Windhaven - Страница 27

Then he slid his arms through the loops, flexed, knelt, and stood again.

Damen reached to help him unfold his wings, but Val turned and said something sharp to him—Maris, circling above, lost the words in the wind—and Damen fell back in confusion.

Then Val laughed, and jumped.

S’Rella trembled visibly in the air, her wings shaking with her shock. From below, Maris heard someone scream, and someone else was swearing. Val fell, body straight like a diver’s, twenty feet down, forty…

And suddenly he was falling no more—the wings came out of nowhere, flaring, flashing silver-white in the sun as they sprang open almost with their own volition. The air screamed past them, and Val caught it and turned it and rode on it, and all at once he was flying, skimming the breakers with impossible speed, then pulling up, climbing, soaring, the waves and the rocks and death all receding visibly beneath him, and Maris could hear dimly the peal of his triumphant wind-blown laughter.

S’Rella had locked into a stall, still watching Val. Maris shouted commands at her, and she broke out of it, twisting her wings at an angle and slanting off back over the land. Above the fortress, its bare rock heated in the sun, she found a strong riser and sailed back up to safety. Below, Sena was cursing up at Val and shaking her cane in apoplectic fury. He paid no attention. He was rising, higher and higher, and from the Woodwingers on the cliff came the ragged, popping sound of applause.

Maris went after him, banking, breaking her circle, heading out over the sea. Val was already ahead of her. But flying easily this time, luxuriating in his stunt.

When she caught him, flying as near to him as she dared—above and a bit behind and to the right—she began to shout curses down at him, borrowing freely from Sena’s more extensive vocabulary.

Val laughed at her.

“That was dangerous and useless and stupid,” Maris shouted. “You could have killed yourself… a jammed strut… if you hadn’t flung them hard enough…”

Val still laughed. “My risk,” he shouted back. “And I didn’t fling them… rigged springs… better than Raven.”

“Raven was a fool,” she shouted. “And long dead… what’s Raven to you?”

“Your brother sang that song, too,” Val yelled. Then he banked and dove, away from her, abruptly terminating the conversation.

Numb, and seeing no use in further pursuit of Val, Maris wheeled around and looked for S’Rella, who was following several hundred yards behind and below them. She drifted down to join her, trying to tell her pounding heart to relax, willing her stiff muscles to loosen and get the feel of the wind.

S’Rella was ghost-pale, and flying badly. “What happened?” she cried when Maris approached. “I could have died.”

“It was a stunt,” Maris called to her. “Flyer named Raven used to do it. Val concocted his own version.”

S’Rella flew silently for a moment, considering that, and then a little color came tentatively back into her face. “I thought someone had pushed him,” she shouted. “A stunt—it was beautiful.”

“It was insane,” Maris called back. She was quietly horrified that S’Rella could possibly have thought one of her fellow students capable of shoving Val to his death. He has been influencing her, she thought bitterly.

The rest of the flight, as Maris had predicted, was easy. Maris and S’Rella flew close together, Val ahead and much higher, preferring the company of rainbirds, it seemed. They kept him in sight throughout the afternoon, but only with an effort.

The winds were cooperative, blowing them so steadily toward Skulny that they hardly needed to do more than relax and glide. It was at times a dull flight, but Maris did not regret it. They skirted the coast of Big Shotan, fishing fleets everywhere beyond the little harbor towns, bringing in as big a catch as possible in the storm-free weather. And they saw Stormtown from the air, its great bay in the center of the city, windmills turning all along the shores, forty of them, or fifty—S’Rella tried to count them, but they were behind her before she was half done. And in the open sea between Little Shotan and Skulny, near sunset, they spied a scylla, its long neck craning up out of the blue-green water as its rows of powerful flippers churned just beneath the surface. S’Rella seemed delighted. She had heard about scyllas all her life, but this was the first she had actually seen.

They reached Skulny just ahead of the night. As they circled before landing, they could see figures below setting up lanterns on poles all along the beach, to guide in later flyers. Already the small flyers’ lodge nearby was ablaze with lights and activity: the parties, thought Maris, began earlier every year.

Maris tried to make her landing an example to S’Rella, but even as she was on her hands and knees, shaking sand out of her hair, she heard S’Rella thump to the ground nearby, and realized the girl had surely been too busy with her own landing to notice how clumsy or adept her teacher was.

Whoops of pleasure and welcome surrounded them at once. Eager hands reached out to them. “Help you, flyer? Help you, please?”

Maris took hold of one strong hand, and looked up into the eager face of a young boy with wind-tangled hair. His face was alive with pleasure; he was here for the glory of being near flyers, and was probably thrilled by the thought of the coming competition on his own island.

But as he was helping her off with her wings—and another boy was helping S’Rella—suddenly there was the sound of wind-on-wings again, and another thump, and Maris glanced over to see that Val had come in. They had lost sight of him near dusk, and she had assumed he was already down.

He climbed awkwardly to his feet, the great silver wings bobbing on his back, and two young girls moved in on him. “Help you, flyer.” The refrain was almost a chant. “Help you, flyer,” and their hands were on him.

“Get away” he snapped, anger in his voice. The girls jumped back, startled, and even Maris looked up. Val was always so cool and controlled; the outburst was unlike him.

“We just want to help you with your wings, flyer,” the bolder of the girls said.

“Don’t you have any pride?” Val said. He was unstrap-ping himself, without help. “Don’t you have anything better to do than fawn over flyers who treat you like dirt? What are your parents?”

The girl quailed. “Tanners, flyer.”

“Then go and learn tanning,” he said. “It’s a cleaner trade than slaving for the flyers.” He turned away from her, began to fold up his wings carefully.

Maris and S’Rella were free of their own wings now. “Here,” said the boy who had been helping Maris, as he offered them to her, neatly folded. Suddenly abashed, she fumbled in her pocket and offered the boy an iron coin. She had always accepted the help without payment before, but something in what Val said had struck a chord.

But the boy just laughed and refused to take her money. “Don’t you know?” he said. “It’s good luck to touch a flyer’s wings.” And then he was off, and Maris saw as he darted toward his companions that the beach was full of children. They were everywhere, helping with the poles, playing in the sand, waiting for the chance to aid a flyer.

But looking at them, Maris thought of Val, and wondered if there were others on the island who were not so thrilled by the flyers and the competition, others who stayed home to brood and sulk and resent the privileged caste that flew the skies of Windhaven.

“Take your wings, flyer?” a voice said sharply, and Maris glanced over. It was Val, mocking. “Here,” he said, in his normal tone, and he offered her the wings he’d worn on the flight. “I imagine you’ll want these for safekeeping.”

She took the wings from him, holding one pair awkwardly in each hand. “Where are you going?” Val shrugged. “This is a fair-sized island. Somewhere there’s a town or two, and a tavern or two, and a bed to sleep in. I have a few irons.”

“You could come up to the lodge with S’Rella and me,” Maris said hesitantly.

“Could I?” Val said, his voice perfectly level. His smile flickered at her. “That would be an interesting scene. More dramatic than my launching today, I’d guess.”

Maris frowned. “I haven’t forgotten that,” she said. “S’Rella could have hurt herself, you know. She was badly startled by that fool’s leap of yours. I ought—”

“I believe I’ve heard this before,” Val said. “Excuse me.” He turned and was gone, walking quickly up the beach with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Behind her, Maris heard S’Rella laughing and talking with the other young people, sharing with them her delight in her first long flight. When Maris approached, she broke off and ran to take her hand. “How was I?” she asked breathlessly. “How did I do?”

“You know how you did—you just want me to praise you,” Maris said, her tone a mock-scold. “All right, I will. You flew as if you’d never done anything else in your life, as if you’d been born to it.”

“I know,” S’Rella said shyly. Then she laughed in sheer joy. “It was marvelous. I never want to do anything but fly!”

“I know how you feel,” Maris said. “But a rest will do us good right now. Let’s go in and sit by the fire and see who else has come early.”

But when she turned to go, S’Rella hung back. Maris looked at her curiously, and then understood; S’Rella was worried about the sort of reception she would find inside the lodge. She was an outsider, after all, and no doubt Val had been filling her with tales of his own rejection.