“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!”
“You didn’t fight them,” Gar pointed out. “We did.”
“They’re not apt to attack you by yourselves,” Alea said, “especially since your lives are even more peaceful now that you’ve learned what we had to teach.”
“Peaceful!”
“Why, yes,” Gar said mildly. “I haven’t heard husbands and wives screaming at each other very often in the last few weeks, and no fistfights between drunks.”
“In fact, no drunks,” Alea added.
The villagers looked at one another, startled.
“Well,” one young man said, “we may not be having fist fights, but when Athelstan and I grew angry with each other we made it a martial arts match, as you’ve shown us.”
“And worked off your anger with neither being hurt much.” Gar nodded. “You restored harmony inside you both, and harmony between you. No magician is going to object to his serfs living in peace.”
“As long as we don’t practice our new skills on him, eh?” the older man said with a grin.
“Exactly. What lord ever minded his peasants indulging in a bout of wrestling now and then?”
“But the teacher’s another matter,” Alea said. “The magicians don’t know where our doctrines might end. If we leave now, they’ll be content to see you’re peaceful—but if we stay, they’ll come back to wipe us out.”
“Or try to,” Gar said, poker-faced.
All things considered, the villagers decided they were right to leave.
“You could stay,” one old woman said to the two apprentices half-hopefully.
Mira looked at Blaize, startled, and they saw the temptation in each other’s eyes.
“There’s something to be said for having a home,” Blaize admitted.
“Yes, but not if the lord’s going to command you to do things you hate.” Mira’s resolve stiffened. “Besides, I haven’t learned everything Alea and Gar have to teach me yet.”
“Neither have I.” Blaize turned to the old woman. “Thank you for the invitation, but I think I’ll follow my teachers.”
“I, too,” Mira said, “but thank you.”
“Go well, then,” the old woman sighed, then admitted, “I would, if I were your age and unmarried with no children.” Off they went, to follow Gar and Alea.
The search for more pupils was depressing, though. They did just as they had, setting up camp on a hillside above a hamlet, then sitting in meditation long hours, waiting for the villagers to come spying out of curiosity—but the serfs stayed home, and after two weeks of waiting, Gar investigated mentally.
“They’re not curious,” he reported to Alea. “They know who we are.”
“So the grapevine’s been that busy, has it?” Alea asked sourly. “And they’d rather be cautious than learn?”
“All they can see is that we bring magicians on the attack,” Gar said, “and that we didn’t even stay around to guard the one village that did listen to us.”
“Perhaps we’ve tried the wrong village,” Alea suggested.
So they struck camp and hiked fifty miles, hoping a different demesne would have villagers with a different attitude. After two weeks with no sign of interest, though, Gar read minds again and reported, “They’re afraid to take the chance of finding something better, for fear of losing what they already have.”
“That isn’t much,” Alea said, wrinkling her nose.
“No, but they don’t have magicians fighting in their pastures very often, and they don’t have to worry about bandits—their lord gets angry if anyone else tries to fleece his peasants.”
“That’s his privilege,” Alea said tartly.
“Of course,” Gar echoed. “He thinks that’s what serfs are for. But he does give them some security: they know what to expect next month, even if it’s only forced labor on his lands and taxes at harvest time.”
“So the villagers prefer the security of an overlord even it if means oppression and losing their young people to the magician’s service—the girls to wait on him and the boys to be his guards.” Alea shook her head in disgust. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I,” Gar sighed. “After all, in their own minds, they’re only being prudent. I’m very much afraid, though, that they lack the courage to be free and the willingness to accept the responsibility that goes along with that freedom.”
Alea thought she had never seen him look so dejected. She tried to buck him up. “It’s not inborn, though. Blaize and Mira are proof of that.”
“Yes, they are, aren’t they?” Gar looked up at the two youngsters with a smile. “They had the courage to fight, in their own ways, and they are making progress.” His smile turned sardonic. “More than I am, at the moment.”
“Yes.” Alea turned to beam at the younger members of the team, sitting by the fire in earnest discussion—maybe a little too earnest. “Hano’s ghost tells me that Mira’s a very rare kind of wyverneer. Most of them train their reptiles by rewards of meat and punishment of headaches, but that’s not her style.”
“Really,” Gar said, interested. “How does she control them?”
“Well, she doesn’t really—she just makes friends with them. They choose to fly along because they enjoy her company.”
“Then they’ll do anything to protect a friend?” Gar grinned. “So all she has to do is persuade them that attacking her enemies is protecting her.”
“Or even bringing her a rabbit for dinner,” Alea said.
Gar frowned. “I don’t remember her using them to hunt.”
“She says she hasn’t, but they’ve offered time and again—something like a cat bringing you a dead mouse as a gift.” Gar smiled, amused. “Well, if we find a rabbit in the pot some night, we’ll know they stopped offering and started doing. I wonder why more wyverneers don’t use her approach.”
“She explained it to me. She makes friends with the wild wyverns, and they’re very different from the flocks born in captivity on her home estate. She says the tame wyverns are all bloodthirsty little creatures, bred and trained to be saurian sadists—attacking anything their masters tell them to, obeying anybody who’s meaner than they are.”
“Not the world’s best news.” Gar frowned.
Blaize raised his voice a notch. “Your wild wyverns may know love and loyalty, but could they stand against the blood-crazed coursers a magician raises?”
“Oh, be sure they can,” Mina told him. “After all, what kinds of enemies do the tame wyverns fight? Only peasants who are frightened of them before they see them, just by what they’ve heard of the beasts. But your wild wyvern has to bring home dinner every day, which means he has to hunt and kill it—and fight off beasts who want to make dinner of her!”
“Not ‘my’ wild wyvern,” Blaize objected. “I’ll cleave to my ghosts, thank you. At least they can think about what to do or not do.”