Windhaven

'Left?!'

S'Rella nodded. 'When the vote was done, Val rose from his place, and his look — I'm glad he had no weapon, or he might have killed someone. Instead he spoke; he called them all fools, and cowards, and worse. There were shouts, curses back at him, some scuffles. Val called on all his friends to leave.

Damen and I had to push through to the door, the flyers — some of them I recognized, people I've known for years, but they were jeering, saying things to us — it was horrible, Maris. The anger there…'

'You got out, though.'

'Yes. And we flew to North Arren, almost all of the one-wings. Val led us to a large field, an old battlefield, and he stood on top of a ruined fortification and spoke to us. We had our own Council. A fourth of all the flyers of Windhaven were there. We voted to impose a sanction on Thayos, even if the others would not. That was why Katinn flew here with me; we were to tell the Landsman together. He had already been sent word of the other decision, but Katinn and I were going to confront him with the one-wings' threat.' She laughed bitterly. 'He listened to us coldly, and when we were finished, he said that we and all of our kind were unfit to be flyers, and that nothing would please him more than never to have a one-wing fly to Thayos again. He promised to show us exactly what he thought of us, and Val, and all one-wings.

'And he showed us. At sunset his landsguard came, and we were marched into the courtyard with the rest, and he showed us.' Her face was gray; the recounting of the tale had opened her wounds again.

'Oh, S'Rella,' Maris said sorrowfully. She reached out and took her friend's hand, but when they touched S'Rella gave a sudden startled shudder and then, again, began to weep.

Sleep did not come easily for Maris. She twisted and turned restlessly. Her dreams were dark and shapeless, nightmares of flights that ended at the end of a rope.

She woke hours before dawn, in darkness, to the faint sound of distant music.

Evan was asleep beside her, snoring softly into his feather pillow. Maris rose and dressed, and wandered from the bedroom. Bari was resting comfortably, a child's innocent sleep, free of the burdens that weighed on the rest of them. S'Rella slept too, hunched beneath blankets.

Coll's room was empty.

Maris followed the sound of the soft, fading music. She found him outside, sitting up against the side of the house in the starlight, filling the cool predawn air with the quiet melancholy of his guitar.

Maris sat on the damp ground beside him. 'Are you making a song?'

'Yes,' Coll said. His fingers moved with slow deliberation. 'How did you know?'

'I remembered,' Maris said. 'When we were young together, you used to rise in the middle of the night and go outside, to work on some new tune you wanted to keep secret.'

Coll struck a final plaintive chord before he set the guitar aside. 'I'm still a creature of habit, then,' he said. 'Well, I have no choice. When the words scurry about in my head, they do not let me sleep.'

'Is it finished?'

'No. I have a mind to call it 'Tya's Fall,' and the words have mostly come to me, but not the tune. I can almost hear it, but I hear it differently at different times. Sometimes it is dark and tragic, a slow, sad song like the ballad of Aron and Jeni. But later it seems to me it should be faster, that it should pulse like the blood of a man choking on his own rage, that it should burn and hurt and throb. What do you think, big sister? How should I do it? What does Tya's fall make you feel, sorrow or anger?'

'Both,' said Maris. 'That's no help, but it's all the answer I can give. Both, and more. I feel guilty, Coll.'

She told him of Arrilan and his companions, and the offer they'd come bearing. Coll listened sympathetically, and when she had finished he took her hand in his own. His fingers were covered with calluses, but gentle and warm. 'I did not know,' he said. 'S'Rella said nothing.'

'I doubt S'Rella knows,' Maris said. 'Val probably told Arrilan not to speak of my refusal. He has a good heart, Val One-Wing, whatever they might say of him.'

'Your guilt is foolish,' Coll told her. 'Even if you had gone I doubt it would have mattered. One person more or less changes little. The Council would have broken with or without you, and Tya would have been hanged. You shouldn't torture yourself with remorse for something you couldn't have changed.'

'Perhaps you're right,' Maris said, 'but I should have tried, Coll. They might have listened to me — Dorrel and his friends, the Stormtown group, Corina, even Corm. They know me, all of them. Val could never reach them. But I might have managed to keep the flyers together, if I'd gone and presided as Val asked me to.'

'Speculation,' said Coll. 'You're giving yourself needless pain.'

'Perhaps it's time I gave myself pain,' Maris said. 'I was afraid of hurting again — that was why I didn't go with Arrilan when he came for me. I was a coward.'

'You can't be responsible for all the flyers of Windhaven, Maris. You have to think of yourself first, of your own needs.'

Maris smiled. 'A long time ago I thought only of myself, and I changed the whole world around to suit me. Oh, I told myself it was for everybody, but you and I know it was really for me. Barrion was right, Coll. I was naive. I had no idea where it would all lead. I knew only that I wanted to fly.

'I should have gone, Coll. It was my responsibility. But all I cared about was my pain, my life, when I should have been thinking of larger things. Tya's blood is on my hands.' She held one up.

Coll took it and squeezed it hard. 'Nonsense. All I see is my sister tearing herself apart for nothing. Tya is gone, there is nothing you could have done, and even if there had been, there is certainly nothing you can do now. It is over. Never anguish about the past, Barrion once told me. Make your pain into a song, and give it to the world.'

'I can't make songs,' Maris said. 'I can't fly. I said I wanted to be of use, but I turned my back on the people who needed me, and played at being a healer. I'm not a healer. I'm not a flyer. So what am I?

Who am I?'

'Maris…'

'Just so,' she said. 'Maris of Lesser Amberly, the girl who once changed the world. If I did it once, perhaps I can do it again. At least I can try.' She stood up abruptly, her face serious in the wan, pale light of dawn, whose faint glow had tinted the eastern horizon.

'Tya is dead,' Coll said. He took his guitar and rose to stand face-to-face with his stepsister. 'The Council is broken. It's over, Maris.'

'No,' she said. 'I won't accept that. It's not over. It's not too late to change the end of Tya's song.'

Evan woke quickly to her light touch, sitting up in bed and ready for any emergency.

'Evan,' Maris said, sitting beside him. 'I know what I must do. I had to tell you first.'

He ran one hand over his head, smoothing down the ruffled white hair, frowning. 'What?'

'I… I am alive, Evan. I cannot fly, but I am still who I am.'

'It's good to hear you say that, and know you mean it.'

'And I'm not a healer. I'll never be a healer.'

'You have been making discoveries, haven't you? All this while I slept? Yes… I've known, although I couldn't quite tell you. You didn't seem to want to know.'

'Of course I didn't want to know. I thought it was the only choice I had. What else was there for me?

Pain, only memories of pain and uselessness. Well, the pain is still there, and the memories, but I need not be useless. I must learn to live with the pain, accept it or ignore it, because there are things I must do. Tya is dead and the flyers are broken, and there are things that only I can do, to set things right. So you see…' She bit her lip and couldn't quite meet his eyes. 'I love you, Evan. But I must leave you.'

'Wait.' He touched her cheek, and she met his eyes. She thought of the first time she had looked into their deep blue depths, and she felt, unexpectedly strong, a pang of loss. 'Tell me now,' he said, ' why you must leave me.'

She moved her hands helplessly. 'Because I… I'm useless here. I don't belong here.'

He caught his breath — it might have been a sob or a laugh that he swallowed, she couldn't tell.