Stonehenge

by Bernard Cornwell

  Derrewyn closed her eyes and swayed from side to side. She was breathing through her nose, but every now and then she let a sigh escape, and then, quite suddenly, she began to weep. Her thin shoulders heaved, her face screwed up and the tears flowed. It was as though her heart was broken. She moaned and gasped and sobbed, and the tears trickled down her face, and then she doubled forward as though she would retch, and Saban feared she would put her head into the smoldering fire, but then, just as suddenly, she arched her body back and stared into the peaked roof as she gasped for breath. “What do you see?” she asked him.

  “I see nothing,” Saban said. He felt light-headed, as though he had drunk too much liquor, but he saw nothing. No dreams, no visions, no apparitions. He had feared he would see Sannas, back from the dead, but there was nothing but shadow and smoke and Derrewyn’s white body with its protruding ribs.

  “I see death,” Derrewyn whispered. The tears still ran down her cheeks. “There will be so much death,” she whispered. “You are making a temple of death.”

  “No,” Saban protested.

  “Camaban’s temple,” Derrewyn said, her voice no more than the sigh of a small wind brushing a temple’s poles, “the winter shrine, the Temple of Shadows.” She rocked from side to side. “The blood will steam from its stones like mist.”

  “No!”

  “And the sun bride will die there,” Derrewyn crooned.

  “No.”

  “Your sun bride.” Derrewyn was staring at Saban now, but not seeing him for her eyes had rolled up so that only the whites showed. “She will die there, blood on stone.”

  “No!” Saban shouted and his vehemence startled her from her trance.

  Her eyes focused and she looked surprised. “I only tell what I see,” she said calmly, “and what Sannas gives me to see, and she sees Camaban clearly for he stole her life.”

  “He stole her life?” Saban asked, puzzled.

  “He was seen, Saban,” Derrewyn said tiredly. “A child saw a limping man leave the shrine at dawn, and that same morning Sannas was found dead.” She shrugged. “So Sannas cannot go to her ancestors, not till Camaban releases her, and I cannot kill Camaban, for I would kill Sannas with him and share her fate.” She looked heartbroken, then shook her head. “I want to go to Lahanna, Saban. I want to be in the sky. There’s no happiness here on earth.”

  “There will be,” Saban said firmly. “We shall bring Slaol back and there will be no more winter and no more sickness.”

  Derrewyn smiled ruefully. “No more winter,” she said wistfully, “and all by restoring the pattern.” She enjoyed Saban’s surprise. “We hear all that happens in Sarmennyn,” she said. “The traders come and talk to us. We know about your temple and about your hopes. But how do you know the pattern is broken?”

  “It just is,” Saban said.

  “You are like mice,” she said scornfully, “who think the wheat is grown for their benefit and that by saying prayers they can prevent the harvest.” She stared at the dull glow of the fire and Saban gazed at her. He was trying to reconcile this bitter sorceress with the girl he had known, and perhaps she was thinking the same thing for she suddenly looked up at him. “Don’t you sometimes wish everything was as it used to be?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Saban said, “all the time.”

  She smiled at the fervor in his voice. “Me too,” she said softly. “We were happy, weren’t we, you and I? But we were also children. It really wasn’t so long ago, but now you move temples and I tell Rallin what to do.”

  “What do you tell him?”

  “To kill anything from Ratharryn, of course. To kill and kill again. They attack us all the time, but the marshes protect us and if they try to go round the marshes we meet them in the forests and kill them one by one.” Her voice was full of vengeance. “And who started the killing? Lengar! And who does Lengar worship? Slaol! He went to Sarmennyn and learned to worship Slaol above all the gods and ever since there has been no end to the killing. Slaol has been unleashed, Saban, and he brings blood.”

  “He is our father,” Saban protested, “and loves us.”

  “Loves us!” Derrewyn snapped. “He is cruel, Saban, and why should a cruel god take away our winter? Or spare us sadness?” She shuddered. “When you worship Slaol as just one of many gods then he is held in check – all is in balance. But you have put him at the head of the gods and now he will use his whip on you.”

  “No,” Saban said.

  “And I will oppose him,” Derrewyn said, “for that is my task. I am now Slaol’s enemy, Saban, because his cruelty will have to be curbed.”

  “He is not cruel,” Saban insisted.

  “Tell that to the girls he burns each year in Sarmennyn,” Derrewyn said tartly, “though he spared your Aurenna, didn’t he?” She smiled. “I do know her name, Saban. Is she a good woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kind?”

  “Yes.”

  “And beautiful?” Derrewyn asked pointedly.

  “Yes.”

  “But she was shown to Slaol, wasn’t she? Given to him!” She hissed those three words. “You think he will forget? She has been marked, Saban, marked by a god. Camaban was marked! He has a moon on his belly. Do not trust people marked by the gods.”

  “Aurenna was not marked,” Saban protested.

  Derrewyn smiled. “Her beauty marks her, Saban. I know, for I was once beautiful.”

  “You still are,” Saban said and he meant it, but she just laughed at him.

  “You would do better to make a hundred temples to a hundred gods, or make one temple to a thousand gods, but to make that temple? It would be better to make no temples at all. Better to take the stones and drop them in the sea.” She shook her head, as though she knew her advice was in vain. “Fetch me the necklace I dropped outside,” she ordered him.

  Saban obeyed, scooping up the rattling bones on their string of sinew. They were, he realized with a shock, the bones of a small baby, all tiny ribs and fragile fingers. He handed it across the smoldering remnants of the fire and Derrewyn bit through the sinew and took a single small vertebra out of the string. She reached behind her for a red-colored pot with a wide mouth that was sealed with beeswax. She used a knife to lever off the wax stopper and immediately a terrible stench pervaded the hut, overpowering even the remnants of the pungent smoke, but Derrewyn, whose head was directly above the evil smell, did not seem to mind. She pushed the small bone into the pot, then brought it out and Saban saw it was smeared with a sticky pale gum.

  She put the pot aside and dragged a flat basket toward her and rooted amongst its contents, finally bringing out two halves of a hazelnut’s shell. She placed the bone inside the shell and, frowning with concentration, closed the shell and wrapped it in a length of sinew. She wound the thread repeatedly about the nut, then took a leather lace and made the sinew-wrapped nut into an amulet that Saban could wear about his neck. She held it to him. “Put it on.”

  “What is it?” Saban asked, taking the amulet nervously.

  “A charm,” she said dismissively, covering the stinking pot with a scrap of leather.

  “What sort of charm?”

  “Lengar gave me a son,” she said calmly, “and the bone inside the shell is a bone of that child, and the ointment is what is left of its flesh.”

  Saban shuddered. “A bone of your own child?”

  “Lengar’s child,” Derrewyn said, “and I killed it as you’d kill a louse. It was born, Saban, it cried for milk and I cut its throat.” She stared at Saban, her gaze unblinking. He shuddered again and tried to imagine the hate that had been put into her soul. “But I shall have another child one day,” she went on. “I shall have a daughter and I shall raise her to be a sorceress like me. I will wait till Lahanna tells me the time is right and then I shall lie with Rallin and breed a girl to guide this tribe when I am dead.” She sighed, then nodded at the nutshell amulet. “Tell Lengar that his life is trapped inside that shell and that if he threatens
you, if he attacks you or if he even offends you, just destroy the amulet. Beat it flat with a stone or burn it and he will die. Tell him that.”

  Saban hung the hazel shell about his neck next to the amber pendant that had been his mother’s gift. “You hate him,” he said, “so why don’t you crush the charm?”

  Derrewyn smiled. “It was my child too, Saban.”

  “So …” Saban began, but could not go on.

  “Crush the amulet,” she said, “and you will hurt me too. Maybe not kill me, for it is my magic and I can make charms to counter it, but it will hurt. It will hurt. No!” She had seen that he was about to take the amulet off. “You will need it, Saban. You brought me a gift and now you must take mine. You gave me Jegar’s life so I give you your brother’s life for, believe me, he wants yours.” She rubbed her eyes, then crawled past him into the open air. Saban followed.

  Derrewyn pulled the deerskin tunic over her head then stooped to look at Jegar’s head. She turned it over and spat into its eyes. “I shall plant this on a stake outside this hut,” she said, “and one day, perhaps, put Lengar’s head beside it.”

  Saban dressed. “I will go at dawn,” he said, “with your permission.”

  “With my help,” Derrewyn said. “I’ll send spearmen to take you safely away.” She kicked Jegar’s head inside the hut. “We shall meet again, Saban,” she said, and then, abruptly, she turned and hugged him, burying her face in his tunic and holding him with an astonishing strength. He felt her shudder and he put his arms about her.

  She immediately pulled away. “I will give you food,” she said coldly, “and a place to sleep. And in the morning you can go.”

  In the morning, he went.

  Lengar had already gone back to Ratharryn when Saban returned to Sul. “He thought you’d run away,” Lewydd told Saban.

  “You didn’t tell him I was coming back?”

  “I told him nothing. Why should I? But the sooner you’re home in Sarmennyn, the better. He wants you dead.”

  Saban touched the shape of the nutshell beneath his tunic, but said nothing of it. Would it work? Would he even need it? If he stayed in distant Sarmennyn he would never need face Lengar again and so he was glad when, on the day after his return from Cathallo, Kereval at last tore himself away from the hot spring in which he had been soaking himself, claiming that it cured the aches in his bones. The westward sea journey home was much harder for the wind was against the boats and though the tides still carried them for half of the time, the voyage took much paddling and a whole day longer than the outward journey. At last, though, the boats turned about the headland and the crews sang as the tide carried them upriver to Kereval’s settlement.

  Next day Saban picked woad from a hillside and Aurenna infused it in water and, when the dye was ready, she placed a second killing tattoo on Saban’s chest. She hammered the marks in with a comb, driving the dye deep, and while she worked Saban told her all that had happened in Sul and how he had taken Jegar’s head to Derrewyn. Afterward, while the blood dried on his chest, he and Aurenna sat by the river and she fingered the nutshell. “Tell me about Derrewyn,” she said.

  “She is thin now,” Saban said, “and bitter.”

  “Who can blame her?” Aurenna asked. She frowned at the nutshell. “I don’t like it. Loosing a curse can hurt the person who releases it.”

  “It might keep me alive,” Saban said, taking it from her. “I shall keep it till Lengar dies, then bury it.” He hung it about his neck. He dared not show it to Camaban for he feared his brother might use the charm to hurt Derrewyn, and so he kept it hidden. He also feared that Camaban would question him about his journey to Cathallo and call him a fool for having made it, but Camaban was preoccupied with finding a trader who could carry him to the island across the western sea. He eventually found some men who were making the voyage with a cargo of flints and so Camaban left Sarmennyn.

  “I shall learn their priests’ secrets,” he told Saban, “and come back when it is time.”

  “When is that?”

  “Whenever I come back, of course,” Camaban said, stepping into the boat. One of the traders handed him a paddle, but Camaban contemptuously swatted it aside. “I don’t paddle,” he said, “I sit and you paddle. Now take me.” He gripped the boat’s gunwales and was carried downstream to the sea.

  Ten boats for carrying the temple’s pillars were now ready, all of them triple-hulled and tight-lashed, and they were towed upstream to where long grass grew around the growing piles of temple stones. The smaller stones, those about the height of a man, could be loaded two to a boat, but the largest needed a boat to themselves and Saban began by loading one of those huge boulders. At high tide one of the boats was hauled in to the river’s edge and its stern was tied firmly to the bank. Saban levered up one end of the boulder, which still rested on its sledge, and slid a beam beneath it. He levered up the other end so three more beams could be placed under the stone, then forty men grasped the beams, heaved up and staggered toward the boat. The men had only a few paces to carry the vast weight, yet they became nervous when they stepped into the water and a dozen more men were needed to steady the stone. The men sweated, but inched onward until the great stone was poised above the square timbers that spanned the three hulls. They lowered the stone and the boat settled so deep in the water that one hull grounded on the riverbed. Lewydd and a dozen men tugged the boat free and Saban saw how little freeboard the hull had, but Lewydd reckoned they would survive the journey to Ratharryn if Malkin, the weather god, was kind. He and a dozen men boarded the boat and paddled it downriver, followed on the bank by a horde of excited men.

  It took three days to load the ten boats. Five of the craft carried large stones while the other five had a pair of smaller stones apiece, and once the stones were lashed to their beams the boats were all floated downstream. There were two places where the river ran shallow and men had to haul the boats across those places as though they were sledges, but in two days all the boats were safe at Aurenna’s settlement where they were tethered to trees. At low tide the great hulls rested in the mud while at high they floated free to tug restlessly at their moorings.

  They were waiting for the weather. It was already late in the summer, but Lewydd prayed at Malkin’s shrine each morning then climbed the hills behind the settlement to peer westward. He was waiting for the wind to die and the sea to settle, but the wind seemed relentless in those late summer days and the gray waves roared endlessly from the west to shatter white on the rocky coast.

  The harvest was cut and then the rains started, blasting from the ocean in teeming downpours so that Saban had to empty the moored boats of rainwater every day. The skies stayed dark and he began to despair of ever moving the stones, but Lewydd never abandoned hope and his optimism was justified for one morning Saban woke to a strange calm. The day was warm, the winds had settled and the fishermen reckoned the fine weather would last. It often happened like this, they said, that, late in the year, just before the autumn brought howling gales, Malkin would send long days of blissful calm and so the ten boats were loaded with skins of fresh water and sacks of dried fish and baskets of the flat bread that was made on hot stones, and then Scathel splashed each boat with the blood of a freshly killed bullock and, at midday, with a dozen paddlers manning each craft, the first of the temple’s stones went to sea.

  There were plenty of men in the tribe who said the crews would never be seen again. In the heft of the sea, they claimed, the boats would swamp and the weight of the stones would drag them down to where the gray monsters of the deep waited. Saban and Aurenna walked to the coast and watched the ten boats, escorted by two slim fishing craft, turn around the headland and paddle out to sea. The pessimists were wrong. The ten boats rode the small waves easily and then the leather sails were hoisted above the stones, the paddles dug deep, and the small fleet rode the gentle wind and long tide eastward.

  Now all Saban could do was wait for Lewydd’s return. He waited as the days sh
ortened and as the wind rose and the air turned chill. Some days Saban and Aurenna would walk to the southern headland from where they would stare from the cliff’s top to search for Lewydd’s boats, but though they could see fishing boats with men standing and throwing their small nets, and though they saw plenty of traders’ boats loaded with goods, they saw none of the triple-hulled boats that had carried the stones. Day by day the wind drove the sea harder, smashing water white on rock and lashing the wave crests to foam, and still Lewydd did not return. There were days when the fishermen would not go out because the water and the wind were too angry and on those days Saban feared for Lewydd.

  The first frost came and after that the first snow. Aurenna was pregnant again and some mornings she woke weeping, though she always denied that her tears were for Lewydd. “He lives,” she insisted, “he lives.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because it is winter,” she said, “and Erek dies in the winter and I am so close to him that I feel his pain.” She flinched when Saban touched her cheek. There were times when he felt she was distancing herself from him, moving closer to Erek. She would sit on her stone beside the river, her hands outstretched on either side, and claim to be listening to her god, and Saban, who heard no voices in his head, was jealous.

  “Spring will come,” he said.

  “As always,” Aurenna said and turned away.

  Saban and Mereth made more boats. They found the last big oaks in the nearer forests and from those trunks they could make just five more craft. If Lewydd returned and brought his boats with him they would have fifteen boats, and fifteen boats could carry all the stones eastward in four voyages. But if Lewydd did not return then the temple could not be moved and, as day followed day, and as winter’s grip locked the land hard, there was neither news nor sight of Lewydd.