“Was, and is,” Evanescent assured her. “Don’t worry, dear. You’ll always be confident of your ability to deal with any situation I can handle.”
Alea wasn’t certain she liked that idea, but since she couldn’t do much about it, she decided to enjoy the advantages. “The situations I’m likely to encounter are difficulties with local magicians. Can you deal with them?”
“One or two at a time,” Evanescent said judiciously. “Of course, with your friend Gar helping out, the three of us together should be able to cope with five or six of the locals. Their psi power isn’t really all that strong, you know.”
“Strong enough to tyrannize their serfs!” Alea snapped. “That takes cleverness and ruthlessness, not telepathy,”
Evanescent told her. “I’ve surveyed three kinds of magicians so far, and the fire-casters don’t have any psi power at all.”
Alea stared. “Then how—?”
“They kept alive one element of Terran technology,” Evanescent explained, “and guard its secret closely. They teach their apprentices how to work the flamethrowers, but even if those apprentices are their sons, they don’t teach them how to make the fuel, or where to find the rock-oil from which they make it. That secret they pass on only when they’re dying.”
“Untrusting and manipulative,” Alea interpreted. “Greedy, too, if the look of their serfs is anything to go by. Their clothes are patched and worn and the few new garments they have are very obviously homemade.”
“They’re barely getting by,” Evanescent said, “and don’t have much time to spare for spinning fine thread or weaving soft cloth. But you have to admit the lords clothe their soldiers well.”
“Yes, and give them very shiny weapons, too! They’re unfeeling and insensitive, though, if Mira’s predicament is at all common.”
“The magicians are greedy for things other than money,” Evanescent agreed. “All in all, I would have to say that if you and Gar wish to devote a year or so to destroying their power, you would be spending the time well.”
“I’ve seen people in worse straits,” Alea said, “but these are surely bad enough to justify our butting in.” She frowned. “How, though? We’ve dealt with a warlord before, and Herkimer has told me how Gar and his friend Dirk overthrew several tyrants, but none of them were magical! How do you fight a force you can’t see?”
“Why, with belief in other powers you can’t see.” Evanescent smiled, a disconcerting sight in itself. “Do you remember Brigante’s sages?”
“Why, yes,” Alea said slowly. “They led the people in harmony and cooperation, healing minds and hearts.”
“These magicians are just as much warlords as the bandit chieftain on Brigante wished to become,” Evanescent pointed out, “though considering their mode of fighting, perhaps we should say ‘magic-lords’ instead of ‘warlords.’ Anything that makes people of different estates join together in anyway should trouble the lords of those estates considerably.”
“Especially if that thing is a way of thinking that isn’t really a religion,” Alea said, smiling, “but is so peaceable that it gives them no excuse for oppressing it.”
“I don’t think these magic-lords are the sort to require an excuse,” Evanescent said thoughtfully, “but I do think even they would have trouble finding grounds to fight a philosophy until it had become too widespread to be exterminated.”
“A notion definitely worth considering,” Alea said with a smile, “especially if that religion had some physical disciplines that could very easily be turned into a system of fighting.”
“I would be careful to hide the implications,” Evanescent warned, “especially if you were tempted to make that philosophy prove itself by making things happen magically.”
“Yes, any kind of magic would be grounds for local lords to stamp it out,” Alea agreed. “I’ve learned that all governments depend on a monopoly of violence, but this is the first one I’ve ever heard of that depends on a monopoly of magic.”
“Major magics, at least,” Evanescent qualified. “Little tricks would pass unnoticed, but you never know which minor illusion will prove its power.”
Alea heard an owl hoot behind her, then come rushing in a flutter of feathers. She turned to look just as the bird tilted its path to climb over her head. Its wings spanned four feet and its body had to be eighteen inches long at least. She turned frontward again to watch it climb, using the rising air from her fire as a spiral ladder. When it had disappeared into the night, she lowered her gaze, looking at the empty woods about her as a good sentry should, but the clearing was empty except for herself, her three companions, and their fire. Nothing else stirred, and she admitted to herself that she had become very sleepy.
Still, that was a good idea that had come to her in midnight musings. Second watch was lonely, but it was good for meditation. When nothing happened, though, it did make you feel like sleeping, and surely she had watched for four hours at least. She rose and went to wake Gar, looking forward to taking his place on the pine-bough pallet. The big lug would have warmed it well for her, if he had done nothing else this night.
He came awake instantly, starting up from sleep. “Trouble?”
“Not a bit,” Alea told him. “Nothing moved except an owl that dive-bombed my head. Boring night. It’s all yours.”
She woke at first light while the younger people still slept. Over the first cup of tea she told Gar her idea, keeping her voice low. “The sages of Brigante showed us that philosophy and good example could work in place of a government, after all.”
“Yes, when combined with village councils and enforced by a secret society.” Gar’s smile was tight with irony. “Still, it’s a good idea—in a society like this one, it could be just the rallying point the people need.”
“And by the time the movement is big enough to worry the magicians, it will be too big for them to stop,” Alea said triumphantly.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Gar said. “Never underestimate the power of old-fashioned violence. But we might be able to mix in some self-defense lessons.”
“You mean by teaching martial arts as part of the philosophy?”
“Why not? Some teachers say Tae Kwon Do is philosophy in action, after all. More to the point, Kung Fu came out of the Taoist monasteries, and that’s the kind of thought system we’d be using here.”
“Why Taoism?” Alea asked with a frown. “And how will we learn about it?”
“We’ll tell Herkimer to print out copies of the books and drop them to us at night. As to why, it’s because the Taoist sages are the ones who came up with the idea of a benign anarchy, one that would work by the peasants wanting to imitate the sage, who lived high on his mountain in the wilderness. Watching him, they would naturally want to live in harmony with their neighbors and their environment.”
Alea gave a short laugh. “They forgot about human greed and lust for power.”
“We all have our blind spots,” Gar said, “but it was a noble ideal.”
“What noble ideal? What could wash away human greed?” They looked up to see Mira rising from her pine boughs and Blaize levering himself up on an elbow, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
“A philosophy,” Alea answered, “a set of ideas that all fit together. If enough people believe in them, they can shape a whole society.”
“Can they really?” Mira asked doubtfully.
“Somewhat,” Gar said. “Monks and priests in all cultures have made them less violent than they might have been. The Greek philosophers invented a system of logic that grew into modern science and changed the world into a place of marvels. Confucian scholars invented a civil service system that made Chinese civilization last more than two thousand years… The list goes on. The way we think can help change the way we live, yes.”