Stonehenge Read Online Free

ominous statement do its work. Hengall, like every other living being, held the sorceress of Cathallo in awe, but he appeared to shrug the thought away. “And Kital has many spearmen,” Hirac added a further warning.
    Hengall prodded the priest, rocking him off balance. “You let me worry about spears, Hirac. You tell me what the gold means. Why did it come here? Who sent it? What do I do with it?”
    The priest glanced about the big hut. A leather screen hung to one side, sheltering the slave girls who attended Hengall’s new wife.Hirac knew that a vast treasure was already concealed within the hut, buried under its floor or hidden under heaped pelts. Hengall had ever been a hoarder, never a spender. “If you keep the gold,” Hirac said, “then men will try to take it from you. This is no ordinary gold.”
    “We don’t even know that it is the gold of Sarmennyn,” Hengall said, though without much conviction.
    “It is,” Hirac said, gesturing at the single small lozenge, brought by Saban, that glittered on the earth floor between them. Sarmennyn was an Outfolk country many miles to the west, and for the last two moons there had been rumors how the people of Sarmennyn had lost a great treasure. “Saban saw the treasure,” Hirac said, “and it is the Outfolk gold, and the Outfolk worship Slaol, though they give him another name …” He paused, trying to remember the name, but it would not come. Slaol was the god of the sun, a mighty god, but his power was rivalled by Lahanna, the goddess of the moon, and the two, who had once been lovers, were now estranged. That was the rivalry that dominated Ratharryn and made every decision agonizing, for a gesture to the one god was resented by the other, and Hirac’s task was to keep all the rival gods, not just the sun and the moon, but the wind and the soil and the stream and the trees and the beasts and the grass and the bracken and the rain, all of the innumerable gods and spirits and unseen powers, content. Hirac picked up the single small lozenge. “Slaol sent us the gold,” he said, “and gold is Slaol’s metal, but the lozenge is Lahanna’s symbol.”
    Hengall hissed, “Are you saying the gold is Lahanna’s?”
    Hirac said nothing for a while. The chief waited. It was the high priest’s job to determine the meaning of strange events, though Hengall would do his best to influence those meanings to the tribe’s advantage. “Slaol could have kept the gold in Sarmennyn,” Hirac said eventually, “but he did not. So it is those folk who will suffer its loss. Its coming here is not a bad omen.”
    “Good,” Hengall grunted.
    “But the shape of the gold,” Hirac went on carefully, “tells us it once belonged to Lahanna, and I think she tried to retrieve it. Did not Saban say the stranger was asking for Sannas?”
    “He did.”
    “And Sannas reveres Lahanna above all the gods,” the priest said, “so Slaol must have sent it to us to keep it from reaching her. But Lahanna will be jealous, and she will want something from us.”
    “A sacrifice?” Hengall asked suspiciously.
    The priest nodded, and Hengall scowled, wondering how many cattle the priest would want to slaughter in Lahanna’s temple, but Hirac did not propose any such depredation on the tribe’s wealth. The gold was important, its coming was extraordinary and the response must be proportionately generous. “The goddess will want a spirit,” the high priest said.
    Hengall brightened when he realized his cattle were safe. “You can take that fool Camaban,” the chief said, talking of his disowned second son. “Make him useful, crush his skull.”
    Hirac rocked back on his haunches, his eyes half closed. “He is marked by Lahanna,” he said quietly. Camaban had come from his mother with a crescent birthmark on his belly and the crescent, like the lozenge, was a shape sacred to the moon. “Lahanna might be angry if we kill him.”
    “Maybe she would like his company?” Hengall