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by the two Arverne warriors who stood guard at the entrance of the Great Hall, perusing each would-be entrant with a dubious stare, turning back the many and admitting the few, and, strangely enough, even giving the same slow and deliberate examination to fellow warriors of their own tribe.
    Vercingetorix, determined to seize the opportunity to impress Marah, yanked her into the crowd.
    “What are you doing?” she cried, bouncing off a man bearing a beer barrel on his shoulder, and into a cursing whore.
    “Getting us inside,” Vercingetorix told her. “Make way for the son of Keltill!” he shouted, to less-than-magical effect.
    Swallowing a small sour portion of his pride, he resorted to the use of his smaller size to slip serpentlike closer to the entrance through the crowd in a less honorable but more effective manner, tugging the protesting Marah behind him. They emerged into a small pocket of calm around a man with a hawk-beaked nose, whose lined face and deep-set green eyes seemed far older than his black hair and beard, and whose moth-eaten purple-and-yellow robe seemed older still. He was juggling three delicate-looking tinted glass balls: red, white, and blue.
    The space accorded to the juggler by the crowd was not at all large and not all that calm. A Sequane warrior brushed by him, he lost concentration for the briefest moment, and the glass balls went flying toward Vercingetorix. Without thought, Vercingetorix snatched them out of the air—one, two, three!
    “Well played, Vercingetorix!” shouted the juggler.
    “You know me?” exclaimed Vercingetorix in no little surprise.
    “What bard in Gaul does not know of Vercingetorix, noble son of the great Keltill!” the juggler roared at the top of his lungs.
    The crowd, which had been pressing in, began to open a respectful space. Vercingetorix eyed the bard suspiciously, certain that the man was after some advantage, but on the other hand, the bard had already gifted
him
with the respect of the crowd, and, better still, with the new look of admiration on Marah’s face.
    “So you’re a bard too. . . ?” he said.
    “Among other things,” said the juggler.
    “Then where is your harp?”
    “Skill in games of chance is, alas, not among my many talents,” said the juggler-bard with a shrug. “At least not lately. In fact, my finances might be greatly improved if I could gain entrance to yonder feast by the grace of some noble guest such as yourself. . . .”
    Aha! thought Vercingetorix, eyeing him narrowly. Still, why not? Let this clever fellow open the way, and earn his reward.
    “Why not?” he said. “Announce my presence to clear the way, for I am far too modest to do it myself”—at this Marah groaned—“and I will grant you entry. What did you say you were called?”
    “I didn’t. . . .”
    Just then a fluff-winged seed drifted by through the air.
    “Call me . . . Sporos,” said the bard, “for I am a spore of the wild mushroom of the forest, a seed of legend, floating on the wind.”
    Vercingetorix laughed. “Well, come along, then, Sporos,” he said. “I’m sure we can find you a harp within.”
    “Make way for Vercingetorix!” shouted Sporos. “Make way for the son of Keltill!”
    Vercingetorix took Marah’s arm and proudly escorted her through the crowd behind Sporos, in the void created—half from respect, half in amusement—by his threadbare and trumpet-voiced crier.
    When this entourage reached the Arverne warriors guarding the entrance, however, it was another matter. He recognized neither of his father’s men, and, stranger still, they didn’t seem to recognize him.
    “Where do you think you’re going, boy?” said the one on the left.
    Vercingetorix’s outrage took precedence over his puzzlement.
    “What do
you
think
you’re
doing?” he demanded. “How dare you speak thusly to the son of your commander?”
    “The son of Gobanit. . . ?” said the other warrior.
    “The son of Keltill, fool!” Vercingetorix