Below them, beside the Stone of Adoration, Fynavir stood in her bridal gown with its unparalleled cape of gold. She looked small and alone amidst the towering megaliths. She felt uneasy, for though these Stones were strange to her, in her own land she knew of Stonehead, the Black Crooked One, surrounded by thirteen pillars, who demanded a tithe of milk, corn and children every seven years. And so it was everywhere—the spirits always demanded a sacrifice; there was always a price to be paid…
What did the Ancestors who ruled Khor Ghor want as payment? And who would pay it?
She shivered, and it wasn’t from the biting wind that seemed to blow, day and night across the plain, bringing inclement weather from the West and battering the stones on that side of the circle.
Glancing to one side, she spied An’kelet among the warriors. His head was bowed, the wind casting his copper-gold hair in wild disarray. A sudden shaft of light touched him, and he was instantly all gold, a scion of the Sun himself.
She looked away hurriedly, fearful that he would notice her furtive glance, afraid her eyes would reveal the fearful secret of her heart.
Merlin and Ardhu were descending from the Door into Winter using a rope ladder that priest-acolytes then removed and rolled up. The shaman was stern-visaged, and unwelcoming; Fynavir had sensed that he did not approve of her. She knew he could be a danger if his opinion did not change, and determined she would put no foot wrong and win him to her cause.
The Merlin stalked up to her and grasped her hand, thrusting it into Ardhu’s with little gentleness. Art grinned at her shyly, looking like the boy he truly was beneath the warrior’s veneer, and squeezed her chilled fingers. Merlin then drew a cord made of gold wires from his belt-pouch. He wrapped it about their twined hands, knotting it again and again, until it dug into their flesh, binding them together.
“By these bonds, you are joined, King and Queen of Khor Ghor and the West, high lord and lady of the lands of the Dwri, the Duvnoni, and other client kingdoms. The spirits have entrusted you with these positions and you are their representatives on earth—son of sky, the Great heavenly Bear who rules the Northern heavens, and daughter of Earth, the White Lady who lies within the chalk below us, the very bones of Albu, our fair land. Together it is your duty to rule the tribes well and to give them a strong line of kings from the joining of your flesh…”
Merlin gave Ardhu a sudden piercing look from under his brows, and both Fynavir and Art blushed profusely, neither gazing at the other.
“So it is done,” said the Merlin, and he waved his staff over them, lightly touching them on brow, on breast, on Fynavir’s belly and Ardhu’s thigh. “Hail to the Lord of the West and his Lady!”
The warband cheered and drums were beaten. A sweet smell went up as priests lit incense cups and walked around the stones, bowing and supplicating them, pouring offerings of animal blood and alcoholic drink at their bases so that the Ancestors might also join in with the wedding feast.
Once finished, they halted and turned toward the North-East. Their drum fell silent—but another in the distance was beating, slow and sensual. Up from the river came a party of women to attend to the bride and prepare her for the wedding night ahead. Three times three they were: a holy number, three maidens, three women of childbearing age, and three withered crones. Naked save for short skirts and paint, they capered and shrieked and wailed, occasionally lifting their skirts and exposing themselves—an age-old gesture that was said to ward off evil spirits and protect against lightning.
The men within the stone circle stared at the ground, or else covered their eyes—it was ill-luck for males to gaze upon these women as they danced for the fertility of human and beast, and even a furtive, stolen glance could make a man blind, or, worse, impotent.
The women surrounded Fynavir, touching her with their stained hands, leaving red and chalky and ashen handprints all over her splendid robe. They guided her to a great flat bluestone at the front of the circle, standing beside a peaked ‘male’ stone, its mate through long eternity. They crowded around it, rubbing themselves against its rough surface, pressing Fynavir forward until she too was embracing it, this old Mother stone that had seen generations come and go. She could feel its rough surface through the thin linen of her bridal robe, and it seemed to grow warm as she touched it, making her body tingle, and her thighs grow warm.
For the first time since she had entered Khor Ghor she felt less afraid. Whatever spirit dwelt in this Ancestor-stone, it felt benign, even loving… unlike crook-backed Stonehead with his Moon-sickle that harvested human lives.
The women took her by the arms and drew her away from the female stone. Slowly they retreated from the great circle, holding hands and making a circle of their own, dancing Sunwise around Fynavir as they chanted and sang.
Down the Avenue they danced, and the Sunlight and shadows of that day enfolded them until they became mere dots on the horizon by the swelling mounds of the Seven Kings.
“Go now,” said Merlin to the men of the warband. “Let there be feasting and merriment among the peoples until the break of dawn. King Ardhu of Prydn now has his Queen.”
*****
The men fared forth to high Kham-El-Ard, where Merlin’s builders had finally completed the Great Hall, a structure unlike any other ever raised in the isles. Crafted to the specifications of the shaman, its design was influenced by past meetings with travellers from beyond the mighty river Rhyn and the Pillars of the Western World, who brought tales of the splendid palaces and strongholds of faraway lands.
The hall stood shining in the pallid Sunlight, a true place of heroes with its mighty gables and lintelled door that faced East to catch the rising Sun. Rectangular in shape, it resembled the small houses that clustered about Deroweth but many times their size and covered with carvings of gods and spirits that seemed almost ready to leap into life. Unusually, it had small high portholes cut in the sides to let out smoke and odours, and screens of stretched calfskin that could be bound over these slits to keep out inclement weather.
The men set about drinking, and many ribald jokes were told, and boasts made that would never be carried out. Warriors wrestled, and a young aurochs, standing nearly six foot at the shoulder, was dragged up the hill and pole-axed before the doors of Ardhu’s Great Hall, its blood being used to paint the threshold and bring good luck to the consummation of the marriage. The beast’s head was then buried in a pit by the gate, a silent watcher that gazed toward the terminus of the Avenue.
Gradually day faded to early evening, and the light became warm. Red rays of Sun shot through the bunched clouds in the West, making the entire fort of Kham-El-Ard glow like fire. Down below, in the twisted trees near the Sacred Pool, a horn suddenly blared, its voice rising eerily up to the heights. Birds scattered from their perches at the sound, soaring into the sky like the souls of the dead taking flight.
“It is time,” said the Merlin, “for the purified bride to come to her husband to fulfil the sacred marriage and bring great blessings on the people of the West. It is time for all to depart save Lord Ardhu.”
The warriors began to gather their possessions—strewn cloaks and beakers, lolling-tongued dogs. They streamed toward the gates of the half-finished citadel, hurrying before the light failed to get onto the riverside path that led to their tents up near the Seven Kings. They did not dare glance back towards the woodland at the foot of the hill, the haunted area where it was whispered the shades of the old Hunting-men still wandered, firing ghostly arrows across the mist-exhaling lake. Here their new Queen was being ritually cleansed before coming to the bed of the King—the beautiful white Queen who was on that night a goddess, not a woman made of mere flesh. A thousand years before, any man who gazed upon the chief’s bride in her purification rites would have been strangled and deposited in the holy waters of the lake, and although that tradition had lapsed, no man risked the displeasure of the gods by spying on her unveiled beauty.
“An’kelet, I would have you stay with me.�
� Ardhu beckoned his friend to his side. “The fort seems too empty. I know it must be so till the warband’s dwellings are built…but still. I would not be alone up here.”
“Alone? You won’t be alone.” An’kelet smiled wryly. The smile did not reach his eyes.
“I meant unguarded. I could have chosen to celebrate the wedding night at Deroweth, but that is a place of priests and the half-world. I am a man, and this hill and the structures upon it are of the now-world—and they are mine, as Ardhu Pendraec, King of Prydn. Hence I want to bring my bride here, to the hall where she will be the first Queen of many over long generations to come.”
An’kelet shifted uneasily, making circles in the dust with his felt boot. His confidence seemed to wane like the dying Moon. “Ardhu…my friend, I beg you, choose another….”
Ardhu frowned, perplexed. “I thought you would be honoured to be the king’s Man on this night—the guardian of the Marriage Chamber.”
“Yes, An’kelet of Ar-morah, surely you would not deny your sworn lord.”
Merlin suddenly flapped in, saturnine and hawk-eyed, his cloak and hair and beard straggling on gusts of the ascending breeze. His piercing gaze darted from An’kelet’s pale, guilty face to Ardhu’s perturbed one. “What an honour, to protect the bridal bed of your beloved King and his comely Queen!”
“I…I cannot…” A glistening bead of sweat trickled down An’kelet’s forehead, despite the coolness of the impending night.
Again, down in the trees below Kham-El-Ard, the horn sounded its mournful note—closer, this time. The chanting of the women could be heard as they began to ascend the hill.
“Maybe you should tell Ardhu why, Lord An’kelet.” Merlin’s voice was a growl. “Tell him the truth.”
An’kelet turned to his friend, his chief, his eyes pleading. “I cannot stay here tonight… What you ask is geish—taboo for me.”
“Taboo?” Ardhu shook his head. “Why? What do you mean?”
“He’s making it up.” Merlin pointed an accusing finger at An’kelet. “I warned you, Ardhu. The bones do not lie.”
“Be silent!” Ardhu blazed back at him. “An’kelet, I order you to speak!”
An’kelet drew a shuddering breath. “I told you of my mother, the Priestess Ailin, and how I am sworn to purity, as she dictated, in order to keep the power of my arm. I must not, therefore, be party to the joining of the flesh, which could lead me to weakness.”
“Nonsense!” Merlin stamped his foot. “He hides the truth, Ardhu!”
“Believe me or not, I must not stay!” cried An’kelet. ”Punish me on the morrow, if it is your will!”
Face white with shame, he stumbled from the hall. Neither Ardhu nor Merlin called after him. As he ran, he spotted the women coming up the hill. Fynavir walked amongst them, proud and cold, a white, frosted flower. Her garments had been stripped from her, and she had been painted head to foot with symbols of luck and fertility, and blue flowers were twined in her unbound hair.
He paused for a moment, unable to tear his gaze away from her naked beauty. His breath came low and heavy; he felt stirrings he had kept long suppressed. And fear, a terrible fear… If Fynavir was goddess on earth, she could be death as well as life…His death, the death of all that An’kelet, greatest warrior in the West, had ever striven for…
He cast himself on the ground, covering his eyes. The marriage party passed, and the doors of Ardhu’s Great Hall closed as the women brought Fynavir to the bridal bed with many women’s charms upon her.
And An’kelet, scrambling back onto his feet, howled like a beast in pain, and ran like a madman out into the Deadlands of the Plain, where the barrows clustered and mortals did not walk. He had told his first ever lie, to his best friend and his lord; heart and mind and body had all betrayed him that night.
And in the sky the new-risen Moon watched his torment: a white and haunting ghost whose face was that of Fynavir.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A year passed at Kham-El-Ard. Carpenters and craftsmen finished work upon the halls and walls, and as Merlin had foreseen, the fort stood in unparalleled splendour— a mighty citadel with woven banners flapping above the gate and guards strutting along the ramparts. The prime warriors and their wives had relocated there from Place-of-Light, living in small houses around the periphery of the fort. Despite the loss, Place-of-Light continued to thrive as it had done for centuries, ever since the gold-men came from overseas; indeed, its population swelled as youths arrived from all over Prydn to join Ardhu’s warband. Not every youth was suitable, of course. Many were hotheaded and ill-trained, so Ka’hai, Bohrs and Betu’or took to teaching them the arts of war—the strike with the slingshot, the death thrust of the dagger, the blow of the war-hammer.
The coasts were free of the snake-like ships of the Sea-Raiders and Ardhu and Fynavir rode out in splendour as far West as Belerion, and wherever they went, they were hailed as gods-come-to-earth. The weather was unusually settled from the Winter Solstice on through spring and summer, and everywhere crops sprouted in abundance, promising a fulsome harvest. Few old ones passed into the Otherworld, and less bone-ache, tooth-loss and rickets plagued the tribes. Children were born, and lived in record numbers, along with their mothers.
It was as if the earth itself had become fertile with the union of the young King and his white Queen…but there was no sign that Fynavir herself would present the people of Prydn with Ardhu's heir. Each month the village crones looked to her and gossiped, but every turning of the Moon she stole away to the Women’s House in the lake valley to spend five days away from her husband until the priestesses of the temple purified her and returned her to her husband’s bed.
But Ardhu was none too worried by the absence of a child. They were both young, and not every coupling produced a babe—he knew that. When the Ancestors decided that a long-dead Great One should be reborn in flesh, then they would make it so, breathing spirit into the woman’s womb. This could happen now or months hence; the Ancestors were capricious.
In some ways he was glad no child had come as yet—he was just enjoying being married to Fynavir. After initial shyness, even slight reluctance, she had warmed to his embraces, and her long, strong dancer’s legs wrapped round him in the lovers’ dance helped him forget the dark, wild lustfulness of Morigau, his eternal shame, and his hidden secret.
But shortly after the first anniversary of their marriage union, Merlin came to Ardhu as he sat beside Fynavir in the Great Hall. Torches lit the high, carved roof-beams and incense burners let off sweet fragrance, while Art sat with his queen upon a nest of furs and pillows stuffed with dried grasses. A warm fire burned in a pit before them, and they passed back and forth a fine imported cup carved from a single lump of amber
“Your sister wants to see you, Pendraec,” said the high priest curtly.
Ardhu turned bone-white; he thrust the amber mug at Fynavir. “My sister! Where is she?”
Merlin glanced at him suspiciously, noting his discomfiture. “What ails you? You look as if I told you the Great Sow herself was rooting for your blood! I am talking of your younger sister Mor-ghan…Ana, who lives in the Lake Valley with Lady Nin-Aeifa. She has asked for you at the secret cave below the fort.”
Ardhu relaxed, colour flooding back into his face. “Ana! Yes, of course! She has joined the Lake Maidens. What does she want?”
Merlin shrugged. “Her tidings are not for me, Ardhu. You must meet with her yourself.”
Ardhu rose from the floor, scattering furs.
Fynavir made to rise too. “Shall I come, Art?” She quite wanted to meet this mysterious sister; she had seen the Ladies of Lake worshipping at the Sacred Pool below Kham-El-Ard, but they wore concealing veils and painted their faces white like the dead, and she had never dared speak to them.
“No, it is a private matter between my kinswoman and myself,” Ardhu said distractedly, dragging his bearskin cloak round his shoulders. “I shan’t be long. An’kelet will entertain you while I’m away…�
�� He nodded at his friend, who sat to the right of the fire, beaker in hand, half-hidden in shadow. “Sing her a song for me, will you, Ank? A ballad from your homeland. Something sad that will make her miss me, and then welcome me home again in the best way a woman can!”
An’kelet bowed his head, expression hidden by the amber locks of his hair. “I will do what I can to please her, lord.”
“Good—that is as it should be! Keep my place warm for me!”
Ardhu slid down the path that led from the summit of the hill, and walked around the base of the mound with its dry defences rimmed by sharpened poles. Passing onto the eastern side, trees rose up in leafy abundance, and the smell of water and old things, growing things, reached into his nostrils. Wind rushed in the treetops, making an eerie hissing, and lonely birds cried out, their shrieks reminiscent of the cries of lost spirits.
Ardhu glanced gratefully toward Carnwennan in its secret sheath against his calf. He was reasonably certain he would meet no hostile humans so close to Kham-El-Ard, but denizens of the spirit-world were another matter. He did not know how well his earthly weapons would fare against spirit-beings, though he had heard they were fearful of metal, since many came from the Time Before, when weapons and tools were of bone or stone.
Ahead of him he saw a gap in the ash, elm and holly, yawning like some prickly foliate mouth. Though it, the waters of the lake where he had gained Caladvolc gleamed silver-blue, a mirror reflecting the graceful, swaying branches and the scudding clouds in the sky above.
He walked to the edge of the water, feet sinking in the mud, feeling suddenly cold and alone. Perhaps he should have allowed Fynavir to accompany him…but maybe Ana had things to say that Fyn could never hear…
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 25