The Druid King by Norman Spinrad Read Free Book Online Page B

Druids of the Inner Way to consider . . .”
    “The portents in the heavens—”
    “The new star—”
    “The Romans—”
    “Keltill—”
    The Arch Druid does not seem truly displeased by the interruption, by the cacophonous confusion of diverse voices, but he does not let it go on long before he demands silence by raising his staff and bringing it down again.
    “To consider the chaos in the heavens that brings chaos to the earth!” the Arch Druid intones. Then, in quite another voice: “Or, as you have just demonstrated, the reverse.”
    He smiles, as if he has made the driest of jests, but does not laugh. No one else does either.
    “The heavens have given us one true sign,” he says, “the birth of a new star. . . .”
    “Sigil of the Wheel’s Great Turning,” says the druid Zelkar.
    Guttuatr nods. “But now there are those claiming to have seen a comet and sowing chaos and confusion.”
    “Easy enough for those without knowledge to mistake a large falling star for a small comet,” scoffs Zelkar, nodding toward the fallen star atop the Arch Druid’s staff.
    “The sign of the death of a king, time out of mind,” says the druid Polgar.
    “Or a king’s
passing,
” says the druid Gwyndo. “Easy enough, in the absence of a king, for someone to claim it means the
coming
of a king first. The same sort of someone who would thus benefit from calling a falling star a comet.”
    “If so,” says Zelkar, “like his falling star, one who will flash across the sky for a brief moment and then be gone.”
    “Let us hope—”
    “—that it’s a sign of the return of Caesar to Rome!”
    “There are those who say the omen points to Keltill—”
    “Nor does he discourage such talk—”
    “Nor does he claim it—”
    “Not openly!”
    “Enough!”
shouts Guttuatr, slamming the butt of his staff down hard. Then his voice becomes intimate. “No Gaul has worn the crown of Brenn since before the time of our grandfathers’ grandfathers. There have been myriad falling stars since, and some few comets, but as long as the land was at peace, no one thought to mistake the one for the other, whether by ignorance or by design. But now, when there is no peace, the people stare up into the sky and see what they might wish to see.”
    “Or what those who might wish to be king might wish them to see,” says Gwyndo.
    “So might Keltill or anyone else be accused by his enemies,” points out Polgar.
    “This is true!”
    “Silence!”
commands Guttuatr. Then he shrugs. “We are men of knowledge, and yet we have seen how these portents, both real and false, bring even ourselves deep into the chaos of the world of strife. . . .”
    “May I speak now, Arch Druid?” Polgar asks in a chastened tone of voice.
    Guttuatr nods.
    “We know that we stand on the cusp of a Great Turning from one Age into the next,” says Polgar. “Might it be . . . might it be . . .” He hesitates, as if what he is struggling to spit out is a morsel so enormous that it sticks in his throat. “Might it be that in the Great Age to come the heavens will speak in a different tongue?”
    “In which false comets become true signs?” sneers Zelkar.
    “A tongue that no man born in this Great Age can understand . . .” Guttuatr says softly. “Might it be that they speak it already?”
    There is no sound but the hissing crackle of the torches, the faint rustle of tree crowns in a light breeze, the far-distant hoot of an owl.
    “It may be so,” Guttuatr finally says. “And as men of knowledge, we turn with the Great Wheel lest we be crushed beneath it.”
    “But
how,
Arch Druid?” asks Zelkar.
    Guttuatr sighs deeply, and there is no answer in his words, nothing like assurance written on his visage. “I do not know,” he says.
    These simple words, spoken so many times by so many men, now call forth gasps of dismay from these men of knowledge.
    “I
cannot
know.”
    He turns to look upward, skyward, into the star-speckled black depths of