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“But you’re a magician, even if you’re not a very good one yet,” Mira said, “and my magician lord summoned me to his bed. I’d seen what he’d done to other girls, so I ran away. He sent guards to chase me with dogs, then ghosts to scare me back toward the guards, and they would have caught me and hauled me back to his cruelty if Gar and Alea hadn’t come along.”

“A horrible man indeed.” Blaize’s face reddened. “He is a man corrupted by his own power—but then, that’s all he really wants from life, isn’t? Power. For him, the pleasure of a beautiful woman is summoning her and knowing she doesn’t dare refuse. His cruelty gives him pleasure only because it proves his power.” Mira looked at him in surprise. He seemed genuinely angry about Roketh.

“Most of them are like that, I’m afraid.” Blaize looked as though he’d bitten into a rotten apple. “Corrupt, tyrannical, and cruel. I’d like to see every one of them hauled off his seat of power and chained in the bowels of the earth with enchanted manacles that would resist every spell. But there are a few good lords: Obiel of Lomark, Bockel of Hightree, and Erkin of Horgan, among others. They live modestly—or as modestly as you can in a mansion—and make sure their serfs have enough to eat and stout clothes to wear. But they have to be strong, very strong, for the others assume that a good man is a weak man and attack with all their powers, trying to swallow them up.”

“There is no end to their greed!”

“No, there isn’t—but there’s another reason.” Blaize turned to look out over the valley. “Word of a good magician gets out, you see, and makes other serfs begin to wonder if they can rid themselves of their cruel lords. Worse, the good lord’s farmers grow more grain and fruit than those of the cruel lords—no wonder, since they’re not weak from starvation.”

“So the tyrants are jealous as well as greedy!”

“So jealous that you wonder their very hair doesn’t turn green,” Blaize agreed. “My own teacher Arnogle was a very good man. He was out among his serfs every day, making sure they were well fed and content with their lot, and if one wasn’t, he sat down with that man or woman and asked why. If they thought they’d been treated unjustly, he brought in their hetmen and thrashed the problem out, even if it meant trying to cure a bad marriage. If someone was sick, he did all he could—not enough, alas, for he wasn’t a healer. If one of them died, he’d be glum about it for days. And he never took a serf woman to his bed, even if it were her idea—said he’d had enough of that when he was young and had seen the unhappiness it could bring.”

Mira turned wary again. “How many women had he despoiled in his youth?”

“None,” Blaize said with certainty. “He told me he had never forced a woman, nor even pressed her to give him her favors, but there were four over the years who did press him, and you can’t be surprised if he accepted.”

“But he never married one of them?”

“No. He was homely, you see. Two had expected advantages from him—not be to have to work in any way, and to be able to lord it over the other women. One other expected fine clothes and jewelry, but he didn’t take such things for himself—he thought the money was better used for repairing the serfs’ cottages—”

“They had cottages? Not hovels?” Mina asked in surprise. “Oh, yes, good thatched cottages—he set the men to building whenever there was no work to do in the fields. He thought the woman who asked for such luxuries was robbing her fellows, and became saddened. The fourth, as it happened, was more interested in stirring up jealousy in a lover who had turned from her to another woman. She succeeded well enough, and when the handsome young man came storming back to her, she left Arnogle on the instant.”

Mira blinked. “But he was their lord! Didn’t he punish them?”

“What for? A few nights of delight? For being in love? No, Arnogle wasn’t that sort of man. He was saddened, though, and never dallied with a woman again. This was all before I joined him, of course,” Blaize added. “He didn’t tell me himself—I heard it piecemeal from the guards and the serfs.”

“I didn’t know there were such lords,” Mira said, wide-eyed. “There are a few, and I want to be like him in every way—except, of course, strong enough to fight off the neighbors who try to conquer my estates,” Blaize amended. “And I’d like to succeed in love, but I’ve seen what happens to ugly men.”

Mira almost blurted out that he was anything but ugly, but caught herself in time. Instead she summoned some indignation. “You mean to accept women’s invitations, then? Don’t worry, I won’t give one. You can turn elsewhere with your lust”

“But with you, it isn’t lust,” Blaize said, wide-eyed and open-faced. “It’s love.”

Something seemed to melt within Mira—but something else shrieked with alarm. Shaken, she said, “Magicians can’t love. Everyone knows that. Look elsewhere still, sir.” She turned away, walking quickly back toward Gar and Alea, hurrying so fast that the water slopped over the brim of the bucket.

Blaize gazed mournfully after her. He should have known not to tell a woman he loved her before she’d come to know him well. Whatever ground he’d gained with her, he’d just lost.

She didn’t seem to despise him quite so much anymore, though. That was something. At least she seemed uncertain. She might not think Blaize was a paragon of virtue, but at least she was no longer sure he was a villain. He’d have to settle for that.

The cave Blaize had found for their campsite was a gap in a cliff face that backed a broad ledge overlooking a valley. The ledge was fifty feet deep, so they had to go fairly close to the edge to look down on the villages below. There were half a dozen, most clearly seen in morning and evening, when their cookfires rose from the patchwork fields below.

Gar insisted they use green wood for their own campfire. He wanted plenty of smoke so the villagers below would notice. Mira and Blaize dutifully scooted around the fire whenever the wind changed, trying to cook food that wouldn’t smell like pine or spruce.

When they weren’t chopping wood or hauling water, though, they took lessons from Alea or Gar, whichever one wasn’t meditating at that moment. The two of them taught the younger people the Tao Te Ching, of course, reading it to them—but they also insisted Mira and Blaize learn to read it for themselves. Reading led to writing, and before they knew it, Mira and Blaize were actually putting the sounds of the letters together to make words, and words to make sentences—slowly at first, haltingly, but writing.

Blaize looked up at Alea in awe. “Why didn’t Arnogle teach me this?”

“Perhaps he didn’t know it himself,” she answered. “Was the magic he taught you written in books?”

“No, he told me about it and coached me in trying it.” Blaize frowned. “But it should have been written down—at least the part of it that you don’t have to feel for yourself.”

“Maybe you can explain what it feels like,” Alea suggested. “Maybe I can.” Blaize picked up his pen and began to write. Mira looked on, wondering if she was watching the writing of the first book of magic and wondering also how she felt about that.

The two wanderers also taught Blaize and Mira to meditate. “You can’t just read about the Tao,” Gar explained. “You have to experience it.” He sat cross-legged before them, teaching them to slow their breathing, to let their emotions smooth out and their thoughts calm and fade so that they could really begin to sense the world around them and feel for the Tao, the harmony of wind and tree, earth and fire.

Still, there were chores to be done. “You’ll have to do the scutwork,” Gar told the younger duo. “The peasants are growing so curious that they’ll begin to sneak up and spy on us, and they won’t believe Alea and I are sages if they see us scouring pots.”