'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,
'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.
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
