Stonehenge

The Temple of the Dead

A dead man walked in the moonlight and the folk of Ratharryn gave a great moan because of the horrors that were being brought on their tribe.

The walking corpse was stark naked and skeletally thin. His eyes were black holes in a pale mask, his skin was ghostly white, his ribs were edged with black and his lank hair was grey. Scraps of his skin and hair dropped and floated away in the air as if he were decomposing even as he walked. The moon was higher now, higher and smaller and paler and brighter, and a spearman near Lengar suddenly screamed in terror, 'He has no shadow! He has no shadow!' Warriors who had been drunkenly fighting now fled or else dropped to the ground and hid their faces. Lengar alone dared advance towards the dead thing that cast no shadow, and even Lengar shook.

Then Saban, who had been rooted to the ground with fear, saw that the wraith did have a mooncast shadow. He saw, too, that every time the corpse put his weight onto his left foot he gave a small lurch. And the dropping grey-white scraps were not flesh flaking, but ash drifting in the small wind. The man had soaked himself in the river, drenched himself in ashes and blackened his eyes and ribs with soot, and as the ashes dried they sifted and fell away from his hair and skin.

'Camaban!' Lengar snarled. He too had recognised the limp and he spoke the name angrily, ashamed of having been afraid of the ghostly figure.

'Brother!' Camaban said. He opened his arms to Lengar who answered the gesture by raising his sword. 'Brother!' Camaban said again, chidingly. 'Would you kill me? How are we to defeat Cathallo if you kill me? How will we defeat Cathallo without sorcery?' He capered some clumsy dance steps as he shrieked at the moon: 'Sorcery! Trickery! Spells in the dark and charms in the moonlight!' He howled and shuddered as though the gods were commanding his body, then, when the fit passed, he frowned quizzically at Lengar. 'You do not need my help to thwart Derrewyn's curses?'

Lengar kept his sword blade extended. 'Your help?' he asked.

'I have come,' Camaban said loudly enough so that the warriors who had fled to the huts could hear him, 'to defeat Cathallo. I have come to grind Cathallo into powder. I have come to unleash the gods against Cathallo, but first, brother, you and I must make peace. We must embrace.' And again he stepped towards Lengar who backed away and glanced towards Saban. 'There will be time for his death,' Camaban said, 'but first make peace with me. I regret our quarrel. It is not right that we should be enemies.'

Lengar checked Camaban with his sword. 'You have come to defeat Cathallo?'

'Ratharryn will never be great so long as Cathallo thrives,' Camaban cried, 'and how I do wish for Ratharryn to be great again.' He gently pushed Lengar's sword aside. 'There is no need for us to quarrel, brother. So long as you and I fight, so long will Cathallo be unconquered. So embrace me, brother, in the cause of victory. And then I shall fall at your feet to show your folk that I was wrong and you were right.'

The thought of defeating Cathallo was more than enough to persuade Lengar to end his quarrel with Camaban and so he opened his arms to allow Camaban to step into his embrace.

Saban, who was standing close to his two brothers, remembered the day Hengall had made peace with Cathallo by embracing Kital, but then he realized that Camaban had not come to make peace. As he placed his right arm about Lengar's neck there was a dull glint of black in his hand and Saban saw there was a knife there, a flint knife with a black blade short enough to have been concealed in Camaban's palm, and the knife came from behind Lengar's head and sliced into his neck so that the blood spurted sudden and warm and dark. Lengar tried to pull away, but Camaban held him with surprising strength. He smiled through his black and white mask and forced the flint blade deeper, sawing it back and forth so that the stone's feathered edge cut through taut muscle and pulsing arteries. Lengar's blood poured down to wash the ashes from Camaban's thin body. Lengar was choking now and blood was welling and spilling from his gullet, and still Camaban would not let him go. The knife sawed again, and then at last Camaban released his grip so that Lengar fell to his knees. Camaban kicked him in the mouth, forcing Lengar's head back, and then he slashed the short knife one more time to cut his brother's throat wide open.

Lengar collapsed. For a few heartbeats he twitched and the blood pulsed from his slit throat, but the pulses grew weaker and finally stopped. Saban stared. He hardly dared believe that Lengar was dead and Aurenna was safe. Lahanna's moon shone, glossing the puddle of black blood beside Lengar's oiled hair.

Camaban stooped and picked up Lengar's bronze sword. Lengar's warriors had watched their chief's death in disbelief, but now some growled angrily and advanced on Camaban who raised the sword to check them. 'I am a sorcerer!' he screamed. 'I can put worms in your bellies, turn your bowels to slime and make your children die in agony.' The warriors stopped. They would carry their spears against human enemies, but sorcery shrank their courage to nothing.

Camaban turned back to Lengar's corpse and hacked at it again and again with the sword, finally slashing off its head with a series of clumsy strokes. Only then did he turn and look at Saban.

'He would not rebuild the temple,' Camaban explained in a calm voice. 'I told him to, but he would not. It's all wrong, you see. The stones from Sarmennyn aren't tall enough. It's my fault, entirely my fault. I chose that temple, but it's wrong. Haragg has always told me we learn as we grow and I have learned, but Lengar simply wouldn't listen. So I decided to come back and start again.' He threw down the sword. 'Who is to be chief here, Saban, you or I?'

'Chief?' Saban asked, surprised by the question.

'I think I should be chief,' Camaban said. 'I am, after all, older than you and a great deal cleverer. Don't you agree?'

'You want to be chief?' Saban asked, still dazed by the night's events.

'Yes,' Camaban said, 'I do. I want other things as well. No more winter, no more sickness, no more children crying in the night. That is what I want.' He had come close to Saban as he spoke. 'I want union with the gods,' he went on softly, 'and endless summer.' He embraced Saban and Saban could smell Lengar's blood on his brother's skin. He felt Camaban's arms wind round his neck, then stiffened as the black knife touched his neck. 'Is Aurenna here?' Camaban asked quietly.

'Yes.'

'Good,' Camaban said, then he held the knife against Saban's skin as he whispered. 'What I want, brother, is to build a temple like no other in the land. A temple to bring the gods together. To bring the dead back to Slaol. A temple to make the world anew. That is what I want.' Camaban teased Saban by suddenly pressing the flint's sharp edge against his skin, then just as suddenly took it away and stepped back. 'It will be a temple that will stand for ever,' he said, 'and you, my brother' — he pointed the knife at Saban — 'will build it.' Camaban turned to stare at the remaining timber posts and vivid flames of Lengar's burning hall. He sniffed the stench of roasted flesh. 'Who was in the hall?'

'Your friends from Sarmennyn.'

'Kereval? Scathel?'

'Both of them, and near a hundred others. Only Lewydd still lives.'

'Lengar was always thorough in his slaughter,' Camaban said with evident admiration, then turned to look at the spearmen. 'I am Camaban!' he shouted. 'Son of Hengall, son of Lock, who was whelped of an Outfolk bitch taken in a raid! Slaol has sent me here. He sent me to be your chief! Me! The cripple! The crooked child! And if any man disputes that, let him fight me now, and I shall stroke that man's eyeballs with nettles, turn his belly into a cauldron of burning piss and bury his skull in the shit pits! Does any man challenge me?' No one moved, no one even spoke, they just stared at the naked, ash-covered figure who ranted at them. 'Slaol speaks to me!' Camaban declared. 'He has always spoken to me! And Slaol now wants this tribe to do his bidding, and his will is mine! Mine!'

A warrior pointed beyond Camaban towards the settlement's northern entrance and Saban turned to see a crowd of men coming through the embankment. They carried bows, and Saban understood that these were the men who had attacked Ratharryn earlier to panic the warriors gloating over the fiery massacre of Kereval and his men. The attackers had not come from Cathallo after all, but were the forest outlaws whom rumour said were led by a dead man — by Camaban. The newcomers were wild-bearded and wild-haired, fugitives from Lengar's rule who had taken refuge in the trees where, during the summer, Camaban had spoken with them, inspired them and recruited them. Now they were coming home, led by Haragg whose bald pate shone in the moonlight. The big man carried a spear and had smeared his face with black strips of soot.

'Those men are mine too!' Camaban shouted, pointing at the outlaws. 'They are my friends and they are now reinstated to the tribe.' He raised his arms and glared defiantly at Ratharryn's appalled warriors. 'Does any man challenge me?' he demanded again.

None did, for they feared him and his sorcery. They went silent to their huts as the funeral pyre of Sarmennyn burned itself out during the night.

'Would you have turned their bellies into burning piss?' Saban asked his brother that night.

'I learned one true thing from Sannas,' Camaban replied wearily, 'which is that sorcery is in our fears, that our fears are in our minds and only the gods are real. But I am now chief in my father's place and you, Saban, will build me a temple.'

—«»—«»—«»—

The men of Drewenna went home in the morning. Their chief declared that Camaban was mad and that he wanted no part of Camaban's madness, so his warriors took up their spears and trailed away across the grasslands.

The spearmen of Ratharryn complained that their best chance of defeating Cathallo was gone with Drewenna's defection and Rallin, they said, would soon attack Ratharryn. Camaban might be a sorcerer, they grumbled, but he was no war leader. Cathallo had sorcerers of its own whose magic would surely counter Camaban's spells, so Ratharryn's men foresaw nothing but shame and defeat.

'Of course they do,' Camaban said when Saban warned him of the tribe's sour mood. It was the morning after Camaban's return and the new chief had summoned the tribe's priests and prominent men to advise him. They sat cross-legged in Mai and Arryn's temple, close to the smoking remains of the feast hall from which eleven charred posts protruded. 'Spearmen are superstitious,' Camaban explained. 'They also carry their brains between their legs, which is why they must be kept busy. How many sons does Lengar have?'

'Seven,' Neel the high priest answered.

'Then let the spearmen start by killing them,' Camaban decreed.

Lewydd protested. 'They are children,' he said, 'and we didn't come here to soak the land in blood!'

Camaban frowned. 'We came here to do Slaol's will, and it is not Slaol's will that Lengar's children should live. If you find a nest of vipers do you kill the adults and let the snakelings live?' He shrugged. 'I like it no more than you, my friend, but Slaol spoke to me in a dream.'

Lewydd looked to Haragg, expecting the big man's support, but Haragg said that the boys' deaths were probably necessary if the new chief were to be safe. 'It has nothing to do with the gods,' he said.

'It has everything to do with the gods,' Neel snapped. Neel had been an avid supporter of Lengar, but overnight he had transferred his loyalty to Camaban. 'Slaol spoke to me also in a dream last night,' he claimed, 'and Camaban's decision is the wise one.'

'I am relieved,' Camaban said drily, then looked at Gundur, whom men said was the best of Ratharryn's warriors. 'See to the boys' deaths,' Camaban ordered and moments later the mothers screamed as Lengar's sons were dragged away. They were taken to the ditch inside the embankment and there killed and their bodies given to pigs. 'It was Slaol's will,' Neel said enthusiastically to Camaban.

'It is also Slaol's will that Haragg should be the new high priest here.'

Neel twitched as though he had been struck, then opened his mouth to protest, but no words came. He stared at Camaban, then at Haragg who looked equally startled. Haragg recovered first. 'I stopped being a priest years ago,' he said mildly.

'And I am high priest!' Neel complained shrilly.

'You are nothing,' Camaban said calmly. 'You are less than nothing. You are slime beneath a stone and you will go to the trees or else I shall bury you alive in the dung pits.' He pointed a bony finger towards the southern causeway, indicating that Neel was outlawed. 'Go,' he said. Neel dared say nothing more; he just obeyed. 'He was a weak man,' Camaban said when Neel had gone, 'and I would have my high priest strong.'

'I am not a priest,' Haragg insisted. 'I am not even of your tribe.'

'You are of Slaol's tribe,' Camaban said, 'and you will be our high priest.'

Haragg took a deep breath and stared over the embankment's crest and thought of far places, sea cliffs, wild forests, strange tribes and all the world's untravelled paths. 'I am not a priest,' he protested again.

'What is it you want?' Camaban asked him

'A land where folk do good,' Haragg said, frowning as he considered his words, 'where they live as the gods meant us to live. A land without war, without unkindness.'

'You talk like a priest,' Camaban said.

'Men are weak,' Haragg said, 'and the demands of the gods are strong.'

'Then make us stronger!' Camaban insisted. 'How are we to bring the gods to earth if we are weak? Stay, Haragg, help us make the temple, help us be worthy! I would have you as my priest and Aurenna as my priestess.'

'Aurenna!' Saban exclaimed.

Camaban turned brooding eyes on Saban. 'You think Slaol spared Aurenna's life so she could whelp your children? You want her to be a sow? A ewe with swollen udders? It was for that we stirred the thunder in Sarmennyn?' He shook his head. 'It is not enough to keep men busy,' he went on, 'we must also inspire them, and who better than Aurenna? She has visions and is beloved of Slaol.'

'Slaol must want something of her,' Haragg agreed. 'Why else did he spare her?'

'And he spared you,' Camaban said forcefully, 'on the night your son died. You think there was no purpose in that? So be a father to my tribe. Be my high priest.'

Haragg was silent for a while, his implacable face unreadable, but then he gave a reluctant nod. 'If it is Slaol's will,' he said.

'It is,' Camaban said confidently.

Haragg sighed. Then I will be high priest here.'

'Good!' Camaban smiled, though the smile hardly detracted from the grimness of his thin face. He had washed most of the ash from his hair and had twisted its long braids round and round his head before pinning them with long bone spikes, but his face still had the ineradicable black barred tattoos. 'Haragg will be high priest, Aurenna will be a priestess, Gundur will lead our spearmen and Saban will make the temple. What will you do, Lewydd?'

Lewydd glanced at the smoking remnants of the feasting hall. 'Bury my folk,' he said grimly, 'and then go home.'

'Then you must take these with you,' Camaban said, and he gave Lewydd a leather bag which, when it was opened, proved to hold the golden lozenges of Sarmennyn. 'There are three missing,' Camaban explained. 'Last night I learned that they were stolen by Derrewyn, but we shall retrieve those pieces and return them to you.' Camaban leaned over and patted Lewydd's shoulder. 'Take your treasure home,' he said, 'and become chief of Sarmennyn. Grow fat, grow wealthy, grow wise, and do not forget us.'

Saban suddenly laughed, and Camaban looked enquiringly at him. Saban shrugged. 'For years now,' he said, 'everything we have done has been driven by that gold. And now it is over.'

'It is not over,' Camaban said, 'it is just beginning. The gold dazzled us and so we sought our destiny in Sarmennyn, but it never lay there. It lies in Cathallo.'

'In Cathallo?' Saban asked, astonished.

'How can I make a temple worthy of Slaol if I don't have boulders?' Camaban asked. 'And who has boulders? Cathallo.'

'Cathallo will give you stones,' Saban said, 'or exchange them.'

'They will not,' Camaban replied fiercely. 'I met Derrewyn this summer. Did you know she has a daughter? Merrel is the wretched infant's name. Derrewyn lay with Rallin because she wanted the chief's child and she will raise it, she tells me, to be a sorceress like herself. A sorceress! She rubs bones together, mutters over snail shells, pounds toadflax and butter into paste, stares into pisspots and thinks she's influencing the gods. But I still went to her this summer. I went in secret, in the dark of night, and I bowed to her. I abased myself. Give me stones, I begged her, and I will bring peace between Ratharryn and Cathallo, but she would not give me so much as a pebble.' He was bitter at the humiliating memory. 'Sannas once told me she prayed to the wolf god when she walked where wolves ran, but why? Why even give him a prayer? For why should the wolf god listen? It is the nature of wolves to kill, not to spare. By begging of Derrewyn I was making Sannas's mistake. I was praying to the wrong god.'

'Give her Lengar's head,' Saban suggested, 'and she might give you every stone in Cathallo.'

'She will give us nothing,' Gundur said, his hands still bloody from the killing of Lengar's sons.

Camaban looked at the warrior. 'If I attack Cathallo tomorrow, can I win?'

Gundur hesitated, then glanced at Vakkal, the Outfolk war leader whose allegiance was now to Ratharryn, and both men shrugged. 'No,' Gundur admitted.

'Then if we cannot get what we want by war, we must try peace,' Camaban said. He turned to Saban. 'Take our brother's head to Derrewyn,' he said, 'and offer her peace. Say all we want of them is some stones.'

'Praying to the wolf god?' Haragg suggested.

'Threatening the wolf god,' Camaban insisted. 'Tell her she must give us stones or I will give them war as they have never seen it.'

So Saban took his elder brother's head, put it in a bag and next morning walked north.

—«»—«»—«»—

Saban carried no weapons, for he went in peace, but he was still nervous as he crossed the streams beside Maden and climbed the hills into Cathallo's skull-marked territory. No one accosted him, though more than once he had the sensation that he was being watched and he flinched at the thought of an arrow flicking through the leaves to strike his back.

It was evening when he crossed the small river to climb the hill that led to the small temple and the sacred way. He had not gone more than thirty paces from the river when a dozen spearmen came from the scattered woods behind, ran through the stream and formed a silent escort on either side of him. They had not only tracked him through the woods, but seemed to expect him, for none challenged his right to be there, but just led him between the paired stones of the sacred path, about the double bend and so into the shrine where, outside Sannas's old hut, a fire burned bright in the gathering twilight and three people waited for him. Rallin, chief of Cathallo, was there, and to one side of him was Derrewyn and on the other her father, the blinded Morthor. Behind that group were the warriors of Cathallo, blue-stained for war and with spears in their hands.

Rallin stood to greet Saban. 'You bring us news,' he said flatly.

Morthor also stood. His skin was chalked white and his empty eye-sockets had been rimmed with red ochre. 'Is that you, Saban?'

'It is.'

Morthor smiled. 'You are well?'

'He crawls in his brother's shadow like a worm,' Derrewyn said, staying seated. She was thinner than ever and her pale skin was stretched taut across her cheekbones, making her dark eyes look very large. Her hair was gathered at the nape of her neck, but Saban saw she had discarded the necklace of her dead child's bones. Perhaps that was because she now had another child, the daughter who lay in her arms and who was a dark-haired girl no older than Lallic. 'Saban has come, father,' Derrewyn went on, to tell us that Lengar is dead, that Camaban is chief and that Ratharryn threatens war if we do not meekly allow them to take stones from our hills.'

'Is it true?' Rallin asked.

'Of course it is true!' Derrewyn hissed at him. 'I felt Lengar's death here!' She slapped her belly, making Merrel cry aloud. With surprising gentleness, Derrewyn stroked her daughter's forehead and crooned a few words to soothe the girl. 'I felt his death when the nutshell was broken. Did you bring me his head, Saban?'

He held out the bag. 'Here.'

'It will match Jegar's,' she said, gesturing for Saban to drop the bag. He obeyed, spilling Lengar's bloody head onto the grass, then he looked at her hut and saw that Jegar's skull was displayed on a pole beside its door.

Rallin and Morthor sat, and Saban followed their example. 'So why are you here, Saban?' Rallin asked.

'What Derrewyn says is true,' Saban said. 'Camaban is now chief of Ratharryn and he does not want war with you. He wants peace and he wishes to take stones from your hills. That is all I came to say.'

'Lengar is truly dead?' blind Morthor asked.

'Truly dead,' Saban confirmed.

'Lahanna did that!' Morthor said, and raised his eye-sockets to the sky. 'If I could weep,' he added, 'I would shed tears of joy.'

Derrewyn ignored her father's pleasure. 'And why do you want stones?' she asked.

'We wish to build a temple,' Saban said. 'It will be a great temple to bring us peace. That is all we want, peace.'

'We have a great temple here,' Rallin said, 'and your people can come and worship.'

'Your temple has not brought the land peace,' Saban said.

'And yours will?' Derrewyn asked sourly.

'It will bring peace and happiness,' Saban said.

'Peace and happiness!' Derrewyn laughed. 'You sound like a child, Saban! And Camaban has already been here. He crawled to me in the summer and begged for stones, and I will give you now the same answer I gave him then. You may have your stones, Saban of Ratharryn, when you return Sannas's spirit to her ancestors.'

'Sannas's spirit?' Saban asked.

'Who stole her last breath?' Derrewyn demanded fiercely. 'Camaban did! And she can have no peace while Camaban holds her breath in his belly. So bring me Camaban's head, Saban, and I will exchange it for a stone.'

Saban looked at Rallin, hoping for a kinder answer. 'We have no quarrel with Cathallo,' Saban said.

'No quarrel!' Derrewyn screamed, startling her child again. 'Ratharryn brought Outfolk to the heartland, and worse, you brought an Outfolk temple. How long before you march the brides to the fire? And for what? For Slaol! Slaol who deserted us, Slaol who brought the Outfolk vermin to our land, Slaol who gives us winter, Slaol who would destroy us if we did not have Lahanna and Garlanna to protect us. No quarrel? I have a quarrel.' She suddenly pushed her crying daughter into the arms of a slave, then stripped the cloak from her upper body to show Saban the three lozenges, the one great and the two small, hanging between her small breasts. 'It burns!' she said, tapping the large piece of gold. 'It burns me night and day, but it reminds me of Slaol's evil.' She wailed, swaying from side to side. 'Yet Lahanna has promised us victory. She has promised that we shall destroy you. We shall cage up your Slaol and burn your corpses to fill his nostrils with filth.' She stood, leaving the cloak on the ground, and brandished the human thigh bone that Sannas had once wielded. 'You shall have no stones,' she declared, 'and you shall have no peace.'

Saban tried a last time. 'I would that my children grew up in a land of peace,' he said.

'I want the same,' Rallin answered, glancing at Merrel who lay in the slave's arms, 'but there cannot be peace so long as Camaban has Sannas's spirit.'

'Our ancestors are unhappy,' Morthor explained. 'They want Sannas to join them. Send us Camaban, Saban, and we shall give you stones.'

'Or tell Camaban to make war on us,' Derrewyn sneered. 'You think he is a warrior? Let him come to our spears! And tell him, Saban, that when he comes we shall tear the flesh from his bones piece by piece and we shall make him scream for three days and three nights and at their end I will take his soul and the soul of Sannas.' She spat into the fire, then plucked the cloak from the ground to cover her nakedness. 'I thank you for Lengar's head,' she said coldly, 'but have nothing to give you in return.' She took her daughter back, then stalked to her hut and ducked inside.

Saban looked at Rallin. 'Do women make the law here?'

'Lahanna does,' Rallin said curtly. He stood, and pulled Morthor to his feet. 'You should leave now,' he told Saban.

'There will be war if I leave.'

'There will be war whether you leave or stay,' Rallin said. 'We have known nothing but war with Ratharryn since your father died. Do you think we can so quickly make peace?' Rallin shook his head. 'Go,' he said, 'just

go.'

So Saban went.

And the war would go on.

—«»—«»—«»—

Camaban did not seem surprised or disappointed that Saban's mission had failed. 'They want war,' he said. Camaban was at the Sky Temple where Saban found him brooding over the twin rings of Sarmennyn's stones. 'Cathallo thinks that with Lengar dead we shall be easy prey to their spears,' Camaban went on. 'They think I cannot lead men into battle.'

'They said as much,' Saban confessed.

'Good!' Camaban said happily. 'I like an enemy who underestimates me, it makes his humiliation so much easier.' He raised his voice so that Gundur and Vakkal, the war leaders of Ratharryn who were among his entourage, could hear him. 'Men think war is the application of force, but it isn't. War is the application of thought. Cleverness. And I think we should march tomorrow, straight across the marshes, over the hills and into Cathallo.'

Gundur half smiled. 'We have tried that before,' he said softly, 'and failed.'

'You've tried everything and failed,' Camaban retorted.

'And we hear Cathallo is filled with spearmen,' Vakkal put in. 'They expected to meet our forces and the men of Drewenna and so they gathered their allies.'

'But they will know Drewenna has deserted us,' Camaban said, 'and will hardly believe we dare to attack them. What better time to do so?'

'They're probably planning to attack us,' Gundur said gloomily.

'You always think of difficulties!' Camaban shouted at them, astonishing both men. 'How can you win a war if all you do is worry about losing one? Are you women?' He limped towards the warriors. 'We shall leave tomorrow morning, we shall attack in the next dawn and we shall win. Slaol has promised it. Understand? Slaol has promised it!'

Gundur bowed his head, though he was plainly unhappy with Camaban's decision. 'We shall march tomorrow,' he reluctantly agreed, then plucked Vakkal's elbow and walked back to the settlement to warn his spearmen.

Camaban watched the two warriors walk away, then laughed. 'We'd better win now or those two will want my head.'

'It will be hard to win,' Saban said carefully, 'for Cathallo seems to know everything we do. They must have spies here and they will know you're coming.'

'What choice do I have?' Camaban demanded. 'I have to fight now, and not just to take the stones, either, or to persuade Gundur and Vakkal not to hack me down like a dog. If I am to be chief here then I must show myself a greater leader than Lengar. It's easier to be cleverer than Lengar, but men don't admire cleverness. They admire power. So by defeating Cathallo I achieve something Lengar never did. The problem, of course, is what to do with all these spearmen once we've won peace. Warriors do not like peace.'

'You think you will have peace?' Saban asked.

'I think, brother, that Slaol will give us victory,' Camaban said, 'and I think you will build me a temple and that your first job will be to pull out these stones.' He gestured at the pillars that had been brought across the sea to be sunk in Ratharryn's turf. 'They looked so splendid in Sarmennyn,' Camaban went on, frowning. 'Do you remember? And you could feel the presence of Slaol. Brooding. Always there! Trapped in stone. Not here, though. Dead, that's what they are here, dead!' He pushed at a stone, trying to topple it, but it was too well sunk in the ground. 'They'll all have to come out, all of them! How many men will you need to haul out the stones?'

'Thirty?' Saban guessed. 'Forty?'

'You'll need more than that,' Camaban said confidently. 'And you're going to need men and oxen to drag the new stones from Cathallo.' He fell silent, staring at the unfinished circles of stone. 'I wish I did not have to fight,' he finally said, then turned to his brother. 'Have you ever seen a battle between whole tribes?'

'No.'

'You should. Before it begins every man is a hero, but as soon as the arrows begin to fly half of them find they've got sprained ankles or upset bellies.' He smiled. 'I think you will prove a hero, Saban.'

'I thought I was to be a builder?'

'A warrior first, a builder after,' Camaban said. 'I would not go to battle without you, brother.'

It had been a long time since Saban saw warriors ready themselves for battle, but next dawn he watched as men stripped themselves naked and daubed their bodies with a paste made from water and woad, then dipped their spear blades and arrow-heads in a viscous mix of faeces and herb-juice. When the sun was at its height the spearmen danced about Mai and Arryn's temple and a captive from Cathallo, who had been kept under guard ever since the last skirmish between the tribes, was dragged to the temple and slaughtered. Camaban was curious about that rite which Gundur told him had begun with Cathallo killing their captives before battle and so Lengar had ordered it done at Ratharryn as revenge. Haragg protested at the killing, but Gundur assured him it was no sacrifice and so the high priest held the skull pole as Gundur, naked and smeared blue, and with his hair blowing wild, took a bronze knife and slowly slit the man from crotch to breastbone. Ratharryn's spearmen then dipped their right hands in the blood of the victim whose long dying scream had been a message to the gods that the tribe was going to battle.

Saban did not dip his hand, nor did he dance about the temple poles as the drummers beat out a quick rhythm on their goatskin hoops. Instead he squatted beside Aurenna who had watched the captive's death unmoved. 'You will win the battle,' she said. 'I saw the victory in a dream.'

'You have a lot of dreams these days,' he said sourly.

'Because I am here,' Aurenna said, 'where Slaol wants me to be.'

'I wish we were going home with Lewydd,' Saban said. He had helped Lewydd drag the burned and shrunken bodies of Kereval and his men from the ashes of the hall. The corpses were to be buried high on the grassy slope above Slaol's old temple and Lewydd would then take the gold back to Sarmennyn.

'This is now my home,' Aurenna said. She watched the warriors crouch one by one over the eviscerated corpse. 'All this was meant to be,' she said happily. 'We did not know what Slaol intended when we came from Sarmennyn. We thought we were just bringing stones! But instead he wants us here to make his glory.'

'So the last years were all wasted?' Saban asked bitterly. He had given the best years of his life to moving the stones from Sarmennyn, only to have them rejected as soon as the task was done.

Aurenna shook her head. 'The years were not wasted,' she said calmly. 'They were given to Slaol, as proof that we could do great things for him, but now we must do more. Scathel's temple was a place for killing, a temple like the Sea Temple, and our new shrine must be a temple of life.'

Saban shuddered. 'Derrewyn once prophesied that our temple would steam with blood. She said the sun bride would die there. She said you would die there.'

Aurenna laughed softly. 'Saban! Saban! Derrewyn is an enemy. She would hardly speak well of what we do. And there will be no blood. Haragg hates sacrifice! He detests it!' She touched his arm. 'Trust us,' she urged him. 'Slaol is inside us! I can feel him like a child in my belly.'

Haragg was to accompany the war band. It was expected of the high priest, though Saban was surprised Haragg was so enthusiastic. 'I have never liked killing,' the dour high priest confessed, 'but war is different. If you had not offered them peace, Saban, I would be unhappy, but they have been given their chance and refused it, so now we must do Slaol's duty.' Haragg was carrying the tribe's skull pole that he took to Arryn and Mai's temple where the warriors assembled. Camaban had donned one of Lengar's old tunics with bronze strips sewn to its breast and at his side hung Lengar's bronze sword. He had dipped his hand in the corpse's blood, then smeared the blood on his tattooed face so that, with his black hair loose, he looked like a thing from a nightmare. He gestured for Haragg to lower the skull, then placed his bloody hand on the yellowed dome and shouted, 'I swear on our ancestors' souls that we shall destroy Cathallo!'

Over two hundred warriors watched that solemn oath. Most were veterans of Lengar's wars, a few were youngsters who had passed their ordeals but had not been tattooed as men for they had not yet killed in battle, while the wildest spearmen were the outlaws who had come from the forests with Camaban. 'We march now and we shall reach Cathallo in tomorrow's dawn,' Camaban cried, 'and that is when we shall attack. And Slaol has spoken with me. He has always spoken with me. Even when I was a child he came to me, but now he speaks more clearly and he tells me we shall win a great victory! We shall conquer Cathallo! We shall kill many spearmen and take many prisoners. We shall end, for all time, the threat of Cathallo and your children will grow in a land at peace!'

They cheered him and the tribe's women added their shouts of approval, then the drummers beat on their skins and the war band followed Camaban north into the woods. They walked all afternoon and it was almost dark by the time they reached the marshes about Maden, but their path across the wet land was lit by a white high moon that glossed the streams and shone on the ghostly white skulls that Cathallo had planted at the edge of the wooded hills to deter Ratharryn's spearmen. Camaban plucked a skull from its pole and threw it to the ground, then the rest of the war band followed him into the forest. Camaban's outlaws, who were at home among the dark trees, went ahead as scouts, but found no enemy.

It was slow going in the woods for the leaves obscured Lahanna's light and the spearmen travelled cautiously. They stopped when they reached the highest ground and there waited through the chill night. Gundur and Vakkal were nervous, for Cathallo had never before allowed Ratharryn's warriors to cross the marshes unchallenged: they were now deep in the enemy's territory and they feared an ambush, but no arrows or spears came from the dark. In the past, Gundur said, Cathallo had forced Ratharryn's warriors to fight their way into these hills where they were constantly ambushed by archers, but now the woods were empty, tempting every warrior to believe that Cathallo was ignorant of their coming. As dawn approached a mist sifted through the trees. Fox cubs scattered across a clearing as the advance resumed, and men took the presence of the cubs as a good omen for the beasts would surely never have left their dens if Cathallo's warriors were lurking among the trees, but then, just as spirits were rising in hopes of an easy victory, a terrible roar made the men crouch and even Camaban's striped face showed sudden fear. There was a trampling in the bushes, not quick like a deer's movement, nor deliberate like a man's, but something huge and ponderous that sounded out of the mist to make the whole war band shudder.

The dreadful sound came closer. Saban had put an arrow on his bow's string, though he doubted any flint head could damage some sorcery from Cathallo, and then a monster appeared with a massive head crowned by spreading horns that twisted forward. Saban pulled the bowstring back, but did not release the arrow. It was no sorcery, nor a monster, but a bull aurochs twice the size of the largest ox Saban had ever seen: a creature of huge muscle, black hide, sharp horns and beady eyes. It stopped when it saw the men, swished its dung-encrusted tail, then pawed at the ground with a huge hoof before bellowing its challenge again. It raised its head and spittle streamed from a cavernous mouth. Its small eyes looked red in the misty light. For a heartbeat Saban thought the animal was going to charge the war band, then it swung away and pounded northwards. 'An omen!' Camaban said. 'Follow it!'

Saban had never seen Camaban so excited. His brother's usual sardonic confidence had been replaced by a childish verve, born of a nervousness that made him boisterous and loud. In these same circumstances, Saban suspected, Lengar would have been silent, but the warriors still followed Camaban willingly enough. He might be dressed as a warrior, but the spearmen believed he was a sorcerer who could defeat Cathallo with spells rather than spears and the absence of any enemy in the woods had convinced them that his spells were working.

The sun rose just after they reached the edge of the trees. The mist was white and damp, muffling the world. The men, who had been so confident in the night, were now assailed by nervousness. They had never pierced so deep into Cathallo's territory and that achievement should have encouraged them, but the mist was frightening them for, once they passed beyond the trees, it seemed as though they walked through a white nothingness. At times the sun would show as a pale disc in the vapour, but then it would vanish again as the wet fog drifted thick again. Some men loosed arrows at shadows just beyond the eye's reach, but no arrows came back and no wounded enemy cried aloud.

'We should go back,' Gundur said.

'Back?' Camaban asked. The blood on his face had dried to a cracking crust.

Gundur gestured into the fog, suggesting that it was hopeless to continue, but just then a man at the left of the ragged war band came to an ancient grave mound, one that had been built as a long ridge instead of a round heap, and Camaban headed for it and gathered his spearmen in the tomb's forecourt, which was cradled by a crescent of vast stones. 'I know where we are,' Camaban told them. 'Cathallo lies that way' — he pointed into the mist — 'and it is not far.'

'Too far in this fog,' Gundur said, and the spearmen growled their agreement.

'Then we shall let the fog thin a little,' Camaban said, 'and harm the enemy while we wait.'

He ordered a dozen men to heave aside two of the smaller stones from the crescent of great boulders and, when the slabs were gone, a dark tunnel lined with yet more stones was revealed. Camaban crawled into the tunnel, muttered a charm to protect his soul from the dead, and then began to hurl out bones and skulls. These were Cathallo's ancestors, the spirits who would guard their descendants in any battle, and Camaban ordered the bones to be made into a pile at the foot of the tomb's stone facade and then, one by one, the warriors climbed to the top of the ridge and pissed onto their enemies. The gesture restored their spirits so that they laughed and began to boast as they had the previous night.

Saban was the last man to climb the mound. His bladder was empty and he feared the scorn of the war band, but then he looked north and saw another person climb out of the fog. The figure was a long way off and for a moment he felt terror, thinking it was a spirit who walked on the fog's surface, then he understood it was someone who had just climbed the chalk-white Sacred Mound and was staring southwards. The figure stared at Saban, who stared back. Was it Derrewyn? He thought it was her and he felt a sudden pang that she should be his enemy now. To his right, much farther off, the hills where the great stones lay emerged from the mist, but here there was just Derrewyn and Saban staring at each other across the silent white valley.

'What is it?' Camaban called up to him.

'Come here,' Saban said, and Camaban went round to the ridge's flank and scrambled up its steep turf slope.

The far figure dropped her cloak and began raising and lowering her arms. 'Curses,' Camaban said, and he spat towards her.

'Is it Derrewyn?' Saban asked.

'Who else?' Camaban asked. Derrewyn was standing on Lahanna's hill, summoning the goddess to hurt Cathallo's enemies.

Saban touched his groin. 'So they know we're coming?'

'They brought the fog,' Camaban said, 'hoping we would get lost in it. But we are not lost. I know the way from here.' He raised a fist to the distant figure, then dragged Saban down from the mound. 'We follow a path north,' he said, 'and the path goes through a wood, then crosses the stream before joining the sacred way.' And the sacred way would lead them into Cathallo's shrine.

The drenching of the bones had restored the war band's spirits so they were now eager to follow Camaban north. He went fast, following a path that had been beaten into the grassland by countless feet. The path led gently downhill through a thick stand of oaks and, as the spearmen threaded the trees, a wind rustled the leaves and the same wind swirled the mist and thinned it so that Ratharryn's leading warriors could see the sacred path across the small valley and there, waiting in a strong line by the grey boulders, was Cathallo's army.

Rallin, Cathallo's chief, was waiting for them. He was ready. All Cathallo's warriors were there, and not just Cathallo's men, but also their allies, the spearmen from the tribes that hated Ratharryn because of Lengar's raids. The enemy host filled the avenue and they gave a great shout as they saw Camaban's men come from the oaks and then the mists thickened again and the two armies were hidden from each other.

'They outnumber us,' Gundur said nervously.

'They are as nervous as we are,' Camaban said, 'but we have Slaol.'

'They let us come this far because they would crush us here,' Gundur explained, 'then follow our survivors back across the hills and slaughter us one by one.'

'What they want,' Camaban agreed, 'is a battle to end the war.'

'They do,' Gundur said, 'and they will win it. We should retreat!' He spoke fiercely and Vakkal nodded his agreement.

'Slaol does not want us to retreat,' Camaban said. His eyes were bright with excitement. 'All our enemies are gathered,' he said, 'and Slaol wants us destroy them.'

'They are too many,' Gundur insisted.

'There are never too many enemies to kill,' Camaban said. The spirit of Slaol was inside him and he was certain of victory, and so he shook his head at Gundur's advice and drew his sword. 'We shall fight,' he shouted, then his whole body shuddered as the god filled him with power. 'We shall fight for Slaol,' he screamed, 'and we shall win!'

The mist shredded slowly, swirled by a fitful wind and reluctantly yielding to Slaol's rising power. Two swans flew above the stream, their wing beats suddenly the loudest noise in a valley edged by two armies. The aurochs had long disappeared, gone, Saban assumed, into the deeper forests to the west, yet he clung to the belief that the beast's appearance had been a good omen. Now every spearman in the opposing armies watched the swans, hoping they would turn towards their side, but the birds flew steadily on between the two forces to vanish in the eastern mists. 'They have gone to the rising sun!' Camaban shouted. 'It means Slaol is with us.'

He could have been speaking to himself, for no one on Ratharryn's side reacted to his shout. They were staring across the shallow valley to where the forces of Cathallo made a formidable line armed with spears, axes, bows, maces, clubs, adzes and swords. That battle-line began near the small temple on the hill, followed the path of paired stones westwards and then went on towards the Sacred Mound. On the low hills behind the battle-line were groups of women and children who had come to watch their menfolk crush Ratharryn.

'Four hundred men?' Mereth had been counting and now spoke softly to Saban.

'Not all men,' Saban said, 'some are scarce boys.'

'A boy can kill you with an arrow,' Mereth muttered. He was armed with one of his father's precious bronze axes and looked formidable, for he had inherited Galeth's height and broad chest, but Mereth was nervous, as was Saban. The men of both armies were nervous, all except the hardened warriors who dreamed of these moments. Those were the men about whom songs were sung, of whom tales were told in the long winter nights; they were the heroes of slaughter, fighters like Vakkal the Outlander who now strutted ahead of Camaban's force to shout insults across the valley. He called the enemy worm dung, claimed their mothers were goitred goats, reviled them as children who wet their pelts at night and invited any two of them to come and fight him on the stream bank. Similar taunts and invitations were being shouted by Cathallo's leading warriors. Hung with feathers and fox tails, their skins thick with kill marks, they strutted in bronze. Saban had once dreamed of being such a warrior, but he had become a maker instead of a destroyer and a man who felt caution, if not outright fear, at the sight of an enemy.

'Spread out,' Gundur shouted at Ratharryn's men. Gundur had not wanted to fight this morning, fearing that Cathallo and its allies were too numerous, but Camaban had taken him aside and Gundur's confidence had been miraculously restored by whatever Camaban had told him, and he now tugged men into line. 'Spread out!' he shouted. 'Make a line! Don't bunch like children! Spread out!'

The war band reluctantly scattered along the edge of the oaks to make a line which, like the enemy's line, was not continuous. Men stayed close to their kin or friends and there were wide gaps between the groups. The priests of both sides were out in front now, shaking bones and shrieking curses at the enemy. Haragg carried Ratharryn's skull pole so that the ancestors could see what was being done in the thinning mist and Morthor, Cathallo's blind high priest, carried a similar pole. He shook it so threateningly that Cathallo's skull toppled clean off its staff, raising a cheer from Ratharryn's men who reckoned the fall of the skull was an ominous sign for the enemy. Derrewyn was still on the Sacred Mound where, attended by a half-dozen spearmen, she was spitting more curses at Camaban. 'I want the sorceress killed!' Camaban shouted at his army. 'A gift of gold to the man who brings me the bitch's head! I shall fill her skull with gold and give it all to the man who kills her!'

'He thinks we'll win?' Mereth asked sourly.

'Slaol is with us,' Saban said, and the sun had indeed broken through the remnants of mist to green the valley and spark shimmering light from the stream between the armies.

'Slaol had better be with us,' Mereth muttered. The enemy outnumbered Ratharryn's men by two to one.

'I want their chief dead!' Camaban was calling to his men. 'Him and his children! Find his children and kill them! If his wives are pregnant, kill them too! And kill the sorceress's whelp, kill it! Kill her, kill her child, kill them all!'

Rallin was walking along his own line, doubtless encouraging his own spearmen to a similar slaughter. The priests of both sides had advanced to the stream's banks, almost within spitting distance of each other, and there they hissed insults and spat curses at each other, leapt in the air, shook as though they were in the grip of the gods and shrieked as they summoned the invisible spirits to come and eviscerate the enemy. Haragg alone had not gone to the stream. Instead he was standing a few paces in front of the line and holding the skull pole towards the sun.

The braver warriors had gone close to the priests to shout more insults, but neither battle-line moved forward. Groups of men danced in a frenzy as they summoned the courage to advance, others sang war hymns or chanted the names of their gods. The mist was all gone now and the day was growing warmer. Mereth stepped back into the wood which stood just behind Camaban's line and began picking blackberries, but Camaban, returning from the left wing of his forces, pulled him out of the bushes and back into the line. Camaban said, 'Every man who has a bow is to go back into the trees and make his way to the centre of the line. You hear me?' He walked on, repeating the instruction, and the archers slipped back into the trees and, unseen by the enemy, ran to the centre of Ratharryn's loose line. Saban alone disobeyed, reluctant to abandon Mereth's companionship.

A drum began to beat from Cathallo's line and the heavy pounding gave Rallin's men courage so that small groups of them darted forward to taunt Camaban's forces. The most courageous splashed through the stream, then stood baring their blue-smeared bodies as if inviting Ratharryn's bowmen to loose their arrows. Vakkal and some of his Outlander spearmen ran to challenge those bolder enemies who quickly retreated, provoking jeers from Ratharryn's men. The priests stood in the centre of these rushes and counter-rushes, ignoring and being ignored by the spearmen.

Scattered archers ran from Cathallo's line to loose their arrows across the valley. Most fell short, though a few hissed overhead to rattle through the leaves in the wood. Small boys ran to retrieve the arrows and carry them to Ratharryn's own archers, a handful of whom advanced from the centre of the line to drive the enemy bowmen back. No one had been injured yet, let alone killed, and though the insults flew thick, neither army seemed inclined to cross the stream and begin the bloodletting. Rallin was walking up and down his line again, exhorting and shouting, and women were carrying pots of liquor to their men.

'We're going to let them come to us,' Camaban was walking behind his line again. 'We stay here,' he said, 'and let them attack us.' He sounded cheerful. 'When they advance, just stand still and wait for them.'

The whole of Cathallo's line was chanting now, the strong voices joining in the battle verse of Lahanna. 'They're working themselves up to it, aren't they?' Mereth observed, his lips stained with blackberry juice.

'I'd rather be making boats in Sarmennyn,' Saban said.

'I'd rather be making boats anywhere,' Mereth said. He did not have even one kill scar on his chest. 'I reckon if they come over that stream,' he went on, 'I'm going to run back and keep running till I reach the sea.'

'They're just as frightened of us,' Saban said.

'That might be true,' Mereth observed, 'but there's two scared fellows over there for every one of us.'

A great shout sounded from Cathallo's line and Saban saw that a large group of warriors had started towards the stream. They came from the centre of Rallin's line and they called Lahanna's name as they advanced, but after a few paces they looked left and right and saw that the rest of their line had stayed rooted and so they themselves stopped and were content to shout insults at Camaban who had returned to the centre of Ratharryn's line. Derrewyn, Saban saw, had come down from the Sacred Mound and was now striding along the front of Cathallo's reluctant battle-line. Her long black hair was unbound and, like the pale cloak she wore, was lifted by the small wind. Saban could see she was shouting, and he could imagine that she was reviling her men's courage, insulting Ratharryn and urging the spearmen forward. More liquor pots were brought to Rallin's men. The drummer was beating his goatskin drum with redoubled force and men were shuffling in a grotesque dance as they summoned their nerves. The priests of both sides, their throats sore from so much shouting, huddled together by the stream where they drank from cupped hands, then talked with each other.

'This isn't how Lengar would have fought,' a man near Saban grumbled.

'How would he have done it?' Saban asked.

'Your brother was always one for attacking,' the man said. 'None of this waiting. Just scream loud, then run at the enemy in a howling rush.' He spat. 'They always broke.'

Saban wondered if that was what Gundur was now planning for he had assembled his best warriors at the line's centre where Ratharryn's skull pole was displayed. The gathered men had been Lengar's best, the spearmen with the most kill scars who had foxes' brushes woven into their hair and dangling from their spear shafts. Gundur was haranguing them, though Saban was too far away to hear what he said. Vakkal and his picked Outfolk warriors joined them, and just behind that fearsome group were Camaban's massed archers.

The sun climbed. Rallin and Derrewyn walked up and down their line, and still neither side attacked, though some bowmen from Cathallo became bold and dared to cross the stream to loose some arrows. They struck one man in the leg and the enemy cheered that wound, then Camaban sent a half-dozen of his own archers forward to chase the enemy away and it was Ratharryn's turn to jeer.

'Maybe there won't be a battle,' Mereth said cheerfully. 'Perhaps we just stand here all day, shout ourselves hoarse, then go home and boast about how brave we've all been. That would suit me.'

'Or perhaps Rallin expected us to attack like Lengar,' Saban suggested.

'He thought we'd charge?'

'Probably,' Saban guessed, 'and now that we're not doing what he expected, he has to come to us if he's to win.'

Rallin had evidently reached the same conclusion for he and Derrewyn now exhorted their army to advance, claiming that the vermin of Ratharryn were too timid to attack and too stubborn to retreat without a fight, and so were just waiting to be slaughtered. Rallin shouted that glory waited for Cathallo and that any man killed this day would go straight to Lahanna's bliss in the sky. The first men into Ratharryn's line, Cathallo's chief promised, could take their pick of the enemy's women and herds, and that encouragement was emboldening his men. The liquor was also having its effect and the drumbeat was filling the sky and the women who watched from the hills were shouting at their men to go forward and kill. The noise was constant, shouting and screaming, drum and chanting, singing and foot-stamping. Rallin's war captains had spread along the line and kept dragging men forward and their example and Rallin's promises at last succeeded in urging the whole excited mass into motion.

'Just stand and wait!' Camaban shouted. 'Stand and wait!'

'The gods help us,' Mereth said, touching his groin.

The enemy came slowly. None was willing to be the first to reach Ratharryn's line and so they edged forward, calling encouragement to each other, and the archers were the only ones who ran ahead, but even they took care not to get too far in front. Rallin was at his line's centre where he did succeed in quickening his best warriors. He wanted the rest of his army to see those heroes smash through the centre of Ratharryn's line and start the slaughter which would turn into massacre when Camaban's men broke and fled. The warriors shouted their war cries, shook their spears and still none of Ratharryn's men stepped forward to meet the attack.

'Stand and wait!' Camaban called. 'Slaol will give us victory!'

The enemy archers had reached the far bank of the stream now and they hesitated for a heartbeat amid the thick willow-herb before jumping into the water. 'Watch for the arrows!' a man shouted close to Saban.

The first arrows were loosed and Saban watched them flicker in the sky. None came at him, though in other places men skipped aside when they saw an arrow diving straight towards them. Cathallo's archers were spread all along the line and so their arrows were few in any one place, though they did succeed in hitting a handful of men and those injuries encouraged the spearmen advancing behind the bowmen. They splashed through the stream, avoiding the priests who still talked placidly. 'Are you going to use that bow?' Mereth asked Saban, and Saban took an arrow from his quiver and laid it on the string, but he did not pull the string back. There had been a time when all he had dreamed of being was a hero of his tribe's songs, but he felt no bloodlust here. He could not hate Derrewyn or her people and so he just stared at the advancing enemy and wondered how Camaban planned to repel such an onslaught.

'Let them come!' Camaban called.

None of Ratharryn's archers had replied to the enemy's arrows, which emboldened Rallin's bowmen who stepped even closer so that now their arrows were driven flat and fast, too fast to avoid, and men shouted as they were hit, staggered and fell backwards, and the sight of the wounded men provoked Rallin's group of experienced warriors to break into a run and scream a challenge as they raced up the gentle slope.

'Now!' Camaban cried, and his own prime spearmen stepped aside to let the massed archers release a stinging cloud of arrows straight into the face of Rallin's charge. A dozen of the enemy were down, one with an arrow through an eye, and the rest of Cathallo's spearmen stopped, astonished at the sudden hail of flint-headed shafts, then another black-fledged flight whipped into them, then a third, and it was then that Gundur shouted Ratharryn's war shout and his picked warriors, fox tails flying, screamed and charged. Camaban's bowmen were scattering now, going left and right to drive the enemy archers back. Ratharryn's men had seemed to be waiting placidly and their sudden counter-strike, swift as a viper's attack, stunned the enemy.

Gundur and Vakkal led the charge into Rallin's injured men. Vakkal, swan feathers bright in his hair, hacked with a long-handled axe while Gundur used a heavy spear with sickening efficiency. For a brief while the centre of the field was a tangle of men stabbing and hacking, but Camaban's archers had hurt the enemy grievously and now Ratharryn's picked warriors broke through Rallin's centre. They killed Cathallo's greatest heroes in the stream where Rallin tried to rally them until Vakkal hurled his axe and the heavy blade struck Rallin on the head and the enemy chieftain fell among the willow-herb. Gundur screamed and splashed through the stream to stab his spear down into Rallin's chest, then Camaban was past him, swinging his sword in huge slashes that were as much a danger to his own side as to the enemy. Camaban's wild appearance, his striped face, bone-hung hair and bloody skin, terrified Cathallo's men who stepped back and stepped back again, and then stepped back faster as the fox-tailed warriors attacked in a howling rush.

'Now!' Camaban shouted at the rest of his line. 'Come and kill them! Come and kill them! Their lives are yours!' And the men of Ratharryn, as astonished as the enemy by the success of their line's centre, and seeing that Cathallo's men were fear-racked and retreating, gave a great shout and charged towards the stream. 'Kill them!' Camaban howled. 'Kill them!' His howling rallied his victorious centre, which he led in a wild screaming charge that turned into a pursuit of an enemy which still outnumbered Camaban's forces, but which had been panicked by their chief's death. Ratharryn's men whooped their victory as they cut the fleeing enemy down from behind. Axes and maces crushed skulls, shattered bones, came back bloody. Men killed in a frenzy of released fear, shrieking and stabbing, slashing and battering, and the panic became a rout when Cathallo's skull pole was taken by Vakkal. He hacked blind Morthor down with a sword, seized the pole and smashed the skull with his blade, and the sight of the skull's destruction caused a great wailing in the enemy's disordered ranks. Cathallo's women fled towards the great shrine and the fugitive spearmen followed in panic. It was chaos now, with Camaban's men hunting and herding the fleeing mass. Cathallo was beaten, Cathallo was running and Ratharryn's men were drenching their weapons with slaughter.

Saban alone did not pursue the enemy. Mereth had taken his great axe to the wild killing that soaked the avenue between the sacred stones, but Saban had been watching Derrewyn who had been at her line's western end when Gundur and Vakkal struck Rallin's men, staring appalled as her tribe collapsed. Saban saw two of Cathallo's warriors try and pull her back towards the settlement, but Derrewyn must have known that was where Camaban's army would aim their pursuit and so she ran a few paces west and, when she saw the screaming charge of Cathallo's men cross the stream and converge on the sacred avenue, she headed for the trees that had stood behind Camaban's battle-line. There was nowhere else to hide. Saban thought she must reach the trees safely, but then two of Ratharryn's archers saw her hurrying southwards and loosed their arrows. One of the missiles thumped into Derrewyn's leg, making her stumble, but her two spearmen picked her up and half carried her into the trees as the archers, eager for Camaban's reward of gold, ran after her.

Saban followed the archers into the wood. He could not see Derrewyn or her pursuers, but then he heard a bowstring being released and Derrewyn screaming an insult. Saban twisted towards the noise, plunging through a thicket of hazels into a small clearing where he saw that one of the Cathallo spearmen was lying dead with a black-fledged arrow through his throat. Derrewyn, her face pale and drawn with pain, was sitting against the moss-covered bole of an oak while her last protector faced the two bowmen of Ratharryn. They were grinning, pleased at the ease of their expected victory, but frowned as Saban burst into the clearing. 'We found her,' one of the archers said emphatically.

'You found her,' Saban agreed, 'so the reward is all yours. I don't want it.' He knew neither of the young men, who were scarce more than boys. He smiled at the nearest man, then placed an arrow on his bowstring. 'Do you have a knife?' he asked them.

'A knife?' one of them asked.

'You'll have to cut off the sorceress's head,' Saban explained, drawing back the arrow and aiming its long flint head at the enemy spearman. 'Remember the reward for her death? It is her skull filled with gold, so you must take my brother her head if you want to become wealthy.' He glanced at Derrewyn who was watching him with an expressionless face. 'But do you know how to ward off her dying curse?' Saban asked the two archers.

'Her curse?' the closest man asked in a worried tone.

'She is a sorceress,' Saban said ominously.

'Do you know?' the archer asked.

Saban smiled. 'You kill the curse like this,' he said, then turned fast so that his arrow was pointing at the nearest archer. He loosed it, saw the blood spurt bright in the green shadows, then threw the bow aside as he leaped the body of the dying man to drive the second bowman down into the leaf mould. He hammered the man in the face, grunted as his opponent punched back, then he saw the man's eyes widen in agony and heard the crunch of rib bones as Derrewyn's spearman thrust his bronze blade into the bowman's chest.

Saban stood. His heart was beating fast and sweat was stinging his eyes. 'I thought that I would go through this whole battle without killing anyone.'

The first bowman, who had Saban's arrow through his throat, heaved against the pain and then lay still. 'You didn't want to kill?' Derrewyn asked scornfully. 'Has your Outfolk woman turned you against killing?'

'I have no quarrel with you,' Saban said. 'I have never had a quarrel with you.'

The surviving spearman was holding his bloody spear threateningly, but Derrewyn waved the weapon down. 'He means no harm,' she told her protector. 'Saban blunders through life meaning no harm, but he causes plenty. Go and guard the end of the wood.' She watched the spearman go, beckoned Saban forward, then crooked her wounded leg and hissed with pain. The arrow had gone clean through the muscle of her right thigh and its flint head stood proud at one side and the raven-black feathers of Ratharryn showed on the other. She broke off the feathered end, grimaced, then snapped off the head. There was not much blood, for the flesh had closed about the shaft.

'I can take the rest of the arrow out,' Saban said.

'I can do that for myself,' Derrewyn said. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat and listened to the faint screams that sounded from the north. 'Thank you for killing them,' she said, gesturing at the two dead bowmen. 'Did your brother truly promise a reward for me?'

'For your corpse,' Saban said.

'So now you can become rich by killing me?' she asked with a smile.

Saban returned the smile. 'No,' he said, crouching in front of her. 'I wish none of this had ever happened,' he said. 'I wish everything was as it used to be.'

'Poor Saban,' Derrewyn said. She leaned her head against the tree. 'You should have been chief of Ratharryn, then none of this would ever have happened.'

'If you go south,' Saban said, 'you should be safe.'

'I doubt I will ever be safe,' she said, then began to laugh. 'I should have given Camaban his stones when he asked for them. He came to me last summer, at night, secretly, and begged me for stones.' She grimaced. 'Do you know what he offered me for the stones?'

'Peace?' Saban suggested.

'Peace!' Derrewyn spat the word. 'He offered more than peace, Saban, he offered me himself! He wanted to marry me. He and I, he said, were the two great sorcerers and between us we would rule Ratharryn and Cathallo and make the gods dance like hares in the springtime.'

Saban stared at her, wondering if she spoke the truth, then decided that of course she did. He smiled. 'How my father's sons do love you,' he said.

'You loved me,' Derrewyn said, 'but Lengar raped me and Camaban fears me.'

'I still love you,' Saban blurted out, and he was far more surprised at his words than she was. He blushed, and felt ashamed because of Aurenna, but he also knew he had spoken the truth, a truth he had never really acknowledged in all the years. He stared at her and he did not see the gaunt drawn face of Cathallo's sorceress, but the bright girl whose laughter had once enraptured a whole tribe.

'Poor Saban,' Derrewyn said, then flinched as pain lashed up her leg. 'It should have been you and I, Saban, just you and I. We would have had children, we would have lived and died and nothing would ever have changed. But now?' She shrugged. 'Slaol wins, and his cruelty will be loosed on the world.'

'He is not cruel.'

'We shall see, won't we?' Derrewyn asked, then she opened her cloak to show Saban the three gold lozenges hanging from a leather thong about her neck. She raised one of the small gold pieces to her mouth, bit through its sinew, then held the shining scrap out to Saban. 'Take it,' she said.

He smiled. 'I don't need it.'

'Take it!' she insisted and waited until he obeyed. 'Keep it safe.'

'I should give it back to Sarmennyn,' he said.

'For once,' she said wearily, 'don't be a fool, because in time you will want my help. Do you remember Mai's island?'

He nodded. 'Of course I remember it.'

'We lay beneath a willow tree there,' she said, 'and it has a fork in the trunk just higher than a man can reach. Leave the gold piece in that fork and I shall come to your aid.'

'You will help me?' Saban asked, gently amused, for Ratharryn had won this day and Derrewyn was now nothing but a fugitive.

'You will need my help,' she said, 'and I will give it when you ask. I shall become a ghost now, Saban, and I shall haunt Ratharryn.' She paused. 'I suppose Camaban wants my daughter dead too?'

Saban nodded. 'He does.'

'Poor Merrel,' Derrewyn said. 'Camaban won't find her, but what life can I give her now?' She fell silent and Saban saw that she was crying, though he could not tell whether it was from grief or pain. He went and cradled her head in his arms so that she sobbed on his shoulder. 'I do hate your brothers,' she said after a while, and then she took a deep breath and gently pulled away from him. 'I shall live like an outlaw,' she said, 'and I shall make a temple to Lahanna deep in the forests where Camaban will never find it.' She held her hand out to him. 'Help me up.'

He pulled her to her feet. She moaned as she put her weight on her wounded leg, but she waved away Saban's help then called for her spearman. It seemed she would leave without saying any farewell, but then, abruptly, she turned back and kissed Saban. She said nothing, just kissed him a second time then limped southwards through the trees.

Saban watched until the leaves hid her, then closed his eyes because he feared he would weep.

—«»—«»—«»—

There would be so many tears that day. The avenue of stones was thick with bodies, many with skulls crushed by axes or clubs, and still more with missing heads. But there had been so many heads to take as trophies that, after a while, the bodies were no longer decapitated and some heads had even been discarded by the pursuers. Others of the enemy still lived, though they were horribly wounded. One man, blood dripping from his hair, clung to a stone pillar as Saban trudged past. What songs they would make of this in Ratharryn, Saban thought sourly. Ravens flapped down and dogs came to feast on dead men's flesh. Two small boys who had followed Camaban's men to war were trying to hack a woman's head off. Saban chased them from the corpse, but knew they would find another. The avenue's stones were dripping with gore and he remembered Derrewyn's prophecy that the stones of the new temple at Ratharryn would steam with blood. She was wrong, he told himself, wrong.

The first curls of smoke were writhing from the thatch in the settlement where Camaban's warriors, having fetched what valuables they could from within the huts, were hurling firebrands onto the roofs. While their huts were thus destroyed, the surviving folk of the defeated tribe sought sanctuary in the great shrine. It was there that Saban found Camaban. He was alone on the summit ridge of the huge encircling earthwork where he was systematically kicking the guardian skulls down into the ditch. 'Where have you been?' he demanded.

'Looking for Derrewyn,' Saban said.

'You found her?'

'No,' Saban said.

'She's probably dead,' Camaban said vengefully. 'I pray she is. But I still want to piss on the bitch's corpse.' He kicked a wolf's skull down to the ditch bottom. There was blood on his long hair and on the bones tied to its braids, but it was not his own blood. The bronze sword, which hung from a loop on his belt, was thick with blood. 'I hope Rallin's children have been found by now,' he went on, 'because I want them dead.'

'They're no danger to us,' Saban protested.

'They're Rallin's family and I want them all killed. And Derrewyn's bitch-child with them.' He kicked another skull off the embankment. 'Calls herself a sorceress! Ha! See where her sorcery has left her tribe!' He grinned suddenly. 'I like war.'

'I hate it.'

'That's because you're no good at it, but it isn't difficult. Gundur wanted to retreat because he hadn't thought about the problem, but I knew Rallin would lead with his best men so it was easy enough to lay a trap for them and, to give Gundur his due, he did see how it could work. Gundur fought well. Did you fight well?'

'I killed one man,' Saban said.

'Only one?' Camaban asked, amused. 'I used to be so envious of you when I was a child. You were like Lengar, tall and strong, and I thought you'd be a warrior and I would always be a cripple. But it's the cripple who has conquered Cathallo. Not Lengar, not you, but me!' He laughed, proud of his day's work, then turned to stare at the crowd of Cathallo's people who had gathered about Sannas's old hut. 'Time to frighten them, I think,' Camaban said, and he walked back to the causeway and then into the temple's centre. Less than a dozen of Ratharryn's spearmen had come into the shrine, so Camaban was virtually unguarded, but he showed no fear as he walked to the very centre of the temple, into the space between the twin stone circles that were girdled by the greater ring of boulders, and there he raised his arms to the sky and held them aloft until the frightened crowd had quietened. 'You know me!' he shouted, 'I am Camaban! Camaban the crooked child! Camaban the cripple! Camaban of Ratharryn! And I am now Camaban, chief of Cathallo. Does anyone dispute that?' He stared at the crowd. There were at least two score of men there, most of them still armed, but none of them moved.

'I am more than Camaban,' Camaban shouted, 'for I came here in the night many years ago and I took the soul of Sannas with her last breath! I, Camaban, have Sannas inside me. I am Sannas! I am Sannas!' He screamed this claim, and then, suddenly, began chanting in Sannas's old voice, her exact voice, ancient and dry like old bones, so that if Saban closed his eyes it was as if the old sorceress were still alive. 'I am Sannas come back to earth, come to save you from punishment!' And he began to writhe and dance, to leap and twist, yelping desperately as though the old woman's soul struggled against his own spirit, and the display made terrified children hide their faces in their mothers' clothes. 'I am Sannas!' Camaban screamed. 'And Slaol has conquered me! Slaol has taken me! Slaol has lain between my thighs and I am full with him! But I will fight for you!' He screamed again, and thrashed his head so that his long bloody hair whipped up and down. 'You must obey, you must obey,' he said, still in Sannas's voice.

'Kill them…' He was speaking in his own voice now, and he drew his gory sword and advanced on the crowd as he chanted the words. 'Kill them, kill them, kill them.' The crowd backed away.

'Take them as slaves!' He had changed to Sannas's voice again. 'They will be good slaves! Whip them if they are not good! Whip them!' He began writhing again, and howling again, and then, very suddenly, went still.

'Slaol talks in me,' he said in his own voice. 'He talks to me and through me. The great god comes to me and he asks why you are not all dead. Why should we not take your babies and dash their heads against the temple stones?' The women cried aloud. 'Why not give your children to Slaol's fire?' Camaban asked. 'Why not give your women to be raped, and bury your men alive in the dung pits? Why not? These last two words were a screech.

'Because I will not let it.' It was Sannas once more. 'My people will obey Ratharryn, they will obey. On your knees, slaves, on your knees!' And the people of Cathallo went on their knees to Camaban. Some held out their hands to him. Women clung to their children and appealed for their lives, but Camaban just turned away, went to the nearest stone and rested his head against it.

Saban let out a great breath that he had not even been aware he had been holding. The folk of Cathallo stayed kneeling, terror on their faces, and that was how Gundur's spearmen found them when they filed through the western entrance.

Gundur went to Camaban. 'Do we kill them?'

'They're slaves,' Camaban said calmly. 'Dead slaves can't work.'

'Kill the old, then?'

'Kill the old,' Camaban agreed, 'but let the others live.' He turned and stared at the kneeling crowd. 'For I am Slaol and these are the slaves who will build me a temple.' He raised his arms to the sun. 'For I am Slaol,' he cried again in triumph, 'and they are going to build my shrine!'

—«»—«»—«»—

Camaban left Gundur to govern Cathallo. Keep the people alive, he told him, for in the spring their labour would be needed. Gundur also had orders to search the woods for Derrewyn, whose body had never been found, and for her daughter who had also disappeared. Rallin's wives and children had been discovered and their bodies now rotted in a shallow grave. Morthor was buried under a mound and a new high priest had been appointed, but only after the man had kissed Camaban's misshapen foot and sworn to obey him.

So Camaban went home in triumph to Ratharryn where, all winter long, he toyed with wooden blocks. He had asked Saban to make the blocks, insisting that the timber was squared into pillar shapes, and he demanded more and more of them and then disappeared into his hut where he arranged and rearranged the blocks obsessively. At first he made the blocks into twin circles, one nested within the other like the unfinished temple that Saban was now removing, but after a while Camaban rejected the twin circles and instead modelled a temple like the existing shrine to Slaol just beyond Ratharryn's entrance. He devised a forest of pillars, but after staring at the model for days he swept it aside. He tried to remake Slaol and Lahanna's pattern in stone: twelve circles imposed on one greater circle; but when he stooped so that he could see the blocks with an eye close to the ground he saw only muddle and confusion and so he also rejected that arrangement.

It was a cold winter and a hungry one. Lewydd carried Erek's gold home, taking with him a half-dozen of Vakkal's men who wanted to live out their days in Sarmennyn, but that still left a horde of mouths to be fed in Ratharryn and Lengar had never been as careful as his father in storing food which meant the grain pits were low. Camaban did not care for he thought of little except his temple. He was chief of two tribes, yet he performed none of the tasks that his father had done. He allowed other men to lead his war bands, he insisted that Haragg dispense justice and was content to let Saban worry about amassing enough food to see Ratharryn through the winter. Camaban took no wives, bred no children and did not amass treasures, though he did begin to dress in some of the finery that he discovered in Lengar's hut. He wore the thick buckle of gold that the stranger had worn when he came to the Old Temple so many years before, he hung a cloak of wolf pelts edged with fox fur from his shoulders, and he carried a small mace that Lengar had taken from a priest of a defeated tribe. Hengall had carried a mace as a symbol of power, and it amused Camaban to ape his father and mock his memory for, where Hengall's mace had been a bone-crushing lump of rough stone, Camaban's mace was a delicate and precious object. Its wooden handle was circled by bone rings sculpted into the shape of lightning bolts, while its head was a perfectly carved and beautifully polished egg of black-veined brown stone, which must have taken a craftsman days of meticulous work. He had shaped the head smooth, then drilled a circular hole for its handle, and when the work was done the man had made a weapon that was good only for ceremony, for the small mace-head was much too light to inflict damage on anything but the most delicate of skulls. Camaban liked to flourish the mace as proof that stone could be worked as easily as wood. 'We won't use rough boulders like those at Cathallo,' he told Haragg. 'We'll shape them. Sculpt them.' He caressed his mace head. 'Smooth them,' he said.

Saban gathered the tribe's grain into one hut, purchased more from Drewenna and doled it out through the cold days. Warriors hunted, bringing back venison and boar and wolf. No one starved, though many of the old and the sick died. And through that cold winter Saban also took away all the dark pillars that had been brought from Sarmennyn. It was not a hard task. The stones were dug out of their holes, tipped onto the grass and dragged down into the small valley that lay east of the temple. Men dug chalk rubble from the ditch and filled the stone holes so that the centre of the temple was once again smooth and empty. Only the moon stones remained within the ditch, and the three pillars beyond it, but then Saban raised the mother stone close to the temple's centre. It took sixty men, a tripod of oak and seven days to raise the stone that was placed opposite the temple's entrance so that on midsummer's day the sun would shine down the avenue onto the pillar. The mother stone stood tall, much taller than the other pillars from Sarmennyn had stood, and in the low winter sun its shadow lay long and black on the pale turf.

Camaban spent whole days at the temple, brooding mostly and rarely taking any notice of the men who laboured to dismantle the Temple of Shadows. As the days grew shorter and the air colder he went there more often, and after a time he carried spears to the temple and rammed their blades into the hard ground, then peered across the tops of their staffs. He was using the spears to judge how high he wanted his stone pillars, but the spears did not satisfy him and so he ordered Mereth to cut him a dozen longer poles and he asked Saban to dig those into the turf. The poles were long, but light, and the work was done in a day. Camaban spent day after day staring at the poles, seeing patterns in his mind.

In the end there were just two poles left. One was twice the height of a man and the other twice as long again, and they stood in line with the midsummer sun's rising, the taller post behind the mother stone and the shorter pole closer to the shrine's entrance, and as the winter came to its heart, Camaban went each evening to the temple and stared at the thin poles, which seemed to shiver in the icy wind.

Midwinter came. It had ever been a time when cattle bellowed as they were sacrificed to appease the sun's weakness, but Haragg would have no such killings in his temples and so the tribe danced and sang without the smell of fresh blood in their nostrils. Some folk grumbled that the gods would be angered by Haragg's squeamishness, claiming sacrifice was necessary if the new year was not to bring plague, but Camaban supported Haragg and that evening, after the tribe had sung a lament to the dying sun, Camaban preached that the old ways were doomed and that if Ratharryn kept their faith then the new temple would ensure that the sun never died again. They feasted that night on venison and pork, then lit the great fires that would draw Slaol back in the dawn after midwinter's day.

There was snow in that dawn: not much, but enough to coat the higher ground with white in which Camaban left footprints as he walked to the temple. He had insisted that Saban accompany him and the brothers were swathed in furs for it was bitter cold and a sharp wind cut from a pale sky banded with wispy pink clouds. The heavier snow clouds had cleared at midday and the afternoon sun was low enough to cast shadows on the snow from the hummocks made by the filled-in stone holes. Camaban gazed at his twin poles, but shook his head in irritation when Saban asked their purpose. Then he turned to stare at Gilan's four moon stones, the paired pillars and slabs that showed the way to Lahanna's most distant wanderings. 'It is time,' Camaban said, 'to forgive Lahanna.'

'To forgive her?'

'We fought against Cathallo so we could have peace,' Camaban said, 'and Slaol will want peace among the gods. Lahanna rebelled against him, but she has lost the battle. We have won. It is time to forgive her.' He gazed at the distant woods. 'Do you think Derrewyn still lives?'

'Do you want to forgive her?' Saban asked.

'Never,' Camaban said bitterly.

'The winter will kill her,' Saban said.

'It will take more than winter to kill that bitch,' Camaban said grimly. 'And while we work for peace she'll be praying to Lahanna in some dark place, and I do not want Lahanna to oppose us. I want her to join us. It is time that she was drawn back to Slaol, and that is why we shall leave her four stones because they show her that she belongs to Slaol.'

'They do?' Saban asked.

Camaban smiled. 'If you were to stand by either pillar,' he said, pointing to the nearest moon stone pillar, 'and looked at the slab across the circle, you will see where Lahanna wanders?'

Yes,' Saban said, remembering how Gilan had placed the four stones.

'But what if you were to look at the other slab?' Camaban asked.

Saban frowned, not understanding, and so Camaban seized his arm and walked him to the pillar and pointed towards the great slab standing on the circle's far side. 'That's where Lahanna goes, yes?'

'Yes,' Saban agreed.

Camaban turned Saban so that now he looked towards the second slab. 'And what would you see if you looked in that direction?'

Saban was so cold that he found it hard to think, but it was late in the day and the sun was low among the pink clouds and he saw that Slaol would touch the horizon in line with the moon stones. 'You would see Slaol's midwinter death,' he said.

'Exactly! And if you looked the other way? If you were to stand by that pillar,' Camaban pointed diagonally across the circle, 'and looked across the other slab?'

'Slaol's summer rising.'

'Yes!' Camaban shouted. 'So what does that tell you? It tells you that Slaol and Lahanna are linked. They are joined, Saban, like a feather is in the wing or a horn in the skull. Lahanna might rebel, but she must come back. All the world's sadness is because Slaol and Lahanna parted, but our temple will bring them together. The stones tell us that. Her stones are his stones, don't you understand that?'

'Yes,' Saban said, and wondered why he had never realised that the moon stones could as easily point to the limits of Slaol's wanderings as to Lahanna's.

'What you'll do, Saban,' Camaban said enthusiastically, 'is dig me a ditch and bank round the two pillars. They're the watching stones. You'll make me two earth rings, and the priests can stand in the rings and watch Slaol across the slabs. Good!' He began to walk briskly back towards the settlement, but stopped by the sun stone which lay farthest from the shrine. 'And another ditch and bank round this stone.' He slapped the stone. 'Three circles round three stones. Three places where only priests can go. Two places to watch the sun's death and Lahanna's wanderings and one place to watch Slaol rise in glory. Now all we have to decide is what goes in the centre.'

'We have more than that to decide,' Saban said.

'What?'

'Cathallo is short of food.'

Camaban shrugged as if that were a small thing.

'Dead slaves' — Saban grimly echoed Camaban's own words — 'can't work.'

'Gundur will look after them,' Camaban said, irritated by the discussion. He wanted to think of nothing except his temple. 'That's why I sent Gundur to Cathallo. Let him feed them.'

'Gundur is only interested in Cathallo's women,' Saban said. 'He keeps a score of the youngest in his hut, and the rest of the settlement starves. You want the remnants of the tribe to rebel against you? You want them to become outlaws instead of slaves?'

'Then you go and rule Cathallo,' Camaban said carelessly, walking away through the thin snow.

'How can I build your temple if I'm in Cathallo?' Saban shouted after him.

Camaban howled at the sky in frustration, then stopped and stared at the darkening sky. 'Aurenna,' he said.

'Aurenna?' Saban asked, puzzled.

Camaban turned. 'Cathallo has ever been ruled by women,' he said. 'Sannas first, then Derrewyn, so why not Aurenna?'

'They'll kill her!' Saban protested.

'They will love her, brother. Is she not be beloved of Slaol? Didn't he spare her life? You think the people of Cathallo could kill what Slaol spared?' Camaban danced some clumsy steps, shuffling in the snow. 'Haragg will tell the folk of Cathallo that Aurenna was the sun's bride and in their minds they will think she is Lahanna.'

'She's my wife,' Saban said harshly.

Camaban walked slowly towards Saban. 'We have no wives, brother, we have no husbands, we have no sons, we have no daughters, we have nothing till the temple is built.'

Saban shook his head at such nonsense. 'They will kill her!' he insisted.

'They will love her,' Camaban said again. He limped close to Saban and then, grotesquely, he fell on his knees in the snow and held up his hands. 'Let your wife go to Cathallo, Saban. I beg you! Let her go! Slaol wants it!' He gazed up at Saban. 'Please!'

'Aurenna might not want to go,' Saban said.

'Slaol wants it,' Camaban said again, then frowned. 'We are trying to turn the world back to its beginnings. To end winter. To drive sadness and weariness from the land. Do you know how hard that is? One wrong step and we could be in darkness for ever, but sometimes, suddenly, Slaol tells me what to do. And he has told me to send Aurenna to Cathallo. I beg you, Saban! I beg you! Let her go.'

'You want her to rule Cathallo?'

'I want her to draw Lahanna back! Aurenna is the sun's bride. If we are to have joy in the world, Saban, we must have Slaol and Lahanna united again. Aurenna alone can do it. Slaol has told me so and you, my brother, must let her go.' He held out a hand so that Saban could pull him to his feet. 'Please,' Camaban said.

'If Aurenna wishes to go,' Saban said, reckoning his wife would have no wish to be isolated so far from the new temple, but to his surprise Aurenna did not reject the idea. Instead she talked a long time with Camaban and Haragg, and afterwards she went to Slaol's old temple where she submitted herself to the widow's rite by having her long golden hair hacked short with a bronze knife. Haragg burned the hair, the ashes were placed in a pot and the pot was broken against one of the timber poles.

Saban watched horrified as Aurenna walked from the temple with her once beautiful hair ravaged into crude clumps smeared with blood where the knife had grazed her scalp, yet on her face was a look of joy. She knelt to Saban. 'You will let me go?' she asked.

'If you really want to,' he said reluctantly.

'I want to!' she said fervently. 'I want to!'

'But why?' Saban asked. 'And why the widow's rite?'

'My old life is gone,' Aurenna said, climbing to her feet. 'I was given to Slaol, and even though he rejected me I was ever his worshipper. But from today, Saban, I am a priestess of Lahanna.'

'Why?' he asked again, his voice filled with pain.

She smiled calmly. 'In Sarmennyn we used to offer the god a human bride each year, but in a year's time the god demanded another bride. One girl after another, Saban, burning, burning! But the girls didn't satisfy Slaol. How could they? He wants a bride for ever, a bride to match his glory in the sky and that can only be Lahanna.'

'The Outfolk have never worshipped Lahanna,' Saban protested.

'And we were wrong,' Aurenna said. 'Lahanna and Slaol! They are made for each other as a man is made for a woman. Why did Slaol spare me from the fire at the Sea Temple? He must have had a purpose and now I see what it is. He rejected a human bride because he wants Lahanna and my task will be to draw her to his embrace. I shall do it by prayer, by dancing, by kindness.' She smiled at Saban, then cupped his face in her hands. 'We are to do a great thing, you and I. We are to make the marriage of the gods. You will make the shrine and I shall bring the bride to Slaol's bed. You cannot forbid me that task, can you?'

'They will kill you in Cathallo,' Saban growled.

Aurenna shook her head. 'I shall comfort them, and in time they will worship at our new temple and share in its joy.' She smiled. 'It is why I was born.'

She left next day, taking Leir and Lallic with her, and Gundur returned to Ratharryn, but left a score of his warriors behind. Aurenna had those men hunt the forests for boar and deer to feed the settlement.

Saban stayed in Ratharryn. Camaban wanted him there, for Camaban was intent on his temple's design and needed his brother's advice. What was the largest stone that could be raised as a pillar? Could one stone be piled on another? How were the stones to be moved? Could the stone be shaped? The questions did not end, even if Saban had no answers. Winter ended and the spring touched the trees with green and still Camaban brooded.

Then one day there were no more questions for the doorway of Camaban's hut stayed curtained and no one, not even Saban or Haragg, was allowed inside. A mist hung across Ratharryn, hiding the skulls on the embankment's crest. There was no wind that day and the world was silent and white. The tribe, sensing that the gods were close about the settlement, kept their voices low.

At sunset Camaban screamed, 'I have found it!'

And the wind blew the mists away.

Haragg and Saban were summoned to Camaban's hut where a patch of the earthen floor had been swept clean and smooth. Saban expected to see the finished model, but instead the wooden blocks had been pushed into a jumbled heap beside which Camaban squatted with eyes so bright and skin so sheened with sweat that Saban wondered if his brother had a fever, but the fever was no sickness, it was excitement. 'We shall build a temple,' Camaban greeted Saban and Haragg, 'like none that is now or ever will be again. We shall make the gods dance with joy.' Camaban was naked, his skin reddened by the glare of the fire which warmed and lit the hut. He waited until Saban and Haragg had settled, then he placed a single wooden pillar very close to the centre of the cleared space. 'That is the mother stone,' Camaban said, 'reminding us that we are of the earth and that the earth is at the heart of all that exists.' The bones hanging from his hair and beard clicked together as he rocked back on his heels. 'And around the mother stone,' he went on, 'we shall build a death house, only this death house will also be Slaol's house. It will remind us that death is the passage to life, and we shall make Slaol's house with stones as tall as any wooden temple pole.' He took the longest two blocks and placed them just behind the mother stone. 'We shall touch the sky,' he said reverently, then took a smaller piece of wood and put it across the two pillars' tops so that the three stones formed a tall and very narrow archway. 'Slaol's arch,' he said reverently, 'a slit through which the dead can go to him.'

Saban stared at the high arch. 'How tall are the stones?' he asked.

'They are the same height as the tallest of the two poles at the temple,' Camaban answered and Saban flinched as he remembered the height of the slender wands that his brother had planted in the cleared temple. Camaban was demanding that the arch should stand more than four times the height of a man, taller than any stone Saban had ever seen, so tall that he could not imagine how such stones were to be raised, let alone how the capstone was to be lifted onto their summits, but he said nothing. He just watched as Camaban placed eight more pillars to flank the first two, not in a straight line, but curved sharply forward in the shape of an ox's horns to make a bay that wrapped about the mother stone. He put blocks on each pair of pillars so that the sun's house was now made of five archways. The central arch was tallest, but the flanking four would all soar high above the ground. 'These arches' — Camaban tapped the four lower arches — 'point towards the moon stones. They will let the dead escape from Lahanna's grip. Wherever she goes, north or south, east or west, the dead will find a gateway into Slaol's house.'

'And from Slaol's house,' Haragg said, 'the dead will escape through the tallest arch?'

'And thus we shall take the dead from Lahanna and give them to Slaol,' Camaban agreed, 'and it is Slaol who gives life.'

'Gateways of the moon,' Haragg said approvingly, 'and an archway of the sun.'

'It isn't finished,' Camaban said, and he took thirty blocks of wood and placed them in a wide circle of pillars all around the sun's house. All but one of the stones were the same size, all were neatly squared and all were shorter than any of the central arches, but the last of the pillars, though as tall as the others, was only half as wide. 'These pillars show the days of the moon,' Camaban explained, and Haragg nodded for he understood that the thirty stones represented the twenty nine and a half days in which the moon travelled from nothingness to fullness, 'So Lahanna will see that we recognise her.'

'But Slaol -' Haragg began, meaning to protest that Camaban had surrounded Slaol's house with a ring dedicated to the moon.

Camaban hushed him and picked up thirty more wooden blocks that he laid one by one on top of the ring of pillars until he had completed a circle of lintels. 'We shall make a ring of stone,' he explained, 'to reflect Slaol. Lahanna will carry the ring and will understand that her duty is to be subservient to Slaol.'

'A sky ring,' Saban said quietly. He did not know how it could be done, but he felt a surge of excitement as he stared at the wooden blocks. It would be magnificent, he thought, and then he told himself that these were mere playthings, and the temple was to be made of boulders that Camaban assumed could be moved and shaped as easily as timber.

Camaban took a last block which he placed a long way from the others, putting it where, on the hillside, the sacred avenue had been dug. That,' he said, tapping the final block, 'is our sun stone, and at midsummer its shadow will reach into the sun's house, and at midwinter the sun's light will go through the tall arch and strike the stone. So when Slaol dies his last light will touch the stone that marked his greatest power.'

'And Slaol will remember,' Haragg said.

'He will remember,' Camaban agreed, 'and he will want his power again and so he will fight against winter and thus come closer to us. Closer and closer until his ring' — he touched the sky ring of stones — 'matches Lahanna's twelve seasons. And then Slaol and Lahanna will be wed and we shall have bliss. We shall have bliss.' He fell silent, gazing at his model temple of wood, but in his mind's eye he was seeing it made of stone and standing on the hill's green slope where it would be ringed by the bank and ditch of whitest chalk. A circle of chalk and a ring of stone and a house of arches to call the far gods back to their home.

Saban stared at the wooden blocks. Their shadows made a complex pattern that flickered black and red. Camaban was right, Saban thought. There was nothing like it in all the land, nothing like it under the sky or between the grey seas. Saban had never dreamed of a temple so splendid, so clean, and so difficult to build.

'It can be done?' Camaban asked with a trace of nervousness in his voice.

'If the god wants it done,' Saban answered.

'Slaol wants it done,' Camaban replied confidently. 'Slaol demands that it be done! He wants it done in three years.'

Three years! Saban grimaced at the thought. 'It will take longer than that,' he said mildly, expecting an angry retort.

Camaban dismissed the pessimism with a shake of his head. 'Whatever you need,' he said, 'demand. Men, timber, sledges, oxen, whatever you want.'

'It will need many men,' Saban warned.

'We shall use slaves,' Camaban decreed, 'and when it is done you will be reunited with Aurenna.'

So Saban began the work. He did it gladly for he had been inspired by Camaban's vision and he longed for the day when the gods would be restored to their proper pattern and so bring an end to the world's afflictions. He had Mereth take a team of men to cut oaks in the forests around Maden for it was in that settlement that the oaks would be trimmed, cut and made into sledges. Each sledge would have two broad runners joined by three massive beams on which a stone could rest, and a fourth beam at the front to which oxen would be harnessed. Men might pull some of the smaller stones, but the great stones, the ten tall ones which would make the sun house and the thirty that would hold the sky ring aloft, would need teams of oxen, so oxen had to be counted. And the ox teams would need harness ropes, which meant more oxen had to be killed, their hides tanned and then cut and twisted into strong lines. There were not enough oxen in Ratharryn and Cathallo so Gundur and Vakkal led their warriors on long raids to find more. Saban made other ropes by soaking stripped lime bark in water-filled pits and, when the strands separated, weaving them into long lines that were curled down in a storehouse.

Camaban laid out the temple's plan in the turf where the stones of Sarmennyn had stood. He scribed a circle in the earth with a plough stick attached by a line to a peg at the shrine's centre and the scratched ring showed where the stones of the sky ring would be planted. He marked the places for its thirty pillars, then banged pegs into the ground where his tall sun house would be built. The shrine's centre was now bare of grass for so many feet trampled the space each day while the chalky rubble that had been used to fill the old holes where the stones from Sarmennyn had stood got kicked all across the circle.

Camaban had given Saban six willow wands, each cut to a precise length, and careful instructions how many stones were needed of each length. The longest pole was four times the height of a man, and that merely represented the length of the stone that needed to be above the turf. Saban knew that a stone needed a third of its length sunk in the ground if it were to resist the storms and winds. Camaban was demanding two such massive stones and when Saban visited Cathallo he could only find one boulder that was big enough. The next longest was too short, though if it was buried shallowly it might just stand. It was simple enough to select the shorter stones, for plenty were scattered across the green hills, but time and again Saban wandered back to the monstrous rock that would form one pillar of the sun's high arch.

It was indeed monstrous. It was a piece of stone so huge that it looked like a rib of the earth itself. It was not thick, for its lichened top barely reached to his knee, though much of the rock's bulk was buried in the soil. Yet at its widest it stretched more than four paces and it was over thirteen paces long. Thirteen! If it could be raised, Saban thought, then it would indeed touch the sky, but how to raise it? And how to lift it from the earth and move it to Ratharryn? He stroked the stone, feeling the sun's warmth in its lichened surface. He could imagine how the smaller stones might be prised from their turf beds and eased onto the beams of an oak sledge, but he doubted there were enough men in all the land to lift this great boulder from the ground.

But however he lifted the stone he knew he would need a sledge that was three times bigger than any he had made before, and he decided the sledge must be made in Cathallo from oak timbers that he would place in a long and narrow hut so that the timber could season. Dry wood was just as strong as green timber, but weighed much less, and Saban reckoned he must make the sledge as light as possible if the big boulder were to be shifted off the hill. He would let the timbers dry for a year or more and in that time he would worry at the problem of how to lift the stone.

He found Aurenna in Cathallo's shrine. She was wearing a strange robe made of deerskin cut with a myriad tiny slits into which she had threaded jays' feathers so that the garment seemed to shiver blue and white whenever a breeze blew. 'The people expect a priestess to be different,' she said, explaining the robe, and Saban thought how beautiful she looked. Her pale skin was still unflawed, her gaze was firm and gentle, while her ravaged hair was growing back so that it now enclosed her face like a soft golden cap. She looked happy, radiantly so, and laughed off Saban's worries that the defeated folk of Cathallo would burn his drying timbers. 'They'll work hard to make our temple a success,' she promised.

'They will?' Saban asked, surprised.

'When the temple is finished,' Aurenna explained, 'they will be free again. I have promised them that.'

'You promised them freedom?' Saban asked. 'And what does Camaban say?'

'Camaban will obey Slaol,' Aurenna said. She walked Saban through the settlement and though she proclaimed a blithe belief in the goodness of Cathallo's people, to Saban they looked sullen and resentful. Their chief was dead, their sorceress had vanished and they lived under the spears of Ratharryn's warriors, and Saban feared they would try to burn the long timbers. He also feared for Aurenna's life, and for the life of his two children, but Aurenna laughed at his worries. She explained how she refused the protection of Ratharryn's warriors and how she walked unguarded in the humiliated settlement. 'They like me,' she said simply, and told Saban how she had fought to keep the shrine unviolated. Haragg had wanted to pull down the temple's boulders and move them to Ratharryn, but Aurenna had persuaded Camaban to leave the stones alone. 'Our job is to entice Lahanna, not to offend her,' she said, and so the temple had remained and the folk of Cathallo took some comfort from that.

They evidently took more comfort from Aurenna. She had proclaimed herself a priestess of Lahanna and though, obedient to Haragg, she would not permit the sacrifice of living things, she had taken care to learn the tribe's ritual prayers. Each night she sang to the moon and in each dawn she turned thrice to lament Lahanna's fading. She consulted Cathallo's priests, rationed the settlement's food so that none starved and, best of all, she was proving to be a healer as effective as either Sannas or Derrewyn. Indeed, she was reckoned better than Derrewyn, for Aurenna loved all children and when the women brought her their sons and daughters Aurenna would soothe away their pain with a kindness and patience that Derrewyn had never shown. A dozen small children lived in Aurenna's hut now, all of them orphans whom she fed, clothed and taught, and the hut had become a meeting place for Cathallo's women. 'I like it here,' Aurenna said as she and Saban walked back to the shrine. 'I am happy here.'

'And I shall be happy with you,' Saban said cheerfully.

'With me?' Aurenna looked alarmed.

Saban smiled. He had not seen his wife since midwinter and he had missed her. 'We shall start moving stones very soon,' he told her. 'The small ones first, then the bigger, so I shall be spending time here. A lot of time.'

Aurenna frowned. 'Not here,' she said, 'not in my hut.' A gaggle of children spilled from the hut, led by Leir. Saban lifted his son, whirled him round and tossed him in the air, but Aurenna, when Leir's feet were safe on the ground, pushed the boy away and took Saban's arm. 'We cannot be together as we used to be. It isn't proper.'

'What isn't proper?' Saban growled.

Aurenna walked a few paces in silence. The children followed, their small faces watching the adults anxiously. 'You and I have become servants of the temple that you will build,' Aurenna said, 'and the temple is Lahanna's bridal shrine.'

'What has that to do with you and me?'

'Lahanna will struggle against the marriage,' Aurenna explained. 'She has tried to rival Slaol, but now we will give her to his keeping for ever and she will resist it. My task is to reassure her. That is why I was sent here.' She paused, frowning. 'Have you heard the rumour that Derrewyn still lives?'

'I heard,' Saban grunted.

'She will be encouraging Lahanna to oppose us, so I am to oppose Derrewyn.' She smiled placidly, as if that explanation must prove satisfying to Saban.

He gazed into the shadowed ditch where the pink and brown blossoms of bee orchids grew so thick. The children crowded round Aurenna who broke off scraps of honeycomb to put into their greedy hands. Saban turned back to look at her and, as ever, was dazzled by her startling beauty. 'I can live here,' he said, gesturing towards Sannas's old hut. 'It's a better place to live than Ratharryn, at least while we're moving the stones.'

'Oh, Saban!' She smiled chidingly. 'Don't you understand anything I've said? I cut my hair! I turned away from my other life! I am now dedicated to Lahanna, only to Lahanna. Not to Slaol, not to you, not to anyone but Lahanna! When the temple is built then we shall come together, for that is the day Lahanna will be coaxed from her loneliness, but till then I have to share the loneliness.'

'We're married!' Saban protested angrily.

'And we shall be married again,' Aurenna said placidly, 'but for now I am Lahanna's priestess and that is my sacrifice.'

'Camaban told you this?' Saban asked bitterly.

'I dreamed it,' Aurenna said firmly. 'Lahanna comes to me in my dreams. She is reluctant, of course, but I am patient with her. I see her as a woman dressed in a long robe that shines! She is so beautiful, Saban! So beautiful and hurt. I see her in the sky and I call to her and sometimes she hears me. And when we bring Slaol to the temple she will come to us. I am sure of it.' She smiled, expecting Saban to share her happiness. 'But until that day,' she went on, 'we must be calm, obedient and good.' She turned and asked the question of her children: 'What are we to be?'

'Calm, obedient and good,' they chorused.

She looked back at Saban. 'I cannot stop you coming to the hut,' she said softly, 'but you will drive Lahanna away if you do and the temple will be meaningless, meaningless.'

Saban went to Haragg when he returned to Ratharryn and told the high priest what Aurenna had said. Haragg listened, thought for a while, then shrugged. 'It is the price you pay,' he said, 'and we shall all pay a price for the temple. Your brother is tortured with visions, I am made a priest again and you will lose Aurenna for a while. Nothing good comes easily.'

'So I should not insist on sleeping with her?'

'Get yourself a slave girl,' Haragg said in his grim voice. 'Forget Aurenna. She must share Lahanna's loneliness for now, but you have a temple to build. So get yourself a slave girl and forget your wife. And build, Saban, just build.'

—«»—«»—«»—

Before Saban could build he had to move the stones from Cathallo. He knew he could not shift them along the direct path to Ratharryn for that crossed the marshes by Maden and climbed the steep hill just south of that settlement, and the big boulders would never pass those obstacles, so he spent that summer searching for a better route. He insisted that Leir should accompany him for it was time, he told Aurenna, that the boy learned how to survive far from any settlement. He and Leir roamed the western country in search of a path that avoided the wet lands and the steepest hills. Their exploration took the best part of the late summer, but eventually Saban discovered a path that would take the stones out of Cathallo towards the setting sun, then round in a great arc so that they would approach the Sky Temple from the west.

Saban enjoyed Leir's company. They kept a sharp eye for outlaws, but saw none, for this western countryside was much hunted by Ratharryn's warriors. Saban taught Leir to use a bow and, on their last day, after Saban had brought down a pricket with a single arrow, he let Leir kill the beast with a spear. The boy was eager enough, but seemed surprised at how much strength was needed to puncture the deer's skin. He managed to avoid the flailing hooves and thrust the bronze blade home and, because it was his son's first kill, Saban smeared the boy's face with the pricket's blood.

'Will the deer come back to life?' Leir asked his father.

'I don't think so,' Saban said with a smile. He tore the hide away from the animal's belly then drew a knife to slit the muscles covering the entrails. 'We'll have eaten most of him!'

'Mother says we'll all come back to life,' Leir said earnestly.

Saban swayed back on his heels. His hands and wrists were covered with blood. 'She says what?'

'She says the graves will empty when the temple is built,' Leir said earnestly. 'Everyone we've ever loved will come back to life. That's what she says.'

Saban wondered if his son had misunderstood Aurenna's words. 'How will we feed them all?' he asked lightly. 'It's hard enough to feed the living, let alone the dead.'

'And no one will ever be ill,' Leir went on, 'and no one will be unhappy again.'

'That's certainly why we're making the temple,' Saban said, going back to the warm carcass and slashing the knife through the flesh to release the deer's coiled guts. He decided Leir must be confused for neither Camaban nor Haragg had ever claimed that the temple would conquer death, but that night, after he and Leir had carried the best of the deer's meat to Ratharryn, Saban asked Camaban about Aurenna's words.

'No more death, eh?' Camaban said. He and Saban were in their father's old hut where Camaban now had a half-dozen female slaves to look after him. The brothers had shared a meal of pork and Camaban now stripped one of the rib bones with his teeth. 'Is that what Aurenna says?'

'So Leir tells me.'

'And he's a clever boy,' Camaban said, glancing at his bloody-faced nephew who slept to one side of the hut. 'I think it's possible,' he said guardedly.

'The dead will come to life?' Saban asked in astonishment.

'Who can tell what will happen when the gods reunite?' Camaban asked, poking in the bowl for another rib. 'Winter will go, of that I'm sure, and death too? Why not?' He frowned, thinking about it. 'Why do we worship?'

'Good harvests, healthy children,' Saban said.

'We worship,' Camaban corrected him, 'because life is not the end. Death is not the end. After death we live, but where? With Lahanna in the night. But Lahanna does not give life, Slaol does, and our temple will take the dead from Lahanna to Slaol. So perhaps Aurenna is right. Have some blackberries, they're the first of the year and very good.' One of his slave girls had brought the berries and now settled beside Camaban. She was a thin young girl from Cathallo with big anxious eyes and a mass of curly black hair. She leaned her head on Camaban's shoulder and he absent-mindedly slipped an arm under her tunic to caress a breast. 'Aurenna's been thinking about these things a long time,' Camaban went on, 'while I've been distracted by the temple. She must think that the gods will reward us for bringing them back together, and that does seem likely, doesn't it? And what greater reward could there be than an end to death?' He put a blackberry into the girl's mouth. 'When will you be ready to move some stones?'

'As soon as the frost hardens the ground.'

'You'll need slaves,' Camaban said, feeding the girl another blackberry. She playfully nipped at his fingers and he pinched her, making her squeal with laughter. 'I'm sending some war parties out this winter to capture more slaves.'

'It isn't slaves I need,' Saban said distractedly. He was jealous of his brother's girl. He had not taken Haragg's advice, though at times he was tempted. 'I need oxen.'

'We'll fetch you oxen,' Camaban promised, 'but you'll need slaves too. You're going to shape the stones, remember? Oxen can't do that!'

'Shape them?' Saban asked so loudly that he woke Leir.

'Of course!' Camaban said. He pointed with his free hand at the wooden blocks of his model temple, which had been Leir's playthings earlier in the evening. 'The stones must be smooth like those blocks. Any tribe can raise rough stones like Cathallo's, but ours will be shaped. They will be beautiful. They will be perfect.'

Saban grimaced at his brother's careless demand. 'Do you know how hard that stone is?' he asked.

'I know the stones must be shaped, and that you are to do it,' Camaban said obstinately, 'and I know that the more time you spend talking about it, the longer it will take.'

Saban and Leir walked back to Cathallo next day. The deer's blood, dry and flaky, was still on the boy's face when he ran to his mother and Aurenna was horrified. She spat on her fingers to wash the blood away, then scolded Saban. 'He doesn't need to know how to kill!' she protested.

'It's the first skill every man needs,' Saban said. 'If you can't kill, you can't eat.'

'Priests don't hunt for their food,' Aurenna said angrily, 'and Leir is to be a priest.'

'He may not want to be.'

'I have dreamed it!' Aurenna insisted defiantly, once again claiming an authority that Saban could not challenge. 'The gods have decided,' she said, then pulled Leir away.

It was after the harvest that Saban moved the first stone off the hillside. It was one of the small stones yet it still needed twenty-four oxen to draw its sledge down the hill. The oxen were in three rows, eight to a row, and behind each line of beasts, like a great bar behind their tails, was a tree trunk to which their harnesses were attached. Each trunk was tied to the sledge by two long lines of twisted ox hide to pull the sledges along. In the first few paces Saban discovered that the oxen at the back were prone to step over the hauling lines whenever the oxen in front faltered and so the stone rested while a dozen small boys were collected from the settlement and taught how to walk between the animals and hold the hauling lines high whenever they slackened. The boys were given sharpened sticks to goad the oxen while a dozen more boys and men ranged ahead of the stone to remove fallen branches or kick down tussocks that might impede the sledge runners. Ten more oxen plodded behind the stone. Some were there to replace any beast that fell ill in its harness, while the others carried fodder and spare hide ropes.

It took a whole day to drag the stone from the hill and through Cathallo's shrine where, as the oxen lumbered by, Aurenna had a choir of women sing a song in praise of Lahanna. Haragg had come from Ratharryn and he beamed as the first stone passed through the boulders. He draped the oxen's horns with chains of violet flowers while Cathallo's priests scattered meadowsweets on the stone. Those priests had been the first to reconcile themselves to Ratharryn's conquest, perhaps because Camaban had taken care to pay them well with bronze, amber and jet.

The oxen's harnesses were great collars of leather, but even on the first day the collars chafed the animals' necks raw and bloody, so Saban had the boys smear pig's fat on the leather. The next day they hauled the stone out of sight of Cathallo. Most of the men and boys went back to the settlement to eat and sleep, but a handful stayed with Saban to guard the stone. They made a fire and shared a meal of dried meat with some pears and blackberries that they had found growing in a nearby wood. Besides Saban there were three men and four boys around the fire; all were from Cathallo and at first they were awkward with Saban, but afterwards, when the meal was eaten and the fire was streaming sparks towards the stars, one of the men turned to Saban. 'You were Derrewyn's friend?' he asked.

'I was.'

'She still lives,' the man said defiantly. He had a scar on his face from where an arrow had struck his cheek during the battle that had destroyed Cathallo's power.

'I hope she still lives,' Saban answered.

'You hope so?' The man was puzzled.

'As you said, I was her friend. And if she does still live,' Saban said firmly, 'then you would do well to keep silent unless you want more of Ratharryn's spearmen searching the forests for her.'

Another of the men played a short tune on a flute made from the bone of a crane's leg. 'They can search all they like,' he said when he had finished, 'but they will never find her. Nor her child.'

The first man, whose name was Vennar, poked the fire to prompt a thick flurry of sparks, then gave Saban a sidelong glance. 'Are you not afraid to be here with us?'

'If I was afraid,' Saban said, 'I would not be here.'

'You need not be afraid,' Vennar said very quietly. 'Derrewyn says you are not to be killed.'

Saban smiled. All summer he had suspected that Derrewyn was close and that, unknown to Cathallo's conquerors, she kept in touch with her tribe. He was touched, too, that she had ordered his life spared. 'But if you try to stop the stones from reaching Ratharryn,' he said, 'then I shall fight you, and you will have to kill me.'

Vennar shook his head. 'If we do not move the stones,' he said, 'someone else will.'

'Besides,' the flute player added, 'our women would fear Lahanna's anger if you were to die.'

'Lahanna's anger?' Saban asked, puzzled. Ratharryn's vengeance, maybe, but surely not Lahanna's anger?

Vennar frowned. 'Some of our women say that Aurenna is Lahanna herself.'

'She is beautiful,' the second man said wistfully.

'And Slaol would not take her life,' Vennar said. 'Is that not true?'

'She is not Lahanna,' Saban said firmly, fearful what Derrewyn might do if she heard such a tale.

'The women say she is,' Vennar insisted, and Saban could tell from his tone that Vennar was not sure what to believe for he was torn between his old loyalty to Derrewyn and his awe of Aurenna. Saban doubted that Aurenna herself would have encouraged such a rumour, but he wondered if Camaban had. It seemed likely. The folk of Cathallo had lost a sorceress, and what better to replace a sorceress than a goddess? 'Didn't the Outfolk worship her as a goddess?' Vennar demanded.

'She is a woman,' Saban insisted, 'just a woman.'

'So was Sannas,' Vennar said.

'Your brother claims to be Slaol,' the flute player said, 'so why shouldn't Aurenna be Lahanna?' But Saban would not talk of it any more. He slept instead, or rather he wrapped himself in his cloak and watched the brilliant stars that lay so thick beyond the shimmering smoke and he began to wonder if Aurenna was indeed turning into a goddess. Her beauty did not fade, her serenity was never broken and her confidence was unshakeable.

It took eleven days to move the first stone to Ratharryn, and once it was there Vennar and his men took the oxen and the sledge back to Cathallo to load another stone, while Saban stayed at the Sky Temple. The first stone was one of the smallest, destined to form a thirtieth part of the sky ring lifted on its pillars. Camaban had marked the ring on the ground by scratching a pair of concentric circles, and he now insisted that the stone be placed on that band. The stone has to be shaped,' Camaban told Saban, 'so that its outer edge curves to match the bigger circle, and its inner edge curves to match the smaller.'

Saban stared at the lump of stone. It was bulbous, protruding far over the two scratched lines, yet Camaban insisted that it be smoothed into a small segment of a wide circle. 'All the thirty stones of the sky ring must be the same length,' Camaban went on enthusiastically, 'but you're not to blunt their ends.' He took a lump of chalk and drew on the stone's slab-like surface. 'One end is to have a tongue and in the other end you'll carve a slot, so that the tongue of one stone fits into the slot of the next stone all around the ring.'

A man might as easily carve the sun, Saban thought, or wipe the sea-bed dry with thistledown, or count the leaves of a forest. And there were not just the sky ring's stones to shape, but the thirty stones that would lift it so high into the air, and the fifteen huge stones of the sun house, which would stand even higher. Camaban had worked out the dimensions of each stone and cut willow-sticks to record the measurements. Saban kept the sticks in a hut he made close to the temple. That hut became his home now. He had slaves to bring him firewood and to fetch water and to cook food, and more slaves to shape the first six stones, which had all arrived by midwinter.

The six grey boulders, like all the stones that came from Cathallo's hills, were slabs. Their top and bottom surfaces were parallel and nearly flat, and all the stones were of much the same thickness, so to make a pillar or a lintel it was only necessary to chip away the slab until its corners were square and its sides matched the lengths of the willow wands in Saban's hut. But the stone was cruelly hard, much harder than the boulders from Sarmennyn, and at first Saban's slaves merely broke their stone hammers on it, so Saban found harder stones. The stone hammers were skull-sized balls that the slaves lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, and each blow ground away a patch of dust and stone splinters, so that, patch by patch, splinter by splinter, dust-grain by dust-grain, the stones were sculpted. The slaves learned as they worked. It was quicker, they discovered, to grind shallow trenches down the face of the stone, then to knock away the ridges left between. Some of the stones came with a dull brown line traceable in their grey faces and Saban found that the discoloration betrayed a weakness in the boulders that could sometimes be exploited if it ran where excess stone was to be removed. A dozen hammers dropped together on one side of the brown line could sometimes shear a great lump away, but if that failed Saban would set a fire down the length of the stain, feed the fire till it raged, then feed it again with a trickle of pig's fat which carried the searing heat down to the stone's surface. He would let the fat sizzle and flare until the rock was almost red hot and then his workers would dash cold water onto the fire and as often as not the stone would crack down the line of the stain. Sometimes the boulders were already cracked and the slaves could drive wedges into the split and hammer the rock apart or, on the coldest nights, fill the cracks with water and let it freeze so that the water spirits, trapped in the ice, would break the rock apart to escape. Yet most of the stones had to be shaped by sheer hard work, by repetitive grinding, by continuous blows, and the crash of the hammers and the grating of the grind-stones never stopped. Even in his dreams Saban heard the scrape and crack and screech of stone on stone, and his skin turned as grey as the boulders and his hair and beard were filled with the gritty dust.

Eight stones came the second year, and eleven the third, and Saban had to find more workers to grind and hammer and split and burn the stone, and more workers required still more slaves to bring food and water to the temple, and Camaban now had war parties permanently roaming up and down the land in search of captives. He led some of those war bands himself. He wore a sword now and had a bronze-plated tunic and a close-fitting cap made of bronze panels that had been cunningly riveted into the shape of a bowl. Men reckoned him as great a warrior as Lengar and a better sorcerer than Sannas, because those whom his spears could not defeat, his reputation could scare into submission.

Yet no sorcery could shape the stones and Camaban, between his raiding forays, grew ever more impatient with the slow progress. He would watch the slaves singing as they worked and the sound angered him. 'Work them harder!'

'They are working as hard as they can,' Saban said.

'Then why do they have breath to sing?'

'The song gives the work rhythm,' Saban explained.

'A whip would give them a faster rhythm,' Camaban grumbled.

'There will be no whips,' Saban said. 'If you want them to work faster then send them more food. Send pelts for clothes. They are not our enemies, brother, but the folk who will build our dream.'

Camaban might be dissatisfied with the temple's progress, but that did not stop him from creating yet more work for the builders. He wanted the pillars jointed to their capstones so that the sky ring would never fall. Saban had thought it would be enough to rest the stones on top of their pillars, but Camaban insisted they must be fixed and so each pillar had to have two knobs sculpted into its top. In time the lintels would need holes ground into their undersides to slot over the knobs, but Saban would not do that work until the pillars were raised and he could measure exactly where the holes had to be bored.

And still Camaban refined his temple. He visited Cathallo and talked for hours with Aurenna, so many hours that folk whispered about their being together, but Haragg dismissed the rumours, saying that the two only spoke of the temple. Saban feared those conversations for they invariably hatched some new and impossible demand. In the fourth year of the work Camaban demanded to know if Saban had ever noticed how some of the temple poles in Ratharryn seemed to look the same width all the way up from the ground to the sky.

Saban had been helping lay a trail of firewood down a boulder's flank. He straightened, frowning. 'They look straight and regular because that's the way they grow.'

'No,' Camaban said. 'Aurenna watched a hut being built in Cathallo and she said the centre-post was tapered, but once it was raised it looked straight. I talked to Galeth about it, and he tells me it's an illusion.'

'An illusion? You mean it's magic?' Saban asked.

'Slaol spare me from idiots!' Camaban seized a piece of chalk and swept aside the line of firewood that Saban had so carefully placed. 'Tree trunks are wider at one end than the other,' he said, scratching an exaggeratedly tapered outline on the stone's rough surface. 'But sometimes Galeth would find a trunk that was just about the same width all the way up, and those, he says, all look wider at the top. It's the ones with narrower tops that look straight, while the straight ones look deformed. So I want you to taper the stones. Make them slightly narrower at the top.' Camaban threw away the chalk and brushed his hands together. 'You don't have to taper them much. Say a hand's width on every side? That way they'll all look regular.'

A moon later Camaban said that Aurenna had dreamed that the faces of the stones had been polished to a shine, and by then Saban was so numb to the immensity of the task that he just nodded. He did not try to tell Camaban how huge was the effort needed to turn each finished stone so its four sides could be ground into a shining surface, instead he just told six of the younger slaves to start polishing one of the finished pillars. They rubbed stone hammers back and forth, back and forth, and sometimes poured scraps of flint, sand and stone dust onto the surface and ground the abrasive mix into the stubborn rock. All summer they pushed the hammers backwards and forwards, tearing their hands to raw shreds as they scraped the flinty dust, and at the summer's end there was a patch of stone the size of a lamb's pelt that was smooth and, when wet, shiny. 'More!' Camaban demanded, 'more! Make it shine!'

'You must give me more workers,' Saban said.

'Why not whip the ones you have?' Camaban asked.

'They must not be whipped,' Haragg said. The high priest limped now, his back was bent and his muscles slack, but there was still a great power in his deep voice. 'They must not be whipped,' he repeated harshly.

'Why not?' Camaban wanted to know.

'It is a temple to end the world's woes,' Haragg said. 'You want it to be born in blood and pain?'

'I want it made!' Camaban screamed. For a few heartbeats it seemed as though he would bring his precious mace crashing down onto one of the boulders and Saban flinched in expectation of the smooth head breaking into a thousand shards, but Camaban controlled his anger. 'Slaol wants it built,' he said instead, 'he tells me it can be done, yet nothing happens here! Nothing! You might as well piss on the stones for all the progress you're making.'

'Give Saban more workers,' Haragg suggested, and so Camaban led raiding parties deep into the northern lands and brought back captives who spoke unknown languages, slaves who tattooed their faces red, slaves who worshipped gods Saban had never heard of, but still more slaves were needed for the work was cruelly hard and painfully slow, and Saban had yet to move any of the long boulders that would form the pillars of the sun's house at the temple's centre. He had cut and shaped the big sledge runners, and those timbers had seasoned in Cathallo, but he had not dared try to move the gigantic stones.

He went to Galeth for advice. His uncle was old and feeble now, his scanty hair was white and his beard a mere wisp. Lidda, his woman, was dead and Galeth was blind, but in his blindness he could still envisage stones and levers and sledges. 'Moving a large stone is no different from moving a small one,' he told Saban. 'It's just that everything is larger: the sledge, the levers and the ox team.' Galeth shivered. It was a warm night, but he had a large fire in his hut and had pulled a bearskin about his shoulders.

'Are you sick?' Saban asked.

'A summer fever,' Galeth said dismissively.

Saban frowned. 'I can build the sledge,' he said, 'and make levers, but I do not see how to shift the stones onto their sledges. They're too big.'

'Then you must build the sledge under the stone,' Galeth suggested. He paused, his body racked with the shakes. 'It's nothing,' he said, 'nothing, just a summer fever.' He waited until the shivering fit had passed, then described how he would first dig a trench down each of the stone's long sides. Once the trenches had reached the bedrock chalk, he said, the huge runners could be laid down each flank. Then the stone must be levered up, using the sledge runners as fulcrums. 'Do it one end at a time,' Galeth advised, 'and put beams under the stone. That way you won't have to shift the stone onto the sledge, but instead build the sledge under the stone.'

Saban thought about it. It would work, he decided, it would work very well. A ramp would have to be made in front of the sledge, and that ramp would need to be long and shallow so that oxen could haul the boulder up from the bedrock to the turf. How many oxen? Galeth did not know, but guessed Saban would need more beasts than had ever been harnessed to a sledge before. More ropes, more beams to spread the load of the ropes, and more men to guide the oxen. 'But you can do it,' the old man said. He shivered again, then moaned.

'You're sick, uncle.'

'Only fever, boy.' Galeth drew the bear's pelt tighter about his old shoulders. 'But I shall be glad to go to the Death Place,' he said, 'and join my dear Lidda. You will carry me, Saban?'

'Of course I will,' Saban said, 'but it will be years yet!'

'And Camaban tells me I shall live on earth again,' Galeth said, ignoring Saban's optimism, 'but I do not see how that can be.'

'He says what?'

'That I shall come back. That my soul will use the gates of his new temple to return to earth.' The old man sat silent for a while. The flames of his fire made the lines on his face deep shadowed like knife cuts. 'I must have raised twenty temples in my life,' he said, breaking the silence, 'and I saw nothing get better with any one of them. But this one will be different.'

'This one will be different,' Saban agreed.

'I hope so,' the old man said, 'but I cannot help thinking that the folk of Cathallo said the same thing when they made their big shrine.' Galeth chuckled and Saban reflected that his uncle was not nearly as slow-thinking as folk thought. 'Or do you think,' Galeth asked, 'that they moved the stones because they had nothing better to do?' He thought about that, then reached out and touched a deerskin bag in which he kept Lidda's flensed bones. He wanted his own bones added to hers before they were buried. He shivered again, then waved a hand to avert Saban's expression of concern. 'This longest stone,' he said after a while, 'is it slender?'

Saban found a piece of kindling in a pile at the hut's edge and put it into Galeth's hand. 'Just like that,' he said.

Galeth felt the long, thin sliver of wood. 'You know what you should do?'

'Tell me.'

'Put it in the hole sideways,' the old man said, and showed what he meant by bending the long thin piece of wood. 'A long flat rock could snap in two when you try to hoist it,' he explained. He turned the scrap of wood sideways and no amount of pressure could bend or snap it, but when he bent it again flatwise it snapped easily. 'Put it in the hole sideways,' he said again, tossing the scraps aside.

'I will,' Saban promised.

'And carry my corpse to the Death Place. Promise me that.'

'I will carry you, uncle,' Saban promised a second time.

'I shall sleep now,' Galeth said, and Saban backed from the hut and went to Camaban to tell him Galeth was sick. Camaban promised to take him an infusion of herbs, but when Saban went back to his uncle's hut he could not wake the old man. Galeth lay on his back, his mouth open and the hairs of his moustache not moving with any breath. Saban gently tapped Galeth's cheek and the old man's blind eyes opened, but there was no life there. He had died as gently as a feather falls.

The women of the tribe washed Galeth's body, then Mereth, his son, and Saban laid the corpse on a hurdle woven from willow. Next morning the women sang the body to the settlement's entrance before Mereth and Saban carried it on to the Death Place. Haragg walked in front of the corpse while a young priest came behind and played a lament on a bone flute. The body was covered with an ox hide on which Saban had strewn some ivy. Camaban did not come, and the only other mourners were Galeth's two younger sons who were Mereth's half-brothers.

The Death Place lay to the south of Ratharryn, not so very far from the Sky Temple, though it was separated from it by a wide valley and hidden by a wood of beech and hazel trees. The Death Place was itself a temple, dedicated to the ancestors, though it was never used for worship, or for bull dances, or for weddings. It was for the dead and so it was left derelict and overgrown. It stank, especially in the high summer, and as soon as the rank smell soured the funeral party's nostrils the young priest hurried ahead to dispel the spirits which were known to cluster about the temple. He reached the sun gate and shrieked at the unseen souls. Ravens called harshly back, then reluctantly spread their black wings and flew to the nearby trees, though the bolder of the birds settled on the remains of a ring of short timber poles which stood inside the temple's low bank. A fox snarled at the approaching men from among the nettles in the ditch, then ran to the trees. 'Safe now,' the young priest called.

Mereth and Saban carried Galeth through the entrance that faced the rising midsummer sun, then threaded the small spirit stakes, which were scattered throughout the temple. Haragg found an empty space and there the two men laid the hurdle down. Mereth pulled the heavy ox hide from the naked corpse, then he and Saban tipped Galeth onto the rank grass, which grew so thick among the dead. The old man was on his side, mouth agape, and Saban pulled on a stiff shoulder so that his uncle lay staring towards the clouded sky. A slave of Camaban's who had died only two days before lay close by; already her pregnant belly had been torn apart by beasts and her face ravaged by ravens' beaks. A dozen other bodies lay in the Death Place, two of them almost reduced to skeletons. One had weeds growing through its ribcage and the young priest bent over the bones to judge whether the time had come to remove them. The spirits of the dead lingered in this grim place until the last of their flesh was gone, and only then did they rise into the sky to join the ancestors.

Galeth's younger sons had brought a sharpened stake and a stone maul which they gave to Mereth. He squatted beside his father's corpse and banged the spirit stake into the turf until it struck the bedrock chalk, and then he gave it three more sharp taps to tell Garlanna that another soul had passed from her domain. Saban closed his eyes and cuffed away a tear.

'What's this?' Haragg asked and Saban turned to see that the high priest was frowning at the turf beside a half-rotted body. Saban stepped over the corpse to see that a lozenge shape had been scratched into the yellow grass. 'It's Lahanna's symbol,' Haragg said, frowning.

'Does it matter?' Saban asked.

'It is not her temple,' Haragg said, then scratched at the symbol with his foot, obliterating the lozenge shape from the turf. 'Maybe it's just child's play,' he said. 'Do children come here?'

'They're not supposed to,' Saban said, 'but they do. I did.'

'Child's play.' Haragg dismissed the lozenge. 'Have we finished?'

'We're finished,' Saban said.

Mereth looked a last time at his father, then walked from the temple and tossed the ivy that had covered the corpse down the deep hole that led to Garlanna's mansion. He and his half-brothers walked on through the hazels and the beech trees, then Mereth realised that Saban was still lingering by the corpse. 'Aren't you coming?' he shouted back.

'I want to say a prayer here,' Saban said, 'alone.'

So Mereth and the others went and Saban waited amidst the foul stench. He knew who had carved the lozenge shape in the Death Place's rank soil, so he stood beside his uncle's pale corpse until he heard a rustle in the trees. 'Derrewyn,' he then said, turning towards the noise and surprising himself by the eagerness in his voice.

And Derrewyn surprised him by smiling as she stepped from the trees, then surprised him further for, when he had crossed the low bank and ditch, she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. 'You look older,' she said.

'I am older,' Saban said.

'White hairs.' She touched his temples. She was painfully thin and her hair was tangled and dirty. She had been living as an outlaw, harried from woodland to woodland, and her pelts were filthy with mud and dead leaves. Her skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones, reminding Saban of Sannas's skull-face. 'Do I look older?' she asked him.

'As beautiful as ever,' Saban said.

She smiled. 'You lie,' she said gently.

'You shouldn't be here,' Saban told her. 'Camaban's spearmen search for you.' The rumours of Derrewyn's survival had never subsided and Camaban had sent scores of warriors and dogs to scour the forests.

'I see them,' Derrewyn said scornfully. 'Clumsy spearmen blundering through the trees, following their hounds, but no hound can see my spirit. Do you know that Camaban sent me a messenger?'

'He did?' Saban was surprised.

'He released a slave into the forests, carrying in his head Camaban's words. "Come to Ratharryn," he said, "and kneel to me and I shall let you live and worship Lahanna."' Derrewyn laughed at the memory. 'I sent the slave back to Camaban. Or, rather, I left his head on Ratharryn's embankment with its tongue cut out. The rest of him I gave to the dogs. Do you still have the lozenge?'

'Of course.' Saban touched the pouch where he kept the sliver of Sarmennyn's gold.

'Guard it well,' Derrewyn said, then she walked to the Death Place's ditch and stared at the bodies. 'I hear,' she said over her shoulder, 'that your wife has become a goddess?'

'She has never claimed that,' Saban insisted.

'But she will not lie with you.'

'Did you come all this way to tell me that?' Saban asked, nettled.

Derrewyn laughed. 'You do not know where I have come from. Just as you do not know that your wife lies with Camaban.'

'That isn't true!' Saban snapped angrily.

'Isn't it?' Derrewyn asked, turning. 'Yet men say Camaban is Slaol and the women claim Aurenna is Lahanna. Are you not supposed to be bringing them together with your stones? A sacred marriage? Perhaps they rehearse the wedding, Saban?'

Saban touched his groin to avert evil. 'You tell stories,' he said bitterly, 'you have always told stories.'

Derrewyn shrugged. 'If you say so, Saban.' She saw how much she had upset him and so she walked to him and lightly touched his hand. 'I will not argue with you,' she said humbly, 'not on a day that I come begging a favour from you.'

'What you said isn't true!'

'I do tell stories,' Derrewyn said humbly, 'I am sorry.'

Saban took a deep breath. 'A favour?' he asked guardedly.

Derrewyn made an abrupt gesture towards the trees and Saban had the impression of six or seven people back there in the shadowed beeches, but only two emerged from the trees. One was a tall and fair-haired woman in a ragged deerskin tunic half covered with a sheepskin cloak, while the other was a child, perhaps Lallic's age or a year younger. She was a dark-haired girl with wide eyes and a frightened face. She stared at Saban, but clung tight to the woman's hand and tried to hide beneath the skirt of the sheepskin cloak.

'The forests are no place for a child,' Derrewyn said. 'We live hard, Saban. We steal and kill for our food, we drink from streams and we sleep where we can find safety. The child has been weak. We had another child with us, but he died last winter and I fear this girl will also die if she stays with us.'

'You want me to raise a child?' Saban asked.

'Kilda will raise her,' Derrewyn said, nodding at the tall woman. 'Kilda was one of my brother's slaves and she has known Merrel since birth. All I want from you is somewhere safe for Kilda and Merrel.'

Saban stared at the child, though he could see little of her face for it was tucked into the slave's skirt. 'She is your daughter,' he said to Derrewyn.

'She is my daughter,' Derrewyn admitted, 'and Camaban must never know that she lives, so from this day on she will carry another name.' She turned on Merrel. 'You hear that? And take that thumb from your mouth!'

The child abruptly snatched her hand away from her face and stared solemnly at Derrewyn who stooped so that her face was close to the child's. 'Your name will be Hanna, for you are Lahanna's child. Who are you?'

'Hanna,' the girl said in a timid voice.

'And Kilda is your mother, and you will live in a proper hut, Hanna, and have clothes and food and friends. And one day I shall come back for you.' Derrewyn straightened. 'Will you do that for me, Saban?'

Saban nodded. He did not know how he would explain the arrival of Kilda and Hanna, but nor did he care. He was lonely, and the work at the temple seemed endless, and he had missed his own daughter so Derrewyn's child would be welcome.

Derrewyn stooped and hugged her girl. She held the embrace for a long while, then stood, sniffed and walked back into the trees.

Saban was left with Kilda and the child. Kilda's skin was grubby and her hair a greasy tangle, but her face was broad, strong-boned and defiant. 'Come,' he said gruffly.

'What will you do with us?' Kilda asked.

'I shall find you a place to live,' Saban said, leading the two out of the trees and onto the open hillside. Across the low valley he could see the Sky Temple where the slaves ground, hammered and scraped the unyielding stones. Closer, just to the east of the sacred path, there was a huddle of slave huts from which wisps of smoke rose.

'Are you going to pretend we're slaves?' Kilda demanded.

'Everyone will know you are not my relatives,' Saban said, 'and you are not of the tribe, so what else could you be in Ratharryn? Of course you'll be slaves.'

'But if we are slaves,' Kilda said, 'your spearmen will use us.'

'Our slaves are under the protection of the priests,' Saban said. 'We are building a temple and when it is done the slaves will be free. There are no whips, nor are there spearmen watching the work.'

'And your slaves don't run?' Kilda asked.

'Some do,' Saban admitted, 'but most work willingly.' That had been Haragg's achievement. He had talked with the slaves, enthusing them with the temple's promise and though some vanished into the forests most wanted to see the temple built. They would be free when it was done, free to stay or go, and free to enjoy Slaol's blessings. They ruled themselves and carried no mark of slavery like Saban's missing finger.

'And at night?' Kilda asked. 'In the slave huts? You think a woman and a child will be safe?'

Saban knew there was only one sure way to keep Hanna safe. 'You will both live in my hut,' he said, 'and I shall say you are my own slaves. Come.' He led them down into the valley, which stank because it was here the slaves dug their dung pits, then up to the chalk ring where the air was clamorous with the sound of hammers on stone.

He took Kilda and Hanna to his hut and that night he listened as Kilda prayed to Lahanna. She prayed as she used to pray in Cathallo: that Lahanna would protect her worshippers from the spite of Slaol and from the scourge of Ratharryn. If Camaban heard that prayer, Saban thought, then Kilda and Hanna would surely die. He supposed he ought to protest to Kilda, demanding that she change her prayers, but he reckoned the gods were powerful enough to sort one prayer from another without his help.

Next day Camaban came to the temple and wanted to know when Saban would move the longest stones from Cathallo. 'Soon,' Saban said.

'Who is that?' Camaban had seen Kilda in the doorway of Saban's hut.

'My slave,' Saban said curtly.

'She looks as if you found her in the forest,' Camaban said scathingly, for Kilda was still dirty and her long hair was dishevelled. 'But wherever you found her, brother, take her to Cathallo and bring me the big stones.'

Saban did not want to take Kilda to Cathallo. She would surely be recognised there, and Hanna's life would be at risk, but Kilda would not leave him. She feared Ratharryn and trusted only Saban. 'Derrewyn said my safety lies with you,' she insisted.

'And Hanna's safety?'

'Is in Lahanna's hands,' Kilda declared.

So all three went to Cathallo.