A Wizard in the Way

4

The giant leaped aside, but not far enough; the horse’s shoulder clipped him and he fell, tumbling head over heels.

“Gar!” the woman cried, and ran toward him, but three ghosts shot to bar her way, moaning in doleful harmony.

The possessed horse wheeled, rearing, iron-clad hooves poised to strike the giant as he strove to regain his feet.

The woman shied away from the ghosts in fright for a moment; then her lips thinned, and she charged right through the nearest.

She came out shivering but swinging her staff like a scythe, smacking into the back of the horse’s hind leg. It folded; with a scream, the horse fell back. Even with one leg weakened, it turned to face this new antagonist, forelegs raised to strike, lips pulled back to show teeth that seemed to glow in the night.

The woman struck one foreleg. The horse screamed again and she pushed the butt into its mouth. It bit down in fury, but its eyes locked with hers. Her voice vibrated with a strange energy as she chanted,

The horse glared at her, eyes locked with hers, malevolence burning, but the giant came up, standing behind the woman and glaring as she did. The other ghosts swooped and shrieked and gibbered at them, but the two ignored them, locking eyes with the horse until it peeled back its teeth, opened its mouth wide in a shriek—and the hag’s ghost shot forth from its mouth, taking the shriek with her, swelling to tower over them, howling in pain and fury even as the rage faded from the horse’s eyes.

“Only what you deserve!” Alea spat at the old woman’s shade. “Be still, or we’ll do worse.”

The ghost’s scream cut off. “She’s as bad as the mad folk in the cities!” she cried, staring at Alea in fright.

“Worse?” a man’s ghost blustered. “What could you do worse?” But his tone was hollow with hidden dread.

“You don’t want to know.” The tall woman turned back to the horse, which blinked, confused, looked about itself in surprise, then struggled to rise and sank back on the injured leg with a doleful neigh.

The giant stepped up behind it to lay a hand on its head. It whipped its nose about to bite, but froze and calmed strangely. After a minute or two, it relaxed, folded its legs, and watched the proceedings with mild interest.

The tall woman turned to find Mira beset. Three ghosts towered over her, their moans growing louder and louder in a dissonance that grated on Mira’s nerves; she clapped her hands over her ears. The tall woman winced but said, “Do I have to teach you to sing? Begone, fools, for even I can cause you pain!”

One of the ghosts—the one in the form of a guardsman in ancient livery with a long ragged scar that showed how he had died—clapped his hands to his head and shrieked. The other two stared at him in shock, then disappeared so suddenly they might never have been.

“Begone,” the woman commanded the ghost guard, and narrowed her eyes. His shriek soared higher; abruptly, he winked out.

“This cannot be!” the ghost of an old man quavered. His translucent robes shook with his trembling. “Mortals can only lead, persuade—they cannot command, for they cannot coerce!”

“ ‘Coerce’ might be too strong a word,” the giant admitted. “We can, however, cause you pain.”

The ghost doubled over screaming as though stabbed in the belly.

“Begone!” the woman commanded.

The old man winked out. The last two ghosts drifted backward warily.

“What’s a ghost without fetters?” the woman asked.

“An unchained malady,” the giant answered, and glowing links appeared in midair with manacles at either end.

With a wail, the last two ghosts disappeared.

Mira knelt, trembling and wide-eyed. She flinched away as the woman came to her—but the stranger knelt, saying, “Don’t fear, my dear, they won’t harm you anymore, and neither shall we. We simply can’t stand to see one against ten, no, especially not when three of them are armed and mounted, and the one is a woman alone.” She caught Mira’s hands in her own. “There now, the danger’s past, and neither my Gar nor myself will offer you the slightest threat. You’re safe with us.”

“But—but…” Mira forced herself not to pull away but was so frightened of the power these two had shown, of their size and strength, that she was afraid to let herself believe, afraid to trust.

“Are we so intimidating, then?” the woman asked with a sad smile. “We shouldn’t be, not to a poor lass alone in the night with bullies and ghosts out to chase her. Come, my name is Alea, and my companion is Gar. We both know what it is to flee and be chased, as you do, and would never dream of hurting one who has suffered as we have.”

Mira wavered, wanting so badly to trust but not daring to—but Alea let go of Mira’s hands and opened her arms. Yearning overcame fear, and Mira let herself fall into the other woman’s embrace, sobbing as though her heart would break.

Alea simply held her and let her weep, now and again making soothing noises. Finally the storm passed and Mira leaned back and away a little, dashing the tears from her eyes. Over Alea’s shoulder she could see the giant tying the unconscious riders over the horses’ backs and shooing them away. Then he turned to frown at the wall of fire. Slowly the flames died, and the night was still.

Mira began to tremble again. “You are a magician.” She turned to Alea, wide-eyed. “Both of you!”

“If this is what passes for a magician in this land, I suppose we are.” The woman spoke angrily. “How foul is the man who would use such power to terrify a poor helpless girl! Tell us his name, damsel, so we will know him for a villain if we should be so unlucky as to meet him!”

“He—he is the lord of our village and fifty more like it, with all their acres.” She clasped Alea’s hands between her own. “But, oh, good people, I beg you not to go near him! Roketh is a magician of fearful power—a ghost leader and fire-hurler both! He can persuade any ghost to do his bidding, even a wild almost ghost who has no form yet hungers for a human spirit to devour so it can steal its shape! None can threaten him and live! He has slain six other magicians in combat and swallowed their lands and people!”

“Then perhaps he should disgorge them,” Gar said heavily, coming to sit cross-legged near them.

“You must not attempt it! He would slay you!” Mira looked wide-eyed from the woman to the man and back, tense with fright at the thought. “None can stand against Roketh!”

“He may not be quite so invincible as he seems,” Alea told her, “but we would certainly be fools if we rushed in to confront him without learning a great deal more about him. Don’t worry, lass, we won’t attack him out of hand. If nothing else, we must stay a while to travel with you and make sure you come to no harm.”

“But Roketh will send soldiers after you! He will send ghosts, he will send apprentice magicians to hurl fire!”

“Why then, we must make sure they can’t find us,” Gar said easily.

Mira stared from one to the other as though they were crazed. “I hid my trail from the dogs, but the hunting-ghosts found me. How can you hide your mind from the specters?”

“So they follow your thoughts, do they?” Alea asked. “Don’t worry, then, lass—we can shield our thoughts quite well, and yours, too.” She glanced up at Gar. “Isn’t that true?”

“Very,” Gar confirmed. “More to the point, now that we know what they are, we should be able to tell when they’re coming.”

Mira thought of evading the ghosts and the despair of utter weariness overwhelmed her; she crumpled to the ground.

“What use is it to hide or flee? If Roketh does not find me again, some other magician will, and will claim me for his own for the same use Roketh intended, for there is no patch of ground in all this land that isn’t the demesne of one magician or another!”

“Well, then, we must keep moving,” Alea said with great practicality. “On the road or off it, we must keep marching until we find a place the magicians can’t reach.”

“There is no such place!”

“Then we’ll have to make one,” Gar said matter-of-factly. Mira stared from one to the other. “You must be powerful magicians indeed, to speak so lightly of building what cannot be made!”

“We don’t really think of it as magic,” Gar protested.

Alea gave him a withering glance. “Speak for yourself, long thinker.” She turned back to Mira. “Magic or not, he’ll make it work. You’ll be safe so long as you travel with us, lass. Come now, we’ve proved ourselves friendly and told you our names—what is your own?”

Mira looked from one to the other yet again. Somehow both she and the man seemed to be smaller, human rather than gigantic, though still very tall. She felt the tension begin to go out of her. “Mira. My name is Mira.”

“Very well, then: Mira, Alea, and Gar.” Alea nodded. “Can you tell us, lass, what you did that was so outrageous that Roketh would send these ghosts and riders after you?”

“I—I tried to escape,” Mira admitted, lowering her gaze. “Escape?” Alea’s voice hardened. “By what right did he hold you in bondage?”

“Why, by his right as my lord.” Mira looked up at Alea wide-eyed. “It was wrong of me to flee, for a serf must work for her lord, no matter who he is.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Alea snapped. “You belong to no one but yourself, lass, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!”

“True,” Gar said, “but it must have taken a powerful threat to make you leave your home and family.”

“It did, sir.” Mira lowered her gaze again. “Roketh sent … he sent his soldiers to bring me to his castle, and I have seen what happened to other girls who answered that summons—so I fled.”

“As indeed you should!” Alea cried indignantly. “He had no business summoning you only for his own depraved pleasure, and you had every right to refuse—even if the only way to do that was to flee!”

She said it with so much heat that Mira wondered if she had a similar story to tell, but that heat warmed Mira’s heart and made her think that perhaps she had done the right thing after all.

“These other women who had obeyed and gone to Roketh’s castle,” Gar reminded her. “What did happen to them?”

“Their eyes … their slumping shoulders … their…” Suddenly the horror of it overwhelmed her again, and Mira burst into tears once more.

Alea folded the young woman in her arms, murmuring, “Hush, dear, it’s over, and he can’t reach you now. Don’t worry, whatever happened to those others won’t happen to you. There, now, it will be all right.”

Gar turned his face away, gazing down the road, then glancing at the forest to either side, then behind them. He seemed rather grim, as though this were an old and far too familiar tale.

Mira’s sobs finally eased; she drew a little away from Alea and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, summoning the remnants of poise. “They … they will seek us here…”

“Yes, but not back at our camp,” Alea said. “Come, dear, we have a stew to heat.”

Mira hung back. “The ghosts … they can find us by our thoughts…”

“I don’t think any of those specters are going to be terribly anxious to renew our acquaintance,” Gar said with gentle amusement. “Let’s go—we left the stew over the fire.”

Alea cast him a sharp glance—she knew very well that he had damped the flames before he followed her. Still, what he had said was literally true—the stewpot was hanging over the campfire. It was simply not lit.

When they reached the campsite, though, she saw that the fire was lit, and the stew simmering gently. She cast a suspicious look at Gar, but he was all innocence. She grumbled under her breath about long-distance fire-lighting show-offs, then hastened to make Mira feel welcome. “Come now, dear, sit close to the flames—that’s right. You’ll feel better with a bit of stew in you. Where’s that third bowl … ah, there.” She pulled a wooden bowl out of her pack and ladled stew into it, then handed it to Mira and filled two more. “Gar, take the stewpot off the fire, will you? We have to boil water for tea.”

Gar switched pots before he settled down with his own bowl and round of hard bread.

As they ate, Alea and Gar took turns asking questions, then answering her answers with little tales of their own, about the villages in which they had grown and the neighbors’ eccentricities. Mira actually found herself laughing, though she would have sworn the last three days had made her forget how.

Before she knew it, she was talking like a waterfall, explaining to Gar and Alea what life was like in her village: the daily round of cleaning and tilling and mending and cooking; about Roketh and his guardsmen; about the cures he had performed when an epidemic seemed about to sweep the village and the punishments he had inflicted for disobedience.

Gar was interested in Roketh’s battles with other magicians, and she told him what she had heard. Alea was interested in the ways in which the female magicians treated their serfs, so Mira told what she had heard about that, too. As she talked, though, the strain of the last few days lifted; she began to relax and, before she knew it, was fighting to keep her eyes open.

Alea saw it. “Time for you to sleep, I think, my dear. Here, you take this bed of pine boughs—you’ll find it remarkably comfortable. No, don’t argue—I can make another quickly enough, but truth to tell, I shan’t need to, for Gar and I never sleep at the same time, one of us is always sitting up awake to keep the fire burning and to watch for … unwelcome company. No, now, sleep.”

Mira protested but found that she was settling herself on the boughs as she did, and fell asleep as she was claiming that she could be comfortable enough on the hard ground.

“She probably could have been, too,” Gar said, gazing at the sleeping woman. “She was tired enough for it.”

“No reason to let her, though,” Alea said sharply.

“No, of course not. What do you make of these ghosts, Alea? Other than a rumpled bedsheet, of course.”

Alea shuddered. “Sleep with one of those things over me? No, thank you!” Then, more thoughtfully, “I don’t think they’re really the spirits of the dead.”

“I would guess that some of the people here are telepaths, but don’t know it,” Gar said, “and are projecting their dreams and superstitions into others’ minds—without the slightest idea they’re doing it.”

“But the ghosts have minds of their own,” Alea objected. “A public dream that’s easier to start than to stop,” Gar guessed.

Alea shook her head. “Too simple. The dreamers would still have to be dreaming to make the ghosts respond to the living people they encounter.”

“A point,” Gar admitted. He stared at the fire in thought, then asked, “Could they be a local life-form that developed a symbiosis with the colonists?”

“Symbiosis?” Alea looked up, frowning. “That happens when both life-forms gain something from each other. What would the colonists gain from having the specters take on their forms and personalities?”

“Immortality of a sort,” Gar said, “though I’m sure the local spirits can’t really absorb souls. If it exists, the soul has a completely different kind of reality from our universe of matter and energy.”

“True,” Alea countered, “but it does leave some very strong traces, such as life and personality.”

“Strictly, a soul is life-force,” Gar said thoughtfully, “and when it passes out of the body, perhaps it releases all the electrical energy patterns that it built up over the years—releases that part that belongs to our world, that is; it would take the spiritual energy, the memories and personality, with it.”

“So the local ghosts can’t gain the memories and thought patterns until a person dies,” Alea said thoughtfully, “which means they’re not really spirits.”

“No, just some very diffuse form of matter,” Gar said, “or perhaps a very concentrated form of energy; I know a physicist who claims that whether something is matter or energy depends on your point of view.”

“Not mine,” Alea protested. “Wouldn’t it be the ghosts’ viewpoint that matters?”

Gar shrugged. “What they’re made of doesn’t really signify anything. What’s important is that they take on the shapes, personalities, and memories of people who have died. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen them and heard their thoughts, but…”

“Well, they weren’t figments of your imagination,” Alea told him. “I saw and heard them, too. For all practical purposes, they are the ghosts of dead people.”

“Yes, and it would seem the local magicians can persuade them to do their dirty work. Which brings us to Mira.”

“A local serf on the run, just as you hoped to find,” Alea reminded. “But that first ghost’s thought of fear wasn’t the only one we heard. I felt a wave of sheer terror, and it wasn’t what the ghost was projecting, it was the response it raised in Mira.”

“Yes, and we weren’t particularly trying to read minds at the time,” Gar said. “She sent that through all by herself, so strongly that we couldn’t ignore it—and I don’t think she knew she was doing it.”

“So, she’s a telepath,” Alea concluded.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Gar said. “She doesn’t seem to have read our minds, after all. She’s definitely an empath though—able to feel others’ emotions and project her own.”

Alea frowned up at him. “Don’t sound so shocked. All right, it’s amazing, but if you found me, you shouldn’t be surprised to find other mind readers.”

“I suppose not,” Gar said, “but I grew up with the idea that most of the galaxy’s telepaths lived on my home planet, and even there they were rare.”

“Maybe so,” Alea answered, “but whoever told you that didn’t know about Midgard—or Oldeira, as it turns out.”

“No,” Gar said, “I guess they didn’t. I wonder if all the Lost Colonies have telepaths.”

“Not all,” Alea objected. “You’ve visited some of them.”

“Yes, some.” Gar recovered his assurance. “And SCENT has visited quite a few more; surely they would have reported finding telepaths. Still, it seems Gramarye isn’t the only world to foster espers. I’m going to have to approach other planets with an open mind.”

“Not too open,” Alea cautioned. “It might be better to keep your shield up.”

“Yes, it might.” Gar smiled, amused. “Though not so vital as it might be, with your shield to guard my back.”

“Is that all I am to you—a shield-companion?” Alea couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

“Only?” Gar stared. “There’s just one way people can be closer! What do you mean, ‘only’?”

But Alea fastened on the first statement. “One way? What’s Number One?”

A shadow crossed Gar’s face; he turned away. “One that’s closed to me.” He smoothed his expression as he turned back to her. “I rejoice in the friendships I can know, and delight in the presence of so excellent a woman as my companion.”

Alea stared, dazed by the compliment but feeling a certain hollowness within her in spite of it. It was flattering to realize that if he were attracted to her, it was quite literally for her mind, or rather her telepathic abilities. Nonetheless, she was surprised to realize that she felt rather chagrined. That surprise bred fear, which sharpened her tone as she said, “But Mira doesn’t have such a shield and doesn’t know how to make one yet. Do you think her empathic ability attracted the ghosts?”

“No,” Gar said slowly, “I think her magical lord of the manor sicced them on her. But I take your point: her psionic talent probably helped them to home in on her.” He gave her a sudden grin. “No need to ask how you managed to banish them. I don’t expect they’re used to the intensity of anger you aimed at them.”

Alea turned her head a little to the side, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Are you sure my capacity for anger is a good thing?”

“That,” Gar said gravely, “depends entirely on who you choose as a target … and why,” he added as an afterthought.

“Well, there was a good deal of indignation in it too,” she told him. “After all, they had no right to pick on that poor girl.”

“They certainly did not,” Gar agreed, “but how did you know telepathy would banish them?”

Alea stared at him, momentarily at a loss. Then she said, “It only made sense. If they implanted fear in their victims by telepathy, they should have been vulnerable to it themselves.” A need for honesty made her add, “Of course, I didn’t think that through before I acted.”

“Yes, you did,” Gar said. “You just didn’t put it into words—you understood it all in an instant.” His smile was slight, but his eyes glowed at her.

Alea looked away, embarrassed. “I didn’t know why I was so sure aiming my anger at them would work—I just knew it would.”

“As indeed it did,” Gar said. “I suspect that it was your self-confidence that daunted them as much as your rage.”

Alea frowned. “You mean they’re all bluff?”

“No, all thought,” Gar said, “even if they are made of gossamer. Their essence is mind-energy; they’re creatures of idea—mental constructs.”

“And if they’re shaped by people’s minds, they’re vulnerable to them.” Alea nodded.

“Therefore they should be attracted by telepathy. I see how you worked it out.” Gar nodded. “Let’s try the experiment.”

“What experiment?” Alea asked in alarm.

But Gar was gazing off into the night. She could feel the pressure of his thoughts, hear his unvoiced words: Here I am—here, for all to see. Come find me if you will and match me thought for thought.

Alea leaped to her feet. “You’re crazy! You have no idea what might answer that call! Gar, stop!”

But he didn’t; he was already in a trance in which the world of thought seemed more real than the world of the body. She had to distract him, make him break off that mental searchlight. In a panic, she leaned forward and planted her lips squarely on his. She knelt frozen, shocked by her own brazen conduct, then was amazed by how good his lips felt, how surprisingly soft; they almost seemed to swell, to turn outward, to become sensuous instead of the thin gash he showed the world. His arms came around her, the kiss deepened, and she knew with certainty that he was no longer issuing his mental challenge. The kiss had served its purpose. That was enough.

The trouble was, she didn’t want to stop.