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"My hair grew longer and fuller. And the hot summer melted into the cooler days of fall, and we were nearing the great annual feast of Samhain. '

"Yet I wouldn't let up on the questions.

"`How many have you brought to be gods in this manner? What was it in me that caused you to choose me?'

"`I have never brought a man to be a god,' he said. `But the god is old; he is robbed of his magic. A terrible calamity has befallen him, and I can't speak of these things. He has chosen his successor. ' He looked frightened. He was saying too much. Something was stirring the deepest fears in him.

" `And how do you know he will want me? Have you sixty other candidates stashed in this fortress?'

"He shook his head and in a moment of uncharacteristic rawness, he said:

"'Marius, if you fail to Drink the Blood, if you do not become the father of a new race of gods, what will become of us?'

" `I wish I could care, my friend'" I said.

" `Ah, calamity,' he whispered. And there followed a long

subdued observation of the rise of Rome, the terrible invasions of Caesar, the decline of a people who had lived in these mountains and forests since the beginning of time, scorning the cities of the Greek and the Etruscan and the Roman for the honorable strongholds of powerful tribal leaders.

"`Civilizations rise and fall, my friend,' I said. `Old gods give way to new ones. '

"`You don't understand, Marius,' he said. `Our god was not defeated by your idols and those who tell their frivolous and lascivious stories. Our god was as beautiful as if the moon itself had fashioned him with her light, and he spoke with a voice that was as pure as the light, and he guided us in that great oneness with all things that is the only cessation of despair and loneliness. But he was stricken with terrible calamity, and all through the north country other gods have perished completely. It was the revenge of the sun god upon him, but how the sun entered into him in the hours of darkness and sleep is not known to us, nor to him. You are our salvation, Marius. You are the mortal Who Knows, and is Learned and Can Learn, and Who Can Go Down into Egypt. '

"I thought about this. I thought of the old worship of Isis and Osiris, and of those who said she was the Mother Earth and he the corn, and Typhon the slayer of Osiris was the fire of the sunlight.

"And now this pious communicator with the god was telling me that the sun had found his god of the night and caused great calamity.

"Finally my reason gave out on me.

"Too many days passed in drunkenness and solitude.

"I lay down in the dark and I sang to myself the hymns of the Great Mother. She was no goddess to me, however. Not Diana of Ephesus with her rows and rows of milk-filled breasts, or the terrible Cybele, or even the gentle Demeter, whose mourning for Persephone in the land of the dead had inspired the sacred mysteries of Eleusis. She was the strong good earth that I smelled through the small barred windows of this place, the wind that carried with it the damp and the sweetness of the dark green forest. She was the meadow flowers and the blowing grass, the water I heard now and then gushing as if from some mountain spring. She was all the things that I still had in this rude little wooden room where everything else had been taken from me. And I knew only what all men know, that the cycle of winter and spring and all growing things has within itself some sublime truth that restores without myth or language.

"I looked through, the bars to the stars overhead, and it seemed to me I was dying in the most absurd and foolish way, among people I did not admire and customs I would have abolished. And yet the seeming sanctity of it all infected me. It caused me to dramatize and to dream and to give in, to see myself at the center of something that possessed its own exalted beauty.

"I sat up one morning and touched my hair, and realized it was thick and curling at my shoulders.

"And in the days that followed, there was endless noise and movement in the fortress. Carts were coming to the gates from all directions. Thousands on foot passed inside. Every hour there was the sound of people on the move, people coming.

"At last Mael and eight of the Druids came to me. Their robes were white and fresh, smelling of the spring water and sunshine in which they'd been washed and dried, and their hair was brushed and shining.

"Carefully, they shaved all the hair from my chin and upper lip. They trimmed my fingernails. They brushed my hair and put on me the same white robes. And then shielding me on all sides with white veils they passed me out of the house and into a white canopied wagon.

"I glimpsed other robed men holding back an enormous crowd, and I realized for the first time that only a select few of the Druids had been allowed to see me.

"Once Mael and I were under the canopy of the cart, the flaps were closed, and we were completely hidden. We seated ourselves on rude benches as the wagon started to move. And we rode for hours without speaking.

"Occasional rays of sun pierced the white fabric of the tentlike enclosure. And when I put my face close to the cloth I could see the forest-deeper, thicker than I remembered. And behind us came an endless train, and great wagons of men who clung to wooden bars and cried out to be released, their voices commingling in an awful chorus.

"`Who are they? Why do they cry like that?' I asked finally. I couldn't stand the tension any longer.

"Mael roused himself as if from a dream. `They are evildoers, thieves, murderers, all justly condemned, and they shall perish in sacred sacrifice. '

"`Loathsome,' I muttered. But was it? We condemned our criminals to die on crosses in Rome, to be burnt at the stake, to suffer all manner of cruelties. Did it make us more civilized that we didn't call it a religious sacrifice? Maybe the Keltoi were wiser than we were in not wasting the deaths.

"But this was nonsense. My head was light. The cart was creeping along. I could hear those who passed us on foot as well as on horseback. Everyone going to the festival of Samhain. I was about to die. I didn't want it to be fire. Mael looked pale and frightened. And the wailing of the men in the prison carts was driving me to the edge of madness.