Windhaven

"Perhaps," the old woman said. "I have seen her many times myself. Walking down the alleys of Port Thayos, I feel a shadow touch me, and I look up, and she is there. She has caused much talk. The people are afraid, and some of the landsguard say that the Landsman is most afraid of all, though he tries not to show it. He will not come outside to look at her when she passes above his keep. Perhaps he is afraid of seeing Tya's face."

Evan had wrapped a bandage soaked in ointment around the storyteller's injured foot. "There," he said.

"Try standing on that."

The woman stood up, leaning on Maris for support. "It pains a bit."

"It was infected," Evan said. "You are lucky. If you had waited a few days longer to come to a healer, you might have lost the foot. Wear boots. The forest trails are hazardous."

"I do not care for boots," the woman said. "I like the feel of the earth and grass and rock beneath my feet."

"Do you like the feel of thorns beneath your skin?" Evan said. They argued back and forth for a time, and finally the woman agreed to wear a soft cloth boot, but only on her injured foot, and only until it was healed.

When she was gone, Evan turned to Maris with a smile. "So it begins," he said. "How is it that the ghost neither eats nor drinks?"

"She carries a bag of nuts and dried fruit, and a skin of water," Maris said. "Flyers often do that on long flights. How do you suppose we could fly to Artellia or the Embers otherwise?"

"I had never given the matter much thought."

Maris nodded, preoccupied. "I suspect they substitute a second flyer by night, secretly, to let their ghost rest. Clever of Val to send someone who looks like Tya. I should have thought of that."

"You have thought of quite enough," Evan said. "Don't reproach yourself. Why do you look so serious?"

"I wish," Maris said, "that the flyer could be me."

Two days later, a little girl arrived panting at their door. She was one of that family so indebted to Evan, and for a brief, fearful moment Maris wondered if the landsguard had come for her already. But it was only news; Evan had asked to be sent word of anything heard in Thossi.

"A merchant came through," said the little girl. "He talked 'bout the flyers."

"What of them?" Maris asked.

"He said, he told old Mullish at the inn, that the Landsman is scared. There are three of them, he said.

Three black flyers, going round and round and round." She stood up and spun in a circle, her small arms outstretched, to show them what she meant. Maris looked at Evan, and smiled.

"Seven black flyers now," a huge fat man told them. He'd come to their door battered and bleeding, a deserter from the landsguard dressed in rags. "Tried to send me to Thrane," he said by way of explanation, "but damned if I'd go there." When he wasn't speaking, he coughed, and often he coughed up blood.

"Seven?"

"A bad number," the man said, coughing. "All dressed in black too, a bad color. They mean us no good."

His coughing suddenly grew so bad he could not talk.

"Easy," Evan said, "easy." He gave the man wine, mixed with herbs, and he and Maris led him to a bed.

The fat man would not rest, though. As soon as his coughing fit had ended, he began to talk again. "If I was Landsman, I'd march out my archers, and shoot 'em down when they flew overhead. Yes, I would.

There's some that says the arrows would just pass through 'em, but not me. I think they're flesh just like me." He slapped his ample gut. "Can't just let 'em fly. They're bringing bad luck to us all. Weather's been bad lately, and the fish haven't been running, and I heard tell of people taking sick and dying in Port Thayos when the shadow of those wings touched 'em. Something terrible is going to happen on Thrane, I know it, that's why I wouldn't go. Not with seven black flyers in the sky. No, not me. This is an evil thing, I tell you, and it won't bring us good."

It brought the fat man no good, at any rate, Maris thought. The next morning, when she brought his breakfast in to him, his huge body was stiff and cold. Evan buried him in the forest, among the graves of a dozen other travelers.

"Thenya went to Port Thayos to try to sell her tapestries," reported another of the horde of children Evan had delivered, a boy this time. "When she came back to Thossi, she said there are more than a dozen black flyers now, flying in a great circle from the port to the Landsman's keep. And more are arriving every day."

"Twenty flyers, all in black, silent, grim," said the young singer. She had golden hair and blue eyes, a sweet voice and an easy manner. "They'll make a marvelous song! I'd be working on it now, if only I knew how it was all going to end…"

"Why are they here, do you think?" Evan asked.

"For Tya, of course," the young woman said, startled that anyone would ask. "She lied to stop the war, and the Landsman killed her for it. They wear black for her, I'd wager. Many people are grieving for her."

"Ah, yes," Evan said. "Tya. Her story might make a song itself. Have you thought of making one?"