contorts with pain, Keltill’s eyes scan the crowd, and while the smoke rises to obscure his blistering body and his tunic catches fire, they find what they seek.
Vercingetorix finds himself looking directly into the eyes of Keltill and doubts not that Keltill sees him. As his hair ignites in a crown of flame, his visage becomes a mask not of pain but of the iron resolve to triumph over that pain, and Keltill’s eyes burn far brighter than the fire consuming him as they gaze from the next world into his own.
And if there is any doubt in Vercingetorix’s heart, it is gone when Keltill speaks from within the flames, loud and clear, for all the world to hear, reciting his own funeral ode from his funeral pyre.
“In fire do I become the tale the bards will sing.
In fire I enter the Land of Legend as a king!”
The flames mount higher, and there is nothing in Vercingetorix’s vision but the fire and the eyes peering out of it into the depth of his soul.
“As the fire sets my spirit free
So in fire will you remember me.”
And something passes from those eyes into those of Vercingetorix, the eyes of a filth-smeared boy dressed in rags with love and pride filling his burning heart.
It lasts but a heartbeat.
And when it is gone nothing remains but the flames.
And Vercingetorix knows that the boy he was has died with the father he had loved.
He swears a silent oath by the flames that consumed them both that the father would live on in the man the son must become.
VI
WHAT ARE THE THREE necessary virtues of the man of knowledge?”
The voices droned on.
Vercingetorix heard, but did not listen.
He squatted on the well-beaten earth within the semicircle of students around Gwyndo, seated before the evening bonfire. Behind the fat and balding druid was a small square temple of roughly dressed granite. Beyond that were the wattle-and-thatch huts where he had lived with his fellow students for twenty cycles of the moon, and beyond the huts the darkening oak aisles of the forest. And outside this hateful and ignoble refuge was the world from which he was banished, the world where he longed to be.
But Vercingetorix’s attention was captured by the flames alone.
“The courage to follow the will of the gods in this world . . .”
The words were willow-bark bitter in his ears. What craven gods willed that he endure these lessons, which taught him nothing of the warrior’s way? What cruel gods willed that he endure the contempt of the sons of vergobrets and nobles of many tribes as an outcast who had gained refuge here only by the will of the Arch Druid himself? Where was the courage in that?
“The will to make his own destiny in the Land of Legend . . .”
Oh, I have the
will
! he thought bitterly. I have the will to finish the great task Keltill died to begin. I have the
will
to be my father’s son. But where is my courage to act?
“Vercingetorix?
Vercingetorix?
”
Gwyndo was shouting at him. Some of the students were laughing.
“If you have returned to this world from the other, Vercingetorix,” Gwyndo said, “perhaps the wisdom you have gained there will now enable you to answer the question.”
More laughter.
“The third of the necessary virtues of a man of knowledge?” Vercingetorix muttered. “The wisdom to tell the one from the other,” he grunted sourly, knowing the proper response, but finding it worse than meaningless to his own heart.
“To tell which from what?” sneered Viridwx. “This world from the one you seek to enter in the fire?”
Viridwx, three years older than Vercingetorix, was the son of an Eduen noble who had once been a famed warrior, served a term as vergobret, and was now waxing richer and richer through commerce with the Romans. He did not have to say “like your father” for Vercingetorix to hear it in his voice.
“We must all enter the other world sooner or later,Viridwx,” he said, his hands balling into fists. “Some of us with honor, some without.”
“You
Vercingetorix finds himself looking directly into the eyes of Keltill and doubts not that Keltill sees him. As his hair ignites in a crown of flame, his visage becomes a mask not of pain but of the iron resolve to triumph over that pain, and Keltill’s eyes burn far brighter than the fire consuming him as they gaze from the next world into his own.
And if there is any doubt in Vercingetorix’s heart, it is gone when Keltill speaks from within the flames, loud and clear, for all the world to hear, reciting his own funeral ode from his funeral pyre.
“In fire do I become the tale the bards will sing.
In fire I enter the Land of Legend as a king!”
The flames mount higher, and there is nothing in Vercingetorix’s vision but the fire and the eyes peering out of it into the depth of his soul.
“As the fire sets my spirit free
So in fire will you remember me.”
And something passes from those eyes into those of Vercingetorix, the eyes of a filth-smeared boy dressed in rags with love and pride filling his burning heart.
It lasts but a heartbeat.
And when it is gone nothing remains but the flames.
And Vercingetorix knows that the boy he was has died with the father he had loved.
He swears a silent oath by the flames that consumed them both that the father would live on in the man the son must become.
VI
WHAT ARE THE THREE necessary virtues of the man of knowledge?”
The voices droned on.
Vercingetorix heard, but did not listen.
He squatted on the well-beaten earth within the semicircle of students around Gwyndo, seated before the evening bonfire. Behind the fat and balding druid was a small square temple of roughly dressed granite. Beyond that were the wattle-and-thatch huts where he had lived with his fellow students for twenty cycles of the moon, and beyond the huts the darkening oak aisles of the forest. And outside this hateful and ignoble refuge was the world from which he was banished, the world where he longed to be.
But Vercingetorix’s attention was captured by the flames alone.
“The courage to follow the will of the gods in this world . . .”
The words were willow-bark bitter in his ears. What craven gods willed that he endure these lessons, which taught him nothing of the warrior’s way? What cruel gods willed that he endure the contempt of the sons of vergobrets and nobles of many tribes as an outcast who had gained refuge here only by the will of the Arch Druid himself? Where was the courage in that?
“The will to make his own destiny in the Land of Legend . . .”
Oh, I have the
will
! he thought bitterly. I have the will to finish the great task Keltill died to begin. I have the
will
to be my father’s son. But where is my courage to act?
“Vercingetorix?
Vercingetorix?
”
Gwyndo was shouting at him. Some of the students were laughing.
“If you have returned to this world from the other, Vercingetorix,” Gwyndo said, “perhaps the wisdom you have gained there will now enable you to answer the question.”
More laughter.
“The third of the necessary virtues of a man of knowledge?” Vercingetorix muttered. “The wisdom to tell the one from the other,” he grunted sourly, knowing the proper response, but finding it worse than meaningless to his own heart.
“To tell which from what?” sneered Viridwx. “This world from the one you seek to enter in the fire?”
Viridwx, three years older than Vercingetorix, was the son of an Eduen noble who had once been a famed warrior, served a term as vergobret, and was now waxing richer and richer through commerce with the Romans. He did not have to say “like your father” for Vercingetorix to hear it in his voice.
“We must all enter the other world sooner or later,Viridwx,” he said, his hands balling into fists. “Some of us with honor, some without.”
“You
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