Windhaven Read online

  Sena looked at Maris. "We have had this problem before," she said. "The children of flyer families know everything they need to when they come of an age to challenge, but we hear no flyer gossip, know little about who is strong or who is weak. What things I know myself are ten years out of date. Will you advise them, Maris?"

  Maris nodded. "Well, obviously, you want to find someone you can beat. I'd say challenge those from Eastern or Western. The flyers from farther away are usually the best from their regions. When the competition is in Southern, then the weaker Southern flyers are on hand, but only the most skilled from Western make the flight.

  "Also, you'd do best to avoid the flyers from Big Shotan. They are organized almost in a military fashion, and they practice and drill endlessly."

  "I challenged a woman from Big Shotan last year," Damen put in glumly. "She hadn't seemed very good beforehand, but she beat me easily enough when it mattered."

  "She was probably being deliberately clumsy earlier, trying to lure a challenge from someone," Maris said. "I've known some who did that."

  "That still leaves a lot of people to choose from," Kerr said, unsatisfied. "I don't know any of them. Can't you tell me the name of someone I can beat?"

  Val laughed. He was standing by the door, S'Rella close to him. "You can't beat anyone," he said, "unless it's Sena here. Challenge her."

  "I'll beat you, One-Wing," Kerr snapped back.

  Sena hushed him and glared at Val. "Quiet. I'll have no more of that, Val." She looked back to Maris.

  "Kerr is right. Can you tell us specific flyers who are vulnerable?"

  "You know, Maris," Val said. "Like Ari." He was smiling.

  Once, not so very long ago, the suggestion would have filled Maris with horror. Once she would have thought it betrayal of the worst kind. Now she was not so sure. The poorer flyers endangered themselves and their wings, and it was no secret who they were for one privy to Eyrie gossip.

  "I–I suppose I can suggest a few names," she said hesitantly. "Jon of Culhall, for one. His eyes are said to be weak, and I've never been impressed by his abilities. Bari of Poweet would be another. She has gained a good thirty pounds this past year, a sure sign of a flyer whose will and body are failing." She named about a half-dozen more, all frequent subjects of flyer talk, reputed to be clumsy or careless or both, the old and the very young. Then, impulsively, she added one other name. "An Easterner I met yesterday might be worth a challenge. Arak of South Arren."

  Val shook his head. "Arak is small but hardly frail," he said calmly. "He would outfly anyone here, except perhaps for me."

  "Oh?" Damen, as ever, was annoyed by the implied slur. "We'll see about that. I'll trust Maris' judgment."

  They talked for a few minutes more, the Wood-wingers eagerly discussing the names Maris had tossed out. Finally Sena chased them all away and told them to get some rest.

  In front of the cabin she had shared with Maris, S'Rella bid goodnight to Val. "Go on," she told him. "I'll stay here tonight."

  He looked a bit nonplussed. "Oh? Well, suit yourself."

  When Val was out of sight, Maris said, "S'Rella? You're welcome, of course, but why…?"

  S'Rella turned to her with a serious expression on her face. "You left out Garth," she said.

  Maris was taken aback. She had thought of Garth, of course. He was ill, drinking too much, gaining weight; it might be best for him to lose his wings. But she knew he would never agree to that, and he had been close to her for a long time, and she could not bring herself to name his name when speaking to the Woodwingers. "I couldn't," she said. "He's my friend."

  "Aren't we your friends too?"

  "Of course."

  "But not as close friends as Garth. You care more about protecting him than about whether we win our wings."

  "Maybe I was wrong to omit him," Maris admitted. "But I care for him too much, and it isn't easy — S'Rella, you haven't said anything about Garth to Val, have you?" She was suddenly worried.

  "Never mind," S'Rella said. She brushed past Maris into the cabin and began to undress. Maris could only follow helplessly, already regretting her question.

  "I want you to understand," Maris said to S'Rella as the Southern girl slipped under the blankets.

  "I understand," S'Rella replied. "You're a flyer." She rolled over on her side, her back to Maris, and said no more.

  The first day dawned bright and still.

  From where she stood outside the flyers' lodge, it seemed to Maris that half the population of Skulny had come to watch the competition. People were everywhere: wandering up and down the shores, climbing over the rugged cliff face to get better vantage points, sitting on grass and sand and stone alone or in groups. The beach was littered with children of all ages, running up and down kicking sand up in their wake, playing in the surf, shouting excitedly, running with their arms stretched out stiffly, playing at being flyers. Merchants moved among the crowds: one man decorated with sausages, another bearing wineskins, a woman wheeling a cart burdened with meat pies. Even the sea was full of spectators. Maris could see more than a dozen boats, laden with passengers, lying dead in the water just beyond the breakers, and she knew there must be even more beyond her sight.

  Only the sky was empty.

  Normally the sky would have been crowded with impatient flyers, full of the glint of silver wings wheeling and turning as they took some last-minute practice or simply tested the wind. But not today.

  Today the air was still.

  The dead calm was frightening. It was unnatural, impossible: along the coast the brisk Seabreeze should have been constant. Yet a suffocating heaviness hung over everything. Even the clouds rested wearily in the sky.

  Flyers paced the beach with their wings slung over their shoulders, glancing up uneasily from time to time, waiting for the wind to return, and talking among themselves about the calm in low, careful voices.

  The land-bound were waiting eagerly for the competition to start, most of them unaware that anything was amiss. It was, after all, a beautiful, clear day. And, atop the cliffs, the judges were setting up their station and taking their seats. The competition could not wait on the weather; contests in this sluggish air might not be as exciting, but they would still be tests of skill and endurance.

  Maris saw Sena leading the Woodwingers across the sands toward the stairs leading up the cliffs. She hurried to join them.

  A line had already formed in front of the judges' table, behind which sat the Landsman of Skulny and four flyers, one each from the Eastern, Southern, Western, and the Outer Islands.

  The Landsman's crier, a massive woman with a chest like a barrel, stood on the edge of the cliff. As each of the challengers named an opponent to the judges, she would cup her hands and shout out the name for all to hear, and her apprentices would take up the cry all along the beach, shouting it over and over until the flyer challenged acknowledged and moved off toward the flyers' cliff. Then the challenger would go to meet his or her opponent, and the line would shuffle forward. Most of the names called were vaguely familiar to Maris, and she knew they were in-family challenges, parents testing children, or — in one case — a younger sibling disputing the right of her older brother to wear the family wings. But just before the Woodwingers reached the judges' table, a black-haired girl from Big Shotan, daughter to a prominent flyer, named Bari of Poweet, and Maris heard Kerr swear softly. That was one good target gone.

  Then it was their turn.

  It seemed to Maris to be quieter than it had been before. The Landsman was animated enough, but the four flyer judges all looked grave and nervous. The Easterner was toying with the wooden telescope that had been set before her on the table, the muscular blond from the Outer Islands was frowning, and even Shalli looked concerned.

  Sher went first, followed by Leva. Both named flyers that Maris had suggested to them. The crier bellowed out the names, and Maris heard the shouts being repeated up and down the beach.

  Damen named Arak of South
Arren, and the judge from Eastern smiled slyly at that. "Arak will be so pleased," she said.

  Kerr named Jon of Culhall. Maris was not happy with that. Jon was a weak flyer, a likely opponent, and she had been hoping that he would be challenged by one of the academy's better prospects — Val, S'Rella, or Damen. Kerr was the poorest of their six, and Jon would probably escape with his wings.

  Val One-Wing moved to the table.

  "Your choice" rumbled the Outer Islander. He was tense, as were the other judges, even the Landsman.

  Maris realized she was on edge as well, afraid of what Val might do.

  "Must I choose only one?" Val said sardonically. "The last time I competed, I had a dozen rivals."

  Shalli replied sharply. "The rules have been changed, as you very well know. Multiple challenges have been disallowed."

  "A pity," Val said. "I had hoped to win a whole collection of wings."

  "It will be unfortunate if you win any wings at all, One-Wing," the Easterner said. "Others are waiting.

  Name your opponent and move on."

  Val shrugged. "Then I name Corm of Lesser Amberly."

  Silence. Shalli looked shocked at first; then she smiled. The Easterner chuckled softly to herself, and the Outer Islander laughed openly.

  "Corm of Lesser Amberly!" the crier thundered. " Corm of Lesser Amberly!" A dozen lesser voices echoed the call.

  "I shall have to disqualify myself from this judging," Shalli said quietly.

  "No, Shalli," said the judge from Eastern. "We have confidence in your fairness."

  "I do not ask you to step aside," Val said.

  She looked at him, puzzled. "Very well. You con-tribute to your own fall, One-Wing. Corm is no grief-stricken child."

  Val smiled at her enigmatically and moved off, and Maris and Sena accosted him instantly. "Why did you do that?" Sena demanded. She was furious. "I have wasted my time with you, clearly. Corm! Maris, tell him how good Corm is, tell this willful fool how he has just thrown away his wings."

  Val was looking at her. "I think he knows how good Corm is," Maris said, meeting his eyes. "And he knows Shalli is his wife. I think that was why he chose him."

  Val had no chance to disagree. Behind them, the line had moved on, and now the crier was shouting out another name. Maris heard it and whirled, her stomach twisting. "No," she said, though the word caught in her throat and no one heard. But the crier, as if in answer, shouted the name once again. " Garth of Skulny! Garth of Skulny!"

  S'Rella was walking away from the judges, her eyes downcast. When she looked up at last to see Maris, her face was reddened, but defiant.

  Two by two they flew off into the morning sun, struggling against the heavy air — the calm had broken, but the winds were still sluggish and erratic — with wings grown suddenly awkward. The flyers wore their own wings, the challengers pairs lent them by judges or friends or bystanders. The course would take them to a rocky little island named Lisle, where they would have to land and collect a marker from the waiting Landsman before proceeding back. It was a flight of some three hours under normal conditions; in this weather, Maris suspected, it would take longer.

  The Woodwingers and their opponents launched in the order in which they had challenged. Sher and Leya got away well enough. Damen had more trouble; Arak abused him verbally while they were circling, waiting for the shout to start, and flew dangerously close to him as they veered out over the ocean. Even from a distance, Maris thought Damen looked shaken.

  Kerr did even worse. He botched his leap badly, almost seeming to stumble from the cliff, and a cry went up from below as he plunged down sharply toward the beach. Finally he regained some control and pulled himself up, but by the time he sailed out over the sea his opponent had opened up a substantial lead.

  Corm was cheerful and smiling as he prepared for his match against Val, joking and flirting with the two land-bound girls who helped him open his wings, calling out comments to the spectators, waving to Shalli.

  He even threw a grim smile in Maris' direction. But he did not speak to Val, except once, before he launched. "This is for Ari," he shouted, his tone deadly, and then he was running and the wind took him.

  Val said nothing. He unfolded his own wings in silence, leaped from the cliff in silence, swept up and around near Corm in silence. The crier gave the shout, and the two of them broke in opposite directions, both coming around cleanly, the shadow of their wings passing across the upturned faces of the children on the beach. When they moved out of sight, Corm was ahead, but only by a wingspan.

  Lastly came S'Rella and Garth. Maris stood with Sena near the judges. She could look down on the flyers' cliff and see them both, and watching them she felt heart-sick. Garth was somber and pale, and from a distance he appeared far too stout and clumsy to have much of a chance against the slim young challenger. Both of them prepared quietly, Garth speaking only once or twice to his sister, S'Rella saying nothing at all. Neither got off to a good start, Garth having a bit more difficulty with the thick air because of his weight. S'Rella moved in front of him quickly, but he had closed the gap by the time they reached the horizon and vanished.

  "I know you wanted to help your Woodwingers, but couldn't you have stopped short of the betrayal of a friend?"

  Dorrel's voice, deceptively calm. Feeling heartsick, Maris turned to face him. She had not spoken to him since that night on the beach.

  "I didn't want it to happen, Dorr," she said. "But it may be for the best. We both know he's sick."

  "Sick, yes," he snapped. "But I wanted to protect him — this will kill him if he loses."

  "It may kill him if he wins."

  "I think he'd prefer that. But if that girl takes his wings from him — he liked her, did you know that? He mentioned her to me, how nice she was, that night after Val wrecked the party in the lodge."

  Maris, too, had been sick and angry over S'Rella's choice of opponent, but Dorrel's cold fury turned her feelings another way.

  "S'Rella hasn't done anything wrong," she said. "Her challenge was perfectly proper. And Val didn't wreck the party, as you say. How dare you say that! It was the flyers who insulted him and then walked out."

  "I don't understand you," Dorrel said quietly. "I haven't wanted to believe how much you've changed. But it's true, it's as they say. You've turned against us. You prefer the company of the Woodwingers and the one-winged to that of true flyers. I don't know you anymore."

  The unhappiness on his face hurt her as much as the harshness of his words. Maris forced herself to speak. "No," she said. "You don't know me anymore."

  Dorrel waited a moment, waited for her to say something more, but Maris knew that if she opened her mouth again it could only be for a scream or a sob. She could see anger warring with sadness on Dorrel's face, and anger finally won. He turned without another word and stalked away.

  She felt, as she watched him walk away from her, that she was bleeding to death, and she knew it was a self-inflicted wound.

  "My choice," she whispered, and the tears ran down her face as she stared blindly out to sea.

  They had flown away two by two; they returned, hours later, one by one.

  Crowds of the land-bound waited on the beaches, their eager eyes scanning the horizon. They had engaged in their own games and contests as well as in eating and drinking as they waited for the results of the flyers' contest.

  The judges watched the skies through telescopes made for them by the finest lensmakers in Stormtown.

  On the table before them were a number of wooden boxes, one for each match, and piles of small pebbles: white pebbles for the flyers, black pebbles for the challengers. When a race was completed, each judge tossed a pebble into the wooden box. In a particularly close match, a judge might choose to vote for a tie by putting one stone of each color into the box. Or — but this was rarely done — if the winner was especially obvious, two white pebbles or two black could be cast.

  The first flyer was sighted from the boats before anyone
on shore saw him, and the shout went rippling over the water. On the beach, people began to stand and raise their hands to shield their eyes from the sun. Shalli lifted her telescope.

  "See anything?" another judge asked.

  "A flyer," Shalli said, laughing. "There" — she tried to point—"below the cloud. Can't tell who it is yet."

  The others looked. Maris could barely see the speck they were straining at; it might have been a kite or a rainbird to her, but they had their telescopes.

  The Eastern woman recognized the flyer first. "That's Lane," she said, surprised. The others looked impressed as well. Lane had started in the third pair, Maris recalled, which meant that not only had he outflown his own son, but four others who had started ahead of him as well.

  By the time he had landed, two other flyers had come surging out of the clouds, one several wingspans ahead of the other. The first pair to depart, the judges announced. One of the Landsman's attendants passed two of the wooden boxes down the table, and Maris heard the small clicks as the stones were dropped.

  When the boxes were set aside, she drifted closer. In the first box, she counted five black pebbles and one white; four judges ruling for the challenger, one for a tie. The other, the box representing the race in which Lane had flown, had five whites in it, but as she watched the judges dropped in three more — two more flyers had appeared, far apart, but neither one was Lane's son. When he finally did appear, some twenty minutes later, five others had preceded him, and Lane's box had ten white pebbles in it. A formidable margin; the boy had probably lost already, Maris knew.

  As each incoming flyer was recognized, the judges announced the name to the crier, who shouted it out for all to hear. Ragged cheers went up for some of the announcements from the land-bound thronging the beaches, and now and again Maris heard a loud groan as well. She suspected that most of the cheering was for financial reasons rather than personal. Most of the land-bound did not know flyers from other islands well enough to like or dislike them, but it was traditional to gamble on the outcome of the races, and she knew that a lot of money was changing hands below. It would be difficult, however, for S'Rella.