Windhaven - Страница 31

And he was looking across the room at Val.

Val turned in his direction and raised his wine glass. “Greetings, Loren,” he called, in his maddeningly flat tones. “I toast your fine singing.” He drained his wine and set the glass aside.

Someone, taking Val’s words for a veiled insult, snickered. Others took the toast in earnest, and raised their own glasses. The singer just sat and stared, his face darkening, and most of the flyers watched him, baffled, waiting for him to resume.

“Do the ballad of Aron and Jeni,” someone called out.

The guitarist shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’ve got a more appropriate song.” He played a few opening bars and began to sing a song unfamiliar to Maris.

Val turned to her. “Don’t you recognize it?” he said.

“It’s popular in Eastern. They call it the ballad of Ari and One-Wing.” He poured himself more wine and raised the glass again in mocking tribute to the singer.

With a sinking feeling, Maris realized that she had heard the song before, years past, and what was worse had enjoyed it. It was a rousing, dramatic story of betrayal and revenge, with One-Wing the villain and the flyers the heroes.

S’Rella was biting her lip in anger, barely holding back her tears. She started forward impulsively, but Val restrained her with a hand on her arm and shook his head. Maris could only stand helplessly, listening to the cruel words, so very different from those of her own song, the one Coll had composed for her. She wished he were here now, to compose a song in answer to this. Singers had a strange power, even amateurs like the Easterner across the room.

When he was finished, everyone knew.

He tossed his guitar down to a friend, and jumped down after it. “I’ll be singing on the beach, if anyone cares to hear,” he said. Then he took his instrument and left, followed by all of the Easterners who had arrived with him and a good many others. The lodge was suddenly half-empty again.

“Loren was a neighbor,” Val said. “From North Arren, just across the bay. I haven’t seen him in years.”

The Shotaners were talking softly among themselves, one or two of them giving Val, Maris, and S’Rella pointed looks from time to time. All of them left together.

“You haven’t introduced me to your flyer friends,” Val said to S’Rella. “Come.” He took her hand and led her forcefully to where four men were clustered in a tight circle. Maris had no choice but to follow. “I’m Val of South Arren,” he said loudly. “This is S’Rella. Fine flying weather today, wasn’t it?”

One of the four, a huge, dark man with a massive jaw, frowned at him. “I admire your courage, One-Wing,” he rumbled, “but nothing else about you. I knew Ari, though not well. Do you want me to make polite conversation with you?”

“This is a flyers’ lodge and a flyers’ party,” one of his companions said sharply. “Do you two have business here?”

“They are my guests,” Maris said furiously. “Or do you question my right to be here too?”

“No. Only your taste in guests.” He clapped the big man on the shoulder. “Come. I have a sudden urge to hear some singing.”

Val tried another group, two women and a man with ale mugs in their hands. Before he had quite reached them, they set down their mugs—still half-full—and left.

Only one party remained in the room, six flyers that Maris knew vaguely from the far reaches of Western, and a single blond youth from the Outer Islands. And suddenly they were leaving too, but on the way to the door one of them, a man well into his middle years, stopped to talk to Val. “You may not remember, but I was among the judges the year you took Ari’s wings,” the man said. “We judged fairly, but some have never forgiven us for the verdict we handed down. Perhaps you did not know what you were doing, perhaps you did. It makes no difference. If they were so reluctant to forgive me, they will never forgive you. I pity you, but we’re helpless. You were wrong to come back, son. They will never let you be a flyer.”

Val had been calm through everything else, but now his face contorted in rage. “I do not want your pity,” he said. “I do not want to be one of you. And I am not your son! Get out of here, old man, or I will take your wings this year.”

The gray-haired flyer shook his head, and a companion took him by his elbow. “Let’s go, Cadon. You waste your concern on him.”

When they left, only Riesa remained in the lodge room with Maris, Val, and S’Rella. She busied herself with her ale mugs, gathering them up to wash, and did not look at them.

“Warmth and generosity,” Val said.

“They’re not all—” Maris started, and found she could not go on. S’Rella looked as if she were about to cry.

Then the door crashed open, and it was Garth standing there, frowning, looking puzzled and angry. “What is going on?” he said. “I stumble up from home to host my party, and everyone is out on the beach. Maris? Riesa?” He slammed the door and started across the room. “If there was a fight, I’ll break the neck of the fool who started it. Flyers have no business quarreling like land-bound.”

Val faced him squarely. “I’m the cause of your empty party,” he said.

“Do I know you?” Garth said.

“Val. Of South Arren.” He waited.

“He didn’t start anything,” Maris said suddenly. “Believe that, Garth. He’s my guest.”

Garth looked baffled. “Then why—?”

“I’m also called One-Wing.”

Comprehension broke across Garth’s face, and Maris knew how she must have looked the day she had met Val on the Stormtown docks, and had a sickening realization of what it must have felt like to Val.

Whatever Garth felt, he struggled to control it. “I wish I could bid you welcome,” he said, “but that would be a lie. Ari was a sweet, fine woman who never hurt anyone, and I knew her brother too. We all did.” He sighed and looked to Maris. “He is your guest, you say? What would you have me do?”

“Ari was my friend as well,” Maris said. “Garth, I don’t ask you to forget her. But Val is not her killer. He took her wings, not her life.”

“They are one and the same,” Garth grumbled, but it was half-hearted. He looked back at Val. “You were a boy then, though, and none of us knew that Ari would kill herself. I’ve made my own share of mistakes, though none as big as yours, and I suppose—”

“I made no mistake,” Val interrupted.

Garth blinked. “Your challenge was a mistake,” he said. “Ari killed herself.”

“I would challenge her again,” Val said. “She was not fit to fly. Her death was her mistake, not mine.”

Garth was always gentle and genial, even his infrequent angers full of bluff and bluster; Maris had never seen his face as cold and bitter as it looked now. “Out, One-Wing,” he said, his voice low. “Leave this lodge and do not enter it again, whether you wear wings or not. I will not have you.”

“I won’t be back,” Val said evenly. “Nonetheless, I thank you for your warmth and generosity.” He smiled and headed toward the door. S’Rella started after him.

“S’Rella,” Garth said. “I don’t—you can stay, girl, I have no—”

S’Rella whirled. “Everything Val says is true. I hate you all.”

And she followed Val One-Wing out into night.

S’Rella did not return to their little cabin that night, but she was there just after dawn the next day, Val with her, both ready for practice. Maris gave them the wings and accompanied them up the steep, twisting stone stairs to the flyers’ cliff. “Race,” she told them. “Fly above the coastline, using the sea breeze and staying low. Circle the entire island.”

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.