The Druid King Read online

  Marah seemed to resist for a moment, but when he persisted, her mouth opened like a flower, and a bolt of lightning went from his mouth to his groin as he felt her tongue reach out for his for the briefest of moments, before it shyly retreated and she pulled away.

  “That’s not exactly what I had in mind!” Marah complained, not entirely convincingly, or so he was pleased to believe. “But not so bad for someone who’s probably never kissed a girl before.”

  “Who says I’ve never kissed a girl before?” Vercingetorix cried, then attempted to mask his dismay at her voicing of this truth with bravado. “Who says I’ve never made love to a girl before? Say the word, and I’ll prove it!”

  “The word,” said Marah loftily, “is ‘crude.’ It is to be hoped that the haggling over my dowry will take long enough to give you time to grow up a little.”

  Vercingetorix’s ears burned. “It…it was only an offer…” he stammered.

  “Very generous, Your Majesty,” Marah said dryly. Was that the thinnest of smiles on those lips he longed to kiss again, or was he only seeing what he wished to see? Without knowing, Vercingetorix dared only stand and stare.

  For a long moment Marah stared back, revealing nothing. Vercingetorix found himself leaning closer and—

  Marah laughed, pecked him on the cheek, took him by the hand.

  “Come on, Your Majesty,” she said. “Time to return to the city. I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from your royal duties.”

  The Great Meeting Hall of the Arverni was the largest building in Gergovia, a tall oblong structure of rough blocks of sand-colored stone mortared together and embellished with gray wood facings and an entryway so weathered that it was difficult to tell the grain of the wood from the ghosts of the swirling floral carvings.

  It faced the main plaza of the city, ordinarily given over to the stalls and kiosks of the market. Today these had been removed, and a good thing too, for, by the time Vercingetorix and Marah arrived, it was quite jammed with jostling and contending people. Some were servants carrying provisions to the Great Hall and sure to gain entry. Others were nobles of the Arverni and other tribes, there by invitation, likewise not to be denied. But there was also a crowd of the curious, the already besotted, and the forlornly hopeful clamoring to get in, no few of whom were harlots, musicians, bards, jugglers, and even a fellow with a trained bear cub, ardently insisting that the festivities within could hardly be complete without their assistance.

  The crush and tumult were not improved by the two Arverne warriors who stood guard at the entrance of the Great Hall, perusing each would-be entrant with a dubious stare, turning back the many and admitting the few, and, strangely enough, even giving the same slow and deliberate examination to fellow warriors of their own tribe.

  Vercingetorix, determined to seize the opportunity to impress Marah, yanked her into the crowd.

  “What are you doing?” she cried, bouncing off a man bearing a beer barrel on his shoulder, and into a cursing whore.

  “Getting us inside,” Vercingetorix told her. “Make way for the son of Keltill!” he shouted, to less-than-magical effect.

  Swallowing a small sour portion of his pride, he resorted to the use of his smaller size to slip serpentlike closer to the entrance through the crowd in a less honorable but more effective manner, tugging the protesting Marah behind him. They emerged into a small pocket of calm around a man with a hawk-beaked nose, whose lined face and deep-set green eyes seemed far older than his black hair and beard, and whose moth-eaten purple-and-yellow robe seemed older still. He was juggling three delicate-looking tinted glass balls: red, white, and blue.

  The space accorded to the juggler by the crowd was not at all large and not all that calm. A Sequane warrior brushed by him, he lost concentration for the briefest moment, and the glass balls went flying toward Vercingetorix. Without thought, Vercingetorix snatched them out of the air—one, two, three!

  “Well played, Vercingetorix!” shouted the juggler.

  “You know me?” exclaimed Vercingetorix in no little surprise.

  “What bard in Gaul does not know of Vercingetorix, noble son of the great Keltill!” the juggler roared at the top of his lungs.

  The crowd, which had been pressing in, began to open a respectful space. Vercingetorix eyed the bard suspiciously, certain that the man was after some advantage, but on the other hand, the bard had already gifted him with the respect of the crowd, and, better still, with the new look of admiration on Marah’s face.

  “So you’re a bard too…?” he said.

  “Among other things,” said the juggler.

  “Then where is your harp?”

  “Skill in games of chance is, alas, not among my many talents,” said the juggler-bard with a shrug. “At least not lately. In fact, my finances might be greatly improved if I could gain entrance to yonder feast by the grace of some noble guest such as yourself…”

  Aha! thought Vercingetorix, eyeing him narrowly. Still, why not? Let this clever fellow open the way, and earn his reward.

  “Why not?” he said. “Announce my presence to clear the way, for I am far too modest to do it myself”—at this Marah groaned—“and I will grant you entry. What did you say you were called?”

  “I didn’t…”

  Just then a fluff-winged seed drifted by through the air.

  “Call me…Sporos,” said the bard, “for I am a spore of the wild mushroom of the forest, a seed of legend, floating on the wind.”

  Vercingetorix laughed. “Well, come along, then, Sporos,” he said. “I’m sure we can find you a harp within.”

  “Make way for Vercingetorix!” shouted Sporos. “Make way for the son of Keltill!”

  Vercingetorix took Marah’s arm and proudly escorted her through the crowd behind Sporos, in the void created—half from respect, half in amusement—by his threadbare and trumpet-voiced crier.

  When this entourage reached the Arverne warriors guarding the entrance, however, it was another matter. He recognized neither of his father’s men, and, stranger still, they didn’t seem to recognize him.

  “Where do you think you’re going, boy?” said the one on the left.

  Vercingetorix’s outrage took precedence over his puzzlement.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “How dare you speak thusly to the son of your commander?”

  “The son of Gobanit…?” said the other warrior.

  “The son of Keltill, fool!” Vercingetorix snapped. “And this is Marah, soon to be my betrothed, and this bard enjoys my favor!” Hearing this, the first warrior trod nervously on the foot of the second. The two warriors exchanged chagrined looks and seemed properly chastened. “A thousand pardons, O…son of Keltill,” said the one on the left, “this man is new here. I promise you it will not happen again.” There was something about the way he said it that Vercingetorix did not like at all.

  Still, he nodded graciously and motioned for Marah and Sporos to precede him within. “Fear not my wrath,” he told the guards reassuringly. “It shall not fall upon you.”

  For Keltill had taught him that openhearted forgiveness of minor faults built loyalty among one’s troops in the end.

  The Great Hall was already half full when Vercingetorix entered with Marah and Sporos. Vergobrets and other important guests were already taking their places at a long sturdy oaken table that dominated the center of the hall, with those in Arverne orange on the benches nearest the entrance, facing the many-colored cloaks and pantaloons of the visitors from the other tribes.

  Immediately behind each tribal contingent at the central banquet table were the modest number of guards allotted them as a courtesy, and behind them were ranks of smaller tables and benches set up for the lesser guests now slowly trooping in: nobles of rank and their attendant subordinates and wives, a few druids; the Arverni on their side of the hall, the rest on the other.

  Serving girls were already bustling everywhere, refilling tankards, mugs, and horns from barrels of
beer as soon as they were emptied, which was as rapidly as possible.

  It seemed to Vercingetorix that he had entered not a building but a twilit glen in the deep woods of legend, for the stone walls had been plastered smooth in the long ago and painted in bright colors with complex patterns of intertwining vines, trees, flowers, creatures both familiar and strange, rendered dusky now by years of smoke and soot from the great stone fireplaces at either end of the hall. The crepuscular atmosphere was enhanced by the rays of the waning sun streaming in through the tall, narrow window slits and the long, wide shadows between them.

  Along the walls, the shadows were banished by torches set high in brass sconces. Captured shields, spears, swords, axes, lances, pennants, standards all but covered the walls, and more of the same hung on ropes and thongs from the rafters, along with a good collection of the skulls of former enemies. Arverne tribal treasures were piled up beneath them: chests of gold and silver coins, gemstones, jewelry; statues of unknown gods in white marble or painted in lifelike colors; bolts of cloth, plain and embroidered, some shot through with threads of gold; great casks of salt from the sea.

  A spitted boar and a sheep were roasting in the big fireplaces, their dripping grease crackling and hissing off the burning logs; just about ready, to judge from the crispy brown skin and the delicious aroma of meat and oak smoke.

  Keltill stood by the roasting boar, hacking off a slice with a battle-ax. He bit off a piece and chewed it thoughtfully as Vercingetorix led Marah and Sporos toward him.

  “All this will be ours one day!” Vercingetorix told her as Keltill swallowed his morsel, nodding his approval to the roasting crew, and, still clutching the ax in one hand and the slice of boar in the other, swept forward to meet them.

  “Well, Marah,” he said, “has my son yet proved to you that he’s a sturdy branch off the gnarly old tree?”

  “Uh, I’d better take my place with my mother,” Marah said, and departed somewhat hastily in the direction of Epona, already seated at the table among the Carnutes.

  Keltill did not seem to take much notice of her embarrassment or even her departure, fixing instead a questioning gaze at the shabbily dressed Sporos, and then at his son.

  “This is your guest, Vercingetorix?” he asked dubiously.

  “The bard Sporos,” Vercingetorix said nervously, suddenly all too aware of how unsavory his guest must appear to his father in the midst of such company.

  “But where is your harp, bard?” asked Keltill, returning his gaze to Sporos.

  Instead of looking away or even blinking, the bard met the gaze of the vergobret of the Arverni with an unwavering stare of his own.

  “Lost on the winds of ill fortune now blowing through our lands,” he said. The words seemed to hold no magic to Vercingetorix’s ears, yet Keltill’s eyes showed him to be uncannily transfixed.

  “Then how to sing us the old tales?” Keltill said.

  “Truth be told, I hope to learn a new tale tonight.”

  Keltill’s gaze became if anything more intense, but now there was suspicion in his voice. “From whom?”

  “Why, from whoever might dare to enter the other world…”

  Vercingetorix beheld something strange passing between them.

  “The other world…?”

  A new and deeper resonance came into the voice of Sporos. “The eternal world hidden in plain sight,” he said. “The world of deeds that shape an age, of valiant heroes…and noble kings. The Land of Legend. Perhaps tonight someone may enter. Who knows? Perhaps even you, Keltill.”

  Vercingetorix started at that last. Did this bard know? Had he unwittingly brought a spy into the Great Hall?

  “Do you know something you’re not supposed to?” said Keltill, mirroring Vercingetorix’s thoughts.

  Sporos continued to stare into Keltill’s eyes, but his mouth now creased in a smile, though one with no mirth in it.

  “We…bards have been accused of having forbidden knowledge from time to time. From time out of mind, Keltill.”

  Now Keltill gave him the same smile back. “Well, then, we who hope to have our stories sung in legend should not be inhospitable to such masters of the, uh, noble arts. So be seated…Sporos. Any guest of my son is a guest of mine.”

  So saying, Keltill handed the ax to a servant and, munching on the slice of boar, took his place to the left of his wife at the center of the Arverne side of the table. When Vercingetorix made to seat himself at his father’s left, Keltill directed him to seat himself one place farther over, to the left of his uncle Gobanit, instead.

  Gobanit—flabby where his brother was hard, dour where his brother was expansive, tight-fisted where Keltill was magnanimous—was no favorite uncle of Vercingetorix’s, and, moreover, to be separated from his own father at the table could be deemed a demotion in honor. Vercingetorix was not at all pleased.

  Until he realized that Keltill had placed him directly across the table from Epona and Marah, who sat next to the Eduen vergobret Dumnorix, and his druid brother Diviacx.

  The sun had long since set, and the only light in the Great Hall, dusky orange, flickering and shadowy, was that provided by the fires in the hearths and the torches on the walls. Still the eating and drinking went on, though the zest for it was waning. Dogs were favored with choicer scraps, beer was flowing more slowly. The diners at the long table slumped torpidly, eyes glazed and bloodshot.

  Of those on the Arverne side of the table, only Keltill, who had been drinking far less than his custom, and Vercingetorix, whom he had enjoined to stay sober, seemed alert, the son’s eyes fixed upon Marah, the father’s darting here and there.

  Directly across the table from him, Dumnorix, the blond, burly, mustachioed Eduen vergobret, relaxed at his ease. But his druid brother Diviacx kept exchanging sidelong glances over his shoulder with a blue-cloaked Eduen warrior directly behind him: a short, wiry man, black-haired and darker-skinned than most Gauls, with a saturnine mien.

  Keltill raised his voice above the general murmurings in the tone of a host about to toast his guests, though there was no horn or tankard in his hand.

  “Good food, good beer, a generous heart, the love of our families, and the admiration of our friends!” he declaimed. “What more do warriors of Gaul need for our lives to be perfect?”

  He suddenly pounded his fist hard upon the table.

  “Except of course to crush our enemies in honorable battle!” he roared.

  “Well spoken!” shouted a beefy iron-haired warrior at the far end of the Arverne table, and guzzled down a mighty swallow of beer to punctuate his enthusiasm. “And, fortunately, we lack not enemies for the pleasure of crushing!”

  “Well spoken yourself, Critognat,” Keltill declared. “We let the Teutons ravage our lands, and now we let the Romans do our fighting for us! Where is the honor in that?”

  “Nowhere!” Critognat shouted woozily. “Let’s slay them all!”

  There was a hush in the Great Hall. All conversation ceased. The bard Sporos, seated behind Vercingetorix, gave over his desultory plucking at a borrowed harp. Even the dogs ceased their scavengers’ squabbling. All eyes were upon Keltill.

  It was Epona, as if by arrangement, who finally broke the silence. “The Teutons slew my husband, but at least he was favored with an honorable death in battle.”

  Diviacx shot her a quick suspicious look, but his attention immediately turned back to Keltill.

  “No one here loves the Teutons,” he said, “but I don’t see—”

  “It’s time to deal with them ourselves, once and for all!” Keltill shouted, not merely at the druid, but in a voice that fairly shook dust from the rafters. “And if we have to change our ways to do it, then so be it!”

  “Change our ways, brother?” said Gobanit, looking at Keltill, but glancing meaningfully across the table at Diviacx.

  “Indeed, Gobanit, we must change our ways enough to preserve them!”

  “Those who cannot find a way to turn with the turning of the t
imes will be crushed beneath it!” blurted the bard Sporos.

  The nobles on both sides of the table shot him poisonous looks for this presumptuous incursion, but Keltill half turned to smile at him strangely.

  “Well spoken…bard!” he said.

  Then, louder, to all present: “Like it or not, we can no longer survive this lack of real leadership!”

  Diviacx and Gobanit exchanged longer looks. Behind the two of them, their warriors came nervously alert.

  “Surely you would not seize another year as vergobret of the Arverni beyond your rightful term and deny me my own?” said Gobanit.

  Keltill laughed. “Surely not, my brother. We must rise above these petty tribal rivalries if we are to preserve the way of life we cherish!”

  Gobanit glanced behind him at his guards. Diviacx shook his head slightly and spoke soothingly. “Where is the problem? Caesar’s legions will soon completely rid us of the Teutons.”

  “What next, Diviacx?” Keltill roared. “Do we invite the wolves into our farmyards to protect our chickens from the foxes?”

  The rude laughter was not shared by Diviacx or Gobanit.

  “Better the forces of Rome, who bring order and wealth, than the Teutons, who bring nothing but death and ruin!” declared Diviacx.

  “Better we are rid of both of them before your friend Caesar turns true Gauls into fawning false Romans and our lands into nothing but another enslaved Roman province!”

  “Or before you use the situation to do what, Keltill?” said Diviacx. “Usurp power against all sacred tradition?”

  “Sacred tradition! What sacred tradition do you imagine we will have left as a province of Rome? The only way to preserve who we are is to unite all the tribes and drive Teutons and Romans alike from our lands, as the great warriors of Gaul we were when Brenn was king and made Rome tremble!”

  “And will again!” roared Critognat. “After we slay the Teutons, let’s march on Rome again and do it right this time! No mercy! No ransom! Burn it to the ground!”