“He could be pretending…”
“If he is, he’s very good at it, but even the best pretender can’t fool a mind reader.”
“Magicians can.”
“Maybe an expert magician, one who specializes in mind reading—are there such?”
Mira nodded.
“But that’s not Blaize’s magic,” Alea pointed out, “and even if it were, he’s still an apprentice. No, he’s an empath and he’s learned how to project his emotions, but he hasn’t learned how to hold them in.”
“Is that why I feel as though I’m getting caught up by his enthusiasm?” Mira asked. “Caught up in his—” She broke off, blushing.
“Yes, he does have romantic moods, doesn’t he?” Alea asked, amused. “He’s still young enough so that they seem a little silly, don’t they?”
“No!” Mira cried. “Hopeless and ill-placed, perhaps, and his ardor always seems to come at the wrong time, but I wouldn’t call him silly!”
Alea gazed at her thoughtfully, then said, “It’s real then, lass.”
“What?” Mira asked in confusion. “His romantic notions or his desire to be good and still be a magician?”
“Both,” Alea said, “but he’ll need a lot of help. It’s hard to gain power and not let it corrupt you.”
Mira wondered if she were talking about magic or love. Then she began to wonder if there were any difference.
The villagers did come back the next day, but with several replacements, and that was the pattern of it—never more than a dozen, but rarely did one person come more than two days in a row. Over the course of the month, Gar and Alea were sure they’d seen the entire adult population of the village.
“It’s their lords,” Mira explained, “and the guard who patrols the fields to watch over them. There’s only one of him to fifty of them, so he’s not going to notice if a few are gone any one day—in fact, if he does, he’ll assume they’re doing other work, such as gathering wood or mending walls or some such. But if it’s the same few every day, he’ll grow suspicious.”
“So they come here in turns.” Alea nodded. She didn’t have to ask how Mira knew; it was a good guess that conditions were the same in her home village.
“We could let them come in the evenings,” Blaize suggested. “Don’t be silly,” Mira said. “They have to rise with the sun.”
“Besides, the ghosts might put them off,” Gar added. That was certainly true. Blaize knew Conn and Ranulf were eavesdropping every day. He could feel their presence, and very often that of other ghosts whom he didn’t know, too. In the evenings, the specters appeared to discuss the issues with Gar and Alea with enthusiasm and fascination. Several times arguments broke out between ghosts, and the living people began to realize that some of the ghosts were sages themselves. Finally Mira asked one of them, an old woman in a hooded robe, “Are you a magician?”
“Don’t you dare call me that!” the old woman snapped. “Oh, I’ve seen our descendants take that title and start using the powers to intimidate people, but we didn’t! Well, not most of us,” she amended. “We were shamans, girl, and don’t you forget it!”
“I won’t,” Mira promised, wide-eyed. “What is a shaman?” The old woman sighed. “A sort of combination of priest, healer, counselor, teacher, and sage, young lady—all that, and more, even, yes, a little bit of a magician. We don’t like that term, though: Our descendants have made it an obscenity by their corruption and cruelty.”
“You’re a wise woman!” A bit of Mira’s fear of the supernatural came back—it was never far away.
“That does sort of wrap it all up, I suppose,” the ghost said. “Then should I call you Your Wisdom?”
“You should call me Elyena and nothing more!” the old woman snapped. “I might be your great-great-great-grandmother, but don’t you dare call me that, either!”
Mina didn’t think she could manage the string of “greats” everytime she wanted to talk to the old woman. “But—where did you gain your wisdom?”
“Why, from an older shaman, of course—several of them, in fact. But if you mean where did they get it, why! They took the ideas of the sages and philosophers of old Terra that our great-great-grandparents brought when they colonized this planet, and they mixed it with the discoveries they’d made themselves, generations of sages and gurus and priests. That’s what it was by the time I learned it, lass: a wisdom and power that’s peculiar to this world of Oldeira, and don’t you forget it!”
“I won’t.” Mira shrank away, then plucked up her nerve and asked, “Is that why you don’t like this talk of the Way?”
“Oh, Taoism’s sound enough—at least the classical version before the Buddhists got hold of it,” Elyena grumbled. “It’s part of the foundation of Oldeira’s wisdom—but only part, lass! And your friend’s trying to make it seem something new, something that will supplant all the philosophy we’ve had such a time thrashing out and blending these past five hundred years.”
“Maybe the serfs need to be reminded of it.” Mira felt shockingly bold offering the idea. “Maybe that way the magicians will hear of it and realize they’re doing something wrong.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” Elyena snorted. “They know they’re doing wrong and they don’t care a whir! All they care about is wealth, power, and gaining all the luxuries and pleasures they can!”
“You—you think it’s wrong of Gar and Alea to try to teach, the Way, then?”
“Oh, it won’t do any harm,” the old woman said with a sniff, “but it won’t do any good, either. You tell them I said that!” Mira did. They thought it was very interesting, but they didn’t stop teaching.
After the third week, though, Gar spent an evening sitting cross-legged staring out over the valley and came back to the campfire at bedtime looking very glum.
Mira saw the look of alarm on Alea’s face but also saw how quickly she masked it even as she hurried to meet Gar, and for once there was no sarcastic turn to her words. “What’s happened? What’s the matter?”
“Oh, just the usual human cussedness.” Gar tried to smile. “They’re excited by our ideas, sure enough, and they’re talking about them whenever they’re sure the lord’s men aren’t listening—but they’re grumbling and complaining about their lives as much as usual, bickering and taunting each other as much as they always did. The boys are still doing their best to seduce the girls, the girls are flaunting their bodies as much as they can in those clothes, and whenever people try to take a few minutes to meditate, their spouses accuse them of laziness.”
“Don’t be disheartened,” Alea said with a tender smile. “They’re only human. You can’t expect them to change their ways overnight.”
“No, I suppose not.” Gar sat down by the campfire with a sigh. “Still, I’d hoped for some sign that they might actually start trying to live the Way instead of merely talking about it.”
“Is there any sign that they’re less bitter about the harshness of their lives?”
Gar was silent a moment, then said, “Now that you mention it, there is—a bit more acceptance, a little of the feeling that the life itself matters more than its comforts.”
“Then they are listening,” Alea said, touching his hand in reassurance. “They really are.”
Mira wondered about the older woman’s claim that Gar was only her friend—not even that, a traveling companion and shield-mate, which was both more and less. Did Alea really know her own heart?
Things weren’t any better by the end of the fourth week, as far as Gar was concerned, but Conn told him, “We’ve been around and listening. They’re beginning to see the lord’s greed and cruelty not just as tyranny, but also as the result of being out of harmony with the Way.”