Pegasus

CHAPTER 10

Sylvi was afraid of what great company she would perforce be assigned to, or they to her; if she and Ebon couldn’t go to a country fair without a dozen minders, what would a visit to Rhiandomeer require? And had they figured out how long it would take to climb the Starcloud Mountains on slow human feet? She kept thinking about how the Starcloud Mountains had come by their name: this too was from Viktur’s journal.

Sylvi’s party would only be able to ride as far as the foothills of the Starclouds. It was all very well that Ebon had permission to take her to the Caves, but how far were the Caves? Was she going to be another pathetic human who only got a day or two inside the pegasus border—and then had to turn around and go home again, because they had already been gone too long?

And could you walk over something called the Starclouds?

She did, as her father predicted, and upon his request, attend a number of meetings on the subject of her journey. These seemed mostly to be a series of prosy old bores standing up in turn and being prosy and boring, and so it was difficult to pay attention and even more difficult to understand any details they might be trying to put forward, although some of them spoke with considerable vehemence. What she did learn was that about a third of the senators, a quarter of the blood and a delegation from the magicians’ guild thought she should not go—and that if there had been so much as one sighting of a taralian or a norindour or a ladon anywhere near the Starclouds, that would have been the end of the matter, and she would have gone nowhere. But there wasn’t, and there hadn’t been for decades. (This didn’t stop her from a small anxious startle every time she saw another travel-stained messenger coming to see one of her parents. It wouldn’t be . . . fate couldn’t be so cruel.) She heard her father once say to Lord Cral that he was tempted to suggest that he was sending his daughter away for her safety; at present there were far too many sightings of taralians and norindours and ladons in the human lowlands.

But she did go.

And only she went—she and her father. They would not have even one minder, one attendant, one courtier—one guard. And her father was staying only one night, while she was given three weeks.

The reason for the lack of a grand procession was that they flew.

They flew.

Not as Sylvi and Ebon flew; she and the king were to sit or lie in something like hammocks. The king’s had eight ropes and Sylvi’s had six, and the ropes ended in great loops that hung round pegasi necks, and a spider-work of straps to hold the loops in place—plus a little crucial shamanic magic to make the system work. The pegasi had spent some time inventing them before they’d extended the official offer of transport.

Actually they didn’t have to invent anything, but they did have to find the old plans. I mean, we carry all kinds of stuff in draia—slings—hammocks—when we have to carry anything. You’ve seen us fly in or out with them, haven’t you? But we don’t carry humans. Gohrocoh said we didn’t need plans, that a drai was always a drai, and draia are not a problem, but Dad got all kingly and said that we weren’t in the habit of carrying humans in our draia and this was going to be a historical event, doodah doodah, and he wanted you to be comfortable as well as safe. Which also meant the shamans had to check out the ooffhaloah . . . the . . . the magic web that makes the whole show possible. Ropes and wings are not a best combination to begin with. And if we drop a load of apples or siragaa it’s not a big deal.

What old plans? said Sylvi.

Well, a long time ago I guess we thought about carrying you around—maybe about bringing you home. I’ve never heard that we ever did—

There aren’t any stories about it on our side, Sylvi put in. Even Ahathin hasn’t heard of any. Just a few stupid ballads that you know are made up.

Eah. But we still have the designs for the draia. Dad’s usually right about stuff but I was afraid it would be winter before they found the devil-blasted plans and then I suppose I’d’ve had to wait till your next birthday.

A pegasus delegation brought one of the human hammocks for inspection and approval. You’d think weaving was weaving, Sylvi had thought, the first time she’d seen a pegasus hammock—a drai—up close, when an envoy had come with chains of silk flowers and banners for some state occasion, shortly after she’d been bound to Ebon. Most things delivered to the human court were brought in the variety of small bags that usually hung round the pegasi’s necks or possibly in a larger bag slung between two pegasi, and they bowed or knelt and pulled a cord, and the bag collapsed, and whatever it was lay revealed or rolled out. It was, to the little Sylvi, only one more strange, unhuman thing the pegasi did, and she had never thought about it, till Ebon.

The next time she had the opportunity she touched—stroked—not only the flowers themselves but the sling the flowers had been carried in, and the lengths of gauzy fabric they’d been wrapped in. Pegasus fabrics remained rare and exotic in Balsinland. They used several plant fibres in their weaving as well as their paper-making, which produced glossy, drapey fabrics human weavers could not emulate; their silk was finer than any made by humans; they furthermore had perfected the use of whhayahaay, cobweb or spider-silk. Their silk was not merely finer but stronger than human-made; Sylvi discovered that a pegasi phrase for “well done” was “tight as silk.”

The human sovereign had several robes of pegasi weaving, and several human-adapted siragaa, and many who saw them would have been happy to buy similar for themselves; but there was no regular trade between the two peoples, and any attempt at discussion on this topic foundered on the pegasi’s blank incomprehension. The pegasi seemed to want nothing, and perhaps it was the empathy of the bindings that prevented any of the sovereign humans from demanding something the pegasi apparently did not wish to offer; and any bound human or family which had been so fortunate as to receive a gift of weaving from the pegasi treated it as an heirloom of their house.

You’d know, Sylvi thought, that there was something strange about this weaving even if you didn’t know anything about the pegasi. The fibres themselves were unfamiliar; the weaving was so delicate you couldn’t see how it fit together; and it had a curious shimmer—a shimmer you seemed to see with your fingertips as well as your eyes. The gauze was as soft as chick down; the sling was stiff and strong, and as sleek as Ebon’s shoulder.

The human draia were less glamorous, but they still shimmered in the golden afternoon sun as if with their own light. Sylvi knelt by hers; it had some kind of padding woven into it to make it comfortable for the passenger. It was like pressing your fingers into a thin, well-stuffed mattress: if you pressed hard enough you could feel the rope supports crisscrossing at the back. Sylvi would have been happy to leave at once—not least because it meant she would go.

She looked up from the mattress-hammock and caught her father’s eye. The drai was making it all real. She was going to go—senators or no senators, blood or no blood . . . Fthoom or no Fthoom, since everyone knew who was behind the delegation of magicians. “It’s perfect,” she said firmly, as if in answer to any unspoken doubts. “I shall want to ride in it forever.”

Her gaze shifted to her mother, who was looking worried with that old-general-measuring-up-inexperienced-troops gaze. Hirishy—the least likely soldier’s pegasus—was standing at the queen’s side. As Sylvi glanced at her, she cocked an ear, which usually meant yes, except when it meant no. And then she unfolded one wing just enough for her feather-hand to brush the queen’s cheek. The queen glanced down: Hirishy cocked the other ear and then the first again, a gesture that meant “Well?” or “There, there.” The queen’s face softened, and she stroked a quick, furtive hand down Hirishy’s cheek.

But the discussions among the humans about the princess’ journey still went on and on. After one particularly harrowing one, when Lord Bullen and Senator Gathshem, who had never agreed on anything before in their long lives at court, had been on their feet at the same time, positively shouting that the princess should not be allowed past the Wall, in the present unsettled state of the country, let alone be sent off—flown off—like a parcel or a diplomatic gift into the utter unknown, and the Holder of Concord had had to shout louder to regain control of the meeting, Sylvi said to her father, “They can’t stop me going, can they?”

When he didn’t answer at once she said in a voice a good deal higher and sharper than she meant, “You won’t stop me going, will you?”

The king sighed. “No, my darling, I am determined you should go.”

After another pause she said in a very small voice: “Fthoom. . . .”

“Fthoom,” said her father grimly, “is one of the reasons you must go.”

There was a petition gathering signatures around the senate and the court—asking that Fthoom be reinstated to his old place in the king’s council. Sylvi only knew about it because of Lucretia: “I’m forbidden to tell you, and I don’t know what they’ll do if you let on it was me—cancel my appointment as your lady, I guess. And Glarfin will personally beat me to splinters. But I remember how much you minded that no one told you about your guards—and I’d’ve felt the same. I’d feel the same way now.” Lucretia looked at her, troubled, and tried to smile. “Us short women have to look out for each other.”

“Thank you,” Sylvi had said.“I would much rather know.” She looked at her father now and thought, This is not the moment to remind him he was going to tell me, next time.

The next several weeks were an eon at least. Sylvi wasn’t the slightest bit interested in anything but going; the details threatened to drive her mad. She couldn’t have cared less about what clothing to take with her—that it had to be lightweight, warm and not merely tidy and relatively hole-free which, Sylvi always felt when dressing for a formal occasion was quite enough to ask, but it had to look like, well, like she was a princess. She was going to have to try to look like a princess for three weeks, and it was going to kill her. She did understand about being respectful and so on: “But the pegasi won’t care what I’m wearing!” she wailed to her father.

“Sylvi—” he began.

She put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear it! You’re going to tell me that I’ll know it! That after you leave I’ll be the sole representative of the entire human race and it’s a huge responsibility and I have to act like I know it and it means something even if I’m the only one knows that’s what I’m doing!”

“I have frequently had the suspicion that Ahathin gets more over to you than we think he does,” said her father, smiling.

“It’s not Ahathin,” she said sadly. “Or it’s not only Ahathin. It’s you and Mum and Danacor and . . . I’d rather wear clothes with holes in so they didn’t take me seriously but . . .” She stopped and then added, “Doesn’t it occur to you that if I did think about being the sole representative of the entire human race I’d just, you know, crumble?”

Still smiling, her father said, “No.” And then a runner was announced, with news of another taralian found and dispatched, and Sylvi had to leave, feeling a rather sick-making mixture of pride and dismay.

Even worse was writing her speech. There was going to be a banquet, of course, for her father. And for her, she supposed, since she was there too. She knew about banquets; she’d sat through a lot of banquet speeches. She was going to have to give one? That was worse than having to look like a princess for three weeks.

“It doesn’t have to be long,” said her father. “Just a few polite sentences. Oh, and—” He paused.

Sylvi’s heart sank. Every regular at the king’s court learnt to dread the king’s “Oh, and—” with the pause. If the rest of the sentence followed immediately, it would be okay. When there was a pause, there was trouble.

“I’d like you to give it in as much of the pegasus language as you can. You can use sign too, if you wish, but I want you to say at least a few words in our hosts’ own language. In what we think we know of our hosts’ own language.” Briskly he added,“You can ask Ebon to help you with your pronunciation.”

Sylvi’s heart continued sinking. It would reach the centre of the earth soon. What the humans understood and could use of the oral and kinetic pegasus language was of the grand and the courtly but mostly meaningless variety—the sort of language that appeared in the treaty. Every court meeting where pegasi were present began with a welcome that included hraasa ho uurha,“esteemed allies,” and if you met one at a banquet and felt the need to say something, one of your choices was niwhi goaraio whanwaidio, which meant something like “I hope you will enjoy your food.” She’d been meaning to ask Ebon for a translation check, but it was one of those things she never thought of when she was with him.

“Are you going to speak in pegasi?” she asked mutinously; but she already knew the answer. Even though she had Ebon and he did not, he wouldn’t ask her to do anything he wouldn’t do.

“I’m going to try,” he said ruefully. “My speech will be longer than yours, and about half of it will be in something resembling pegasi, I hope. Remember we won’t have any Speakers with us—”

“We don’t need them,” Sylvi interrupted. “We’ll have the shamans, and you and Lrrianay nearly—and away from the palace Ebon and I—”

“It’s not the same thing,” said the king.

“Like wearing nice clothes,” said Sylvi, and sighed.

She did ask Ebon to help her. Your ears are going to twist themselves off if you spin them any harder, she said crossly. He stopped grinning, flattened his ears sideways and then, after a second or two, let out a guffaw they could probably hear on the other side of the Wall.

You sound like a donkey, she said.

This is going to be fun, he said.

But he did help her. She’d never given a proper speech at a banquet before, even a short one—even in her own language—but she’d become accustomed to saying a few sentences at opening or closing ceremonies at fairs and name days and occasions when she was ranking royalty.

First there was the confusing business of stopping their silent-speech for the words spoken aloud so she could concentrate on the sounds of the oral language; and then there was the decision to dispense with trying to learn any of the pegasi kinetics—there were a lot of what Sylvi thought of as adjectives that the pegasi did in body language. But there isn’t a good way to, uh, translate the, uh, difference in body parts, said Ebon.

Yes, said Sylvi. Or that I’ve got ears but can’t wiggle them. The signlanguage is dire enough—and anyway I don’t want to be saying “it’s a pretty day but I think it will rain tomorrow.”

But the meanings of even the usual court-speech words seemed to keep slipping away from her, even with Ebon helping. They ran away like mice, or a handful of sand through your fingers.

It’s weird, isn’t it? said Ebon.

Yes, she said grimly. Very weird.

It’s like the binding, said Ebon. When it felt like they were separating us, rather than tying us together.

They had never said this to each other before.

Yes, said Sylvi.

There was an awful little silence, and then Ebon said, Well, it didn’t work. We got bound anyway.

And then there was her pronunciation. You haven’t got a tadpole’s chance at a heron party of saying that so anyone will understand you, Ebon declared in response to her first try, so they had to find other words that she could get her mouth around—could remember long enough to learn. Sometimes by the time they’d found a compromise, the original meaning of what she’d wanted to say had got lost on the way. It’s not like you’re such a—such an elocutionist in human, Sylvi said crossly, after Ebon had had to roll over on the ground and kick his legs in the air in reaction to her attempts to say honoured, which was gwyyfvva in pegasi.

“Hhhhh, eeeee?” said Ebon: Who, me? If the world depended on me giving a speech in human, the world would just have to end, okay? How about “respected”? That’s only “fffwha,” which you might manage.

“Fuwa,” said Sylvi. I’ve heard your dad speak human pretty well, she added.

“Fffwha,” said Ebon. Yes, and he’s impossible to live with for weeks before he does it too. Don’t go there. How’s your dad doing?

“Fuuuwa,” said Sylvi. You could say he’s impossible to live with. Although in my dad’s case, impossible to live with means because you never see him. Ebon raised his head from where he was still sprawled on the ground and looked at her and she looked back. Her father sometimes used a speech-writer for an ordinary human speech. Not this one.

Fthoom? said Ebon.

Sylvi shrugged. He’s behind the magicians who want me not to go. But . . . She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to talk to Ebon about all the humans—all the courtiers and councillors and ordinary people—who didn’t want her to go. About the petition to bring back Fthoom. Who had wanted to turn her into a newt.

You—you are still coming? He sounded as uncertain as she’d ever heard him.

If they try and stop me I’ll flap my arms and fly over the Starclouds.

I’ll meet you right outside the Wall, said Ebon, recovering his spirits. Flying is hard work when you’re not used to it.

I believe you, said Sylvi. Now listen. “Fwee henny awwhaha blaiahaanuushor anawha: na, fa, zinanah. Fffwha nor, daboorau.” I bow my best bow to you, to each of you I bow once, twice, three times. Respected friends, my thanks and gratitude.

You sound like you have a bad head cold and a mouthful of mouldy reeds. But . . . not bad. And that’s two whole sentences.

Now tell me the one about foes and stuff.

“Liananana oria nolaa, auroneewhala, dom. Norwhee da norwheerela.”

“Li . . . dom. Noriwee. Um. Norewela.”

Needs work.

But we started there! Remember? We started there. “Foes press round us, as they did at the beginning. But we stand friends.” We’ve done it over and over and over and over . I still can’t remember the foes sentence at all and it’s like it spills over into the friends sentence, which I can almost half remember, sort of.

“Inskawhaksha,” said Ebon. Say it. It’s really short. Never mind your pronunciation. Just say it.

I can’t remember, said Sylvi in frustration. Say it again.

“Inskawhaksha,” said Ebon.

“Is—in—” I can’t remember!

It means “my darkest enemy.” And you can’t remember it.

If it’s a spell, said Sylvi slowly, then it’s wearing off on the friendly words first.

Sylvi was grateful for her daily practise under the master-at-arms with sword, staff and bow—glad for the excuse to go bash at something, and sweat and grunt. Aside from any other considerations, she had fought for this much too hard not to keep to her practise strictly—and now, under the pressure of bearing with the uproar about her coming journey to Rhiandomeer she had the dubious pleasure of being told that, pound for pound, she was the toughest fighter of her family. Diamon himself was not a large man—and Lucretia was a small woman, though not as small as Sylvi. Between the two of them they knew the sorts of things that someone small and quick and accurate can do to upset the advantage of a bigger, stronger adversary; and Sylvi found that a practise sword in an opponent’s hand (especially Lucretia’s) focussed her mind and her reflexes wonderfully.

It didn’t seem to her respectful not to know how to use a sword, having sworn fealty to her king on the Sword. Her mother, a noted swordswoman herself, had been fully on her side about this, although the royal family tradition was that the nonreigning women were archers. Her father had looked at her thoughtfully when she suggested, shortly after her twelfth birthday, that she wanted to train properly with Diamon, to a plan and a schedule, but he had let himself be persuaded. “Your mother wouldn’t let me make any other decision, of course,” he said, “but she says this was your idea.”

“I would have asked you years ago, only I’m so short,” Sylvi said. That on the night of her twelfth birthday she had discovered one enormous advantage to being small had not eased frustration with her situation elsewhere; and her twelfth birthday was also when she had been obliged to begin going to council meetings, which produced a different form of frustration. “All my brothers started when they were seven. I think Danny was taller than I am now when he was seven.”

“My disgraceful heritage, I fear,” said her father.“ There is one more hurdle for you: you must ask your unnecessarily tall eldest brother’s permission as well as mine. He will be your king and commander some day and it is his choice where he would have you to command.”

Sylvi opened her mouth and shut it. Opened it again.“He’ll tell me I’m too short.”

The king sighed. “He may. In which case refer him to me, and you will be a lesson for him in allowing his people to make their own decisions, for they will work much harder doing what they feel they themselves have chosen to do.”

Tall Danacor visibly had his mouth open to say “you’re too short” when Sylvi added, “And Dad says that if you tell me I’m too short you’re to talk to him and I’m going to be a lesson in letting your subjects make their own decisions.” Whereupon Danacor stopped looking like a pompous prig and more like a young man who still sometimes found being the king’s heir rather a strain.

“Okay.” He smiled a little. “Diamon is pretty short himself. I think he likes short people best. First time you knock him down I’ll—I’ll give you a sword.”

She had still not attained such a height of glory, although on a good day she could make him take a step backward he hadn’t meant to take. Four years ago it had been a matter of principle that she wanted lessons in combat, and Sylvi, as she crossed swords or staves with Lucretia or Diamon or any of the others, or as she released her arrow or fired her crossbow bolt or rode at the large straw bolster (on wheels, to make hitting it more interesting), told herself it was still only a matter of principle that she should learn the arts of war. There had been skirmishes many times before, since Viktur and Balsin had come through the Dravalu Pass; with humans beyond the borders of her father’s realm, and with taralians and norindours, ladons and wyverns within it. Some of those skirmishes had been fierce enough and lasted long enough to be called wars.

“There is a theory,” Ahathin had once told her, “that we are here in a kind of—nexus, a crossroads, a meeting place of force and power. That there is a reason why we are so plagued not merely by taralians and norindours, but that ladons and wyverns, which should not be natural to our climate and geography, are drawn back here. That it is this convergence that attracts rocs. And . . .”

“And pegasi,” interrupted Sylvi, not wanting to think about rocs or magical convergences. “The only pegasi there are are here, are ours.”

“Yes,” said Ahathin.“So far as we know, the pegasi that are a part of our lives are the only pegasi anywhere.”

“Then we had better keep them alive, hadn’t we?” said Sylvi.

“Yes. Yes, we had indeed.”

That’s what it is like at a crossroads, Sylvi said to herself. They were only having a bad season, an unsettled year—or two years, or three. Nothing to do with a princess and her pegasus, or with Fthoom. The Alliance did live, visibly, in the bond between her and Ebon. Let them exploit that....

Especially if it included seeing the Caves, she told herself honestly, the night before they were due to leave. Her head was still ringing with the good wishes (and the good advice) of all of those who had come to the medium-sized dinner in her and Ebon’s honour that evening—ringing as well, she felt, with all the things that had not been said, mostly by those who had continued to oppose her going, but whom her father had thought it was politic to invite to the dinner to send her off.

She was not going to be able to sleep. If her ears were ringing with other people’s words, her mind was ringing with her own. She paced her bedroom restlessly; she had packed and repacked and re-re-repacked what she was taking with her; changed her mind dozens if not hundreds of times about the individual gifts she was bringing. She had had the various choices laid out on a shelf in her wardrobe, where she could be indecisive without troubling any of her attendants. Would the pegasus queen like the gold chain, or the silver and gold one better? Was the little mother-of-pearl bowl—light enough for pegasus hands—really grand enough for Lrrianay, even with the sparkle of tiny diamonds in a ring below its rim? Grand—oh, grand was another of those cumbersome, confusing human things, like choosing the clothes to take with her to make her look like a princess. What did you give people who didn’t want anything?

Since she was at that end of the room, she opened her wardrobe and stared at the things she wasn’t taking. I am not changing my mind again, she thought, as she stared at the embroidered ribbons she wasn’t taking for Ebon’s little sister. They were extremely pretty, but Sylvi thought bringing human embroidery to a pegasus was probably like giving farm boots to a dancer. She thought of her farmer uncle Rulf telling her how his eldest son, who had never cried about anything, cried the first time he saw pegasi, flying with the sunset gilding their wings. Sylvi couldn’t remember the first time she’d seen pegasi; for her at the palace they’d always been there. But she was going to be alone with them for almost three weeks; alone with creatures so beautiful and strange that they made a little boy cry for their beauty and strangeness.

Her eyes drifted to a glint from farther inside the wardrobe. Until a few weeks ago her practise gear had all hung on a peg in the armoury, but a few days after Diamon had told her that pound for pound she was tougher than her brothers, he had come up behind her at the end of their session together, as she was shrugging out of her extremely beat-up leather breastplate. Her sword was already rubbed clean of dust and dirt and hanging up, but he lifted it down again and once she was free of her armour, handed it to her. Puzzled, she grasped the familiar hilt and accepted the scabbard with the other hand. She’d graduated to a real sword a few months ago, even if it wouldn’t have been much more than a dagger in Danacor’s hand; Diamon said that he’d known the young woman who’d last carried it, and that it had been responsible for the deaths of at least two taralians. Lucretia liked to tease her that it was the sword that young Razolon had run his first Speaker through with; it was probably almost old enough, although very plain for a sovereign’s heir, even a twelve-year-old one.

“Take it back to the palace with you,” said Diamon. “Time you started learning to live with it. The sword is your weapon, clearly, just like it’s your mum’s, and a soldier or a princess should be ready. You don’t want to have to come pelting out to the armoury when the battalion of rocs is sighted.” He smiled, but his eyes were serious.

No sword practise for three weeks, she thought. No thumping and being thumped, and getting dust up your nose and in your eyes; her pony would be baffled but pleased by an unexpected three weeks’ holiday; her father’s dogs would be less pleased that she didn’t appear to take them for walks.... At least no council meetings, she thought. She would miss Nanthir’s next report from the Kishes—but she’d also miss the Chaugh ambassador’s daughter’s birthday. She was going to be all alone....

I’m going to see the Caves, she thought, before her courage failed her. The Linwhialinwhia Caves. The Caves that I’ve been longing to see for years—that I’ve known—known—that I never would see. I’ll probably even get to taste fwhfwhfwha.

Eventually she climbed into her bed and lay stiffly down. Last night in a bed for three weeks, she thought. Last night indoors. I hope it doesn’t rain all the time.

There would be hundreds of people to watch them set out tomorrow—far more than at any mere village festival. There was no centuries’-old traditional script for this occasion either. “Be your father’s daughter,” her mother had said, smiling. “And try not to worry too much.”

Sylvi gave a little gulp of laughter.“Well, that’s not being my father’s daughter!”