Windhaven - Страница 58

“There can be no peace until we have won.”

“I’m not a stone on Val’s geechi board, and the sooner he learns that the better! Val knows what it would cost me to do as he asks. How dare he ask? He sent you to trick me, to lie to me with talk of safety, because he knew I would refuse. I can’t bear to see one flyer—do you think I want to be with a thousand of them, watching them play in the sky and listening to them trade stories and finally stand alone, an old cripple, and watch them fly away and leave me? Do you think I’d like that?” Maris realized she had been shouting at him. Her pain was a knot in her stomach.

Arrilan’s voice was sullen. “I scarcely know you—how could you expect me to know how you felt? I’m sorry. I’m sure Val is sorry, too. But it can’t be helped. This is more important than your feelings. Everything depends on this Council, and Val wants you there.”

“Tell Val that I am sorry,” Maris said quietly. “Tell him I wish him luck, but I will not go. I’m old and tired and I want to be left alone.”

Arrilan stood up. His eyes were very cold. “I told Val I would not fail him,” he said. “There are four of us against you.” He made a small gesture, and the woman on his right slid her knife from its sheath. She grinned, and Maris saw that her teeth were made of wood. The man behind her rose, and he, too, held a knife in his hand.

“Get out,” said Evan. He was standing near the door to his workroom, and in his hands was the bow he used for hunting, an arrow notched and ready.

“You could take only one of us with that,” said the woman with the wooden teeth. “If you were lucky. And you wouldn’t have time to reach for another arrow, old man.”

“True,” said Evan. “But the point of this arrow is smeared with blue tick venom, so one of you will die.”

“Put your knives away,” Arrilan said. “Please, put that down. No one need die.” He looked at Maris.

Maris said, “Did you really think you could force me into presiding over the Council?” She made a disgusted sound. “You might tell Val that if his strategy is as good as yours, the one-wings are finished.”

Arrilan glanced at his companions. “Leave us,” he said. “Wait outside.” Reluctantly the three shambled to the door. “No more threats,” Arrilan said. “I’m sorry, Maris. Maybe you can understand how desperate I feel. We need you.”

“You need the flyer I was, perhaps, but she died in a fall. Leave me alone. I’m just an old woman, a healer’s apprentice, and that’s all I aspire to be. Don’t hurt me any more by dragging me into the world.”

Contempt was plain on Arrilan’s face. “To think that they still sing of a coward like you,” he said.

When he had gone, Maris turned to Evan. She was trembling, and her head felt light and dizzy.

The healer lowered the great bow he held and set it aside. He was frowning. “Dead?” he asked bitterly. “All this time, have you been dead? I thought you were learning how to live again, but all this time you’ve seen my bed as your grave.”

“Oh, Evan, no,” she said, dismayed, wanting comfort and not still more reproach.

“It was your own word,” he said. “Do you still believe that your life ended with your fall?” His face twisted with pain and anger. “I won’t love a corpse.”

“Oh, Evan.” She sat down abruptly, feeling that her legs could no longer hold her up. “I didn’t mean—I meant only that I am dead to the flyers, or they are dead to me. That part of my life is finished.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Evan said. “If you try to kill a part of yourself, you risk killing everything. It’s like what your brother said—rather, what Barrion said—about trying to change just one note in a song.”

“I value our life together, Evan,” Maris said. “Please believe me. It’s just that Arrilan—this damn Council of Val’s—brought it all back to mind. I was reminded of everything I’ve lost. It made the pain come back.”

“It made you feel sorry for yourself,” Evan said.

Maris felt a flash of annoyance. Couldn’t he understand? Could a land-bound ever understand what she had lost? “Yes,” she said, her voice cold. “It made me feel sorry for myself. Don’t I have that right?”

“The time for self-pity is long past. You have to come to terms with what you are, Maris.”

“I will. I am. I was learning to forget. But to be drawn into this thing, this flyers’ dispute, would ruin everything; it would drive me mad. Can’t you see that?”

“I see a woman denying everything she has been,” Evan said. He might have said more, but a sound made them both look around, and they saw Bari standing in the doorway, looking a little frightened.

Evan’s face softened, and he went to her and lifted her in a great bear hug. “We had some visitors,” he said. He kissed her.

“Since we’re all up, shall I make breakfast?” Maris asked.

Bari grinned and nodded. Evan’s face was unreadable. Maris turned away and set to work, determined to forget.

In the weeks that followed, they seldom spoke of Tya or the flyers’ Council, but news came to them regularly, without being sought. A crier in the Thossi village square; gossip from shopkeepers; travelers who sought out Evan for healing or advice—they all spoke of war and flyers and the belligerent Landsman.

On South Arren, Maris knew, the flyers of Windhaven were gathering. The land-bound of that small island would never forget these days, any more than the people of Greater and Lesser Amberly had ever forgotten the last Council. By now the streets of Southport and Arrenton—small, dusty towns she remembered well—would have a festive air to them. Winesellers and bakers and sausage-makers and merchants would converge from a half-dozen nearby islands, crossing treacherous seas in unsteady boats in hopes of making a few irons from the flyers. The inns and taverns would be full, and flyers would be everywhere, throngs of them, swelling the little towns to bursting. Maris could see them in her mind’s eye: flyers from Big Shotan in their dark red uniforms, cool pale Artellians with silver crowns about their brows, priests of the Sky God from Southern, Outer Islanders and Emberites whom no one had seen in years. Old friends would hug each other and talk away the nights; old lovers would trade uncertain smiles and find other ways to pass the dark hours. Singers and storytellers would tell the old tales and compose new ones to suit the occasion. The air would be full of gossip and boasting and song, fragrant with the scents of spiced kivas and roasted meat.

All of her friends would be there, Maris thought. In her dreams she saw them: young flyers and old ones, one-wings and flyer-born, the proud and the timid, the troublemakers and the compliant; all of them would assemble, and the sheen of their wings and the sound of their laughter would fill South Arren.

And they would fly.

Maris tried not to think of that, but the thought came unbidden, and in her dreams she flew with them. She could feel the wind as she slept, touching her with knowing, gentle fingers, carrying her to ecstasy. Around her she could see their wings, hundreds of them bright against the deep blue sky, turning and banking in graceful, languid circles. Her own wing caught the light of the sun and flashed briefly, brilliantly: a soundless cry of joy. She saw the wings at sunset, blood-red against an orange—and-purple sky, fading slowly to indigo, then turning silver-white again, when the last light vanished and there were only stars to fly by.

She remembered the taste of rain, and the throb of distant thunder, and the way the sea looked at dawn, just before the sun came up. She remembered the way it felt to run and cast herself from a flyers’ cliff, trusting wind and wings and her own skill to keep her in the air.

Sometimes she trembled and cried out in the night, and Evan wrapped his arms around her and whispered soothing promises, but Maris did not tell him of her dreams. He had never been a flyer, or seen a flyers’ Council, and he would not understand.

Time passed. The sick came to Evan, or he to them, and died or grew well. Maris and Bari worked at his side, doing what they could. But Maris found that her mind was not always in the work she did. Once Evan sent her into the forest to gather sweetsong, an herb he used to make tesis, but Maris found herself thinking of the Council as she wandered in the cool, damp woods. It has started by now, she thought, and in her head she heard the speeches they must be making, Val and Corm and the rest, and she weighed their arguments and set others up against them, and wondered where it would all go, and whom they had chosen to preside. When she finally returned, beneath her arm was a basket of liar’s weed, which looks almost like sweetsong but has no healing properties. Evan took the basket and sighed loudly, shaking his head. “Maris, Maris,” he muttered, “what am I to do with you?” He turned to Bari. “Girl,” he said, “go fetch me some sweetsong before it grows too dark. Your aunt is not feeling well.”

Maris could only agree with him.

Then one day Coll returned, trudging up the road with his guitar across his back, some six weeks after he had left them. He was not alone. S’Rella walked by his side, still wearing her wings, and stumbling like one half-asleep. Their faces were gray and drawn.

When Bari saw them coming, she gave a loud cry and ran to embrace her father. Maris turned to S’Rella. “S’Rella—are you all right? How did the Council go?”

S’Rella began to weep.

Maris went to her and took her old friend in her arms, feeling her shake. Twice she tried to speak, but only gasped and choked.