Free The Druid King by Norman Spinrad

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