Finally all those who were coming had arrived. The Council was set for dusk; there would be no crowds in the inns of Ambertown tonight.
“You have a chance,” Barrion told Maris on the steps of the great hall just before the meeting. Coll was with her too, and Dorrel. “Most of them are in a good mood, after weeks of wine and song. I drift, I talk, I sing, and I know this: they will listen to you.” He grinned his wolfish grin. “For flyers, that is quite unusual.”
Dorrel nodded. “Garth and I have talked to many of them. There is a lot of sympathy for you, particularly among the younger flyers. The older delegates, most of them, tend to side with Corm and tradition, but even they do not have their minds completely made up.”
Maris shook her head. “The older flyers outnumber the younger ones, Dorr.”
Barrion put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “Then you will have to win them to your side also. After the things I've seen you do already, it should be easy enough.” He smiled.
The delegates had all filed inside, and now, from the door behind her, Maris heard the Landsman of Greater Amberly sound the ceremonial drumbeats that signaled the beginning of the Council. “We must go,” Maris said. Barrion nodded. As a non-flyer, he was barred from the assembly. He squeezed her shoulder once, for luck, then took his guitar and walked slowly down the steps. Maris, Coll, and Dorrel hurried inside.
The hall was an immense stone pit, ringed by torches. In the center of the sunken floor, a long table had been set up. The flyers sat around it in a semicircle, on rough stone seats that ascended, tier after tier after tier, to the place where wall met ceiling. Jamis the Senior, his thin face lined by age, sat in the center of the long table. Though a land-bound for several years now, his experience and character were still widely esteemed, and he had come by boat to preside. On either side of him sat the only two non-flyers admitted: the swarthy Landsman of Greater Amberly and the portly ruler of Lesser. Corm had the fourth seat, at the right-hand end of the table. A fifth chair was empty on the left.
Maris went to it, while Dorrel and Coll climbed the stairs to their places. The drumbeats sounded again, a call for silence. Maris sat and looked around as the room began to quieten. Coll had found a seat, high up among the unwinged youths. Many of them had come by boat from nearby islands, to see history be made; but like Coll, they were expected to play no part in the decision. Now they ignored Coll, as might be expected; children eager for the sky could scarcely understand a boy who had willingly given up his wings. He looked dreadfully out of place and lonely, much as Maris felt.
The drums stopped. Jamis the Senior stood, and his deep voice rang over the hall. “This is the first flyers' Council in the memory of any here,” he said. “Most of you already know the circumstances under which it has been called. My rules will be simple. Corm shall speak first, since he invoked this meeting. Then Maris, whom he accuses, shall have her chance to answer him. Then any flyer or former flyer here may have his or her say. I ask only that you speak loudly, and name yourself before you talk. Many of us here are strangers to each other.” He sat down.
And now Corm stood and spoke into the silence. “I invoked this Council by flyer's right,” he said, his voice assured and resonant. “A crime has been committed, and its nature and implications are such that it must be answered by us all, by all flyers acting as one. Our decision shall determine our future, as have the decisions of Councils past. Imagine what our world should be now if our fathers and mothers before us had decided to bring warfare into the air. The kinship of all flyers would not be—we would be torn apart by petty regional rivalries instead of being properly airborne above the quarrels of the land.”
He went on, painting a picture of the desolation that could have followed, had that long ago Council voted wrongly. He was a good speaker, Maris thought; he spoke like Barrion sang. She shook herself out of the spell Corm was creating, and wondered how she could possibly counter him.
“The problem today is equally grave,” Corm continued, “and your decision will not simply affect one person, for whom you may feel sympathy, but rather all our children for generations to come. Mind you remember that as you listen to the arguments tonight.” He looked around, and although his burning eyes did not fall on her, Maris nevertheless felt intimidated.
“Maris of Lesser Amberly has stolen a pair of wings,” he said. “The story, I think, is known to all of you—” But Corm told it, nonetheless, from the facts of her birth to the scene on the beach. “. . . and a new bearer was found. But before Devin of Gavora, who is among us now, could arrive to claim his wings, Maris stole them, and fled.
“But this is not the whole of it. Stealing is shameful, but even the theft of wings might not be grounds for a flyers' Council. Maris knew she could not hope to keep the wings. She took them not to flee, but rather with the thought of revolting against our most vital traditions. She questions the very foundations of our society. She would open the ownership of the wings to dispute, threaten us with anarchy. Unless we make our disapproval plain, pass judgment on her in Council that will go down in history, the facts could easily become distorted. Maris could be remembered as a brave rebel, and not the thief she is.”
A twinge went through Maris at that word. Thief. Was that truly what she was?
“She has friends among the singers who would delight in mocking us,” Corm was saying, “in singing songs in praise of her daring.” And Maris heard in memory Barrion's voice: I'd rather make us all into heroes. Her eyes sought out Coll and she saw that he was sitting straighter, with a slight smile on his lips. Singers did indeed have power, if they were good.
“So we must speak out plainly, for all of history, in denouncing what she has done,” Corm said. He faced Maris and looked down at her. “Maris, I accuse you of the theft of wings. And I call upon the flyers of Windhaven, met in Council, to name you outlaw, and pledge that none will land on any island you call home.”
He sat, and in the awful silence that followed Maris knew just how much she had offended him. She had never dreamed he would ask so much. Not content merely to take her wings, he would deny her life itself, force her into friendless exile on some distant empty rock.
“Maris,” Jamis said gently. She had not risen. “It is your turn. Will you answer Corm?”
Slowly she got to her feet, wishing for the power of a singer, wishing that even once she could speak with the assurance Corm had in his voice. “I cannot deny the theft,” she said, looking up at the rows of blank faces, the sea of strangers. Her voice was steadier than she had thought it would be. “I stole the wings out of desperation, because they were my only chance. A boat would have been far too slow, and no one on Lesser Amberly was willing to help. I needed to reach a flyer who would call Council for me. Once I did that, I surrendered my wings. I can prove this, if—” She looked over at Jamis; he nodded.
Dorrel picked up his cue. Halfway up in the tiered hall, he rose. “Dorrel of Laus,” he said loudly. “I vouch for Maris. As soon as she reached me, she gave her wings into my safekeeping, and would not wear them again. I do not call this theft.” From around him, there was a chorus of approving murmurs; his family was known and esteemed, his word good.
Maris had scored a point, and now she continued, feeling more confident with every word. “I wanted a Council for something I consider very important to us all, and to our future. But Corm beat me to it.” She grimaced slightly, unconsciously. And out in the audience she noticed a few smiles on the faces of flyers who were strangers to her. Skepticism? Contempt? Or support, agreement? She had to will her hands to part and lie still by her sides. It would not do to be wringing her hands before them all.
“Corm says I am fighting tradition,” Maris continued, “and that's true. He has told you this is a terrible thing, but he hasn't said why. He hasn't explained why tradition needs to be defended against me. Just because something has always been done in one way doesn't mean that change is impossible, or undesirable. Did people fly on the home worlds of t
he star sailors? If not, does that mean it was better not to fly? Well, after all, we aren't dauberbirds, that if our beaks get pushed to the ground we keep on walking that way until we fall over and die—we don't have to walk the same path every day—it wasn't bred into us.”
She heard a laugh from her listeners, and felt elated. She could paint pictures with words even as Corm could! Those silly waddling cave birds had gone from her mind to someone else's and drawn a laugh; she had mentioned breaking tradition, and still they listened. Inspired, she went on.
“We are people, and if we have an instinct for anything, it is the instinct—the will—toward change. Things have always been changing and if we're smart we'll make the changes for ourselves, and for the better, before we're forced into them.
“The tradition of passing the wings on from parent to child has worked fairly well for a long time—certainly, it is better than anarchy, or the older tradition of trial by combat that sprang up in Eastern during the Days of Sorrow. But it is not the only way, nor is it the perfect way.”
“Enough talk!” someone growled. Maris looked around for the source and was startled to see Helmer rise from his seat in the second tier front. The flyer's face was bitter, and he stood with folded arms.
“Helmer,” Jamis said firmly, “Maris has the floor.”
“I don't care,” he said. “She attacks our ways, but she offers us nothing better. And for good reason. This way has worked for so many years because there is none better. It may be hard, yes. It's hard for you because you weren't born to a flyer. Sure, it's hard. But have you another way?”
Helmer, she thought as he sat. Of course, his anger made sense, he was one whom this tradition would soon hurt—was hurting. Still young, he would be a land-bound in less than a year, when his daughter came of age and took his wings. He had accepted the loss as inevitable, perhaps, as a rightful part of an honored tradition. But now Maris attacked the tradition, the only thing that gave nobility to Helmer's sacrifice-to-come. If things remained unchanged, Maris wondered briefly, would Helmer in time hate his own daughter for her wings? And Russ . . . if he had not been injured . . . if Coll had not been born . . .
“Yes,” Maris said loudly, suddenly realizing that the room was silently awaiting her reply. “Yes, I do have a way; I would never have presumed to call a Council if—”
“You didn't!” someone shouted, and others laughed. Maris felt herself grow hot and hoped she was not blushing.
Jamis slapped the table, hard. “Maris of Lesser Amberly is speaking,” he said, loudly. “The next one who interrupts her will be ejected!”
Maris gave him a grateful smile. “I propose a new way, a better way,” she said. “I propose that the right to wear wings be earned. Not by birth or by age, but by the one measure that truly counts—by skill!” And as she spoke, the idea sprang suddenly into her head, more elaborate, more complex, more right than her vague concept of a free-for-all. “I propose a flying academy, open to all, to every child who dreams of wings. The standards would be very high, of course, and many would be sent away. But all would have the right to try—the son of a fisherman, the daughter of a singer, or a weaver—everyone could dream, hope. And for those who passed all the tests, there would be a final test. At our annual competition, they could challenge any flyer of their choice. And, if they were good enough, good enough to outfly him or her, then they would win the wings!
“The best flyers would always keep the wings, this way. And a defeated flyer, well, could wait for next year and try to win back the wings from the one who had taken them. Or he or she could challenge someone else, some poorer flyer. No flyer could afford to be lazy, no one who did not love the sky would have to fly, and . . .” She looked at Helmer, whose face was unreadable. “And more, even the children of flyers would have to challenge to win the sky. They would claim their parents' wings only when they were ready, when they could actually fly better than their father or their mother. No flyer would become a land-bound just because he'd married young and had a child come of age while he should, by all that is just and right, still be in the sky. Only skill would be important, not birth, not age—the person, not tradition!”
She paused, on the verge of blurting out her own story, of what it was like to be a fisherman's daughter and know the sky could never be hers—the pain, the longing. But why waste her breath? These were all born flyers, and she would not wring sympathy from them for the land-bounds they held in contempt. No, it was important that the next Woodwings born on Windhaven have a chance to fly, but it was no good as an argument. She had said enough. She had set it all before them, and the choice was theirs. She glanced briefly at Helmer, at the odd smile flickering over his face, and she knew with dead certainty that his vote was hers. She had just given him a chance to reclaim his life, without being cruel to his daughter. Satisfied, smiling, Maris sat.
Jamis the Senior looked over at Corm.
“That sounds very nice,” he said. Smiling, in control, Corm did not even bother to stand. At the sight of his calm, Maris felt all her painfully piled-up hope slip away. “A nice dream for a fisherman's daughter, and it's understandable. Perhaps you don't understand about the wings, Maris. How do you expect families who have flown since—since forever—to put their wings up for grabs, to pass them on to strangers. Strangers who without tradition or family pride may not care for them properly, may not respect them. Do you truly think any of us would hand over our heritage to an impudent land-bound? Instead of our own children?”
Maris' temper flared. “You expected me to give my wings to Coll, who could not fly as well as I.”
“They were never your wings,” Corm said.
Her lips tightened; she said nothing.
“If you thought they were, that was your folly,” Corm said. “Think: If wings are passed from person to person like a cloak, if they are held for only a year or two, what sort of pride would their owners have in them? They would be—borrowed—not owned, and everyone knows a flyer must own his wings, or he is not a flyer at all. Only a land-bound would wish such a life on us!”
Maris felt the sentiments of the audience shifting with each of Corm's words. He piled his arguments on top of each other so glibly that they all slipped away from her before she'd had a chance to get at them. She had to answer him, but how, how? The attachment of a flyer to his wings was nearly as strong as his attachment to his feet; she couldn't deny that, she couldn't fight it. She remembered her own anger when she felt Corm had not cared for her wings properly, and yet they were never hers at all, only her father's, her brother's.
“The wings are a trust,” she blurted out. “Even now a flyer knows he must pass them on, in time, to his child.”
“That is quite different,” Corm said tolerantly. “Family is not the same as strangers, and a flyer's child is not a land-bound.”
“This is something too important to be silly about blood ties!” Maris flashed at him, her voice rising. “Listen to yourself, Corm! Listen to the snobbery that has been allowed to grow in you, in other flyers; listen to your contempt for the land-bound, as if they could help what they are with the laws of inheritance as they now stand!” Her words were angry, and the audience grew perceptibly more hostile; she would lose it all if she championed the land-bound against the flyers, she suddenly realized.
Maris willed herself to be calm. “We do have pride in our wings,” she said, consciously returning to her strongest arguments. “And that pride, if it is strong enough, should make sure we keep them. Good flyers will keep the sky. If challenged, they will not be defeated easily. If defeated, they will come back. And they will have the satisfaction of knowing that the flyer who takes their wings is good, of knowing that their replacement will bring honor to the wings and use them well, regardless of parentage.”
“The wings are meant to be—” Corm began, but Maris would not let him finish.
“The wings are not meant to be lost in the sea,” she said, “and clumsy flyers, flyers who have taken no
care to be really good because they've never had to, these are the flyers who have lost wings for us all. Some hardly deserved the name of flyer. And what of the children who are really too young for the sky, though they may be of age technically? They panic, fly foolishly, and die, taking their wings with them.” She glanced quickly at Coll. “Or how about the ones who were not meant to fly at all? Being born of a flyer doesn't mean you'll have the skill. My own—Coll, whom I love as a brother and a son, he was never meant to be a flyer. The wings were his, yet I couldn't give them to him—didn't want to give them to him—oh, even if he had wanted them, I wouldn't have wanted to give them up—”
“Your system won't change that,” someone shouted.
Maris shook her head. “No, it wouldn't. I still wouldn't be happy about losing my wings, but if I were bested, well, I could stay on at the academy, train, wait for next year and try to get them back. Oh, nothing is going to be perfect, don't you see, because there aren't enough wings, and that's going to get worse, not better. But we must try to stop it, stop all the wings that are lost each year, stop sending out unqualified flyers, stop losing so many. There will still be accidents, we'll still have dangers, but we won't lose wings and flyers because of poor judgment and fear and lack of skill.”