A Wizard in the Way

10

Alea took up the pouches of colored sand they’d collected for the occasion.

Gar tied a string to two pegs, tapped one into the ground for a center, then inscribed a circle in the dirt with the other. Alea sprinkled yellow sand in a tadpole shape that occupied one half of the circle, swelling from nothing at its tail to a bulbous head. Then she sprinkled red sand in the other half, so that she had two tadpoles, nestled head to tail, making up a complete circle. She dropped a little red to make a tiny circle for the yellow tadpole’s eye and used yellow sand for the red tadpole’s eye.

“Yellow is masculine, red is feminine,” Gar intoned.

“Each holds within it the seed of the other,” Alea answered. “The masculine element is hot, dry, mechanical, and active.”

“The feminine element,” said Alea, “is cool, moist, organic, and passive.”

Gar put a finger beside the edge of the circle at the midpoint of the yellow tadpole, which was also the midpoint of the red. “When both are in balance, the world is peaceful and prosperous.”

The youngest serfs began edging out of hiding, craning their necks to see.

Gar traced a finger along the edge toward the yellow tadpole’s head. “When the masculine element grows to take up most of the circle, though, governments are tyrannical. No one can think for themselves; everyone does what the king commands. There is always food, but the serfs are kept poor by high taxes.”

The young folk crept closer. The older ones began to sneak out from cover.

Alea moved her finger to trace the red tadpole to its head. “When the feminine element takes up most of the circle, there is no government. Lords are constantly fighting one another, killing the serfs and trampling the crops, keeping people poor.”

The young serfs crept closer, so intent on seeing the Great Monad that they didn’t realize their shadows were falling across it. “Only when there is balance are the people free, with the chance to find their own happiness,” Gar said.

“Only when there is harmony can people be prosperous and safe,” said Alea.

Mira came up behind one of the older serfs and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “You might as well sit down, you know. They love answering questions.”

The serf jumped as though he’d just stepped on a live wire. “You’re all welcome here,” Blaize told the people in the rock pile, “if you really want to learn. Oh, and when you’re done, you might take a hand with the sweeping.”

The serfs stared at him. Then, one by one, they came out from hiding. “Are—are you sure?” a middle-aged woman asked. “Of course,” Blaize said. “They’ve known you were there for days—”

She stared in fright. “Are they… are they magicians?”

“Not as we usually think of them,” Blaize said. “They’re sages.”

“Sit down,” Alea invited one of the younger serfs, “and ask your questions.”

The girl sat down at the side of the circle, warily, hesitantly. The boy beside her sat down, too, slowly. “How do you find harmony?” the girl asked.

“By putting yourself in balance,” Alea answered.

A young man sat down on the other side of the circle, giving the impression of a rabbit about to bolt. “How do you find balance?”

“By seeking harmony with the Way,” Gar replied.

A young woman sat down beside the young man, frowning. “What is this Way you keep talking about?”

Their elders came up behind them, wary but intent.

“The Way includes all things that exist,” Alea explained. “Everything came from it; everything returns to it, as the rivers flow home to the sea.”

“But the sea is never full,” Gar said, “and the Way is empty.”

“But it never needs filling,” Alea said, “for everything is in harmony.” An older man frowned. “How can it be empty and full at the same time?”

“Because it is a paradox,” Gar said, “an apparent contradiction.”

“But only apparent,” Alea reminded them. “It’s like a puzzle, and there’s always a way to solve it.”

“How?” the man asked, totally bewildered.

“By experiencing the Way,” Alea told him. “You can’t really talk about it, for as soon as you do, as soon as you even give it a name, you limit it, and it isn’t really the Way anymore—because the Way is limitless.”

A girl asked, “So if I call it the Way, I’ve lost track of it?”

“Yes,” Gar said, “but we have to call it something, and ‘way’ is about as vague as we can get and still have a name.”

“But as soon as you name it, it stops being what you named?” an older woman asked.

“That’s right.” Gar beamed at her. “Any name you can give it won’t fit long, because it’s always changing.”

“But it’s always the same, too,” Alea put in, “because it’s the source of everything.”

“But I want to find out what it is!” the boy objected.

“Then you’ll find what you expect to find,” Gar told him, “but it won’t be the real Way.”

The older man frowned. “So we can only find it by not looking for it?”

“Exactly!” Alea clapped her hands with delight. “You have to wait until it finds you.”

“But how,” the young woman asked, totally perplexed, “will we know when it does?”

“Believe me,” said Alea, “you’ll know.”

The serfs left an hour later, confused but inspired.

“They won’t come back, will they?” Mira asked mournfully. “Are you joking?” Gar asked. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to them in years!”

“Learning is always exciting.” Blaize beamed, giving the impression that he was about to start bouncing. “I can hardly wait for tomorrow!”

Mira eyed him warily.

Gar decided to build a pavilion to shelter their students from the sun and rain, so he took Blaize downslope to hunt up some reasonably sized deadwood. Mira started making dinner, looking pensive.

“What’s the matter, lass?” Alea asked gently.

Mira looked up, startled, then dropped her gaze again. “Oh, it’s—it’s nothing, Alea.”

“Nothing named Blaize?” Alea smiled. “He bothers you, doesn’t he?”

Reluctantly, Mina nodded.

“More doubts because he’s a magician?”

“No, because he says he wants to be a good man as well as a good magician!” Mira looked up, eyes blazing. “Can he really mean it, Alea? Or was he just spinning a fable, putting on a show to make me think he’s really trying?”

“Oh, he’s sincere,” Alea said. “You can feel the emotions leaking out of him. He means what he says.”

“He could be pretending…”

“If he is, he’s very good at it, but even the best pretender can’t fool a mind reader.”

“Magicians can.”

“Maybe an expert magician, one who specializes in mind reading—are there such?”

Mira nodded.

“But that’s not Blaize’s magic,” Alea pointed out, “and even if it were, he’s still an apprentice. No, he’s an empath and he’s learned how to project his emotions, but he hasn’t learned how to hold them in.”

“Is that why I feel as though I’m getting caught up by his enthusiasm?” Mira asked. “Caught up in his—” She broke off, blushing.

“Yes, he does have romantic moods, doesn’t he?” Alea asked, amused. “He’s still young enough so that they seem a little silly, don’t they?”

“No!” Mira cried. “Hopeless and ill-placed, perhaps, and his ardor always seems to come at the wrong time, but I wouldn’t call him silly!”

Alea gazed at her thoughtfully, then said, “It’s real then, lass.”

“What?” Mira asked in confusion. “His romantic notions or his desire to be good and still be a magician?”

“Both,” Alea said, “but he’ll need a lot of help. It’s hard to gain power and not let it corrupt you.”

Mira wondered if she were talking about magic or love. Then she began to wonder if there were any difference.

The villagers did come back the next day, but with several replacements, and that was the pattern of it—never more than a dozen, but rarely did one person come more than two days in a row. Over the course of the month, Gar and Alea were sure they’d seen the entire adult population of the village.

“It’s their lords,” Mira explained, “and the guard who patrols the fields to watch over them. There’s only one of him to fifty of them, so he’s not going to notice if a few are gone any one day—in fact, if he does, he’ll assume they’re doing other work, such as gathering wood or mending walls or some such. But if it’s the same few every day, he’ll grow suspicious.”

“So they come here in turns.” Alea nodded. She didn’t have to ask how Mira knew; it was a good guess that conditions were the same in her home village.

“We could let them come in the evenings,” Blaize suggested. “Don’t be silly,” Mira said. “They have to rise with the sun.”

“Besides, the ghosts might put them off,” Gar added. That was certainly true. Blaize knew Conn and Ranulf were eavesdropping every day. He could feel their presence, and very often that of other ghosts whom he didn’t know, too. In the evenings, the specters appeared to discuss the issues with Gar and Alea with enthusiasm and fascination. Several times arguments broke out between ghosts, and the living people began to realize that some of the ghosts were sages themselves. Finally Mira asked one of them, an old woman in a hooded robe, “Are you a magician?”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” the old woman snapped. “Oh, I’ve seen our descendants take that title and start using the powers to intimidate people, but we didn’t! Well, not most of us,” she amended. “We were shamans, girl, and don’t you forget it!”

“I won’t,” Mira promised, wide-eyed. “What is a shaman?” The old woman sighed. “A sort of combination of priest, healer, counselor, teacher, and sage, young lady—all that, and more, even, yes, a little bit of a magician. We don’t like that term, though: Our descendants have made it an obscenity by their corruption and cruelty.”

“You’re a wise woman!” A bit of Mira’s fear of the supernatural came back—it was never far away.

“That does sort of wrap it all up, I suppose,” the ghost said. “Then should I call you Your Wisdom?”

“You should call me Elyena and nothing more!” the old woman snapped. “I might be your great-great-great-grandmother, but don’t you dare call me that, either!”

Mina didn’t think she could manage the string of “greats” everytime she wanted to talk to the old woman. “But—where did you gain your wisdom?”

“Why, from an older shaman, of course—several of them, in fact. But if you mean where did they get it, why! They took the ideas of the sages and philosophers of old Terra that our great-great-grandparents brought when they colonized this planet, and they mixed it with the discoveries they’d made themselves, generations of sages and gurus and priests. That’s what it was by the time I learned it, lass: a wisdom and power that’s peculiar to this world of Oldeira, and don’t you forget it!”

“I won’t.” Mira shrank away, then plucked up her nerve and asked, “Is that why you don’t like this talk of the Way?”

“Oh, Taoism’s sound enough—at least the classical version before the Buddhists got hold of it,” Elyena grumbled. “It’s part of the foundation of Oldeira’s wisdom—but only part, lass! And your friend’s trying to make it seem something new, something that will supplant all the philosophy we’ve had such a time thrashing out and blending these past five hundred years.”

“Maybe the serfs need to be reminded of it.” Mira felt shockingly bold offering the idea. “Maybe that way the magicians will hear of it and realize they’re doing something wrong.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Elyena snorted. “They know they’re doing wrong and they don’t care a whir! All they care about is wealth, power, and gaining all the luxuries and pleasures they can!”

“You—you think it’s wrong of Gar and Alea to try to teach, the Way, then?”

“Oh, it won’t do any harm,” the old woman said with a sniff, “but it won’t do any good, either. You tell them I said that!” Mira did. They thought it was very interesting, but they didn’t stop teaching.

After the third week, though, Gar spent an evening sitting cross-legged staring out over the valley and came back to the campfire at bedtime looking very glum.

Mira saw the look of alarm on Alea’s face but also saw how quickly she masked it even as she hurried to meet Gar, and for once there was no sarcastic turn to her words. “What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, just the usual human cussedness.” Gar tried to smile. “They’re excited by our ideas, sure enough, and they’re talking about them whenever they’re sure the lord’s men aren’t listening—but they’re grumbling and complaining about their lives as much as usual, bickering and taunting each other as much as they always did. The boys are still doing their best to seduce the girls, the girls are flaunting their bodies as much as they can in those clothes, and whenever people try to take a few minutes to meditate, their spouses accuse them of laziness.”

“Don’t be disheartened,” Alea said with a tender smile. “They’re only human. You can’t expect them to change their ways overnight.”

“No, I suppose not.” Gar sat down by the campfire with a sigh. “Still, I’d hoped for some sign that they might actually start trying to live the Way instead of merely talking about it.”

“Is there any sign that they’re less bitter about the harshness of their lives?”

Gar was silent a moment, then said, “Now that you mention it, there is—a bit more acceptance, a little of the feeling that the life itself matters more than its comforts.”

“Then they are listening,” Alea said, touching his hand in reassurance. “They really are.”

Mira wondered about the older woman’s claim that Gar was only her friend—not even that, a traveling companion and shield-mate, which was both more and less. Did Alea really know her own heart?

Things weren’t any better by the end of the fourth week, as far as Gar was concerned, but Conn told him, “We’ve been around and listening. They’re beginning to see the lord’s greed and cruelty not just as tyranny, but also as the result of being out of harmony with the Way.”

“Are they really?” Gar asked, hope sparking in his eyes. “They are,” Ranulf assured him. “There’s a sense growing in them that the lords are actually living wrongly.”

“Could they ever have thought anything else?” Alea cried.

“Oh, yes,” Mira said. “The lords are just part of the world, just the way things are.”

Blaize nodded. “Rabbits are timid, wolves are ravenous, and lords are cruel. That’s the way things have always been and the way they’ll always be.”

“And there’s nothing you can do about it,” Gar said grimly. Blaize nodded. “You can suffer it, or you can die fighting back.”

“And people are beginning to think of fighting back?” Alea asked.

“I haven’t heard anything like that yet,” Gar protested. “You’re right,” Conn said, “but thinking the magicians are wrong is the first step toward thinking they’re evil, and that means they’re way out of harmony with the Way.”

“Which means they should put themselves back in touch with it!” Gar slapped his knee in triumph. “The people are beginning to think the magicians should change!”

“That’s how it begins,” Alea said, glowing, “by thinking change is possible.”

“Yes, and the lords are aware of it, too,” Ranulf said. “Your villagers haven’t been keeping the Way a secret, you see. They’ve been telling the neighboring villagers about it whenever they go to trade or to help. It’s all over the district now—villages in five lords’ demesnes.”

“They’ve been talking about the marvelous sages who have been teaching them, too,” Conn said. “A dozen villages know your names and look toward this mountain for some trace of you…”

Gar stiffened. “How long before the lords send their soldiers to get rid of us?”

“Right after they punish the villagers,” Ranulf said. “They’ve sent guards in serfs’ garb to throw magical powder into the village ovens. They think one good round of vomiting and stomach cramps will make the serfs remember their places again.” Gar leaped to his feet. “We have to stop them!”

“Yes, we have to!” Alea jumped up, too. “But how? We can run down to our nearest village and tell them not to bake, but what about the other villages?”

“Conn and Ranulf can tell them,” Gar said, then turned to the two ghosts. “No, wait you said a dozen villages, and there’s only two of you. Can you recruit some other friendly phantoms?”

“We’ve a score standing by itching for some action,” Conn said with a grin. “More excitement they’ve ever seen this side of the grave.”

“Send them to scare the serfs into keeping the grain out of the oven, would you?”

“Gladly, O Sage! Come on, Ranulf, we’re heralds now!” The two ghosts vanished. Gar turned to the younger members. “Smother the fire and come running! We’re going to need to knock on every door, and quickly!” He set off downslope with Alea beside him.

Blaize stared after him, on fire with jealousy. Here he’d been studying ghost leading for five years, and Gar came from nowhere and in five weeks could talk the specters into doing anything he wanted! Well, maybe the big man would teach what he had learned, and in any event, the people had to be warned.

The campfire burst into a ball of steam that hissed like a thousand snakes. Blaize turned to see Mira holding a bucket mouth-down over the drowned coals. “Quickly!” she told him.

“Aye.” Blaize caught up the thick sheet of bark they used for a hearth-shovel and gouged up dirt to smother what had already drowned. Then he and Mira set off downhill after their teachers.

They knew they were too late as soon as they reached the village. Smoke from the oven fire lay like a pall over the common instead of spiraling up as it usually did. People were on their knees doubled over in that haze, retching miserably—men, women, children, old folk. Only Gar and Alea stood upright, but they stood in the midst of the people, the smoke had cleared around them, and two by two the serfs’ heaving slackened, then ceased.

Blaize skidded to a stop. “What can we do here?”

“Aid those whose spasms have stopped! They are sorely weakened!” Mira dashed out to help one old woman who was trying to climb back to her feet.

But some sixth sense, or perhaps the touch of a ghost’s warning, held Blaize to the spot, his mind seeking. He felt doom hover and, from what Gar had told him, the apprehension might not be his. He wished fervently that he could read minds as Gar and Alea could, but since he couldn’t, he used what gifts he had. “Unseen ones! Ancestors of these folk! Seek, I pray you, and find the enemies who descend upon us!”

He stood stiffly, every sense alert, feeling as though he were a vibrating string on a minstrel’s lute. Finally the wind came to make him thrum, a breathy voice that sighed by his ear, “They advance down the northern slope, five magicians and their guards.”

“Sixty-five in all! I shall alert our own magicians!” Blaize sent all the emotion he could behind his words. “I pray you, for your descendants’ sakes, slow the enemy if you can!”

“They move, they come,” the ghost warned him. A sound like a breeze told Blaize it had left, hopefully to harry the magicians.

He ran to Gar and Alea, pointing toward the northern slope, “The enemy comes!”

Gar turned to see the magicians striding down the slope, blue robes fluttering, each with his dozen guards behind him. He looked down at Alea, who nodded. They turned toward their enemies and the smoke from the common streamed away toward the magicians and their soldiers. In seconds, the common was clear.

The magicians halted so suddenly that their guards bumped into them. Then they turned, plowing through their troops upslope, away from the smoke—but the wind moved faster and the cloud engulfed them, settling over magicians and guards alike. Still some blundered uphill, no doubt holding their breaths, but most sank to their knees, bent over and retching. A minute later the fugitives had to breathe, too, and fell as the cloud enfolded them.

But two downslope magicians and their guards struggled to their feet and staggered farther down out of the cloud. There they drew great lungfuls of fresh air. “Onward!” one magician croaked, pointing at Gar and Alea. A fat electrical spark burst from his fingertip and sailed toward them—but winked out halfway there. Nonetheless, he staggered toward them, and his guards pulled themselves together and followed at an unsteady gait. The other magician straightened as much as he could and came after.

It was Pilochin.

Something snapped inside Blaize. He ran toward the woozy throng, crying, “Vengeance! Vengeance for a dishonorable battle, for a kindly lord dead though a dastardly trick!”

Pilochin looked up, startled, then narrowed his eyes and panted, “You had better … learn from … his example … boy, and … flee while you can.”

“Justice!” Blaize pointed straight-armed at Pilochin. “O spirits of this village, ancestors of those beset, give me justice for a good lord slain through treachery!”

Banshees howled, and the air suddenly filled with a score of ghosts, whirling like a tornado, their funnel narrowing to aim at Pilochin. The magician stumbled backward, crying out in alarm. Then the tornado struck and he shouted in pain and surprise as he fell backward sprawling on the ground. He scrambled to his feet and turned to flee in a ragged run. His guards stared at him, looked back at the host of ghosts, then threw down their weapons and followed their lord.

“Drive him mad if you can!” Blaize howled. “Chase him off the edge of a precipice!”

The ghosts might indeed manage that, he realized, for they closed in upon the magician and his guards on three sides, herding them with cries and moans and dreadful shrieks. In panic the men fled up the mountainside, tottering and gasping, weak from the retching. Some fell but kept on, crawling upslope away from the furies that followed.

Mira stared at Blaize in astonishment. He stood rigid, fists clenched, face distorted with anger.

The cloud of poisoned smoke drifted on up the mountainside, enfolding Pilochin and his men, though it was thinning rapidly. They began to retch again, but they kept staggering away from the village.

The other three magicians knelt gasping for air; so did their guards. One magician, though, managed to summon the strength to turn toward the village, raising an arm in command, then snapping it down as though hurling something—and half a dozen two-foot-long dragons sprang from the branches of the trees around the village.

Screaming, the wyverns plunged at Gar and Alea, talons extended.