Pegasus

CHAPTER 14

The next day they flew again, and when they landed they had arrived at the entrance to the Caves.

Tomorrow morning they would go inside. Tomorrow morning she, Sylviianel, fourth child of the human King Corone IV, would enter the pegasi’s mythical Caves, where no human had ever before set foot, the Caves which were the centre of their lives and their civilisation, and of ssshasssha, the pegasi history and recollection, which no human understood.

Ebon had told her which of the mountain peaks roofed the main entrance to the Caves: there was a double-crowned mountain and then a falling-away series of smaller ones that made a zigzag line against the sky much sharper than those surrounding it. They were their own little range, visibly of some other, less erodible material than the rest. Ebon had first pointed them out to her the day she had arrived with her father, but she hadn’t taken it in; or rather, she had allowed herself to be distracted, because there were so many things to see, to make sense of, to try and understand.

Look at old Cuandoia, Ebon had said. He’s the big one in the middle, with the two peaks. He used to be a stag, you know, and the peaks were his antlers.

One of our story-tellers can sing you the story. Can you see how he looks like he’s leaning toward us? Our weather-seers will tell you it’s something about clouds and temperature but it’s still a good omen when you see him like that.

The days had passed, and those mountains had come closer, and Cuandoia seemed to watch them—watch and beckon. Well, he’s glad to see Lrrianay and Aliaalia, Sylvi said to herself. But it was hard not to feel, if she were going to think in terms of a mountain watching them, then he must be seeing her too, strange conspicuous creature that she was, and that it was acceptable to him that she was included.

She was shivering when she climbed out of her drai that evening near the main entrance of the Caves, although it was no colder than it had been the evening before, and the close-woven pegasus blanket kept the wind out better than several of the sheep’s-wool blankets she was accustomed to would have done. Cuandoia’s double crown was lost in the twilight, but she still seemed to feel him watching—as if she could sense, even in the darkness, that there was an awareness, sharp as a beam of light, coming from the crowned mountain above the Caves—and not from anywhere else.

They were here.

If she had been among humans she might have been able to pass off her oppression of spirits as mere tiredness: but she was not among humans. The problem with silent-speech was how much else was available about you than only your words.

I was scared gutless the first time I was brought to the Caves, Ebon said without preamble.

I’m still scared, said Niahi. They’re so big and they’re so full.

They’re nothing like full, said Ebon, in best big-brother- brushing- off-little-sister style. They’re hardly started.

Oh, Ebon, don’t be a strawhead! said Niahi, obviously flustered. Sylvi could hear herself in Niahi’s silent voice, talking to one of her brothers.

Niahi went on defensively, You know what I mean. There are leagues and leagues of them that are empty, but there are leagues of them that are full of us, of what we’ve been doing for the last thousands and thousands of years. And it’s not just the stuff on the walls. It hangs in the air. It follows you. It stands up ahead of you and calls you in a voice you can’t hear, but you know you’re being called, and it knows your name.

Like Cuandoia, thought Sylvi. She had a brief impulse to kneel and put her hand on the ground, like a salute, but it might be impertinent, as she had once been taught—it seemed ages and ages ago—that touching a pegasus was rude.

They’re the most beautiful thing in the world, said Ebon. And you want to go and make a spook story out of them. Fine, you can stay outside and watch for bears. Syl and I are going in with Dad.

There are no bears here!

Then it should be easy to watch for them.

Ebon, I hate you!

Sylvi thought Niahi sounded near tears, if pegasi wept, and she also sounded like some of Sylvi’s cousins, when they had all been younger, when Sylvi’s brothers had been tormenting them. She went over to her, not knowing if it was the right gesture or not, and pushed the forelock away from Niahi’s eyes as she might have pushed hair out of the eyes of one of her cousins, and swept a hand down her neck and shoulder as she might have patted her cousin. She wanted to tell Niahi that Ebon was her brother, she couldn’t afford to let him wind her up this easily, but she could guess it was her, Sylvi’s, presence that made it so easy. Niahi was the little sister who might have been Sylvi’s pegasus, if their fathers had decided that the human king’s daughter should be bound to a daughter of the pegasus king. And Niahi had been the second pegasus Sylvi had found she could talk to. Niahi had opened the door that their fathers had hoped would open—could be opened.

Tell him he has no imagination, she said to Niahi. Tell him he’s a thickie. That all he has is muscles.

Hey! said Ebon.

I’m a little sister too, you know, she said. And all my older brothers are big bullies. And I’ve only got three of them. I probably will be frightened of your beautiful Caves.

Yes, you probably will. That was my point, said Ebon. But they’re—they’re not— He switched his tail in a sign of frustration that was one of the first pegasus gestures she’d learnt to read after she met Ebon—before Ebon it hadn’t occurred to her that the pegasi would feel anything as ignoble as frustration—it was not dissimilar to the frustrated tail-switch of a horse. But a horse didn’t follow up with the long almost-invisible-unless-you-were-watching-closely sinuous shiver which was the signal of transition from gesture to language. They’re not spooky. That’s all wrong. There’s a . . . there’s an immensity to them, even in the smallest spaces. That’s what Niahi means about hangs and follows and calls—and full. You’ll see.

Niahi put her velvet lips briefly to Sylvi’s face. You’ll see, she said. And I don’t mean the Caves aren’t wonderful too. They are. They’re too wonderful.

They’re too wonderful kept recurring to Sylvi’s mind the next day.

She’d slept well—thanks to a sweet-smelling drink the queen had given her; she could feel it begin to work with her first sip and she went to her feather-bed smiling and relaxed. But she woke at dawn when the pegasi themselves were first stirring, and she was awake immediately and absolutely. She felt excited, but the wrong kind of excited, the way she might have felt on a test day for a test she hadn’t practised or studied hard enough for and she knew it, and whoever would be testing her would know it too. Ssshasssha, she thought. How does a human practise for that? But I wanted to do this, she told herself fiercely .I still want to. And it’s the most enormous compliment.

Which was the problem.

She missed her father—any other human—so badly it made her curiously achy, as if her humanity were a cramped or injured limb. A part of that discomfort was her relentless sense of herself as wrong, as alien—stiff and clumsy, a grotesque unnatural shape and freakishly unbalanced posture (how ridiculous to spend all your life rearing!). And bald. And wingless.... She felt her arms—her forelegs—flapping foolishly at her sides; how bizarre human shoulders were, pulling the forelegs apart and forcing them to dangle. She drew her arms forward, jerking her shoulders and letting the rest of her arms trail as if she’d forgotten how they worked. Slowly she bent her elbows and held her big spindly-fingered human hands out in front of her. She spread the long fingers, curled them up, spread them again, turned her wrists back and forth so she looked at the palms, and then the backs, and then the palms of her hands again. They were big hands only here in Rhiandomeer ; at home, among humans, they were little, like everything about Sylvi was little. The sword Diamon had told her to take back to her rooms with her was still only three-quarter-sized because her hands weren’t big enough to get a proper grip on the hilt of a full-sized one.

She let her hands droop at the ends of her wrists, and then folded her arms across her stomach and tucked her hands behind her elbows, holding on to her rib cage as if she were holding herself together. This was becoming the way she most often stood here, in the pegasi country, where she was bald and wingless and always rearing.

It was only going to be herself and Ebon and Lrrianay going into the Caves, and Ebon and Lrrianay were used to humans. To the funny way they looked, and the funny way they moved. There was no human equivalent of ssshasssha, which filled the Caves and called your name. It won’t call mine, she thought, but this gave her no comfort.

That morning even Ebon was subdued. She asked him on her way to her bath if she should hurry. No, he said immediately, but then he hesitated. Do you have—do you have a way of putting yourself in—and then there was a word she didn’t know. She stood there in her crumpled nightdress, clutching her towel and staring at her best friend—her best friend who was so hopelessly unlike herself—and saw the unbridgeable chasm lying between them again. You know, in your head?

I don’t know that word, she said, and she said it as if she were pronouncing her own doom. It’s only one word, she told herself. It’s just one word.

Uh, said Ebon, and she thought she heard in his silent voice that it was an important word, and that he was seeing the same chasm she was. Eah. Dad said you wouldn’t. Dad said—Never mind. You humans, you only seem to see now. A kind of squared-off, pillar-at-each-corner now, and a few weighed-and-measured years before and after. All of us in bound families have to study some of your history, whether we’re individually bound or not. I always thought it was something about the translation, about the fact that we can’t talk to each other and even our shamans couldn’t get it right, that it was all “he was king from the eighth day of the first month of spring in 892 to the eleventh day of the last month of winter 921,” “her army contained ninety-six regiments and the colours on her banner were red and gold.” Your history is only what someone remembers or has written down—and it’s just history, it’s not— and he used the word again. It’s the way into ssshasssha—your magicians talk about our ssshasssha, don’t they? You’ve asked me about it. But how do they describe it? It’s easy to get stuck in now—are you hungry, what’s the weather, what are you doing tomorrow? What words can you give these things so you can give them to someone else? From when we’re really little we practise getting out of now. I’m not very good at it. Niahi is hopeless, although Mum says she’ll get better as she gets older, but she’s worse than most kids, which is probably why she thinks the Caves are spooky.

Sylvi said, I’ll be okay. I can stand spooky. I won’t embarrass you. I’ll—I’ll try so hard and be so respectful you’ll scarcely recognise me.

Ebon stamped, and lashed his tail so violently it was as if he were trying to shake it loose. That’s not what I mean. He stepped forward and put out one of his feather-hands to her cheek again; the tiny breeze of his half-opening wing fanned her face. I want you to—to like the Caves! He stamped again. Oh, like! It’s a stupid word. Liking the Caves would be like liking water or daylight. If you’d lived in the dark or never tasted water they’d be overwhelming. You wouldn’t be able to think about liking.

Like flying when you haven’t any wings, thought Sylvi.

But I don’t care if this is a historic moment or not, bringing a human into the Caves. All that is grown-up stuff. I knew something was up when I asked Dad if I could bring you here and he didn’t say no. I’d been thinking how to be a royal pain in the pinfeathers and then it didn’t go like that at all. But then it was too late, I’d got used to it that I was going to be able to bring you here and I told myself the other stuff didn’t matter, the grown-up stuff didn’t matter to us—and Niahi, Niahi’s okay, and it would be nice if you could talk to more of us than just me. But it does matter, the grown-up stuff. Why the grown-ups wanted to bring you.

You’re not happy here. I never thought about that. I never thought . . . I shouldn’t have brought you. I wanted you to see the Caves, and I didn’t know how else to do it. They’d never have agreed to bringing a lot of you—you humans. I couldn’t bear your palace—even with you—if it weren’t that there are always at least twelve or a gazai of us around too. I was blind with what I wanted. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry....

Stop, she said, and put her hand to his mouth, as if he were human, as if he were speaking aloud. He dropped his own hand and dipped his head, pressing his nose into her hand, till she was looking at the arched crest of his neck, and in that moment she thought that the way his glittering black mane fell down his shining black shoulders was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Stop, she said. I knew before I came that it was really all about grown-up stuff, that that was the only reason they were letting me come. That you and I—the way we think of you and me—would be a little thing that happened accidentally too. Have you ever wondered what will happen when they lift the ban on letting us translate? If the guild lets them.... But I still wanted to come. I knew better than you did—I went to all those senate meetings. I thought . . . I didn’t think. Just like you. I wanted to come. It is worth it—whatever it is—to come. She couldn’t resist running her hands up his long silky face and down the perfect arch of his neck, and burying her hands in his mane. It’s that I’m all wrong here. You must feel it at the palace, even though there are more of you.

You’re not all wrong to me, said Ebon, and turned his head to rest his nose on her shoulder.

They stood silently for a moment or two and Sylvi thought, if I could just stand here like this forever, I’d be happy.

And then she sighed, and stooped to pick up the towel she’d dropped. I’d better get ready. Did you ever say when I should be there? Wherever. I don’t know where it is yet either.

It’s not like that, going into the Caves. The right time is when we all get there—the right time only happens some time after we all get there. That’s part of getting out of now, into— This time she almost heard the word as a distinct word, but she still had no translation for it: ssshuuwuushuu.

The way to ssshasssha, she thought. I wonder if Fthoom knows? I wonder how much our magicians know that they haven’t told us?

Time—

We have time, said Ebon. Time isn’t a—a thing. And the Caves are the Caves; day and night aren’t things either. And days—hours—are different.

The Caves themselves help with going there, with ssshuuwuushuu. You’re half there just by crossing the threshold. It’s why if you can’t go there yourself the Caves are harder—like the difference between jumping and being thrown. He paused. Once you’re there, it’s—it’s almost like dreaming, when you’re in your dream as yourself instead of your dreaming self, when you’re both nothing and everything in your dream. Everything matters when you’re not in now.

She gave a little grunt of surprised laughter. I almost know what you mean.

Ebon smiled. Of course you do. How could you not at least almost know anything I know?

It’ll be all right, she said.

Eah. Yes, it will.

But her heart was beating rather too quickly when she and Ebon arrived at the clearing near the entrance to the Caves. Sylvi had one hand wrapped around the little wooden bead Ebon had just dropped round her neck; he was wearing one too. Its creamy glow was startling against his blackness.

Lrrianay was there ahead of them; he too wore a bead. From a distance it seemed as if Lrrianay himself shone with a soft brilliance. If Viktur’s soldiers had first seen a pegasus like this, Sylvi thought, they would have been sure he was a god, or at least the numen of the land—the sweet green land. There was another pegasus with him, wearing a little bag around his neck which did not glow. It took her a moment to recognise him: Hibeehea.

She didn’t mean to—she meant to be poised and perfectly behaved—but she stopped dead. Ebon stopped too, and looked at her inquiringly.

Hibeehea, she said, and felt that even her silent voice shook.

We have to have a shaman with us to go into the Caves, said Ebon.

He had told her that. She had forgotten. Hibeehea? she said. No—wait—you’re going to tell me what a great honour it is again.

Well, it is, he said. I didn’t know it was going to be Hibeehea either.

She made her feet start moving again. Poised, she thought. Perfectly behaved. Lrrianay and Hibeehea turned to look at her and Ebon, but they showed no impatience—would I know what impatience looks like in a pegasus? thought Sylvi. I’ve never seen one impatient. Maybe I just don’t know what it looks like. But maybe they’re never impatient. She glanced at Ebon. He gets impatient, she thought.

Some of this slid inadvertently into her speaking range. Not knowing where the border was was a good deal more worrisome now that she was talking to more pegasi than just Ebon, and Hibeehea. . . .

Ebon glanced back at her. Impatient? No, I don’t feel impatient. I . . . There was a brief pause. Come to think about it, I feel kind of scared. That’s good, right? We can be scared together.

She tried to laugh and almost succeeded. She thought, He’s afraid I’ll make a mess of it. She was sure she had been careful to think that on the safe, private side of the silent border, but Ebon turned on her and said, Don’t ever think that. About anything. You’re my heart’s sister, even if you are a funny shape and walk on your hind legs all the time and rattle away out loud like a donkey or a bird. I’m frightened because you’re frightened, and because it’s hard—it can be hard—the first time going into the Caves, and you’re old for it—you can’t do ssshuuwuushuu and the ssshasssha will be like . . . being thrown in a cold dark lake when you can’t swim and you’ve never seen water before.

Unbidden, something Ahathin had said to her years ago came back to her, something he had said to her shortly before her binding, about apprentice magicians learning the language of the pegasi: Imagine learning to swim by being thrown into a lake in perfect darkness, never having seen water before.

I need to think about this, she thought suddenly. I need—

We start ’em young, and you only go in for a mouthful of moments your first time, and . . . His silent-voice trailed away.

And I’m a funny shape, and I talk out loud, she said.

He looked at her and there was another pause; but all he said, un-Ebon-like, was, Yes.

Then she was making her bows and greetings to Lrrianay and Hibeehea, and Hibeehea was standing very close to her—so close she had to stop herself stepping backward—to distract herself she looked up, and saw that there were many pegasi standing at the edge of the clearing, among the trees; she had not noticed them before. Niahi nodded her head and—waved, stretching one wing out and forward, and flicking it up and down. Hesitantly Sylvi raised a thin bare arm and waved back. The queen, standing beside Niahi, stepped forward, and at once Sylvi turned toward her: she was less scary than either Hibeehea or Lrrianay. Sylvi’s eyes fell to her garnet, still round the queen’s neck, lying where the bright beads lay round Lrrianay’s or Ebon’s. As the queen moved into the sunlight, the little garnet flared briefly, red as a torch.

Aliaalia said, As you are a girl, it is your mother who should take you into the Caves for the first time. But the leader of your kinsfolk may choose to do it instead. Ebon is your kin here, and Lrrianay wishes to take you. But I want you to know, little Sylvi, that I would have been happy and proud to bring you into our Caves myself. Go well, daughter, and may you see all you will see. She brushed her velvet cheek across Sylvi’s cheek, and walked back to the edge of the trees where Niahi waited for her.

See all I will see? thought Sylvi.

Lrrianay nodded and led the way. Hibeehea followed, and Ebon dropped half a step behind Sylvi and (she felt) chivvied her forward. She thought she was probably glad for a little chivvying. She let go of her bead as they passed the threshold, into the twilight of the Caves.

Her first impression of the Caves was merely the sound of her first footstep, when she crossed from turf to packed earth. Her second impression was of darkness, in spite of candlelight and her bead, as she stepped from daylight into the cave mouth.

There was a pegasus she had not seen before just inside, who bowed to them all; there was a little round space like an antechamber with a cluster of tall candles at its centre, and Lrrianay paused. Sylvi involuntarily looked back, toward the daylight and the trees and the open air. She was looking past Ebon, blacker than ever against the light, with the tiny dazzle of his bead against his chest. He seemed taller than a carriage-horse, bigger and broader than a war-horse, standing between her and the sun. She didn’t even know how long they would be in the Caves, how long before she would see daylight again: It depends, Ebon had said. It’s not—not a useful question, “how long?” We’ll stop when we get tired or hungry.

“Stop”? thought Sylvi. Don’t you mean come back outdoors? But she hadn’t asked.

Lrrianay glanced at her. Yes, I’m here, she thought—to herself, she hoped. With my two legs and my preposterous hands. I wish I could stop thinking, so I could stop worrying about anyone overhearing me. But . . . She thought of Niahi: spooky, she’d said. Full. Very cautiously Sylvi tried to feel her way into the little anteroom of the Cave she stood in—“felt” in the way she “listened” to Ebon.

Spooky. No. Yes. No. Full—?

It was nothing like a velvet nose against her face or a friendly feather mattress curling around her as she slept, or even the shockwave of the ting as her father dropped a magician’s spiral on the floor of his receiving room. But there was something there—here—something besides pegasi and rock and candles. Something not unlike what had made her fall down, only three nights ago, when she’d heard Niahi speak for the first time.

That was three days ago, she thought. That is a long time. And time doesn’t matter in the Caves.

There were dark tunnel openings all round them, and Lrrianay chose one and led them into it.

It was a gentle downslope, but there were also small fat candles in niches along the walls, so it was easy enough to see your way. At first Sylvi kept her eyes on her feet, and then on Hibeehea’s long smoke-coloured tail, with occasional sidelong glances at the candles, as if checking that there was enough wax left that they would keep burning and not plunge them suddenly into darkness.... Her hand crept up again to the bead on its string round her neck. She kept wanting to hold it like a talisman, blotting out its light; she touched it and let her hand drop again. It was not only the darkness, the awareness of it barely held off by a few small candles and smaller beads; it was the awareness of the inconceivable weight of all the rock and earth of the mountain above them, as they went farther and farther down and in.... There was no record in the thousands of years the pegasi had been using their Caves of any ceiling or tunnel collapse; Ebon had told her this. Occasionally someone gets lost, he’d added cheerfully. But never for very long. We’ve always found ’em before they got very hungry.

Sylvi wanted to ask Ebon if he knew where they were going, if he recognised the tunnel his father had chosen, but she didn’t want to be overheard. She tried to concentrate on Hibeehea’s tail and wingtips, on the consciousness of Ebon just behind her, on Lrrianay leading them calmly and surely . . . where?

It’s just the dark, she told herself. It’s just the dark and the . . . the caveness, the mountain overhead. The rest is just . . . like the story of the prince who ran away; there wasn’t anything chasing him but fear. I am not going to be the princess who ran away....

It wasn’t sounds, exactly. There were sounds, of course: the soft tap of hoofs and the lighter, slappier tap of her own feet, the sound of Ebon’s breathing, the faint rustly noise of trickling water. But there was something else. She’d felt it in the anteroom. It had come with her. No, it was all around her.

Almost involuntarily her hand reached out and touched a smooth knob of wall. It was curious, she wasn’t used to caves, so why shouldn’t the walls here look strangely sheeny and almost fluid? She could hear the sound of water, but the wall she touched was dry. But these were the Caves; the pegasi had chosen them thousands of years ago because they were exceptional, because they were extraordinary. Because they were unique.

She knew, as soon as she touched the wall—knew—what did she know? That the wall was not like a human-built wall, not like even the oldest wall of the eight-hundred-year-old palace. She knew, of course, that the pegasus sculptors were greatly honoured; if the pegasi created hierarchies the way humans did, the sculptors would be behind only the shamans and the monarch: what the sculptors did created ssshasssha, which humans feebly translated as “recollection.”

She knew that the Caves contained hundreds of amazing chambers of thousands of years of sculptors’ work. She hadn’t realised that mere passageways had also been carved and shaped—she thought again of Niahi saying, They’re so full. As almost involuntarily as she had first put her hand on the wall, she stopped and put her other hand next to the first. The wall seemed almost to quiver, like a horse’s skin dislodging a fly. She lightened her touch and then thought despairingly, Oh, I’m human! Ebon, may I not touch the walls?—and she heard the pleading in her silent voice.

Ebon’s nearer wing unfolded, and his feather-hand lay lightly over hers, pressing it delicately—so delicately—against the wall. She could never quite adjust to the fineness, the fragility of pegasus hands, especially Ebon’s—Ebon who was nearly as big as a small horse, and could fly even carrying her on his back. Suddenly she was trembling, trembling as she imagined the wall was trembling—surely it could not really tremble, rock and earth and mountain that it was?—in the overwhelming knowledge of the thousands upon thousands of tiny pegasus sculptor hands that had made even an ordinary passage wall beautiful. It was perhaps as astonishing as the touch of a human hand was to the Caves, accustomed to thousands of years of the pegasi.

They’re so full, Niahi had said. If the corridor walls were overwhelming, what would the chambers be like?

She would not be the princess who ran away.

With Ebon’s hand over hers she dared keep hers against the wall a little longer. She rested only her fingertips and the heel of her hands against the wall, as lightly as she could, as lightly as Ebon’s hand touched hers; the tenuousness of contact seemed to sharpen her senses, so her fingers seemed to identify each individual grain of the stone, each tenderly-sculpted brush-stroke. She was still shaking as if with shock; but then it was as if the wall bloomed under her fingers. It was no longer stone, but silken-warm like a pegasus’ side. What she’d thought was trembling was the rise and fall of its breath....

For a moment she thought nothing at all. She was not Sylviianel, daughter of Corone, who was king of his land; she was not the first human to set foot in the pegasus Caves in thousands of years; she was not standing in those Caves with her hands on a corridor wall and her bound pegasus standing next to her with his hand over one of hers.

She was nothing; she was Cave; she was pegasus; she was everything . . . ssshuuwuushuu.

It was over in a heartbeat, and she was Sylvi again, standing in a dark tunnel with a mountain over her head and candlelight flickering across the wall and making it look as if it was moving. Lrrianay and Hibeehea had stopped as soon as she did, as soon as she had spoken to Ebon. She dropped her hands and turned away from the wall, toward them, and toward the way they had been going. She felt Ebon’s feather-hand just touch her hair and then withdraw. She was still shivering somewhere deep inside herself, but much of the light-headed, off-balance, wrong feeling she’d had for the last three days, since she’d heard Niahi speak and had rediscovered herself as awkward and bizarre, had faded away. Walking on her hind legs seemed normal again, acceptable. She was human. She took a deep breath, aware of how shallow her lungs were in comparison to a pegasus’, but aware that that was as it should be. She was small, and human.

Child, are you all right? said Lrrianay.

She did not know how to answer him; she knew that she heard “all right” because her human mind, her use of language did not contain what he asked her: was she at peace with herself was perhaps closer. She could not think how to put her answer—her question—in pegasi terms. Have I just passed another test? she said, knowing the pegasi did not set tests any more than they created hierarchies.

There was a pause as Lrrianay thought this over. What we show you depends on what you see, yes, he said. And we hoped you would see the walls here, yes.

She thought, His “see” is not quite what it means anywhere but here. It was the “see” that the queen had used: May you see all that you will see.

What you would see if we told you to look, and where to look, would be different, said Lrrianay.

Less, she said, but she was thinking, that is another human concept, less.

There was another pause and this time Hibeehea answered: Not less, different. But we would have you as much like us as possible, yes. To see these walls, as you evidently do see them, is like us.

But they are strange to me. Strange. She could not think of the right word, a word that would reverberate not only through her bones, but through Hibeehea’s, and Lrrianay’s, and the bones of this mountain.

We can turn around now, child, if you wish, said Hibeehea, and there was only kindness in his silent voice. We have our answer, and you have visited the Caves.

Oh, no! she said before she thought. I have only seen one corridor! A little of one corridor! I mean—whatever you say, great lord, srrrwa! But—I—please—sir!

Lrrianay wrinkled his nose and flicked his ears. I see again why you and Ebon are so close, he said. I wonder how much that closeness has to do with how much you were alike before you met? Very well. We will go on. And then he turned away from her and led them on the way they had been going.

She thought of the sky and the trees and the daylight. But she was not sorry she had answered as she had; she did not now want to turn around, even if the ceiling did seem to lean down toward her—as if it would stretch down a stony hand and smack her forehead. The pegasi’s heads on their long upright necks were higher than hers, and they did not stoop. She squared her shoulders—such a human gesture—and followed.

The corridor walls around her opened, and she was walking on grass under the sky with many pegasi all around her—white and cream-coloured, all the shades of golden from flaxen to dark honey, amber-red to russet-red, coppery and tawny and dark loam brown; silver to twilight-grey; and occasionally black. They were cantering past her, their wings half spread, the occasional pale feather in a dark wing catching her eye. Where were they all going? They streamed past her, hundreds upon hundreds of them; occasionally one would turn its head and nod at her, although she recognised none of them. They seemed to be going somewhere, and they seemed to be drawing her along with them: where her slow walking feet were taking her was ultimately where all their quick cantering feet were taking them.

Then the landscape, or her dream, changed, and there was a small round valley in the hill before them, and this was their destination. Or, no—this was her destination, for most of the pegasi ran on, parting around the way into the little valley and disappearing behind the shoulders of the hill. A few pegasi slowed to a walk and accompanied her.

But the moment she entered the little circle of the valley she wanted to go no farther; her feet slowed, dragged, and finally stopped. The pegasi with her quietly stopped too.

The valley, now that she was in it, was bigger than it had looked from outside. A group of perhaps twenty pegasi stood in the flat centre of the valley, and with them stood a group of perhaps thirty humans. Sylvi saw the humans with a shock like a blow: how graceless they were, both squat and elongated—how ungrounded and unbalanced—with their strange thin pawing arms and huge clutching hands—and she forgot again that she had remembered how to be human, and she grieved that she was one of them.

A few of the pegasi standing with the humans turned their heads and acknowledged the newcomers, but most did not. None of the humans looked at them. And now, with another shock, Sylvi recognised that the humans were wearing armour, worn, stained armour, and they wore it as if they were used to wearing it and had been wearing it for a long time. They had swords slung round their hips or over their shoulders, and two or three had bows and quivers, and she saw one with a short dagger and halberd; all their faces were tired and grim.

As she noticed these things it was as if the scene were building itself around her. She knew, suddenly, that there was an army camp on the far side of the hill; now that she knew it was there she could hear it, smell the smoke of its cook- and watchfires; there was even a sentinel standing on the brow of the little hill to her right. He could not have been there before—she could not have missed him? Surely she could not have missed him?

She glanced back over her shoulder. The land was empty and silent. All the galloping pegasi were gone, all but the few who stood with her, and the grass they had galloped across was a smooth unruffled sea. Pegasi ordinarily left little mark of where they had been, but there had been hundreds of them, and even if they had contrived to bend not a single grass-stem, her plodding human feet should have broken a path—and there was no sign of her passage either.

She turned forward again. There was a small table, now, at the centre of the valley, around which the humans and the pegasi stood—or rather, on either side of which they stood, the humans on one side and the pegasi on the other. This distressed her; she wanted to walk forward and join the pegasi, or seize two of those ugly human arms with her own ungainly hands and draw them toward the pegasus side of the table. It was not good that they should stay so divided from each other. Was that not why she was here? To help end—to help soften—that division, between human and pegasus?

But where was she? She was walking in the Caves, the pegasus Caves, where no human had ever walked before. She was with Ebon and Lrrianay and Hibeehea. . . .

Where was she?

The armour the humans wore was unfamiliar to her. Old-fashioned perhaps—some of the poorer barons were still using armour their grandparents’ troops had worn, and some of the bits and pieces still in use in the practise yards at the palace were older still—but this seemed to her more than merely that. These men and women did not carry themselves like soldiers in a held-together-with-string unit—nor would one of the poorer barons have twenty pegasi as members of his company.

She knew a little about armour; lessons with Diamon included learning about your equipment and its history. This armour was like nothing she had seen before, mostly leather and very little chain, and the chain curiously linked; they wore no chausses or greaves, and their gauntlets and gorgets were peculiarly cut, as were the panels of their leather cuirasses. When one turned and spoke low-voiced to another, she could half hear the words, which seemed to be at least half known to her but strangely pronounced, and the rhythm of the sentences was odd and outlandish.

The one who had spoken glanced up. There was something odd about him; something about him marked him out from the others . . . no, the man standing next to him was another like him. . . . But what was the oddness? Did they stand differently, move differently, was their skin a different colour, their armour a different kind? They were both wearing slightly shabby once-grand gowns over their armour, but so were several of the others. Nothing she could put her finger on but she was certain....

One of the two drew a short baton from under his surcoat, held it flat across his palms and offered it to the other one.

She’d seen that gesture at hundreds of rituals. They were magicians. And in the rituals she knew, that particular gesture heralded some confirmation, validation, agreement—although the baton was usually brought by a third, more subordinate magician. She looked round again. But the rituals she knew took place at the palace, or at carefully planned and organised festivals elsewhere. This was not a battlefield, but the battlefield was obviously nearby.

Two humans unrolled a large, long sheet of what, by its pliancy, must be pegasus-made paper. The humans, perhaps disconcerted by something so unlike stiff, crackly parchment, handled it uneasily and laid it—cautiously, warily, protectively, attentively—on the table. Everyone was staring at it. The two humans holding it touched it as if they weren’t sure what sort of beast it was: was it an ally, was it hostile?

A battlefield alliance . . .

The strange armour, the language whose words were familiar but whose rhythms were not . . .

One of the magicians looked tired and worried and grim, like all the other humans.

The other one turned and looked at her . . .

. . . and for a moment he was Fthoom.

And she was walking in the Caves again, except that she wasn’t walking. She was standing still, and her three companions were standing with her. Lrrianay and Hibeehea were gravely watching her, and Ebon had his nose on her shoulder.

You okay?

She nodded. And then, startled, looked around. They were no longer in the long corridor, but a huge room, the ceiling lost in shadows overhead. There were other pegasi here—three that she could immediately see—one of them was lighting a candle in a niche in the wall. There were candles all around the walls at irregular intervals, and as the niches were various sizes, so were the candles. In the centre of the room, a low table stood, a dozen tall lamps on it, blazing with light.

In the light she could see the walls.... Millennia of tiny, frail feather-hands, smoothing and scooping, carving and scoring the natural walls of the cave....

There were portraits of pegasi everywhere on the walls, walking and flying, standing, running, lying, bowing, pawing, dancing, rearing, and doing other things she had no names for, as when two stood face to face and clasped their feather-hands together; or when, again face to face, four stood in a four-pointed star, knelt and bowed their heads, and wrapped their wings over each other. The curves of one pegasus, the billow of one tail or the fall of one mane, became a curve or a billow or a fall of the next; and in the flicker of the light, the rounds and hollows of all seemed to move as if with life.

Among the stone pegasi there were other things: trees and flowers and climbing vines, leaves and branches and blooms, saplings and bushes and forests—rabbits, deer, foxes, fornols, badgers, bears, birds—many, many birds, from the tiniest wrens to great raptors with wingspans nearly as great as the pegasi’s own—spiders and beetles and butterflies and bees. There was a stone stream near where Sylvi stood with several pegasi prancing in it: every drop of water was clearly and lovingly detailed.

And humans. Sylvi had been turning slowly round as if looking for something—and yet she did not want to see humans—see them here, surrounded by pegasi, to be forced to look again at the coarseness and gracelessness of what she was herself. She wrapped her gawky arms around her clumsy body and hunched her shoulders.

Ebon saw where she was looking and said, Hey, don’t worry. They’re only stone.

We’re so ugly, said Sylvi miserably.

Ugly? There was a pause, as if Ebon were considering the matter; he was certainly looking first at the carved humans and then at Sylvi, and then back. I don’t think so. I like the way it’s all up and down with you, and no sideways. It’s very—direct. Like you humans are. Although you’re better-looking than that lot. He looked hard at Sylvi, seemed to make up his mind about something, and went on: When Dad first told me I was going to have to be your pegasus, I used to come here and stare at these guys. I’d only seen live humans a few times, when a crowd of us went to your palace for some big rite or festival or other, after I was big enough to fly that far. And then us kids were always kept well back and never went to the banquets.

I never saw you, said Sylvi. I’d remember, black is so unusual. I can hardly remember seeing any young pegasi, unless it was one of you being bound to one of us.

Yes—well—you do have to be nearly grown to fly that far. Ebon was silent a moment, and then went on: You—you humans—saved our lives—and you go on saving our lives. The taralians and their friends would be all over us in a few generations if you left. And we’d just sit here and let them, because we wouldn’t leave the Caves, and without the llyri grass we’d stop flying within a generation or two. We’d stop flying but our legs still wouldn’t be tough enough to run like deer and horses run. Our shamans say the grass grows out of the stone that the Caves are made of, that’s what makes our wings strong enough to carry us. Two thousand years ago the taralians found us—that’s what the stories say—we could have run away, but we couldn’t’ve either, right?

Taralians and norindours and ladons don’t like our mountains much and don’t like our Caves at all, but we couldn’t stay here all the time. Did you know that we used to raise llyri grass where your palace now sits? That field of it your gardeners keep for us has been growing there for probably four thousand years. Even the barn where you keep it after harvest is where our old winter pavilion used to be. A roc knocked it down a century or two before you came.... That’s pretty much when we pulled out of the lowlands.

Our shamans told us we’d get rescued at the last minute. And we did—you came. But something went wrong....

Sylvi turned and walked toward the wall where the carved stone humans stood. It took her a moment to realise why the scene looked familiar. It was where she had just been, what she had just seen, although she was seeing it now from a different angle, as if the army camp was behind her, and the way she had come with the hundreds of pegasi in front of her. The humans were now on her left and the pegasi on her right. Even now that she could not hear them speak, the strangeness of the humans’ armour drew her attention; even now that they were inanimate images on a wall she could see the tension of them, the set concentration of their faces.

And she could still pick out the two magicians although the baton was not visible. One of them looked as the other humans looked, fixed on the matter at hand but worried about its outcome. The other was the one who reminded her of Fthoom.

She knew he was not Fthoom; this man did not even look like him. But that sense of power, of power held for hidden purposes, held in a way meant to be intimidating so that the wielder of it can better judge the strength of any opposition—that was Fthoom. That inward look, the look of a miser always preoccupied with his private treasure, of the greatness of what was his and his alone, and of how to make it greater yet—that was Fthoom. She found herself thinking that this man even moved like Fthoom—except that she was looking at a sculptured wall. Perhaps the candlelight slid over him differently than it glinted over the others.

I don’t like this one, she said.

I don’t like him either. He’s ugly, if you like.

Ugly, she said. Why did you come here? When you knew you had to be my pegasus.

The skin over Ebon’s shoulders shivered and he nodded his head once quickly, a sign of embarrassment. Well. These are the only humans in the Caves. If I wanted to look at humans, these were it. That was a long time ago, okay? I was a lot younger, and I hadn’t met you.

These are the only humans in the Caves? I’m surprised there are any, she thought. Why these?

Ebon looked at her in surprise—tall neck drawn up even straighter (how regal he looks, she thought), ears stiffly pricked, just one wrinkle across his nose. That’s the signing of the treaty, he said. I thought you’d recognised it. That’s your king Balsin, and our Fralialal. And that’s Dorogin, the ugly one, and Gandam.

The signing of the treaty.

Ssshasssha. History and . . . recollection.

The motionless stone picture was taking place just after she had watched the living scene: the two humans were still holding the treaty paper flat against the table, but a pegasus—it would be the pegasus king—was holding one wing, with the first three primaries curiously spread, just above its surface. These were astonishingly artfully done, for the shadows fell in such a way as to show, now that she was looking for this, the inked tips of those feathers. As the candlelight flickered she felt she saw him draw his feather-tips across the surface of the paper in the quick, graceful, triple stroke she had seen replicated on so many documents, so many commemorative plaques and paintings at the palace. She thought of the mural in the Great Hall where, when she was younger, she had thought she could hear Fralialal stepping down from the wall onto the floor. That Fralialal was bigger, grander—more human. This one, here, on the wall of the Caves, this one was a true pegasus: smaller, finer, graceful as candlelight . . . exotic. Inexplicable. Unknowable.

The signing of the treaty.

She had just been standing on eight-hundred-year-old grass, smelling the smoke of the eight-hundred-year-old war that had given her people and Ebon’s their Alliance. She had seen the treaty itself unrolled, when it was only a new piece of fine paper with some writing on it—she had seen it before it was signed, before it was the treaty, before it hung on the wall of the Great Hall, before Balsin’s signature on it had become the reigning monarch’s mark.

She had met Dorogin’s eyes.

And Dorogin looked like Fthoom. In the mural at the palace, none of the human faces stood out: they were just humans. Only the pegasus king and the treaty itself had any reality.

No—she would not think of it any more. She would not think of the fact that she had been there, the fact that something about the Caves had made her imagine that she had been there. She would not think of it. But she could—she would—she must think about Dorogin and Fthoom.

So it began . . . at the beginning, she said slowly, what went wrong.

She held her hands out—her human hands—and looked down through them at her single pair of human feet. It’s a good thing I didn’t . . . know all this. Or I’d’ve been too frightened to come.

Eah. I’d be the same.

You would not, she thought.

I’d be the same, but I’d do it anyway, just like you would.

Well, I’m here, she said slowly, staring at the wall—at Dorogin’s stony eyes watching her. What am I going to tell my father? She wasn’t sure if she’d said that so Ebon could hear it, and she moved nearer to him, and twisted her fingers in a handful of his long mane as it spilled down his shoulder. He turned his head, and his nose rested for a moment on the back of her hand. The glow from the bead that hung round his neck haloed him.

They turned together, and found Lrrianay and Hibeehea standing at a little distance, watching them—letting us talk together privately, Sylvi thought in surprise. Before she lost her nerve, she let go of Ebon’s mane and stepped forward quickly, ahead of him. What can I tell my father? she said.

What have you seen, child? said Hibeehea. What do you want to tell your father?

You know what I saw, she said. Didn’t you send me? This is more of what I’m here for, isn’t it? Ssshasssha, that humans don’t understand? Is there any more you haven’t told me? That you’re going to throw me into without telling me? Well, I have heard—and spoken—and seen, and perhaps I understand—a little. But even if my father believes me, he will say, What can we tell our people? Our people, who think the pegasus ssshasssha is a bard’s fantastic tale? How is a picture carved on a wall anything but a picture carved on a wall?

And how will you answer him?

She took a deep breath. I will say, because I was there, and I saw them. Why did you bring me to the Caves and not him? He is the king. He is the one you have to convince. And he loves you—you pegasi. He would listen to you. He envies me coming to the Caves. But he let me come—alone—because that is what you wanted. And this is why you brought me, isn’t it? I’m already half in your—your world, because of my friendship with Ebon—because I can talk to Ebon. Because—and now I can talk to all of you, all you pegasi. I went there— she gestured at the stony Alliance—I went there. I walked into that scene. I saw them breathing. I smelled horses and campfires and human food cooking and human sweat. Did you send me because you could not send him?

There was a little pause, but Sylvi was too angry and shaken to think about how she was addressing the king and his shaman.

We cannot send you or anyone—we cannot send ourselves, or each other, said Hibeehea. But we can recognise those who may be able to go themselves. It is an unusual talent. Most of those who have it become shamans. I am one of them. We don’t know what that talent would look like in a human—we have never seen a human who has made us wonder if they might carry that talent.

But we have wondered about you a great deal since Lrrianay came back from your binding to say that you and Ebon could speak to each other.

And then Ebon came to us with his mad idea of bringing you here as what he called a birthday present, said Lrrianay, smiling, but he held his head low and worried.

What is it you humans say? That we backed into their hands? said Ebon.

Played into their hands, said Sylvi, and curled her fingers into fists. She turned around quickly and looked again at the signing: and she was sure—except that she knew it was nonsense—that Dorogin’s eyes moved to meet hers and his mouth turned up in a gloating sneer, a sneer that said, There’s nothing you can do.

I don’t know what I can do, she said, because silent-speech had become her ordinary way of speech; and then she added aloud, as if for Dorogin’s benefit, “But I will do something.” The vibration of her larynx felt strange to her, and she uncurled one of her fists, and put her long nimble fingers on her throat.