Windhaven

Fair enough?'

'Val,' Maris started. But he had turned away and was staring through the cell's small window at the moving, cloudy sky, his face cold and closed.

Sena brought the others out to the launching cliff to watch Maris, S'Rella, and Val depart. All of them were in the highest of spirits, laughing and joking, vying with each other for the privilege of helping Maris and S'Rella with their wings. There was a mood of wild and restless gaiety among them that was infectious; Maris felt her own spirits rise, and for the first time she was eager for the competitions.

'Let them be, let them be!' Sena cried, laughing. 'They certainly can't fly with the lot of you hanging on their wings!'

'Wish they could,' mumbled Kerr. He pushed at his nose, which had turned bright red in the wind.

'You'll have your chance,' S'Rella said, sounding defensive.

'No one grudges you this,' Leya said quickly.

'You're the best of us,' Sher added.

'Save it,' Sena said, putting one arm around Leya, the other around Sher. 'Go now. We'll wave goodbye and meet you again on Skulny.'

Maris turned to S'Rella and saw that the younger woman was watching her intently, her whole body tensed and ready for Maris' slightest signal. She remembered her own earliest flights, when she had still not quite believed that she could have wings of her own, and she touched S'Rella's shoulder and spoke to her kindly.

'We'll all stay close together and take it easy,' she said. 'The stunts are for the competitions — right now, we'll concentrate on steady flying. This will be a long trip for you, I know, but don't worry about it — you've got enough stamina for twice the distance. Just relax and trust yourself. I'll be there watching out for you, but you won't really need me.'

'Thank you,' S'Rella said. 'I'll do my best.'

Maris nodded and signaled, and Damen and Liane came out and unfolded her wings for her, strut by strut, pulling the bright silver fabric taut until her wings were spread twenty feet. Then she was off, leaping away from the cliff to a chorus of farewells and good wishes, into the cool, steady, faintly rain-scented flow of the wind. She circled and watched S'Rella's takeoff, trying to judge it as if S'Rella were in competition.

No doubt about it, S'Rella had improved greatly recently. The clumsiness was gone, and she did not hesitate at the edge, but sprang smoothly clear of the fortress and, having judged the wind nicely, began to rise almost at once.

'I don't believe your wings are of wood at all!' Maris called to her.

Then both of them swung through the sky in impatient, widening circles, waiting for Val.

He had been leaning against the door through all of the joking and the preparations, standing outside it all, his face blank and guarded. He was winged already, having strapped them on without help. Now he walked calmly through the group of students and would-be flyers, and stood perched on the brink of the precipice, his feet half- over the edge. Painstakingly he unfolded the first three struts, but he did not lock them into place.

Then he slid his arms through the loops, flexed, knelt, and stood again.

Damen reached to help him unfold his wings, but Val turned and said something sharp to him — Maris, circling above, lost the words in the wind — and Damen fell back in confusion.

Then Val laughed, and jumped.

S'Rella trembled visibly in the air, her wings shaking with her shock. From below, Maris heard someone scream, and someone else was swearing. Val fell, body straight like a diver's, twenty feet down, forty…

And suddenly he was falling no more — the wings came out of nowhere, flaring, flashing silver-white in the sun as they sprang open almost with their own volition. The air screamed past them, and Val caught it and turned it and rode on it, and all at once he was flying, skimming the breakers with impossible speed, then pulling up, climbing, soaring, the waves and the rocks and death all receding visibly beneath him, and Maris could hear dimly the peal of his triumphant wind-blown laughter.

S'Rella had locked into a stall, still watching Val. Maris shouted commands at her, and she broke out of it, twisting her wings at an angle and slanting off back over the land. Above the fortress, its bare rock heated in the sun, she found a strong riser and sailed back up to safety. Below, Sena was cursing up at Val and shaking her cane in apoplectic fury. He paid no attention. He was rising, higher and higher, and from the Woodwingers on the cliff came the ragged, popping sound of applause.

Maris went after him, banking, breaking her circle, heading out over the sea. Val was already ahead of her. But flying easily this time, luxuriating in his stunt.

When she caught him, flying as near to him as she dared — above and a bit behind and to the right — she began to shout curses down at him, borrowing freely from Sena's more extensive vocabulary.

Val laughed at her.

'That was dangerous and useless and stupid,' Maris shouted. 'You could have killed yourself… a jammed strut… if you hadn't flung them hard enough…'

Val still laughed. 'My risk,' he shouted back. 'And I didn't fling them… rigged springs… better than Raven.'

'Raven was a fool,' she shouted. 'And long dead… what's Raven to you?'

'Your brother sang that song, too,' Val yelled. Then he banked and dove, away from her, abruptly terminating the conversation.

Numb, and seeing no use in further pursuit of Val, Maris wheeled around and looked for S'Rella, who was following several hundred yards behind and below them. She drifted down to join her, trying to tell her pounding heart to relax, willing her stiff muscles to loosen and get the feel of the wind.

S'Rella was ghost-pale, and flying badly. 'What happened?' she cried when Maris approached. 'I could have died.'

'It was a stunt,' Maris called to her. 'Flyer named Raven used to do it. Val concocted his own version.'

S'Rella flew silently for a moment, considering that, and then a little color came tentatively back into her face. 'I thought someone had pushed him,' she shouted. 'A stunt — it was beautiful.'

'It was insane,' Maris called back. She was quietly horrified that S'Rella could possibly have thought one of her fellow students capable of shoving Val to his death. He has been influencing her, she thought bitterly.

The rest of the flight, as Maris had predicted, was easy. Maris and S'Rella flew close together, Val ahead and much higher, preferring the company of rainbirds, it seemed. They kept him in sight throughout the afternoon, but only with an effort.

The winds were cooperative, blowing them so steadily toward Skulny that they hardly needed to do more than relax and glide. It was at times a dull flight, but Maris did not regret it. They skirted the coast of Big Shotan, fishing fleets everywhere beyond the little harbor towns, bringing in as big a catch as possible in the storm-free weather. And they saw Stormtown from the air, its great bay in the center of the city, windmills turning all along the shores, forty of them, or fifty — S'Rella tried to count them, but they were behind her before she was half done. And in the open sea between Little Shotan and Skulny, near sunset, they spied a scylla, its long neck craning up out of the blue-green water as its rows of powerful flippers churned just beneath the surface. S'Rella seemed delighted. She had heard about scyllas all her life, but this was the first she had actually seen.

They reached Skulny just ahead of the night. As they circled before landing, they could see figures below setting up lanterns on poles all along the beach, to guide in later flyers. Already the small flyers' lodge nearby was ablaze with lights and activity: the parties, thought Maris, began earlier every year.

Maris tried to make her landing an example to S'Rella, but even as she was on her hands and knees, shaking sand out of her hair, she heard S'Rella thump to the ground nearby, and realized the girl had surely been too busy with her own landing to notice how clumsy or adept her teacher was.

Whoops of pleasure and welcome surrounded them at once. Eager hands reached out to them. 'Help you, flyer? Help you, please?'

Maris took hold of one strong hand, and looked up into the eager face of a young boy with wind-tangled hair. His face was alive with pleasure; he was here for the glory of being near flyers, and was probably thrilled by the thought of the coming competition on his own island.

But as he was helping her off with her wings — and another boy was helping S'Rella — suddenly there was