“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.