A Wizard In Peace

by Christopher Stasheff

  "Do you say the reeves and ministers are the noblemen of this land?" Orgoru asked, still parched.

  "They are the equivalents, yes."

  Orgoru lay unmoving still, his thoughts racing.

  "Be what you are." The Wizard's ice-blue eyes pierced to Orgoru's core again.

  And suddenly, miraculously, Orgoru was. He was simply and only Orgoru, the son of a peasant, and could accept the fact. But within him burned the desire to become in fact what he had been in pretense-one of the aristocrats of his world. Within him was now a granite core of determination. He would learn to read and write, he would learn the Protector's laws and procedures, he would become a magistrate!

  Then wonder grew and filled him, wonder that he could now see that the Prince of Paradime had been only pretense, wonder that he could accept the truth of his own state.

  "Yes, you can regain your life of luxury," the Wizard told him, "but noblesse oblige-nobility imposes obligations. You must earn your rank by fulfilling the duties that go with itsecuring the welfare of your fellow peasants. Then you shall become a magistrate or reeve in reality, instead of a prince in illusion."

  Orgoru groaned as the memory of the gilded life he had just begun to lead overwhelmed him, of the beautiful women and noble men whom he would no doubt now discover were really very ordinary. "I'd prefer the illusion!"

  "Then you may have it," the Wizard declared, "if you first help your fellow peasants to win their freedom. Help them to overthrow the Protector, become one of the new magistrates who serve the people rather than their overlord, see the new government firmly established-and I will send you back into your delusion. But you must earn it first."

  Orgoru stared. "What is this talk of overthrow? Of new magistrates?"

  But the Wizard had begun to shrink, and Orgoru realized he was receding, going away. "Don't leave!" Orgoru cried. "Tell me first!"

  "Ask the giant," the Wizard said. Then he shrank abruptly to a little white ball, racing away from Orgoru, becoming only a dot that winked out, and was gone.

  Orgoru hung suspended in darkness with hope blooming in him. If there was truly a chance to bring down the Protector and the vicious magistrates who served him, then there would really be a chance for Orgoru to become a magistrate himself! But how was this all to be done? The Wizard had said to ask the giant-but which giant? Where? How would Orgoru find him?

  "Where?" he cried, flailing about. "Where is he?" His arm struck something solid. He turned to look, and saw brown trouser thighs with huge hands resting on them. Looking up, he saw Gar looming over him, huge against darkness, and realized he was the giant!

  Then Orgoru realized that he was awake.

  He opened his mouth to demand Gar tell him how to overthrow the Protector-then realized that the giant was swaying, eyes still closed, sweat streaming down his face. His eyelids opened; he looked down at Orgoru with unutterable weariness and said, "Forgive me, but I can't tell you now. Please rise from that bed, for I need it."

  Orgoru stared, not understanding, riot even knowing he had been on a bed.

  Then Dirk came up beside Gar, reaching down toward Orgoru. "Up, my friend. He has cured you; he has earned his rest."

  Orgoru understood enough to seize Dirk's hand and scramble to his feet. Gar swayed, then leaned, then fell, crashing down onto the bed of pine boughs, his eyes closing.

  Orgoru stared. "Why is he so tired?"

  "Because he has just finished a very hard task," Dirk explained, "and on top of that, he was worried about your health, after that blow on the head."

  Orgoru felt his head, frowning, but found no lump. "I don't remember being struck."

  "You were," Dirk assured him, "where it counted most. You understand what you have to do now?"

  "Only in broad outline," Orgoru sighed, "but I will undertake it, for the reward promised me. What must I do first?"

  "Nothing much," Dirk told him. "Go back into the city and pretend to be the Prince of Paradime still-but whenever anybody wakes up from delusion, talk to them and reassure them. When you've all been cured, we'll tell you how to overthrow the Protector and the magistrates who have become corrupt. Then we'll start your training."

  Training? Orgoru wondered what kind of training he could mean.

  Distant shouts came thinly through the dead pine needles. Dirk raised his head. "Your friends have found out you're missing, and are coming back for you. Actually, they've been searching for you, and for us, all night. Tell them you fell and hit your head, and just woke up. Come on."

  He led the way out of the lean-to. Orgoru stared at it in surprise; he hadn't known he was in it. He also hadn't known how much time had passed, but the forest around him glowed with the twilight of false dawn. Then he looked up, and saw Ciletha standing next to the stocky man he remembered as Gar and Dirk's servant. What was he really?

  "Orgoru!" Ciletha cried in a voice that was half a sob, and ran to him. Orgoru held her against his chest, bemused, amazed at her embrace, beset by a feeling of newness, as though he had never seen the world before. Is this what it's like to see everything as it really is? Aloud, he soothed, "Don't worry, Ciletha. I'm all right. In fact, I'm better than I've ever been."

  She pulled back, staring up at him, face stained with tears. "Are you ... are you still ... "

  "The Prince of Paradime?" Orgoru smiled and shook his head. "No. I'm cured of that."

  But why was the stocky man-Miles, that's what his name was!-why was he standing so stiffly, looking so grim?

  The shouting was coming closer. "I must go," Orgoru said, and stepped away from Ciletha with a quick pat on her shoulder.

  "This way." Dirk led him between a huge old elm and a hickory. He stopped halfway through and faded back out of sight. Orgoru saw the dim trail and stepped forward just as the "aristocrats" burst into sight.

  Orgoru was shaken to his core. Admittedly, their finery was torn and bedraggled from briars, and from leaves laden with dew-but the colors were so garish! And the people were so common! Moon-faced or gaunt, short and round or tall and skinny-where were the elegant forms he remembered?

  Was this how he really looked?

  The thought was almost enough to send him back into madness, but a fat little man with a full crown came bustling up to him, and a voice he recognized demanded, "Prince of Paradime! Where have you been?"

  Orgoru stared. Could this rotund commoner really be King Longar? But where was the imposing stature, the commanding mien?

  He shook himself and forced a smile. "I must have struck my head on a tree branch as I searched for you, Your Majesty, for I've only just now waked up, and my head aches abominably." The first part was true, anyway.

  "Well, let us rejoice that you are restored to. us!" King Longar reached up to clap him on the shoulder.

  Up? It should have been down! He'd been taller than Orgoru-at least in delusion.

  "Come, back to the city!" the king called to his noblemen. "It's a great victory, for we've driven off the invaders and rescued one of our own!"

  The men gave a single, unified cheer, and turned back toward the city. Orgoru jostled along in their midst, forcing himself to smile and bow and joke with them about their wonderful night's work. He knew that the tale of this adventure would swell till a whole army took the place of Gar, Dirk, and Miles, and Orgoru would be torn from their evil clutches before the aristocrats fought the army into, a rout. Looking about, he could see that they believed it already, and it hadn't even been put into words.

  It frightened him that he could understand them so wellbut the Guardian had been right, he was one of their kind.

  If the Guardian was real.

  Real or not, Orgoru resolved to hold fast to one bit of delusion-his image of himself as tall and lean, graceful and cultured, with a noble brow and wise face. When he stopped to think about it, he knew he was only a plump, dowdy, very ordinary looking man-but he didn't intend to stop to think about it if he didn't have to. His unthinking image of himself as aristocratic, woul
d help him become the magistrate, then the reeve, that he knew he could be!

  When the Protector was overthrown.

  As they came back into the city, though, another shock awaited him. Why he should have thought the women wouldn't look any different, when the men did, he didn't know-but they were different indeed, tall, short, fat, cadaverous, lumpen and plain, with moon-faces and horse-faces and squints and warts. They cried welcome to the men as they came into the palace, and some ran to embrace their lovers. Orgoru watched in shock until one tall, rawboned woman came hurrying up to him and, in the voice of Countess Gilda, cried, "Welcome back! Oh, I feared so for your safety, for your life, my prince!" She threw her arms about him, but Orgoru stood frozen, trying to reconcile the beautiful countess of his delusion with this long-faced, lantern jawed woman.

  Gilda thrust herself away, staring up at him in alarm. "Why are you so cold, my love?"

  With a stabbing pain, Orgoru felt the image of beauty wrenched away from him-but he looked into Gilda's eyes, those huge, limpid, lovely dark blue eyes, and knew that one element of her beauty, at least, was real.

  Perhaps her conversation was, too, her intelligence and her wit. His pulse quickened with the thought, but he still couldn't bring himself to really embrace this taIl, ungainly creature. Silently, he thanked all good fortune that he hadn't started a real affair, and certainly that he hadn't married yet!

  Orgoru prowled the halls of the palace in the early light of the next morning, pausing to listen at every door, prepared to explain, if anyone came upon him, that he had waked in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again, so he had gone to take a walk and try to regain sleepiness. Part of the story, at least, was true.

  As he stopped by Countess Gilda's door, he heard sobbing. At once, compassion flowed, and all his revulsion fled. He tapped on her door. The sobbing stopped.

  "It's Orgoru," he called softly.

  There was only one sobbing gasp from within. "Orgoru only," he explained, "not the Prince Not to you-now."

  There was a burst of footsteps, and the door flew open; he found himself staring into Gilda's tear-streaked face. She looked him up and down with a look of disbelief. "You? Orgoru? But ... but how . . ."

  "This is how I really am," Orgoru told her gently. "Look closely at my face! Do you see nothing of the Orgoru you knew?"

  "Some. . . something," she managed.

  "I woke crying out yesterday morning," Orgoru told her. "May I come in?"

  "Yes! At once! Before anyone sees!" Gilda pulled him into the chamber and shut the door quickly, then turned and leaned against it, bosom heaving-and Orgoru realized that not all the delusion had been false. "How ... how did you..."

  "I dreamed of all the worst wrongs of my life being righted," Orgoru told her. "I dreamed of an old man who called himself `the Wizard of Peace,' and made me see myself as I really am-only Orgoru, the son of peasants. I nearly fled back into madness then, but he had shown me enough that was good about myself that I held on to sanity."

  "I, too!" Gilda gasped. "I dreamed of other boys and girls treating me kindly, including me in their games, even dancing with me when I grew to young womanhood! I found I dared to see myself as I was, and not shrink in disgust!"

  Orgoru nodded. "Then the Wizard told me I could earn real nobility by rescuing the common people from this dictator who rules with with an iron rod, the Protector."

  "I ... I too," Gilda said, her tone faltering.

  Orgoru looked into those large, fine eyes, and realized that she wasn't so plain after all-even though her face was streaked, and her eyes red with tears. "Brace yourself. None of the others look as you have seen them. King Longar is short and fat."

  "How ... how did I look to you?"

  "Shorter than you are, voluptuous, and stunning in your beauty." Orgoru knew that lies wouldn't serve. He took a step closer, frowning. "But looking closely, looking into your eyes, I see that not all of that beauty was a dream."

  Gratitude flashed across her face, chased out by a sardonic grimace. "I know what I am, Orgoru. I've looked in my mirror. Don't lie to me, for it did not."

  Yes, there was something of her old wit left there, and certainly . . . "Your intelligence is as great as I remember it."

  "Oh, is it really! And what man ever found a woman attractive for intelligence?"

  "I," Orgoru told her truthfully, "and most of the men here, I think."

  She stared, hope rising in her eyes.

  "We all of us value wit, at least," he told her, "men and women alike."

  "Then there was some shred of truth in that delusion," she whispered.

  "Some," he told her. "When the shock of seeing the others for the first time wore off, I watched them move, watched them dance. Their gracefulness is no illusion, nor their posture and bearing. They have all learned to move like the aristocrats in the magic pictures, and that grace remains. It's learned, but it's there."

  "Then the Wizard spoke truly? We can learn to be real lords and ladies?"

  "Our land's equivalent, at least," Orgoru told her, "reeves and their wives."

  Suddenly she almost collapsed, and he sprang to catch her, to hold her up. "Give me my madness again!" she sobbed into his chest.

  "We shall have to earn it," he told her sadly, "and to earn it, we have to become what we only played at being."

  Her body firmed; the tears dwindled, and she looked up at him. "We shall, then," she said, with the same iron resolution that now made up his core. "I may never be able to be beaufiful, but I shall become a lady in fact."

  "You already are," he whispered.

  That afternoon, Lord Saunders woke from his nap sobbing. Orgoru was prowling the halls and came upon him before he had been alone long. The two men commiserated, then resolved to hurry the overthrow along, so that they could earn their return to madness.

  The next morning, Lady Rijora awoke weeping, and Gilda went to comfort her. King Longar woke crying out that afternoon, and Saunders and Orgoru comforted him. Thus, one by one and ten a day, the deluded folk awoke to sanity, and longed for madness.

  By the end of the month, everyone in Voyagend had dreamed of the Wizard, and the Wizard had assured them all that the giant would tell them how to overthrow the Protector. They welcomed Gar and his companions back into the city, albeit nervously, and while he was recovering from the exertion of curing them, they spent a nervous night trying to socialize in their old style, but all very obviously trying not to feel uncomfortable with these plain, drab, ordinary-looking people whom reality had shown them. Toward the end of the evening, Miles found Dirk and said, "Master Dirk. . ."

  Dirk gave him a warning glare. Miles sighed; the man was fight. "Dirk, we must do something, and quickly! They're so repulsed by the sight of one another that we may very well see them trying to go mad again!"

  "A lot more chance than I'd like to take," Dirk agreed "After all, wanting to get well is one of the biggest assets in recovery. Well, I'll catch them before they all go to bed." He stepped out into the middle of the room and called, "Music, stop playing!"

  He could have waited until the end of the dance, of course, but the computer stopped the music in mid-bar, and it drew the people's attention to him more sharply than any amount of shouting could have done. They stepped apart from their partners with ill-concealed relief and turned to stare at the giant's friend.

  "I know you all want to start learning how to overthrow the Protector," Dirk called out. "Well, even though Gar is still recuperating, we can start without him."

  A murmur went around the room, apprehension and excitement mixed. Dirk waited for it to calm, then went on. "The first part is learning to live by the same schedule the magistrates do, and the second part is to learn to fight, so you can tell your bailiffs how to command their watchmen-or your armies, if you rise 'to reeves. So everyone wakes at nine o'clock tomorrow, and we'll work our way earlier and earlier until you're up with the sun."

  A massed groan rose from the quondam aristocrats.


  "I know, I know, but it's necessary," Dirk answered. "How many magistrates have you seen who slept in till noon? So up at nine tomorrow, and we'll start the day with a light breakfast, then a few basic lessons in hand-to-hand combat."

  "But what shall, the ladies do?" Rijora called.

  "Do?" Dirk said blankly. "Why, get out there with a quarterstaff, of course!"

  A hum of shocked talk went up. Dirk waited a moment, then held up hands for calm. "Let's make this clear for everyoneyou're not going out for a Sunday picnic. Everybody who's in on this scheme is very likely to be attacked at some point, and you'd all better know how to defend yourselves. In some ways, it's even more important for the ladies! So up at nine, now, and that means you ought to be getting to bed as quickly as you can!"

  He didn't need to add "alone"-even longtime lovers were shying away from one another now. They dispersed, and Dirk took Miles and Ciletha for a visit to Gar.

  His suite was as grand as the rest, with, full computer support. Dirk stopped in the sitting room and said, "Wait here. I'll call you if he's up to talking." They nodded, so he went to tap on the bedroom door.

  "Come in," Gar called.

  Dirk stepped in as Gar called, "Lights, low," and the lights glowed to life enough to show him lying in the four-poster bed, rising up on one elbow. "How are things, Dirk?"

  "Tense." Dirk started to sit down in the bedside chair he'd been using a lot lately, then hesitated. "Did you eat today?"

  "I think so." Gar rubbed his eyes. "I stumbled over to the dispenser and had some oatmeal the last time I woke-but the sun was shining then."

  "Yeah, that was this morning. Think you can stay awake long enough for some chicken soup?"

  Gar nodded, so Dirk went to the dispenser and brought back a tray. As Gar sipped, Dirk said, "They're full of nervous energy, so I figured I'd better channel it before they deliberately try to go mad again."

  "Wise." Gar nodded. "What will you do?"

  "Wake them up at nine, for starters. Then a few light calisthenics and some basic self-defense techniques-how to fall and roll, block a punch, that kind of thing. Might start with quarterstaves."