Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge)

by J. P. Reedman

  “He will regard your presence as a great honour,” replied An’kelet. “And your bows and daggers a great relief. You see, he has a reason greater than most lords to want his walls unbreached, his house defended. Behind the stout posts that surround his holdings he hides a great treasure!”

  “A great treasure?” Art’s dark eyebrows rose. “What kind of treasure is this?”

  An’kelet grinned and tossed back his golden-bronze hair, setting his hair-rings jangling. “A most unique treasure, and the old man guards it with his life. In his walls he holds the White Phantom, fair beyond compare!”

  "White phantom? You mean like a barrow-spirit? What a strange thing to trammel within the walls of a dwelling; such should stay behind the walls of henge and ditch!”

  An’kelet laughed, his white teeth flashing. “No, my lord-friend. A goddess! A queen! His foster-daughter Fynavir of Ibherna, who was set to marry his son as Harvest-tide, had the lad not died. Ludegran worships her and fears for her safety, should he fall in battle. As well he might; I saw the northern emissaries’ lustful eyes when they saw her!”

  “A girl!” said Ardhu, with some disappointment. “Is that all?”

  An’kelet laughed. “You are young yet, lord, I imagine women are not as interesting to you as hounds, horses and swords. Not yet.”

  “And I suppose you are the world’s greatest lover, as well as the greatest warrior,” said Ardhu teasingly.

  “If I chose to be,” said An’kelet, face suddenly serious and his eyes vaguely shadowed “Both woman and men have offered themselves to me. But, in truth, I take a more restrained approach to…pleasures… than most. I grew up on the Lake of Maidens where most of the priestesses knew men only once in their lives, and killed the men who took them, in atonement for their virginity.”

  An’kelet pulled his short cloak tight around his shoulders; the wind was rising, cooling. “Death was the fruit of the lust of men; I saw this. My own father succumbed to it. I believe yours did too, my lord, if the tales are true. I swore as a youth I would not be swayed by such lusts; that I would only worship and love what was pure and holy. I will not, I pray, be taken by passions that bring only doom and pain for all concerned.”

  “But surely you want to continue your line. That’s what the Ancestors desire of us!”

  “Maybe. But I do not think they frown on me.” He grinned. “Do I look as though I am in disfavour?”

  “You are a strange one, An’kelet,” said Ardhu, laughing.

  “I know, young lord. You will never meet my like again!” An’kelet tossed his head again, and his clear laughter mixed with the jangle of the rings in his hair rang out across the grey, empty land.

  *****

  The path ahead narrowed and the trees melted away to become clusters of thorny bushes. Over the steep ridges ahead the sea was now visible, slate grey and shining dully. Far to the West, the green curves and swells of Ibherna rested under a pall of cloud.

  “Look,” said An'kelet. “Ahead is the fort of Ludegran, ready for war.”

  Art peered into the Sun. High on a plateau before him rose a fort with earthen ramparts newly dug. Stakes sharp as spears bristled at the bottom of the ditches, waiting to impale the unwelcome. A wooden palisade circled it, made of stout oak. He felt a small thrill as he looked upon it; for surely this was what Kham-El-Ard would look like one day. Only his citadel would be twice as big, twice as grand, blessed by the rising Sun on its eastern flank, and on the other side facing the Temple and the Great Plain.

  An’kelet set his heels to the flanks of his pony and joyfully thundered toward the gates. A multitude of heads immediately popped up over the ramparts; Art could see a line of drawn bows. “Peace! It is only I, An’kelet-of-the-Lake!” called An’kelet, waving his spear above his head. “I’ve returned to help you, my friends, and I have brought with me Ardhu Pendraec, King of the West, my ally and my friend. Unbar the way and make us welcome!”

  There was scuffling in the entrance to the fort. Barricades of wood and sharpened poles were hastily pushed aside.

  An’kelet rode through the gap, his bright hair streaming like a banner, and Ardhu and his band followed after to cheers and the blowing of ox-horns.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Welcome, Lord Ardhu, Terrible head, chief of Khor Ghor and the West.”

  An old man, his beard white frizz and his rheumy eyes the colour of rain-wet slate, walked up to Art and bowed deeply. He wore a checked tunic with a sash tied over one shoulder; the dagger at his belt was of an ancient type with a handle of horn, and he wore an ancestral wristguard as a bracelet, its red stone pierced by three great studs of gold. “You may remember me from Marthodunu. I supported your cause.”

  Ardhu nodded. “I remember. I wish we could have met here in happier circumstances. Your stronghold intrigues me; it should hold out many foes.”

  “I pray you are right, young lord.” A shadow passed over Ludegran’s gaunt face. “Foe-men are on the march. I see Prince An’kelet has met with you already; I trust he has told you of Loth’s treachery, and of the threats he has made against my people. And against you too, of course. He resents that he could not lift the stone and take the kingly blade.”

  “Yes, I know about Loth, and his twisted brother,” said Ardhu. “We will deal with them, and if the spirits will it, few if any of their men will return to their unfriendly, wind-blasted homeland! Do you have any news on their movements?”

  “Nothing as yet. I have scouts in the villages along the coast, ready to send warnings when they arrive. But come, you look weary; news has come from the West that you have already been victorious in many battles. You will eat and drink with me and mine, and we will make a fitting reception for your brave heroes.”

  Chief Ludegran led Ardhu towards a massive roundhouse that stood in the shadow of the fort’s retaining wall. Torches lit a path to its door, and the Westering Sun turned the thatching of its sloped roof to flame. Carved household deities with eyes of flint capered at the threshold, and a bull’s skull loomed above the door-lintel, horns poking the sky.

  Following Ludegran, Ardhu entered the smoky darkness of the house. For a rural chieftain away from main trade routes, Ludegran lived in moderate opulence. Furs of bear, wildcats and beavers hung on the walls, making the room warm and cosy. Woven pennants bearing blue and red designs—the symbols of kingly clans—hung between the furs. Skulls of boar and horse lined the roof beams, and several human skulls, either enemies or Ancestors, hung suspended over the deep fire-pit, which was tended by ash-smeared women who continuously poked and prodded, and fed the flames with logs of ash and oak. At the back of the house, several screened off areas marked the sleeping compartments of the highborn, their floors strewn with rushes and mounds of goatskins.

  An’kelet, who had followed Ludegran and Ardhu into the roundhouse, was peering around. “My lord Ludegran, where is your fair treasure, who brings joy to us all?”

  Ludegran smiled. “When strangers are at the gate, I hide her away—as any man would do with such a lady of value. She is here, watching even as we speak! War-chief Ardhu, let me present to you the White Phantom, noblest and most blessed woman in Prydn: Fynavir, daughter of red Mevva.”

  A screen shifted aside, skin hangings stirred and a slender figure emerged into the sultry glow of the fire-pit.

  Knowing that Ludegran’s 'treasure’ was but a maiden beloved by a doting foster-father, Ardhu fixed a polite smile to his face, fully intending to murmur a few pretty words and then get on with men’s discussions of war.

  Abruptly his smile faded.

  The girl was indeed magic, a goddess, as An’kelet had said. Like her name, White Phantom, she was truly white—almost unnaturally white, the palest girl he had ever seen. Moon-silk hair drifted in a sea of cobweb strands to her waist, and her skin was pearlescent, rose-tinted on her high cheekbones. A red robe with a fringe of bronze was wound about her, while a great Moon-collar wreathed in magic symbols clasped her neck.

 
; Ludegran noticed Ardhu’s appreciative stare. “My fosterling Fynavir is a Princess of Ibherna, Lord Ardhu—her mother the great Queen Mevva, the Intoxicator, who men say is a goddess-on-earth. She was to marry my lad, Brokfel, and make an alliance between our people and those of the sister-isle, but…he died. We have not yet heard what Mevva and her husband, the Ailello, wish for Fynavir now. No doubt they will seek another match before long.”

  An’kelet standing beside Ardhu stepped forward and kissed Fynavir’s on each of her pale cheeks, a brotherly kiss of friendship but one that made Ardhu feel strangely uncomfortable nonetheless. Strangely jealous. “The Sun goes down and we live another day—and the great King Ardhu is amongst us!” he said. “Will you aid in our merrymaking tonight, my fair friend, as we wait for the approach of our enemies?”

  Fynavir smiled and nodded, then left the roundhouse with other girls of the village crowded around her. They soon returned with beakers that brimmed with honey-mead, roundels of aged cheese, and wooden trenchers of beef and pork for the men. Musicians followed close behind them, blowing on bone flutes and horns of cattle and tapping out a steady beat on small skin drums painted with chevron designs.

  “Come, Fynavir,” An’kelet teased, catching at the hem of Fynavir’s rustred gown, “will you dance for us tonight—a victory dance to inspire the men of the tribe? Your feet are as light as falling leaves and pleasing to the spirits.”

  “It is not up to me, friend An’kelet,” said the pale girl, pulling the fabric of her dress from An’kelet’s fingers but smiling at him nonetheless. “It must be as my foster-father wishes—and our revered guest, the mighty warlord Ardhu Pendraec. He is a man of dagger and axe, who may not be given to watching the dances of maidens.”

  Regally she swept up to Ardhu, who sat cross-legged on a skin beside Ludegran. “My lord?” she questioned. Her teeth were like pearls, her eyes, beneath curving silver brows were chips of green ice. “Would you have me dance?”

  “Ah…uh... yes…” he stammered, flushing to the roots of his hair.

  “Foster-father?” She looked at Ludegran, who was beaming, full of pride as if he was her true father.

  “Of course! If my esteemed guest wishes it, it shall be done.”

  Ludegran snapped his fingers and the pipes and flutes and drums came together to form a loud and frantic tune, wild and sensual and unearthly. The onlookers of the household stamped their feet and chanted in time to the beat as the foreign princess let her red robe fall to the floor, revealing a strange ritual dress beneath—a short woven top that left her belly bare, a belt with a round bronze plate, and a short skirt of individual woven strands that barely hid her modesty and revealed long, milky legs and smooth thighs. Gracefully she began to twirl on the rushes, arching backwards and leaping into the air, using arms and hands to gesture and pose, whipping and tossing back her silken hair which coiled and frothed round her almost-exposed hips. She seemed on the edge of a trance state as she danced, her eyes closed, her lips slightly apart, beads of sweat breaking out on her flesh and slipping down her neck, between her full hard breasts…

  Art stared, transfixed, the contents of his beaker slopping onto his deerskin leggings as his fingers suddenly turned to jelly. His men laughed; he ignored them. A strange heat went through him, rising up to his face, making his ears burn. He had little experience with females; once he’d become king Merlin had warned him against being too free with willing girls—“You are a great chief now, and many will try to be your friend or lover in order to share your power and fame. This will not do for one of your stature. Take low-rank women if you must ease your flesh, but a proper match with a female of similar standing to yourself must be made. I will find you a wife who will bring you riches and no shame!”

  Ardhu wished Merlin was here with him now to advise him. Surely, surely, the shaman would agree that this girl, a princess from over the West Sea, would be a fitting match for the Stone Lord, the Terrible Head.… Oh spirits, but what madness possessed him to even think of a match so soon…he’d only just met her, and had grunted at her like some savage, and ogled her like some lust-addled oaf. She probably thought he was coarse, clumsy and thick, but it was as if a mad fire was burning in his brain, and even worse, in his loins….

  “Chief Ludegran, I must …get some air!” He dropped his beaker, spilling mead all over the floor, and pushed his way out of the roundhouse. Pausing by the door, he took a quick look back. Seemingly unconcerned by his sudden departure, Fynavir was now dancing for An’kelet. Anger and jealousy leapt up in him like a wild fire, and, ashamed, he hurried away, almost knocking over a startled serving-woman carrying a platter of mutton.

  Face grim, he stormed over to the palisade behind the hut and kicked the wall with all the force he could muster. It hurt, but the pain brought him back to his senses. Slightly. He knew better than to go into the roundhouse right now lest he behave in a way that was less than kingly. Sighing, he climbed up onto the palisade and stared moodily into the descending night, uncaring of the curious stares of the men positioned as guards on the wall.

  “Lord Ardhu…” A voice soft as the Moonlight drifted through the shadows. He froze. It couldn’t be…

  Turning around slowly, he gazed into the glacier-green eyes of Princess Fynavir. She had donned her red robe and a cloak of sewn beaver-pelts, and had tied her hair into a long braid, but still she looked heartbreakingly lovely, there in the muted starlight.

  “My lord, I pray I did not offend you with my dancing.” She placed a gentle hand on his arm. He nearly jumped with the unexpectedness of her touch.

  “Offended?” he laughed coarsely, trying to sound unflustered. “Of course not. It was just…different… to the dances of my people. As were your garments. They were…short.”

  She nodded. “My father was the third Ailello of my mother, Queen Mevva, and he was a man from over the Northern Sea, and it was to his homeland I was sent in fosterage as a young girl. I was to marry a northern chief who would bring amber from the Sea of Beltis to Ibherna in return for our gold. I grew up in the Women’s House there and learned the dances of spring, to invoke the Sun and the spirits who make crops and women’s bellies grow. It is their style of garments I wear, carried home in a cedar box when my intended husband died of tooth-rot. My mother ordered me to bring the dress; she said prospective husbands would like it.”

  “Well, I certainly liked it,” Art mumbled, and then reddened, hating his bumbling, foolish tongue. She must surely think him a stupid, callow youth, not only an unworthy ruler but useless as a man.

  Fynavir smiled. “My mother is seldom wrong about the wants of men. She has had more lovers than I can count and men clamour to bed her for both her beauty and her reputation.”

  “Does your father not complain?” Ardhu looked shocked.

  A shadow passed over her face. “He is dead. Every seven years the old Ailello is given to Krom the Bloody Crescent, that some call Stonehead, at his temple of thirteen stones, and my mother takes a new young strong Ailello as husband. All are pawns to my mother, who men say is goddess-of-the-tuath or tribe. Even I, her only living daughter, am but a useful tool. However, I am unlucky with husbands, it would seem, much to Mevva’s dismay!”

  “And what now for you?” His heart started to pound dully in his ears. He wanted nothing more than to reach out, to touch that soft pale face, the long, swan-like neck, and feel those white, half-revealed thighs against his…

  “I do not know, “she said softly. “It all depends on if we survive the attacks of these chieftains from the North. If we do, I am sure my mother will find some other who wants a goddess’ daughter for a bride, or a golden bride price. Or both.”

  Ardhu reached up, suddenly catching hold of her arms. She gasped ever so slightly, eyes widening, unsure as to his intention. “You won’t be bartered like that…if it’s not your wish,” he said forcefully. “Do you understand? You are in Albu now, and if I say you are free to do as you will, then so it will be.”

&nb
sp; She shook her head violently. “No! You would not dare risk ten thousand spears sailing to your shores!”

  His eyes darkened; suddenly he was his father’s son indeed, scion of impetuous hot header U’thyr. “I would risk it! I am Ardhu, king of Prydn! I am the land and this land is mine! Do you understand me, foreign girl? Your redheaded mother with her paramours and scheming ways holds no terror for me! Understand?”

  “My lord… forgive me!” She drew back and dropped into a position of obeisance.

  His face softened; he caught her arms and drew her up to him. The Moonlight was shivering on her brow and in her eyes, bleaching them of colour; she was like a mist-wraith ready to vanish on the wind. But she was of earth too—all too well he remembered her pale, round thighs, their promise barely hidden by the swinging strands of her skirt. “You are forgiven,” he said, “but do not doubt what I say to you again. I would never lie…not to you, Fynavir White Phantom.”

  She glanced up, wondering, and before she could protest, he took her in his arms and covered her mouth with his, while the guards on the ramparts nudged each other and muttered behind their hands.

  “Ardhu…” Fynavir pulled away first, but her hands were still resting on his shoulders. “Lord, you honour me, but I fear I will bring no luck to you. As I told you, both my betrothed husbands now lie in their barrows.”

  “Three is a blessed number and I will break that fatal charm,” said Ardhu dismissively. And when Fynavir opened her mouth to protest: “I warned you not to doubt me!”

  He was about to say more, but suddenly a wolf howled in the valley beyond the fort. It was a lonely cry, long and drawn out, borne aloft on the bitter night-wind. A score of other howls soon joined it, rising and falling, peaking in intensity as the Moon shone out from behind a patch of flying stratus.

  “Wolves,” breathed Fynavir. “I’d heard they sometimes came into these hills but not in recent years; they fear the halls of men.”