[A Dream of Eagles 01] - The Skystone

by Jack Whyte (ebook by Undead)

  The footing was very uneven for our horses, with long, rank grass growing in tufts and hummocks as high as their knees. I was satisfied long before half an hour had gone by that all of the boulders in this valley were the same. They were only rocks, as the lake was just a lake. Luceiia, however, with the exuberance of the amateur, wanted to check every one of them, just in case there was one that was different from the others. She had no idea what she was looking for, but she crossed the valley from spot to spot enthusiastically, examining the surfaces of all the boulders in the hope of a revelation of some kind. Meric and I finally drew our horses together and watched her as she ambled about, leaning from her horse to peer closely at each new stone and growing a little more dejected with each one that turned out to be the same as all the others.

  I was enjoying looking at her without being obvious. She had astonished me that morning by appearing in the leather breeches of a legionary beneath a long, knee-length tunic. The tunic was what look my breath away, for it was slit from knee to hip-bone on each side of her body. It was eminently sensible for a woman who wanted to ride like a man, but the degree to which it showed the curves of her legs and thighs was devastating. I had managed to betray nothing of my thoughts, although only with great difficulty, and had been at pains to keep my eyes away from her legs all day. Now that she was at a safe distance, I was able to feast my eyes on her.

  The shadow of a cloud scudding across the hillside in front of her caught my eye, and I was watching it idly, trying to gauge the speed of its progress, when Meric spoke.

  "That's strange."

  I looked at him. He had turned his horse around and was staring up into the hills behind me. A cloud swept over the sun and a sharp gust of wind made my horse skitter nervously.

  "What is?" I asked.

  He shook his head, his expression one of slight perplexity. "I thought for a minute, there, that I could see a circle on the hillside."

  "What?" I swung around, wrenching my horse with me so that it grunted in protest. "Where?"

  He pointed up the hill. "Up there, just where Athyr said he saw it. But there's nothing there. I must have imagined it."

  He was right. There was nothing to be seen on the bare hillside. I quartered the entire flank of the hill with eyes that wanted to see a circle shape, but it was useless. There was nothing. I swung my horse back around again in disgust.

  "Your eyes are playing tricks on you, my friend. We'd better be getting back. It's growing late." I cupped my hands and yelled to Luceiia, signalling her to come back,

  "Look, Varrus! There! Look!"

  I swung my horse around again, and as I did I caught the merest, fleeting suggestion of a ring shape in the corner of my eye. It vanished even as I saw it. but not before I had identified it for what it was. My heart leaped into my mouth.

  "It's a shadow, Meric. A shadow! Look, the sun's gone again. When it breaks through the clouds it throws the edges of the ring into shadow." I gazed up at the great cloud that was obscuring the sun. "It'll be back in a few minutes." I was seething with excitement. "As soon as it breaks through, mark the exact position of the ring on the hillside. I'll go up to it and you stay here and direct me in case I can't find it."

  It seemed to take years for the sun to find its way from behind that cloud again, but when it did, there, stamped on the side of the hill, faint yet clearly defined, was the shape of the ring. I kicked my horse into motion and tackled the side of the hill at a gallop. The sun continued to shine, but I had not gone fifty paces before I lost sight of the shape. I had marked its position by an outcrop of rock, however, and I kept going.

  It took me about five minutes to climb up to where I thought the shape had been, and eventually I reined in and looked back down at Meric, who by this time had been joined by Luceiia. The sun was still shining, but I could see no trace of the ring shape. Meric's voice came floating up to me from below, accompanied by wide-armed gestures.

  "Right! To your right!"

  I moved slowly to my right for what seemed to be a long way, until he yelled to stop.

  "Now this way! To me!"

  I moved forward, down the hill again.

  "Stop! Stay there."

  I sat there and waited as they made their way up to me. Meric arrived slightly ahead of Luceiia, whose eyes were roaming the whole hillside constantly as she climbed. Meric was panting slightly.

  "Well," he gasped, "whatever it is, you're right in the middle of it."

  "How far am I from the edge?"

  "I tried to gauge that from down below. As far as I could tell, judging by your size in the middle of the ring and the length of your shadow, the outer edge should be about four or five paces on either side of you." I looked where he indicated. My shadow was long on the grass of the hillside.

  "I lost sight of the ring as soon as I started to climb the hill," I said. "Did you?"

  "I saw it plainly as you climbed the hill, and that's why I was able to guide you into it. But I lost it, too, as soon as I began to climb. There may be something magical about this place."

  "There is." I slid from my horse's back to the ground, heading directly to my right, my eyes fixed firmly on the ground ahead of me, and within five paces, there it was: the rim of the ring. Unless a man had been looking for it in exactly that spot, he would never have noticed it. It was no more than a ridge of slightly raised earth, about ten or twelve inches high at its highest point, but once detected, the entire perimeter was easily traceable. I too was breathing hard now, barely able to contain myself as I realized where I was standing. I stepped over the raised outline and walked another twenty paces across the hillside before turning to look back. Sure enough, there was a slight but definite bowl-shaped depression within the ring. I walked back to the middle of the circle with triumph swelling in my chest.

  "What does it mean, Varrus?" Meric was completely bewildered. "Is this important?"

  I laughed aloud, my excitement making the laugh sound false even to me. "Important?" I looked at Luceiia, who was still mounted and was looking at me as if I had suddenly become possessed. "Luceiia, do you think this is important?" Her eyes were wide and baffled. "I want you to go over there, both of you, to where I was a few minutes ago, then tell me what you see. Please."

  They exchanged looks of polite mystification and moved off obediently. As they went, I led my horse out of the circle and returned to stand in its centre.

  "Now, what can you see?"

  They looked at each other, and then back at me, and Luceiia said, "Nothing, Publius."

  "The ground, Luceiia! Look at the ground. Meric, I'm standing in the middle of the ring. Do you notice anything about it? Anything different? Anything at all?" Meric's brow furrowed in concentration, and then I saw astonishment spread as he saw what I wanted him to see.

  "It's bowl-shaped! As though it has been dug, hollowed out. There's a dip."

  "Yes, Meric. Luceiia? Can you see it now?" She nodded wordlessly. "Good! Now you can come back."

  They rejoined me on foot, leaving their horses outside the circle. Both of them still looked distinctly puzzled.

  "Don't you know where you are yet?" I asked them.

  Meric frowned. "We Druids have a circular temple to the sun on the great plain, but this is too small for such a place."

  "Hah!" I shouted. "Temple to the sun? Nothing so tame, Meric! It's a dragon's nest! We're standing in a dragon's nest!"

  It was an unkind thing to say to them, and I almost choked with laughter when the colour drained abruptly from their faces and they immediately and instinctively looked around as if expecting to be seized and devoured. I could see instant, total belief in their eyes, and still laughing, I drew my sword and stuck it into the ground at my feet, probing for bedrock. There was practically no soil, except at the centre of the depression, where my blade sank almost to the hilt. I straightened up and sheathed the sword again.

  "Come," I said. "It's late. Next time we come back, we'll bring shovels and dig out the dragon
's egg."

  There was still fear on their faces and wild laughter in my belly as I gathered some stones to build a cairn in the middle of the ring. After that, I helped Luceiia to mount before vaulting onto my own horse, and we headed for the crest of the hill with the sun now far down on our left. I had marked the site well. The cairn thrust upward, a finger for tomorrow, marking the location of the skystone that every instinct in my body told me lay buried beneath it.

  "We'll be travelling a long way in the dark tonight," I said, feeling again, for the first time in over an hour, the keen bite of the wind.

  "Publius! Look!" It was Luceiia, and I heard awe in her voice as I reined in and turned. The sun was almost gone now, and, shadowed by its dying light, the outlines of five more circles were clearly visible on the hillsides and on the floor of the valley itself. I stared in astonishment and spoke into an almost religious silence.

  "Dragons, my friends." I said. "The place is a colony of dragons."

  XX

  I had quizzed Luceiia about the distance facing us on our trip to the Mendips, long before the time came to set out. Her response had been that, according to Meric, the round trip was easily achievable in the space of a day.

  It occurred to neither of us that Meric, being a Druid, looked on things like weather, time and distance from a perspective different to most people's. He would walk all night and all day and all night again, to get where he was going, and still not count it a two-day journey if he arrived before the sun rose again.

  We had been on the road out for several hours, borne up on the excitement of the journey, before I began to have misgivings about the distance involved, and the length of time it might require. My doubts were fired by Meric's optimistically imprecise answers to such questions as, "How much further do you think we have to go now?"

  It became clear to me eventually that the distance — despite the old Druid's protestations — was simply too great to permit an easy return journey in one day. By the time I realized it fully, however, we had been too far from the villa to return for extra supplies. It became a matter of returning home and starting again the next day, or suffering the inconvenience of a long, one-day, two-way trip on this single occasion. Luceiia's had been the final decision. At that time, it had still been a beautiful morning, with not a cloud in sight in the December sky. That changed within the next two hours. The weather grew gloomy and overcast, and on top of that we began to realize that we had underestimated the hardships of the excursion. For myself, I would have minded little, but Luceiia could hardly have been described as a hardened veteran of overland journeys. Meric, of course, was oblivious to all of this.

  Even so, knowing what we knew, we had still allowed ourselves to overstay our time in the valley, caught up in the hunt. Darkness began to fall quickly as we turned for home, and the rain that had been threatening all afternoon began to fall in earnest, adding to the chill of the biting wind. Meric's sense of direction failed him at one point and we spent almost an hour floundering around on the hillside, leading our horses and in grave danger of falling down inclines that were far steeper than any we had faced on the way up.

  By the time we finally made it down from the flank of the last hill, it had been pitch-dark for hours and we were all three soaked to the skin and chilled, it seemed, to the marrow. The rain had become a steady downpour and the wind howled in gusts so violent that our world was reduced to nothing but Stygian blackness and dementing noise. There could not have been three more miserable people on the face of Britain that night, and we were still at least twelve miles from the Villa Britannicus.

  Luceiia grasped me by the arm and leaned close to me to shout something into my ear, but so strong and loud was the wind that her words flew off into the darkness without reaching me. I waved and shook my head to indicate that I had not heard her and leaned even closer, angling my plodding horse so close to hers that our legs were pressed together. This time her lips almost touched my ear and I felt her warm breath on my skin, stirring that entire side of my body to goose-flesh, in spite of my chill.

  "Shelter," she shouted. "We have to find shelter quickly! We're hours away from home."

  "I know," I yelled back. "But where? Do you know where we are?"

  I could tell from her headshake that she did not, and we must have ridden for another three miles, sodden and sore and half frozen, before Meric suddenly appeared right beside me, waving wildly to indicate a change of direction. The suddenness with which I became aware of his closeness told me that I had been dozing, and the knowledge flared in my mind like a signal-fire warning of danger. I shook my head hard, trying to clear my thoughts, and began paying more attention to what was going on around me.

  I had never been out on a more hostile night in all my years with the legions. The blackness was absolute, unrelieved by any gleam of light or any break in the solid cloud above us, and the lancing rain was still being driven relentlessly by a buffeting, icy wind that howled like a pack of hungry wolves. I thought about how long we had been travelling like this and felt a leaden fear grow in me with the realization that any or all of us could die of exposure on a night such as this, in the middle of nowhere without warmth or shelter of any kind. And suddenly, just as that thought occurred to me, the wind died away for the first time in hours, and I could hear again.

  "What is it, Meric?" I screamed too loud into the sudden stillness.

  "I think I know where we are, but I cannot see enough to be sure. If I am right, there should be a hut close by that will shelter us from the wind, at least. It has no roof."

  "Where? How far?" My heart leaped at the realization that I could see the outline of his shape and the motion of a quick headshake.

  "I don't really know. Can't really be sure. If I could see the hills I'd be able to be more certain." The outline of his shape was growing plainer. I turned and looked at where Luceiia should be and, sure enough, there she was, faint and indistinct but visible. As I saw her outline, the rain began steadily to lessen. I lifted my eyes to the sky and saw the shapes of cloud masses roiling above me.

  "Look," I said. "It's breaking up."

  As I spoke, a gap was torn in the clouds directly above Meric's head, and I saw the moon for a second before it was obscured again. The rain had stopped, and as all three of us sat there immobile, staring up at the clouds, I became aware of a strange noise in the stillness that now surrounded us. My ears quickened immediately, straining to identify the sound until, with a rush of pity and sympathy, I realized that I was hearing the chattering of Luceiia's teeth. I knew how bad I was feeling, and I had spent years on the open countryside campaigning in all weathers: I could only guess at the extent of Luceiia's misery.

  A great rent appeared among the clouds now and moonlight spilled through, brilliantly bright after the long hours of pitch-blackness. Meric swung his head all around, looking in all directions for recognizable landmarks.

  "I have it!" I heard relief and decisiveness in his voice. "I know exactly where we are."

  "Good," I responded. "Are we close to the hut?"

  "No." His gaze was directed away from me. "That's miles from here. But there is a hamlet of four families close by, down in that little fold in the land over there. Less than half a mile. Come."

  Our horses were exhausted, and I could tell from the way mine moved beneath me that he was close to collapse. I slid down and began to walk after Meric, leading my own horse with one hand and Luceiia's with the other and willing my bad leg back to life.

  The tiny hamlet we came to seemed to us more luxurious than the Villa Britannicus. AH four households were awakened by the noise of our arrival, and Meric's presence was enough to win us the utmost of their hospitality. Banked fires were stirred back to life, and Luceiia was taken by two women into one of the houses to struggle out of her soaked clothing and dry off in the warmth of a welcoming hearth. Meric and I led our three horses to the shelter of a lean-to against one of the houses and towelled them down with dry rags before headin
g into the warmth ourselves, leaving the animals to eat with four cows.

  The inside of the small, stone house was warm and filled with dancing shadows from the flames of the fire. Luceiia sat huddled close to the heat dressed in a long, dark robe of some kind, clutching a bowl of something that steamed. I went directly to her and laid my hand on her shoulder, asking her if she was well; I was acutely aware that this was the first time I had laid a hand upon her. She looked up at me and nodded slowly, but she did not speak. She did, however, reward me with a tiny, not-quite-certain, surprisingly childlike smile. Relieved, I stepped into the shadows at the back of the room, away from the firelight, and began to strip off my own sodden clothing, believing quite firmly that I would never feel warm again.

  Twenty minutes later, however, sitting on a three-legged stool close to the flames and nursing my own bowl of warm rabbit stew, I was feeling wondrously well, staring contentedly into the fire and revelling in the comfortable weight of Luceiia's body as she sat on the floor at my feet, leaning against my leg. I had no robe to cover my nakedness; instead, I was wrapped in an enormous bearskin taken from the pile of skins that served the household as a bed.

  Luceiia's head began to droop, and she jerked suddenly erect. I smiled at the top of her head. She was deathly tired. I put down my bowl of broth and looked around me. We were alone. The family had moved in with neighbours, as had Meric, leaving the tiny hut to us. Something in the fire cracked loudly and she twitched erect again. My smile felt fixed on my face forever as I examined the nape of her neck, where her long, straight hair split into two torrents cascading down in front of her to dry in the heat of the fire. I felt love and protectiveness such as I had never known filling my throat.