The Druid King (13 page)

The spring sun warmed the land, the crocuses bloomed in the meadows, and the birds beginning their mating songs seemed to be calling upon Vercingetorix to be gone from this cowardly refuge, to cease learning, to go, to be, to
do.

And so Vercingetorix listened sullenly to the druid teachers drone on and waited for he knew not what. He practiced the figures of the way of the sword alone into exhaustion, and he waited. He dreamed each night of Rhia’s body, and he waited. He burned with impatience, and he waited.

Only when Guttuatr finally appeared once more at the druid school did he realize what—or, rather, whom—he had been waiting for.

The Arch Druid had brought him here. The Arch Druid had commanded him to remain. The Arch Druid could not be disobeyed. Therefore, only Guttuatr could free him from his captivity in this place.

Guttuatr avoided him for two days, eyeing him from a distance, falling into conversation with other druids on his approach, shying away from him like a skittish colt or a teasing maiden. But, at length, Guttuatr finally allowed himself to be approached, walking near the edge of the forest.

“How much longer must I remain here?” Vercingetorix demanded forthrightly.

“Until you leave.”

“That is not an answer!”

“Ask a better question.”

Vercingetorix sought to contain his ire. “May I go whenever I want?” he asked.

“No man will stop you.”

“May I go wherever I want?”

“No man may do that,” the Arch Druid told him.

Vercingetorix refused to let his exasperation overwhelm him, and spoke instead from the honest confusion in his heart.

“Please, Guttuatr, speak to me plain, as the father I do not have. What am I to do? Who am I to become?”

“You believe you are ready to seek such knowledge?” Guttuatr asked. “You believe you are ready to pay the price?”

“Would I ask if I were not?”

“You do not know what the price is,” Guttuatr said ominously.

“It cannot be worse than the price I am already paying for my ignorance!” Vercingetorix exclaimed.

“Walk with me,” said the Arch Druid, and he led Vercingetorix into the forest.

Nothing more was said until the works of men were lost from sight, and the sounds of the druid school faded away into the chirpings of the birds and the whispering of the wind through the treetops, and even the loamy tang of the forest must have been as it was before men walked here and as it would be when they were gone.

“Have you never thought to ask why you were brought here to safety?” Guttuatr then asked.

“Does one question kindness?” Vercingetorix answered insincerely.

“Was it kindness to make you watch your father’s burning in silence?”

“Certainly not! It was very cruel!”

“But a necessary cruelty,” said Guttuatr.

“How can you call such cruelty necessary?”

“Why were you taught the way of the sword by Rhia?”

“That is not an answer!” Vercingetorix told the Arch Druid angrily.

“But it is,” said Guttuatr. “For the two questions have the same answer. An answer that is also a question.”

“Can you speak nothing plain?” Vercingetorix shouted.

“Destiny is both the answer and the question,” Guttuatr told him calmly. “And more often than not speaks far less plainly than I.”

“Destiny? Whose destiny?”

“Yours, of course. That of Gaul . . . perhaps. There was a sign in the heavens—”

“A comet declaring the coming of a king, everyone knows—”

“So everyone wants to believe,” said Guttuatr. “But there was no comet.”

“There was no sign?”

“I did not say that, Vercingetorix. There was no comet, but there
was
a sign, a true sign, and a far greater one, the knowledge of whose meaning few possess.”

They were approaching a small clearing in the forest. From within its shadows and between its tree trunks, Vercingetorix could see a mighty lone oak in a sunlit circle.

“The sign of a Great Turning,” said Guttuatr, “of the death of the Age in which we live and the coming birth of the next. And . . .”

“And?”

Guttuatr turned to regard Vercingetorix most strangely.

“When the Crown of Brenn tumbled from the brow of Keltill, and your hand plucked it from the air before it could fall . . .”

Guttuatr hesitated for a long moment.

“Yes?
Yes?
”

“I saw that sign again.”

And before Vercingetorix could speak, the Arch Druid stayed him by raising his hand. “Do not ask me what it means,” he said. “I do not know, I cannot know, for it was the sign of
your
destiny, not mine, Vercingetorix. You may choose to follow it blindly, or you may choose . . . to know.”

They entered the clearing. The earth within it was covered with dark-green moss. And in the center was a single ancient oak. And growing from the bare ground sheltered by its gnarly roots were scores of white-speckled brown mushrooms.

“What is this tree . . . ?” Vercingetorix said softly. But he knew, for there was a magic here that he could feel.

“Have you not been told that ‘druid’ means ‘man of knowledge,’ but the inner meaning is—”

“Knowledge of the oak . . . This is . . . ?”

“
That
oak,” said Guttuatr. He laid the palm of his hand on the bark of the mighty oak. “This is the Tree of Knowledge.”

“The Tree of Knowledge?”

“Some call it the Tree of Life, for they are one and the same. Here a man becomes a Druid of the Inner Way. If he so chooses.”

“If he so chooses?”

“Few are the druids who choose to walk the Inner Way. For to do so is to know your own destiny.”

“Who would not wish to know—”

The Arch Druid silenced Vercingetorix with an upraised hand and a baleful stare. “What knowledge is the heaviest to bear?” he asked.

Vercingetorix remained silent, for he did not know.

“The knowledge of your own destiny,” the Arch Druid said.

“Why should that be so heavy to bear?”

“What destiny do all men share?” said the Arch Druid.

And Vercingetorix knew. And though the heavy green leaves of the ancient oak moved not at all, he felt a chill wind blowing through the clearing, through his soul.

“Yes, all men’s destiny is death,” said the Arch Druid. “To eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is to step outside the dream men call time and know that our lives do not proceed moment by moment, like beads on a string. It is to stand upon a hill above a mist-shrouded forest, looking down on what will be. That hill is your death, and the foreknowledge of its meaning is the greatest power a man can attain.
If
he has the courage to encompass it while he yet lives.”

He reached down, plucked a mushroom, held it up to Vercingetorix.

“I offer you the gift of that knowledge now,” said the Arch Druid. “But I warn you, bitter or sweet, it is the one gift that can never be returned.”

Vercingetorix reached out and took it.

“Are you afraid?” asked Guttuatr.

“Yes,” said Vercingetorix.

“Good,” said Guttuatr. “He who would not be afraid to bear this knowledge is a fool, and thus unworthy.
You may eat.”

Vercingetorix found himself biting into the mushroom. It was bitter. He choked the rest of it down as fast as he could to avoid the taste, and then sat down between the roots of the Tree of Knowledge, leaned back against its ancient rough trunk, and waited to discover if what he would learn would be more bitter still.

Vercingetorix awakens into a white mist so dense he cannot see his own body. The only sound is the susurrus of a distant wordless song of seduction.

The mist begins to glow.

And there is light.

A single silver point of it above him.

A star.

A star that waxes brighter, and brighter, and brighter. It becomes the sun burning away the mist above him, and Vercingetorix stands upon the pinnacle of a fog-shrouded mountain. And now he can hear the chanting of an unseen multitude like a lover’s whisper crooning in his ear:

“Vercingetorix . . . Vercingetorix . . .”

The hill beneath his feet begins to turn, or the mist swirls round it, and all the world now revolves about the place where he stands, the unmoving hub of a great wheel turning the dance of life through time.

He is once more an innocently happy boy riding on the road to Gergovia beside his father. “Can you keep a secret?” says Keltill.

Keltill anoints a dusty old crown with beer until it shines, then lowers it onto the brow of Vercingetorix. “Whatever the price may be, you must pay it,” he says, bursting into flame, “for there is no one to pay it in your stead.”

Keltill burns in a wicker cage as Vercingetorix watches helplessly, the sweet odor of roasting flesh assailing his nostrils, choking his throat, tearing his eyes.

“In fire shall you remember me!” his father proclaims, and he disappears into the flames, his eyes glaring from the face of a giant of fire.

The burning giant strides through green meadows and golden grain, in his wake ashes and fields burned black and the smoldering skeletons of trees.

Vercingetorix hears the voice of a far-off suffering multitude summoning him to battle.

“Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix!”

And he becomes the flaming giant.

And he stands once more atop the hill above the dance of life. Through the swirling mists below he beholds a great army of Gauls, warriors of every tribe beneath the standards of the boar and the hawk, the owl and the horse, the wolf, the stag, and the lynx.

And he rides at the head of this, his army, his heart joyously beating to the battle rhythm of the pounding hooves. Beside him rides Rhia, holding aloft the bear standard of the Arverni.

But Vercingetorix carries the eagle standard of Rome. And he rides a white horse bedecked with the gold-and-red trappings of a Roman general and wears a cloak of brilliant crimson.

Louder still becomes the chanting:

“Vercingetorix! Vercingetorix!”

He rides through the main plaza of Gergovia through a cheering multitude, up the stairs of the Great Hall itself into a Roman encampment, into an enormous tent draped in tapestries fringed with threads of gold, lit by golden lamps, the bare earth hidden beneath colorful carpets.

He luxuriates upon a soft couch, sipping heady red wine from a golden goblet. On a couch beside him reclines a stocky balding Roman wearing a crimson cloak. The Roman offers him a crown of prickly green laurel leaves.

“Vercingetorix? King of Gaul?”

Vercingetorix rejects the crown of laurel.

The Roman offers him the Crown of Brenn.

Vercingetorix hesitates.

The Roman becomes the Arch Druid Guttuatr.

“The greater the price to be paid, the greater the magic,” says the Arch Druid. And he presses the Crown of Brenn down upon the head of Vercingetorix.

Guttuatr’s robe becomes a gown of white mist, swirling, swirling, the gown of a woman without a face, with the face of his mother, Gaela, with the face of Epona, with the face of a golden-haired woman Vercingetorix knows from somewhere, with the faces, or so it seems, of all the women who were and are and will be flowing through time.

In the crook of her right arm she cradles a baby. In her left hand she holds a dagger.

She offers Vercingetorix the dagger. Vercingetorix takes it.

And plunges it into his own heart.

The golden-haired woman stands naked and beautiful before him. She kisses him. “Take that with you into the Land of Legend,Vercingetorix, king of Gaul,” she tells him as she places the Crown of Brenn upon his head.

And Vercingetorix rides in a gilded chariot beside the crimson-cloaked Roman who wears a wreath of laurel. The Roman waves in triumph to the cheering crowds thronging a wide avenue through an endless canyon of great white buildings of ornately worked marble in the heart of a city that can only be Rome.

And Vercingetorix receives the accolade of all Rome as he marches afoot through the triumphal aisle wearing the Crown of Brenn.

“Vercingetorix, king of Gaul! Vercingetorix, king of Gaul!”

His heart brims with pride. His spirit soars with joy. It bursts out of his body and takes wing.

But the bird he becomes is the black carrion raven of death.

He swoops down, down, down, to alight on the sill of a barred window and peer into a dank stone cell.

Vercingetorix the raven beholds Vercingetorix the man lying dead in a pool of his own blood.

“Vercingetorix, king of Gaul!”

The raven croaks, and hops into the cell. It hops through the blood, cawing. It hops up onto the dead man’s breast. Cackling, it hops onto Vercingetorix’s face. It pecks at the corpse’s eye—

As it does, the raven is thereby transformed into an eagle.

The bars of the cell window melt away. Brilliant sunlight pours through. The eagle flies up out of the cell, up, up, up, into the sky above Rome.

“Vercingetorix, king of Gaul! Vercingetorix, king of Gaul!”

Up through the swirling white mist of a cloud the eagle soars. Beyond is another time. Beyond is a starless night sky.

A star is born in the perfect blackness.

It waxes brighter and brighter and brighter. It becomes a brilliant golden sun burning away the night to reveal a blue noonday sky above.

Burning away the mists below to reveal a great city.

Which can only be a city in the Land of Legend. For it is a magical city.

A magical river flows through it; the great boats upon it, made not of wood but of gleaming metal, glide downstream and up without sail or oar.

Multitudes of wagons move through the streets of the city, drawn by magic alone, for there is not a horse or an ox to be seen.

Although it is bright noon, here and there magical torches have been set up on poles. These torches are capped not with pitch-soaked hay giving forth smoky orange flame, but with giant jewels—rubies, emeralds, amber—shining star-bright from within as if they have been hollowed out and filled with fireflies.

Close by the river rises a wickerwork tower tall as a mountain. But magic has transformed the wicker into metal.