Stonehenge

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Perhaps?”

  “Boats do get swamped,” Haragg said, “and traders from the land across the sea do bring us gold.”

  Saban frowned at the skepticism in the big man’s voice. “Are you saying …” he began to ask.

  Haragg turned on him fiercely. “I am saying nothing. The gods do talk to us, and maybe the gods did send us the gold. Perhaps Dilan swamped the boat and steered it to that beach under the cliff, but why?” Haragg frowned into the wind. “We never did ask why, we just wrapped a girl in gold and killed her, and we went on doing it year after year after year!” He was angry now, spitting at the temple stone where the sacrificial blood, stuck with brown hairs, still showed. “And it is always the priests who demand sacrifice,” Haragg went on. “From every beast that is killed they get the liver and kidney and brain and the meat of one leg. When the sun bride is a goddess she is given treasure, but who keeps it when she is dead? The priests! Sacrifice, the priests say, or else the harvest will be bad, and when the harvest is bad anyway they simply say you did not sacrifice enough and so demand more!” He spat again.

  “Are you saying there should be no more priests?” Saban asked.

  Haragg shook his head. “We need priests. We need people who can translate the gods to us, but why do we choose our priests from the weakest?” He gave Saban a wry look. “Just like your tribe, we choose our priests from those who fail the ordeals. I failed! I cannot swim and I almost drowned, but my brother saved me, and in so doing he failed his own ordeal too, but Scathel always wanted to be a priest.” He shrugged, dismissing the story. “So most priests are weak men, but like all men, given some small authority, they become tyrants. And because so many priests are fools they will not think, but simply repeat the things they learned. Things change, but priests do not change. And now things are changing fast.”

  “Are they?” Saban asked.

  Haragg gave him a pitying look. “Our gold is stolen! Your father is killed! These are signs from the gods, Saban. The difficulty is knowing what they mean.”

  “And you do?”

  Haragg shook his head. “No, but your brother Camaban does.”

  For a moment Saban’s soul rebelled against this fate, which had brought him to a strange temple above an unforgiving sea. Camaban and Haragg, he thought, had entangled him in madness, and he felt a huge resentment against the destiny that had snatched him from Ratharryn and from Derrewyn’s arms. “I just want to be a warrior!” he protested.

  “What you want counts for nothing,” Haragg said curtly, “but what your brother wants is everything, and he saved your life. You would be dead now, cut down by Lengar’s spear, if Camaban had not arranged otherwise. He has given you life, Saban, and the rest of that life must be in his service. You have been chosen.”

  To make the world anew, Saban thought, and was tempted to laugh. Except that he was trapped in Camaban’s dream and, whether he wanted to or not, he was expected to fulfill that vision.

  Camaban returned to Sarmennyn at the beginning of spring. He had wintered in the forest at an ancient timber temple. It was overgrown and decaying, but he had cleared the undergrowth and watched the sun retreat about the ring of poles and then start back again toward its summer fullness, and all the time he had talked with Slaol – even argued with the god, for at times Camaban resented the burden laid on him. He alone understood the gods and the world, and he knew he alone could turn the world back to its beginnings, but sometimes, as he tested his ideas, he would groan in agony and rock backward and forward. Once a hunting party of Outfolk, seeking slaves, had heard him, seen him and fled from him because they understood he was a holy man. He was also a hungry man by the time he reached Sarmennyn: hungry, sour and gaunt, and he came to the tribe’s chief settlement on a day of festival like a mangy crow alighting amid a flock of swans. The settlement’s main gate was hung with white garlands of cow parsley and pear blossom, for this was the day on which the new sun bride would be greeted by her people.

  Kereval, the chief of Sarmennyn, greeted Camaban warmly. At first glance Kereval was an unlikely chief for such a warlike nation, for he was neither the tallest nor the strongest man in the tribe. However, he was reckoned to have wisdom and, in the wake of their treasures’ loss, that was what the people of Sarmennyn had sought in their new leader. He was a small and wiry man with dark eyes that peered from the tangle of gray tattoos that covered his cheeks; his black hair was pinned with fishbones; his woolen cloak was dyed blue. His people asked only one thing of him: that he retrieve the treasures, and that Kereval was seeking to do by his alliance with Lengar. A bargain had been struck by which a small war band of Sarmennyn’s feared warriors would help Lengar defeat Cathallo and a temple of Sarmennyn would be given to Ratharryn, and in return the golden lozenges would be sent home.

  “There are those who think your brother cannot be trusted,” Kereval told Camaban. The two men squatted outside Kereval’s hut where Camaban greedily ate a bowl of fish broth and a piece of hard flat bread.

  “Of course they think that,” Camaban retorted, though in truth he did not care what people thought for his head was dizzy with the glory of Slaol.

  “They believe we should go to war,” Kereval said, peering toward the gate to see if the sun bride had yet appeared.

  “Then go to war,” Camaban said carelessly, his mouth full. “You think it matters to me whether your miserable treasures are returned?”

  Kereval said nothing. He knew he could never hope to lead an army to Ratharryn for it was too far away and his spearmen would meet too many enemies on the way, despite the fact that those spearmen were famous for their bravery, and were feared by all their neighbors for they were as hard and pitiless as the land they came from. Sarmennyn was a rocky land, a bitter place trapped between the sea and the mountains where even the trees grew bent as old folk, though few in the tribe ever did grow old. The hardships of life bent the people as the wind bent the trees, a wind that rarely ceased from wailing about the rocky tops of the mountains beneath which the folk of Sarmennyn lived in low huts made of stone and thatched with driftwood, seaweed, straw and turf. The smoke from their crouched huts mixed with mist, rain and sleet. It was a land, the people said, that no man wanted, and so the Outfolk tribe had occupied it and made a living from the sea, by carving axes from the dark stones of the mountains and by stealing from their neighbors. They had thrived in their barren country, but since their treasures had been stolen nothing had gone well in the land. There had been more disease than usual, and the disease had afflicted the tribe’s cattle and sheep. A score of boats had been lost at sea, their crew’s bodies washed ashore all white and swollen and sea-nibbled. Storms had flattened the land’s few crops so there was hunger. Wolves had come down from the hills and their howling was like a lament for the lost treasures.

  “If your brother does not keep our bargain –” Kereval began.

  “If my brother breaks his word,” Camaban interrupted the chief, “then I will undertake to return the gold. I, Camaban, will send you the gold. You trust me, do you not?”

  “Of course,” Kereval said, and he did, for Camaban had cured the chief’s favorite wife who had been dying of the wasting disease when Camaban had first visited Sarmennyn. Kereval’s priests and healers had achieved nothing, but Camaban had given the woman a potion he had learned from Sannas and she had recovered swiftly and wholly.

  Camaban wiped the broth from the clay bowl with the last of the bread then turned toward the crowd at the garlanded gate who had suddenly sunk to their knees. “Your newest bride is here?” he asked Kereval sarcastically. “Another child with twisted teeth and tangled hair to throw at the god?”

  “No,” Kereval said, standing to join the crowd at the gate. “Her name is Aurenna, and the priests tell me we have never sent a girl so lovely to the sun. Never. This one is beautiful.”

  “They say that every year,” Camaban said, and that was true, for the sun brides were always reckoned beautiful. The tribe gave their
best to the god, but sometimes, in years past, when parents had a beautiful daughter, they would hide the girl when the priests came to search for the bride. But the parents of this year’s sun bride had not hidden her, nor married her to some young man who, by taking her virginity, would have made her ineligible for the sun god’s bed. Instead they had kept her for Erek, although Aurenna was a girl so lovely that men had offered her father whole herds of cattle for her hand, while a chieftain from across the sea, a man whose traders brought gold and bronze into Sarmennyn, had said he would yield Aurenna’s own weight in metal if she would just take ship to his far island.

  Her father had rejected all the suitors, even though he desperately needed wealth for he had no cattle, no sheep, no fields and no boat. He chipped stone every day. He and his wife and their children all chipped the dark, greenish stone that came from the mountains to make axe-heads, which his children polished with sand, and then a trader would come and take away the heads and leave a little food for Aurenna’s family. Aurenna alone had not chipped or polished stone. Her parents would not permit it for she was beautiful and a local priest had prophesied that she would become the sun bride, and so her family had protected her until the priests came to take her away. Her father had wept and her mother had embraced her when that moment arrived. “When you are a goddess,” her mother pleaded, “look after us.”

  Now the new sun bride came to Kereval’s settlement and the waiting crowd touched their foreheads to the ground as the priests escorted her through the blossom-hung gate. Kereval lay flat just inside the settlement’s gateway and did not move until Aurenna gave him permission to stand, though one of the priests had to prompt her for she still did not fully understand that she was about to become a goddess. Kereval stood and felt a great relief that Aurenna was all that she had been reported to be. Her name meant “golden one” in the Outfolk tongue, and it was a good name for her hair shone like pale gold. She had the whitest, cleanest skin Kereval had ever seen, a long face, calm eyes and a strange air of authority. She was, indeed, beautiful – Kereval would have liked to have taken her into his own household, but that was impossible. Instead he escorted her to the hut where the priests’ wives would wash her, comb her long golden hair and dress her in the white woolen robe.

  “She is beautiful,” Camaban grudgingly said to Kereval.

  “Very,” Kereval said, and dared to hope that the sun god would reward the tribe for giving him a bride of such ethereal beauty.

  “Beautiful,” Camaban said softly, and he knew suddenly that Aurenna must be part of his great scheme. In a world where folk were bent and scarred, toothless and dirty even when they were not wall-eyed, crippled and wart-covered, Aurenna was a pale, serene and dazzling presence, and Camaban understood that her sacrifice made this year a special one for Slaol. “But what if the god rejects her?” Camaban asked.

  Kereval touched his groin in the same gesture that Camaban’s people used to avert ill fortune. “He won’t,” Kereval said fiercely, but in truth he did fear just such a rejection. In the past the sun brides had gone calmly to their deaths to be snatched in a blaze of light, but since the loss of the treasures the brides had all died hard. The last one had been the worst for she had screamed like a clumsily killed pig. She had writhed and shrieked and her moans of pain were worse than the howling of the wolves or the sigh of the ever-cold sea as it sucked at the dark rocks which edged Sarmennyn’s bleak land. Kereval believed that the manner of Aurenna’s death would be a touchstone for his wisdom. If the god approved of the bargain with Lengar then Aurenna would die cleanly, but if he disapproved then Aurenna would die in agony and Kereval’s enemies within the tribe would reject his leadership.

  At the southern edge of the settlement, beside the river where a score of boats had been pulled above the high tide, there stood a circle of rough stone pillars: the temple of the sun bride. The tribe danced about the circle, singing as they waited for the bride to appear from the hut where she was being washed and dressed. Leckan, the lame sorcerer who had gone to Ratharryn when the folk of Sarmennyn had attempted to trade for the gold, and who was now the senior priest in Kereval’s settlement, glanced up at the sky and saw that the clouds were thinning so that there was a chance that the sun might see the girl. That was a good omen. Then the singing and the dancing stopped as the tribe dropped to the ground.

  Aurenna had appeared and, led by two priests, walked to her temple. Her hair had been combed, then gathered into a plait that was bound with a leather thong and laced with cowslips and sloe-blossom. The robe, so clean and white, hung straight from her shoulders. She would normally have been arrayed in gold, with a cascade of lozenges around her neck and the larger pieces sewn to the robe, but the gold was gone, yet even so she was dazzling. She was a tall girl, and slender, and straight-backed, so that it seemed to Camaban, who alone watched as she walked through the prostrate tribe, that she moved with an unworldly grace.

  Aurenna was unsure of what she should do. She was hesitant to enter the circle until one of the priests whispered that this was the moment when she became a goddess and this was her temple and she could do as she wished, but that it was customary for the bride to go to the circle’s center and there instruct the tribe to stand and dance. Aurenna did as she was told, though there was a catch in her voice as she spoke. And just at that moment the sun broke through the clouds and the people sighed with delight for that good omen.

  Kereval, the chief, carried a leather bag which he handed to Leckan, and Leckan opened it to discover new treasures inside. These were treasures that Kereval had ordered made in the land across the western sea, and they had cost him dearly in bronze and amber and jet, and though they could not replace the lost treasures, they could still do honor to Erek and his bride. The priest drew out one large golden lozenge and three chains of smaller lozenges that had been strung on strings of sinews and he hung them about Aurenna’s neck. Then he produced a bronze-bladed knife that had pins of gold pierced into its wooden handle. He kept the knife himself as a symbol that the thread of Aurenna’s life would be cut when her time was done.

  Gifts were brought to the goddess. There were bags of grain, oysters, mussels and many dried fish. There were axe-heads and slivers of bronze, and those gifts the priests tucked away for their own use, but the food was piled before Aurenna, fetched into the temple by men who dared take a glance at the goddess before they prostrated themselves. She thanked each one with a diffidence that was alluring. She even laughed when one man brought some dried fish, all threaded by their gills onto a stick, and one fish fell off. As the man turned to retrieve it another fell from the opposite end of the stick, and as he turned to retrieve that so a third fell off. Aurenna’s laughter was as bright as her betrothed who still shone down from the gap in the clouds.

  “It is customary to give the food to the widows,” Leckan the priest told her in a low voice.

  “The food must go to the widows,” Aurenna said in a clear voice.

  Leckan gave her more instructions. She was a goddess now, so she must not be seen eating or drinking, though wherever she went in Sarmennyn a hut would be provided for her privacy. Two women would be her constant attendants and four young spearmen her guards. “You are free to go wherever you wish, great one,” he murmured to Aurenna, “but it is customary to travel throughout the land to bring blessings on it.”

  “And …” Aurenna began a question, but the words dried in her throat. “When …” she began again, but still could not finish.

  “And, at the end,” Leckan said calmly, “you will be here and we shall escort you to your husband. It does not hurt.” He pointed to the sun, which now blazed between the clouds. “Your husband will not wish to wait one heartbeat longer than is necessary. There will be no pain.”

  “No pain?” a voice suddenly shouted behind them. “No pain? There must be pain! What bride does not feel pain? Pain and blood! Blood and pain!” The man who had shouted these words now came into the temple where he dropped to the gr
ound and stretched his hands toward Aurenna’s feet. “Of course there is pain!” he shouted into the grass. “Unimaginable pain! Your blood will boil, your bones crack and your skin shrivel. It is agony. You could never imagine such pain, not if you were to live in torment till the end of time!” He scrambled to his feet again. “You should scream in pain,” he spat at Aurenna, “for you are a bride!”

  The man had come with a dozen followers, all naked like their leader and all priests, but only the man who shouted had come close to Aurenna. He was a tall, gaunt creature with a starved face and blazing eyes, long yellow teeth and tangled black hair and a scar-flecked skin. His voice was like a raven’s jeer, his heavy bones were as knobbled as flint and his blackened fingers were hooked like claws. “Pain is the price you pay!” he shouted at the terrified girl. He carried a heavy flint-headed spear which he flourished wildly as he capered among the stones. “Your eyes will burst, your sinews will shrink and your screams will echo from the cliffs!” he shouted.

  Camaban had watched this display and grinned at it, but Kereval had run into the temple. “Scathel?” he shouted angrily. “Scathel!”

  Scathel was the high priest of Sarmennyn, and had been the high priest when the treasures were stolen, but he had blamed himself for the gold’s loss and so he had gone away into the hills where he had howled at the rocks and scarred his body with flints. Others of the priests had followed him and, when Scathel’s madness had passed, they had built themselves a new temple in the high rocks and there they had prayed, starved and abased themselves, making amends for the loss of the treasures. Many in the tribe believed that Scathel had vanished forever, but now he had returned.