Garder voiced the objection. “We’ll never all agree on anything, and so we’ll be bound in inaction and waste our time in quarrels. You must have one man over all, that he may act. It always has been so.
“Might we not avoid unwise decisions if we act in concert?” Wardel asked.
“But what about the wise decisions, which we might be too fearful to see?” Lilos inquired. “Or, unable to admit, in our quarrels?”
“They’d be made eventually, if only because fear has a weak grip on a true heart,” Wardel answered lightly. “And I’ll claim true hearts for all of us.”
Griff thought that Wardel and Lilos were already willingly convinced.
“Sir,” Garder said. “I say this with all due reverence. I am not hopeful about this council, if all on it must agree.”
“Oh, but I am,” Lilos said. “The more I think of it, the more I like it. In time, if a thing is good to do, we will all agree.”
“Are we four in agreement that the lady should sit equal among us?” Griff asked.
The three men were.
“Beryl?” Griff asked. “What say you?”
She didn’t speak, but just studied their faces.
“No, you must speak,” Wardel said.
“Why must I?” Beryl asked. “I will speak when I have something to say. What is this must? What I must have is the right to decide when I have something to say, and when I do not, that is my must. Otherwise, I am no more than a puppet, if you can pull the string and I must have words in my mouth.”
Beryl smiled to Griff, out of dark blue eyes, and he knew what she remembered. No one spoke, however, for none could answer her. It was Griff they all turned to.
And Griff was what Oriel had shown him how to be, and needed him to be, and saved his life to be. Like Beryl, who was his lady, Griff carried on his breast the medallion that marked the house of the Earls Sutherland. This was the treasure Oriel had won, and given to them. This was the medal Oriel had worn at his heart, when they had laid him down into the dark earth—emblazoned onto a disk of heavy gold, the falcon with its wings outstretched.
Cynthia Voigt won the Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song, the Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue, and was a National Book Award Finalist for Homecoming—all part of the beloved Tillerman Cycle. She is also the author of many other celebrated books for middle-grade and teen readers, including the Tales of the Kingdom series and Izzy, Willy-Nilly. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995 and the Katahdin Award in 2003 for her work in literature. She lives in Maine. Visit her online at CynthiaVoigt.com.
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
SIMON & SCHUSTER
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Also by Cynthia Voigt
The Tale of Gwyn
The Tale of Birle
The Tale of Elske
THE TILLERMAN CYCLE
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
A Solitary Blue
The Runner
Come a Stranger
Sons from Afar
Seventeen Against the Dealer
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 1993 by Cynthia Voigt
Jacket illustrations copyright © 2015 by Adam S. Doyle
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Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover
The text for this book is set in Dolly.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Voigt, Cynthia, author.
[Wings of a falcon]
Tale of Oriel / Cynthia Voigt.
pages cm. — (Tales of the kingdom ; 3)
Originally published under the title: The wings of a falcon. New York : Scholastic, 1993.
ISBN 978-1-4814-0323-8 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-0324-5 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4814-0325-2 (eBook)
1. Adventure stories. 2. Heroes—Juvenile fiction. [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Heroes—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V874Tao 2015
813.54—dc23
[Fic]
2014044135
The Wings of a Falcon Page 38