A Wizard in the Way

13

A patch of fog gathered next to Lodicia, thickened, then formed itself into the ghost of a man in his forties wearing doublet and hose beneath his cloak and a hat with a jaunty feather. He held his forearm up with the ghost of a wyvern perched on it, hissing as it coiled and uncoiled its tail. “Where is she who would command my dragons?” Hano cried gaily.

“I-I am she.” Mira swallowed and took a step forward, almost succeeding in hiding her trembling.

“Are you, then? Don’t be afeard, lass—if you’ve the gift, they’ll not hurt you.”

It wasn’t the wyverns hurting her that worried Mira, but she didn’t tell the ghost that.

“Though, mind you,” Hano said, “you’ll need a stout gauntlet, such as this.” He held out his forearm for her to see. He wore a leather glove with a thick, stiff cuff that extended almost up to his elbow. “You’ll need leather for your shoulders, too, if you want them to perch.” He gestured to the shoulders of his doublet, which were indeed thickened.

Mira shrank away at the warning.

“Not that you need to have them sit there,” Hano said quickly. “You can bid one perch anywhere near you—that tree limb, for example.” He pointed at the nearest branch. “Go on, go over there. Stand near, but not too near.”

With several glances at him, Mira went, though her footsteps dragged.

“There’s a brave lass!” Hano cried. “Now call for a wyvern.”

“How—how do I do that?”

“With your mind, lass, your thoughts alone, though you can speak them aloud if that helps. Go on, now, sing its praises. Tell it what a beautiful beast it is, how its scales shine and its eyes glow—you know, flattery. Works with every animal.”

“Including man,” Alea muttered. “In both sexes,” Gar qualified. “But … but I can’t even see one!” Mira protested.

“Doesn’t matter,” Hano told her. “Think of a wyvern, any wyvern. Doesn’t even have to be a real one. Think of Gorak, here.”

The ghostly wyvern gave a raucous cry.

“All—all right.” Mira screwed her eyes up tight, clenched her fists, and went rigid. Minutes passed. Blaize started toward her, his face a mask of concern, but Gar held out a hand to stop him.

“How does she?” Lodicia asked in an anxious undertone. “Well, she’s thinking it right,” Hano answered softly. “Now we’ll see if she has the talent, as you told me … There!”

He pointed at a speck in the sky. It swelled as it plunged, growing wings and a long supple neck. As it took on the shape of a dragon, several other specks appeared.

“Talent, truly!” Hano declared. “She’s called not just one, but half a dozen!”

In no time at all, it seemed, Mira had six wyverns perched side by side on the branch and Blaize was frantically cutting scraps from the bones of last night’s dinner for her to toss to her new friends.

“They don’t mind it smoked or dried,” Hano told her, “so it’s best to keep a pouch of tidbits by you at all times. Think now of an errand you’d like it to run and the juicy bit of meat it will have if it does. No, don’t close your eyes—once they’re here, you need to keep watch on them.”

“But … but how can I picture something in my mind if my eyes are open?”

“By practice, lass. Come now, I didn’t say it would be easy. Watch the wyverns but think of one of them flying away and coming back, nothing more.”

Mira’s face tensed with strain, but she stared at the wyvern on the left end until it took off in an explosion of wings, caught a thermal and rose in lazy loops, then arrowed off to the west, turned in a long curve, and came sailing back. It landed on the branch again, jaws gaping for its reward. Mira threw it a gobbet of meat.

“Well done!” Hano cried. “The next one, now.”

He coaxed, cajoled, and taught. Mina listened with singleminded intensity, and in the process lost her fear of ghosts.

The villagers came to learn in droves after that. Seeing their new sages fight off five magicians left them with a great desire to learn. They listened intently and even began trying to apply Taoist principles in everyday life. As Gar and Alea taught them, that included striving for harmony within themselves and without—in practical terms, such things as planning instead of worrying and turning quarrels into discussions. Of far more interest to the serfs was the instruction in martial arts, showing them how they could respond to attack by using an opponent’s strength and momentum to help him defeat himself. They understood quite well how that could restore harmony between bully and victim.

The exercises also helped them to balance the conflicting tensions of their bodies into inner harmony, which they felt as peace though they didn’t notice that until their teachers pointed it out to them.

They weren’t the only ones who gained a new viewpoint toward their studies. After their conference with the ghosts, neither Gar nor Alea could begin to meditate without a peripheral awareness of half a dozen specters hanging on their every thought but in a trance even that ceased to matter much.

Blaize and Mira studied and practiced as assiduously as any of the villagers—more, considering that, after the countryfolk had left, the two of them worked at developing their different talents. Blaize was indignant at first, still offended that Gar and Alea should so easily succeed where he had made such slow progress.

“It’s not fair!” he told Mira. “I labored long and hard, I practiced hours every day for five years trying to attract and control ghosts and they’ve surpassed me in a matter of days!”

“But you didn’t know the Way,” Mira reminded him, “and they did.”

Blaize frowned in thought, then nodded reluctantly. “Yes, that makes sense. The ghosts must be part of the Tao, too, mustn’t they? Whether they know it or not. Yes, of course somebody who knew the Way would be able to learn quickly how to deal with phantoms.”

“It will take us longer, of course,” Mira told him. “We’re both trying to learn the Way at the same time as we’re trying to apply it.”

“Yes. Of course we’ll go more slowly.” Blaize gave her a look that was almost as surprised as it was pleased. Inside, he rejoiced, amazed—Mira no longer seemed to be treating him as a villain! She even seemed friendly! He would have liked more, but he was happy with what progress he seemed to have made.

He and Mira both buckled down to some serious learning. Mira suffered a nightly training session with Hano and her friendship with wyverns, all wyverns, grew by leaps and bounds; soon there was almost nothing the little dragons wouldn’t do for her.

Gar waited for the surrounding villages to come to learn the Way. When no one came, he did a telepathic survey to see if perhaps his village was the planet’s best kept secret—but no, peasant had talked to peasant who had talked to peasant, cousin to uncle to second cousin once-removed, and the surrounding villages had indeed learned what was happening here. In fact, the news seemed to be spreading far and wide, like ripples in a pond, but no one else came to learn. Gar began to realize that they were all taking the prudent course of waiting to see what happened to the villagers who had dared to learn to fight back—though of course, the serfs themselves hadn’t fought their lords, only their teachers had. It remained to be seen if the magicians would punish the peasants simply for learning.

Gar realized the sense of it. “That’s what I would do in their places,” he confided to Alea.

“Of course,” she said. “They’re alive, after all. Why risk magicians coming to throw boulders and fireballs unless you know you’re going to be able to fight them off?”

“I don’t think the magicians will attack the village just for becoming Taoists,” Gar mused, “but they might attack us.”

“Yes, they might,” Alea agreed. “Do we have the right to stay and endanger the village?”

“They are making excellent progress toward understanding the world without superstition—or at least as much as they can, on a planet like this.” A proud smiled flickered over his face, then flickered again. “They’ve learned the courage of their convictions, too. They might even be willing to do what they believe to be right no matter how their lord threatened.”

“Dangerous, that,” Alea pointed out. “It’s only a step or two from striking back at the magicians for trying to do what’s wrong.”

“Well, yes, but that’s been my goal, hasn’t it?” Gar said candidly. “Nonetheless, I don’t think they can win yet, not by themselves. We’ll have to convert a few more villages.”

“Time to hit the road,” Alea agreed.

The next morning, they came down to the village to tell their pupils good-bye.

The villagers panicked.

“But how will we live without you?” an older man cried. “The magicians will fall on us again and flay us alive for having fought them!”

“You didn’t fight them,” Gar pointed out. “We did.”

“They’re not apt to attack you by yourselves,” Alea said, “especially since your lives are even more peaceful now that you’ve learned what we had to teach.”

“Peaceful!”

“Why, yes,” Gar said mildly. “I haven’t heard husbands and wives screaming at each other very often in the last few weeks, and no fistfights between drunks.”

“In fact, no drunks,” Alea added.

The villagers looked at one another, startled.

“Well,” one young man said, “we may not be having fist fights, but when Athelstan and I grew angry with each other we made it a martial arts match, as you’ve shown us.”

“And worked off your anger with neither being hurt much.” Gar nodded. “You restored harmony inside you both, and harmony between you. No magician is going to object to his serfs living in peace.”

“As long as we don’t practice our new skills on him, eh?” the older man said with a grin.

“Exactly. What lord ever minded his peasants indulging in a bout of wrestling now and then?”

“But the teacher’s another matter,” Alea said. “The magicians don’t know where our doctrines might end. If we leave now, they’ll be content to see you’re peaceful—but if we stay, they’ll come back to wipe us out.”

“Or try to,” Gar said, poker-faced.

All things considered, the villagers decided they were right to leave.

“You could stay,” one old woman said to the two apprentices half-hopefully.

Mira looked at Blaize, startled, and they saw the temptation in each other’s eyes.

“There’s something to be said for having a home,” Blaize admitted.

“Yes, but not if the lord’s going to command you to do things you hate.” Mira’s resolve stiffened. “Besides, I haven’t learned everything Alea and Gar have to teach me yet.”

“Neither have I.” Blaize turned to the old woman. “Thank you for the invitation, but I think I’ll follow my teachers.”

“I, too,” Mira said, “but thank you.”

“Go well, then,” the old woman sighed, then admitted, “I would, if I were your age and unmarried with no children.” Off they went, to follow Gar and Alea.

The search for more pupils was depressing, though. They did just as they had, setting up camp on a hillside above a hamlet, then sitting in meditation long hours, waiting for the villagers to come spying out of curiosity—but the serfs stayed home, and after two weeks of waiting, Gar investigated mentally.

“They’re not curious,” he reported to Alea. “They know who we are.”

“So the grapevine’s been that busy, has it?” Alea asked sourly. “And they’d rather be cautious than learn?”

“All they can see is that we bring magicians on the attack,” Gar said, “and that we didn’t even stay around to guard the one village that did listen to us.”

“Perhaps we’ve tried the wrong village,” Alea suggested.

So they struck camp and hiked fifty miles, hoping a different demesne would have villagers with a different attitude. After two weeks with no sign of interest, though, Gar read minds again and reported, “They’re afraid to take the chance of finding something better, for fear of losing what they already have.”

“That isn’t much,” Alea said, wrinkling her nose.

“No, but they don’t have magicians fighting in their pastures very often, and they don’t have to worry about bandits—their lord gets angry if anyone else tries to fleece his peasants.”

“That’s his privilege,” Alea said tartly.

“Of course,” Gar echoed. “He thinks that’s what serfs are for. But he does give them some security: they know what to expect next month, even if it’s only forced labor on his lands and taxes at harvest time.”

“So the villagers prefer the security of an overlord even it if means oppression and losing their young people to the magician’s service—the girls to wait on him and the boys to be his guards.” Alea shook her head in disgust. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“So do I,” Gar sighed. “After all, in their own minds, they’re only being prudent. I’m very much afraid, though, that they lack the courage to be free and the willingness to accept the responsibility that goes along with that freedom.”

Alea thought she had never seen him look so dejected. She tried to buck him up. “It’s not inborn, though. Blaize and Mira are proof of that.”

“Yes, they are, aren’t they?” Gar looked up at the two youngsters with a smile. “They had the courage to fight, in their own ways, and they are making progress.” His smile turned sardonic. “More than I am, at the moment.”

“Yes.” Alea turned to beam at the younger members of the team, sitting by the fire in earnest discussion—maybe a little too earnest. “Hano’s ghost tells me that Mira’s a very rare kind of wyverneer. Most of them train their reptiles by rewards of meat and punishment of headaches, but that’s not her style.”

“Really,” Gar said, interested. “How does she control them?”

“Well, she doesn’t really—she just makes friends with them. They choose to fly along because they enjoy her company.”

“Then they’ll do anything to protect a friend?” Gar grinned. “So all she has to do is persuade them that attacking her enemies is protecting her.”

“Or even bringing her a rabbit for dinner,” Alea said.

Gar frowned. “I don’t remember her using them to hunt.”

“She says she hasn’t, but they’ve offered time and again—something like a cat bringing you a dead mouse as a gift.” Gar smiled, amused. “Well, if we find a rabbit in the pot some night, we’ll know they stopped offering and started doing. I wonder why more wyverneers don’t use her approach.”

“She explained it to me. She makes friends with the wild wyverns, and they’re very different from the flocks born in captivity on her home estate. She says the tame wyverns are all bloodthirsty little creatures, bred and trained to be saurian sadists—attacking anything their masters tell them to, obeying anybody who’s meaner than they are.”

“Not the world’s best news.” Gar frowned.

Blaize raised his voice a notch. “Your wild wyverns may know love and loyalty, but could they stand against the blood-crazed coursers a magician raises?”

“Oh, be sure they can,” Mina told him. “After all, what kinds of enemies do the tame wyverns fight? Only peasants who are frightened of them before they see them, just by what they’ve heard of the beasts. But your wild wyvern has to bring home dinner every day, which means he has to hunt and kill it—and fight off beasts who want to make dinner of her!”

“Not ‘my’ wild wyvern,” Blaize objected. “I’ll cleave to my ghosts, thank you. At least they can think about what to do or not do.”

“I’ll have you know my wyverns think quite well! And they’re loyal—once they decide you’re a friend, they’re true for life!”

“How would you know? You’ve only had them for a few weeks,” Blaize objected.

“At least they’re real friends, not allies out of convenience!”

“I wouldn’t call having a mutual enemy convenience—”

“Wouldn’t you?” Mira challenged. “As soon as that mutual enemy’s overcome, your ghosts will drift away and ignore you—if they don’t find a reason to turn on you first!”

Blaize smiled. “I’ll have to learn to persuade them not to, won’t I?”

“My friends,” Mira pointed out, “don’t need persuading—not once you’ve befriended them, at least!”

“Hold!” Blaize raised a hand, looking off into space. “My friends are sounding the alarm!”

Sure enough, Conn and Ranulf appeared in the shade of an oak, dim and watery in daylight, but their faces were hard and angry. “Up and away!” Conn cried. “Your enemies are on the march!”

“How far away?” Gar came to his feet.

“Perhaps half an hour, at their rate of march. Off with you!” Blaize and Mira leaped up in alarm.

Gar stood, scowling.

“The better part of valor,” Alea reminded him.

“It’s the same five magicians.” Gar read distant minds, his gaze remote under lowering brows. “But they’re bringing fifty guards each this time. They’re planning to let brute strength and strong brutes do the worst of the job for them.”

“The worst?” Alea asked in alarm. “I thought they fought with magic!”

“Not when they’re outspelled.” Gar’s eyes sparkled with anger. “This time they’re going to sit back and wait while their little army of two hundred fifty charges in to catch us and tie us up.”

“Two hundred fifty?” Conn said with a vulpine smile. “Then half of them are fresh from the plow with scarcely enough training to hold a spear! One sight of a ghost, one moan, one clank of a chain, and home they’ll run!”

“He’s right.” Blaize squared his shoulders even though his eyes were wide with fear. “And if one ghost should scare them, a dozen will rout them utterly. I’ll call up a few I’ve come to know—”

“And I shall summon a dozen of the friends I’ve made these last few weeks!” Mira cried. “Let’s see how their courage holds in the face of claws-and claws in the face!” She trembled, but she stood firm.

Alea smiled at both of them, then turned back to Gar. “Do you still doubt the worth of these serfs?”

“Not these two, at least,” Gar said with an answering smile, “but I don’t think we can fight off this many without some getting hurt, even a man or two dead.”

“Let them die!” cried Ranulf. “They knew the risk when they became soldiers!”

“Yes, but only a few of them actually chose their trade,” Gar answered, “and we’re preaching peace and harmony, not slaughter. We’ll fight if we have to—but so far we don’t have to.”

Alea nodded. “Time for discretion.”

“What does that mean?” Blaize asked, puzzled.

“In practical terms, it means we strike camp and see if we can march faster than the magicians’ little army,” Gar told him. “You don’t mean we’re running away!”

“I mean exactly that,” Gar said. “If they don’t give up the chase, we’ll choose high ground and a narrow trail to make our stand and fight them off. If we fight them here, though, the battle might spill over onto the villagers, and they may not deserve to be free, but they don’t deserve to die, either.”

“No, that’s true,” Blaize said, frowning. He turned away to start stuffing his pack.

“No amusement here,” Conn said in scorn. “Let us know if you decide to stand up for yourself, laddie!”

He and Ranulf disappeared.

Mira looked up at the half-dozen wyverns circling above. “There’re friends for you! I didn’t even call—they came because they felt my alarm.” She raised her voice. “Not yet, little ones! Go and hide, but stay near. If the soldiers attack, I’ll call on you quickly.”

The wyverns wheeled and glided away toward a stand of trees, squawking in disappointment.

“Not as good as ghosts, perhaps, but they certainly could prove useful,” Blaize said, his eyes on the little dragons.

“Not as good! What’s better about your ghosts, I’d like to know?”

“They can’t be knocked out of the air by crossbow bolts, for one thing,” Blaize said. “Here, I’ll pack your tent. You drown the fire.”

Off they went as quickly as they could into the forest and along the stream, but the woods-ghosts told Blaize that the soldiers were still coming. Slow they might be and wary of the shadows and overhanging limbs, but their masters wouldn’t let them stop, driving them ahead with fire and shaking the earth behind them.

“Might bandits find us?” Mira asked, looking about them wide-eyed.

Gar gazed off into the shadows. “They already have—and they’re thinking about attacking, but they realize they’d have to fight the soldiers for us. They’re pulling back to watch and wait.” Then he straightened, smiling. “One of them has a boat moored nearby! We’ll borrow it.”

They found a rowboat moored beneath an overhanging bank. In they went and took turns with the oars. The current quickened and bore them out of the forest much faster than the soldiers could march, but as they came out of the trees, they found themselves in a gully.

“Over to the side,” Gar directed. “I don’t like traveling where somebody can throw rocks down at me.”

His friends allowed as how he had a point and moored the boat to a root. Up the bank they climbed, then across a meadow to the shadow of some hills. They climbed as the sun sank behind them, and when they reached the top, they looked down the far side and saw, in the gloom of the hills’ shadow, a grim outcrop of angular shapes where two rivers met. Clusters of lights glowed in its darkness.

“A city!” Alea exclaimed, staring.

“Yes, one of the graveyards of our ancestors,” Blaize said, shivering. “I wouldn’t like to try to sort out the hundreds of ghosts I’d find in those towers!”

“Somebody lives there,” Gar pointed out “Somebody alive, I mean.”

Alea looked back sharply. “Do you hear that?”

The others fell silent, listening, and heard the clank of steel behind them. They turned to look anxiously and saw Conn in the shadows below them, waving and calling, “They found your boat and are climbing after—much more quickly now that they’re out of the forest!”

“Try to slow them down, will you?” Blaize asked.

“We’ll try.” Conn shrugged. “But their masters have ghosts of their own, and any fear we inspire will be balanced by those behind them.”

Ranulf appeared beside him, calling, “Go quickly! Go to ground! Hide while you may!”

“Hide?” Blaize asked in a quandary. “Where?”

“There’s a city below you to the east! They’ll never come after you there.”

“Neither will we!” Mira shuddered. “I’ve no wish to be plagued by the ghosts of our ancestors—or hunted by the maniacs who are too mad to fear them!”

“You’ve small choice!” Conn said impatiently. “Besides, what’s to fear from a few ghosts?”

“But these are the ghosts of centuries of madmen!” Blaize protested.

“Aye, and some might have rage so intense as to cause a mortal pain,” Ranulf conceded. “Still and all, lad, it’s phantom pain and means nothing. Spectral swords don’t really pierce you, limbs aren’t truly broken. Ignore and plow ahead, and they’ll leave off.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of this.” Alea turned to Blaize. “Nonetheless, lad, I think we can summon anger to equal their own. If they can cause us pain, we can return it.”

Blaize looked none too sure—in fact, he looked as fearful as a rabbit surrounded by foxes—but he swallowed, straightened his shoulders, and said bravely, “Surely we can. Let us march.”

“We have some protection, at least.” Mira looked up and a dozen wyverns came flocking, cawing in delight at being able to help her.

“You can summon up some anger too, I think.” Alea looked up at Gar. “You may try to pretend that you don’t have the ghost of an emotion, but I know better.”

“You won’t leave me in the shade,” Gar assured her. “I do have a well of bitterness I can tap, and I’ve had some experience with madmen.”

Alea looked at him again, startled, but he only said, “Lead on.”

She turned away toward the city and started the long climb down.