by Jack Whyte
"Everything was covered in mud, and yet Athyr said the cattle were roasted alive. I still don't understand how that could have happened, how it could have been true. " He shrugged his shoulders. "I can do no more than accept it on faith. Athyr would never lie about anything. I have never known a more truthful man. He told me that is what he saw, therefore that is what he saw. He believed what he told me, and I believed him. By the time he brought me here, more than ten years had gone by and the grass had begun to cover everything again, although not so thickly as it has now. "
I interrupted him. "What about the lake?" He looked at me in surprise.
"What about it?" "I don't know what about it. That's why I'm asking. Did Athyr say anything about the lake?"
He frowned, remembering that day. "No. No, Athyr said nothing about the lake. Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. " I was examining the valley more closely now. "That whole valley is shut in. How did the cattle get there?" He looked mystified. "I don't know. They must have crossed the hills. " I kept my voice free of impatience. "Why would they do that? There's no shortage of grazing on the other side of the hills. Why would the villagers go to all the trouble of bringing their cattle all the way up and over the hills to let them graze in a shut-in valley?"
"For protection, perhaps?"
"From whom? Did you have trouble with raiders back then?"
"Not that I know of. "
"And you're sure he said nothing about the lake?"
"Nothing. I am convinced of that. "
"Has the lake always been here?"
"What kind of a question is that? Of course it has. "
"Then where did all the mud come from?"
"I don't know, boyo. "
"What else did he tell you? Think hard, Meric. It's important. Was there anything else he said to you about this place that might have slipped from your memory? Something that you might not have thought important at the time? Anything at all?"
His face became thoughtful as he turned back to the valley below us. I watched him closely, not taking my eyes off his face for a second. His gaze swept across the valley from right to left, and then I saw it — a momentary tic between his brows. I held my breath as it became obvious that he was searching his memories of his first visit to this place and recalling something, something vague that had lain disregarded and forgotten, for years.
"There was something. Something he said about that hillside. " Then it was as though a light suddenly shone in his eyes. "I remember now. He said the Sum God's face was there in the mud of the hillside. " "What?
What in Hades does that mean?" He grinned a quick grin and looked at me. "I wondered the same thing and asked him to explain. He said that the mud on the hillside over there had a circular gap in it, where there was no mud at all. He said it was as if one of those dragons had scooped out a perfect picture of the Sun God from the mud all around. A perfect circle of silver-grey rock, he said, in the middle of a sea of mud. " I was silent for a while. There was something tugging at a loose end in my mind. I felt that irritating anticipation you feel when something is just about to pop into prominence in your mind and then will not. I blinked my eyes hard and shook my head to clear my thoughts. "Where?" I demanded. "Where was it?" He pointed. "Over there, on the flank of the hill. " I stared hard in the direction he was pointing. Nothing. I could see nothing.
"How big was this circle?"
"I don't know. Athyr did not say, and I did not think to ask him. " I mumbled a curse, scouring the hillside with my eyes, willing the Sun God's portrait to be there. But there was nothing. And then my stomach churned as I remembered what had caused the tugging at the loose end in my mind: a hot, dusty summer day in Germany, twenty-odd years earlier. We had been marching all day and had stopped for a ten-minute rest. I hadn't even had the energy to unload my gear; I sat hunched on a milestone by the side of the road, staring blindly at the dust that covered the cobbled road surface.
There had been thunder growling around for most of the afternoon, but the rain had held off. As I sat there, a scattering of big, fat, heavy raindrops fell sullenly around me. It was literally just a scatter of drops, each one of which left its own singular mark in the dust: a perfect circle, a blob of water in the middle of a perfect circle of dust thrown up around it like a wall. If I had not been so tired I would never have seen it. As it happened, the first one that I did see just happened to land right in the centre of the very cobblestone I was staring at. I was mildly surprised by the perfection of the shape it had caused, and I looked at the next one closest to it for the sake of idle comparison. And they were all the same!
All the same size and all the same perfect shape, not only on the stones in the road, but in the dust by the roadside. I was sitting in a field of tiny, perfect circles. And then the centurion started yelling and I forgot all about it in the renewed agony of the long march.
I had remembered it again a couple of days later, however, when we arrived at the end of our march and were installed in camp. The dust was thick everywhere, and our centurion had detailed a couple of men, of whom I was one, to wet down the area surrounding the tribune's tent. I tried then to reproduce the effect of those raindrops, scattering drops high into the air and watching how they fell. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. It seemed to depend on the size of the drops of water. Big drops just splattered everywhere. It wasn't important to me, just a matter of curiosity, and when the other fellows around noticed what I was doing and started to mock me, I felt foolish and quit.
For months after, however, I became very conscious of the effects of falling rain. I saw how it landed on water, creating circular ripples. Eventually I lost interest in the phenomenon and forgot all about it, until one day about five years later when we got caught on the extreme edge of a freak summer hailstorm, and I saw the same circle effect in the dust of the field we were crossing.
I hadn't thought about it in years, and yet it had been there at the bottom of my consciousness, waiting to be remembered. Now I had recalled it, and it excited me. I remembered that my father had found the skystone at the bottom of a hole — a hole punched by the fury of its descent from the sky. And old Athyr had seen a circle in the mud on the hillside, a circle big enough to attract his attention.
My reverie was interrupted by Luceiia, who had been silent for a long time. "Shouldn't we go down and take a look at the boulders, Publius?" I smiled at her delicacy in not pointing out that she was freezing to death sitting up there on an exposed hilltop.
"We can go down and look, of course, but I doubt if we'll find or see any skystones today. "
Her face fell. "How do you know that?"
"I don't. I don't know it at all. But I just have a feeling that those boulders are not skystones. Anyway, let's go and see. I could be wrong. " We started to move down the hill, and I could see from the expression on her face that she was having doubts about something.
"You look concerned, Luceiia. What's the matter?" She jerked her head in a negative. "Nothing, really. I was just wondering how you would know whether a stone, any stone, is a skystone or not?"
I grinned at the seriousness of her expression. "I seem to be saying this a lot today, but I don't know that either. I have no idea how I'll know, or even if I will know. Unless we find one that is pure metal. I won't know until I try to pick one up, I suppose. "
"Publius Varrus! Are you telling us you really don't know what a skystone looks like?"
I shook my head. "Haven't got an earthly idea. I've only heard about them. I've never seen one. "
"You said you won't know until you try to pick one up. Were you joking?
Those boulders in the valley are huge. Nobody could pick one of those up. "
"I'll grant you that, Luceiia, but a man with half a brain in his head should be able to break a piece off one of them, eh? Don't you think so?" She flushed, thinking I was teasing her.
"No, I'm serious, Luceiia. I'll have to break each stone to see what's inside it. Metallic
ore is easy to see inside a newly broken stone. The outside's usually weathered and discoloured and the veins of ore are often hard to see at a glance. You'll see, I'll show you when we get down there. " I turned to Meric, who was making his way down directly behind me. "Seen any dragons yet, Meric?" He only grunted, not even lifting his eyes from the ground where the horse was placing its dainty feet. I relaxed and left my own horse to find its way down, remembering the day of the Invasion, many years before, when Britannicus and I had both trusted our lives to the sure-footedness of our horses.
As we descended, the clouds parted and allowed the pale December sun to shine through, with beams too weak to counteract the chill of the wind. The bottom of the valley was exactly the kind of spot that gave me the professional soldier's indigestion; it was completely surrounded by hills. The ground sloped down gradually, westward to our right, and the extreme western end of the valley was blocked by the waters of the lake. It was easy to imagine a whole legion getting trapped there with their backs to the lake and being slaughtered from the hills above.
"Does the lake have a name, Meric?"
"Not that I know of. It's just a lake. There's another in the valley below it, to the west. Much smaller. But no name, just another lake. " We spent the next half hour examining the closest of the boulders we had seen from the hilltop. I chipped a piece off each of them and showed Luceiia the striations in the material, but there was nothing there that indicated metal to me. It was Luceiia herself who pointed out that the inside of the rock was not much different from the outside, and she was correct. These boulders were brand new, no more than thirty or forty years old. They were great lumps of rock that had been blasted away from the glowering cliff face to the north, on the night of the dragons. 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 lo
oks 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.