“The lot of apprentices everywhere,” Blaize told Mira with a sigh. “Well, I’m used to it.”
“I’m used to it, too,” Mira answered, “and I wasn’t even an apprentice!” She wondered how Gar knew the villagers were growing curious, then remembered that he could hear thoughts. She was glad she hadn’t asked.
She did ask Alea if there were any reasons for herself and Blaize to be doing chores, other than putting on a show. Alea told her, and when the work became too boring, Mira told it to Blaize as a way of starting a safe conversation.
“Alea says we have to do the gathering and cooking and cleaning so that we can learn humility, patience, and obedience to the order of things.”
“I’ve already learned plenty of humility, thank you.” Blaize grunted as he swung one end of a log into place to make a seat by the fire, “and if an apprentice in magic doesn’t understand the importance of obedience both to his master and to the laws of magic, I’d like to know who does.” He picked up the other end of the log.
Mina set her hands on her hips. “There you go, trying to lord it over me because you’ve had some learning.”
“Lord it over you?” Blaize looked up in astonishment and dropped the log. “Ow! Oh-oh-oh-oh! My toe!”
“Is it badly hurt? Here, let me see!” Mira pushed him backward to sit on the log and reached for his foot.
“No, no! just a bruise, I’m sure, nothing more!” But Blaize cradled the injured member in his other hand. “Believe me, I’m not telling you anything about how much you have to learn—only that even in the earliest days of my apprenticeship, I may have spent the day sweeping up and hauling water, but Arnogle always found a few minutes every day to teach me a little about magic.”
“Well, so do Gar and Alea,” Mira countered. “In fact, they’re teaching us almost as quickly as they learn it themselves. Here, are you sure that toe isn’t mashed?”
“Believe me, if it were, I’d know it,” Blaize protested. “You’re just trying to act bravely!”
“Well, of course,” Blaize said in surprise. “If it were really hurt, though, I’d be brave about the pain while I tied it in a splint.” He set his foot down and leaned on it experimentally.
“Ow! Not just yet—which is what Gar says about teaching me magic.”
“Well, we’ve only just begun to learn to meditate,” Mira said practically. “Alea told us we needed to learn the Tao before we learned magic.”
“Why?” Blaize grumbled. “I’m not learning any magic by meditating. Besides, they’re just learning about the Tao now, and they’ve both known magic for years. I think Gar even grew up with it.”
Mira frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“His trying to read his little brother’s mind across an ocean of stars. That sounds like magic to me, and if two brothers know it, their parents would have, too, wouldn’t they? So they learned it the way we learned reaping and mowing—helping as little children, tying sheaves as big boys and girls, then mowing when we were full grown.”
Mira started a retort, then hesitated. “There might be something to that…”
“Doesn’t matter if there is,” Blaize said with a sigh. He pushed himself upright, carefully putting a little weight, then a little more, on his injured toe. “It hurts, but it works.”
“If it starts hurting worse, you sit down on the instant,” Mira said sternly.
He looked up, beaming at her so warmly that she shrank away a little. “I will,” he said softly, “and thank you.”
Mira didn’t ask for what. She did talk to Alea, though, as soon as she could catch her alone, when the two of them went to the stream to gather rushes. “Blaize is growing discontented.”
“Really?” Alea looked up. “Why?”
“Well, we’ve been fetching and carrying for three weeks now, and you’re teaching us how to meditate, but Blaize thinks you’re never going to teach us your magic.”
“We don’t really know enough about his kind of magic to add to it,” Alea said slowly, “but I suppose we’ll have to learn.” She must have told Gar, because that very evening, when dinner was done and the dishes cleaned and put away, Gar sat Blaize down by the fire and said, “time to take the first small step toward magic, Blaize.”
“Really?” the young man asked eagerly. “What do I do?”
“Put yourself into a light trance-you know how to do that now. You, too, Mira. Come sit with us and meditate.”
Slowly and with misgivings, Mira sat cross-legged in front of him, smoothing her skirt down over her knees, then setting her palms on her thighs and straightening her back. Alea sat beside her and touched her hand for reassurance. Mira darted a look of gratitude toward her, then turned back to Gar and closed her eyes.
She pictured a blank gray wall, let it fill her vision, then before she let the tiny black dot appear on its expanse, glanced at Blaize. He sat, eyes closed, face rapt, seeking. The sight both bothered and reassured her somehow, but she closed her eyes again and let the black dot appear in the blank gray wall, then let it expand, growing slowly but steadily as a dozen thoughts whirled through her head but, one by one, began to settle and drop away. She knew Blaize was doing the same, and the black circle was no doubt growing behind his own eyes, growing and growing as his thoughts calmed to leave his mind blank.
But the dot began to make a noise, a groan that grew louder and louder, and a swaying white shape appeared in the black circle. Mira shrieked and leaped up, opening her eyes. Alea’s hand seized hers, and she needed it, because the white shape was still there, swaying in the darkness beyond the edge of the cliff, and there were others like it, darting and advancing from the cliff path and actually stepping out of the wall of rock.
“Um, Blaize,” Alea said, “I think you had better open your eyes and look about you.”
Blaize looked up blinking. His eyes widened as he saw the ghost. Then he heard the moans from his left, from his right, behind him. He turned to look, this way, that way, then back up at Gar, beaming. “It works! Never before have I summoned so many!”
8
Let’s hope your bargaining works better, too,” Gar said nervously. “Talk to them, Blaize.”
“Talk?” Blaize looked up at the ghosts, some formless and faceless, most looking exactly like people, some grim, some amused, some with wicked grins. “What would you have me say to them?”
“That we’re friends, for starters.” Gar swallowed, his eyes bulging. “That we’re sorry to bother them, and they might as well go back to sleep.”
“Ghosts don’t sleep,” Blaize said, not really thinking about it. “They would be cross indeed if they felt we had summoned them to no purpose, Master.”
“I’m not your master!”
“Teacher, then. Can we not find some question to ask them?”
Gar’s eyes began to glow; he seemed to relax a bit. “Yes, now that you mention it. There might be one or two things we’d like to know.”
“How would you have me speak to them?”
Gar pursed his lips, thinking fast. “Well, you might begin with hello.”
“Not courtly enough.” Blaize shook his head, then raised his voice. “Good evening, O Ancestors of Our Kind. We greet you and honor you.”
“Courteous, at least,” rumbled a frowning ghost with jowls, a large nose, and a fringe of hair around a bald pate. “If you have summoned us to no purpose, you shall regret it sorely!”
Gar eyed the specter’s clothing, trying to place it—a sort of open-necked doublet with tight-fitting trousers; the clothing might almost have been a businessman’s suit of several hundred years before, romanticized and made a bit more dashing.