Being goats, the animals were stripping the berries from the bushes with single-minded determination before moving on to the leaves and any tender twigs they could reach. Being lads, the youths were waving a spray of fruit on the end of a stick to tempt a bold kid out along a weathered knife-edge of outcrop rock. Every time the little goat took another cautious step with small black hooves, the first tow-headed boy edged the berries a little further away. The second boy wanted his turn at the tease, reaching for the branch.
Behind me, Ryshad bent to whisper soundlessly in my ear. “My father always reckons one lad does the work of one lad, two do the work of half a lad and three gives you no lad at all.”
This pair were so intent on their nonsense, they wouldn’t have heard him shout that aloud. They didn’t even notice the goats pause in their chewing to stare in their peculiar, slot-eyed way.
Sorgrad and ’Gren appeared at the head of the defile, startling the boys who backed away. The kid sprang lightly down the crumbling rock to bolt the fallen berries with muffled bleats of triumph. One nanny licked a stray leaf from her tufted chin with slow deliberation as she watched me and Ryshad get behind the lads.
It was the work of a moment for me to grab one and Ryshad had the other. The lad froze before easing his head round to see what had snared him. After a sudden gasp, he all but stopped breathing, as entranced as a rabbit by a dancing weasel. I smiled but wondered how effective the disguise might be this close.
If my lad stood stiff as bone, Ryshad’s was spineless. He sagged at the knees, hunching over, hands covering his face as Sorgrad and ’Gren advanced with a measured pace. I felt my lad tremble to the very soles of his boots and tightened my grip. He snapped out of his terrified stillness. “Who are you? What do you want? We’re no one, nobody. Take the goats, just don’t hurt us.”
Sorgrad reached us and, still silent, laid a finger on the lad’s mouth to hush him. The other boy looked up from his half-crouch between Ryshad’s merciless hands, blue eyes wide with fear, blond hair tumbled all over his face. If we frightened him any more thoroughly he’d wet himself.
Sorgrad beckoned with one finger before turning to walk back the way he had come. Just as before ’Gren matched his step precisely.
I gave my lad a breath or so before smacking him smartly between the shoulder blades. He stepped forward before he could help himself and I followed close, urging another step with another blow.
The other lad’s legs were as useless as if he’d been hamstrung. Ryshad growled deep in his throat, grabbing the lad’s tousled hair and pulling back his head to stare deep into his eyes with cold menace. That sent the boy scrambling over the stony ground to cower beside his pal who was now forcing his reluctant feet onward without my intervention.
Ryshad looked a question at me and I shrugged. We followed at the same leaden pace that soon had my nerves twitching. Theatrics were all very well but what if a troop of Elietimm turned up to avenge Ilkehan while we were playing masquerades? On the other hand, we didn’t want this pair running off to raise the alarm. Shiv appeared at the head of the defile, standing with ’Gren and Sorgrad. I jerked my head at the three of them with silent insistence that we get on with whatever ostentatious destruction they had planned.
Sorgrad led the way over a shoulder of the land, and I got my first sight of Ilkehan’s hargeard. As a symbol of his might and of the reach of that power, it was daunting enough, even without ancestral bones and his inescapable Artifice to sanctify it for his people. We walked round the base of the great mound, flattened on top like an upturned bowl, so steeply sided there was no need for a ditch to deter the profane. A pale scar on the turf showed where countless feet had made this circuit before us. The boys stumbled; fear tripping both now, terrified whimpers escaping the weaker one.
I slowed to get my bearings. The keep was pretty much at my back, unseen over the shallow hills that formed a half-circle here to frame the hargeard. On the shore side, more hummocks and hillocks hid the dunes and sea. On the far side, turf reached out to an abrupt wall of unforgiving rock where the ground had fallen away like a broken piecrust. The grey stone cut into the land like a knife blade, shallow enough to step up nearest the hargeard but rising into the distance until it reached five and six times the height of a man. Ahead I saw a fan-shaped expanse of grass dotted with scrubby growth. A road marked with tall grey pillars marched down this long plain, a flange carved on the inner face of each one. They were imposing stones but raising them must have been a mere trifle compared to setting up the sarsens crowning the mound. I did my best not to gawp like some country bumpkin on her first visit to Toremal. A slack jaw wouldn’t befit a dread messenger from the Eldritch Kin.
Steps were cut into the side where the approach road met the mound. ’Gren, Shiv and Sorgrad stood on successive treads.
“Kneel,” said ’Gren, lowest and closest to us. The boys fell to their knees and at ’Gren’s gesture, Ryshad and I left them grovelling to go and flank him.
“All we require is that you bear witness.” Sorgrad’s words were sonorous with the archaic accents I’d heard from the Sheltya. “Life cannot thrive without death. Acknowledge this debt and those who have gone before will guard and guide you.” I saw the boys pale beneath the tan of their summer duties, eyes huge.
“But there is a balance to be observed. Ilkehan profaned it.” Sorgrad’s words were as implacable as the tread of the hangman to the gallows. “He returned ill for ill thrice and fivefold. He visited profligate death on the innocent and defiled the exile of the guilty with blood. He has died at our hands for these offences.”
The weaker lad huddled ever closer to his companion. The bolder one gazed at Sorgrad in horrified wonder.
“We will destroy Ilkehan’s power root and branch. Malice and greed desecrate this place and the dead will not suffer such taint. Bear witness,” Sorgrad repeated. “Whoever will rule this land must bring clean hands and raise a new sanctuary or suffer our wrath.”
He turned and walked slowly up the steps, Shiv at his shoulder. ’Gren and I followed with Ryshad.
“What now?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.
“Stand in the middle and keep still,” Shiv murmured.
Where Shernasekke had been happy with roughly hewn stones for their hargeard, Ilkehan’s were smooth and regular, evenly spaced and looked so precisely upright you could test them with a plumb line. The circle was as perfect as one drawn with Pered’s compasses. Each stone was twice as tall as Ryshad, maybe more, not squared at the top but cut at an angle, all the same, edges so sharp you might fear to cut yourself.
The stones were not the tallest monument to Ilkehan’s arrogance. An inner circle was made of wood. Great pines had been stripped of branches and bark, smoothed and then more prosaically steeped in pitch to stop them rotting. This dark, sterile thicket towered above our heads, forbidding, around the innermost sanctuary where four triangular stones waist high and concave on every face marked the corners of a paved square in the centre of the whole edifice.
“What would you say the breadth of this is, compared to Olret’s?” Ryshad looked around with a calculating eye. “There’s some constant measure used here, I’d bet on it.”
“Shall we worry about that later?” The five of us stood between the stones; Shiv at the centre, Ryshad behind him and Sorgrad in front. ’Gren and I at either side. I frowned. ”Where are those cursed goatherds?”
“They can’t have got far. They’ll see this regardless.” Shiv raised his hands and the hargeard responded to the elemental magic with a crashing clangour like a bell tower collapsing. I hastily clapped my hands to my ears. Eldritch dignity be cursed, I didn’t want to go home deafened. Unperturbed, Shiv wove his spell and hail hammered down on the stones. Only on the stones. The ice melted and steamed in the evening sun, dark stains trickling down the grey sides before the water paled to frost. Now chill, like the breath of winter, floated off the rocks like smoke. The smooth stones began to split, hairline cracks widening to ragged fissures, flakes and chips of rock falling away.