Windhaven - Страница 48

She heard Evan approaching. “You can’t tell me that’s not beautiful,” she said, without turning. She took an-other step closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down… and felt the world drop beneath her.

She gasped for breath and her arms flailed, seeking some solidity, and she was falling, falling, falling, and even Evan’s arms wrapped tight around her could not draw her back to safety.

It stormed all the next day. Maris spent the day inside, lost in depression, thinking of what had happened on the cliffs. She did not exercise. She ate listlessly, and had to force herself to tend to her wings. Evan watched her in silence, frowning often.

The rain continued the following day, but the worst of the storm was past, and the downpour grew more gentle. Evan announced that he was going out. “There are some things I need from Port Thayos,” he said, “herbs that do not grow here. A trader came in last week, I understand. Perhaps I will be able to replenish my stores.”

“Perhaps,” Maris said evenly. She was tired, though she had done nothing this morning except eat breakfast. She felt old.

“Would you like to walk with me? You have never seen Port Thayos.”

“No,” Maris said. “I don’t feel up to it just now. I’ll spend the day here.”

Evan frowned, but reached for his heavy raincloak nonetheless. “Very well,” he said. “I will be back before dark.”

But it was well after dark when the healer finally returned, carrying a basket full of bottled herbs. The rain had finally stopped. Maris had begun to worry about him when the sun went down. “You’re late,” she said when he entered, and shook the rain from his cloak. “Are you all right?”

He was smiling; Maris had never seen him quite so happy. “News, good news,” he said. “The port is full of it. There will be no war. The Landsmen of Thayos and Thrane have agreed to a personal meeting on that accursed rock, to work out a compromise about mining rights!”

“No war,” Maris said, a little dully. “Good, good. Odd, though. How did it happen?”

Evan started a fire and began to make some tea. “Oh, it was all happenstance,” he said. “Tya returned from another mission, bearing nothing. Our Landsman was rebuffed on all sides. Without allies, he did not feel strong enough to press his claims. He is furious, I’m told, but what can he do? Nothing. So he sent Jem to Thrane to set up a meeting, to haggle out whatever settlement he can. Anything is better than nothing, I would have thought he’d find support on Cheslin or Thrynel, particularly if he offered them a large enough share of the iron. And certainly there is no love lost between Thrane and the Arrens.” Evan laughed. “Ah, what does it matter? The war is off. Port Thayos is giddy with relief, except for a few landsguard who’d hoped to weigh down their pockets with iron. Everyone is celebrating, and we should celebrate too.”

Evan went to his basket and rummaged among the herbs, pulling out a large moonfish. “I thought perhaps seafood would cheer you up,” he said. “I know a way of cooking this with dandyweed and bitternuts that will make your tongue sing.” He found a long bone knife, and began to scale the fish, whistling happily as he worked, and his mood was so infectious that Maris found herself smiling too.

There was a loud knocking at the door.

Evan looked up, scowling. “An emergency, no doubt,” he said, cursing. “Answer it if you would, Maris. My hands are full of fish.”

The girl standing in the door wore a dark green uniform, trimmed with gray fur; a landsguard, and one of the Landsman’s runners. “Maris of Lesser Amberly?” she asked.

“Yes,” Maris said.

The girl nodded. “The Landsman of Thayos sends his greetings, and invites you and the healer Evan to honor him at dinner tomorrow night. If your health permits it.”

“My health permits it,” Maris snapped. “Why are we suddenly so honored, child?”

The runner had a seriousness beyond her years. “The Landsman honors all flyers, and your injury in his service has weighed heavily on him. He wishes to show his gratitude to all the flyers who have flown for Thayos, however briefly, in the emergency just past.”

“Oh,” Maris said. She still was not satisfied. The Landsman of Thayos had not struck her as the type who cared much about expressing gratitude. “Is that all?”

The girl hesitated. Briefly her detachment left her, and Maris saw that she was indeed very young. “It is not part of the message, flyer, but…”

“Yes?” Maris prompted. Evan had stopped his work to stand behind her.

“Late this afternoon, a flyer arrived, with a message for the Landsman’s ears only. He received her in private chambers. She was from Western, I think. She dressed funny, and her hair was too short.”

“Describe her, if you can,” Maris said. She took a copper coin from a pocket and let her fingers play with it.

The girl looked at the coin and smiled. “Oh, she was a Westerner, young—twenty or twenty-five. Her hair was black, cut just like yours. She was very pretty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as pretty. She had a nice smile, I thought, but the lodge men didn’t like her. They said she didn’t even bother thanking them for their help. Green eyes. She was wearing a choker. Three strands of colored sea-glass. Is that enough?”

“Yes,” Maris said. “You’re very observant.” She gave the girl the coin.

“You know her?” Evan asked. “This flyer?”

Maris nodded. “I’ve known her since the day she was born. I know her parents as well.”

“Who is she?” he demanded, impatiently.

“Corina,” said Maris, “of Lesser Amberly.”

The runner remained at the door. Maris glanced back at her. “Yes?” she asked. “Is there more? We accept the invitation, of course. You may give the Landsman our thanks.”

“There’s more,” the girl blurted. “I forgot. The Landsman said, most respectfully, that you are requested to bring your wings, if that would not put too great a burden on your health.”

“Of course,” Maris said numbly. “Of course.”

She closed the door.

The keep of the Landsman of Thayos was a grim, martial place that lay well away from the island’s towns and villages in a narrow, secluded valley of its own. It was close to the sea, but shielded from it by a solid wall of mountains. By land, only two roads gave approach, and both were fortified by landsguard. A stone watchtower stood atop the tallest peak, a high sentinel for all the paths leading to the keep.

The fortress itself was old and stern, built of great blocks of weathered black stone. Its back was to the mountain, and Maris knew from her last visit that much of it lay underground, in chambers chiseled from solid rock. Its exterior face showed a double set of wide walls—landsguard armed with longbows walked patrol on the parapets—ringing a cluster of wooden buildings and two black towers, the taller of which was almost fifty feet high. Stout wooden bars closed off the tower windows. The valley, so close to the sea, was damp and cold. The only ground cover was a tenacious violet lichen, and a blue-green moss that clung to the underside of boulders and half-covered the walls of the keep.

Coming up the road from Thossi, Maris and Evan were stopped once at the valley checkpoint, passed, stopped again at the outer wall, and finally admitted to the keep. They might have been detained longer, but Maris was carrying her bright silver wings, and lands-guard did not trifle with flyers. The inner courtyard was full of activity—children playing with great shaggy dogs, fierce-looking pigs running everywhere, landsguard drilling with bow and club. A gibbet had been built against one wall, its wood cracked and well-weathered. The children played all about it, and one of them was using a noose as a swing. The other two nooses hung empty, twisting ominously in the chill wind of evening.

“This place oppresses me,” Maris told Evan. “The Landsman of Lesser Amberly lives in a huge wooden manor on a hill overlooking the town. It has twenty guest rooms, and a tremendous banquet hall, and wonderful windows of colored glass, and a beacon tower for summoning flyers—but it has no walls, and no guards, and no gibbets.”

“The Landsman of Lesser Amberly is chosen by the people,” Evan said. “The Landsman of Thayos is from a line that has ruled here since the days of the star sailors. And you forget, Maris, that Eastern is not as gentle a land as Western. Winter lasts longer here. Our storms are colder and fiercer. Our soil has more metal, but it is not so good for growing things as the soil in the West. Famine and war are never very far away on Thayos.”

They passed through a massive gate, down into the interior of the keep, and Maris fell silent.

The Landsman met them in his private reception chamber, seated on a plain wooden throne and flanked by two sour-faced landsguard. But he rose when they entered; Landsmen and flyers were equal. “I’m pleased you could accept my invitation, flyer,” he said. “There was some concern about your health.”

Despite the polite words, Maris did not like him. The Landsman was a tall, well-proportioned man with regular, almost handsome, features, his gray hair worn long and knotted behind his head in the Eastern fashion. But there was something disturbing about his manner, and he had a puffiness around his eyes, and a twitch at the corner of his mouth that his full beard did not quite conceal. His dress was rich and somber; thick blue-gray cloth trimmed with black fur, thigh-high boots, a wide leather belt inlaid with iron and silver and gemstones. And he wore a small metal dagger.