A Wizard In The Way

by Christopher Stasheff

  "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."

  "Are they really?" Gar asked, hope sparking in his eyes. "They are," Ranulf assured him. "There's a sense growing in them that the lords are actually living wrongly."

  "Could they ever have thought anything else?" Alea cried.

  "Oh, yes," Mira said. "The lords are just part of the world, just the way things are."

  Blaize nodded. "Rabbits are timid, wolves are ravenous, and lords are cruel. That's the way things have always been and the way they'll always be."

  "And there's nothing you can do about it," Gar said grimly. Blaize nodded. "You can suffer it, or you can die fighting back."

  "And people are beginning to think of fighting back?" Alea asked.

  "I haven't heard anything like that yet," Gar protested. "You're right," Conn said, "but thinking the magicians are wrong is the first step toward thinking they're evil, and that means they're way out of harmony with the Way."

  "Which means they should put themselves back in touch with it!" Gar slapped his knee in triumph. "The people are beginning to think the magicians should change!"

  "That's how it begins," Alea said, glowing, "by thinking change is possible."

  "Yes, and the lords are aware of it, too," Ranulf said. "Your villagers haven't been keeping the Way a secret, you see. They've been telling the neighboring villagers about it whenever they go to trade or to help. It's all over the district now-villages in five lords' demesnes."

  "They've been talking about the marvelous sages who have been teaching them, too," Conn said. "A dozen villages know your names and look toward this mountain for some trace of you..."

  Gar stiffened. "How long before the lords send their soldiers to get rid of us?"

  "Right after they punish the villagers," Ranulf said. "They've sent guards in serfs' garb to throw magical powder into the village ovens. They think one good round of vomiting and stomach cramps will make the serfs remember their places again." Gar leaped to his feet. "We have to stop them!"

  "Yes, we have to!" Alea jumped up, too. "But how? We can run down to our nearest village and tell them not to bake, but what about the other villages?"

  "Conn and Ranulf can tell them," Gar said, then turned to the two ghosts. "No, wait you said a dozen villages, and there's only two of you. Can you recruit some other friendly phantoms?"

  "We've a score standing by itching for some action," Conn said with a grin. "More excitement they've ever seen this side of the grave."

  "Send them to scare the serfs into keeping the grain out of the oven, would you?"

  "Gladly, O Sage! Come on, Ranulf, we're heralds now!" The two ghosts vanished. Gar turned to the younger members. "Smother the fire and come running! We're going to need to knock on every door, and quickly!" He set off downslope with Alea beside him.

  Blaize stared after him, on fire with jealousy. Here he'd been studying ghost leading for five years, and Gar came from nowhere and in five weeks could talk the specters into doing anything he wanted! Well, maybe the big man would teach what he had learned, and in any event, the people had to be warned.

  The campfire burst into a ball of steam that hissed like a thousand snakes. Blaize turned to see Mira holding a bucket mouth-down over the drowned coals. "Quickly!" she told him.

  "Aye." Blaize caught up the thick sheet of bark they used for a hearth-shovel and gouged up dirt to smother what had already drowned. Then he and Mira set off downhill after their teachers.

  They knew they were too late as soon as they reached the village. Smoke from the oven fire lay like a pall over the common instead of spiraling up as it usually did. People were on their knees doubled over in that haze, retching miserably-men, women, children, old folk. Only Gar and Alea stood upright, but they stood in the midst of the people, the smoke had cleared around them, and two by two the serfs' heaving slackened, then ceased.

  Blaize skidded to a stop. "What can we do here?"

  "Aid those whose spasms have stopped! They are sorely weakened!" Mira dashed out to help one old woman who was trying to climb back to her feet.

  But some sixth sense, or perhaps the touch of a ghost's warning, held Blaize to the spot, his mind seeking. He felt doom hover and, from what Gar had told him, the apprehension might not be his. He wished fervently that he could read minds as Gar and Alea could, but since he couldn't, he used what gifts he had. "Unseen ones! Ancestors of these folk! Seek, I pray you, and find the enemies who descend upon us!"

  He stood stiffly, every sense alert, feeling as though he were a vibrating string on a minstrel's lute. Finally the wind came to make him thrum, a breathy voice that sighed by his ear, "They advance down the northern slope, five magicians and their guards."

  "Sixty-five in all! I shall alert our own magicians!" Blaize sent all the emotion he could behind his words. "I pray you, for your descendants' sakes, slow the enemy if you can!"

  "They move, they come," the ghost warned him. A sound like a breeze told Blaize it had left, hopefully to harry the magicians.

  He ran to Gar and Alea, pointing toward the northern slope, "The enemy comes!"

  Gar turned to see the magicians striding down the slope, blue robes fluttering, each with his dozen guards behind him. He looked down at Alea, who nodded. They turned toward their enemies and the smoke from the common streamed away toward the magicians and their soldiers. In seconds, the common was clear.

  The magicians halted so suddenly that their guards bumped into them. Then they turned, plowing through their troops upslope, away from the smoke-but the wind moved faster and the cloud engulfed them, settling over magicians and guards alike. Still some blundered uphill, no doubt holding their breaths, but most sank to their knees, bent over and retching. A minute later the fugitives had to breathe, too, and fell as the cloud enfolded them.

  But two downslope magicians and their guards struggled to their feet and staggered farther down out of the cloud. There they drew great lungfuls of fresh air. "Onward!" one magician croaked, pointing at Gar and Alea. A fat electrical spark burst from his fingertip and sailed toward them-but winked out halfway there. Nonetheless, he staggered toward them, and his guards pulled themselves together and followed at an unsteady gait. The other magician straightened as much as he could and came after.

  It was Pilochin.

  Something snapped inside Blaize. He ran toward the woozy throng, crying, "Vengeance! Vengeance for a dishonorable battle, for a kindly lord dead though a dastardly trick!"

  Pilochin looked up, startled, then narrowed his eyes and panted, "You had better ... learn from ... his example ... boy, and ... flee while you can."

  "Justice!" Blaize pointed straight-armed at Pilochin. "O spirits of this village, ancestors of those beset, give me justice for a good lord slain through treachery!"

  Banshees howled, and the air suddenly filled with a score of ghosts, whirling like a tornado, their funnel narrowing to aim at Pilochin. The magic
ian stumbled backward, crying out in alarm. Then the tornado struck and he shouted in pain and surprise as he fell backward sprawling on the ground He scrambled to his feet and turned to flee in a ragged run. His guards stared at him, looked back at the host of ghosts, then threw down their weapons and followed their lord.

  "Drive him mad if you can!" Blaize howled. "Chase him off the edge of a precipice!"

  The ghosts might indeed manage that, he realized, for they closed in upon the magician and his guards on three sides, herding them with cries and moans and dreadful shrieks. In panic the men fled up the mountainside, tottering and gasping, weak from the retching. Some fell but kept on, crawling upslope away from the furies that followed.

  Mira stared at Blaize in astonishment. He stood rigid, fists clenched, face distorted with anger.

  The cloud of poisoned smoke drifted on up the mountainside, enfolding Pilochin and his men, though it was thinning rapidly. They began to retch again, but they kept staggering away from the village.

  The other three magicians knelt gasping for air; so did their guards. One magician, though, managed to summon the strength to turn toward the village, raising an arm in command, then snapping it down as though hurling something-and half a dozen two-foot-long dragons sprang from the branches of the trees around the village.

  Screaming, the wyverns plunged at Gar and Alea, talons extended.

  11

  Gar and Alea looked up at the screams. So did Mira-and her blood ran cold, for a wyvern-master had come to confer with her magician-lord Roketh once, and these were the sort of little monsters he had used to terrorize his serfs into submission. No one could fight even one such creature, let alone half a dozen!

  But Alea didn't know that. She glared at the wyverns, glared harder, the tendons in her neck standing out with the strain of concentration, then shook a fist in frustration.

  One wyvern swerved to follow that gesture. Three others suddenly plummeted ten feet straight down, then flapped their wings frantically to regain altitude-but the other two still stooped upon their targets. Ten feet away from Gar and Alea, they suddenly shot three-foot tongues of flame from their mouths. Attacking her friends! Imperiling the kind protectors who had saved her! Something snapped inside Mira. She dashed out in front of her two mentors, slashing the air to wave aside the two aerial flamethrowers, screaming in rage. "Away] Leave us! Go back and pounce upon him who sent you]"

  The two wyverns swerved aside, then circled high, arrowing back toward their magician. He stared, dumbfounded.

  So did Mira. They had obeyed her!

  Then the magician recovered and pointed at his wyverns with menace. They sheered off, circling high again, and shot back toward Gar and Alea.

  They had listened to her once-they might again. "Go away] Go far from here! Go home!"

  Obediently, the wyverns turned as one and glided toward the east.

  "Come back]" the magician shouted. "Attack]"

  The wyverns turned again, beginning to look confused. "They don't fly as well when the air sinks beneath their wings," Gar said.

  Suddenly the flock plummeted straight down, screeching in surprise and distress, and this time Mira saw grass and leaves shooting outward in a circle beneath them. But there was no time to wonder-the wyverns were flapping mightily, trying to regain altitude, clawing their way back into the air.

  "Tell them to roost and sleep," Gar said helpfully.

  Mira didn't stop to protest that the little dragons wouldn't listen to her, only threw her hands up, crying, "Sleep] Let slumber shield you from confusion] Each seek a perch! Roost! Sleep!"

  The wyverns managed to catch enough air beneath their wings to start gliding again. For a minute, they milled about in the air, uncertain what to do.

  "Attack]" the magician screamed. "Fall upon them!"

  "Sleep]" Mira cried.

  The wyverns churned in a wobbly globe, completely confused now.

  "Sleep untangles the knot of confusion]" Mira called. "Sleep sends you peace! Sleep frees you from the commands of the tyrant]"

  The flock turned and shot off toward the trees.

  Mira lowered her arms, staring after them. Had she really done that? What? And how? There their master stood, howling at them and waving his arms, but they paid him not the slightest heed! Had she freed the wyverns from his spell? Impossible!

  Livid, the magician pointed at her. "It is you who have done this, unnatural wench! Men of mine! Set upon her!"

  His guardsmen looked up in trepidation, then struggled to their feet, still green-faced and stumbling-but stumbling toward Mira.

  "Well now, we can't have that," Gar said.

  "Indeed not," Alea agreed. "But what can we do? Smoke was all I could handle yet, and I was surprised I could do that."

  "It would seem you are telekinetic after all, but it will take a while before you can trip a dozen men like these."

  "Why not?" Alea asked practically. "They're nearly falling as it is."

  "A good point," Gar said. "Try twisting the back foot as it comes forward, so the toe catches on the heel of the front footlike this." He pointed at the man on the right-hand end of the line, who promptly tripped and fell.

  "Like that, is it? Well, now, let me see." Alea's face went tense with concentration again, and another man stumbled.

  "Very good," Gar said. "Let me demonstrate again." The man on the left end tripped and went sprawling. "Oh-lead foot, you mean)"Alea glowered again at the man who had stumbled. This time, he tripped and fell.

  "Very good!" Gar cried with delight. "You've learned the trick of it! Again, now?" He pointed at the left-hand end of the line once more and the next man tripped and fell.

  Alea nodded and glared. The third man on the right went face-first in the grass. Then, in rapid succession, the other seven stretched their lengths on the greensward. Some of them looked up, glancing around apprehensively, but most didn't even do that. They had been fairly felled and felt no obligation to stand up and put themselves in the path of magic again.

  "Up, you cowards)" their master screamed, turning purple. "Up, whoresons! Up, or face the whip)"

  "I can't trip him," Alea said, her voice strained with effort. "He's not moving."

  "Yes, but he's not all that steady on his feet, either," Gar pointed out. "His stomach might start twisting again."

  The magician suddenly clapped his hands to his midriff, bending forward, face turning from purple to green.

  "Then once he's off balance, it doesn't take much of a push to knock him down," Gar explained.

  The magician tottered and fell. He clawed his way back to his feet, still bent over and holding his belly, then turned and stumbled away toward the eastern road.

  One of his soldiers saw him and croaked, "We must follow and ward our lord!" He pushed himself to his feet and staggered after the magician. Faces lighting with hope, the others clambered up and followed, tottering.

  Gar and Alea stood watching with satisfaction as the last of the magicians and soldiers beat a very undignified retreat. Mira and Blaize watched, too, in utter astonishment.

  "Of course, they won't be willing to let it go at that," Alea told Gar.

  "Indeed not," Gar agreed. "They'll be back with several more magicians and a much larger number of soldiers."

  "Then what will we do?" Blaize asked, suddenly realizing the enormity of what he had already done.

  "Fight them," Gar said simply, "or help them to fight themselves, which is pretty much what we did today."

  Blaize's gaze drifted off as he reviewed the events of the last half-hour. "You're right! We didn't really attack them, did we? Just turned their own foul tricks back on them."

  "That's how the Way defends you," Alea said, smiling. "Restore harmony, restore the beginning state of things, and the ones who clash with it fall down."

  "After all," Gar said, "you seem to have a far greater number of allies than you realized."

  "You mean the ghosts? Why ... I simply thought that the ancestor
s of the village might want to defend their greatgrandchildren," Blaize said.

  Gar nodded. "You thought. That's the main thing. You seem to have acquired a much stronger knack of persuading phantoms."

  "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 systemstopped 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?"