Windhaven

by George R. R. Martin

  "And you'll save my father?" Bari asked.

  "Yes," Maris said.

  "And after I take her to Thrynel?" S'Rella said. "What then?"

  "Then," said Maris, standing and taking Bari by the hand, "I want you to fly to the keep with a message for the Landsman. Tell him that it was all my doing, that I put Coll and the other singers up to it. If he wants me, and he will, tell him I will turn myself over to him, just as soon as he releases Coll and the others."

  "Maris," warned Evan, "he will hang you."

  "Perhaps," said Maris. "That's a chance I have to take."

  "He agrees," S'Rella reported on her return. "As a sign of his good faith, he has released all the singers except Coll. They were taken away by boat to Thrynel, with orders never to return to Thayos. I witnessed their departure myself."

  "And Coll?"

  "I was allowed to speak to him. He seemed unharmed, although he was worried that something might have happened to his guitar — they wouldn't let him keep it. The Landsman has said he will hold Coll for three days. If you do not appear at his keep by then, Coll will hang."

  "Then I must go at once," Maris said.

  S'Rella caught her hand. "Coll told me to warn you away. He said you were not to come under any circumstances. That it was too dangerous for you."

  Maris shrugged. "Dangerous for him as well. Of course I will go."

  "It may be a trap," Evan said. "The Landsman is not to be trusted. He may mean to hang you both."

  "That's a risk I'll have to take. If I don't go, Coll is sure to hang. I can't have that on my conscience — I got him into this."

  "I don't like it," Evan said.

  Maris sighed. "The Landsman will have me sooner or later, unless I flee Thayos at once. By giving myself up to him, I have the chance to save Coll. And, perhaps, to do more."

  "What more can you do?" S'Rella demanded. "He'll hang you, and probably your brother too, and that will be that."

  "If he hangs me," said Maris calmly, "we will have our incident. My death would unite the flyers as nothing else could."

  The color drained out of S'Rella's face. "Maris, no," she whispered.

  "I thought that might be it," said Evan in a voice that was unnaturally calm. "So this was the unspoken twist in all your plans. You decided to live just long enough to be a martyr."

  Maris frowned. "I was afraid to tell you, Evan. I thought this might happen — I had to consider it when I made my plans. Are you angry?"

  "Angry? No. Disappointed. Hurt. And very sad. I believed you when you told me you had decided to live. You seemed happier, and stronger, and I thought that you did love me, and that I could help you."

  He sighed. "I didn't realize that, instead of life, you had simply chosen what you thought would be a nobler death. I can't deny you what you want. Death and I wrestle daily, and I have never found him noble, but perhaps I look too closely. You will have what you want, and after you are gone the singers will make it all sound very beautiful, no doubt."

  "I don't want to die," she said, very quietly.

  She went to Evan and took him by the shoulders. "Look at me, and listen to me," she said. His blue eyes met hers, and she saw the sorrow in them, and hated herself for putting it there.

  "My love, you must believe me," she said. "I go to the Landsman's keep because it is all I can do. I must try to save my brother, and myself, and convince the Landsman that flyers are not to be trifled with.

  "My plan is to push the Landsman until he breaks and does something foolish — I admit that. And I know that this is a dangerous game. I have known that I might die, or that one of my friends might die. But this is not, not an elaborate plan to make a noble death for myself.

  "Evan, I want to live. And I love you. Please don't doubt that." She drew a deep breath, "I need your faith in me. I've needed your help and your love all along.

  "I know the Landsman may kill me, but I have to go there, risk that, in order to live. It's the only way. I have to do this, for Coll and for Bari, for Tya, for the flyers— and for myself. Because I have to know, really know, that I'm still good for something. That I was left alive for some purpose. Do you understand?"

  Evan looked at her, searching her face. Finally he nodded. "Yes. I understand. I believe you."

  Maris turned. "S'Rella?"

  There were tears in the other woman's eyes, but she was smiling tremulously. "I'm afraid for you, Maris.

  But you're right. You have to go. And I pray you'll succeed, for your own sake and for all of us. I don't want us to win if it means your death."

  "One more thing," said Evan.

  "Yes?"

  "I'm going with you."

  They both wore black.

  They had been on the road less than ten minutes when they encountered one of Evan's friends, a little girl rushing breathlessly up the road from Thossi to warn them that a half-dozen landsguard were on their way.

  They met the landsguard a half-hour later. They were a weary group, armed with spiked clubs and bows, and dressed in soiled uniforms stained with the sweat of their long forced march. But they treated Maris and Evan almost deferentially, and did not seem in the least surprised to meet them on the road. "We are to escort you back to the Landsman's keep," said the young woman in charge.

  "Fine," said Maris. She set them a brisk pace.

  An hour before they entered the Landsman's isolated valley, Maris finally saw the black flyers for the first time.

  From a distance, they seemed like so many insects, dark specks creeping across the sky, although they moved with a sensuous slowness no insect could ever match. They were never out of sight from the first moment Maris noticed motion low on the horizon; no sooner would one vanish behind a tree or a rocky outcrop than another would appear where the first had been. On and on they came, a never-ending procession, and Maris knew that the aerial column trailed miles behind to Port Thayos, and extended on ahead to the Landsman's keep and the sea, before curving around in a great circle to meet itself above the waves.

  "Look," she said to Evan, pointing. He looked, and smiled at her, and they held hands. Somehow the mere sight of the flyers made Maris feel better, gave her strength and reassurance. As she walked on, the moving specks in the afternoon sky took on shape and form, growing until she could see the silver sheen of sunlight on their wings, and the way they banked and tacked to find the right wind.

  Where the road from Thossi joined the broad thoroughfare up from Port Thayos, the flyers passed directly overhead, and for the rest of the journey the walkers moved beneath them. Maris could make out the flyers quite well by then; a few kept high, up where the wind was stronger, but most skimmed along barely above tree-top level, and the silver of their wings and the black of their clothing were equally conspicuous. Every few moments another flyer caught and passed Maris and Evan and their escort, so the shadow of wings washed over them as regularly as silent breakers crashing against a beach.

  The landsguard never looked up at the flyers, Maris noticed. In fact, the procession in the sky seemed to make them surly and irritable, and at least one of the party — a whey-faced youth with pockmarks — trembled visibly whenever the shadows swept over him.

  Near sunset the road climbed over the last hills to the first checkpoint. Their escort marched through without stopping. A few yards beyond, the path dropped off abruptly, and there was a high vantage point from which the entire valley was visible beneath them.

  Maris drew in her breath sharply, and felt Evan's hand tighten in her own.

  In the shimmering red haze of sunset, colors faded and vanished while shadows etched themselves starkly on the valley floor. Beneath them the world seemed drenched in blood, and the keep hunched like some great crippled animal made of shadow, impossibly black. The fires within it sent up heat ripples that made the dark stone itself seem to writhe and tremble, so it looked like a beast shivering in terror.

  Above it, waiting, were the flyers.

  The valley was full of them; Maris
counted ten before losing track. Heat beating against stone sent up great updrafts, and the flyers soared on them, climbing halfway up the sky before spinning free to descend in wide graceful spirals. Around and around they moved, circling, waiting; dark scavenger kites impatient for the shadow beast to die. It was a somber, silent scene.

  "No wonder he is so afraid," Maris said.

  "We are not supposed to stop," the young officer leading their escort said to them.

  With a final glance, Maris proceeded down into the valley, where Tya's silent mourners flew ominous circles above the shadowed fortress, and the Landsman of Thayos waited inside his cold stone halls, afraid of open sky.

  "I have a mind to hang the three of you," the Landsman said.

  He was seated on the wooden throne in his receiving chamber, fingering a heavy bronze knife that lay across his knees. Against a white silk shirt, his silver chain of office gleamed softly in the light of the oil lamps, but his face was at odds with his clothing: pale and drawn and twitching.

  The room was full of landsguard; they stood along the walls, silent, impassive. There were no windows in the chamber. Perhaps that was why the Landsman had chosen it. Outside, the black flyers would be wheeling against the scattered evening stars.

  "Coll goes free," Maris said, trying to keep the tension from her voice.

  The Landsman frowned and gestured with his knife. "Bring up the singer," he ordered. A landsguard officer hurried off. "Your brother has caused me great trouble," the Landsman continued. "His songs are treason. I see no reason to release him."

  "We have an agreement," Maris said quickly. "I came. Now you must give Coll his freedom."

  The Landsman's mouth twitched. "Do not presume to tell me what to do. By what conceit do you imagine that you can dictate terms to me? There can be no bargaining between us. I am Landsman here. I am Thayos. You and your brother are my prisoners."

  "S'Rella carried your promise to me," Maris replied. "She will know if you break it, and soon flyers and Landsmen will know all over Windhaven. Your pledge will be worthless. How will you rule then, or bargain?"

  His eyes narrowed. "Oh? Perhaps so." He smiled. "I made no promise to release him whole, however.

  How well will your brother sing of Tya, I wonder, when I have had his tongue yanked from his mouth, and the fingers of his right hand cut off?"

  A wave of vertigo washed over Maris suddenly, as if she stood on the edge of a great precipice, wingless and about to fall. Then she felt Evan take her hand again, and when his fingers twined within her own, somehow she found the threat she needed. "You wouldn't dare," she said. "Even your landsguard might balk at such an atrocity, and flyers would carry word of your crime as far as the wind would take them.

  All your knives could not long protect you then."

  "I intend to let your brother go," the Landsman said loudly, "not because I fear his friends and your empty threats, but because I am merciful. But neither he nor any other singer will ever sing of Tya again on my island. He will be sent from Thayos never to return."

  "And us?"

  The Landsman smiled and ran his thumb along the blade of the bronze knife. "The healer is nothing. Less than nothing. He can go as well." He leaned forward on his throne and pointed the knife at Maris. "As to you, wingless flyer, I will even extend my mercy to you. You too shall go free."

  "You have a price," Maris said with certainty.

  "I want the black flyers out of my sky," the Landsman said.

  "No," said Maris.

  " NO?" He shrieked the word, and his hand plunged the point of the knife into the arm of his chair.

  "Where do you think you are? I've had enough of your arrogance. How dare you refuse! I'll have you hanging at first light, if I so choose."

  "You won't hang us," Maris said.

  His mouth trembled. "Oh?" he said. "Go on, then. Tell me what I will and will not do. I am anxious to hear." His voice was thick with barely suppressed rage.

  "You might like to hang us," Maris said, "but you don't dare. Because of the black flyers you are so anxious to have us remove."

  "I dared hang one flyer," he said. "I can hang others. Your black flyers do not frighten me."

  "No? Why is it then that you do not go outside your halls these days, even to hunt or walk in your own courtyard?"

  "Flyers are pledged not to carry weapons," the Landsman said. "What harm can they do? Let them float up there forever."

  "For ages no flyer has carried a blade into the sky," Maris agreed, choosing her words carefully. "It is flyer law, tradition. But it was flyer law to stay out of land-bound politics as well, to deliver all messages without a second thought as to what they meant. Tya did what she did nonetheless. And you killed her for it, in spite of centuries of tradition that said no Landsman might judge a flyer."

  "She was a traitor," the Landsman said. "Traitors deserve no other fate, whether they wear wings or not."

  Maris shrugged. "My point," she said, "is only that traditions are poor protection in these troubled days.

  You think yourself safe because flyers carry no weapons?" She stared at him coldly. "Well, every flyer who brings you a message will wear black, and some of them will carry the grief in their hearts as well.

  As you hear them out, you will always wonder. Will this be the one? Will this be a new Tya, a new Maris, a new Val One-Wing? Will the ancient tradition end here and now, in blood?"

  "It will never happen," the Landsman said, too shrilly.

  "It's unthinkable," Maris said. "As unthinkable as what you did to Tya. Hang me, and it will happen all the sooner."

  "I hang who I please. My guards protect me."

  "Can they stop an arrow loosed from above? Will you bar all your windows? Refuse to see flyers?"

  "You are threatening me!" the Landsman said in sudden fury.

  "I am warning you," Maris said. "Perhaps no harm will come to you at all, but you will never be sure. The black flyers will see to that. For the rest of your life they will follow you, haunting you as sure as Tya's ghost. Whenever you look up at the stars, you will see wings. Whenever a shadow brushes you, you will wonder. You'll never be able to look out a window or walk in the sun. The flyers will circle your keep forever, like flies around a corpse. You will see them on your deathbed. Your own home will be your prison, and even there you will never really be certain. Flyers can pass any wall, and once they have slipped off their wings, they look like anyone else."

  The Landsman sat very still as Maris spoke, and she watched him carefully, hoping she was pushing him the right way. There was a wildness about his puffy eyes, an unpredictability that terrified her. Her voice was calm, but her brow was beaded by sweat, and her hands felt damp and clammy.

  The Landsman's eyes flicked back and forth as if hunting for escape from the specter of the black flyers, until they settled on one of his guards. "Bring me my flyer!" he snapped. "At once, at once!"

  The man must have been waiting just outside the chamber; he entered at once. Maris recognized him; a thin, balding, stoop-shouldered flyer she had never really known. "Sahn," she said aloud, when his name came to her.

  He did not acknowledge her greeting. "My Landsman," he said deferentially, in a reedy voice.

  "She threatens me," the Landsman said angrily. "Black flyers, she says. They will hound me to my death, she says."

  "She lies," Sahn said quickly, and with a start Maris remembered who he was. Sahn of Thayos, flyer-born, conservative; Sahn who two years ago had lost his wings to an upstart one-wing. Now he had them back, by virtue of her death. "The black flyers are no threat. They are nothing, nothing."

  "She says they will never leave me," the Landsman said.

  "Wrong," said Sahn in his thin, ingratiating voice. "You have nothing to fear. They will soon be gone. They have duties, Landsmen of their own, lives to live, families, messages to fly. They cannot stay indefinitely."

  "Others will take their place," Maris said. "Windhaven has many flyers. You will never b
e out from under the shadow of their wings."

  "Pay her no mind, sir," Sahn said. "The flyers are not behind her. Only a few one-wings. Trash of the sky.

  When they leave, no one will take their place. You need only wait, my Landsman." Something in his tone, beyond his words, shocked and sickened her, and all at once Maris knew why; Sahn spoke as a lesser to a superior, not as equal to equal. He feared the Landsman, and was beholden to him for his very wings, and his voice made it clear that he knew it. For the first time, a flyer had become his Landsman's creature, through and through.

  The Landsman turned to face her again, his eyes cold. "As I thought," he said. "Tya lied to me, and I found her out. Val One-Wing tried to frighten me with empty threats. And now you. All of you are liars, but I am cleverer than you think me. Your black flyers will do nothing, nothing. One-wings, all of you.

  The real flyers, they care nothing for Tya. The Council proved that."

  "Yes," Sahn agreed, head nodding.

  For an instant Maris was consumed by rage. She wanted to storm across the chamber and seize the frail flyer, shake him until he hurt. But Evan squeezed her hand hard, and when she glanced at him he shook his head.

  "Sahn," she said, gently.

  Reluctantly he turned his eyes to meet hers. He was shaking, she saw, perhaps in shame at what he had become. As she looked at him, Maris thought she saw a bit of all the flyers she had ever known. The things we will do to fly, she thought… "Sahn," she said. "Jem has joined the black flyers. He is no one-wing."

  "No," Sahn admitted, "but he knew Tya well."

  "If you advise your Landsman," she said, "tell him who Dorrel of Laus is."

  Sahn hesitated.

  "Who?" the Landsman snapped, eyes flicking from Maris to Sahn. "Well?"

  "Dorrel of Laus," Sahn said reluctantly. "A Western flyer, my Landsman. He's from a very old family. A good flyer. He is about my age."

  "What of him? What do I care?" The Landsman was impatient.

  "Sahn," said Maris, "what do you think would happen if Dorrel joined the black flyers?"