Windhaven

It was not until they were out of sight that Maris took wing herself. They would take several hours to complete the circuit, and she was thankful for the time. She felt tired and irritable, in no mood for even the best of company, and Val was never that. She gave herself to the healing embrace of the wind and angled out to sea.

The morning was pale and quiet, the wind steady behind her. She rode it, letting it take her where it would; all directions were the same to her. She wanted only to fly, to feel the touch of the wind, to forget all the petty troubles below in the cold, clean air of the upper sky.

There was little enough to see: gulls and scavenger kites and a hawk or two near the shores of Skulny, a fishing boat here and there, and farther out only ocean, ocean everywhere, blue-green water with long bright streaks of sun upon it. Once she saw a pack of seacats, graceful silver shapes whose playful leaps took them twenty feet above the waves. An hour later, she caught a rare glimpse of a wind wraith, a vast strange bird with semi-translucent wings as wide and thin as the sails of a trading ship. Maris had never seen one before, though she had heard other flyers speak of them. They liked the higher altitudes where humans seldom flew, and almost never came within sight of land. This one was quite low, floating on the wind, its great wings scarcely seeming to move. She soon lost sight of it.

A deep sense of peace filled her, and she felt all the tensions and angers of the land drain away from her.

This was what it meant to fly, she thought. The rest, the messages she flew, the honor paid to her, the ease of living, the friends and enemies in flyer society, the rules and laws and legends, the responsibility and the boundless freedom, all of it, all of it was secondary. This, for her, was the real reward; the simple feel of flying.

S'Rella felt it too, she thought. Perhaps that was why she was so drawn to the Southern girl, because of the way she looked when she came from flying, cheeks flushed, eyes glowing, smiling. Val had none of that look about him, Maris realized suddenly. The thought saddened her. Even if he should win his wings, he would miss so much; he took a fierce pride in his flying, came away from it with a sheen of satisfaction, but he was not capable of finding joy in the sky. Whether or not he ever won his wings, the peace and happiness of the true flyer would always be denied him. And that, thought Maris, was the crudest truth about Val's life.

When she saw by the sun that it was nearly noon, Maris finally banked and swept around in a long, graceful arc to begin the flight back to Skulny.

Maris was resting alone in her cabin late that afternoon when she was startled by loud, insistent pounding at the door.

Her visitor was a stranger, a short, slight, hollow-cheeked man with graying hair pulled back hard and tied in a knot at the back of his head. An Easterner: his hairstyle and fur-trimmed clothes told her that. He wore an iron ring on one finger and silver on another, testimonials to his wealth.

"My name is Arak," he said. "I have flown for South Arren these past thirty years."

Maris opened the door wider and let him in, gesturing him toward the one chair. She sat on a bed. "You are from Val's home island."

He grimaced. "Indeed. It is Val One-Wing I would speak to you about. Some of us have been talking—"

"Us?"

"Flyers."

"Which flyers?" His self-centered intensity made her hostile; she did not like his presumption or his tone.

"That doesn't matter," Arak said. "I was sent to talk with you because it is generally felt that you are a flyer at heart, even if not flyer-born. You would not help Val One-Wing if you knew the sort of man he is."

"I know him," Maris said. "I do not like him, and I have not forgotten Ari's death, but still he deserves his chance."

"He has had more chances than he ever deserved," Arak said angrily. "Do you know the stock he springs from? His parents were vicious, dirty, ignorant. From Lomarron, not South Arren at all. Do you know Lomarron?"

Maris nodded, remembering the time she had flown to Lomarron three years before. A large, mountainous island, soil-poor but metal-rich. Because of that wealth, warfare was endemic. Most of the land-bound there worked in the mines. "His parents were miners," she guessed.

But Arak shook his head. "Landsguard," he said. "Professional killers. His father was a knife-fighter, his mother a sling."

"Many islands have landsguard forces," Maris said uneasily.

Arak seemed to be enjoying this. "On Lomarron they get more practice than on other islands," he said.

"Too much, finally. His mother had her sling hand lopped off in an engagement, severed clean at the wrist.