Windhaven

  “It will always be One-Wing,” he said. “Maybe for you too.”

  “A half-flyer,” she agreed. “Both of us. But which half? Val, you can make the Landsmen bid for your services. The flyers will despise you for it, most of them, and maybe some of the younger and greedier will imitate you, and I'd hate to see that. And you can wear that knife your father gave you when you fly, even though you break one of the oldest and wisest flyer laws by doing so. It is a small point, a tradition, and the flyers again will despise you, but no one will do anything. But I tell you now, if you find who ordered you beaten, and kill them with that same knife, you'll be One-Wing no longer. The flyers will name you outlaw and strip your wings away, and not a Landsman on Windhaven will take your side or give you landing, no matter how much they need flyers.”

  “You want me to forget,” Val said. “Forget this?”

  “No,” said Maris. “Find them, and take them to a Landsman, or call a flyer court. Let your enemy be the one who loses wings and home and life, and not you. Is that such a bad alternative?”

  Val smiled crookedly, and Maris saw he had lost some teeth as well. “No,” he said. “I almost like it.”

  “It's your choice,” Maris said. “You won't be flying for a good while, so you'll have time to think about it. I think you're intelligent enough to use that time.” She looked to S'Rella. “I must return to Lesser Amberly. It's on your way, if you're going back to Southern. Will you fly with me, and spend a day in my home?”

  S'Rella nodded eagerly. “Yes, I'd love—that is, if Val will be all right.”

  “Flyers have unlimited credit,” Val said. “If I promise Raggin enough iron, he'll nurse me better than my own parent.”

  “I'll go, then,” S'Rella said. “But I'll see you again, Val, won't I? We both have wings now.”

  “Yes,” Val said. “Go fly with yours. I'll look at mine.”

  S'Rella kissed him and crossed the room to where Maris stood. They started out the door.

  “Maris!” Val called sharply.

  She turned at the sound of his voice, in time to see his left hand reach awkwardly behind his head, under the pillow, and come whipping out with frightening speed. The long blade sliced through the air and struck the doorframe not a foot from Maris' head. But the knife was ornamental obsidian, bright and black and sharp, but not resilient, and it shattered when it struck.

  Maris must have looked terrified; Val was smiling. “It was never my father's,” he said. “My father never owned anything. I stole it from Arak.” Across the room their eyes met, and Val laughed painfully. “Get rid of it for me, will you, One-Wing?”

  Maris smiled and bent to pick up the pieces.

  PART THREE

  The Fall

  SHE GREW OLD in less than a minute.

  When Maris left the side of the Landsman of Thayos she was still young. She took the underground way from his spare rocky keep to the sea, a damp, gloomy tunnel through the mountain. She walked quickly, with a taper in her hand, her folded wings on her back, surrounded by echoes and the slow drip of water. There were puddles on the floor of the tunnel, and the water soaked through her boots. Maris was anxious to be off.

  It was not until she emerged into the twilight on the far side of the mountain that Maris saw the sky. It was a dim threatening purple, a violet so dark it was almost black; the color of a bad bruise, full of blood and pain. The wind was cold and unruly. Maris could taste the fury that was about to break, could see it in the clouds. She stood at the foot of the time-worn stairs that led up the sea cliff, and briefly she considered turning back, resting overnight at the lodge house and postponing her flight until dawn.

  The thought of the long walk back through the tunnel dismayed her, however, and Maris took no joy in this place. Thayos seemed to her a dark and bitter land, and its Landsman rude, his brutality barely hidden beneath the civilities required between Landsman and flyer. The message he had given her to fly weighed heavily upon her. The words were angry, greedy, full of the threat of war, and Maris was eager to deliver and forget them, to free herself of the burden as quickly as she could.

  So she extinguished her taper and started up the stairs, climbing easily with long, impatient strides. There were lines on her face and gray in her hair, but Maris was still as graceful and vigorous as she had been at twenty.

  Where the steps opened onto a broad stone platform above the sea, Maris unfolded her wings. They caught the wind and tugged at her as she snapped the last struts into place. The purple gloom of the storm gave a dark cast to the silver metal, and the rays of the setting sun left red streaks of light upon it, like fresh wounds welling full of blood. Maris hurried. She wanted to get ahead of the storm, to use the front for added speed. She tightened the straps around herself, checked the wings a final time, and wrapped her hands about the familiar grips. With two quick steps she flung herself from the cliff, as she had uncounted times before. The wind was her old and true lover. She folded herself into its embrace and flew.

  She saw lightning on the horizon, a lingering three-pronged bolt in the eastern sky. Then the wind slackened and went soft on her, and she fell, and banked, and turned, searching for a stronger current until the storm hit her, sudden as the crack of a whip. The wind gusted out of nowhere with terrible force, and as she struggled to ride with it, it changed direction. Then a second time, then a third. Rain stung her face, lightning blinded her, and there was a pounding in her ears.

  The storm pushed her backward, then head over heels, as if she were a toy. She had no more choice, no more chance, than a leaf in a gale. She was buffeted this way and that until she was sick and dizzy and aware that she was falling. And she looked over her shoulder and saw the mountain rushing at her, a sheer wall of slick wet stone. She tried to pull away, and managed only to turn herself in the fierce embrace of the wind. Her left wing brushed the rock, collapsed, and Maris fell sideways, screaming, her left wing limp; though she tried to fly one-winged, she knew that it was useless, and was blinded by the rain; the storm had her in its killing teeth, and with her last clear thought, Maris knew this was her death.

  The sea took her, and broke her, and spit her out. They found her late the next day, broken and unconscious, but alive, on a rocky beach three miles from Thayos' flyers' cliff.

  When Maris woke, days later, she was old.

  She was seldom more than semi-conscious during that first week, and afterward she remembered little. Pain, when she moved and when she did not; waking and sleeping. She slept most of the time, and her dreams were as real to her as the constant pain. She walked through long tunnels beneath the earth, walked until her legs ached horribly, but she never found the steps that would lead her out to the sky. She fell through still air endlessly, her strength and skill useless in a windless sky. She stood before hundreds in Council and argued, but her words were slurred and too soft, and the people there would not listen. She was hot, terribly hot, and she could not move. Someone had taken her wings and tied her legs and arms. She struggled to move, to speak. She had to fly somewhere with an urgent message. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, she didn't know if there were tears or rain on her cheeks. Someone wiped her face and made her drink a thick, bitter liquid.

  At some point Maris knew she was lying in a big bed, a hearth nearby that always had a blazing fire in it, and she was covered with heavy layers of furs and blankets. She was hot, terribly hot, and she struggled to push off the blankets but could not.

  There seemed to be people in the room, coming and going. She recognized some of them—they were her friends—but although she asked them to remove the blankets, they never did. They didn't seem to hear her, but they would often sit at the foot of the bed and talk to her. They spoke of things gone by as if they were present still, which confused her, but everything was confused, and she was glad to have her friends with her.

  Coll came, singing his songs, and Barrion was with him, Barrion of the quick grin and the deep, rumbly voice. Old, crippled Sena sat on
the edge of the bed and said nothing. Raven appeared once, dressed all in black and looking so bold and beautiful that her heart ached with unspoken love for him all over again. Garth brought her steaming hot kivas, then told her jokes so that she laughed and forgot to drink. Val One-Wing stood in the doorway, watching, cold-faced as ever. S'Rella, her dear friend, came often, speaking of old times. And Dorrel, her first love and still a trusted friend, came again and again, his presence a familiar comfort to her through the pain and confusion. Others came as well: old lovers she had never thought to see again appeared before her to speak, to plead, to accuse, and then vanished, leaving all her questions unanswered. There was chubby blond T'mar, bringing her gifts he'd carved from stone, and Halland the singer, strong, black-bearded, looking just as he had when they had lived together on Lesser Amberly. She remembered then that he had been lost at sea, and she wept, her tears blotting out the sight of him.

  There was another visitor, a man strange to Maris. And yet he was not a stranger: She knew the touch of his gentle, sure hands, and the sound of his almost musical voice speaking her name. Unlike her other visitors, he came close to her and held up her head and fed her hot milky soups and spice tea and a thick, bitter potion that made her sleep. She could not think how or when she had met him, but she felt glad to see him. He was thin and small but sinewy. Pale skin was stretched taut over the bones and planes of his face, freckled with age. Fine white hair grew well back from a high forehead. His eyes, beneath prominent brows and in a webwork of tiny wrinkles, were brilliantly blue. But although he came so often, and knew her, Maris could not bring his name to mind.

  Once, as he stood beside her and watched her, Maris struggled out of her half-sleep and told him how hot it was, and asked him to take away the blankets.

  He shook his head. “You're feverish,” he said. “The room is chilly and you are very sick. You need the warmth of the blankets.”

  Startled by this phantom who had finally answered her, Maris struggled to sit up and get a better look at him. Her body responded sluggishly, and a sickening pain seared her left side.

  “Easy,” said the man. His cool fingers were on her brow. “Your bones must knit before you can move. Here, drink this.” He lifted her head and pressed the smooth, thick rim of a cup to her lips. She tasted familiar bitterness, swallowed obediently. The tension and pain drained out of her as her head sank back on the pillow.

  “Sleep and don't worry,” said the man.

  With difficulty she managed to speak: “Who . . . ?”

  “My name is Evan,” he said. “I'm a healer. You've been in my care for weeks now. You are healing, but still very weak. You must sleep now, and conserve your strength.”

  “Weeks.” The word frightened her. She must be terribly sick, horribly injured, to spend weeks in the house of a healer. “Wh—where?”

  He put his strong, thin fingers against her mouth to hush her. “On Thayos. No more questions now. I'll tell you everything later, when you are stronger. Now sleep. Let your body heal itself.”

  Maris stopped fighting the coming sleep. He had said she was mending and must conserve her strength. She wished only, as she sank into sleep, that she would not dream again about that brief, terrible flight through the storm, and the awful crushing of her body.

  Later, when she awoke, the world was dark, with only dim embers alive in the hearth to give shape to the shadows. As soon as she stirred, Evan was there. He prodded the fire into new life, felt her brow, and then sat lightly on the bed.

  “The fever has broken,” he said, “but you are not well yet. I know you want to move—it will be hard to keep still. But you must. You are still very weak, and your body will mend better if you do not tax it. If you cannot keep still by yourself I must give you more tesis.”

  “Tesis?” Her own voice sounded strange in her ears. She coughed, trying to clear her throat.

  “The bitter drink that quiets the body and mind, brings sleep and relaxation to stop the pain. It's a very helpful drink, full of healing herbs, but too much of it can be a poison. I had to give you more than I liked to, to keep you still. Physical restraints were no good for you—you thrashed and struggled and strained to be free. You wouldn't let the broken parts of your body rest and heal. When you drank the tesis you fell into the quiet, healing, painless sleep you needed. But I don't want to give you any more. There will be pain, but I think you can bear it. If you cannot, then I will give you tesis. Do you understand me, Maris?”

  She looked into his bright blue eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. I'll try to be still. Remind me.”

  He smiled. It made his face suddenly young. “I'll remind you,” he said. “You're accustomed to a life of activity, motion, always going and doing. But you can't go somewhere to get your strength back—you must wait for it, lying here, as patiently as you can.”

  Maris began to nod her head, checking it as she felt a dull, straining pain on her left side. “I've never been a patient person,” she said.

  “No, but I've heard that you are strong. Use that strength to be still, and you may recover.”

  “You must tell me the truth,” Maris said. She watched his face, trying to read the answer there. She felt fear like a cold poison moving throughout her body. She longed for the strength to sit up, to check her arms and legs.

  “I'll tell you what I know,” said Evan.

  She felt the fear in her throat and could scarcely speak. The words came in a whisper. “How . . . how badly was I hurt?” She closed her eyes, afraid now to read his face.

  “You were terribly battered, but you lived.” He stroked her cheek and she opened her eyes. “Both your legs were broken in the fall, the left one in four places. I set them, and they seem to be mending well—not as quickly as they would if you were younger, but I think you will walk without a limp again. Your left arm was shattered, with bone protruding through the flesh. I thought I would have to amputate. But I did not.” He pressed his fingers against her lips and withdrew them—it was like a kiss. “I cleaned it and used the fireflower essence and other herbs. You'll have stiffness there a long time, but I don't think there was any nerve damage, so that with time and exercise I think your left arm will be strong and useful again. You broke two ribs when you fell, and you hit your head on the rock. You were unconscious for three days in my care—I didn't know if you would ever return.”

  “Only three broken limbs,” Maris said. “An easy landing, after all.” Then she frowned. “The message . . .”

  Evan nodded. “You repeated it again and again in your delirium like a chant, determined to deliver it. But you needn't worry. The Landsman was informed of your accident, and by now he has sent the same message to the Landsman of Thrane by another flyer.”

  “Of course,” Maris murmured. She felt a burden she had not even known she carried lifted from her.

  “Such an urgent message,” Evan said, his voice bitter. “It couldn't wait for better flying weather. It sent you out into the storm, to injury. It might have meant your death. The war hasn't come yet, but already they start, disregarding human lives.”

  His bitterness distressed her even more than his talk of war, which merely puzzled her. “Evan,” she said gently, “the flyer chooses when to fly. The Landsmen have no power over us, war or no. It was my eagerness to leave your bleak little island that made me start out despite the weather.”

  “And now my bleak little island is your home for a time.”

  “How long?” she asked. “How long before I can fly again?”

  He looked at her without replying.

  Maris suddenly feared the worst. “My wings!” She struggled to rise. “Are they lost?”

  Evan was quick, with hands on her shoulders. “Be still!” His blue eyes blazed.

  “I forgot,” she whispered. “I'll be still.” Her whole body throbbed painfully in response to the mild exertion. “Please . . . my wings?”

  “I have them,” he said. He shook his head. “Flyers. I should have kn
own—I've healed other flyers. I should have hung them over your bed so they would be the first thing you saw. The Landsman wanted to take them for repair, but I insisted on keeping them. I'll get them for you.” He vanished into the next room. A few minutes later he returned, carrying her wings in his arms.

  They were mangled and broken and did not fold properly. The metallic fabric of the wings themselves was virtually indestructible, but the supporting struts were ordinary metal, and Maris could see that several of them had shattered, while others were bent and twisted grotesquely. The bright silver was crusted with dirt and stained black in places. In Evan's uncertain grasp they seemed a hopeless ruin.

  But Maris knew better. They were not lost to the sea. They could be made whole again. Her heart soared to see them. They meant life to her; she would fly again.

  “Thank you,” she said to Evan. She tried not to weep.

  Evan hung the wings on the wall beyond the foot of the bed, where Maris could see them. Then he turned to her.

  “It will be longer and harder to repair your body than your wings,” he said. “Much longer than you will like. It won't be a matter of weeks, but of months, many months, and even then I can't promise you anything. Your bones were shattered, and the muscles torn—you aren't likely, at your age, to regain all the strength you once had. You'll walk again, but as for flying—”

  “I will fly. My legs and my ribs and my arm will mend,” Maris said quietly.

  “Yes, given time, I hope they will mend. But that may not be enough.” He came close, and she saw the concern in his face. “The head injury—it may have affected your vision, or your sense of balance.”

  “Stop it,” Maris said. “Please.” Tears leaked from her eyes.

  “It's too soon,” Evan said. “I'm sorry.” He stroked her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “You need rest and hope, not worry. You need time to grow strong again. You'll put on your wings again, but not before you are really ready—not before I say you are ready.”