“People of Belenos! It has been long since anyone from this village worshiped as you should! Therefore I shall lead you in prayers to the Old Gods, and you who do not understand the rituals may watch without the need to pray.”
“Good way for him and them to pretend they belong here, when they’re really just feeling it out,” Matt muttered to the bauchan. There was no answer, and Matt glanced over at him, surprised to discover that Buckeye had disappeared. He couldn’t suppress a shiver of apprehension, and wondered what kind of mischief the bauchan was preparing.
“Do you know this song?” the druid asked, and sang for them,
The people stared, then nodded, and a few began to sing with the druid.
“I see that you know it!” Banalix cried. “Sing it with me, then!”
The people joined in for the second verse and a chorus.
“That is a song of the Old Gods!” the druid cried, and the people exclaimed to one another in wonder.
Matt wondered, too—at the man’s audacity. “Lhude Sing Cucu” had been a hit song only a hundred years before, and the druids had known it about as well as they had known Gothic cathedrals.
Banalix let them talk a few minutes, then cried out, “Aye, of the Old Gods, a song for May Day, a sacred festival! But since it mentions none of the Old Gods by name, your Christian priests let you keep it! Sing it all, now!”
He led them in a rousing rendition of the song, and Matt had to admire his musical abilities, or those of whoever had arranged this particular version—it had a driving beat he would never have expected.
When they finished, the “druid” cried, “Belenos!”
The people fell silent.
“Come, come,” Banalix urged, “if you do not believe in them, you are only making noise! Shout their names with me! Belenos!”
“Belenos,” some of the people muttered.
“You can call more loudly than that!” Banalix urged. “Belenos!”
“Belenos!” the people answered.
“I cannot hear you!” Banalix cried. “Louder, now, louder! BELENOS!”
“BELENOS!” the people thundered.
“Good, good! Now see if you can call as loudly for the rest! TOUTATIS!”
“TOUTATIS!” the people cried.
Banalix pulled a flask out of his robes. “Behold the holy elixir, the mead of the gods! Drink of this brew, that it may elevate your spirits!” He tossed the wooden bottle down to the front row. A man caught it, unstoppered it, sniffed suspiciously, took a sip, then took a longer sip. His neighbor took it from his hand and drank even more.
“Another for you, and for you!” Banalix pulled bottle after bottle out of his robes, tossing them down to the people. “Pass them from hand to hand and quaff as you chant the names of the gods! LUGH!”
“LUGH!” the people shouted.
“MORRIGAN!” Banalix caroled.
“MORRIGAN!”
He led the people in roaring out the names of the gods as they drank from the bottles of holy elixir. Curious, Matt stepped in among them and noticed that Banalix kept tossing down bottle after bottle from an apparently unlimited supply—though he was taking them from a pile in the shadows now, not from his robe. Someone passed him a bottle, and Matt sniffed warily, then took a sip and let it roll across his tongue as he passed the bottle on. It was sweet, very sweet—Banalix hadn’t been kidding when he called it mead. It did seem to be made of fermented honey, but the aftertaste flared along Mart’s esophagus and lit a glow in his stomach. The drink may have been honey wine at some point, but it had been boiled and condensed into something much stronger, a sort of honey brandy. Matt wondered who had invented distilling here, and had a notion it hadn’t been the real druids.
Banalix had worked the crowd up to a regular chant now, reciting the names of the Druid gods, not shouting, but calling only a little louder than their normal speaking voices, with a hard driving rhythm, and Matt realized what Banalix had done. The ceremony thus far had been carefully designed to make the people stop thinking as individuals and start thinking as a mob. They’d be much less likely to worry about right and wrong now.
“The gods have given you their blood!” Banalix called. “They have given it to you in the bottles you have held, and it has been sweet. See, now! I give of my blood to the gods!” He produced a twisted dagger, carved to look like a snake, and pricked his finger, then squeezed and let the blood drip down to the grass of the meadow.
A murmur of wonder ran through the crowd.
“Those of you who wish to give in return for what you have gained, do likewise!” Banalix called. “Step forward, those of you who have the courage to give of your blood to the gods, so that all may see and honor you!”
That was obviously too much. No one would go that far so soon, Matt was sure—until he remembered the liquor. Even so, he stared in disbelief as half a dozen men stepped forward right away and pricked their fingers, then let blood drip onto the grass.
“Behold the holy libation!” Banalix cried. “Who else wishes to do as they have done?”
A dozen more men stepped forward, and even three wild-eyed girls, old enough to be caught up in the communal mania, young enough not to know better. Knives pricked in the moonlight; drops of blood welled to the grass.
“Honor what they have done!” Banalix beckoned, palms upright. “Hail, O Grateful Ones! Hail, they who give for us all! Hail! Hail!”
“HAIL!” the crowd roared. “HAIL!”
Matt had always known some people would do anything for attention, and Banalix made sure they received it. A score more of people stepped forward, drawing their knives, but Banalix was moving on. “Now dance,” he cried, “for dancing pleases the Old Gods! It is part of the worship they desire! Dance like this!” He held his arms curving up, snapping his fingers as he moved left foot across right, then right behind left in a chain. He stepped back and reversed the chain, men stepped forward, completing a rectangle. “It is simple, but it honors the gods!”
The ceremony, Matt realized, had been made up out of whole cloth, and the pattern-maker had designed it like a television commercial, showing all the good things about the “old religion” and none of the unpleasant ones they might find distasteful. Well, not none—there was that bloodletting, but it was minor, and no one had really seemed to mind. In fact, they had started competing for the honor and the praise of their fellows. But step by step he was leading them away from reason and independent thought, and into a group-mind, group-body state. How far would he lead them tonight? He had brought them from group chanting to individual bloodletting, but now was leading them on into group movement, the dance inducing everybody to move as one.
Banalix jumped down off his platform—only a very wide stump, Matt realized—and strode out into the midst of the crowd. “Form a circle about me! Aye, for the circle is the sign of the whole and of emptiness, of totality and annihilation, of all and of nothing!”
Murmuring in wonder and confusion, the people lined up in an oval, filling the clearing.
“Music!” Banalix cried.
A piper stepped from the crowd with a small set of bagpipes—dance pipes, not the great drones of war—and began to play.
“Fancy just happening to have a piper at hand,” Matt muttered, then remembered that the bauchan had disappeared, and foreboding struck. After all, who else knew he was here, let alone where he was? Matt began to move around the clearing as silently as he could, but didn’t for a minute think he was fooling Buckeye.
“Dance, then!” the druid told the people. “Dance to honor Toutatis!”