A Wizard In The Way

by Christopher Stasheff

  "When you came here?" Alea's eyes widened. "Are you one of the original colonists?"

  "That I was, though I was in the third ship. By the time we came, the streets were laid out and some of the houses already built. The farms were producing, of course-the first ship saw to that."

  "How many ships were there?" Gar asked.

  "Twenty there were-one a year, each with five thousand immigrants aboard. Everyone who wanted to go to a world where philosophy was the only king, where cooperation was prized above competition, where people ruled themselves and worked out their differences by talking in councils-well, you'd be surprised how many there were who were eager to leave old Terra to come here."

  Alea stared off into space with a haunted gaze and Gar knew she was remembering the oppression and constant warfare of her home world. "I can believe it," she said.

  Lodicia's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Then you won't believe how quick our grandchildren were to turn away from it."

  "Every generation tries to establish its identity by rejecting some of the ideas of its elders," Gar said with a haunted look of his own.

  "Yes, well, it was our children who were the cause of it, really-I shouldn't blame the grandchildren for listening to them," Lodicia allowed. "Some of them became gurus in their own turn, of course, we expected that, wanted that-but we didn't look for a dozen of them to get hungry for power and try to seize it by gathering young lonely ones about them to pay them virtual worship."

  "They rejected reason, then," Gar said with a frown.

  "Yes, and rejected with it the idea that all people are only that, people that there aren't any prophets or reborn saints," Lodicia said bitterly. "One of my own grandchildren joined such a cult. Oh, his guru played right smartly on his followers, awing them with fireballs that were no more than flash powder and mind reading that was no more than the old vaudeville mentalists' tricks! But the worst came when one of them died and sent his ghost to overawe his worshippers. Then his son really had them by the hindbrain, with an actual ghost to conjure!"

  Light exploded near her with a boom that shook the leaves about them. Blaize leaped up in a fighter's crouch. Mira was on her feet, too, ready to run but waiting to see if she should.

  Gar and Alea sat still, though, staring at the apparition that appeared next to Lodicia: an old man in a robe and pointed hat embroidered with zodiacal symbols. His beard fell down over his chest, his hair around his shoulders. "Why don't you tell them the rest of it, old woman? About the tractors that wouldn't work because Terra wouldn't send us any more parts, the ethanol distilleries that had to shut down, the famine that stalked the land as we reinvented plowing with horses and oxen!"

  "Yes, all of that happened, Aesc," Lodicia said, her lip curling, "but that didn't give you the right to set yourself up as a petty tyrant."

  "Right? It was my duty!" Aesc exclaimed. "Everything was falling apart when Terra cut us off! No one knew how to repair the machines, or what to do when the villages couldn't talk with the towns anymore, to call for help or to plan! Everyone swarmed out of the cities, leaving only the idiots and the deformed to hunt for nuts and squirrels to eat! People were starving, whole villages were turning bandit and stealing other villages' food! Someone had to gather people together and show them how to farm like primitives! Someone had to overawe the bandits and chase them away! We were one step away from turning into a feudal society with all its oppression!"

  "So you beat them to it and made lords of the magicians, instead of the warriors," Lodicia said with scathing sarcasm. "Wasn't it the better way?" Aesc demanded. "Now, instead of lords leading armies to kill each other by the hundreds, we had magicians with scarcely a score of soldiers battling it out by illusions and tricks!"

  "And how were you to know that some of you had turned into telepaths and were making your tricks deadly?" Lodicia sneered.

  "Who could have guessed that could happen in only three generations?" Aesc countered. "Who could have known that the strange gossamer clouds blowing through the air could turn into ghosts when dying minds seized them? Who could have known that those ghosts would select and pair up people who had ESP talents? It's not as though we set out to become real, genuine mind readers!"

  "Oh, I believe that," Lodicia said. "Tricks are so much easier to control."

  "All right, the new powers became unpredictable!" Aesc admitted, thin-lipped. "Is it any surprise that even we who wielded them began to believe in the supernatural and came to call ourselves shamans instead of magicians? After all, we were healing with one hand while fighting off bandits with the other! Who could have guessed that we were really using psionic talents as much herbs and weapons? But we kept the warlords from rising!"

  "You became warlords!" Lodicia retorted, eyes burning. "You turned into the very monsters you claimed to be fighting! What did it matter that you were using your so-called magic instead of armies? You were still petty tyrants, feudal lords!"

  "Fewer people died in battle, only a handful-that's what difference it made!"

  "And the only difference! You fought each other to stalemates and kept any real government from rising! You overawed the councils so that they withered away! There was no power left to protect the poor and send food from those who had plenty to those who had none! You made each magician into a petty king over his own few square miles with the power of life and death over his hundreds of people-and he wouldn't let them leave his estate, because what's a lord without somebody to browbeat? The people became serfs and the shamans became lords just as surely as though you had called yourselves dukes and earls! You were no better than any other kind of warlordyou oppressed your people just as harshly! The only thing you really changed was the kind of power you used to bully themcharlatans' magic instead of fists and clubs!"

  "Scoff if you like," Aesc said, eyes blazing, "but we never did let a warlord rise and conquer his way into a kingship. Individual domains remained free!"

  "Aye, the magician lords remained free, but no one else! Now the serfs dress in rags and are driven to grub in the fields so their lords can dress in velvet and loll about in their great padded chairs taking their ease! Guards still march to war at the commands of their lords! Serfs who displease you and escape your death sentences take to the forest and become bandits, harrying all the villages! You have fashioned a living nightmare from the ruins of your grandparents' dreamt"

  Before Aesc could retort, Gar said quickly, "'Needs must as the devil drives,' as the old saying goes. Maybe the shamans made a worse choice than they could have, but they did keep the people alive, kept some vestige of civilization."

  "Vestige indeed!" Lodicia said indignantly. "Can you really call it civilization when there is no trade, no arts, no crafts more skilled than rough carpentry?"

  "Civilization is the way of life of people who live in cities," Alea put in.

  "Yes, and there are no cities here, only mansions and villages!"

  "But there is a basis for civilization to grow again," Gar said in as soothing a tone as he could manage. "A crystal city may still grow from the ruins."

  "How, as long as the magicians block any power but their own?" Lodicia asked bitterly.

  "By reviving the power of your dream," Alea answered. "If we can teach the villages to cooperate again, they will outdo the power of the lords' conflicts."

  Aesc eyed her narrowly but said nothing, only listened. "How are you to do that?" Lodicia demanded.

  "By learning how to command wyverns, for a beginning," Alea answered. "We have a young woman here who has discovered she has a talent for it-discovered it rather abruptly and rudely, at that. Can you find us the ghost of a wyvern-handler to teach her?"

  "What! Raise up one more magician?" Lodicia cried. "I will never be a magician!" Mira said hotly.

  Lodicia chopped the denial aside with a wave of her hand. "If you learn to work magic, you are a magician."

  "But I will never oppress the poor! I will use my gift to make their lives better, sweeter!"

/>   "So said many who are now lords," Lodicia said sourly, "and look what power has done to them."

  "Surely taming beasts is not truly magic," Aesc objected, "no matter how supernatural their appearance. If the lass uses wyverns to protect the poor, can you really object?"

  Lodicia gave him a simmering glare while she looked for the flaw in his argument. At last she said, "It takes a talent, you can't deny that. What's the difference between talent and magic?"

  "When I look at the paintings of the masters and listen to the symphonies of the great composers, I have to agree with you," Gar said. "Still, I don't think their magic is quite the same thing as throwing fireballs or raising hosts of ghosts."

  Lodicia glowered at him but didn't answer.

  "She is a serf," Alea reminded the crone's ghost, "and means to send wyverns to defend serfs' villages."

  "Perhaps," Lodicia allowed, then turned on Mira with eyes that flamed. "Though mind you, girl, if you betray your fellows with this power, I shall haunt you for the rest of your days!"

  "Do so." Mira bore up bravely under her glare. "If I should so forget the hurts my people have borne, I could deserve no less."

  Still Lodicia held her stare, but the fire in her eyes faded until they only glowed. Then she gave a single nod. "Well enough, then. I shall summon Hano." She scowled more deeply than ever. The companions waited, holding their breaths.

  13

  A patch of fog gathered next to Lodicia, thickened, then formed itself into the ghost of a man in his forties wearing doublet and hose beneath his cloak and a hat with a jaunty feather. He held his forearm up with the ghost of a wyvern perched on it, hissing as it coiled and uncoiled its tail. "Where is she who would command my dragons?" Hano cried gaily.

  "I-I am she." Mira swallowed and took a step forward, almost succeeding in hiding her trembling.

  "Are you, then? Don't be afeard, lass-if you've the gift, they'll not hurt you."

  It wasn't the wyverns hurting her that worried Mira, but she didn't tell the ghost that.

  "Though, mind you," Hano said, "you'll need a stout gauntlet, such as this." He held out his forearm for her to see. He wore a leather glove with a thick, stiff cuff that extended almost up to his elbow. "You'll need leather for your shoulders, too, if you want them to perch." He gestured to the shoulders of his doublet, which were indeed thickened.

  Mira shrank away at the warning.

  "Not that you need to have them sit there," Hano said quickly. "You can bid one perch anywhere near you-that tree limb, for example." He pointed at the nearest branch. "Go on, go over there. Stand near, but not too near."

  With several glances at him, Mira went, though her footsteps dragged.

  "There's a brave lass!" Hano cried. "Now call for a wyvern."

  "How-how do I do that?"

  "With your mind, lass, your thoughts alone, though you can speak them aloud if that helps. Go on, now, sing its praises. Tell it what a beautiful beast it is, how its scales shine and its eyes glow-you know, flattery. Works with every animal."

  "Including man," Alea muttered. "In both sexes," Gar qualified. "But ... but I can't even see one!" Mira protested.

  "Doesn't matter," Hano told her. "Think of a wyvern, any wyvern. Doesn't even have to be a real one. Think of Gorak, here."

  The ghostly wyvern gave a raucous cry.

  "All-all right." Mira screwed her eyes up tight, clenched her fists, and went rigid. Minutes passed. Blaize started toward her, his face a mask of concern, but Gar held out a hand to stop him.

  "How does she?" Lodicia asked in an anxious undertone. "Well, she's thinking it right," Hano answered softly. "Now we'll see if she has the talent, as you told me ... There!"

  He pointed at a speck in the sky. It swelled as it plunged, growing wings and a long supple neck. As it took on the shape of a dragon, several other specks appeared.

  "Talent, truly!" Hano declared. "She's called not just one, but half a dozen!"

  In no time at all, it seemed, Mira had six wyverns perched side by side on the branch and Blaize was frantically cutting scraps from the bones of last night's dinner for her to toss to her new friends.

  "They don't mind it smoked or dried," Hano told her, "so it's best to keep a pouch of tidbits by you at all times. Think now of an errand you'd like it to run and the juicy bit of meat it will have if it does. No, don't close your eyes-once they're here, you need to keep watch on them."

  "But ... but how can I picture something in my mind if my eyes are open?"

  "By practice, lass. Come now, I didn't say it would be easy. Watch the wyverns but think of one of them flying away and coming back, nothing more."

  Mira's face tensed with strain, but she stared at the wyvern on the left end until it took off in an explosion of wings, caught a thermal and rose in lazy loops, then arrowed off to the west, turned in a long curve, and came sailing back. It landed on the branch again, jaws gaping for its reward. Mira threw it a gobbet of meat.

  "Well done!" Hano cried. "The next one, now."

  He coaxed, cajoled, and taught. Mina listened with singleminded intensity, and in the process lost her fear of ghosts.

  The villagers came to learn in droves after that. Seeing their new sages fight off five magicians left them with a great desire to learn. They listened intently and even began trying to apply Taoist principles in everyday life. As Gar and Alea taught them, that included striving for harmony within themselves and without-in practical terms, such things as planning instead of worrying and turning quarrels into discussions. Of far more interest to the serfs was the instruction in martial arts, showing them how they could respond to attack by using an opponent's strength and momentum to help him defeat himself. They understood quite well how that could restore harmony between bully and victim.

  The exercises also helped them to balance the conflicting tensions of their bodies into inner harmony, which they felt as peace though they didn't notice that until their teachers pointed it out to them.

  They weren't the only ones who gained a new viewpoint toward their studies. After their conference with the ghosts, neither Gar nor Alea could begin to meditate without a peripheral awareness of half a dozen specters hanging on their every thought but in a trance even that ceased to matter much.

  Blaize and Mira studied and practiced as assiduously as any of the villagers-more, considering that, after the countryfolk had left, the two of them worked at developing their different talents. Blaize was indignant at first, still offended that Gar and Alea should so easily succeed where he had made such slow progress.

  "It's not fair!" he told Mira. "I labored long and hard, I practiced hours every day for five years trying to attract and control ghosts and they've surpassed me in a matter of days!"

  "But you didn't know the Way," Mira reminded him, "and they did."

  Blaize frowned in thought, then nodded reluctantly. "Yes, that makes sense. The ghosts must be part of the Tao, too, mustn't they? Whether they know it or not. Yes, of course somebody who knew the Way would be able to learn quickly how to deal with phantoms."

  "It will take us longer, of course," Mira told him. "We're both trying to learn the Way at the same time as we're trying to apply it."

  "Yes. Of course we'll go more slowly." Blaize gave her a look that was almost as surprised as it was pleased. Inside, he rejoiced, amazed--Mira no longer seemed to be treating him as a villain! She even seemed friendly! He would have liked more, but he was happy with what progress he seemed to have made.

  He and Mira both buckled down to some serious learning. Mira suffered a nightly training session with Hano and her friendship with wyverns, all wyverns, grew by leaps and bounds; soon there was almost nothing the little dragons wouldn't do for her.

  Gar waited for the surrounding villages to come to learn the Way. When no one came, he did a telepathic survey to see if perhaps his village was the planet's best kept secret-but no, peasant had talked to peasant who had talked to peasant, cousin to uncle to second cousin once-re
moved, and the surrounding villages had indeed learned what was happening here. In fact, the news seemed to be spreading far and wide, like ripples in a pond, but no one else came to learn. Gar began to realize that they were all taking the prudent course of waiting to see what happened to the villagers who had dared to learn to fight backthough of course, the serfs themselves hadn't fought their lords, only their teachers had. It remained to be seen if the magicians would punish the peasants simply for learning.

  Gar realized the sense of it. "That's what I would do in their places," he confided to Alea.

  "Of course," she said. "They're alive, after all. Why risk magicians coming to throw boulders and fireballs unless you know you're going to be able to fight them off?"

  "I don't think the magicians will attack the village just for becoming Taoists," Gar mused, "but they might attack us."

  "Yes, they might," Alea agreed. "Do we have the right to stay and endanger the village?"

  "They are making excellent progress toward understanding the world without superstition-or at least as much as they can, on a planet like this." A proud smiled flickered over his face, then flickered again. "They've learned the courage of their convictions, too. They might even be willing to do what they believe to be right no matter how their lord threatened."

  "Dangerous, that," Alea pointed out. "It's only a step or two from striking back at the magicians for trying to do what's wrong."

  "Well, yes, but that's been my goal, hasn't it?" Gar said candidly. "Nonetheless, I don't think they can win yet, not by themselves. We'll have to convert a few more villages."

  "Time to hit the road," Alea agreed.

  The next morning, they came down to the village to tell their pupils good-bye.

  The villagers panicked.

  "But how will we live without you?" an older man cried. "The magicians will fall on us again and flay us alive for having fought them!"