The Tall Stones

by Moyra Caldecott

  There were murmurs.

  ‘Maal? What could that old man do!’

  ‘He has not been near the Sacred Circle or the people since Wardyke came!’

  ‘He waits only to die.’

  There was a faction who was still blinded by Wardyke, it seemed.

  Karne flushed with anger at these remarks and prepared to answer them but, seeing the situation and knowing his son well, Karne’s father spoke quickly.

  ‘Maal’s advice as one who has lived long in our village and served us well . . .’ and here he looked fiercely at the maker of the last remark, ‘should certainly be sought. But he is no longer priest here and his word is no longer our law,’ and here he looked hard at his son.

  ‘I mean only his advice, father,’ Karne said mildly, realizing in time the wisdom of tact. ‘He has had much experience and has travelled further than any of us. Perhaps he could tell us where these people come from.’

  ‘Send for him.’ The man who had muttered earlier against Wardyke’s sole word being law spoke up now.

  Karne was off before anyone could offer an objection, and Maal was fetched. In hurrying him back to the meeting, Karne noticed impatiently that Maal was slow and feeble in his movements.

  ‘Hurry,’ he cried. ‘Wardyke is not there. You may have a chance to influence the people.’

  ‘I am not as young as you, boy,’ Maal complained, out of breath.

  ‘Could you not go a little faster,’ Karne pleaded.

  ‘I am going as fast as I can,’ puffed Maal. ‘I am sorely in need of a new body.’

  Karne tried to swallow his impatience. Maal’s mind was so vigorous and young, he always forgot it was housed in such a decrepit body. Karne had noticed that since Kyra’s last experience with spirit-travelling, Maal had grown feebler. He remembered her description of Maal’s rotting corpse and wondered fleetingly again if it was prophetic.

  When they arrived back at the meeting, everything had changed. Wardyke and Thorn were back and were enraged to find the villagers had taken the initiative in anything without their permission.

  Wardyke was standing on the flat rock that served them as a platform and his eyes were blazing with anger. The villagers were terrified. Even those who had murmured against the control of Thorn and Wardyke were cowed.

  Seeing the situation instantly, Maal pushed Karne aside.

  ‘Go, boy, do not be seen with me,’ he whispered with the sudden strength of command in his voice.

  Karne obeyed and ducked into the crowd, appearing again within sight of Wardyke and Thorn, but far from Maal.

  Wardyke’s voice was like thunder as he berated them for ‘forming this unruly mob to cause trouble and disorder in the community.’

  ‘Who called this meeting?’ he roared.

  There was silence. No one dared answer.

  ‘Who called it, I say!’ he roared again, and his eyes lashed at them with fire. Not one person dared raise his head and look him in the eye. He lifted his arm, his hand bony and immense, pointing to the sky, his black cloak falling from it in magnificent folds. He seemed about to cast a spell upon them when a voice spoke up and he turned his attention to it.

  It was Maal and he was standing straight, an old man sustained by determination and desperation.

  ‘The people of this village called it,’ he said boldly, looking Wardyke straight in the face.

  ‘Oh you gods! I wish Kyra were here now!’ Karne could have wept that she was not. Maal was alone, and Wardyke was roused against him.

  All eyes were on Maal now and there were many who were grateful to him, and were amazed and impressed with his dignity and courage.

  ‘You!’ screamed Wardyke, and Karne knew he was no longer in control of himself, he was so angry. The boy feared for Maal’s life but did not know what to do.

  ‘Yes, I.’

  Maal strode with amazing strength towards the centre of the crowd. The people fell back till Maal was facing Wardyke directly. Wardyke was still upon the rock and so towered above Maal, but Maal’s eyes were blazing and he did not for a moment relax the beam of his concentration on the younger man.

  ‘These people did not meet here to cause trouble but to prevent it. Since the ancient days strangers have been welcomed in our community. They bring new life and new skills. Where our ways are different from theirs we learn from them and they from us. But there are some who have come in to our village who bring nothing but disruption and dismay. They desecrate the earth spirit, taking what is not any man’s to take. You as priest should have been working amongst them, guiding them and teaching them our ways, easing the difference between us. But time has passed and nothing has been done . . .’

  ‘Enough!’ bellowed Wardyke, and if his voice had been loud before, it was now more like a clap of thunder than a human voice.

  ‘These are my people! I will not have them criticized!’

  ‘Your people? Does Wardyke own people now?’

  And Maal’s lips had a curl to them that Wardyke could not miss. He seemed to rise upon the air with rage. His long and deadly finger pointed straight at Maal.

  ‘Die, old man!’ he screamed.

  There was a gasp from every throat. Every eye was upon the doomed old man. Karne expected a flash of lightning to come from the sky and devastate the land. Every muscle in his body was tensed against it.

  Maal stumbled and almost fell. Karne could see him crumpling as though he were a pile of dust and then . . . and then . . . to another gasp from the community, he stood up straight again as though he had received new strength from somewhere, and, slowly and with great dignity, he turned and walked away.

  Stupefied the villagers stared.

  Maal had not died. Maal was walking away.

  * * * *

  Karne broke from the circle and ran as hard as he had ever run, over the fields to Fern’s wood. Kyra had gone to see Fern that afternoon and neither of them had been at the meeting. He must know if what he suspected had indeed happened.

  He found the two girls in the house. Kyra was lying down looking very pale and Fern was stroking her head.

  ‘What is the matter?’ he cried out, bursting in upon them, sweating from the run.

  Fern looked at him in surprise.

  Kyra opened her eyes and sat up reaching out her arms for him.

  ‘Oh Karne, I do not know, but it seemed to me Maal was in trouble and needed me. I tried to reach him as he taught me to . . . and I felt the most terrible pain shooting through my head as though . . . as though I had been hit by a battle axe . . .’

  ‘Or a lightning bolt?’ Karne asked.

  ‘Yes, something like that. It was horrible.’

  ‘She kept screaming and holding her head,’ Fern said, ‘and then she became all calm and pale. I brought her in here because she said the light hurt her eyes.’

  ‘Poor Kyra,’ Karne said gently, stroking her. ‘But you have saved Maal’s life.’

  ‘What?’

  The girls were eager to hear what had been going on and listened in tense silence while he told the whole story.

  Kyra was awed and frightened by her own part in the drama. She knew her powers were important, had indeed proved themselves without any doubt, but she was still uneasy about them.

  ‘I do not know what I do or how I do it,’ she said miserably. ‘If only I knew what I was doing and could control it!’

  ‘It will come,’ Fern said gently.

  ‘Even without knowing what you are doing, you manage all right!’ Karne said admiringly.

  Kyra gave a deep sigh and looked doubtful.

  * * * *

  When Karne and Kyra returned to the village early that evening there was no outward sign that anything was wrong. The tangy smell of the blue smoke of the cooking fires permeated the air. The boys were bringing the animals back to the stockades and they could hear their constant whistling as they walked behind them. Karne ran on ahead of Kyra knowing that his father’s herd was his responsibility this particular e
vening. He was late bringing it in and his father was not pleased, but after the evening meal the family settled down and there was a chance to talk.

  ‘What did Wardyke mean,’ Karne asked his father, ‘when he said “these are my people?”’

  ‘It turns out,’ his mother interrupted indignantly, ‘all these people come from the community where Wardyke used to be priest, and he invited them here!’

  ‘But surely,’ Kyra said, ‘priests train for one particular community and stay with it for life?’

  ‘I know,’ her mother said and her children could tell that the events of the day had left her agitated and anxious. ‘But Wardyke announced it as though it was perfectly normal. I suppose we are old fashioned and isolated here and do not know what is going on in the rest of the country’

  ‘He says,’ Karne’s father spoke now and there was an edge of harshness in his voice, ‘he wants us to be “great,” to expand and multiply and take over more land from our neighbours.’

  ‘I think it will be good for us,’ Thon said. ‘We have been too small and set in our ways for too long. I for one will be glad to have more land, more people around to talk to, a few changes about the place.’

  ‘But the land we have supports us well. We have everything we need – food, shelter, warmth in winter . . .’

  ‘A healthy and a loving family around us,’ Karne’s mother interrupted.

  ‘If we had more land we would have more problems. More work to be done, excess food to be stored . . .’

  ‘We could barter for more things.’

  ‘What things? We have everything we need.’

  ‘You have no imagination!’ Thon cried impatiently. ‘No ambition! I am sure there are a lot of things we could do with if we only set our minds to it.’

  ‘If we have to “set our minds” to look for them, they cannot be very necessary or urgent.’

  ‘And surely,’ Kyra said, remembering something she had heard from Maal, ‘the good life is based on proportion and balance. We have a good balance of work to what we need at the moment. If we either had to work harder, or we invented more needs, the balance would be destroyed.’

  ‘She is right,’ her mother said, ‘more possessions only bring more harassment.’

  ‘We could do with a bigger house,’ Thon muttered.

  ‘What is wrong with this house?’ Kyra’s mother looked around proudly at her neatly built and beautifully maintained home. No space wasted, and no space too crowded. These little round houses built sturdily of tree trunks filled in with a mixture of firmly packed twigs and clay, the roof thatched with marsh reeds and covered with hides lashed firmly down against the wind, had been built this way for generations and she could see no reason for change. The family slept together and kept each other warm and safe. The circle that surrounded them was the circle of the Sun, the Moon, the Sacred Stones. It gave them security and peace. They had no need of change.

  But Thon could not see it. Since Wardyke’s arrival he had felt restless. A different kind of restlessness to Karne’s. Karne wanted to know. Thon wanted to possess. In a sense, the houses of the two priests summed up the difference in the two attitudes.

  When Wardyke had first come to the village he had stayed in the guest house the villagers always kept empty but clean for the use of travelling strangers. It was a modest circular construction similar to the others in the village. But within days of his arrival he had set the community to doing two things: constructing Maal’s tomb and building his own house.

  It was accepted that he would not take over Maal’s house as it was the custom to burn the previous home of a person who had died. The people felt very strongly that the home of a person was in a sense like a further skin that enclosed him, that was personal to him and should die with him. After years of living in a house it became impregnated with the occupant’s personal feelings and if someone else were to come and live in it, he would be troubled with the memories and concerns of his predecessor.

  The villagers did not have any excess possessions. Those they had were in constant use and, in a sense, extensions of themselves, usually made lovingly by themselves or by their relations. A man’s axe, a woman’s bone needle, were steeped in personal history by the time they came to die and these things were not taken from them but left for their own use in the next life in a place where they would expect to find them, the chamber of the burial. Sometimes pottery vessels that had belonged to them but were not of prime importance to them were smashed against the burial mound or, in some communities, against the standing stones of the Sacred Circle itself.

  As each child grew up and took a mate they would leave the family home and build one of their own which they would inhabit until their death. If parents died leaving children, the house would still be burnt and the children would go to live with relatives. It was accepted. It was natural.

  Wardyke made it known that he did not want a house like the villagers, or like Maal’s. He frequently came to the site and drew pictures in the dust of what he wanted. But first he chose the trees with care from the great southern forest. Some of the men were uneasy about penetrating so deeply into the forest. It was heavy work breaking through the undergrowth and chopping down the giant trees Wardyke chose, and there was a danger of wild boars and wolves as well.

  Wardyke’s timber was hard won and two men suffered for the rest of their lives because of it. One lad of seventeen had his leg crushed by a falling tree and for the rest of his life dragged himself around in pain. Another man lost an eye to a sharp and deadly branch. After these accidents some of the men murmured that the timber was cursed in some way, the spirits of the forest did not want Wardyke to have it for his house. On hearing this, Wardyke called all the community together at the edge of the forest and held a ceremony to cleanse it of any evil curse that might have been lurking there. He chose his time well and as he intoned the age-old words of exorcism clouds as black as night gathered above the tall trees, wind groaned in the high branches and the people shuddered with sudden cold. His long black robes spread out around him in the wind like the wings of a bird of prey and his eyes were the colour of lightning.

  ‘I command,’ he bellowed into the gathering rage of the star, ‘the thwarting spirits of the dark! Begone and leave the forest to my pleasure!’

  As he finished the storm broke and the people were drenched in hard and hammering rain. The wind tore at the trees and they could hear within the forest the ripping, cracking roar of a giant tree uprooted and flung upon the ground.

  Terrified they fled, their last sight the figure of Wardyke like the pointing figure of the storm aimed at the forest.

  In the calm morning that followed this upheaval, many trees were found to be upon the ground. Wardyke claimed that they were his, given to him by the repentant forest.

  His house was to be circular as the others were, but many times the size. Concentric rings of tall and beautifully smoothed tree trunks held the roof of wood and thatch aloft. In the very centre the house was unroofed so that light could penetrate, and Wardyke could walk if he so wished in sunlight within his own house. Channels were dug to lead rainwater out if it should fall to excess, and hangings of hide between the inner columns kept inclement weather from the inner chambers.

  ‘What does he need so many chambers for?’ Karne’s father asked. ‘He lives alone.’

  ‘The meetings of the Elders are held in there now,’ Karne said. ‘In secret, where the people cannot argue with what is said.’

  Karne’s father shook his head sadly.

  ‘I do not care for such changes. The old way was the best.’

  This time Karne was inclined to agree with him.

  * * * *

  Maal’s home on the other hand was small and compact. Kyra stood within it for the first time the day after the confrontation at the meeting stone. Maal had not been seen since the moment of his dramatic stand against the magician and she was anxious about his health.

  He did not respond when she st
ood at the entrance and called to him, and after a few moments of hesitation she stepped into the shadows of the interior. In contrast to the brilliant sunlight without, the inside of the house was very dark indeed. She paused a few moments and gradually the darkness appeared to lift and she could see quite clearly. As with their own homes there were columns of wood holding up the roof. But unlike their own, these were carved with amazing designs, mostly circles within circles within circles, a great many of which seemed to be built round the spindly figures of men, as though (but she was not sure of this) they were standing with their arms raised holding a series of arcs above their heads, the arcs almost completing themselves as circles behind and around them. Some designs looked more like trees, each branch of which supported one of these concentric multiple circles. Amazed, she gazed from one to the other, and had almost forgotten the purpose of her visit when she suddenly became aware of Maal sitting in the dead centre of the room observing her.

  ‘My lord Maal!’ she cried with a mixture of confusion and relief. ‘I was worried about you. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘thanks to you.’

  She flushed slightly.

  ‘Was it really me?’ she murmured, hanging her head in embarrassment. ‘I cannot believe it!’

  ‘Yes, it really was you,’ and he raised himself to stand beside her, taking her arm lightly.

  Her heart was so full she did not know what to say next. She looked around her and gestured at what she saw.

  ‘It is all so beautiful,’ she said with awe. ‘I have never seen anything like it.’

  Maal smiled and there was some secret knowledge in his smile.

  ‘I will show you greater wonders than these, my child.’

  At a loss to know quite what he meant, Kyra returned to the carvings.

  ‘Did you carve them yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do they mean?’