Windhaven by George R. R. Martin
“This is more than a gesture, and more than mourning. I'm certain of it,” Dorrel said. “Maris, be honest with me. We have known each other for a very long time. For the love I still bear for you I would do much. But I can't go against what I believe, and I won't be tricked. Please don't play one of Val One-Wing's games and try to use me. I think you owe me honesty.”
Maris looked steadily back into his eyes, but she felt a pang of guilt. She was trying to use him—he was an important part of her plan, and because of what they had once meant to each other she had felt certain he would not let her down. But she did not mean to deceive him.
She said quietly, “I've always thought of you as my friend, Dorr, even when we were opposed. But I'm not asking you to do this for me just out of friendship. It's more important than that. I think it is equally important to you that this rift between the one-wings and the flyer-born be healed.”
“Tell me the whole truth, then. Tell me what you want me to do, and why.”
“I want you to join the black flyers, to prove that the one-wings do not fly alone. I want to bring flyers and one-wings together again, to show the world that they can still act as one.”
“You think that if Val One-Wing and I fly together we will forget all our differences?”
Maris smiled ruefully. “Perhaps once, long ago, I was that naive. No more. I hope that the one-wings and the flyer-born will act together.”
“How? In what way beyond this odd mourning ceremony?”
“The black flyers carry no weapons, make no threats, and do not even land on Thayos,” she said. “They are mourners, nothing more. But their presence makes the Landsman of Thayos very nervous. He does not understand. Already he is so frightened he has called his landsguard from Thrane—and therefore the black flyers have succeeded where Tya failed, and ended the war.”
“But surely the Landsman will get over his fear. And the black flyers cannot circle Thayos forever.”
“The Landsman here is an impetuous, bloody-minded, and fearful man,” Maris said. “The violent always suspect others of violence. And it is not his way to wait for someone else to act. I think he will do something before long. I think he will give the flyers cause to act.”
Dorrel frowned. “By doing what? Shooting a flight of arrows to knock us from the sky?”
“‘Us'?”
Dorrel shook his head, but he was smiling. “It could be dangerous, Maris. Trying to provoke him to action . . .”
His smiled heartened her. “The black flyers do nothing but fly. If Port Thayos grows agitated in their shadows, that is the work of the Landsman and his subjects.”
“Especially the singers and the healers—we know what troublemakers they can be! I'll do as you ask, Maris. It will make a good story to tell my grandchildren, when they come along. I won't have my wings much longer now anyway, with Jan getting to be such a good flyer.”
“Oh, Dorr!”
He held up one hand. “I will wear black as a sign of grief for Tya,” he said carefully. “And I will join the great circle that flies to mourn her. But I will do nothing that might be seen as condoning her crime, or expressing a sanction against Thayos for her death.” He stood up and stretched. “Of course, if anything should happen, if the Landsman should presume to exceed his powers and threaten the flyers, why then, we should all, one-wings and flyer-born, have to act together.”
Maris also stood. She was smiling. “I knew you would see it that way,” she said.
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her in an affectionate hug. Then Dorrel lifted her face and kissed her, perhaps just for old times' sake, but for a moment it was as if all the years that lay between them had never been, and they were youths again, and lovers, and the sky was theirs from horizon to horizon, and all that lay beneath it.
But the kiss ended, and they stood apart again: old friends linked by memories and faint regrets.
“Go safely, Dorr,” said Maris. “Come back soon.”
Returning from the sea cliffs, where she had seen Dorrel launch himself for Laus, Maris felt full of hope. There was sadness, too, beneath it—the old familiar longing had swept over her again as she helped Dorrel unfold his wings, and watched him mount the warm blue sky.
But the pain was a little less this time. Although she would have given anything to fly with Dorrel again, she had other things to think about now, and it was not so difficult to pull her hopeless thoughts away from the sky and think of more practical matters. Dorrel had promised to return soon, with more followers, and Maris enjoyed the vision of an even vaster circle of black flyers.
She was shocked out of her reverie as she approached Evan's house, by the sound of a shriek from within.
She ran the last few steps and threw the door open. She saw at once that Bari was crying, Evan trying in vain to comfort her. Standing a little apart was S'Rella with a boy from Thossi.
“What's wrong?” Maris cried, suspecting the worst.
At her voice, Bari turned and ran to her aunt, weeping. “My father, they took my father, make them, please make them . . .”
Maris embraced the weeping child and stroked her hair absently. “What's happened to Coll?”
“Coll has been arrested and taken to the keep,” Evan said. “The Landsman has seized a half-dozen other singers as well—everyone known to have performed Coll's song about Tya. He means to try them for treason.”
Maris continued to hold Bari tightly. “There, there,” she said. “Shh, shh, Bari.”
“There was a riot in Port Thayos,” said the boy from Thossi. “When they came to the Moonfish Inn to take Lanya the singer, the landsguard met with customers who tried to defend her. They beat the defenders off with clubs. No one was killed.”
Maris listened numbly, trying to absorb it, trying to think.
“I'll fly to Val,” S'Rella said. “I'll spread the word among the black flyers—they'll all come. The Landsman will have to release Coll!”
“No,” said Maris. She still hugged Bari, and the child's sobbing had ceased. “No, Coll is a land-bound, a singer. He has no claim upon the flyers—they would not rally together to defend him.”
“But he's your brother!”
“That makes no difference.”
“We have to do something,” S'Rella insisted.
“We will. We had hoped to provoke the Landsman, but to make him strike at the flyers, not the land-bound. But now that it has happened. . . . Coll and I discussed this possibility.” She raised Bari's face gently with a finger beneath her chin, and wiped away her tears. “Bari, you have to go away now.”
“No! I want my father! I won't leave without him!”
“Bari, listen to me. You must leave before the Landsman catches you. Your father wouldn't want that.”
“I don't care,” Bari said stubbornly. “I don't care if the Landsman catches me! I want to be with my father!”
“Don't you want to fly?” Maris asked.
“To fly?” Bari's face suddenly lit up with wonder.
“S'Rella here will let you fly with her over the ocean,” Maris said, “if you're big enough not to be afraid.” She looked up at S'Rella. “You can take her, can't you?”
S'Rella nodded. “She's light enough. Val has people on Thrynel. It'll be an easy flight.”
“Are you big enough?” Maris asked. “Or would you be afraid?”
“I'm not scared,” Bari said fiercely, her pride wounded. “My father used to fly, you know.”
“I know,” Maris said, smiling. She remembered Coll's terror of flight, and hoped that Bari hadn't inherited that particular trait.
“And you'll save my father?” Bari asked.
“Yes,” Maris said.
“And after I take her to Thrynel?” S'Rella said. “What then?”
“Then,” said Maris, standing and taking Bari by the hand, “I want you to fly to the keep with a message for the Landsman. Tell him that it was all my doing, that I put Coll and the other singers up to it. If he want
“Maris,” warned Evan, “he will hang you.”
“Perhaps,” said Maris. “That's a chance I have to take.”
“He agrees,” S'Rella reported on her return. “As a sign of his good faith, he has released all the singers except Coll. They were taken away by boat to Thrynel, with orders never to return to Thayos. I witnessed their departure myself.”
“And Coll?”
“I was allowed to speak to him. He seemed unharmed, although he was worried that something might have happened to his guitar—they wouldn't let him keep it. The Landsman has said he will hold Coll for three days. If you do not appear at his keep by then, Coll will hang.”
“Then I must go at once,” Maris said.
S'Rella caught her hand. “Coll told me to warn you away. He said you were not to come under any circumstances. That it was too dangerous for you.”
Maris shrugged. “Dangerous for him as well. Of course I will go.”
“It may be a trap,” Evan said. “The Landsman is not to be trusted. He may mean to hang you both.”
“That's a risk I'll have to take. If I don't go, Coll is sure to hang. I can't have that on my conscience—I got him into this.”
“I don't like it,” Evan said.
Maris sighed. “The Landsman will have me sooner or later, unless I flee Thayos at once. By giving myself up to him, I have the chance to save Coll. And, perhaps, to do more.”
“What more can you do?” S'Rella demanded. “He'll hang you, and probably your brother too, and that will be that.”
“If he hangs me,” said Maris calmly, “we will have our incident. My death would unite the flyers as nothing else could.”
The color drained out of S'Rella's face. “Maris, no,” she whispered.
“I thought that might be it,” said Evan in a voice that was unnaturally calm. “So this was the unspoken twist in all your plans. You decided to live just long enough to be a martyr.”
Maris frowned. “I was afraid to tell you, Evan. I thought this might happen—I had to consider it when I made my plans. Are you angry?”
“Angry? No. Disappointed. Hurt. And very sad. I believed you when you told me you had decided to live. You seemed happier, and stronger, and I thought that you did love me, and that I could help you.” He sighed. “I didn't realize that, instead of life, you had simply chosen what you thought would be a nobler death. I can't deny you what you want. Death and I wrestle daily, and I have never found him noble, but perhaps I look too closely. You will have what you want, and after you are gone the singers will make it all sound very beautiful, no doubt.”
“I don't want to die,” she said, very quietly.
She went to Evan and took him by the shoulders. “Look at me, and listen to me,” she said. His blue eyes met hers, and she saw the sorrow in them, and hated herself for putting it there.
“My love, you must believe me,” she said. “I go to the Landsman's keep because it is all I can do. I must try to save my brother, and myself, and convince the Landsman that flyers are not to be trifled with.
“My plan is to push the Landsman until he breaks and does something foolish—I admit that. And I know that this is a dangerous game. I have known that I might die, or that one of my friends might die. But this is not, not an elaborate plan to make a noble death for myself.
“Evan, I want to live. And I love you. Please don't doubt that.” She drew a deep breath. “I need your faith in me. I've needed your help and your love all along.
“I know the Landsman may kill me, but I have to go there, risk that, in order to live. It's the only way. I have to do this, for Coll and for Bari, for Tya, for the flyers—and for myself. Because I have to know, really know, that I'm still good for something. That I was left alive for some purpose. Do you understand?”
Evan looked at her, searching her face. Finally he nodded. “Yes. I understand. I believe you.”
Maris turned. “S'Rella?”
There were tears in the other woman's eyes, but she was smiling tremulously. “I'm afraid for you, Maris. But you're right. You have to go. And I pray you'll succeed, for your own sake and for all of us. I don't want us to win if it means your death.”
“One more thing,” said Evan.
“Yes?”
“I'm going with you.”
They both wore black.
They had been on the road less than ten minutes when they encountered one of Evan's friends, a little girl rushing breathlessly up the road from Thossi to warn them that a half-dozen landsguard were on their way.
They met the landsguard a half-hour later. They were a weary group, armed with spiked clubs and bows, and dressed in soiled uniforms stained with the sweat of their long forced march. But they treated Maris and Evan almost deferentially, and did not seem in the least surprised to meet them on the road. “We are to escort you back to the Landsman's keep,” said the young woman in charge.
“Fine,” said Maris. She set them a brisk pace.
An hour before they entered the Landsman's isolated valley, Maris finally saw the black flyers for the first time.
From a distance, they seemed like so many insects, dark specks creeping across the sky, although they moved with a sensuous slowness no insect could ever match. They were never out of sight from the first moment Maris noticed motion low on the horizon; no sooner would one vanish behind a tree or a rocky outcrop than another would appear where the first had been. On and on they came, a never-ending procession, and Maris knew that the aerial column trailed miles behind to Port Thayos, and extended on ahead to the Landsman's keep and the sea, before curving around in a great circle to meet itself above the waves.
“Look,” she said to Evan, pointing. He looked, and smiled at her, and they held hands. Somehow the mere sight of the flyers made Maris feel better, gave her strength and reassurance. As she walked on, the moving specks in the afternoon sky took on shape and form, growing until she could see the silver sheen of sunlight on their wings, and the way they banked and tacked to find the right wind.
Where the road from Thossi joined the broad thoroughfare up from Port Thayos, the flyers passed directly overhead, and for the rest of the journey the walkers moved beneath them. Maris could make out the flyers quite well by then; a few kept high, up where the wind was stronger, but most skimmed along barely above tree-top level, and the silver of their wings and the black of their clothing were equally conspicuous. Every few moments another flyer caught and passed Maris and Evan and their escort, so the shadow of wings washed over them as regularly as silent breakers crashing against a beach.
The landsguard never looked up at the flyers, Maris noticed. In fact, the procession in the sky seemed to make them surly and irritable, and at least one of the party—a whey-faced youth with pockmarks—trembled visibly whenever the shadows swept over him.
Near sunset the road climbed over the last hills to the first checkpoint. Their escort marched through without stopping. A few yards beyond, the path dropped off abruptly, and there was a high vantage point from which the entire valley was visible beneath them.
Maris drew in her breath sharply, and felt Evan's hand tighten in her own.
In the shimmering red haze of sunset, colors faded and vanished while shadows etched themselves starkly on the valley floor. Beneath them the world seemed drenched in blood, and the keep hunched like some great crippled animal made of shadow, impossibly black. The fires within it sent up heat ripples that made the dark stone itself seem to writhe and tremble, so it looked like a beast shivering in terror.
Above it, waiting, were the flyers.
The valley was full of them; Maris counted ten before losing track. Heat beating against stone sent up great updrafts, and the flyers soared on them, climbing halfway up the sky before spinning free to descend in wide graceful spirals. Around and around they moved, circling, waiting; dark scavenger kites impatient for the shadow
“No wonder he is so afraid,” Maris said.
“We are not supposed to stop,” the young officer leading their escort said to them.
With a final glance, Maris proceeded down into the valley, where Tya's silent mourners flew ominous circles above the shadowed fortress, and the Landsman of Thayos waited inside his cold stone halls, afraid of open sky.
“I have a mind to hang the three of you,” the Landsman said.
He was seated on the wooden throne in his receiving chamber, fingering a heavy bronze knife that lay across his knees. Against a white silk shirt, his silver chain of office gleamed softly in the light of the oil lamps, but his face was at odds with his clothing: pale and drawn and twitching.
The room was full of landsguard; they stood along the walls, silent, impassive. There were no windows in the chamber. Perhaps that was why the Landsman had chosen it. Outside, the black flyers would be wheeling against the scattered evening stars.
“Coll goes free,” Maris said, trying to keep the tension from her voice.
The Landsman frowned and gestured with his knife. “Bring up the singer,” he ordered. A landsguard officer hurried off. “Your brother has caused me great trouble,” the Landsman continued. “His songs are treason. I see no reason to release him.”
“We have an agreement,” Maris said quickly. “I came. Now you must give Coll his freedom.”
The Landsman's mouth twitched. “Do not presume to tell me what to do. By what conceit do you imagine that you can dictate terms to me? There can be no bargaining between us. I am Landsman here. I am Thayos. You and your brother are my prisoners.”
“S'Rella carried your promise to me,” Maris replied. “She will know if you break it, and soon flyers and Landsmen will know all over Windhaven. Your pledge will be worthless. How will you rule then, or bargain?”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh? Perhaps so.” He smiled. “I made no promise to release him whole, however. How well will your brother sing of Tya, I wonder, when I have had his tongue yanked from his mouth, and the fingers of his right hand cut off?”