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-removed, 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 back—though 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?”