Windhaven - Страница 35

“I know you wanted to help your Woodwingers, but couldn’t you have stopped short of the betrayal of a friend?”

Dorrel’s voice, deceptively calm. Feeling heartsick, Maris turned to face him. She had not spoken to him since that night on the beach.

“I didn’t want it to happen, Dorr,” she said. “But it may be for the best. We both know he’s sick.”

“Sick, yes,” he snapped. “But I wanted to protect him—this will kill him if he loses.”

“It may kill him if he wins.”

“I think he’d prefer that. But if that girl takes his wings from him—he liked her, did you know that? He mentioned her to me, how nice she was, that night after Val wrecked the party in the lodge.”

Maris, too, had been sick and angry over S’Rella’s choice of opponent, but Dorrel’s cold fury turned her feelings another way.

“S’Rella hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said. “Her challenge was perfectly proper. And Val didn’t wreck the party, as you say. How dare you say that! It was the flyers who insulted him and then walked out.”

“I don’t understand you,” Dorrel said quietly. “I haven’t wanted to believe how much you’ve changed. But it’s true, it’s as they say. You’ve turned against us. You prefer the company of the Woodwingers and the one-winged to that of true flyers. I don’t know you anymore.”

The unhappiness on his face hurt her as much as the harshness of his words. Maris forced herself to speak. “No,” she said. “You don’t know me anymore.”

Dorrel waited a moment, waited for her to say something more, but Maris knew that if she opened her mouth again it could only be for a scream or a sob. She could see anger warring with sadness on Dorrel’s face, and anger finally won. He turned without another word and stalked away.

She felt, as she watched him walk away from her, that she was bleeding to death, and she knew it was a self-inflicted wound.

“My choice,” she whispered, and the tears ran down her face as she stared blindly out to sea.

They had flown away two by two; they returned, hours later, one by one.

Crowds of the land-bound waited on the beaches, their eager eyes scanning the horizon. They had engaged in their own games and contests as well as in eating and drinking as they waited for the results of the flyers’ contest.

The judges watched the skies through telescopes made for them by the finest lensmakers in Stormtown. On the table before them were a number of wooden boxes, one for each match, and piles of small pebbles: white pebbles for the flyers, black pebbles for the challengers. When a race was completed, each judge tossed a pebble into the wooden box. In a particularly close match, a judge might choose to vote for a tie by putting one stone of each color into the box. Or—but this was rarely done—if the winner was especially obvious, two white pebbles or two black could be cast.

The first flyer was sighted from the boats before anyone on shore saw him, and the shout went rippling over the water. On the beach, people began to stand and raise their hands to shield their eyes from the sun. Shalli lifted her telescope.

“See anything?” another judge asked.

“A flyer,” Shalli said, laughing. “There”—she tried to point—“below the cloud. Can’t tell who it is yet.”

The others looked. Maris could barely see the speck they were straining at; it might have been a kite or a rainbird to her, but they had their telescopes.

The Eastern woman recognized the flyer first. “That’s Lane,” she said, surprised. The others looked impressed as well. Lane had started in the third pair, Maris recalled, which meant that not only had he outflown his own son, but four others who had started ahead of him as well.

By the time he had landed, two other flyers had come surging out of the clouds, one several wingspans ahead of the other. The first pair to depart, the judges announced. One of the Landsman’s attendants passed two of the wooden boxes down the table, and Maris heard the small clicks as the stones were dropped.

When the boxes were set aside, she drifted closer. In the first box, she counted five black pebbles and one white; four judges ruling for the challenger, one for a tie. The other, the box representing the race in which Lane had flown, had five whites in it, but as she watched the judges dropped in three more—two more flyers had appeared, far apart, but neither one was Lane’s son. When he finally did appear, some twenty minutes later, five others had preceded him, and Lane’s box had ten white pebbles in it. A formidable margin; the boy had probably lost already, Maris knew.

As each incoming flyer was recognized, the judges announced the name to the crier, who shouted it out for all to hear. Ragged cheers went up for some of the announcements from the land-bound thronging the beaches, and now and again Maris heard a loud groan as well. She suspected that most of the cheering was for financial reasons rather than personal. Most of the land-bound did not know flyers from other islands well enough to like or dislike them, but it was traditional to gamble on the outcome of the races, and she knew that a lot of money was changing hands below. It would be difficult, however, for S’Rella. This was Skulny, Garth’s home island, and he was familiar and popular with many of the spectators.

“Arak of South Arren!” the crier yelled.

Sena swore softly. Maris borrowed a scope from Shalli. It was Arak, sure enough, flying alone, ahead of not only Damen but of Sher and Leya and their opponents as well.

One by one the Woodwingers and their rivals struggled in.

Arak came first, then the man Sher had challenged, then Damen, followed by Leya’s rival. Minutes later, three flyers appeared bunched close together; Sher and Leya, inseparable as always, and close to them—moving ahead now—Jon of Culhall. Sena was swearing again, her face screwed up in disappointment. Maris tried to think of something reassuring to say, but nothing came to mind. The judges were dropping pebbles into the boxes. On the beach, Damen was down and getting out of his wings, while the others approached for a landing.

The sky was clear for a moment, with nothing to see. Kerr was losing badly too; Jon of Culhall had landed now, and Kerr was nowhere in sight. Maris took advantage of the free moment to see how the judges had scored her students.

She was not cheered. Sher’s box had seven whites in it, Leya’s had five, Damen’s eight. Kerr had six against him at the moment, but the judges were dropping in more as minutes went by and he did not appear. “Come on,” Maris mumbled under her breath.

“I see someone,” the Southern judge said. “Very high, angling down now.”

The others lifted their scopes. “Yes,” one of them said. Now people on the beach had spotted the incoming flyer as well, and Maris could hear the buzz of speculation.

“Is it Kerr?” Sena said anxiously.

“I’m not sure,” the Easterner answered. “Wait.”

But it was Shalli who lowered her telescope first, looking stunned. “It’s One-Wing,” she said, in a small voice.

“Give me that,” Sena said, snatching the telescope from her hands. “It is him.” She passed the instrument over to Maris, beaming.

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.