which Camaban left footprints as he walked to the temple. He had insisted that Saban accompany him and the brothers were swathed in furs for it was bitter cold and a sharp wind cut from a pale sky banded with wispy pink clouds. The heavier snow clouds had cleared at midday and the afternoon sun was low enough to cast shadows on the snow from the hummocks made by the filled-in stone holes. Camaban gazed at his twin poles, but shook his head in irritation when Saban asked their purpose. Then he turned to stare at Gilan’s four moon stones, the paired pillars and slabs that showed the way to Lahanna’s most distant wanderings. “It is time,” Camaban said, “to forgive Lahanna.”
“To forgive her?”
“We fought against Cathallo so we could have peace,” Camaban said, “and Slaol will want peace among the gods. Lahanna rebelled against him, but she has lost the battle. We have won. It is time to forgive her.” He gazed at the distant woods. “Do you think Derrewyn still lives?”
“Do you want to forgive her?” Saban asked.
“Never,” Camaban said bitterly.
“The winter will kill her,” Saban said.
“It will take more than winter to kill that bitch,” Camaban said grimly. “And while we work for peace she’ll be praying to Lahanna in some dark place, and I do not want Lahanna to oppose us. I want her to join us. It is time that she was drawn back to Slaol, and that is why we shall leave her four stones because they show her that she belongs to Slaol.”
Stonehenge Page 37
