Pegasus

CHAPTER 18

All sightings of taralians and norindours and their other old enemies were brought to the Balsinland king, even if the report was merely that the creature had already been dispatched by a baronial hunting party or a patrol of soldiers. Barring taralians, which were a more persistent problem, there were several reports every year, but—until recently—never more than several, not since Corone IV’s great-great-grandfather’s day. There were ballads about the Great Hunt that King Janek himself had led; the main fact about it was that it had been successful and had not been repeated.

Sylvi was with her father in his private office the morning the messenger from General Randarl came. It was three days after her birthday party. Ebon was with her, Lord Cral and his pegasus, Miaia, the two kings—and two Speakers.

They were again considering her travels in Rhiandomeer; she was tense and anxious, unsure what she could discuss and what she must not. She was afraid to say anything to Ebon that she wouldn’t want a Speaker to overhear; whenever she asked him anything about what she’d seen or where she’d gone, there was an implication of How much can I say? and his answers were stilted and constrained. She wondered if his father was saying anything to him; if so, she did not hear it.

Both she and Ebon were oppressed by the knowledge of the suggestions that were still coming in from senate, council, individual bloods and courtiers, and from a surprising number of citizen groups, about how to use the ability of the princess and her pegasus to talk across the barrier between their two species: proposals and recommendations as well as specific requests for arbitration and intervention. The Speakers’ Guild, however, advised caution and deferment, and requested the right to inspect any papers on the subject and to sit in on any meetings. On Ahathin’s advice, Sylvi’s new secretary, for the present, reported to her father.

“Welcome to my world,” her father had said gently. “I’m sorry, my love, you and Ebon will have to make some decisions in a little while—after the senate decides what decisions you’re allowed to make, and if the Speakers’ Guild ever lets them decide. All your secretary can do meanwhile is sort into categories and write acknowledgements—and draw up summaries.”

She said—it was the nearest she had ever come to telling her father the hidden truth about her journey, and she said it absent-mindedly—“Hibeehea told me, the last morning in Rhiandomeer, that I had changed the world. But this ...” She was watching her new secretary pressing her emblem, the princess’ seal, onto the back of a folded letter. The secretary, whose name was Iridin and who was not a magician, looked up and smiled, and put the letter on a pile of other letters.

“Sometimes it only takes a moment for everything to change,” said her father, unknowingly echoing what the queen had said two days after her daughter’s return from Rhiandomeer.“More commonly, however, it takes forever, and an astonishing amount of ink. This is only the fresh beginning of a new forever.”

But her father and Lord Cral were both clearly and genuinely and openly absorbed by everything she could tell them, and they asked many questions based on what she’d described during her presentation—although Lord Cral asked more, and once or twice when she had felt herself floundering it had seemed to her that her father had deflected Cral’s questions by talking about what he had seen during his brief visit. Lord Cral had said more than once, “Cory, we must look again at the possibility of building a human way through the Starclouds.”

The second or third time he said this, her father caught her eye and smiled.

She thought, I must tell my father. I must tell him I can . . . I could . . . Niahi . . . She looked first at Ebon, standing at her shoulder—just behind her shoulder—in the correct way a bound pegasus in the human court—in the way that no longer seemed at all correct to her. Her eyes shifted to Lrrianay, who smiled at her also, but she could read nothing in his face or posture—she could read nothing of him, like any human failing to read any pegasus, like any human who had never spent three weeks in Rhiandomeer surrounded by pegasi. What if it was only Niahi, aside from Ebon? It could easily be only Niahi.

And at that moment the messenger was announced, a Lightbearer lieutenant. She came from the camp in the Greentops, and she came to report a norindour sighting.

But not of one norindour: of seven.

This was bad enough; there were too many sightings now, of all their old enemies, taralians and norindours, ladons and wyverns. We haven’t got any quiet borders left, Danacor had said to his sister. But the sightings were still of ones and twos—unwelcome, especially as they kept coming, but nothing that the now-regular patrols could not deal with.

Not seven. Seven norindours presented a serious danger, even to a regiment. They were bigger than taralians, and they had wings. And norindours were normally solitary, barring breeding pairs. What would bring seven together?

But even that was not all of her news. The rest was much worse: there was a roc with them. A roc that made no attempt to hide itself, who saw them seeing it, and let them look. A roc who was—probably—the reason seven norindours were hunting together. Hunting—what? Even a greyear stag, some of which grew as big as horses, could not feed seven norindours.

“Y-yes, my king,” said the messenger upon questioning. “Yes, I was there. It—the roc—is bigger than you—than I—can imagine. It stood there, watching us watch it—watching us fall back—watching us trying not to stumble over each other to get away from it—and then it spread its wings and flew. It . . . it wasn’t just that its wings blotted out the sun, that there was darkness over us at midday. The darkness in the shadow of a roc’s wings is like the end of the world. . . .”

Taralians are intelligent enough to be deadly enemies; norindours are cleverer than taralians. But rocs are at least as intelligent as humans or pegasi—and they had some powers of magic, possibly powers as strong as human magicians’. A confirmed roc sighting was the worst news the country had had in generations.

Everyone who lived in the king’s palace, and everyone who had ever attended one of the high festival days when the king carried the Sword, had seen it flame up at the king’s touch, but no one had ever seen it glare and dazzle as it did on this day. The news was already spreading, and people began to pour into the Great Hall to hear what the king would say—this too was reported, while the messenger still stood before the king.

“I—I came as fast as I could, my king,” said the messenger. “As fast as I could without foundering my horse. But other people saw the roc, my king.”

“Yes. A roc that wishes to be seen will certainly be seen,” replied the king. “Go get yourself some food and rest.” He put a hand on Sylvi’s shoulder.“I’m afraid our previous discussion, infinitely to be preferred though it is, must now wait.” He led the way toward the Great Hall, briskly, but not hurriedly. Sylvi, feeling superfluous and lagging a little behind, discovered Glarfin to have materialised at her other elbow. One did not lag with Glarfin at one’s elbow. She caught up with her father and Lord Cral, all three pegasi dropping back to allow her more room. They are always behind us, she thought. And Lrrianay is king, and I am only king’s daughter.

When the little group paused at the door, Sylvi’s father said to her, “Walk with me, young one; we’re all we’ve got at the moment. Danny should be around here somewhere, but everyone else is out on patrol.”

The king went up to the burning Sword and laid his hand upon it; Sylvi thought that she would not have touched it if her life depended on it. There was a great shout, or clap of thunder, a sound that was more of a buffet than a noise, that no one afterwards was sure they had heard, and the Sword’s light went out. Everyone found themselves gasping for breath; everyone except, perhaps, the king, who had turned to look at his eldest son, who had just appeared in the doorway next to the mural of King Fralialal and had paused, staring at the Sword. From where Sylvi stood at the king’s side, her brother’s face was in shadow, but she could see that his head was turned toward the Sword.

“I will ride west this afternoon,” said Danacor. “The Skyclears are ready.”

Danacor went with a party not only of his Skyclears, but also magicians and specialist trackers; he went to the mountain where General Randarl now watched, and where the roc had been seen. Danny had seen the roc—he had seen two rocs, although that was not generally known “—I hope,” read the private letter that came with his official report. “We are doing our damnedest to make it only one roc; one roc is bad enough.” The chief thing that he stressed and reiterated in all his reports—as well as why they had some prospect of preventing knowledge of the second roc—was that both rocs were still well to the far side of the boundary of the land King Corone called his, at the edge of the wild lands, where only the boldest hunters went, where there were known to be basilisks and chimeras as well as taralians and norindours and ladons and a wyvern or two. This territory had never been claimed by any human government because of the difficulty of administering it—although there were rumours of encampments of humans as wild as any of the beasts, and the occasional mad magician living there.

But if the rocs as yet came no nearer, neither did they go away. It had been two generations since anyone from Balsinland had seen a roc to be sure it was a roc—and more than one had not been seen, even in the wild lands, since the Great Hunt.

Farley took his own company of the Queen’s Own to a different mountain, and Farley’s company had also seen a roc. The messages he sent made it clear that Farley’s roc was a third.

A little over a fortnight after Sylvi’s birthday party there was a terrific row—between Thowara and Danacor. Thowara had Poih and Oyry with him. Danacor had returned long enough to speak to his father in private, and was going out again at once. The pegasi were insisting on going with Danacor and Garren, who was accompanying his brother. Danacor was equally insisting that he did not want to risk them—as he put it. If they came, he said, they must not fly, on account of the norindours, on account of the rocs—in which case they should stay away altogether. They replied that this land—Balsinland—lay next to their own Rhiandomeer, and that they were the bound and sworn allies of the sons and daughters of Balsin, which meant that they were bound and sworn to protect Balsin’s land, or hadn’t Danacor read the treaty lately?

Eight Speakers were present to translate between the two humans and three pegasi—plus Lrrianay and Corone. Corone had sent a message to his daughter, requesting her presence, and so she had to go, however much she shrank from hearing—or not hearing—three humans and four pegasi talking to each other—arguing with each other.

At first she could hear nothing but the ordinary murmur of human voices—the ordinary murmur that was to her no longer ordinary—saying the sort of courtly-negotiation things that typically made her struggle to stay awake. Even in this case the orotund flow of the Speakers’ voices—they spoke in a kind of overlapping chant, like a part-song—began to make her feel sleepy. Perhaps this relaxed her concentration till she began to pick out the three separate strands of the conversation: the humans, the Speakers—and the pegasi. She could not hear precisely what the pegasi said, but she felt she could not hear them as one might not be able to hear a lute if a huge drum was thundering away beside it. She was hearing the strange singing rhythm of the pegasi silent-speech, and she heard it because it was so different from the rhythms of human speech. She could hear what Danacor said because he was accustomed to addressing crowds, and because when the king’s heir or his brother spoke, the other humans fell silent. When a pegasus spoke, a magician, or more than one, spoke at the same time, translating; sometimes a third or fourth magician broke in to add something. Sylvi began to wake up again, and listen hard. And she became uneasily certain that the magicians’ translation was less than perfect. By accident or incapacity? Or by design?

I must tell my father, she thought. Her thought in his private office, with Lord Cral, before the news of the rocs had arrived, had been put away in the ensuing uproar; and she was half-relieved for the excuse. But she could not hide behind her uncertainty forever: she was looking at a forever about blood, not ink. Perhaps it was not forever, but it was as long as Balsinland had been in existence, and as long as it would remain Balsinland.

Everything was different since her trip to Rhiandomeer. Everything she had thought she understood was changed; how could she recognise or judge anything new? She could not forget being a tall, narrow, top-heavy human with flailing arms surrounded by pegasi; she could not forget the shock of returning to the palace after three weeks in Rhiandomeer. Perhaps I am not hearing the pegasi, she thought; perhaps it’s just the strangeness I’m hearing, the strangeness of being here, of pretending to be the old Lady Sylviianel, fourth child of King Corone IV. . . . But the lute-singing in her ears now was only like pegasi silent-speech. She knew what she was hearing, in spite of the strangeness of everything, including the strangeness of hearing the pegasi in Balsinland, where the air seemed to swaddle you round, to both muffle and protect you.

She thought clearly and calmly, I must tell my father.... If the magicians would be quiet a moment I could hear....

Eliona and Hirishy had joined the company on the low dais at the head of the king’s receiving room; Hirishy promptly found a curtain to stand behind. The scattering of courtiers, barons and senators was growing as the word spread what was happening. Once or twice the discussion broke down while Danacor and Thowara merely shouted at each other. Sylvi had never heard a pegasus shout before; it wasn’t something the pegasi did. Thowara made a noise like a combination of a horse’s neigh and the king’s Guild of Heralds on a feast-day: the only time she had heard anything like it was the day that her father had banished Fthoom, when Lrrianay had trumpeted. But today Thowara was not merely louder but angrier. The pegasi were never angry either. And Sylvi was increasingly sure that neither her brothers nor her brothers’ pegasi were understanding more than one word in five of what the other was saying—despite the Speakers. What shamans were at the palace? Would it be worth asking—or was that one of the things she dared not do, because it meant that she favoured the pegasi? And perhaps the shamans would be as confused as she was. If Hibeehea were here, would he not be able to create some symmetry to this chaos? But he had left—he was back in Rhiandomeer—because human magic made him ill.

There was a brief pause in the proceedings—while, Sylvi thought, Danacor and Thowara got their breath back—and a rustle behind her, and a silky black head appeared over her shoulder.

I hope I’ve missed most of this, whatever it is, said Ebon.

I think so, said Sylvi. I think Thowara’s winning. He wants to go with Danacor—he and the others with their bondmates.

Yes—I know about this. They’ve been rahmerarahmering about it a while.

Thowara’s determined to go. He thinks he should take a—take a—what do you call it? Regiment. Of pegasi. With him. There’re a lot of volunteers.

Rahmerarahmering was a good word for it. They were going at it again now. The magicians’ voices rose as they tried to keep pace.

I . . . Sylvi hesitated. I’m not sure the magicians are translating as well as . . . as well as we depend on them to.

Danacor’s Speaker was now translating Danacor back to Thowara, who was standing stiffly, head a little bit back so he could look Danacor, who was a tall man, in the eye. Thowara’s wings were half roused, but held rigidly back, rather than curved out to the sides. Anger, thought Sylvus. This is what pegasus anger looks like.

Should we—no, we’re not allowed, the senate and the council are still arguing about us, and Iridin—Why don’t your shamans come? In frustration, knowing the answer, she cried out, Hibeehea speaks human better than I do!

They’ve all gone home—you know that. Nmmoor’s the only one left, and she wasn’t invited here, said Ebon. Our shamans are never invited, except to parties. Not to the courts.

Who told you? said Sylvi. Who told you to come here?

Glarfin. He said “Sylviianel” and then led me here. But I should be here. Even if neither one of us is doing any good, even if—

Even if they won’t let us try. Should I tell my father—

But at this point Lrrianay stepped forward and slowly—that there could be no mistake—formally and quietly demanded his and his people’s rights as set out in the treaty. There was a collective sigh from most of the humans present, because even without the Speakers’ translation it was clear by the way Lrrianay stood—every shining hair on his body saying king, Sylvi thought—what he was declaring.

And so it was decided that Thowara and his two brothers would go with the human company; with Thowara, and under his command, would go five more, and another ten would follow, as soon as the message went back to Rhiandomeer that they were needed.

And Danacor would be carrying the Sword.

It had happened that way several times before, that the young heir rode out with the Sword while the elder ruler remained in the city, to govern and think and negotiate and plot. King Corone formally handed the Sword over to his eldest son—the Sword having agreed to be so handed—and the ceremony was a brief but very beautiful one. But what was a glorious tale in the history books was grim and awful when it was happening to you.

Dinner on Danacor’s last evening was hushed and tense. The king and queen from long practise of difficult conversations did the best, chatting about ordinary things without ignoring the fact that Danacor was riding to war. Several times when runners or other messengers concerning the campaign came to whisper in the king’s ear, the king responded as if the whispers were no more alarming than those on the night before a feast day, when the guild of flute-players was feuding with the guild of viol players and there was the dire threat that neither would appear. Danacor tried to take the lead from his father, but was only half successful. His left hand, as if involuntarily, kept touching his belt, where the Sword had hung this afternoon for the first time, and where it would hang tomorrow for . . . no one knew how long. Their pegasi had been present only briefly; Thowara and Oyry had preparations to make for the morrow—and even Ebon had said, Best I go with my brothers now, dearheart. Sylvi had nodded, feeling the difference between them again yawning like a void—or like the beak of a roc, which was big enough to catch and swallow a pegasus. Rhiandomeer seemed a million years ago.

Sylvi finally managed, at the end of the evening, to slip up to Danacor to say a private good-bye; and then she could find no words for it.

She looked up at him—she remembered when he was her age now, and she not much more than a toddler, and he had been so big and fine and grand, and she was so proud to have him as her big brother. She had been much more dazzled by the manifest splendour of her big brother than by the fact that her parents were king and queen of the country; being a king and queen seemed chiefly to mean talking to a lot of boring people about boring things (and being a princess seemed to be about being polite to people you didn’t want to have to speak to at all, and learning boring indoor book-ink-and-paper lessons even on sunny days), while Danacor was spending his afternoons in the practise yards with the horsemaster and the master-at-arms—and occasionally the queen, who didn’t like boring indoor things very much either. Sylvi, when she could escape nursemaid and governess, would hang on the fence and watch.

Her mother told her years later that her governess had let her escape far oftener than a stricter or more traditionalist educator would have. The young woman gravely told the queen that fresh air was always good for a growing child, and that since children will find people to idolise, it seemed to her a good thing to indulge the lady Sylviianel in idolising such a fine young man.

The queen told this story grinning at the memory: “Scai was such a serious young woman. Her mother had stood in your grandmother’s army, and it makes me wonder what effect it had on her child-rearing.”

Warfare. It had just been a proud glorious game, when Sylvi was four and six and eight and Danacor was sixteen and eighteen and twenty. Even when he had begun to take his turn on patrol, for they had since Balsin’s day patrolled the border with the wild lands, she had felt no fear. No taralian had a hope of getting the best of her brother; any taralian with any sense would see him and run away. She looked up at him now, the night before he rode out with the Sword at his side, and remembered the tall boy in the practise yards. Danacor looked down at her and smiled, but he didn’t seem to have anything to say either.

“I’ll come watch you ride out,” she said at last. “As I used to watch you in the practise yards, when you were learning. . .” Her voice trailed away.

“Yes,” he said, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. He put his hand on her shoulder, and then looked at her again as if reconsidering something he had previously discarded.“You’re growing!” he said, and this time his smile reached his eyes. “You are growing! Syl, you’re growing at last. Soon you’ll need a special low chair to sit at table with the rest of us,” he said, teasing her, but she burst out—

“I’m not! I’m not growing!”

Danacor looked startled, and dropped his hand.“Well, you are, you know, but I thought you’d be pleased. I thought you always hated being small.”

She couldn’t tell him about Ebon and flying, so instead she muttered the first thing she could think of: “I’m sorry. It’s just—everything is changing.” Has already changed.

“Yes,” he said again. His eyes strayed to the door. They’d had dinner in the Little Hall off the Great Hall where the Sword still hung for one more night. “Well, it does. Everything changes. But I’ll be back, Sylvi, love. That won’t change.” He stooped and kissed her, and soon after that the melancholy party finished breaking up, everyone going to an early bed, for there would be much to do tomorrow for everyone.

Again that night Sylvi had difficulty sleeping, to the dismay of the hounds who had lately learnt to like sharing the princess’ bed. She got up at last (to the hounds’ relief), and put her dressing gown on, and went and sat on the window-sill. There was no moon, and the sky was low and dark with cloud; even the air was oppressive, and she could hear more voices and movements than she should be able to at such an hour—on any night that the heir was not riding out the next day carrying the Sword into battle. Restlessly she stood up again, and went to a little chest that stood on a shelf next to one of her sky holds, and opened it.

It had previously held hair ribbons, but with her sixteenth birthday she would use these rarely any more, and had moved them to the back of a shelf in her wardrobe, incongruously near the hook where her sword now hung. The little chest now contained small souvenirs of her journey to Rhiandomeer: a bright blue feather from an unknown bird, a yellow leaf from a seehar tree (seehars did not grow in Balsinland), a loop of badly plaited llyri grass—badly because she’d done it herself. The little vial of water from the Dreaming Sea. Her hand hesitated over this for a moment, picked it up and held it so that she was looking through it, toward the grey rectangle of the window. She breathed out slowly. Ssshuuwuushuu. . . .

The water in the little vial moved—expanded—no; her hand held the tiny bottle as before. But her vision sharpened, focussed....

She saw the roc first: yellow-gold, tawny, huge, so huge that it was several moments before she saw that it moved in response to . . . a tiny human. A tiny pegasus. One tiny human. One tiny pegasus. No, that was not possible; she sucked her breath in in horror, because in the next moment she would see them killed....

And with her gasp the vision was gone, and her hand holding the vial was shaking. She laid the vial back in the chest, unwillingly remembering what she had seen: the tawny roc, the bright red-gold pegasus, the human in battle leathers holding a short sword in one hand and a spear in the other—a spear shorter than one of the roc’s toenails, a sword shorter than one of its pinfeathers. When the pegasus had spread its great wings—a blow from a pegasus’ wing could break a taralian’s back—they looked as tiny as the palms of Sylvi’s hands. She stared unseeingly at the other contents of the chest for some minutes, till the remains of the vision left her.

Aliaalia had given her one of the pegasi’s little embroidered bags as a farewell gift, and Sylvi had put Ebon’s bead in it—the bead she’d worn round her neck during her six days in the Caves. She hadn’t looked at it since she’d been home.

She tipped it slowly out into the palm of her hand. It lay there, dark, inert—dead. She closed her hand over it and felt as if something inside her were breaking. Her heart? Her will? She squeezed both her hand and her eyes shut. And then slowly opened them again.

As if it had taken a moment to wake up, sleepy after too long a nap, the bead was just beginning to glow, with a faint throb like a heart. At first she thought she was imagining it, but as she watched, the glow strengthened and steadied, till it was so bright she could not see her hand behind it.

For several weeks there was little news; Danacor sent terse descriptions, tied to the legs of carrier-pigeons, of quartering the lower slopes of the boundary mountains. Then a dusty, distressed pigeon missing a few primaries brought the news of the first skirmish; there were a few wounded—although neither Danacor nor his brothers, nor any pegasus—but no one killed. A human messenger on a tired horse brought more news, and, when he returned, he took a packhorse with him, loaded with small padded cages containing more carrier pigeons. About a week after that, a pegasus—no one Sylvi knew—came with more news, both what he could tell and a letter from Danacor hung round his neck in a little bag like a nrala: he was closeted with Corone, Lrrianay and Fazuur for several hours.

The day after he left, Garren rode in through the northwest gate of the Wall with Poih at his side.

Sylvi and Ebon went at once to the king’s receiving room to hear Garren’s report. The scouts, crossing the border and going deep in the wild lands, had discovered the mouths of caves leading—they suspected, as far as they dared explore, as much as the magicians with them could guess—to a great network of underground caves; and the passages they did explore were clearly used by taralians and norindours. Garren looked old and grim and determined. “This is not something Danny wanted to send a messenger with, even a messenger who had seen the caves himself. So I said we’d go, Poih and I. And we could bring more troops back.

“We had Doarday up to take a look, and he believes that there are many more of both taralians and norindours than we have any idea of—that they have been hiding and growing and increasing for a long time. Maybe generations. We should have been keeping better watch . . . but the truth is that we would still not have found the caves if we hadn’t been searching that specific area—”

“Which means that the rocs wanted us to find them,” said the king. “That this is something they have been planning. Neither taralians nor norindours plan far in advance; their great cleverness is on the immediate field of battle, when they can see openings and possibilities that slow humans cannot—and pegasi are too honourable to take such advantage. Nor do the two races live together. All this is, I fear, the doing of rocs.”

Sylvi listened without understanding the details to the rest of the conversation; it ended when the king said, “I will write it down and send a messenger with it now. You need food and sleep, and a regiment cannot move as quickly as a single horse and rider, especially a quick horse and a clever rider.”

“If it please you, sir,” said Sylvi. “There is no one quicker or cleverer than Lucretia.”

“Indeed,” said the king. “If you can spare her, Sylviianel, please send for her.”

Spare her, thought Sylvi. She’s so edgy and impatient she’s become the scourge of the practise yards. We’ll be glad to see her go.

“We cannot know what the rocs’ plan is,” said Garren, “and Danny says that for now we must do the obvious thing—drive the creatures out of their burrows and destroy them—and watch our backs. How soon can the Second Horse Guards be ready to leave?”

“Tomorrow,” said the king. “I don’t guarantee before breakfast, but before noon. I will see if there is a company or two of someone else we can spare as well; because if the rocs are putting their plan, whatever it is, into action, then we must assume we need more eyes actively watching here too.

“That gives you time for food and sleep. And I would have you talk to the queen; she is out on patrol, but she will be here this evening. She hunted taralians in those mountains.”

Garren nodded.“She kept telling us to look for caves—especially a network of caves. Ginab wasn’t enthusiastic and even Doarday thought it unlikely.”

“She’ll be sorry she was right.”

“Yes.” Garren’s smile had no humour in it. He paused long enough to hug Sylvi—without ever quite seeing her, she thought—and left.

Sylvi made to do the same herself. She had already sent a footman to look for Lucretia; it was as well she had someone to send, because her own limbs felt heavy, and her thinking stunned. Taralians and norindours living underground—many of them—ready to pour out upon the country—her country. She could not grasp it—she could not make herself understand that the king would be putting extra watchers on the Wall in response to Garren’s report—that warehouses and under-used buildings inside the Wall would be readied for refugees, or wounded. What she could grasp was that Danacor and Farley, and Garren again soon, were in terrible danger. A terrible danger that, if they could not contain it, would indeed spread over the entire country . . . and at last come here, to the king’s city within its Wall, to the palace, to her home.

She put out a hand blindly and encountered Ebon’s shoulder. Bad, he said.

Very bad.

They turned to leave, but her father beckoned to them. There was a new look on his face. She could never remember a time when he did not seem tired and needing to think about too many things at once, most of which he would not or could not explain to his daughter. But always before he could set it aside occasionally, and play with her or tease her brothers or swing her mother around in an impromptu dance—he was an excellent dancer—or engage them all in a ballad-composing contest, which he would win unless all five of them united to outdo him. This new tiredness was of a sort that could not be set aside, till the end of some great matter was reached. She wished she could see it in his face that he believed that the end would be reached as he wished it to be. Lrrianay walked a few paces away from the human king, and Ebon followed him; Sylvi could hear a faint rustle of pegasus speech. She missed Niahi, and Niahi’s gaiety and sparkle. Niahi had flown home with her mother two days after the party, with the shamans. But with this news even Niahi’s brightness might go dull.

“I have seen Fthoom,” her father said, and sighed. “I am sorry, child—sorry for all of us. But he demands to give his report. I hear in his voice that it is a report that pleases him, which means it will not please us. Those of his assistants who report to me say that he found something not long ago that pleased him tremendously, but they do not know what it is. I have said that we have other, mightier concerns on our hands, but Fthoom says that what he will tell us has great import upon those mightier concerns. You know of the petition to reinstate him—he has hinted all these four years that we need his strength; he says almost openly now that we will need it worse when we hear what he has to say.

“He says he brings proof of the tale that he will tell, and on my orders he spent yesterday in the Hall of Magicians, being grilled by his own. Andovan and Fahlraken have brought me the guilds’ confirmation that what he says is true and that his proof is true proof, though they do not know what of any more than I do. I trust their word, and I trust the Hall.”

It was one of the purposes of the Hall of Magicians that any magician standing in it had to tell the truth. It had been Gandam’s idea that there should be somewhere in the palace of the monarch where not even the cleverest magician would be able to beguile and deceive. It did not work as well as Gandam had hoped, perhaps because his own powers had been failing when he laid its five cornerstones; but as Ahathin had explained, somewhat drily, to Sylvi some years before, it was at least a good deal harder to lie in the Hall of Magicians than out of it. A determined panel of questioners could get at the truth—or so it had been believed for eight hundred years. Andovan and Fahlraken were two of the oldest members of the magicians’ guilds, and had been in the service of the monarch all that time—they were among the few magicians who were neither dazzled nor frightened by Fthoom. Neither of them had been present four years before, when the king had banished him.

“Sylviianel,” said her father, calling her back to the present, “I have agreed to listen to him. I can do nothing else; I do not have the time to waste to keep putting him off—even more so now that we have heard Garren’s news.”

Sylvi thought, I do not want to depend on Fthoom’s strength. I do not want to know that there are times when the king can do only what he wants not to do. I do not want to hear my father say to me, I can do nothing else. I wish that Danny and Garren and Farley and the folk with them were home safe—and that the Second Horse Guards were not going anywhere tomorrow. I wish those caves were empty. I wish that there were no caves....

I wish I had never come home from Rhiandomeer.

I must tell Dad . . . tell him what? That I could talk to the other pegasi in their own country, but that I—I don’t know how reliable it is now that I’m home again? That I am not reliable now that I am home again? That I see things in little bottles of water? That the air I breathe in Balsinland is heavy in a way the air in Rhiandomeer is not? That I agree with the pegasi that what is wrong between us is something about our magicians—our magic? That I think so because I met Dorogin in the pegasi Caves? Dorogin, who has been dead for seven hundred years?

That I am allying myself with the pegasi against my own people? Isn’t that exactly what Fthoom would want, so he could exile me?

She put her hand to her throat, as if she could not breathe, as if she could not speak. I wish I might have had one more flight with Ebon. I wish we might have had one more afternoon lying on the grass in the sunlight, even knowing the end is coming. I wish....

They had not gone flying since she had returned from Rhiandomeer. They had not been flying, therefore, just the two of them as they had once done whenever Ebon was at the palace, since before her journey to his homeland—a time that now seemed so long ago she could barely remember it.

Perhaps they had never been flying, just the two of them, with Ebon’s mane tangling her own hair, and the world framed by his wings. Perhaps she had imagined it. Perhaps she had imagined that she could talk to the pegasi.

She wished she had imagined it.

She had said to her mother, How can everything change in three weeks? Three little weeks. Her mother had smiled and answered, Sometimes they change in a moment.

Her father continued, “I have given Fthoom a conference for the day after tomorrow. You and Ebon will attend, of course.” He stood up. “I must talk to Lrrianay.” As he looked around for his bondmate, Lrrianay turned his head as if he had heard his name spoken, and Fazuur materialised at the king’s elbow. The king turned back to his daughter for a moment and put his hands on her shoulders and stared at her as if she held some answer to an important question.

“Dad—” she began, nerving herself to ask him for a moment of private speech, to tell him what she had to tell him, but as she said it her voice cracked, and he didn’t hear her.

The same look she had seen in Danacor’s eyes the last evening came into her father’s. “You’re growing!” he said.

She bit her lip. But she replied, “Yes. I know. I am.”