“Oh, I can walk.” To prove it, Blaize took a few steps, though with a slight limp.
“You are hiding pain,” Mira accused. “Come, lean on my shoulder.” She looked up at Alea and Gar. “He needs warmth and hot broth.”
“Yes, he does,” Alea said, amused, but Gar only nodded gravely and turned away. “Come.”
“Call if we go too swiftly for you,” Alea told Mira, “and we’ll slow down.” Then she turned away to walk beside Gar.
They kept their pace slow and Mira found she and Blaize were able to match it. “Did your lord press you into his service, or did you volunteer?”
“Volunteered, in a way.” Blaize gave her a sickly grin. “I ran away, found a magician who was kind to his peasants, and enlisted in his service.”
Mira’s eyes widened, and her insides flipped over again. “That was dangerous—and very brave.”
Blaize shrugged off the praise, embarrassed. “I could not stay to see my family ground down further every day, and I would rather have died than serve their lord.”
“You might have died indeed!” Mira exclaimed. She had heard of such daring, but only rarely—if a serf could escape and take service with another magician, his old lord had to let him go; custom as well as prudence dictated such restraint, for there was no reason to go to war over a single runaway, especially since his new lord might prove stronger. “Were you lucky or shrewd? Most who try to escape are usually caught and flogged within an inch of their lives!”
“Sometimes past that,” Blaize said grimly. “I’ve heard of men dying under the lash.”
“Yes, and I’ve heard of others whom the guards have killed outright before they could find a new magician to accept their service! You were very lucky—and very brave.” Her eyes shone.
“I was lucky indeed,” Blaize said fervently, “though there was some sense in it, too. I knew which magician I sought before I fled, you see.”
“You did! But—but I thought that all lords were equally cruel. What point is there in escaping one only to find another who is just as bad?”
“But I had heard of Arnogle and his kindness before I escaped,” Blaize told her.
“Oh … Arnogle. Yes.” Mira’s gaze strayed. Everyone had heard of Arnogle and his generosity. “But he is not the strongest of magicians, is he?”
She regretted the words the moment she’d said them, even more when she saw Blaize wince with the pain of memory. “He was not, alas—though he proved quite a bit stronger with me to aid him.”
“Aid him!” Mira froze. “Aid him in what way?”
“By summoning ghosts,” Blaize explained. “I could do that much, but I could scarcely do anything with them at all once they had come.” He gave her a sardonic smile. “I think that was why my old lord let me escape—he was tired of having ghosts hanging about the village with nothing to do. There was always the chance they would turn mischievous, you see.”
“I see indeed!” Mira dropped his arm as though it were firehot. “You were Arnogle’s apprentice!”
“Why, yes.” Blaize’s eyes widened. “What sort of service did you think I meant?”
“As a guard, of course!” Mira backed away, trembling “What did you think to do once you had become a magician in your own right—capture some peasants to toil for you, whip them when you were bored, and summon their daughters to your bed whenever it pleased you?”
“Not at all!” Blaize said, startled. “I meant to overthrow my old lord and govern his peasants with kindness and generosity!”
“Indeed! And how long would it have been before you began to enjoy the power of making others cringe?” Mira whirled to Alea and Gar. “Send him away! It was not a soldier’s uniform he cast away in his flight—it was a sorcerer’s robe and tall pointed hat! He is one of them, he is a sorcerer’s apprentice!”
The two tall people stopped, turning to her in surprise. “Is he really?” Alea asked.
Blaize stared at her, wounded. “An apprentice I am, and would have become a magician if my master had not been slain in this battle. Is that so bad a thing?”
“Yes,” Mira snapped. “Magicians make people suffer and fear them, then force them to do things they don’t want to do, things they know are wrong!”
Alea looked at her in surprise, then in sympathy, and Mira knew the tall woman had a past much like her own. She said, though, “A man can be a magician and still be good.”
Too late, Mira remembered that these two were magicians themselves, but magicians from far away. “Not in this land!”
“Most magicians are tyrants,” Blaize agreed, “but my master was not. His peasants loved him.”
“They still were peasants!”
“Yes, but they lived comfortably, He was a good man and a kind lord.”
“How long would he have remained so?” Mira demanded. “Even a magician who means to be good gives in to temptation, a little at first, then more and more, until he becomes as wicked as any!”
“There are always a few who manage to withstand the lure of corruption,” Gar said quietly. “He deserves his chance to prove his good will. Certainly he has seen a good example, if his master did indeed rule his peasants with justice and kindness.”
“He did, and they were happy.” Blaize looked away, shivering. “Alas for them! How shall they fare, now that Pilochin has conquered them?”
Mira shivered, too, at the foul name. “I have heard of Pilochin. He burns people.”
“He is a fire-caster,” Blaize said grimly. “He burned my master Arnogle and all his guards.”
A shoot of pity sprouted in Mira’s heart but she did her best to pluck it out. “Why, then, are you left alive?”
“I scarcely know.” Blaize’s gaze drifted away, face racked with grief and guilt. “My ghost warned me at the last second; I drew back and shouted a warning to Arnogle, but it was too late.”
Mira stared. “You are a ghost leader! No wonder the specter led us to you!”
“I called it up and beseeched it to find me help,” Blaize admitted. “It is a very friendly ghost and took pity on me.”
“Friendly to you!” Mira turned to Alea and Gar. “For anyone else, this specter would have stood by and waited for him to die so that it could gobble his spirit and turn itself into his ghost! He must be a powerful magician indeed to be able to command it to do his will!”
“I did not command,” Blaize protested, “only beseeched and persuaded.”
“What did you promise to give it in return?” Mira snapped. “The life of one of the people it brought to aid you?”
Alea stiffened. Gar’s eyes gleamed.
“I promised it nothing,” Blaize said indignantly. “I made it proud to be what it is—a wild ghost, unshaped by human will.”
“Human will! It is the ghost who swallows the human, not the human the ghost!”
“Sometimes,” Blaize said. “Most often, though, the dying spirit seizes upon a ghost as a way to hold on to life. The ghost does not enjoy the experience and is itself extinguished, swallowed up by the human personality.”
“Then why do ghosts cluster around a deathbed?” Mira demanded.
“Because that is when the human spirit cries out,” Baize told her, “some for Heaven, because they have lived long and fully and are ready to die; some because life has tortured them and they welcome death; but many because they have enjoyed life and wish to hold to it, no matter what the cost the cost to others, at least.”
Mira stared “I have never heard any of this.”
“Few have,” Blaize said, “only ghost leaders, and who would believe us if we told?”
Mira was silent, disconcerted.
Blaize smiled sadly. “Even you yourself. Even when I have told you, you do not believe me.”