“I … I have, haven’t I?” Blaize said, nonplussed. “Does that have anything to do with the Way?”
“Maybe a little,” Gar said judiciously. “You’re beginning to see everything as connected, part of a single vast system—stopped seeing people and houses as being alone and separate. You looked for connections, for ghosts who had an interest in the villagers, and saw how to incite them to help defend their descendants.”
Alea turned to Mira. “You didn’t tell us you were a wyvern-handler.”
“I didn’t know,” the girl said, feeling numb. “My … my lord Roketh … perhaps I watched more closely than I knew when his visitor managed his wyverns.”
“Or had a talent you didn’t know about.”
“I don’t want it!” Mira cried. “Wyverneers use their creatures to torment serfs! The people in the cities are all witches, and each has a familiar in the form of a wyvern riding on his shoulder! I won’t be one of them!”
“Maybe it’s like other kinds of magic,” Alea suggested, “not evil in itself, but only a power, able to be used for good or for ill. They’re not demons, no matter what the rumors say about the cities—they’re just animals.” She turned to Gar. “I still say they’re pterodactyls, even though they have muzzles instead of beaks.”
“And breathe fire?”
Alea shrugged. “Terra only produced fossils. How do we know pterodactyls didn’t?”
“And how?” Gar mused. “I suppose their bodies manufacture methane and they exhale it to get it out of their systems.”
“For all we know, pterodactyls might have,” Alea said. “Monitor lizards belch a horrible-smelling gas when they fight.” Mira and Blaize stared at them, completely lost. Blaize fastened every word into his memory, though. It was magicians’ talk, and someday he would understand it.
“They do have tails with broad triangular points at the ends and ridges along their backbones,” Gar said. “Rudders and stabilizers, no doubt.” He shrugged. “Who said evolution had to produce the same life-forms on every planet?”
“But it would produce the same ecological niches,” Alea said, “and similar creatures to fill them.” She turned back to Mira. “You really should develop that gift.”
“Yes, you should,” Blaize said, with heartfelt emotion, “for all our sakes.”
Mira turned to stare at him, feeling flattered and amazed. “I—I’ll try.”
“So should you,” Gar said to Alea. “I thought you had some ability for telekinesis.”
“But it didn’t work with their weapons!” Alea objected.
“Just a matter of practice,” Gar said airily. “You were able to control the smoke because its particles have so much less mass. Start making breezes, then ripples in ponds.”
“I think we’ve been making enough ripples as it is! Did you see the look on Pilochin’s face when that tornado of ghosts hit him?”
“Yes, and I was wondering about that.” Gar frowned. “If he’s the man who defeated Blaize’s master, he should certainly know what ghosts can and can’t do.”
“Oh, he knows all right,” Blaize said darkly, “knows that ghosts can scare you and read your mind and make you feel emotions you’ve never felt, but he didn’t know they could knock him down.”
He swallowed heavily. “Neither did I.”
“Yes, you did say they couldn’t do physical harm,” Alea mused. “They were awfully angry, though.”
“And there were a great many of them,” Mira reminded. Gar nodded. “That much emotion coming from that many ghosts—no wonder it seemed to have a physical impact.”
“And if those specters could strike him down,” Alea asked softly, “what else could they do?”
They looked at one another in silence for a moment, letting the question sink in. Then Gar said, “Probably not much, or they would have done it before this. But it was a very useful surprise.”
“Once,” Alea pointed out. “Next time, they’ll be braced for it.”
“Yes, but they’ll also be a great deal more cautious.”
“More circumspect even than these?” Gar nodded toward a handful of villagers who were coming toward them, hats in their hands.
Alea turned to them with a smile. “Come closer, friends. We are only the neighbors who have been talking with you these past weeks, nothing more.”
“A great deal more,” said an older woman as she stepped up. “Either that, or this Tao you speak of has much greater power than we realized.”
“It has immense power,” Alea said carefully, “because it is all around you and within you. Knowing how to let your enemies turn that power against themselves, though, is another matter altogether.”
“Then teach it to us!” said a middle-aged man. “That could take years,” Gar cautioned.
“We can’t stay among you that long,” Alea added. “We have other villages to visit.”
“But we can teach you how to build the foundation,” Gar said, “show you ways in which you can become a stumbling block to your enemies.”
“We will learn!” the woman avowed. “Only show us!”
“Then you must remember that you are all parts of one whole,” Alea told her, “and treat one another as parts of yourselves.” The villagers frowned, nodding, struggling to understand. “Come, then!” Gar turned and started back up the hillside. “Those who want to learn, come and listen!”
Half the village followed him and Alea as they climbed. Mira and Blaize waited until the villagers had passed, then brought up the rear. They climbed beside each other in an awkward silence.
Finally Mira broke it. “I—I was amazed that you were so very angry with that tyrant Pilochin.”
“He slew my master, and that not in fair combat but by an underhanded trick.” Blaize’s face set in hard lines. “That outraged me.”
“But you seemed enraged by all of them.”
“Why not? They’re all just as bad as Pilochin. Any magician is who uses his powers to grind down his peasants and make them give him every luxury they can.”
Mira stared at him in wonder. “You mean it!”
“Of course I mean it,” Blaize said bitterly. “I am the son of serfs and would have been a serf myself if Arnogle hadn’t taken me for his apprentice. He taught me more than his magic—he taught me compassion and respect for the poor. He taught me to help them make their lives as comfortable as lord and serf together could manage. He taught me to live modestly myself so that there would be more left for my people.”
Mira didn’t dare say it aloud, but she found herself wondering if he might be honestly dedicated to the welfare of the poor. “If you truly think that,” she said, “why have you worked to master such weak creatures as ghosts, when you might have managed such mighty beings as wyverns?”
Blaize looked up in surprise. “Because I have no gift with wyverns, and I have with ghosts. It is not a matter of knowledge alone, but of talent.”
“If you have talent with the one, you have talent with the other!”
“No wyvern has yet come to my call,” Blaize said dubiously, “though I will admit I have only shouted at them to be gone, never to come. Still, I think this night has proved that ghosts can be as mighty as beasts.”
“Only by frightening people, and soldiers grow harder and harder to frighten!”
“They grow harder and harder armor, too.” Blaize was beginning to be irritated; he had done nothing to deserve this attack.
Mira, on the other hand, was surprised to discover that she no longer feared him well, not much, anyway. “They have not yet armored their faces and would be nearly blinded if they wore iron masks to protect them from wyverns’ claws!”
“There is small reason,” Blaize countered, “when they can shoot down wyverns with their arrows. You cannot shoot down a ghost.”