Stonehenge

'You shouldn't be coming to Cathallo,' Saban grumbled to Kilda. He was carrying Hanna who clung to his neck and watched the world from wide eyes. 'You'll be recognised, and this child will die.'

Kilda spat into the undergrowth. She had stopped at a stream and washed her face and dragged water through her hair, which she had then tied at the nape of her neck. She had a strong, bony face with wide blue eyes and a long nose. She was, Saban thought guiltily, a good-looking woman. 'You think I will be recognized?' Kilda asked defiantly. 'You are right, I will. But what does that matter? You think the people of Cathallo will betray us? What do you know of Cathallo, Saban? You can read its heart? The folk of Cathallo look back to the old days, to Derrewyn, to when Lahanna was properly worshipped. They will welcome us, but they will also keep silent. The child is as safe in Cathallo as if she were in Lahanna's own arms.'

'You hope that,' Saban said sourly, 'but you do not know it.'

'We have been to Cathallo often enough,' Kilda retorted. 'Your brother searched the woods for us, but some nights we even slept in Cathallo and no one betrayed us. We know what happens in Cathallo. One night I will show you.'

'Show me what?'

'Wait,' she said curtly.

Aurenna greeted them gently enough. She gave Kilda a cursory glance, made a fuss of Hanna and ordered a hut prepared for Saban. 'Your woman will share it?' she asked.

'She is my slave, not my woman.'

'And the child?'

'Hers,' Saban said shortly. 'The woman cooks for me while I work here. I shall need a score of men in a few days, more later.'

'You can have all there are after the harvest,' Aurenna said.

'Twenty will do for now,' Saban said.

Saban had decided he would move the very largest stone first. If that great earthbound rock could be shifted then the others must prove easier, and so he summoned the twenty men and ordered them to dig the earth away all around the boulder. The men worked willingly enough, although they refused to believe that such a rock could be lifted. Galeth, however, had told Saban how to do it and Saban now made the task easier by hammering and scraping and burning the vast boulder to reduce its width and so lessen its weight. It took a whole moon, and when the work was done the great boulder had begun to resemble the tall pillar it was destined to become.

Leir liked to come to watch the stone being hammered and Saban welcomed his son, for he had seen too little of the boy in the last years. While the men roughly shaped the stone the children of Cathallo scrambled over its surface, fighting to occupy its long stony plateau. They used ox goads as spears, and sometimes their mock battles became fierce and Saban noted approvingly that Leir did not complain when he was pierced in the arm so deeply that the blood ran to drip from his fingers. Leir just laughed the injury away, snatched up his toy spear and charged after the boy who had wounded him.

Once the stone's weight had been lessened they dug two trenches down its long sides. That took six days, and it took another two to bring the seasoned sledge runners up from the settlement. The huge runners were laid in the trenches, and then, using two dozen men and levers so long that their outer ends had to be hauled downwards with hide ropes, Saban raised one end of the great rock so that a beam could be shoved beneath it. Raising the one end took a whole day, and another was spent lifting the back of the stone and putting three more beams beneath. Saban fastened the beams to the runners, then dug a long smooth ramp up from the bedrock chalk.

He had to wait now, for it was harvest and all the folk of Cathallo were busy in the fields or on the winnowing floors, but those harvest days gave Saban a chance to spend time with Leir. He taught the boy how to draw a bow, geld a calf and stroke fish out of the river. He saw little of his daughter. Lallic was a nervous child, scared of spiders, moths and dogs, and whenever Saban appeared she would hide behind her mother. 'She is frail,' Aurenna claimed.

'Sick?' Saban asked.

'No, just precious. Fragile.' Aurenna patted Lallic fondly. The girl did indeed look fragile to Saban, but she was also beautiful. Her skin was white and clean, her golden eyelashes were long and delicate, and her hair was as bright as her mother's. 'She has been chosen,' Aurenna added.

'Chosen as what?' Saban asked.

'She and Leir are to be the guardians of the new temple,' Aurenna said proudly. 'He will be a priest and she a priestess. They are already dedicated to Slaol and Lahanna.'

Saban thought of his son's enthusiasm in the war games that the children had fought around the stone. 'I think Leir would rather be a warrior.'

'You give him ideas,' Aurenna said disapprovingly, 'but Lahanna has chosen him.'

'Lahanna? Not Slaol?'

'Lahanna rules here,' Aurenna said, 'the true Lahanna, not the false goddess they once worshipped.'

When the harvest was gathered the folk of Cathallo danced in their temple, weaving between the boulders to lay gifts of wheat, barley and fruit at the foot of the ring-stone. There was a feast in the settlement that night, and Saban was intrigued to see that both of his children, and all the orphans who lived with Aurenna, were at the feast, but that Aurenna herself stayed in the temple. Lallic missed her mother and when Saban made a fuss of her she looked as if she wanted to cry.

There was a fire burning in the temple, its glow outlining the skull-topped crest of the embankment, but when Saban walked towards that embankment a priest stopped him. 'There is a curse on it this night.'

'This night?'

'Just this night.' The priest shrugged and gently pulled Saban back towards the feast. 'The gods do not want you there,' he said.

Kilda saw Saban return and, leaving Hanna with another woman, came and took his arm. 'I said I would show you,' she said.

'Show me what?'

'What Derrewyn and I have seen.' She drew him into the shadows then led him north away from the settlement. 'I told you,' she said, 'that no one would betray us.'

'But you have been recognised?'

'Of course.'

'And Hanna? Do folk know who she is?'

'They probably do,' Kilda said carelessly, 'but she has grown since she was here, and I tell people that she is my daughter. They pretend to believe me.' She leapt a ditch then turned eastwards. 'No one will betray Hanna.'

'You are not from Cathallo?' Saban asked. He still knew little about Kilda, but her voice betrayed that she had learned Cathallo's language late. He did know that she was little more than twenty-two summers old, but otherwise she was a stranger to him.

'I was sold into slavery as a child,' she answered. 'My people live beside the eastern sea. Life is hard there and daughters are more valuable if they are sold. We worshipped the sea god, Crommadh, and Crommadh would choose which girls were to be sold.'

'How?'

'They would take us far out on the mud flats and make us race the incoming tide. The fastest were kept to be married and the slowest were sold.' She shrugged. 'The very slowest were drowned.'

'You were slow?'

'I deliberately went slowly,' she said flatly, 'for my father would use me in the night. I wanted to escape him.'

She went south now, approaching the temple. No priest or guard had seen them loop far out into the fields and there was only a sliver of a moon to light the stubble. 'Be quiet now,' Kilda said, 'for if they see us they will kill us.'

'If who sees us?'

'Quiet,' she cautioned him, then the two of them climbed the steep chalk slope of the embankment under the baleful gaze of the wolf skulls. Kilda reached the summit first and lay flat. Saban dropped beside her.

At first he could see nothing in the wide temple. The big fire burned close to Aurenna's hut and its violent flames threw the flickering shadows of the boulders across the black ditch onto the inner slope of chalk. The fire's smoke plume, its underside touched red by the fires in the settlement, sifted towards the stars. 'Your brother came to Cathallo this afternoon,' Kilda whispered into Saban's ear, then pointed to the temple's far side where Saban saw a black shadow detach itself from a boulder.

He knew it was Camaban, for even at that distance and although the man was swathed in a bull-dancer's cloak, he could see that the figure was limping slightly. The great hide hung from his shoulders, the bull's head flopped over his face, while the hoofs and tail of the dead beast flopped or dragged on the ground. The bull-man limped in a clumsy dance, stepping from one side to another, stopping, going on again, peering about him. Then he bellowed and Saban recognized the voice.

'In your tribe,' Kilda whispered, 'the bull is Slaol, yes?'

'Yes.'

'So we are watching Slaol,' Kilda said scornfully.

Then Saban saw Aurenna. Or rather he saw a shimmering white figure come from the shadow of the hut and run lithely across the temple. White scraps floated behind her. 'Swan feathers,' Kilda said, and Saban realized his wife was wearing a cloak like her jay-feather cape, only this one was threaded with swan feathers. It seemed to glow, making her ethereal. She danced away from Camaban who roared in feigned rage and then rushed towards her, but she evaded him easily and ran around the temple's margin.

Saban knew how the dance would end and he buried his face in his arms. He wanted to throw himself down the embankment and kill his brother, but Kilda had placed a hand on his back. 'This is their dream,' she said flatly, 'the dream which drives the temple you build.'

'No,' Saban said.

'The temple is to reunite Slaol and Lahanna,' she said remorselessly, 'and the gods must be shown the way. Lahanna must be taught her duties.'

Saban looked up to see that Camaban had abandoned the chase and was now standing beside the piled harvest which lay by the ringstone. Aurenna was watching him, sometimes skipping aside, then gingerly going nearer before skittishly darting away again, yet always the erratic steps took her closer to the monstrous bull.

This was the dream, Saban realized, and yet the anger was hot in him. If he killed Camaban now, he thought, then the dream would die, for only Camaban had the rage to build the temple. And the temple would reunite Slaol and Lahanna. It would end winter, it would banish the world's troubles. 'Did Derrewyn tell you to bring me here?' he asked Kilda. 'So I would kill my brother?'

'No.' She sounded surprised that he had asked. 'I brought you here to see your brother's dream.'

'And my wife's dream,' he said bitterly.

'Is she your wife?' Kilda asked scornfully. 'I was told she cut her hair like a widow.'

Saban looked into the temple again. Aurenna was close to Camaban now, yet still she seemed reluctant to join him; she took some fast steps backwards and then danced to one side, smoothly and gracefully. Then, slowly, she sank to her knees and the dark shape of the bull lumbered forward. Saban closed his eyes, knowing that Aurenna was surrendering to his brother just as Lahanna was supposed to surrender to Slaol when the temple was made. When he opened his eyes again he saw that the feathered cloak had been tossed aside and Aurenna's naked back was slim and white in the firelight. Saban growled, but Kilda held him firm with her hand. They are playing at being gods,' she said.

'If I kill them,' Saban said, 'then there will be no temple. Isn't that what Derrewyn wants?'

Kilda shook her head. 'Derrewyn believes the gods will use their temple as they want, not as your brother wants. And what Derrewyn wants of you is her daughter's life. That is why she gave Hanna to you. If you kill them now, won't there be revenge? Will you live? Will your children live? Will Hanna live? Folk think those two are gods.' She nodded towards the temple, but all Saban could see there now was the great humped shape of the bull cloak, and under it, he knew, his wife and brother coupled. He closed his eyes and shuddered, then Kilda took him in her arms and held him close. 'Derrewyn has talked with Lahanna,' she whispered, 'and your task now is to raise Hanna.' She rolled onto him, holding him down with her body, and when he opened his eyes he saw she was smiling and saw she was beautiful.

'I have no wife,' he said.

She kissed him. 'You are doing Lahanna's work,' she said quietly, 'and that is why Derrewyn sent me.'

In the morning there were just ashes in the temple, but the harvest was gathered and the work on the long stones could at last be resumed.

—«»—«»—«»—

The sledge had been made beneath the longest stone, the ramp was finished, the hide ropes were laid on the grass and now the largest ox team that Saban had ever seen was assembled on the hillside. He had a hundred of the beasts; neither he nor any of the ox herdsmen had ever managed a team so large and at first, when they tried to harness the oxen to the stone, the beasts tangled themselves. It took three days to learn how to lead the ropes to tree-trunks from which more ropes led to the harnessed oxen.

Camaban had gone from Cathallo as secretly as he had come, leaving Saban in a confusion of anger and joy. Anger because Aurenna was his wife; joy because Kilda had become his lover, and Kilda did not talk with the gods, she did not preach how Saban should behave, but loved him with a fierce directness that assuaged years of loneliness. Yet that joy could not overcome the anger in Saban and he felt it when he saw Aurenna climbing the hill to watch the long stone dragged from its place. She wore her jay-feathered cloak so that she glinted white and blue as she led Lallic by the hand. Saban turned from her rather than greet her. Leir was standing beside him, an ox goad in his hand, and the boy looked at Kilda and Hanna who both carried bundles. 'Are you going back to Ratharryn?' Leir asked his father.

'I'm travelling with the stone,' Saban said, 'and I don't know how long it will take, but yes, I'm going back to Ratharryn.' He cupped his hands. 'Take them forward!' he shouted to the ox herdsmen and a score of men and boys prodded the beasts who lumbered ahead until the traces were all stretched tight.

'I don't want to be a priest,' Leir blurted out. 'I want to be a man.'

It took a few heartbeats for Saban to realize what the boy had said. He had been concentrating on the hide ropes, watching them stretch tighter and wondering if they were thick enough. 'You don't want to be a priest?' he asked.

'I want to be a warrior.'

Saban cupped his hands. 'Now!' he shouted. 'Forward!'

The goads stabbed, the ox blood ran, the beasts fought the turf to find their footing and the ropes began to quiver with tension. 'Go,' Saban shouted, 'go!' and the oxen's heads were down and suddenly the sledge gave a grating lurch. Saban feared the ropes would snap, but instead the stone was moving. It was moving! The great boulder was grinding up from the earth's grip and the watching folk cheered.

'I don't want to be a priest,' Leir said again, misery in his small voice.

'You want to be a warrior,' Saban said. The sledge was coming up the ramp, leaving a smear of crushed chalk behind the broad runners.

'But my mother says I can't take the ordeals because I don't need to.' Leir looked up at his father. 'She says I have to be a priest. Lahanna has ordered it.'

'Every boy should take the ordeals,' Saban said. The sledge had reached the turf now and was sliding steadily through the ox dung and grass.

Saban followed the sledge and Leir ran after him with tears in his eyes. 'I want to pass the ordeals!' he wailed.

'Then come to Ratharryn,' Saban said, 'and you can take them there.'

Leir stared up at his father. 'I can?' he asked, disbelief in his voice.

'Do you really want to?'

'Yes!'

'Then you will,' Saban said, and he lifted his delighted son and put him on the stone so that Leir rode the moving boulder.

Saban took the cumbersome sledge north around Cathallo's shrine because the team of oxen was much too large to go through the gaps in the temple's embankment. Aurenna paced alongside, followed by the crowd, and when the boulder had gone past the temple she called for Leir to jump down from the sledge and follow her home. Leir looked at her, but stubbornly stayed where he was. 'Leir!' Aurenna called sharply.

'Leir is coming with me,' Saban told her. 'He is coming to Ratharryn. He will live with me there.'

Aurenna looked surprised, then the surprise turned to anger. 'He will live with you?' Her voice was dangerous.

'And he will learn what I learned as a child,' Saban said. He will learn how to use an axe, an adze and an awl. He will learn how to make a bow, how to kill a deer and how to wield a spear. He will become a man.'

The oxen bellowed and the air stank of their dung and blood. The stone moved at less than a man's walking pace, but it did move. 'Leir!' Aurenna shouted. 'Come here!'

'Stay where you are,' Saban called to his son and hurried to catch up with the sledge.

'He is to be a priest,' Aurenna shouted. She ran after Saban, jay feathers fluttering from her cloak.

'He will become a man first,' Saban said, 'and if, after he has become a man, he wishes to be a priest, then so be it. But my son will be a man before he is ever a priest.'

'He can't go with you!' Aurenna shrieked. Saban had never seen her angry before, indeed he had not believed there was such fierce emotion inside her, but now she screamed at him and her hair was wild and her face distorted. 'How can he live with you? You have a slave woman in your bed!' She pointed at Kilda and Hanna who were following the sledge along with the folk of Cathallo who were eagerly listening to the argument. Leir was still on the stone from where he gazed at his parents while Lallic hid her small face in Aurenna's skirts. 'You keep a slave whore and her bastard!' Aurenna howled.

'But at least I don't dress in a bull-dancer's cloak to cover her!' Saban snapped. 'She is my whore, not Slaol's whore!'

Aurenna stopped and the anger on her face turned to a cold fury. She drew back her hand to strike Saban across the face, but he seized her wrist. 'You took yourself from my bed, woman, because you claimed a man would frighten Lahanna away. I did what you wanted then, but I will not let you deny my son his manhood. He is my son and he will be a man.'

'He will be a priest!' There were tears in Aurenna's eyes now. 'Lahanna demands it!'

Saban saw that he was hurting her with his grip, so he let her wrist go. 'If the goddess wants him to be a priest,' he said, 'then he will be a priest, but he will be a man first.' He turned on the ox herdsmen who had abandoned their animals to watch the confrontation. 'Watch the hauling lines!' he shouted. 'Don't let them slow down. Leir! Get down, use your goad, work!' He walked away from Aurenna who stood still, crying. Saban was trembling, half fearing a terrible curse, but Aurenna just turned and led Lallic back to her home.

'She will want revenge,' Kilda warned him.

'She will try to take her son back, that is all. But he won't go. He won't go.'

It took twenty-three days to move the long stone to Ratharryn and Saban stayed with the great sledge for most of the journey, but when they were a day or two away from the Sky Temple he hurried ahead with Kilda, Hanna and Leir for he knew that the temple's entrance would need to be widened if the stone was to be hauled through. The ditch by the entrance would have to be filled and the portal stones taken down, and he wanted both jobs done before the long boulder arrived.

The stone arrived two days later and Saban had forty slaves start sculpting it into a pillar. It might have been roughly shaped in Cathallo, but now it must be made smooth, polished and tapering. A dozen other slaves began to dig the socket for the stone, delving deep into the chalk under the soil.

Saban did not go down to the settlement, nor did Camaban come to the temple in the first days after the long stone had arrived, but Saban could smell the trouble in the air like the stench of a tanner's pit. Those folk who did come from the settlement avoided Saban, or else they forced idle conversation and seemed not to notice that Leir was now living with his father. The slaves worked, Saban pretended there was no danger and the stone shrank into its smooth shape.

The first frosts came. The sky looked washed and pale, and then at last Camaban did come to the temple. He came with a score of spearmen, all dressed for battle and led by Vakkal, his spear decorated with the scalps of men he had killed in the battle at Cathallo. Camaban, swathed in his father's bear cloak, had a bronze sword at his waist. His hair was bushy and wild, its tangles threaded with children's bones, which also hung from his beard that now had a badger's streak of white. He signalled for his spearmen to wait by the sun stone, then limped on towards Saban. A single young priest came with him, carrying the skull pole.

There was silence as Camaban crossed the entrance causeway between the two pillars that had been thrown down so that the longer stones could be hauled into the circle. His face was angry. The slaves close to Saban backed away, leaving him alone beside the mother stone where Camaban stopped to look around the temple, the priest with the skull pole two paces behind. 'No stones have been raised.' His voice was mild but he frowned at Saban. 'Why have no stones been raised?'

'They must be shaped first.'

'Those are shaped,' Camaban said, pointing his mace at some of the pillars for the sky circle.

'If they are raised,' Saban said, 'then they will get in the way of the larger stones. Those must be raised first.'

Camaban nodded. 'But where are the longer stones?' His tone was reasonable, as though he had no quarrel with Saban, but that reticence only increased the threat of his presence.

'The first is here,' Saban said, pointing to the monstrous boulder, which lay amidst piles of stone chips and dust. 'Mereth has taken the big sledge back to Cathallo and will be bringing another. But that one' — he nodded at the longest stone — 'will be raised before midwinter.'

Camaban nodded again, apparently satisfied. He drew his sword, walked to the long stone and began to sharpen the blade on the rock's edge. 'I have talked with Aurenna,' he said, his voice still calm, 'and she told me a strange tale.'

'About Leir?' Saban asked, bristling and defensive as he tried to hide his nervousness.

'She told me about Leir, of course she did.' Camaban paused to feel the edge of his blade, found it blunt and began scraping the sword on the stone again. It made a ringing noise. 'But I agree with you about Leir, brother,' he went on, glancing at Saban, 'he should be a man. I don't see him as a priest. He has no dreams like his sister. He is more like you. But I don't think he should live with you. He needs to learn a warrior's ways and a hunter's paths. He can live in Gundur's household.' Saban nodded cautiously. Gundur was not a cruel man and his sons were growing into honest men. 'He can live in Gundur's hut,' he agreed. 'No,' Camaban said, frowning at a small nick in the sword's edge, 'the strange tale that Aurenna told me was about Derrewyn.' He looked up at Saban. 'She still lives.. Did you know that?'

'How would I know?' Saban asked. But her child is not with her,' Camaban said. He had straightened from the stone and was staring into Saban's eyes now. 'Her child, it seems, was sent to live in a settlement because Derrewyn feared it would sicken and die in the forests. So she sent it away. To Cathallo, do you think? Or maybe here? To Ratharryn? The tale is whispered in Cathallo's huts, brother, but Aurenna hears all. Have you heard that tale, Saban?'

'No.'

Camaban smiled, then made a gesture with his sword and Saban turned to see that two spearmen had found Hanna and were dragging her from the hut. Kilda was screaming at them, but a third man barred her way as the terrified child was brought to Camaban. Saban moved to take the child from the spearmen, but one of them held his weapon towards Saban while the other gave the child to Camaban who first gripped her, then laid his newly sharpened sword across her throat. 'Her mother, if that woman of yours is her mother,' Camaban said, 'has fair hair. This child is dark.'

Saban touched his own black hair.

Camaban shook his head. 'She is too old to be your child, Saban, not unless you met the mother before we ever began to build the temple.' He tightened the pressure of the sword and Hanna gasped. 'Is she Derrewyn's bastard child, Saban?' Camaban asked.

'No,' Saban said.

Camaban laughed softly. 'You were Derrewyn's lover once,' he said, 'and maybe you still love her? Enough, perhaps, to help her?'

'And you wanted to marry her once, brother,' Saban hissed, 'but that does not mean you would help her now.' Saban saw Camaban's astonishment that he knew of his offer of marriage to Derrewyn, and the astonishment made him smile. 'Would you like me to shout that news aloud, brother?'

Hanna screamed as Camaban twitched with anger. 'Do you threaten me, Saban?' he asked.

'Me?' Saban laughed. 'Threaten you, the sorcerer? But how will you build this temple, brother, if you fight me? You can build a tripod? You can line a hole with timber? You can harness oxen? You know how the stone breaks naturally? You, who boast that you have never held an axe in your life, can build this temple?'

Camaban laughed at the question. 'I can find a hundred men to raise stones!' he said scornfully.

Saban smiled. 'Then let those hundred men tell you how they will raise one stone upon another.' He pointed to the long stone. 'When that pillar is raised, brother, it will stand four times the height of a man. Four times! And how will you lift another stone to rest on its summit? Do you know?' He looked past Camaban and shouted the question even louder. 'Do any of you know?' He called to the spearmen. 'Vakkal? Gundur? Can you tell me? How will you raise a capstone to the summit of that pillar? And not just one capstone, but a whole ring of stones! How will you do it? Answer me!'

No one spoke. They just stared at him. Camaban shrugged. 'A ramp of earth, of course,' he said.

'A ramp of earth?' Saban sneered. 'You have thirty-five capstones to raise, brother, and you'll make thirty-five ramps? How long will that take? And how will you scrape those ramps from this shallow soil? Raise the stones with earth and our great-grandchildren won't see this temple finished.'

'Than how would you do it?' Camaban asked angrily.

'Properly,' Saban answered.

'Tell me!' Camaban shouted.

'No,' Saban said, 'and without me, brother, you will never have a temple. You will have a pile of rocks.' He pointed at Hanna. 'And if you kill that child I will walk away from this temple and I will never look back, never! She is a slave's whelp, but I am fond of her. You think she is Derrewyn's daughter?' Saban spat his scorn onto the long stone. 'Do you think Derrewyn would send her child to a tribe where you ruled? Search the land, brother, haul down every hut, but don't search here for Derrewyn's child.'

Camaban watched him for a time. 'Do you swear this child is not Derrewyn's daughter?'

'I do,' Saban said, and felt a chill run through him for a false oath was not to be taken lightly, yet if he had hesitated, or if he had told the truth, Hanna would have died instantly.

Camaban watched him, then gestured that the priest should step forward and lower the skull to Saban. Camaban still held his sword at Hanna's small throat. 'Put a hand on the skull,' he ordered Saban, 'and swear before the ancestors that this child is not Derrewyn's whelp.'

Saban reached his hand out slowly. This was the most solemn oath he could make, and to lie to the ancestors was to betray his whole tribe, but he placed his fingers on the bone and nodded. 'I swear it,' he said.

'On your daughter's life?' Camaban demanded.

Saban was sweating now. The world seemed to tremble about him, but Hanna was staring at him and he felt himself nod again. 'On Lallic's life,' he said and he knew he had told a terrible lie. He would have to make amends if Lallic were to live and he did not know how he could do that.

Camaban pushed Hanna away and she ran to Saban and clung to him, weeping. He picked her up and held her close.

'Make me a temple, brother,' Camaban said, pushing the sword into his leather belt, 'make me a temple, but hurry!' His voice was rising now. 'You are forever making excuses! The stone is hard, the ground is too wet for sledges, the oxens' hooves are breaking. And nothing gets done!' He screeched the last four words. He was shaking and Saban wondered if his brother was about to roll his eyes and go into a howling trance that could fill the temple with blood and fear, but Camaban just yelped as if he were in pain and then abruptly turned and walked away. 'Make me a temple!' he shouted, and Saban held Hanna tight for she was weeping with fear.

As Camaban crossed the temple causeway, followed by his warriors, Saban leaned on the long stone and let out a great breath. It was a cold day, but he was still sweating. Kilda ran to him and took Hanna into her arms. 'I thought he would kill you both!' she said.

'I have sworn my daughter's life on Hanna's life,' Saban said dully. 'He knew who Hanna was and I swore she was not.' He closed his eyes, shaking. 'I have sworn a false oath.'

Kilda was silent. The slaves watched Saban.

'I have risked Lallic,' Saban said, and the tears ran down his cheeks to make furrows in the white stone dust.

'What will you do?' Kilda asked quietly.

'The gods must forgive me,' Saban said, 'no one else can.'

'If you build the gods a temple,' Kilda said, 'then they will forgive you. So build it, Saban, build it.' She reached out and wiped a tear from his face. 'And how will you raise the capstones?' she asked.

'I don't know,' Saban said, 'I truly don't know.' But if he found out, he thought, then perhaps the gods would forgive him and Lallic would live. Only the temple could save her now, and so he turned on the slaves. 'Work!' he told them. 'Work! The sooner it's done, the sooner we're all free.'

They worked. They hammered, they ground patches of stone to dust, they dug rock and earth, and they polished stone until their arms ached and their nostrils were filled with dust and their eyes stung. The strongest of them worked on the long stone and, as Saban had promised, it was ready before midwinter. The day came when it could not be shaped any more, it had been turned from a rock into a slender, elegant and tapering monolith, and Saban knew he must raise it. He remembered Galeth's advice and proposed raising the stone on edge, for he feared the narrow stone's weight might shear it in two. But first the stone had to be manoeuvred to the edge of its hole and that took six days of levering and sweating and cursing, and then it had to be turned onto one of its long narrow edges and that took a whole day, but at last it stood on its log rollers and Saban could loop ropes about the whole length of the stone and attach the ropes to the sixty oxen that would haul the monstrous rock into its hole.

The hole was the deepest Saban had ever dug. Its depth was almost twice the height of a man and he had protected its ramp and the face opposing the ramp with split tree trunks greased with pig fat. The ropes led from the stone clear across the hole, then across the ditch and banks to where the breath of sixty oxen formed a mist. Saban gave the signal and the ox drivers goaded their beasts and the twisted hide ropes lifted from the ground, went taut, quivered, stretched and then at last the stone lurched forward. 'Slowly now! Slowly!' Saban called. He feared that the slab might topple, but it edged forward safely enough, grinding splinters from the log rollers. Slaves pulled the logs from the back of the pillar as its leading edge began to jut out over the ramp. Then one of the ropes broke and there was a flurry of shouts and a long wait while a new rope was fetched and tied to the harness.

The oxen were goaded again and, finger's breadth by finger's breadth, the huge stone eased forward until half of it was poised above the ramp and the other half was still resting on the rollers, and then the oxen tugged once more and Saban was shouting at the beasts' drivers to halt the animals because the stone was tipping at last. For a heartbeat it seemed to balance on the ramp's edge, then its leading half crashed down onto the timbers. The ground shook with the impact, then the great boulder slid down the ramp to lodge against the hole's face.

Saban left the stone there that night. One end of the pillar jutted into the sky at an angle and the carved knob on its end, which would anchor the capstone of the highest arch, was stark against the winter stars.

Next day he ordered fifty slaves to bring baskets filled with chalk rubble and river stones to the edge of the hole, then he looped ten ropes about the canted stone. He led the ropes up over a tripod, which stood four times the height of a man, and then on to the oxen waiting beyond the ditch. The notch at the tripod's peak, over which the ropes would slide, was smoothed and greased. The ropes themselves were greased. Camaban and Haragg had both come to watch and the high priest could not contain his excitement. 'I don't suppose a greater stone has ever been raised!' Haragg exclaimed.

And if the stone broke now, Saban thought, then the temple would never be built for there was no slab long enough to replace this first great pillar.

It took the best part of the morning to arrange the ox teams, to anchor the tripod's legs in small pits dug into the soil just inside the bank and to attach the ropes, but at last all was ready and Saban waved at the ox drivers and watched as the ten ropes lifted from the ground. The tripod settled into the earth, it creaked, and the ropes went taut as bronze bars. The men beyond the ditch stabbed the oxen with goads so that blood poured down their hind legs. The ropes seemed to catch in the tripod's peak for there was a jerk and a shudder, but then they slid and there was suddenly a small gap between the pillar and the ramp and the slaves began to cram the gap with the stones fetched from the river.

'Drive them!' Saban shouted. 'Drive them!' And the oxen had their heads down and the trembling tripod creaked as the stone edged up, its front edge gouging the timbers that faced the deep hole, but the higher the stone went the easier the hauling became because the ropes, coming from the tripod's peak, were now pulling at a right angle to the stone. Saban watched, holding his breath, and still the stone was rising and its base was grinding the hole's face and the slaves were desperately hurling baskets of chalk rubble and stones into the ramp so that if the stone did fall back it would not collapse all the way.

'Drive them! Drive them!' Camaban shouted, and the goads prodded, the ropes quivered, the oxen bled and the stone shuddered upwards.

'Slow now! Slow!' Saban cautioned. The pillar was close to its full height and if the oxen pulled too hard now there was a danger they might pull the pillar clean over and out of its socket. 'Just one step more!' Saban called, and the ox teams were goaded a last time and the stone shifted another fraction and then its own weight took over and the pillar thumped upright, its leading edge smashing into the protective timbers with a sickening crash. Saban held his breath, but the stone stayed where it was and he screamed at the slaves to fill the hole's edges and ram down the filling. Camaban was clumsily leaping up and down and Haragg was crying for joy. The first, the tallest stone of the temple was raised.

The ropes were taken away, the hole was filled, and at last Saban could step back and see what he had done.

He saw a marvel to exceed any at Cathallo, a marvel such as no man had ever seen in all the world.

He saw a stone standing as high as a tree.

His heart seemed to swell as he looked at it and there were tears in his eyes. The stone looked gaunt and high and slender against the grey winter sky. It looked, Saban thought, beautiful. It was smooth and shaped and awesome; it suddenly dominated the wide landscape. It towered over the mother stone which he had previously thought so huge. It was magnificent.

'It's splendid,' Camaban said, his eyes wide.

'It is Slaol's work,' Haragg said humbly.

Even the slaves were impressed. It was their work, and they looked at the pillar in wonder. In none of their tribes, in none of their temples, in none of their lands and in none of their dreams was there a stone so large and sculpted and stark. At that moment Saban knew the gods must recognise what Camaban was doing and even Kilda was impressed. 'And you will place another stone on top of that?' she asked Saban that evening.

'We will,' he said, 'for that is just one pillar of an arch.'

'But you still don't know how?'

'Maybe the gods will tell me,' he said. They were alone by the great stone. Night was falling, turning the grey rock black. Saban gazed up the monolith and was overcome again, astonished that he had ever moved it, ever shaped it, ever raised it, and he knew at that instant that he would finish the temple. There were men who said it could not be done, and even Camaban did not know how it could be achieved, but Saban knew he would do it. And he felt a sudden certainty that by building the temple he would appease the gods who would then forgive him the oath he had sworn on Lallic's life. 'I sometimes think,' he told Kilda, 'none of us really knows why we are building this temple. Camaban says he knows, and Aurenna is certain it will bring the gods to a marriage bed, but I do not know what the gods want. Except that they want it built. I think it will surprise us all when it's done.'

'Which is what Derrewyn always said,' Kilda answered.

Midwinter came and the tribe lit their fires and made their feast. The slaves ate by the temple and after midwinter, when the first snow came, they began shaping the second pillar of the long arch. That pillar was the second longest stone, but it was too short for Saban had been unable to find a stone as long as the first, so he had deliberately left the second pillar's foot clubbed and bulbous, just like Camaban's foot before Sannas had broken and straightened it, and he hoped that the heavy clubbed foot would anchor the pillar in the earth. He would sink it in a hole he knew was too shallow, but the hole had to be shallow if the second pillar were to match the height of the first.

He raised that stone in the spring. The tripod was placed and the oxen were harnessed and when the beasts took the stone's weight Saban heard the pillar's clubbed foot scrunching the chalk and timbers, but at last it was standing and the hole could be filled and there were two pillars in the earth now, side by side and so close together at their base that a kitten could scarce wriggle between them, while at their tops the twin pillars tapered and so made a gap through which the winter sun would shine.

'When do you put the top stone on?' Camaban asked.

'In a year's time,' Saban said, 'or maybe two.'

'A year!' Camaban protested.

'The stones must settle,' Saban said. 'We'll be ramming and filling the holes all year.'

'So every pillar must stand a year?' Camaban asked, appalled.

'Two years would be better.'

Camaban became even more impatient then. He was frustrated when oxen were stubborn or ropes broke or, as happened twice, a tripod splintered. He hated it when stones ended up canted and it took days of hard work to haul them straight and ram their bases with rocks and soil.

It took three whole years to shape and raise the ten tall pillars of the sun's house. The raising of the stones was the easiest part; the hardest was the grinding and shaping that still filled the temple with noise and dust. The knobs on the pillars' tops, which would anchor the capstones, proved hardest to carve, for each was twice the width of a man's hand and to make the knobs the slaves had to wear away the rest of the pillar's top, which they did dust grain by dust grain. Saban also had them leave a lip around the stone's edge so that the capstones would be held at their sides as well as by the protruding knobs.

Leir became a man in the year that the last of the sun house's pillars was raised, the same year that six of the sky-ring stones were sunk in the ground. Leir passed his ordeals and gleefully broke the chalk ball of his spirit into fragments. Saban gave him a bronze-headed spear, then hammered the tattoos of manhood into his son's chest. 'Will you go and show yourself to your mother?' he asked his son.

'She will not want to see me.'

'She will be proud of you,' Saban said, firmly, although he doubled that he spoke the truth.

Leir grimaced. 'She will be disappointed in me.'

'Then go to see your sister,' Saban said, 'and tell her I miss her.' He had not seen Lallic since he had taken Leir away from his mother, not since he had sworn her life on the skull pole.

'Lallic sees no one,' Leir said. 'She is frightened. She shivers in the hut and cries if her mother leaves her.'

Saban feared his false oath had settled a dreadful curse on his daughter and he decided he would have to see Haragg, swear the high priest to silence, confess the truth and do whatever penance Haragg commanded.

But it was not to be. For on the night when the ordeals finished, before Saban could find him, Haragg gave a great cry and died. And Camaban went mad.

Camaban howled as he had when his mother had died. He howled in unassuageable grief, claiming that Haragg had been his father. 'He was my father and my mother,' he shouted, 'my only family!' He drove the slave girls from his hut and slashed himself with flints so that his naked body was laced with blood when he emerged into the daylight. He threw himself onto Haragg's corpse, wailing that the high priest was not really dead at all, but sleeping, though when he tried to breathe his own life into Haragg's soul, the corpse stubbornly remained dead. Camaban turned on Saban then. 'If you had finished the temple, brother, he would not have died!' Camaban was quivering, scattering droplets of blood onto Haragg's body, then he snatched up handfuls of turf and hurled them at Saban. 'Go!' he shouted. 'Go! You never really loved me! You never loved me, go!'

Gundur hurried Saban out of Camaban's sight behind a hut. 'He'll kill you if you stay.' The warrior frowned as he listened to Camaban's howls. 'The gods are in him,' Gundur muttered.

'That was Haragg's tragedy,' Saban answered drily.

'His tragedy?'

Saban shrugged. 'Haragg loved being a trader. He loved it. He was curious, you see, and he wandered the land to look for answers, but then he met Camaban and he believed he had found the truth. But he missed the trader's life. He shouldn't have stayed here as high priest, for he was never the same man after.'

Camaban insisted that Haragg's body would not be taken to the Death Place, but must lie in the new temple's death house and so the corpse was carried on a hurdle and placed between the mother stone and the tallest pillars that still awaited their capstone. The whole tribe accompanied the body. Camaban wept all the way. He was still naked, his body a web of crusted blood, and at times he threw himself to the turf and had to be persuaded onwards by Aurenna who had come from Cathallo at the news of Haragg's death. She wore a robe of grey wolf fur into which she had rubbed ashes. Her hair was dishevelled. Lallic, almost grown now, was at her side. She was a wan and thin girl with pale eyes and a frightened expression. She looked startled when Saban approached her. 'I will show you the stones,' he told Lallic, 'and how we shape them.'

'She already knows,' Aurenna snapped. 'Lahanna shows her the stones in her dreams.'

'Does she?' Saban asked Lallic.

'Every night,' the girl answered timidly.

'Lallic!' Aurenna summoned her, then glared at Saban. 'You have taken one child from the goddess. You will not take another.'

The slaves stayed in their huts that day as the women of the tribe danced about the temple's ditch and bank, singing Slaol's lament. The men danced inside the temple, threading their heavy steps between the unfinished boulders and the emptied sledges. Camaban, some of his cuts reopened and bleeding, knelt beside the body and shrieked at the sky while Aurenna and Lallic, the only women who had been allowed to cross the temple causeway, cried loudly on either side of the corpse.

What shocked Saban was that two priests then led an ox into the temple. Haragg had hated the sacrifice of anything living, yet Camaban insisted the dead man's soul needed blood. The beast was hamstrung, then its tail was lifted so that its head dropped and Camaban swung the bronze axe, but his blow merely glanced off one of the horns and gouged into the animal's neck. It bellowed, Camaban struck again, missed again, and when a priest tried to take the axe from him he swung it round in a dangerous arc, just missing the man, then hacked at the animal in a maniacal frenzy. Blood spattered on the mother stone, on the corpse, on Aurenna and Lallic and Camaban, but at last the hobbled beast crumpled and Camaban drove the axe deep into its spine to end its torment. He threw the axe down and dropped to his knees. 'He will live!' he cried, 'he will live again!'

'He will live,' Aurenna echoed, then she put her arms around Camaban and lifted him up. 'Haragg will live,' she said softly, stroking Camaban who was weeping on her shoulder.

The body of the heifer was dragged away and Saban angrily scuffed chalk dust over the blood splashes. 'There was never supposed to be sacrifice here,' he said to Kilda.

'Who said so?' she asked.

'Haragg.'

And Haragg is dead,' she answered grimly.

Haragg was dead and his body stayed in the sun house where it slowly decayed so that the stench of the dead priest was ever in the nostrils of the men digging the holes and shaping the stones. Ravens feasted on the corpse and maggots writhed in his rotting flesh. It took a whole year for the corpse to be reduced to bone, and even then Camaban refused to let it be buried. 'It must stay there,' he decreed, and so the bones remained. Some were taken by animals, but Saban tried to keep the skeleton whole. Camaban recovered his wits during that year and declared that he would replace Haragg, which meant he was now chief and high priest. He insisted that Haragg's bones needed the blood of sacrifices, therefore he brought sheep, goats, oxen, pigs and even birds to the temple and slaughtered them above the dry bones that became stained black with the constant blood. The slaves avoided the bones, though one day Saban was shocked to see Hanna crouching over the drenched skeleton. 'Will he really live again?' she asked Saban.

'So Camaban says,' Saban answered.

Hanna shuddered, imagining the priest's skeleton putting on flesh and skin, then climbing awkwardly to its feet and staggering like a stiff-legged drunk between the high stones. 'And when you die,' she asked Saban, 'will you lie in the temple?'

'When I die,' Saban told her, 'you must bury me where there are no stones. No stones at all.'

Hanna frowned at him, then suddenly laughed. She was growing fast and in a year or two would be accounted a woman. She knew who her real mother was, and knew too that her life depended on never admitting it, so she called Kilda her mother and Saban her father. She sometimes asked Saban if her real mother still lived, and Saban could only say that he hoped so, yet in truth he feared the opposite. Hanna reminded him more and more of the young Derrewyn: she had the same dark good looks, the same vigour, and the young men of Ratharryn were acutely aware of her. Saban reckoned in another year he might have to place a clay phallus and a skull on his hut's roof. Leir was among Hanna's admirers, and she in turn was fascinated by Saban's son who had grown tall, wore his dark hair plaited down his back and now had the first kill marks on his chest. It was rumoured that Camaban wanted Leir to be the next chief, and most thought that a good thing for Leir was already achieving a reputation for boldness. He fought in Gundur's band and was kept busy either defending Ratharryn's wide borders or in the raids that went beyond those hazy frontiers to bring back oxen and slaves. Saban was proud of his son, though he saw little enough of him for Camaban, in the years following Haragg's death, demanded that the work on the temple be hurried.

More slaves were sought, and to feed them and the tribe more war bands ranged in search of pigs, oxen and grain. The temple had become a great mouth to be fed, and still the stones came from Cathallo to be shaped by hammers, sweat and fire, and still Camaban fretted. 'Why does it all take so long?' he constantly demanded.

'Because the stone is hard,' Saban constantly replied.

'Whip the slaves!' Camaban demanded.

'And it will take twice as long,' Saban threatened, and then Camaban would get angry and swear that Saban was his enemy.

When half the pillars of the sky ring were in place Camaban demanded a new refinement. 'The sky ring will be level, won't it?' he asked Saban.

'Level?'

'Flat!' Camaban said angrily, making a smoothing gesture with his hand. 'Flat like the surface of a lake.'

Saban frowned. 'The temple slopes,' he said, pointing to the gentle fall in the ground, 'so if the sky ring's pillars are all the same height then the ring of stone will follow the slope.'

'The ring must be flat!' Camaban insisted. 'It must be flat!' He paused to watch Hanna walk away from the hut and a sly smile crossed his face. 'She looks like Derrewyn.'

'She is young and dark haired,' Saban said carelessly, 'that is all.'

'But your daughter's life says she is not Derrewyn's daughter,' Camaban said, still smiling, 'does it not?'

'You heard my oath,' Saban said, and then to distract Camaban he promised to make the sky ring flat, although he knew that would take still more time. He laid light timbers across the tops of the pillars and on each timber in turn he laid a clay trough; when he filled the trough with water he could see whether or not the adjacent pillars were level. Some pillars stood too tall and slaves had to climb pegged ladders and hammer the pillar tops down. After that, because Saban dared not erect a stone that proved too short, he deliberately made the new pillars slightly too long so that each of them had to be hammered and scraped down until it stood level with its neighbours.

One stone almost broke as they erected it. It slid from its rollers, rammed into the facing timbers and a great crack showed in the stone, running diagonally up its face. Saban ordered it raised anyway and by some miracle it did not break as it swung into place, though the crack was still visible. 'It will serve,' Camaban said, 'it will serve.'

In another two years all the stones had come from Cathallo and half the sky ring's pillars had been placed, but before those pillars could be completed Saban knew he had to drag the sun house capstones into the temple's centre and he did that in the summer. The stones were hauled by scores of slaves who manoeuvred the sledges so that each capstone stood squarely by the twin pillars it would surmount.

Saban had spent days and nights wondering how to lift those capstones. Thirty-five had to be raised into the sky, thirty of them for the sky ring and five on the arches of the sun house, and it had been deep in one winter's night that the answer had come to him.

The answer was timber. A vast amount of timber that had to be cut from the forests and dragged to the temple where, with a team of sixteen slaves, Saban would try to make his idea work.

He began with the tallest arch. The sledge with the arch's capstone lay parallel to the twin pillars and about two paces away from it and Saban ordered the slaves to lay an oblong of timbers all about the sledge so that when they were done it seemed as though the long stone rested on a platform of wood. The slaves now used oak levers to raise one end of the capstone and Saban shoved a long timber underneath it, crosswise to the timbers in the bottom layer. He did the same at the stone's other end, and now the capstone rested on two timbers a forearm's height above the oblong platform.

More timbers were brought and laid all about the two supporting beams until, once again, the stone appeared to be resting on a platform, and then the stone was levered up again and propped on two blocks of wood. A new platform was laid about the blocks, using timbers that lay parallel with the beams of the first layer. The platform was now three layers high and was wide enough and long enough for men to work their levers under the stone with each subsequent raising.

Layer by layer the stone was raised until the boulder had been carried to the very top of the twin pillars and was poised there on a monstrous pile of stacked timbers. Twenty-five layers of wood now supported the capstone, but it still could not be slid across to the pillars for Saban had to measure the twin knobs on the pillars' tops and make chalk marks on the capstone where the corresponding sockets should be bored. It had taken eleven days to raise the stone and another twenty were needed to hammer and grind the holes, and then the stone had to be turned over with levers, and two more layers of wood added beneath it before the slaves could lever it, finger's breadth by finger's breadth, across from the platform and onto two beams that carried the stone until its sockets were poised directly above the twin knobs on the pillar tops.

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

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

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

'It took how many days?' Camaban wanted to know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'It will be ready,' Saban promised.

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

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

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

'And Aurenna gives you joy?' Saban asked.

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

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

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

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

'Your daughter is Hanna now,' Kilda said. 'Mine too.'

'You think Derrewyn is dead?'

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

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

And now it was almost finished.

—«»—«»—«»—

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Her fate?'

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

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

'Easily,' Saban said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'No!' Saban protested.

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

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

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

'And what would you have me do about it?'

'Talk to Camaban?'

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

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

Saban stared at the grey dust that smothered the ground. 'If I tell the slaves to run away,' he said softly, 'then the spearmen will just gather more.'

'You can do nothing?' Leir sounded indignant.

'You can do something,' Saban said. He turned and beckoned to Hanna and as she ran eagerly towards Leir she looked so like her mother that the breath caught in Saban's throat. A dozen spearmen had asked Saban if they could marry Hanna and Saban's rejection of their requests had caused resentment. Hanna, they said, was only a slave, and a slave should be flattered to be courted by a warrior, but there was only one warrior whom Hanna liked and that was Leir. She smiled shyly at him, then looked obediently to Saban and bowed her head as a girl would to her father. 'I want you to take Leir to that island in the river,' Saban told her, 'the island I showed you a year ago.'

Hanna nodded, though she looked puzzled for she had never before been given the freedom to go with a young man into the forest. Saban felt in his pouch and brought out the small patch of worn leather that was folded about the golden lozenge. 'You are to take this,' Saban said to Leir, unwrapping the lozenge, 'and you are to place it in the fork of a willow tree. Hanna will show you which tree.' He put the gold into his son's hand.

Leir frowned at the bright scrap. 'What will this do?'

'It will change things,' Saban said, and hoped it was true for he did not even know if Derrewyn was still alive, yet the gold had always changed things. Its coming to Ratharryn had changed everything, and now he would let the sun-filled metal work its magic again. 'Hanna will tell you what the gold will do,' Saban told his son, 'for it is time that Hanna told you everything.' He kissed the girl on the forehead, for Saban knew that with those last words he had released Derrewyn's daughter from his care. He was giving her and Leir to the truth and he hoped his son would not be aghast when Hanna told him she was the daughter of Ratharryn's bitterest enemy. 'Hanna will tell you everything,' he said. 'Now go.'

He watched them walk towards the river and remembered how he had walked that same path with Derrewyn so many years before. He had thought then that his happiness would never end, and later he had believed his happiness would never return. He saw Hanna reach out and take Leir's hand and Saban's eyes filled with tears. He turned to look at the temple and saw how intricately the light and the shadows mixed on the soaring stones, and he knew his brother had dreamed a wondrous thing, but he understood now how that soaring dream was curdling into madness.

He walked back to the stones. There were only two to raise before the temple would be finished and it would be then, and only then, Saban reckoned, that he would discover why the gods had wanted it made.

—«»—«»—«»—

The very last stone was placed just three days before midwinter. It was the capstone which rested on the smallest pillar of the outer circle. Saban had worried about that pillar for Camaban had insisted it should be only half as wide as the others because it represented the half-day of the moon's journey and it also left a wider gap in the outer stones through which folk could file into the temple's centre, but there was scarce room on its narrow summit to make the knobs for the two capstones which Saban feared would rest precariously.

He had the wrong fears. It was not the space that was inadequate, but the stone itself, for when the platform of timbers was built, and after the final capstone had been levered up layer by layer to its full height, and after it had been edged across until its tongue was above the slit in the neighbouring lintel, and when it was released to drop into place, the pillar cracked.

The capstones always fell into place with a jarring crash, and Saban always feared the moment, worrying that either the lintel itself or the pillars beneath would shatter under the impact. The hard stone contained faults that Saban had sometimes used to shape the boulders and he knew that some of those flaws must be hidden deep in the rock, though none had ever betrayed itself till now. The five lintels of the sun's house and twenty-nine capstones of the sky ring had all been safely raised, each had been levered across to its position so that the holes on its base lined up with the knobs on the pillars, and all had been released to fall with a crash, yet every stone had stayed whole until this final capstone was dropped. It did not fall with a crash, but with a flat cracking sound that echoed ominously from the circle's far side.

Saban went very still, waiting for disaster, but the silence stretched. The capstone was in its proper place and the pillar stood, but when he climbed down the stacked layers of timber he saw that the narrow pillar had a deep crack running diagonally across its face. The crack started at the stone's top and ran halfway down one flank. A slave jumped down beside Saban and put a finger into the crack. 'If that gives way…' he said, but did not finish the statement.

If it gave way, Saban knew, then the capstone would collapse. 'Don't even touch it,' he told the slave, and when Camaban came that evening Saban told him the grim news.

Camaban peered at the crack, then looked up at the lintel. 'The stone stands, doesn't it?' he declared.

'It stands, but for how long?' Saban asked. 'It should be replaced.'

'Replaced?' Camaban sounded astonished.

'We should bring another stone from Cathallo.'

'And how long will that take?' Camaban demanded.

'To move the stone? To shape it? To take this one away?' Saban thought for a few heartbeats. 'And we'll have to take both lintels off the narrow pillar,' he said, 'which is why I left the platform in place.' He shrugged. 'It might be done by next summer.'

'Next summer?' Camaban shouted. 'We are going to dedicate this temple in three days' time! Three days! It cannot wait! It is done, it is done, it is done! Of course it won't fall.' He beat the flat of his hand against the cracked pillar and Saban instinctively stepped back, but the stone did not shatter. Then Camaban tapped it with his small mace and afterwards, because he saw Saban was flinching, he picked up one of the heavy round stone mauls that had been used to shape the boulders and he beat it with all his strength against the cracked pillar. He smashed the stone again and again, grunting and sweating, filling the temple with the echoes of each hammering blow, and still the stone remained whole. 'You see?' Camaban asked, letting the maul fall, and then, his temper rising as it always did when his temple encountered an obstacle, he placed himself between the cracked stone and its neighbouring pillar and began to throw his full weight at the flawed stone, bouncing back and forth between the pillars. 'You see?' he screamed, and the slaves glanced nervously at Saban.

The pillar did not break. Camaban threw himself a last time at the stone, then tried to shake it with his hands. 'You see?' Camaban asked again, pulling his cloak straight. 'It is done. It is finished.' He backed away from the sky ring and stared up at its lintels. 'It is finished.' He cried those last words in triumph, then unexpectedly turned and embraced Saban. 'You have done well, Saban, you have done well. You have made the temple. It is finished! It is finished!' He screamed the last word and capered a few clumsy dance steps, then fell on his knees and prostrated himself on the ground.

And it really was finished. There was the just the last platform to dismantle and the debris of the long years to clear up. The stones of Sarmennyn were to be left in the low ground to the temple's east, while the timber of the sledges had already been piled into two great heaps that would be burned at the temple's dedication. That ceremony was three days away and Camaban, when he had finished his prayers, said that it was time the slave huts were pulled down and their timbers and straw added to the fire heaps. 'Huts burn well,' he said wolfishly.

'If I pull down the slaves' huts,' Saban asked, 'where will they sleep?'

'They can go free, of course,' Camaban said dismissively.

'Now?' Saban asked.

'Not yet,' Camaban said with a frown. 'I want to thank them. Should I give them a feast?'

'They deserve it,' Saban said.

'Then I shall arrange it,' Camaban said carelessly. 'They will have a feast on midwinter's eve. A great feast! And you can pull down the slave huts on the morning of the ceremony.' He walked away, though he continually turned to stare back at the stones.

Leir and Hanna both now lived in Saban's hut. The couple had come back from the island where Leir had left the lozenge, though there had been no reply from Derrewyn and Saban feared she was dead. Leir, far from being shocked at Hanna's parentage, seemed excited by it and demanded to hear the old stories of Cathallo and Ratharryn, of Lengar and Hengall, and of Derrewyn and Sannas.

'Derrewyn is not dead,' Kilda said stubbornly on the night of the temple's completion. The stones were deserted and Saban and Kilda walked hand in hand through the dark pillars that were touched with moonlight so that the tiny flecks embedded in the grey rock glinted like reflections of the uncountable stars. Somehow the stones seemed taller at night, taller and closer, so that when Saban and Kilda edged between two of the sun house's pillars it was as though they were enclosed by stone. Haragg's bones were shadowed, but the sour smell of blood lingered in the cold air.

'It seems smaller when you're inside,' Kilda said.

'Like a tomb,' Saban said.

'Maybe it's a temple of death?' Kilda suggested.

'Which is what Camaban wants,' a harsh voice said from the shadows that shrouded Haragg's stinking bones. 'He thinks it will give life, but it is a temple of death.'

Kilda had gasped when the voice interrupted them and Saban had put an arm around her shoulders as they turned to see a hooded figure stand up from beside the bones and walk towards them. For an instant Saban thought it was Haragg coming back to life, then Kilda suddenly released herself from his grip, ran to the dark figure and dropped at its feet. 'Derrewyn!' she cried. 'Derrewyn!'

The figure pushed back the hood and Saban saw it was indeed Derrewyn. An older Derrewyn, white haired and with a face so thin and skull-like that she resembled Sannas. 'You left the lozenge, Saban?' she asked.

'My son and your daughter left it,' Saban said.

Derrewyn smiled. Kilda was embracing her legs and Derrewyn gently disentangled herself and walked towards Saban. She still had a small limp, a legacy of the arrow that had pierced her thigh. 'Your son and my daughter,' she said, 'are they lovers now?'

'They are.'

'I hear your Leir is a good man,' Derrewyn said. 'So why did you send for me? Is it because your brother will kill all the slaves? I knew that. I know everything, Saban. Not a whisper is uttered in Ratharryn or Cathallo that I do not hear.' She stared around her, gazing up at the tall stones. 'It already has the stench of blood, but he will give it more. He will feed it blood till his miracle happens.' She laughed scornfully. 'An end to winter? An end to sickness? An end, even, to death? But suppose the miracle doesn't happen, Saban, what will your brother do then? Make another temple? Or just feed this one with blood, blood and more blood till the very earth is red?'

Saban said nothing. Derrewyn stroked the flank of the mother stone, which reflected the moon more brightly than the stones from Cathallo. 'Or perhaps his miracle will work,' Derrewyn went on. 'Perhaps we shall see the dead walking here. All the dead, Saban, their bodies white and gaunt, walking from the stones with creaking joints.' She spat. 'You'll dig no more graves in Ratharryn, eh?' She crossed to the outer stones from where she stared at the glow of the fires from the slave huts in the small valley. 'In two days, Saban,' she said, 'your brother plans to kill all those slaves. He will pretend he is giving them a feast, but his warriors will surround the huts with spears and drive them to these stones to kill them. How do I know? I heard it, Saban, from the women at Cathallo where your brother goes to lie with your wife. They rut together, only of course they don't call it that. Rutting is what you and I did, what you and Kilda do, what your son is probably doing to my daughter even as you stand there with your jaw hanging. No, Camaban and Aurenna rehearse the wedding of Slaol and Lahanna. It is their sacred duty,' she sneered, 'but it's still rutting, however you decorate it with prayers, and when they have finished, they talk, and do you think the women of Cathallo do not pass on to me every word they overhear?'

'I sent the lozenge so you would help me,' Saban said. 'I want the slaves to live.'

'Even if that means Camaban's miracle does not work?'

Saban shrugged. 'I think Camaban is frightened that it will not work, which is why he is touched by madness,' he said quietly. 'And that madness will not end until he has dedicated his temple. And perhaps Slaol will come? I wish he would.'

'And if he doesn't?' Derrewyn asked.

'Then I have built a great temple,' Saban said firmly, 'and when the madness is over we shall come here and we shall dance and we shall pray and the gods will use the stones as they think best.'

'And that is all you've done?' Derrewyn asked sourly. 'Built a temple?'

Saban remembered what Galeth had said so shortly before his death. 'What did the folk of Cathallo believe they were doing when they dragged those great boulders from the hills?' he asked Derrewyn. 'What miracle were those stones going to work?'

Derrewyn stared at him for a heartbeat, but had no answer. She turned to Kilda. 'Tomorrow,' she said, 'you will tell the slaves that they are to be killed on midwinter's eve. Tell them that in my name. And tell them that tomorrow night there will be a path of light to take them to safety. And you, Saban' — she turned and pointed at him with a bony finger — 'tomorrow night you will sleep in Ratharryn and you will send Leir and my daughter back to the island. If Hanna stays in Ratharryn she will likely die, for she is still a slave of this temple even if she does rut with your son.'

Saban frowned. 'Will I see my son again?'

'We shall come back,' Derrewyn confirmed. 'We shall come back, and let me promise you something, and I promise it on my life. Your brother is right, Saban. On the day this temple is dedicated the dead will walk. You will see it. In three days' time, when night falls on Ratharryn, the dead will walk.'

She pulled the hood over her head and, without a backward glance, walked away.

Kilda would not go with Saban to the settlement. 'I am a slave,' she told him. 'If I stay in Ratharryn I shall be killed.'

'I wouldn't permit it,' Saban said.

'The temple has made your brother mad,' Kilda responded, 'and what you will not permit will give him delight. I shall stay here and walk Derrewyn's path of light.'

Saban accepted her choice, though without any pleasure. 'I am getting old,' he told her, 'and my bones ache. I could not bear to lose a third woman.'

'You will not lose me,' Kilda promised. 'When the madness is over we shall be together again.'

'When the madness is over,' Saban promised, 'I shall marry you.'

With that promise he walked to Ratharryn. He was in a nervous mood, but so, he discovered, was the settlement, which was filled with an uneasy anticipation. Everyone was waiting for the temple's dedication, though no one other than Camaban seemed certain what change would come in two days' time, and even Camaban was vague. 'Slaol will return to his proper place,' was all he would say, 'and our hardships will vanish with the winter.'

Saban ate that night in Mereth's hut where a dozen other folk had gathered. They brought food, they sang and they told old tales. It was the kind of evening Saban had enjoyed throughout his youth, yet this night the singing was half-hearted for all in the hut were thinking of the temple. 'You can tell us what will happen,' a man demanded of Saban.

'I don't know.'

'At least your slaves will be happy,' another man said.

'Happy?' Saban asked.

'They are to have a feast.'

'A feast of liquor,' Mereth interjected. 'Every woman in Ratharryn has been told to brew three jars and tomorrow we are to carry it to the temple as a reward to your slaves. There's no honey left in Ratharryn!'

Saban wished he could believe that Camaban really intended to offer the temple's builders a feast, but he suspected the liquor was only intended to stupefy the slaves before the spearmen assaulted their encampment. He closed his eyes, thinking of Leir and Hanna who even now should be following the River Mai northwards. He had embraced them both, then watched them walk away with nothing except Leir's weapons. Saban had waited till they vanished in the winter trees and he had thought how simple life had been when his father had worshipped Mai, Arryn, Slaol and Lahanna, and when the gods had not made extravagant demands. Then the gold had come and with it Camaban's ambitions to change the world.

'Are you sick?' Mereth asked, worried because Saban looked so pale and drawn.

'I'm tired,' Saban said, 'just tired,' and he leaned back on the hut wall as the folk sang the song of Camaban's victory over Rallin. He listened to the singing, then smiled when Mereth's Outlander wife began a song from Sarmennyn. It was the tale of a fisherman who had caught a monster and fought it through the wind-stinging foam all the way to shore, and it reminded Saban of the years he had lived beside Sarmennyn's river, Mereth's wife sang in her own tongue and Ratharryn's folk listened from politeness rather than interest, but Saban was remembering the happy days in Sarmennyn when Aurenna had not aspired to be a goddess, but had taken such delight in the making of the boats and the moving of the stones. He was thinking of Leir learning to swim when there was a sudden shout from the darkness outside and Saban twisted to the hut entrance to see spearmen running south towards a glow on the horizon. He stared and for a mad instant he thought the vast glow of fire meant that the stones themselves were on fire, then he shouted to Mereth that something strange was happening at the temple and scrambled into the night.

Derrewyn, it could be no one else, had fired the great piles of kindling and sledge timbers that had been waiting for the dedication. She had done more, for when Saban reached the sacred avenue he saw that the slave huts were also burning, indeed his own hut was in flames and the crackling fires lit the stones, making them beautiful in the darkness.

Then a warrior shouted that the slaves were gone.

Or most were. A few, too scared to run away, or not believing the rumour that Kilda had assiduously spread all day, were huddled by the sun stone, but the rest had fled southwards along Derrewyn's path of light. Saban climbed the crest south of the temple to see the path, which had been made by ramming torches into the turf, then lighting them so that their flames marked a path to safety. The torches burned low now as they snaked across the hills to disappear among the trees beyond the Death Place. The path of light was empty, for the slaves had long gone. By now, Saban thought, they would be deep in the forest and, even as he watched, the guttering torches began to flicker out.

Camaban raged amidst the astonishment. He shouted for water to extinguish the fires, but the river was too far away and the fires were too fierce. 'Gundur!' he shouted, 'Gundur!' and when the warrior came to him Camaban ordered that every spearman and every hunting dog in Ratharryn be sent on the fugitives' trail. 'And in the meantime take them to the temple and kill them.' He pointed his sword towards the handful of surviving slaves.

'Kill them?' Gundur asked.

'Kill them!' Camaban screamed, and set an example by hacking down a man who was trying to explain what had happened in the night. The man, a slave who had stayed at the temple expecting gratitude, looked astonished for a moment, then fell to his knees as Camaban chopped blindly down with his sword. Camaban was splashed with the man's blood by the time he had finished, and then, his appetite unslaked, he looked around for another slave to kill and saw Saban instead. 'Where were you?' Camaban demanded.

'In the settlement,' Saban said, staring at his blazing hut. What few possessions he had were in that hut. His weapons, clothes and pots. 'There is no need to kill any slaves,' he protested.

'I decide the need!' Camaban screamed. He drew back the bloody sword. 'What happened here?' he demanded. 'What happened?'

Saban ignored the threatening sword. 'You tell me,' he said coldly.

'I tell you?' Camaban kept the sword raised. 'What would I know of this?'

'Nothing happens here, brother, unless you decide it. This is your temple, your dream, your doing.' Saban fought his rising anger. He looked at the flickering red flame-light where it touched the stones to fill the temple's interior with a quivering tangle of locking shadows. 'This is all your doing, brother,' he said bitterly, 'and I have done nothing here except what you have told me to do.'

Camaban stared at him and Saban thought the sword must swing forward for there was a terrible madness in his brother's fire-glossed eyes, but then, quite suddenly, Camaban began to cry. 'There has to be blood!' he sobbed. 'None of you understands! Even Haragg did not understand! There has to be blood.'

'The temple is soaked in blood,' Saban said. 'Why does it need more?'

'There must be blood. If there's no blood the god won't come. He won't come!' Camaban screamed this. Men watched him with appalled faces for he was now writhing as if his belly were gripped with pain. 'I don't want there to be death,' he cried, 'but the gods want it. We must give them blood or they will give us nothing! Nothing! And none of you understands it!'

Saban pushed the sword down, then gripped his brother's shoulders. 'When you first dreamed of the temple,' he said quietly, 'you did not see blood. There is no need for blood. The temple lives already.'

Camaban looked up at him, puzzlement on his striped face. 'It does?'

'I have felt it,' Saban said. 'It lives. And the gods will reward you if you let the slaves go.'

They will?' Camaban asked in a frightened voice.

'They will,' Saban said, 'I promise it.'

Camaban leaned against Saban and wept on his shoulder like a child. Saban comforted him until at last Camaban straightened. 'All will be well?' he asked, cuffing at his tears.

'Everything will be well,' Saban said.

Camaban nodded, looked as if he would speak, but instead just walked away. Saban watched him go, let out a breath, then went to the temple and told Gundur the remaining slaves could live. 'But run away,' he told the slaves grimly, 'run now and run far!'

Gundur spat into the stones' shadows. 'He's mad,' he said.

'He's always been mad,' Saban said, 'from the day he was born crooked he has been mad. And we have followed his madness.'

'But what happens when the temple is dedicated?' Gundur asked. 'Where will his madness go then?'

'It is that thought which makes the madness worse,' Saban said. 'But we have followed him this far so we can give him the next two nights.'

'If the dead don't walk,' Gundur said grimly, 'then the other tribes will turn on us like wolves.'

'So keep your spears sharp,' Saban advised.

The wind changed in the night to blow the smoke northwards, and the wind brought a heavy rain that doused the fires and washed the last stone dust from the circle. When the skies cleared before dawn an owl was seen circling the temple and then flying towards the rising sun. There could be no better omen.

The temple was ready and the gods lingered close. The dream had become stone.

—«»—«»—«»—

Aurenna came to Ratharryn in the morning, bringing Lallic and a dozen slaves with her. She went to Camaban's hut and stayed there. It was a strangely warm day so that men and women walked about without cloaks and marvelled at the new southern wind that had brought such weather. Slaol was already relenting of winter, they said, and the warmth reassured folk that the temple truly had power.

Many strangers were now at Ratharryn. None had been invited, but all came from curiosity. They had been arriving for days. Most were from neighbouring peoples, from Drewenna and the tribes along the southern coast, but some came from the distant north and others had braved a sea journey to see the miracle of the stones. Many of the visitors were from tribes that had suffered cruelly from Ratharryn's slave raids, but they all came in peace and brought their own food and so were allowed to build shelters among the berry-rich bushes of the nearby woods. On the day after the slaves fled Lewydd arrived with a dozen spearmen from Sarmennyn and Saban embraced his old friend and made room for him in Mereth's hut.

Lewydd was chief of Sarmennyn now and had a grey beard and two new scars on his grey-tattooed cheeks. 'When Kereval died,' he told Saban, 'our neighbours thought we would be easily conquered. So I have fought battles for years.'

'And won them?'

'Enough of them,' Lewydd said laconically. Then he asked about Aurenna and Haragg, and about Leir and Lallic, and he shook his head when he heard all Saban's news. 'You should have come back to Sarmennyn,' he said.

'I always wished to.'

'But you stayed and built the temple?'

'It was my duty,' Saban said. 'It is why the gods put me on the earth, and I am glad I did it. No one will remember Lengar's battles, they might even forget Cathallo's defeat, but they will always see my temple.'

Lewydd smiled. 'You built well. I have seen nothing like it in any land.' He held his hands towards Saban's fire. 'So what will happen tomorrow?'

'You must ask Camaban. If he'll talk to you.'

'He doesn't talk to you?' Lewydd asked.

Saban shrugged. 'He talks to no one except Aurenna.'

'Folk say that Erek will come to earth,' Lewydd suggested.

'Folk say many things,' Saban said. 'They say that we shall become gods, that the dead will walk and that the winter will vanish, but I do not know what will happen.'

'We shall discover soon enough,' Lewydd said comfortingly.

Women prepared food all that day. Camaban had revealed no plans for the temple's dedication, but midwinter had ever been a feast day and so the women cooked and beat and stirred so that the whole high embankment was filled with the smells of food. Camaban stayed in his hut and Saban was glad of that, for he feared his brother would miss Leir and demand to know where he had gone, but neither Camaban nor Aurenna questioned his absence.

Few slept well that night for there was too much anticipation. The woods were bright with the visitors' fires and a new moon hung in the west, though at dawn the moon faded behind a fog as the people of Ratharryn dressed themselves in their finest clothes. They combed their hair and hung themselves with necklaces of bone, jet, amber and sea-shells. The weather was still strangely warm. The fog cleared and a sudden rain shower made the people dash for their huts, but when the rain ended there was a magnificent rainbow hanging in the west. One end of the rainbow swooped down to the temple and folk climbed the embankment to marvel at the good omen.

The clouds slowly drifted northwards to leave a sky scraped bare and pale. By midday there were hundreds of folk from dozens of tribes up on the grassland about the temple and though there were scores of liquor pots no one became drunk. Some danced, some sang and the children played, though none ventured across the ditch and banks except for a dozen men who drove the cattle from among the stones then cleared the dung from inside the sacred circle. People stood beside the low outer bank and gazed at the stones, which looked splendid, clean, placid and filled with mystery. Folk complimented Saban, and he had to tell and retell the tales of the temple's making: how some pillars were too short; how he had raised the lintels; and how much sweat had gone into every single stone.

The wind dropped and the day became oddly still which only sharpened the air of expectancy. The sun was sinking in the southern sky and still no procession came from Ratharryn, though folk said there were dancers and musicians gathering about the temple of Mai and Arryn. Saban took Lewydd through the entrance of the sun and told him how the stones had been sunk in the ground and raised into the sky. He stroked the flank of the mother stone, the only stone of Sarmennyn remaining in the ring, and then he picked up some chips of rock that still lay on the grass about Haragg's bones. The rain had washed away the blood of the last sacrifice and the temple smelt sweet. Lewydd gazed up at the arches of the sun's house and seemed lost for words. 'It is…' he said, but could not finish.

'It is beautiful,' Saban said. He knew every stone. He knew which ones had been difficult to erect, and which had gone easily into their holes. He knew where a slave had fallen from a platform and broken a leg, and where another had been crushed by a stone being turned for shaping, and he dared to hope that all life's hardships would end this day as Slaol seared to his new home.

Then someone shouted that the priests were coming and Saban hurried Lewydd out of the temple, leaving it empty. They pushed through the crowd to see that the procession was at last coming from the settlement.

A dozen women dancers came first, sweeping leafless ash branches across the ground, and behind them came drummers and more dancers, and then came the priests who had their naked skins chalked and patterned and wore antlers or rams' horns on their heads. Last of all came a great band of warriors, all with foxes' brushes woven into their hair and hanging from their spears. Saban had never seen weapons carried to a temple's dedication, but he supposed that nothing about this evening would be the same for the crooked child was setting the world straight.

One of the approaching priests carried the tribe's skull pole and Saban saw the white bone start and stop as the priests placated the spirits. They prayed at the place where a man had fallen dead, wailed to the bear god where a child had been mauled to death, then stopped at the tombs to tell the ancestors what great thing was being done at Ratharryn this day. The sight of the skull reminded Saban of his false oath and he touched his groin and prayed to the gods to forgive him. Beyond the approaching priests the smoke from the settlement rose vertically into the sky, which was still clear of clouds, though the first faint shadow of night was dimming the north.

The procession came on again, dropping into the valley then climbing between the banks of the sacred path. The crowd had begun to dance to the approaching drum beats, shuffling left and right, advancing and retreating, beginning the steps that would not end until the drums ceased.

Camaban and Aurenna had not come with the priests who now spread themselves into a ring about the temple's ditch while the dancers swept their ash branches all about the chalk circle to drive away any malevolent spirits. The warriors, once the circle had been swept, made a protective ring about the chalk ditch.

The women of Ratharryn sang the wedding chant of Slaol. They danced to their own voices, stopping when the song stopped, then stepping on again when the beautiful lament resumed. The music was so plangent and lovely that Saban felt tears in his eyes and he began to dance himself, feeling the spirit inside him, and all about him the great crowd was swaying and moving as the voices swelled and stopped, swooped and sang. The sun was low now, but still bright, not yet touched with the blood-red of its winter dying.

A murmur sounded from the back of the crowd and Saban turned to see three figures had emerged from Ratharryn. One was all in black, one all in white and one was dressed in a deerskin tunic. It was Lallic who wore the tunic, and she walked between Camaban and Aurenna who were arrayed in feathered cloaks. Camaban's cloak was thick with swan feathers while Aurenna, her hair as bright as the day Saban had first seen her, was swathed in ravens' feathers. White and black, Slaol and Lahanna, and Aurenna's face was transfigured by a look of ecstatic delight. She was unaware of the waiting crowd or of the silent priests or even of the towering stones because her spirit had already been carried to the new world that the temple would bring. The crowd fell silent.

Camaban had ordered two new piles of wood to be made on either side of the temple, but well away from the stones, and a hundred men had laboured all the previous day to rebuild what Derrewyn had burned. Now those new heaps of timber were set on fire. The flames climbed hungrily through the high stacks in which whole trees had been placed so that the fires would burn through the whole long midwinter night. The fires hissed and crackled, the loudest noise of the evening, for the drumming, singing and dancing had all stopped as the three figures came up the sacred path.

Camaban stopped by the sun stone, and Lallic, obedient to his muttered order, stood in front of the stone and stared towards the temple. 'Your daughter?' Lewydd asked in a murmur.

'My daughter,' Saban confirmed. 'She is to be a priestess here.' He wanted to walk closer to Lallic, but two spearmen immediately stepped into his path. 'You must be still,' one said and lowered his spear blade so that it pointed at Saban's chest. 'Camaban insisted we must all be still,' the spearman explained. Aurenna was walking on into the long shadow of the stones and then she disappeared into the temple itself.

The crowd waited. The sun was low now, but the shadows of the temple did not yet stretch to the sun stone. There was a faint pinkness in the sky and the southernmost stones were touched with that colour while the inside of the temple was already dark. The pattern of shadows was becoming clear as the stones took on depth when, from the temple's darkened heart, Aurenna sang.

She sang for a long time and the crowd strained to listen for her voice was not powerful and it was muffled by the barriers of tall pillars, but those closest to the spearmen could hear her words and they whispered them on to the folk behind. Slaol made the world, Aurenna chanted, and made the gods to preserve the world, and he made the people to live in the world, and he made the plants and animals to shelter and feed the people, and in the beginning, when all that was made, there was nothing but life and love and laughter, for men and women were the companions of the gods. But some of the gods had been envious of Slaol for none was as bright and powerful as their creator, and Lahanna was the most jealous of all and she had tried to dim Slaol's brightness by sliding in front of his face, and when that failed she had persuaded mankind that she could take away death if they would just worship her instead of Slaol. It was then, Aurenna chanted, that man's misery began. Misery and sickness and toil and pain, and death was not vanquished for Lahanna had lied, and Slaol had moved away from the world to let winter ravage the land so that the people would know his power.

But now, Aurenna sang, the world would be turned back to its beginnings. Lahanna would bow to Slaol and Slaol would return, and there would be an end to the misery. There would be no more winter and no more sadness, for Slaol would take his proper place and the dead would go to Slaol instead of to Lahanna and they would walk in his vast brightness. Aurenna's voice was thready and sibilant, seeming to come disembodied from the stones. We shall live in Slaol's glory, she sang, and share in his favour, and with those words the shadow of the topmost arch stretched to touch the sun stone and Slaol was poised, dazzling and terrible and vast, just above his temple. The evening was cooling and the first shiver of the night wind stirred the plumes of smoke from the fires.

Slaol is the giver of life, Aurenna sang, the only giver of life, and he will give us life if we give life to him. The shadow was creeping up the sun stone. All the ground between that stone and the temple was dark now, while the rest of the hillside was green with the year's last light. Tonight, Aurenna sang, we shall give Slaol a bride of the earth and he will give her back to us.

It took a few heartbeats for those words to register with Saban and then he understood Lallic's purpose, the same purpose that Aurenna had avoided at the Sea Temple in Sarmennyn, and he knew his oath was being returned to him in blood. 'No!' Saban shouted, shattering the crowd's solemn stillness, and one of the spearmen clubbed him on the side of the head with his spear staff. He struck Saban to the ground and the other man placed his blade on Saban's neck. Camaban did not turn round at the commotion, nor did Lallic move; Aurenna went on undisturbed.

We shall give a bride to the sun, Aurenna chanted, and we shall see the bride return to us alive and we will know the god has heard us and that he loves us and that all will be well. The dead will walk, Aurenna sang, the dead will dance, and when the bride comes back to life there will be no more weeping in the night and no more sobs of mourning, for mankind will live with the gods and be like them. Saban struggled to rise, but both spearmen were holding him down and he saw that the sun was now hidden behind the topmost arch and blazing its light all around the temple's outline.

Camaban turned to Lallic. He smiled at her. He raised his hands from under his white-feathered cloak and he gently untied the lace at the neck of her tunic. She trembled slightly and a whimper escaped her throat. 'You are going on a journey,' Camaban soothed her, 'but it will not be a long journey and you will greet Slaol face to face and bring his greeting back to us.'

She nodded, and Camaban pushed the deerskin tunic down over her shoulders and let it fall so that her white naked body shivered against the grey of the sun stone. 'He comes,' Camaban whispered, and from beneath his cloak he brought out a bronze knife with a wooden handle studded with a thousand small gold pins. 'He comes,' he said again and half turned towards the stones and at that instant the sun lanced through the topmost arch of the temple to send a spear of brilliant light towards the sun stone. That ray of light, narrow and stark and bright, slid over the capstone at the far side of the sky ring, through the tallest arch and under the nearest lintel to strike against Lallic who shuddered as the knife was raised. The bronze blade flashed in the sun.

'No!' Saban shouted again, and the spearmen pressed their bronze blades against his neck as the crowd held its breath.

But the knife did not move.

The crowd waited. The beam of light would not last long. It was already narrowing as the sun sank towards the horizon beyond the temple, but still the blade stayed aloft and Saban saw that it was shaking. Lallic was shivering in fear and someone hissed at Camaban to strike with the blade before the sun went, but just as Hirac had been paralysed by the gold on Camaban's tongue, so Camaban himself was now struck motionless.

For the dead walked.

Just as Derrewyn had promised, the dead walked.

—«»—«»—«»—

There was a small group of people at the end of the sacred avenue. No one had remarked on their presence, assuming they were latecomers to the ceremony, but they had stayed in the lower ground as Aurenna sang the story of the world. Now a single figure came from the group and climbed the sacred path between the white chalk ditches. She walked slowly, haltingly, and it was the sight of her that had stilled Camaban's hand. And still he could not move, but only stare at the woman who advanced into the temple's long shadow. She was swathed in a cloak made from badger skins and had a woollen shawl hooding her long white hair, and the eyes that peered from the hood were malevolent, clever and terrifying. She came slowly for she was old, so old no one knew how old she was. She was Sannas and she had come to collect her soul and Camaban suddenly screamed at her to go away. The knife trembled.

'Now!' Aurenna shouted from the temple. 'Now!'

But Camaban could not move. He stared at Sannas who came to the sun stone. There she smiled at him and there was only one tooth in her mouth. 'Do you have my soul safe?' she asked him in a voice that was as dry as bones that had been resting for generations in the dark hearts of their grave mounds. 'Is my soul safe, Camaban?' she asked.

'Don't k-k-kill me, p-p-p-please don't k-kill me,' Camaban begged. The old woman smiled at him, then put her arms about his neck and kissed him on the mouth. The crowd stared in amazement; many recognised the old woman and they touched their groins and shook with fear. It was then that Lewydd shouldered aside the terrified guards holding Saban to the ground and Saban climbed to his feet, seized one of the guards' spears and ran towards the sun stone where the ray of Slaol's dying light was shrinking. 'Now!' Aurenna shouted again, and the crowd was moaning and wailing in fear of the dead sorceress in her black and white cloak, and the spearmen did not dare interfere for they had seen Camaban's horror and it had infected them.

Sannas took her mouth from Camaban's lips. 'Lahanna!' she prayed in her grating voice, 'give me his last breath,' and she kissed him again and Saban thrust the spear with all his strength into his brother's back. He did not hesitate, for it was his own oath that had endangered his daughter's life and he alone could save her, and he struck high on Camaban's back so that the heavy blade smashed through the ribs and into his heart. Saban screamed as he struck and the force of his killing blow drove Camaban forward so that he fell, dying, but with the woman's mouth still on his.

Sannas clung to Camaban as they fell, then waited till she saw her enemy was truly dead before she pushed back her hood and Saban saw it was Derrewyn, as he had known it must be, and they stared at each other, blood on the grass between them and the light almost gone from the sun stone. 'I took his soul,' Derrewyn whispered to Saban. Her hair was whitened with ash and her gums were still bloody where she had pulled out her teeth. 'I took his soul,' she exulted. Just then Aurenna ran from the temple, screaming, and as she passed Saban she drew a copper dagger from beneath her raven-black cloak. There was still a patch of light on Lallic's face. The light shone on the sun bride and on the stone behind her, the stone which marked Slaol's midsummer rising and served as a reminder to the sun god of his strength. Slaol could see the stone, could know his power, and by seeing what gift was brought to the stone he would know what his loving people wanted. And surely he would give it to them? In that belief Aurenna drove the green blade through her daughter's throat so that the blood spurted out to spatter scarlet on Camaban's white-feathered robe.

'No!' Saban shouted, too late.

'Now!' Aurenna turned to the sun. 'Now!'

Saban stared in horror. He had thought Aurenna was running to rescue Lallic, not kill her, but the girl had collapsed at the stone's foot and her slim white body was webbed with blood. She choked for a heartbeat and her eyes stared at Saban, but then she was dead and Aurenna threw down the knife and shrieked once more at Slaol. 'Now! Now!'

Lallic did not move.

'Now!' Aurenna howled. There were tears in her eyes. 'You promised! You promised!' She staggered towards the temple, her hair wild, her eyes wide and her hands red with her daughter's blood. 'Erek!' she screeched, 'Erek! Now! Now!'

Saban turned to follow her, but Derrewyn put out a hand. 'Let her find the truth,' she said, still speaking in Sannas's voice.

'Now!' Aurenna wailed. 'You promised us! Please!' She was crying now, racked by great sobs. 'Please!' She was back among the stones and the ray of light had vanished so that the temple was all shadow, but rimmed with the sun's dying brightness, and Aurenna, weeping and moaning, turned to see that her daughter did not live and so she ran through the stones, twisting past the pillars to the entrance at the southern side of the sky ring where she fell to her knees in the wide gap next to the slender pillar, clasped her hands together and howled again at the sun, which now sat red and vast and uncaring on the horizon. 'You promised! You promised!'

Saban did not see it. He heard it. He heard the crack and the grating noise and the crash that made the earth shudder, and he knew that the last pillar of Lahanna's ring had broken and the capstone had fallen. And Aurenna's scream was cut off.

Slaol slipped beneath the earth.

There was silence.

—«»—«»—«»—

Saban did not want to be chief of Ratharryn, yet the tribe chose him and would not let him refuse them. He pleaded that Leir was a younger man and that Gundur was an experienced warrior, but the men of Ratharryn were tired of being led by spearmen or by visionaries and they wanted Saban. They wanted him to be like his father, so Saban ruled as Hengall had ruled in Ratharryn. He dispensed justice, he hoarded grain and he let the priests tell him by what signs the gods were making their wishes known.

Derrewyn went to Cathallo and appointed a chief there, but Leir and Hanna stayed at Ratharryn where Kilda became Saban's wife. Slaol's temple, the one just outside the settlement's gate, was given to Lahanna.

The world was as it had been. The winter was as cold as ever. Snow fell. The old, the sick and the cursed died. Saban doled out grain, sent hunters to the woods and guarded the tribe's treasures. Some of the old folk said it was as though Hengall had never died, but had simply been reborn into Saban.

Yet on the hill there stood a broken circle of stone within a ring of chalk.

The bodies of Camaban, Aurenna and Lallic were laid in the Death House and there, in the shadow of the mother stone, the ravens fed on their flesh until, in the late spring, there were only white bones left on the grass. Haragg's bones had long been buried.

The temple was never deserted. Even in that first hard winter folk came to the stones. They brought their sick to be healed, their dreams to be fulfilled and gifts to keep Ratharryn wealthy. Saban was surprised, for he had thought that with Camaban's death and the capstone's fall the temple had failed. Slaol had not come to earth and winter still locked the river with ice, but the people who came to the temple believed the stones had worked a miracle. 'And so they did,' Derrewyn said to Saban in the first spring after Camaban's death.

'What miracle?' Saban asked.

Derrewyn grimaced. 'Your brother believed the stones would control the gods. He thought he was a god himself, and that Aurenna was a goddess, and what happened?'

'They died,' Saban said curtly.

'The stones killed them,' Derrewyn said. 'The gods did come to the temple that night and they killed the man who claimed he was a god and crushed the woman who thought she was a goddess.' She stared at the temple. 'It is a place of the gods, Saban. Truly.'

'They killed my daughter too,' Saban said bitterly.

'The gods demand sacrifice.' Derrewyn's voice was harsh. 'They always have. They always will.'

Aurenna and Lallic were laid in a shared grave and Saban raised a mound over them. He made another mound for Camaban, and it was that second grave that had brought Derrewyn to Ratharryn. She watched as Camaban's bones were laid in the mound's central pit. 'You won't take his jawbone?' she asked Saban.

'Let him talk to the gods as he always did.' Saban put the small mace beside his brother's body, then added the gold-hiked knife, the copper knife, the great buckle of gold and, last of all, a bronze axe. 'In the afterlife,' Saban explained, 'he can work. He always boasted he never held an axe, so let him hold one now. He can fell trees, as I did.'

'And he will go to Lahanna's care after all,' Derrewyn said with a toothless smile.

'It seems so,' Saban said.

'Then he can take her a gift from me.' Derrewyn climbed down into the pit and placed the three lozenges on Camaban's breast. She placed the large one in the centre and the two smaller on either side. A robin perched on the edge of the pit and Saban took the bird's presence as a sign that the gods approved of the gift.

Saban helped Derrewyn climb from the grave. He stared a last time at his brother's bones, then turned away. 'Fill it,' he ordered the waiting men, and so they scraped the earth and chalk onto Camaban's body, finishing the mound that would stand with the other ancestors' graves on the grassy crest above the temple.

Saban walked home.

It was evening, and the shadow of the stones stretched long towards Ratharryn. They stood grey and gaunt, broken and awesome, like nothing else on all the earth, but Saban did not look back. He knew he had built a great thing and that folk would worship there until time itself was ended, but he did not look back. He took Derrewyn's arm and they walked away until they were free of the temple's shadow.

There were fish traps to mend and ground to break and grain to sow and disputes to settle.

Behind Saban and Derrewyn the dying sun flashed in the temple's topmost arch. It blazed there for a while, edging the stones with dazzling light, and then it sank and in the twilight the temple turned as black as night. Day folded into darkness and the stones were left to the spirits.

Which hold them still.