“Well, they’re really one light year apart,” Alea explained.
“That’s so far that if you set out to walk to it, then turned the journey over to your child when you died, and your child left it to your grandchild, by the time one of your descendants came there, thousands of years would have passed, and your memory would be only a name, if it survived at all.”
Mira stared, awed by the immensity suddenly breaking upon her senses. “But—but if those two are so close together, how far apart is the Ranger’s left shoulder from his right?” She pointed to a parallelogram of stars.
“Hundreds of light-years,” Alea said. “If someone were to light a huge fire on his left shoulder, your great-great-great-great-great grandchildren would be the first to see it.”
Blaize shivered at the thought, but his face was rapt as he gazed at the stars.
Mira shivered, too, feeling suddenly alone and tiny, lost among the constellations. The old, familiar, friendly stars suddenly seemed cold and alien, and incredibly distant.
“Each of those stars is a sun,” Alea explained, “like the bright ball that lights the day here and gives you its warmth and light.”
“A sun?” Mira stared. “But there is only one sun, above the world! They can’t be suns—they are too small!”
“They only seem small because they are so far away,” Alea answered, “and they don’t hang above the world, for worlds are balls of rock and earth and swing around their suns in endless circles.”
Mira’s eyes mirrored the horde of stars above her. “You mean each of those stars has a world?”
“No, only a few,” Alea explained, “but that ‘few,’ when there are so many stars, means thousands.”
Mira’s mind reeled at the idea of thousands of worlds like her own, filled with warmth and flowers and animals and people, falling in love and marrying and living out their lives struggling to rear their children without starving.
“Do you see that river of stars that slants across the heavens?” Alea asked.
“The Waterfall of the Gods? Of course.”
“That is really the far side of the galaxy,” Alea explained. Mira paled. “You mean Gar is trying to reach one of those stars with his mind?”
“No, the star he seeks is much closer, only two hundred thirty-four light-years away.” Alea pointed at a patch of darkness between the Wagon and the Hoe. “It’s somewhere in that part of the sky, but its sun is too small to see.”
“Why does he want to reach so small a world with his mind?” Mira whispered.
“To talk to his little brother there,” Alea explained. “He can reach across that gulf with his mind and read Gregory’s thoughts.”
Now Mira began to tremble. “Can his brother’s mind reach here to us?”
“We think so,” Alea said. “That’s what Gar is trying to find out right now. He tells me I’ll be able to do it someday, too, if I keep practicing.” She leaned closer, her tone dropping in confidence. “I don’t believe him, though. I think it takes two to forge that kind of link—and I don’t have a brother or sister.”
“Except Gar,” Mira murmured, eyes on the stars, not really thinking—so she didn’t notice how long Alea hesitated before she said, “Yes. Except for Gar.”
“He can teach me magic.” Blaize breathed, gazing at Gar with worshipful eyes. Then he transferred the same look to Alea. “So can you, if you will.”
“Learn the Tao first,” Alea said. “Then we’ll talk about magic.”
Mira felt a sudden determination to do exactly that.
They learned well enough in the little time that Alea and Gar were free to talk with them; for the next several days they seemed to be always reading and asked Mira and Blaize to do the chores of the camp for them. Mira complied, though warily, as though expecting them to turn into dragons the moment she tamed her back. Blaize did his tasks cheerfully—after all, he had been fetching and carrying for Arnogle for years. Besides, if Gar had turned into a dragon, Blaize would only have stared and marveled.
In the afternoons, the two adventurers took turns; one would meditate while the other tried to teach the younger people about the Tao and how people behaved if they tried to follow that Way.
Gar explained that the ancient sages had really believed that if everybody lived in villages and each village had a sage living nearby, then the people would follow the example of the sages, treating each other with kindness and trying to settle their differences without anger or violence. Blaize found that he couldn’t accept the idea. “What if another village didn’t believe in the Way or wish to follow their sage? Wouldn’t they try to conquer the neighboring villages and take everything they had, even the women and children?”
“Not if everyone believed in the Tao and tried to live like a sage,” Gar answered.
“But that could never happen!” Blaize protested. “All it would take would be one person who didn’t believe—especially if that person were a powerful magician. Then he would try to build up an army and use his powers to enslave everybody else.”
Gar looked sharply at him. “Is that how your world came to be divided up between magic-lords?”
“I don’t really know,” Blaize confessed, “but if they did, what could have stopped them?”
“A government,” Gar said. “I think the government collapsed when the world from which your ancestors came stopped sending them food, medicine, and weapons.”
“Do you really think sages could have stopped that?” Blaize asked.
“No,” Gar said, “though it would have been awfully nice if they could have. But they could become a counterforce to the power of the magicians. The example of the sages might make the lords treat their serfs more gently.”
“Perhaps,” Blaize said doubtfully, “but most of the magicians I’ve heard of don’t care that much for what anybody else thinks of them. Your sages would have to find a way of forming the people into little armies, to be able to fight off the wizards’ guards—and how could they fight the lords’ magic? Unless your sages were magicians themselves—but you tell me they don’t believe in fighting.”
“They don’t,” Gar confirmed, “but they also don’t mind if a bully hurts himself when he’s trying to hurt you.”
Blaize gazed at him, knowing he was hearing a riddle. His mind circled the problem, nibbling at it. Then he straightened in surprise. “They found a way to make soldiers hurt themselves!”
Gar nodded. “Ways to make the soldiers’ own blows work against them.”
“What magic is that?”
“No magic, only a system of fighting,” Gar assured him. “We’ll teach it to you, but the basis of it is this: you become the rock over which your enemy trips.”
It was an exciting idea, but Baize had to wait to learn the philosophy first, and since Gar and Alea seemed to be learning it themselves, it would be a long wait. He filled the time as best he could with camp chores: hunting up a cave for their dwelling, sweeping it out, lashing branches together to make screens that divided the women’s sleeping area from the men’s and both from the living area. Mira helped, of course, but would only answer his questions with terse comments. That saddened Blaize, for chores could fill just so much of the day, and conversation would have lightened the rest but Mira wouldn’t talk with him any more than she absolutely had to. In fact, she seemed not just to despise him, but even to be afraid of him. That wounded Blaize. After all, he had done nothing to hurt her.
Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. One day, when he was carrying a basket of tubers he had dug back to camp, he met her as she was hauling a bucket of water from the stream. He fell in beside her and demanded, “Why do you despise me, Mira? I haven’t hurt you in any way. I’ve given you no reason to be afraid of me.”