Emil Petaja by The Path Beyond The Stars

Author:The Path Beyond The Stars
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

13

A RAW wind whined across the dark Wiltshire plain when Jon pointed out a full mile ahead the dim trinity of circles, the “three Stonehenges.” He veered their slackened pace toward some lumpish hillocks with scraggly brush furred on them in patches. Here they dismounted, and Jon tethered the horses in the thickest copse.

“We’ll wait back here,” he told the girl. “The Druids are skittish about their star worship in these Christian days. Robert tells me there’ve been rumors popping up for decades about human sacrifice. The ancients always felt that the gods would be more likely to grant them good crops and many sons if they gave them back something valuable in return. Old ways die hard. In some ways the Druids were shrewdly scientific; in other ways…”

Venus nestled down with him behind a huge boulder.

“Now can we eat?” she begged. “I’m starved.”

Jon unwrapped the cheese and cold mutton he had bought with one of his dwindling supply of coins at a wayside tavern, along with two flat rounds of Scottish cake like those Alfred had allowed to burn. A flask of rather bitter black ale served to wash down their indifferent fare.

“Tell me some more about the ring,” Venus said.

“Actually, the three rings were built by different cultures over a period of several hundred years. The Late Stone Age folk who built them used deer-antler picks to set in the uncut heel stone. Inside the outer ring are ritual pits filled with cremated bones. Seems they gave their sacrifices the flint-knife treatment, then burned them.

“A couple of centuries later, newcomers trenched in the heel and the entrance, which has two smaller sarsens as well. It was these Neolithic people’s descendants who did the most ambitious touching up. They erected the sarsen circle and the horseshoe-shape trilithons with the four station stones at the outermost circle. The twin pillars toward the center are called the ‘slaughter stones.’ ”

“Ugh.”

“Ugh is right. Now the secondary ring of bluestones were dragged well over two hundred miles from the Prescelly Mountains! Hard to believe, what? The whole trinity of rings forms a fantastically accurate pattern and the midsummer-solstice ceremony, just when the rising sun hits the bridge lintel stones, was contrived with unbelievable precision!”

Venus said, “I remember Father’s reading me an old tale about how Merlin the magician was really the one who did it. He whisked the great stones over from Ireland in a single night! I just thought of something—the Druids didn’t fashion the rings, right?”

“Right. It predated the Druids by at least two thousand years.”

“But that’s before Ezekiel!”

“So? Do I have to remind you of your own Pattern, where Time takes on the same all-at-onceness as Space? Who knows what the Stone Agers who built it had in mind? Maybe one of their priests had the same kind of a flash of truth that Ezekiel had. Only thing was, they had no written language. They did, however, make a note of it within yon circles of forty-ton rocks!”

“And

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.