Stonehenge (56 page)

Three men levered up one end of the capstone and Saban kicked away the beam that had been supporting the stone, and the slaves pulled the lever away so that the stone crashed down onto the pillar. The platform shook, but neither the capstone nor the pillar broke. The second beam was freed, the stone crashed down again and the first, and tallest, of the five great arches was complete.

The platform was dismantled and taken to the second pair of pillars and, as the slaves began to place the first layer of timbers about the second capstone, Saban stepped back and gazed up at the first.

And he felt humbled. He knew, better than anyone, how much labor, how many days of grinding and hammering, and how much
sweat and grief had gone into those three stones. He knew that one of the pillars was too short and stood on a grotesquely clubbed foot in a hole that was too shallow, but even so the archway was magnificent. It took his breath away. It soared. And its capstone, a boulder so heavy that sixteen oxen had been needed to drag it from Cathallo, was now lifted into the sky out of man’s reach. It would stay there forever and Saban trembled as he wondered whether any man would ever again lift so great a burden so high into the sky. He turned and looked at the sun which was setting behind pale clouds on the western horizon. Slaol must surely be watching, he thought. Slaol would surely reward this work with Lallic’s life and that hope brought tears to Saban’s eyes and he dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the ground.

“It took how many days?” Camaban wanted to know.

“A few days more than a whole moon,” Saban said, “but the others will be swifter, for the pillars are lower.”

“There are thirty-four more capstones to raise!” Camaban shouted. “That’s three years!” He howled his disappointment, then turned to stare at the slaves who were hammering and grinding the remaining sky-ring pillars smooth. “Not every stone has to be properly shaped,” Camaban said. “If they’re nearly square, then let them go up. Forget the outer faces, they can be left rough.”

Saban stared at his brother. “You want me to do what?” he asked. For years Camaban had been demanding perfection, now he was willing to let half-shaped stones be raised?

“Do it!” Camaban shouted, then turned on the listening slaves. “None of you will go home till the work is done, none of you! So work! Work! Work!”

It was possible now to see how the finished temple would look, for the last pillars were being erected and, from the west and north, the circle of pillars already looked complete. The sun house was built, towering above the growing ring of stone, and Saban would often walk a hundred or more paces away and stare at what he had made and feel astonishment. It had taken years, this temple, but it was beautiful. Most of all he loved the pattern of shadows that it cast, regular and straight-sided, unlike any shadows he had ever seen, and he understood how he was watching the broken pattern of the world being mended on this hillside and at those
moments he would marvel at his brother’s dream. At other times he would stand in the temple’s center and feel shrunken by the pillars and oppressed by their shadows. Even on the sunniest days there was a darkness inside the stones that seemed to loom over him so that he could not rid himself of the fear that one of the capstones would fall. He knew they could not. The capstones were socketed, and the pillars’ tops were dished to hold the lintels firm, yet even so, and especially standing beside Haragg’s bones in the narrow space between the tallest arch and the mother stone, he felt crushed by the temple’s dark heaviness. Yet if he walked away from it, crossed the ditch and turned to look again, the darkness went.

And this temple was not slight, as the stones of Sarmennyn had been slight. It filled its proper place, no longer dwarfed by the sky and the long slope of grass. Visitors, some coming from strange lands across the seas, would often drop to their knees when they first saw the stones, while the slaves now kept their voices low as they worked. “It’s coming alive,” Kilda said to Saban one day.

The last pillar of the sky ring, which was only half as wide as the others because it represented the half-day of the moon’s cycle, was erected on midwinter’s day. It went up easily and Camaban, who had come to see that final pillar raised, stayed at the temple as the sun sank. It was a fine day, cold but clear, and the southwestern sky was delicately banded with thin clouds that turned from white to pink. A flock of starlings, looking like flint arrowheads, wheeled over the temple. The birds were innumerable and black against the high sky’s emptiness, they all shifted together, changing direction as one, and the sight made Camaban smile. It had been a long time since Camaban had smiled with pleasure. “It’s all about pattern,” he said quietly.

The sun sank lower, lengthening the temple’s shadows, and Saban began to feel the stones stirring. They looked black now, for he was standing with Camaban beside the sun stone in the sacred avenue and the shadows were imperceptibly reaching toward them. And as the sun went lower the temple seemed to grow in height until its stones were vast and black. Then the sun vanished behind the capstone of the tallest arch and the first shadows of night engulfed the brothers. Behind them, in Ratharryn, the great midwinter
fires were being lit and Saban assumed Camaban would go back to preside over the day’s feast, but instead he waited, staring expectantly at the shadowed stones. “Soon,” Camaban said softly, “very soon.”

A few heartbeats later the lower edge of the highest capstone was touched a livid red and then the sun blazed through the sliver between the tallest pillars and Camaban clapped his hands for pure joy. “It works!” he cried. “It works!”

The land all about them was in darkness, for the shadows of the sky ring’s pillars locked together to cast a great pall across the sacred avenue, but in the center of that great stone-cast shadow there was a beam of light. It was the sun’s dying light, the last light of the year, and it lanced across the horizon, over the woods, above the grass and through the arch to dazzle Camaban as he stood beside the sun stone. “Here!” he shouted, thumping his breast as if he were drawing Slaol’s attention. “Here!” he shouted again, then stared, entranced, as the sun slid behind the stones and the shadows of the stones melded into one great blackness that spilt across the grassland. “Do you see what we have done?” Camaban asked excitedly. “The dying sun will see the stone that marked his greatest strength, and he will yearn for that strength and so rid himself of his winter weakness. It will work! It will work!” He turned and clasped Saban’s shoulders. “I want it ready for next midwinter.”

“It will be ready,” Saban promised.

Camaban stared into Saban’s eyes, then frowned. “Do you forgive me, brother?”

“Forgive you what?” Saban asked, knowing full well what Camaban was asking.

Camaban grimaced. “Slaol and Lahanna must be one.” He let go of Saban’s shoulders. “I know it is hard for you, but the gods are hard on us. They are hard! There are nights when I pray that Slaol will let go of his goad, but he makes me bleed. He makes me bleed.”

“And Aurenna gives you joy?” Saban asked.

Camaban flinched, but nodded. “She gives me joy, and what you have made, brother’ – he nodded at the temple – “will give us all such joy. Finish it. Just finish it.” He walked away.

The entrance pillars were taken to the causeway and put back in
their holes, and then all that needed to be done was to raise the last capstones of the sky ring. Saban worried that the newest pillars would not have had time to settle in the ground, but Camaban would endure no delay now. “It must be done,” he insisted, “it must be ready.”

But ready for what? Sometimes, when Saban gazed for a long time at the shadowed stones, it seemed to him that they did have their own life. If he was tired and the light was dim the stones appeared to shift like ponderous dancers, though if he raised his head and stared directly at the pillars they would all be still. Yet the gods were in the stones, of that he was sure. The temple was not dedicated, yet the gods had found it. They brooded over the high stones. Some nights he would pray to them; Kilda found him doing so one evening and she sat and waited for him to finish, then asked him what he had begged of the gods.

“What I always pray,” Saban said, “that they will spare my daughter’s life.”

“Your daughter is Hanna now,” Kilda said. “Mine too.”

“You think Derrewyn is dead?”

“I think she lives,” Kilda said, “but I think you and I will always be parents to Hanna.”

Saban nodded, yet still he prayed for Lallic. She would be a priestess here, and he was the temple’s builder, so, in time, he decided, she would lose her fear of him and come to trust him, for she would surely see that this was a beautiful place, a home for the gods, and know that her father had made it.

And now it was almost finished.

The bull dancers capered at midsummer. The fires scared the malevolent spirits away and in the next dawn, for the very first time, the rising sun threw the shadow of the sun stone through the completed ring of pillars to the temple’s heart where Haragg’s bones lay.

The last capstones were shaped. One of those stones had its sockets too close together because Camaban had insisted that it would be faster to make the holes before the lintels were raised,
and Saban had to order the grinding of a third hole. It would, he prayed, be the last delay.

The harvest was cut. The women danced the threshing floors smooth and the priests husked the first grains. No more slaves came to Cathallo for there was scarce enough work for those already at the temple, but Camaban refused to release them. “We can feed them till the temple is dedicated,” he said. “They built it, they should see it finished, and then they will be freed.”

Winter came and folk hoped it would be the very last winter on earth. Kilda had a miscarriage and wept for days afterward. “I always wanted a child,” she told Saban, “but the gods will not give me one.”

“You have Hanna,” Saban said, trying to comfort her just as she had tried to comfort him.

“She is almost grown,” Kilda said, “and her fate is close.”

“Her fate?”

Kilda shrugged. “She is Derrewyn’s child. She has Sannas’s blood. She has a fate, Saban, and it will come soon.”

It came the very next day. It was a cold day and the temple stones were frosted white. There were just two lintels left to be raised and Saban was starting the platform for the first when Leir walked up from the settlement. He was dressed in the finery of a Ratharryn warrior with foxes’ brushes woven into his hair, his chest was blue from tattoos and he carried a spear hung with a rare sea eagle’s feathers that had been part of the tribute brought to Ratharryn by an admiring chief from a distant coast. Leir crossed the causeway and gazed at the stones. “The temple will be ready by midwinter?” he asked his father.

“Easily,” Saban said.

Leir offered a half-smile, then nodded toward the sacred avenue as if suggesting they should walk there. Saban, puzzled, followed his son back across the causeway. “Camaban says Haragg’s body needs blood,” Leir said flatly.

Saban nodded. “Always.” Only that morning Camaban had come with a trussed swan that had hissed at the stones before having its neck cut. The temple stank of blood, for no sooner had the blood of one sacrifice dried than another beast or bird was brought to Haragg’s bones and killed.

“And when it is dedicated,” Leir went on grimly, “we are promised that all the dead, not just Haragg, will find new life through the stones.”

“Are we?” Saban asked. He had thought that the dead were supposed to be taken from Lahanna’s keeping and sent to Slaol’s care, but the temple’s effects were constantly subject to rumor and tales. Indeed, the closer the dedication came, the less anyone was certain what the temple would achieve. All knew that winter would be banished, but much more was expected. Some folk declared that the dead would walk while others claimed that only the dead who were placed in the temple would have their lives given back.

“And to give the dead life,” Leir went on, “Camaban wants more blood.” He stopped beside the sun stone and looked back. Some slaves were polishing the standing pillars while a score of women were grubbing the ditch of weeds. “Those slaves will not be going home when the temple is finished.”

“Some will stay,” Saban said. “They’ve all been promised their freedom, but most will want to go home if they can remember where home is.”

Leir shook his head. “Camaban became drunk last night,” he said, “and told Gundur that he wants an avenue of heads to lead from the settlement to the temple. It is to be a path of the dead to show how we go from death back into life.” He was looking into Saban’s face. “He says he dreamed it and that Slaol demands it. Gundur’s men are to kill the slaves.”

“No!” Saban protested.

“They are to be killed in the temple so their blood soaks the ground, then their heads are to be cut off and placed on the avenue’s banks,” Leir said remorselessly, “and we spearmen are expected to do the killing.”

Saban flinched. He looked at his hut where Kilda was tending a fire and he saw Hanna come through the low doorway with dry firewood. The girl saw Leir, but she must have sensed that he wanted to be alone with his father for she stayed at the hut with Kilda. “And what do you think of Camaban’s idea?” Saban asked Leir.

“If I liked it, father, would I have come to you?” Leir paused and glanced toward Hanna. “Camaban wants to kill all the slaves, father, all of them.”

“And what would you have me do about it?”

“Talk to Camaban?”

Saban shook his head. “You think he listens to me? I might as well talk to a charging boar.” He stroked the sun stone. In time, he supposed, all the temple’s stones would lose their pristine grayness and go dark with lichen. “We could talk to your mother,” he suggested.

“She won’t talk to me,” Leir confessed. “She talks to the gods, not to men.” He sounded bitter. “And Gundur says there’s another reason to kill the slaves. He says that if they are allowed to go to their homes then they will take the secrets of the temple’s construction with them and then others will build like it and Slaol will not come to us, but go to them.”