Page 156 of Circle of Days
“No. I told him to come to the Midsummer Rite, when all will be revealed.”
“Well done! That’s what we want. Lots of curious people at the Rite.”
Next day, Seft and Joia set out along the riverside path. “The great advantage of following a riverbank is that there are no hills,” Seft said.
The path was well-trodden, but rough in places. “The ideal would be a trackway of poles laid flat and hammered into the earth, but that would take too long and use more timber than we could get. Anyway, we don’t really need it here on level ground. Perhaps we’ll do it farther along, when we have to divert away from the river, and there are some uphill stretches. Here we’ll put down rough branches, which will get trodden in and be better than nothing.”
“The stones are awfully wide,” Joia said. “Parts of this path are too narrow for them to pass.”
“We’ll have to widen it by cutting back the vegetation,” Seft said. “We can spread the debris on the path to level the surface.”
“But in a few places the path is narrowed by rising ground on the side away from the water.”
Seft nodded. “We can dig out the ground. And the earth we remove can be spread on the path to smooth it. It will be a lot of work, but we’ve got a year.”
Joia was pleased that he had gone so far in working out the details. But there was more to come.
Seft halted at a point where the river widened into a small lake. “We’ll need stopping places, especially on the way back, when we’re dragging a stone and the volunteers will need rests. And it makes sense to pick them out in advance, so there will be no need for time-wasting discussions on the journey. This place is about a quarter of the way to Stony Valley. And we must get Chack and Melly to start thinking about how to feed our volunteers. They can’t haul giant stones if their bellies are empty.”
“Chack and Melly will like this,” Joia said. “It will be a change from just catering the feasts. And they love a challenge.”
They walked on to the village of Upriver, which Seft said was roughly halfway. They rested in a large meadow alongside the river. “Our crowd of volunteers can pause here,” he said.
“Two hundred of them,” Joia said. “Yes, I think there’s room.”
A little north of the village Seft turned away from the river, heading northwest across a corner of the Great Plain. “Last time I was here there was a large herd,” Seft said. “I talked to two ofthe herders. They told me they often moved the cattle here for new growth, but it’s a little early in the year for that.” He smiled, remembering the encounter. “The woman, Revo, was pregnant. I suppose she has a baby by now.”
After a while the landscape changed to hills, and Seft stopped again at a place where a stream emerged from a valley. “Here, where the plain ends, is about three-quarters of the way. After this it gets more difficult. We’ll be traveling in the other direction when we move the stones, so the hard part will come first.”
“That’s good,” Joia said. “The volunteers will be fresh.”
They reached Stony Valley at the end of the day. The village had grown. Under Tem’s direction the cleverhands had stockpiled timber. They had particularly cut lengths of stout oak, about as long as a person is tall, to use as levers when raising the half-buried stones from the ground. Soon they would collect the antlers that the red deer shed, and store them for digging.
“I’ve got something to show you,” Seft said to Joia, “but it had better wait until tomorrow.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m looking forward to sleep, after today’s long walk.”
They all ate together. When they had finished, but were still sitting in a circle, Seft said: “The first big task is to clear the riverside pathway. We’re going to be using it a lot even before we start moving stones. We need to bring the ropes the priestesses are making, and later Chack and Melly will bring supplies of food plus cooking utensils. The more we use the path, the smoother it will become.”
Seft was putting his heart and soul into this project, Joiarealized as she lay down to sleep. Yet he could not succeed without her. She had to summon the volunteers and motivate them. If she failed, the whole enterprise would collapse.
From where she lay she could look up the slope to where the shepherd lived. She wondered if she would see a gleam as the setting sun was reflected off a head of bushy fair hair. But it did not happen, and she went to sleep.
Next morning Seft showed Joia the sled.
It stood behind the houses, a huge object as big as several houses put together. It was hidden by a cover made of the skins of a small herd of cows. Seft and Tem together pulled the leather off.
The sled was enormous, longer and wider than the biggest stone in the valley. Joia recalled the single runner Seft had shown her. Now there were two, and the entire edifice rested on them. The parallel runners were polished and greased. They were joined by lateral planks. Rising from the planks were short, very thick sections of tree trunks. They in turn supported a platform, which, Seft explained, would hold the stone.
Joia thought it was a beautiful object. It seemed to her perfectly designed for its purpose and lovingly assembled, but it also spoke of great strength. Like the trees from which it was made, it seemed impossible to improve.
“If this works the way I think it will,” Seft said, in a tone that made Joia feel he was saying something of great importance, “I think a crowd of strong young men and women could drag the stone from here to the Monument in two days.”
Joia was astonished. Could that possibly be true? Two days? With her arithmetical brain she saw immediately that the stone would be traveling at half the speed of an ordinary person walking. It did not seem impossible. “That would be fantastic!” she said.
“If I’m right,” Seft said somberly, “it would indeed be fantastic.”
After breakfast Seft announced that they needed to lift a stone upright—not one of the largest, for he wanted only to examine the underside.
