Bran Mak Morn: The Last King Read Online Free PDF

boulder and sat him down, and the girl threw her arms about him, murmuring to him in a gentle, joyous voice.
    �he Sword of the Picts is swift,�mumbled the wizard. �he Arm of the Pict is Strong. Hai! They say a mighty one has risen among the Western Men.� �aze ye upon the ancient Fire of the Lost Race, Wolf of the Heather! Aai, hai! They say a chief has risen to lead the race onward.� The wizard stooped above the coals of the fire which had gone out, muttering to himself.
    Stirring the coals, mumbling in his white beard, he half droned, half sang a weird chant, of little meaning or rhyme, but with a kind of wild rhythm, remarkably strange and eery.
    ��r lakes agleam the old gods dream;
    Ghosts stride the heather dim.
    The night winds croon; the eery moon
    Slips o�r the ocean� rim.
    From peak to peak the witches shriek.
    The gray wolf seeks the height.
    Like gold sword sheath, far o�r the heath
    Glimmers the wandering light.�
    The ancient stirred the coals, pausing now and then to toss on them some weird object, keeping time with his motions with his chant.
    �ods of heather, gods of lake,
    Bestial fiends of swamp and brake;
    White god riding on the moon,
    Jackal-jawed, with voice of loon;
    Serpentgod whose scaly coils
    Grasp the Universe in toils;
    See, the Unseen Sages sit;
    See the council fires alit.
    See I stir the glowing coals,
    Toss on manes of seven foals.
    Seven foals all golden shod
    From the herds of Alba� god.
    Now in numbers one and six,
    Shape and place the magic sticks.
    Scented wood brought from afar,
    From the land of Morning Star.
    Hewn from limbs of sandal-trees,
    Brought far o�r the Eastern Seas.
    Sea-snakes�fangs, see now, I fling,
    Pinions of a sea-gull� wing.
    Now the magic dust I toss,
    Men are shadows, life is dross.
    Now the flames crawl, ere they blaze,
    Now the smokes rise in a haze.
    Fanned by far off ocean-blast
    Leaps the tale of distant past.�
    In and out among the coals licked the thin red flames, now leaping in swift upward spurts, now vanishing, now catching the tinder thrown upon it, with a dry crackle that sounded through the stillness. Wisps of smoke began to curl upward in a mingling, hazy cloud.
    �imly, dimly glimmers the starlight,
    Over the heather-hill, over the vale.
    Gods of the Old Land brood o�r the far night,
    Things of the Darkness ride on the gale.
    Now while the fire smoulders, while smokes enfold it,
    Now ere it leap into clear, mystic flame,
    Harken once more (else the dark gods withhold it),
    Hark to the tale of the race without name.�
    The smoke floated upward, swirling about the wizard; as through a dense fog his fierce yellow eyes peered. As if across far spaces his voice came floating, with a strange impression of disembodiment. With a weird intonation as though the voice were, not the voice of the ancient, but a something detached, a something apart; as if disembodied ages, and not the wizard� mind, spake through him.
    A wilder setting I have seldom seen. Overhead all darkness, scarce a star a-glitter, the waving tentacles of the Northern Lights reaching lurid banners across the sullen sky; sombre slopes stretching away to mingle with vagueness, a dim sea of silent, waving heather; and on that bare, lone hill, the half-human horde crouching like sombre specters of another world, their bestial faces now merging in the shadows, now touched with blood as the fire-light veered and flickered. And Bran Mak Morn sitting like a statue of bronze, his face thrown into bold relief by the light of the leaping flames. And that weird face, limned by the eery light, with its great, blazing yellow eyes, and its long, snow-white beard.
    � mighty race, the men of the Mediterranean.� Savage faces alit, they leaned forward. And I found myself thinking that the wizard was right. No man might civilize those primeval savages. They were untamable, unconquerable. The spirit of the wild, of the Stone Age was theirs.
    �lder than the snow-crowned