Windhaven

It was Val, all right. The wind had picked up quite a bit, and he was using it well, slipping from current to current, riding with a veteran's grace.

"Announce him," Shalli said numbly to the crier.

"Val One-Wing, Val of South Arren!"

The crowd was hushed for a moment, then erupted into noise; wild cheering, groans, cursing. No one was indifferent to Val One-Wing.

Another pair of silvered wings sliced into view from above. Corm, Maris guessed, and a glance through Shalli's telescope confirmed it. But he was behind, too far behind, with no chance of catching up. It was by no means a humiliation for him, but it was clearly a defeat.

"Maris," Shalli said, "I want you to see this, so everyone will know that my judging is fair." She opened her hand, and a single black pebble rested in the hollow of her palm, and as Maris watched she dropped it into the box. Four others followed it.

"Another one," someone said. "No, two."

Val had landed, and was calmly taking off his wings. As always he had refused the help of the land-bound children who crowded around him. Corm came sliding over the beach and cliffs, then swept around in an angry predatory circle, reluctant to come down and face the fact of his defeat. Corm did not take defeat well, Maris knew.

All eyes moved to the two new flyers. "Garth of Skulny," the Outer Islander said, "and his challenger.

She's close behind him."

"Yes, it's Garth," the Landsman put in. He had not been happy when S'Rella challenged one of his flyers; the prospect of losing a pair of wings was something no Landsman relished. "Fly, Garth," he said now, openly partisan. "Hurry."

Sena grimaced at him. "She's doing well," she said to Maris.

"Not well enough," Maris said. She could see them clearly now. S'Rella was one, two wingspans behind.

But with the beach in sight, she seemed to be faltering. Garth began his descent, cutting sharply in front of her, and the turbulence created by his passing seemed to shake her. Her wings seesawed for a moment before she regained stability, giving him a chance to open his lead a bit wider.

He passed over the beach about three wingspans ahead of her. The pebbles began to clatter into the box. Maris turned to see. It had been a close race, credible, spirited. Perhaps some of the judges would score it a tie.

One did, but only one. Maris counted. Five white pebbles for Garth, one lonely black for S'Rella.

"Let's go down to her," Maris said to Sena.

"Kerr hasn't come in yet," the teacher replied.

Maris had almost forgotten about Kerr. "Oh, I hope he's safe."

"I should never have sponsored him," Sena grumbled. "Damn his parents' iron."

They waited five minutes, ten, fifteen. Sher, Leya, and a very dispirited Damen all wandered up to join them. Other wings appeared on the horizon, but none of them was Kerr. Maris began to grow seriously afraid for him.

But finally he was there, the last of all those who had left that morning, and coming from the wrong direction too; he had been blown off course, he explained, and overshot Skulny. He was very sheepish about it.

By then, of course, ten white pebbles had been cast against him.

The crowds of land-bound were breaking up below, going off in search of food or drink or shade. Flyers were preparing for the afternoon games. Sena shook her head. "Come," she said, throwing an arm around Kerr. "Let's find the others and get some food into them."

The afternoon passed quickly. Some of the Woodwingers went off to watch the flying games — an Outer Islander and two Shotaners won the individual prizes, and Western came away with the medals in the team races — while the others rested, talked, or played. Damen had brought a geechi set, and he and Sher spent hours bent over it, both of them trying to recoup some of their lost pride.

In the evening the parties started. The Woodwingers had a small party of their own outside Sena's cabin, in a halfhearted effort to lighten dampened spirits. Leya played the pipes and Kerr told sea stories, and all of them drank from the wineskin Maris had brought. Val was in his usual mood, cool and distant and invulnerable, but everyone else remained glum.

"No one has died," Sena said at last, her manner gruff. "When you lose an eye and shatter a leg as I did, then you will have a right to be morose. You don't have that right now. Get out of here, the lot of you, before you make me irritable." She waved her cane at them. "Off now, and to bed. We still have two more days of competition, and all of you can win your wings if you fly well enough. Tomorrow I expect more of you."

Maris and S'Rella walked along the beach for a while, talking and listening to the slow restless sound of the sea, before heading back to the cabin they shared. "Are you angry with me?" S'Rella asked quietly.

"For naming Garth?"

"I was," Maris said wearily. She did not have the heart to speak of her break with Dorrel. "Maybe I had no right to be. If you beat him, you have a right to his wings. I'm not angry now."