"Quick! Quick! Time is running out!"

Faraday panicked. She opened her mouth to scream — and then stopped, very suddenly calm.

"You choose for me," she said. "I trust you to choose for me."

"Good girl," said the land, approvingly, and Faraday found herself rising slowly through alake of emerald water, rising, rising towards the surface.

She broke through the surface and shook the water from her hair, and laughed.

"DareWing," she said, and her hand gripped his shoulder more strongly. "We will be here for you."

DareWing spiralled through the air, more determined than at any time in his life.

The ground was not going to get him.

He was an Icarii! A birdman! The ground held nothing for him, nothing.

Then why did he feel the tug on his wings so painfully? Why did the weight of his bodyseemingly grow with each breath so that now he found it almost impossible to stay aloft?

The ground called him: "Walk on me, be my lover, bind yourself to me."

No!

"Bind yourself forever."

No!

DareWing made a supreme effort, his shoulders and breast belly aching with the effort ofstaying within the thermal.

But now he was spiralling downwards, not up.

The speed of his fall increased, and DareWing screamed at the ground. He would neverallow himself to be ground bound! He was a creature of the air, of the sky, of the stars!

The ground rushed towards him, and DareWing screamed in rather than anger. Not fear atdeath or even pain, but fear that he would be ground bound, that he would never flyagain, never soar, never again be the proud Icarii warrior ...

He hit the ground with a force that should have killed him outright, but the worst injuryDareWing felt was a bruised shoulder and thigh. He scrambled to his feet, and almostoverbalanced.

He kept to his feet only with a sustained effort. Why was his balance so out? Why waseverything so heavy?

DareWing halted, horrified.

His wings had become a burden. For the first time in his long life, DareWing realised that hiswings were a burden. They hung like great stone weights from his back, and he could barely movethem, let alone will them to lift him into the sky.

"No! Damn you! Give me my grace back! My balance! Give me back —"

My Icarii pride, he thought, and halted, amazed. Have I always been so arrogant?

So contemptuous of the ground?

So blind?

"What do you want of me?" he whispered. "How can I redeem myself?"

"Relinquish your arrogance," the ground replied, "for that is what made the unwinged resentyou in ages past."

Relinquish my wings? DareWing thought, and anger surged through him. No birdmanrelinquishes his wings!

The ground was silent, and DareWing hung his head in shame.

His wings hung heavy behind him. A burden, not of weight, but of arrogance.

DareWing turned his head slightly so he could regard them. His wings were creations ofmajesty and beauty, feathered in glossy black, powerful, graceful, the physical manifestation ofthe Icarii "otherness", the means by which the Icarii believed they were the creatures of the stars.

The Star Dance loved the Icarii for their beauty, and for their ability to fly.

"Wrong," said the ground. "The Star Dance has tolerated your beauty and your flight skills,but it has loved you for other reasons."

"Really?"

"Your inner beauty, which thrives despite your arrogance —"

DareWing winced, and hung his head.

" — as well your courage to dare. You and your people are composed of jewel lights, DareWing. Don't hide them behind your arrogance."

DareWing nodded. Courage, he thought, is not required for what I do now. It is boundlesshumility.

And so DareWing turned his shoulders, and lifted his arms, and he took hold of one of hiswings. He took a deep breath, flexing the powerful flight muscles of chest and shoulder.

Then he tore the wing out.

He screamed, and doubled over, sobbing in agony, still gripping the wing. Bloodpoured down his back, obscuring the brief glint of bone.

DareWing dug his teeth into his lips, fighting to remain conscious, then he threw the wingaside.

It landed some two paces away, a useless appendage of flesh and feather.

Waves of blackness threatened to consume DareWing, but he fought against them. He tookhold of his remaining wing, his hands slipping in the blood from his back, then he steadiedhimself, his eyes wild, his chest heaving in frantic breaths, and he tore it free.

It fell useless to the ground, and DareWing managed one final scream before the agony tippedhim into oblivion.

Faraday knelt by Dare Wing's side, and her hand tightened its grip on his shoulder. His eyes were wide, staring but unseeing, and his body jerked and jittered as if caught in some crazed, sickened dance.

"Faraday ..." Leagh said, her voice tight, and she shifted on her chair.

"He will come through this shortly," Faraday said. She paused, and her jaw tightened as if she shared Dare Wing's pain. "He must."

"Nevertheless," Leagh said, "he needs all of our aid."