Windhaven - Страница 25

“You don’t need to wait,” Maris told them. “It’s too cold for standing around. After I race you, help the next student with the wings, and then you can go on inside.”

The exertion of flying kept Maris warm, but it also tired her. Finally, bone weary and beginning to really feel the cold, Maris saw that she was alone on the flyers’ cliff with Val.

Her shoulders slumped. She had not expected him to wait. And to race him now, when he was fresh and she was so tired… She looked up at the swirling purple sky and licked dried salt from the corners of her mouth.

“It’s late for flying,” she said. “The winds are wild and it’s getting dark. We can race another time.”

“The winds will make it that much more of a challenge,” Val said. His eyes rested coolly on hers, and Maris knew, with a sinking heart, that he’d been waiting a long time for this moment.

“Sena may worry,” she began weakly.

“Of course, if flying against the Woodwingers has worn you out…”

“I once flew thirty hours without a rest,” she said, stung. “An afternoon of play doesn’t wear me out.”

His smile mocked her; she saw that she had fallen into his trap.

“Get your wings on,” she said.

She did not offer to help him, but it was obvious that he was accustomed to putting on his wings unaided. Maris tried unobtrusively to flex some resilience back into her muscles, telling herself that a victory for him, with her as tired as she was and the winds so capricious, would mean nothing. And he must know that.

“The usual? Twice out and back?”

Maris nodded, glancing across the gray, churning waves to the distant spire of rock they all used as a marker. How many times had she flown out there today? Thirty? More? It didn’t matter. She would fly the last two laps as if they were the first; her pride insisted.

“Who will judge us?” she asked.

Val snapped the last two joints of his wings into place. “We’ll know,” he said. “That’s all that matters. I’ll launch first. You call ready. Agreed?”

“Yes.” She watched as, with a few swift steps, Val moved to the edge of the cliff and leapt outward. His body bobbed on the conflicting winds like a small boat on rough water until he took command, veered off to the right, and began to climb.

Maris took a breath and let her mind clear. She ran lightly forward and pushed off. For one brief moment she fell; then her wings caught the winds and she was buoyed upward. She took her time coming to Val’s level, climbing in a ragged spiral, needing those few moments to get the feel back, so her tired body would know how best to use the winds.

When she came up to him, the two of them circled warily, around and around each other, struggling to hold position amid the restless winds. Her eyes met his, and then she looked away, straight ahead, toward the rock that was their marker.

“Ready… go,” she shouted, and they were off.

The winds were strong but turbulent, the prevailing north wind interrupted by gusts from one direction, then from another. The whole eastern sky was a mass of darkening clouds, towering shapes that threatened a storm. Maris gave them an uneasy glance and started to climb again, looking for a steadier, faster wind in the heights. She fought constantly to keep on course; the gusts pushed her first one way, then another, demanding constant attention and frequent half-turns and corrections. She could not afford any detours.

Although she did not look for him, she often caught sight of Val. He sometimes flew below her, but more often he was beside her, disconcertingly close. He flew well, and it did not help Maris to reflect that he was using the advice she had given him. There would be nothing easy or simple about defeating him, she thought.

Then Val surged ahead.

A shock of adrenaline coursed through Maris and she flung her body to the left to catch the changing wind that had given him his push. They might call him One-Wing, but he knew how to use both wings in the air. Flying races against Woodwingers had made her soft, Maris thought. Her responses were dulled.

Ahead of her, just barely out of reach, Val’s wings swept around the spike of rock. He turned downwind, Maris noted, coming around wide and rocking just a little, but picking up speed as he did so. Then he was headed back toward the cliff.

Determined to overtake him, Maris flew dangerously close to the rock. Her wingtip grazed the spire and that slight scraping threw her sideways, off balance for a crucial moment. She sheared downward crookedly, the wind lost to her, stalling, her heart pounding in her throat, before she finally gained control again. Val had put more distance between them. She was only grateful that he hadn’t seen her blunder.

She had lost altitude, but she caught a strong updraft above the rocks, and suddenly Maris was rising again. She flew recklessly, thinking only of the immediate need for speed, searching and shifting until she found a steady current she could use.

It moved her close to Val, but she was so intent on passing him that she barely noticed the approach of land, and abruptly she was clutched by a sinker, a cold pocket of air that yanked her down like an icy hand from below. Val somehow flew clear of it, found some impossible lift that shoved him up and further ahead while Maris checked her abrupt descent and banked to free herself from the down-draft. He circled above the fortress, gauging the winds by the thin smoke rising from the academy’s chimneys, and was on his way back out again, higher and higher, before Maris had finished her recovery.

It was as if the sky itself favored Val this evening, Maris thought resentfully as she came around. The winds toyed with her and stalled her, gusting unpredictably every time she tried to ride them, but let Val fly them freely. He seemed almost unaware of the dangerous uncertainty of the gales, somehow finding, amid the constant shifting, the sure and fluid wind on which to glide.

Maris knew then that she had lost the race. Val was high above her, knowing that altitude often meant speed, and it would take her too long to reach his height, even if she should find the winds she needed to take her there. She tried to make up the distance between them, but the struggle against the ragged gusts wore her out, and the awareness that already it was too late took the heart out of her efforts. Val lost some time descending for his landing, but still passed above the cliff the second, final time more than a full wing-span ahead of her. Clearly, he had won.

Maris was too drained by the flight to smile at him when they had both come down in the soft sand of the landing pit, too depressed to pretend that it didn’t matter. In silence, she removed her wings as hastily as she could, her numbed fingers often slipping and fumbling uselessly at the straps. At last, still without a word having passed between them, Maris slung her wings over her shoulder and turned toward the weathered fortress.

Val blocked her way.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said.

Her head jerked up, and she felt a hot flush of embarrassment rise in her cheeks. “I don’t care what you say—about anything—to anyone!”

“Oh?” His faint smile taunted her, made her realize how hollow her words rang. Obviously she did care.

“It wasn’t a fair trial,” she snapped, and instantly regretted the feeble, childish complaint.

“No,” Val agreed, his tone flat enough so Maris had no clue as to whether irony was intended. “You were flying all day, while I was well-rested. I could never have beaten you if we were both fresh. We all know that.”

“I’ve lost before,” Maris said, trying hard to control her emotions. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“I see,” said Val. “Good.” He smiled again.

Maris shrugged irritably, feeling the wings scrape her back. “I’m very tired,” she said. “Please excuse me.”

“Certainly.” Val moved out of her way and she trudged past him, crossed the sand wearily, and began climbing the flight of worn, moss-covered steps that led to the fortress’s seaward entrance. But at the top, some impulse made her hesitate and turn before ducking inside.

Val had not followed her. He still stood out on the sand, a gaunt solitary figure in the gathering dusk, his folded wings propped lightly on one shoulder. He was looking off over the sea, where a lone scavenger kite sailed in ragged circles against the clouds of sunset.

Maris shivered and went inside.

The yearly competition was a festive three-day affair. Once it had been only games and drinking, with nothing at stake except pride. In those days it was smaller, and traditionally held on the Eyrie. But since the challenge system had been instituted seven years ago, flyer participation had grown dramatically, and it had been necessary to move the competition to the islands.

The Landsmen competed for it eagerly, donating facilities and labor. It was a holiday for their own people, and brought crowds of visitors with good metal coin from other islands. The land-bound had few spectacles like it, and the flyers were still figures of romance and adventure to many of them.

This year the contests were to be held on Skulny, a mid-sized island to the northeast of Little Shotan. Seatooth’s Landsman had chartered a ship for Sena and the Woodwingers, and a runner had just brought word that it was waiting at the small island’s only port. They would sail on the evening tide.

“Setting out in the dark,” Sena grumbled, taking a seat beside Maris at breakfast. “Asking for trouble.”

Kerr looked up from his porridge. “Oh, but we have to leave on the tide,” he said earnestly. “That’s why we leave in the evening.”