Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

Saban said nothing. There was a slithering noise from the roof as a mass of snow slid down the roof turfs. 'But, in Sarmennyn,' Haragg went on, 'we choose a sun bride each year. She is chosen in the spring and for three moons' — he rocked his hand back and forth to show that the three moons were an approximation — 'she is a goddess herself. And then, at midsummer, at the sun's glory, we kill her.'

'Kill her?' Saban asked, shocked.

'We send her to Erek.' Erek was the Outfolk's name for Slaol. 'And one year,' Haragg went on, 'we chose Miyac'

Saban flinched. 'You chose her?'

'The priests chose her,' Haragg said, 'and I was a priest. My wife screamed at me, she hit me, but I thought it was an honour to our family. What greater husband could Miyac have than Erek? And so my daughter went to her death and my wife died within a moon, and I fell into a black sadness, and when I came from that sadness I no longer wanted to be a priest and my ideas were unwelcome and so I began to wander the land. I traded.' The sadness showed on his face and Cagan whimpered so that Haragg leaned over and patted his son's hand to show that everything was well.

Saban shifted closer to the fire, dragged the pelt around his shoulders and wondered if the world would ever be warm again.

'My twin brother was the high priest in Sarmennyn,' Haragg said, 'and when I told him I no longer believed in sacrifice he allowed me to become a trader instead of a priest. His name is Scathel. You will meet him, if he still lives.'

Something about the way Haragg said his brother's name suggested that Saban did not want to meet Scathel. 'Is your brother still the high priest?' he asked.

Haragg shrugged. 'He lost his wits when the treasures were stolen and fled into the mountains, so now I do not know if he is alive or dead.'

'Who stole the treasures?' Saban asked.

'His name is never spoken,' Haragg answered, 'but he was a son of our chief and he wanted to be chief himself, except he had three older brothers and all were greater men than he and so he stole the tribe's treasures to bring ill luck on Sarmennyn. He had heard of Sannas, and he believed she could use the treasures to make a magic that would kill his father and brothers and give him the chieftainship. We know that, for he said as much to his woman, and she told us before we killed her, and then Scathel averted the ill luck by killing the chief and all his family. So the gold never did reach Sannas, but Scathel still went mad.' He paused. 'And perhaps the ill luck was not averted, I don't know. What I do know is that my people will do anything, give anything, to have the treasures returned.'

'They must give a temple,' Saban said, remembering what Lengar had told him on the morning of his enslavement.

'They must listen to Camaban,' Haragg said softly, and once again Saban was filled with wonderment that his awkward, crippled brother had suddenly gained such an awesome reputation.

A few days later, when a thaw had melted some of the snow on the passes through the hills and Haragg's precious white pelts had been delivered, and as the days lengthened again as Slaol recovered his strength, Haragg took Saban and Cagan westwards. Ostensibly they went to buy some axes made from black stone that were much prized in the south country, but Saban suspected there was another purpose in the journey. It took half a day until, quite unexpectedly, they reached a high hill that ended abruptly at a sea cliff. This was the first time Saban had ever seen the sea and he whimpered at the sight. He had never imagined anything so dark, grey, cold and venomous. It heaved constantly, as though muscles worked beneath its white-flecked surface, and where it met the land it broke into a myriad wind-whipped fragments, then sucked and drained and surged to shatter again. Shrieking white birds filled the air. He could have gazed at it for ever, but Haragg stirred him northwards along the shore. Monsters' bones littered the small beaches in the cliff bends and, when they came to the settlement that sold the axes, Saban found himself sleeping in a hut whose rafters were made of those vast curved bones that arched above him to support a low roof of wood and turf.

Next morning Haragg took Cagan and Saban to a narrow fragment of high land that jutted into the vast ocean and, at the land's end, atop a cliff that seemed to shake with the endless thunder of the sea, there was a temple. It was a simple enough shrine, a mere ring of eight tall stones, but one stone stood proud of the circle. 'Erek again,' Haragg said, 'for wherever you travel, you will find Erek is worshipped. Always Erek.' The outlying stone, Saban guessed, stood towards the place where the sun rose in midsummer and its shadow would pierce the circle as the sun gave life to the earth. Small sprigs of dead heather lay at the foot of the stones, evidence of prayers made, and not even the skirling sea wind could wholly snatch away the blood stink of a beast that had been sacrificed at the temple not long before. 'We have a shrine like this in Sarmennyn,' Haragg said softly, 'and we call it the Sea Temple, though it has nothing to do with Dilan.' Dilan, Saban now knew, was Sarmennyn's sea god. 'Our Sea Temple doesn't face the rising sun,' Haragg went on, 'but looks to where it sets in midsummer, and if I had my way I would pull it down. I would take its stones and cast them into the sea. I would obliterate it.' He spoke with an uncommon bitterness.

'The sun bride?' Saban guessed diffidently.

Haragg nodded. 'She dies at the Sea Temple.' He closed his eyes for a few heartbeats. 'She goes to the temple arrayed in Erek's gold and there she is stripped naked, just as a bride should go to her husband, and sent to her death.' Haragg hugged his knees, and Saban could see tears on his face, or perhaps that was just the effect of the wind that flecked the sea ragged and whirled the shrieking birds about the sky. Saban understood now why Haragg had come to this high place, because from here he could gaze into the vastness above the sea where his daughter's spirit flew with the soaring white birds. 'The gold was a gift from Dilan,' Haragg went on. 'The treasures were washed ashore in a swamped boat, close to where the Sea Temple stands, and so our ancestors decided the gold was a gift from one god to the other, and perhaps they were right.'

'Perhaps?'

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

Saban frowned at the scepticism 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 fulfil 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 towards 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 backwards and forwards. 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 grey tattoos that covered his cheeks; his black hair was pinned with fishbones; his woollen 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 towards 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 neighbours 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 neighbours. 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 favourite 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 towards 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.'