Pegasus

CHAPTER 19

There were many more people present for Fthoom’s report than there had been on the day, four years ago, when the king had plucked the magician’s spiral from Fthoom’s head and sent him away. Sylvi had been surprised when Glarfin had reported that the meeting would occur in the Little Hall—which was little only in comparison to the Great Hall—rather than the king’s private receiving room. That meant that this was not only a semipublic occasion but that many people were expected to attend. Glarfin would be there again, as he had been four years ago; but this only made her remember his leaping in front of her, to protect her from Fthoom.

Ebon knew the business was serious, but he refused to admit that he took it as seriously as Sylvi had to. His response to Fthoom’s prospective return from exile was, Pity. Any day you see that great rolling barrel in the corridor is a blighted day. And then, sadly, in a tone that sounded eerily like his father, I don’t understand why your magicians grow so—so—umblumbulum, which was a pegasus word that meant, roughly, out of order. Pegasi did not use words like “belligerent” and “aggressive” about their friends and allies, and—she guessed—would hesitate to use such words about any human. Even “powerful” implied the misuse of that power, because why did you possess so much of it? Power existed to be given away. She had seen over and over again how his people approached Lrrianay, had seen how different it was from how his people approached her father—her father who was the kindest and quietest of men—far more like Lrrianay than Fthoom.

She thought again—as she often, involuntarily thought—of Dorogin’s stony eyes in his stony face, staring out at her from the Cave wall, and his stony smile, all saying, Too late.

And Gandam’s, saying, Try.

Sylvi said sadly, I don’t know either. But magic was a power as her father’s sovereignty was a power, which was why no magician was allowed to accept as a student any member of the nobility or of royalty—except on very rare occasions when the student renounced his or her family, or their family renounced them—nor was a magician allowed to marry a member of royalty or blood either, so that the available forms of power could not mount up dangerously in one individual or one rank.

Redfora could not have existed. She was just a story the pegasi told. A story that could seem to come to life when told by a wily old shaman like Hibeehea.

Sylvi wished she could gouge out the look in Dorogin’s stony eyes, and change the course of history. She wished Fthoom had been eaten by a sea monster.

The thrum of suppressed excitement from the Little Hall was audible from a long way off. Well, these corridors do echo, she told herself, marching down the stairs from her attic office, where she had been pretending to read an historical survey of the reign of Queen Egelair III, during which nothing at all had happened except that the crops were excellent year after year and the children healthy and the people long-lived and happy—and the magicians calm and restrained—and Sylvi stared at the paragraphs and wondered why the reign of King Corone IV could not have been similarly boring. Ahathin, who today had been sitting at the other end of the same table, kindly forbore to point out that she hadn’t turned a page in half an hour. Perhaps he hadn’t turned a page either. Ahathin would come with her today—she had asked him to—if what Fthoom had to say was so ill it stopped her thoughts, Ebon should still know what was said.

She had dreaded the occasion even more since she found out that she and Ebon would have to enter the Hall immediately behind, and at the same time as, the two kings, her father and Lrrianay. As mere fourth children they should have come in either earlier or later, with a minimum of fuss, and would ordinarily have been given places less prominent than the king’s chief ministers and the highest-ranking senator and blood present. Or than whatever unfortunate person or group of people was the centre of attention.

But she and Ebon were the centre of attention. She and Ebon and Fthoom.

It was not the noise that struck at her the worst when she came through the door behind her father. It was the tension. It was like walking into glue; she had to stop herself from struggling to escape, wrenching herself backwards, wiping at her face with her hands as if something thick and sticky and clinging were smothering her. She thought Ebon had shivered very slightly when he’d come through the door at her shoulder. She wanted to say something to him—anything—just to hear him answer her, but even their silent speech felt unsafe.

That Ahathin and three footmen flanked them as they entered made it worse, not better: that Glarfin bowed her to her chair and another footman bowed Ebon to his place beside her made it worse, not better, even though she knew that her father was saying, This is my daughter, this is the pegasus king’s son bound to her, and you will do well to remember it in king-language, a language of gesture as clear as any tail-lashing and wing-rousing.

Fthoom was there already. Sylvi had hoped that his bare head would diminish him as it had four years ago, but it did not. He was wearing a different cloak, and while it stood out around him as the old one had, the collar had been redesigned, and was heavily embroidered with the public symbols of the magician’s art. It was worse—again it was worse, Sylvi thought, that he should look so potent and compelling without his magician’s spiral. This was a collar to complement bareheadedness, to make a new fashion in magicianry. None of the other magicians present were wearing spirals; Gornchern and Topo always did, on any and all occasions. But they were bareheaded today. Fahlraken was wearing a single low coil, as he usually did; Andovan was always bareheaded; they stood near the back, together, looking grim.

Immediately in front of the dais stood a young magician she had not seen before, dressed in the long blue robe of a bearer, with the silver chain of truth witnessed round his neck. In his arms he carried a long thin object that might have been a scroll wrapped in a light fabric. He was standing near her chair, and she could see that the fabric was stamped and woven with protective sigils. These caught at her eyes like a hand grasping her arm. She found herself thinking of a great tawny roc, and a red pegasus, and a human with a spear and a sword.

She turned away from Fthoom, from the bearer, from everyone, glad of the excuse not only not to face any magicians for a moment, but to remind herself she could and, at this moment, as she entered the Little Hall and settled herself in her place, should. In formal Court, as this was, you did not turn your back on your betters. She was reminding herself and all the Court that she was a princess, and Fthoom was only a magician. With the roc of her vision still tugging at her attention she thought suddenly of the rocs and taralians and norindours, the ladons and the wyverns of Garren’s report, and their leagues of dark tunnels and unknown exits—and hoped that Danny and Garren and Farley always had good eyes and good swords at their backs. For a moment her own eyes were dazzled blue, not the midnight blue of the bearer’s robe, but as if Danacor stood in front of her, and unsheathed the Sword: but at least the blue flare banished the tawny roc.

She climbed the three steps to her chair, and then she had to turn round again and sit down, and face Fthoom. She was still taller than he, even sitting, on the king’s dais, and her head was level with Ebon’s, who was standing at her side. Ebon looked at her once—an unreadable, unfathomable, silent look—and then faced out, inscrutable as a black statue of a pegasus. She hoped her own face was as expressionless. Ahathin, with the faintest tock of Speaker sticks, took his place beside Ebon.

A herald announced that the Court was present on this day of six sixes after the vertex of spring at the request of the magician Fthoom and the sanction of the king; and herewith it begins.

Fthoom stepped forward, his cloak rustling. “My kings,” he said, and knelt, in precisely his old unmindful gesture. Rising to his feet again he plunged into speech, eager as a child at a party. His eyes glittered—like jewels in sunlight, not like human eyes at all. “My kings,” he said again.“I have done as my king bade me, and studied the records in the royal libraries for all mention of friendship between pegasus and human beyond the binding defined in the Treaty of Alliance. Years this work has taken me, as you know, for there have been many records to study and many reports to consider and weigh; and my work was the harder in that most of those chronicles which dealt specifically with such relationships did not tell plainly of their outcome. I had to use all my skill—all my skill and all my helpers’ skill—to extrapolate what lay hidden: and still no clear picture emerged.”

Which is to say that you found no support at all for your hateful theory and you were working away like anything to think of ways to discredit what you did find, thought Sylvi—and she thought this louder than she realised, for there was a silent hum of agreement from Ebon. But this gave her no comfort; Fthoom had not demanded an audience to declare defeat.

She felt a sense of dread as strong as if Fthoom were to announce a tawny roc waiting for them, now, this minute, in the Great Court.

“Until, but a few months ago, I had a dream. While I have also been suspended from my position in the Guild of Magicians, I have not lost my expertise.”

Sylvi, listening hard, thought that for the first time his voice sounded a little too emphatic, and thought, something good may yet come of this, if his power in that guild has been shaken. She wanted to look at her father, but she didn’t dare; and she also knew that he, of everyone in the Court that day, would never allow anything to be read on his face.

“I had a dream, and I knew at once that it was an important dream. In this dream I saw myself in a far corner of one of the libraries—the farthest oldest corner of our king’s great library—a corner where such fragments of text as have little worth are stored. And in a corner of this corner I laid my hand upon a stone, and found that it was loose in the wall, and drew it out, and found a parchment roll in the dark hollow behind it, old and brown and fragile.”

Sylvi wanted to shout, I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you! It’s a trick! What you say you found—if you found anything—you put there for yourself to find!

The young bearer shifted his position and a breath of alien air fanned across Sylvi’s face with a smell of hot metal and blood.

“My dream, as you will have guessed, spoke truly. I went to the corner of the library, and I found that stone—but it was not loose in the wall, and had I not spells to loosen it, it would remain there still, and its secret dark behind it; and had I not had the dream I would not have recognised the stone that I needed to loosen. This stone has the ancient symbol for lightning etched upon it, as guard and ward; but it itself had been warded, that no one might see there was something there defended, for whoever hid this thing badly wanted none to find it. And had I—I—not been so absorbed—consumed—by my desire to fulfil my obligation to my king that even my dreaming self did continue the search on planes of being and perception I cannot reach awake, I too might have passed it by. As it was I spoke certain subtle words of power, and I drew the lightning-blazed stone out, and there I found the parchment roll.”

Fthoom paused, sure of his audience. “That parchment roll,” he said, his voice now low, and slippery as oil on a plate, “tells a story of the reign of King Ascur II, who was also twelfth of his line.”

Ascur II, thought Sylvi frantically. Ascur II—she could remember a little about him because he did not have a placid reign like Egelair III, and he made more interesting reading—what—there was a war, and the crown went to a cousin—it was a long time ago, long before the Great Hunt—some of the palace got knocked down—the war had rocs in it—

“In the days of Ascur II, there was a deadly invasion of taralians, norindours, ladons and wyverns, and led by rocs. The kingdom was hard-pressed by these creatures, and whether Ascur’s forces or the opposing army would win at last was often in doubt. The war stretched on for years, with neither side able to claim a decisive victory.

“Ascur had three sons; the youngest was named Tilbad. He was bound, at the age of twelve, to the pegasi king’s third child, a daughter, Erex.”

Three children? But the crown went to a cousin. The Sword chose—I can’t remember anything—

She heard the echo of a great—a vast—hoarse shriek, perhaps like the sound that a roc might make—she shook her head to clear it. No, she was imagining this, as she was imagining the tawny roc of her vision in the Great Court.

“The war broke out several years after this binding: four years, in fact, although the two events appeared to have nothing in common. When Tilbad reached the age of seventeen, he and Erex joined the army and they were, the records tell us, very valiant. But the army—including Tilbad and Erex—were now driven back till they were fighting within the palace Wall—the Wall which was still of some defense against taralians, but its magic was failing as the strength of Ascur’s armies failed.

“The battle went ill for Ascur’s army; so ill, at last, that the Wall was breached, and the palace fired. So much all our histories tell us. But this is where the lightning-guarded scroll takes up the story:

“The palace was torched and burning, and there were only scattered handfuls of defenders left. Everyone who could be sent away had been sent long ago; Ascur was now trying to gather what remained of his forces for a tactical retreat—even though he knew there was nowhere left to retreat to.

“His messages had gone out, and his soldiers gathered slowly round him. Those who came did not include Tilbad and Erex, although no one could say they had seen them fall; and as the beaten remnants of the army crept through what had once been the parkland surrounding the palace of the king, they saw Tilbad and Erex—fighting a roc. Alone.

“I assume you all know how large a roc is? Even the smallest of them can pick up a war-horse with one claw and its armoured rider with the other, and fly away with them. One man—and one pegasus—cannot possibly defeat a roc alone.

“And so Ascur watched in great anguish, waiting to see the death of his third son, for two of his sons had perished already, and he was himself sore wounded, and his horse killed, and he could not go to Tilbad’s aid; nor were any of his soldiers in any better state, and Ascur feared any fumbling interference would only bring about the deaths of Tilbad and Erex the sooner. The only magician present lay half delirious on a rough pallet. His own pegasus—Erex’s father, the pegasus king—stood trembling beside him, his broken wing tied awkwardly over his back. Time, for Ascur, slowed.

“And, because it slowed, and because of the great pain and distress of mind he was in, which sharpened his perceptions almost past bearing, he noticed something more clearly than he had ever done before: the curiously intense partnership of Tilbad and Erex. It was almost as if they could talk to each other—as if they could hear each other’s thoughts. They moved around the roc as if each knew what the other was doing—even when they were out of sight of each other—what each was trying to do, and would do next. They covered for each other in ways no ordinary human soldiers, nor any ordinary pair of bound Excellent Friends, should have been able to do.

“It was at the moment Ascur was saying these things to himself that the truly impossible thing happened: Tilbad slew the roc. But in dancing out of the way of the roc’s sword-sharp beak one last time— for the death throes of a roc are also deadly to the smaller folk within its long reach—Erex stumbled with weariness. And a ladon which had been waiting its chance thudded down upon her, and broke her back, and she fell lifeless to the earth.

“Then the second miracle happened: for the roc, instead of seizing Tilbad as he threw himself heedlessly upon the body of his friend, seized the ladon—and squeezed the breath out of it, and tossed its body down to lie beside Erex.

“Everyone knows that a roc speaks truth as it dies, although rarely is the truth it speaks welcome. This roc opened its beak, and its dark blood dripped upon the ground. ‘A curse upon that ladon, and a curse upon its children, and its children’s children’s children. For we have come within a breath of taking this land back from the inimical humans and the skulking pegasi which allied themselves with the invaders; and by the deed of one ladon we will lose all.

“ ‘For that alliance is rotten at the heart of it; humans are set apart from the other creatures of the earth, and no other race may bind itself to them. You have been protected by the weakness of the binding between your two races, in that human and pegasus cannot speak each other’s language and be understood. Have you not wondered why this should be so? That it takes your best magicians’ best efforts to make any communication possible? The pegasus shamans gave it up generations ago; to save their miserable skins they forbore to tell you humans the truth. The truth is that your selves, your spirits, your beings, are absolutely opposed to each other: to draw you closer together is to press the sword point to your own hearts.’ ”

Ebon was hearing Fthoom through Sylvi—in her anguish the story poured through her; it was as if she were shouting at him. It would have been better if he had heard it from Ahathin, a story translated from another world, as if nothing to do with him. She wished she could hold it off, close that door, turn her face away from her best friend—no, she needed him to hear what she was hearing, and what use to protect him? She heard the faint creak of feathers as his wings flattened; she heard Fazuur, who was translating for Lrrianay, stumble over the soft pegasi syllables, and could imagine his nimble, speaking hands suddenly drop motionless to his sides; had his silent-speech also stuttered to a halt?

She had not noticed that the smell of blood and death had grown stronger; only that her sense of despair was growing as huge as the wingspread of a roc.

“ ‘Your son and your daughter, they who lie now at my feet, they could speak to each other. And by that speaking they have indeed bound your two races closer together; but that closeness is a wound, and the blood and breath of each is poisonous to the other, and the bodies of your two races are dying of it. When this war was first mooted, I was one of those who spoke against it: the humans are too strong, I said. And I have been amazed that it is not so. I have been amazed, till this last half hour.’

“ The roc gasped, and the death rattle was in its breast. ‘This ladon, this single, wretched creature, has ruined all that; for the partnership is broken too soon. Such a thing will not come again for generations—generations upon generations—and I—I—I will not be here to see it.’ And the roc drew in one last, terrible, rasping breath, and died.

“Ascur, not knowing what else to do, went to his son, and attempted to lift him, but his own wounds prevented him; and he said, ‘We must get away from here; there is nothing you can do for Erex.’ Tilbad rose to his feet, but his gaze was turned inward, and it was as though he did not see that his own father stood before him sore injured. He said, ‘I will die of this wound, Father,’ though there was no mark on him.

“And so it was, for Tilbad died twenty-three months later, having lived long enough to be a part of the driving of the remaining rocs and their allies out of his father’s kingdom, for as if upon the death of Erex, the human army rallied; it grew stronger and fiercer than anyone who had stood with Ascur that day and watched Tilbad kill a roc would have believed possible. Tilbad saw peace re-established, and the farmers growing a new year’s crops untroubled in their old fields, and the stock fattening, and children playing in the meadows.

“It was said of Tilbad that from the moment of Erex’s death he never smiled, nor spoke any word that was not absolutely necessary; and that he fought tirelessly, and took risks no sane man would take—and lived; which is as some men do, from a grief too great for them to bear. And when Tilbad had seen that his father’s land—his own land—our sweet green land—was safe again, he disappeared. But when the news had come to the king that Tilbad could not be found, the king blanched, saying nothing, but rose from his chair and went at once to Erex’s grave. Few pegasi are buried within the palace Wall, but Tilbad had begged this favour of both his father and Erex’s, and so she had been buried in a little private glade some distance from the palace, in a place no one would notice or go, unless they wished to visit her grave. And there Tilbad’s breathless body was found, curled up on its side, head resting near the head of the grave. And there was no mark on him.”

Sylvi was paralysed. She could feel her mouth fallen a little open, feel her body bent a little forward and resting its weight on her two clenched hands on the chair-arms, her elbows bent up and behind her like rudimentary wings. In her mind a tiny voice said, And what wound was it Tilbad died of? The loss of his friend or the lie the roc told? Rocs speak the truth when they are dying, her conscience answered miserably; it is in the histories. They speak the truth when they are dying, and they live almost forever—if that roc hadn’t been killed, it might be one of those facing us now; those we face might remember it, and remember its death. But the tiny wild voice replied, Who says they tell the truth? And what truth do they not tell?

Ebon still stood like a stone pegasus.

The bearer moved very slightly again, causing the faintest hush sound of his robe against the sigil-stamped fabric, or of the fabric against whatever it protected.

The smell of blood and death was overwhelming.

Since she had never heard such a thing before, Sylvi did not at first recognise the sound of her father shouting for silence over the tumult in the Little Hall. That there was tumult around her did not register with her at all, the tumult in her mind and heart was so much greater—the tumult inside her, and Ebon’s silence. Why was he not saying what she wished to say—that Fthoom was a liar, that this story was a fabrication created of Fthoom’s overwhelming greed for power, a power potentially threatened by her and Ebon, by the flood of eager suggestions Iridin was putting into order. Ebon’s silence and stillness was as if a part of her were missing; as if a leg or an arm, hitherto faithful, had simply ceased to answer her wishes. And with that she realised for the first time how much a part not just of her life but of herself he was.

And in that same moment she realised that she would lose him.

Again she heard the ghostly cry of a roc, but this time she knew it was a cry of triumph.

Her father was on his feet, shouting. The king never had to raise his voice to be heard; he was the king, and his subjects listened. But many people were shouting: Fthoom, and the magicians with him—and Fazuur was at the front of the dais, on his knees, shouting at them—and some of the courtiers, as well as the king. Most of the ministers, the senators and the blood looked dazed, but Senator Barnum was waving his arms and shouting too.... Sylvi found that she had also come to her feet as if the noise were a sea that threatened to drown her, and she was straining to hold her head above water. Someone’s hands were holding her up, grasping her upper arms, and she knew without looking that the hands belonged to Glarfin, and she leaned into them as she struggled for some—any—clarity of mind.

She turned her head and that link at least was still there, for Ebon moved at last, and turned his head at the same moment as she turned hers, and they stared into each other’s eyes, each reading shock and love and despair in the other’s.

Sylvi—

Ebon—

We’ll never forget—

They’re wrong—wrong—

We are bound—

That is the true thing—

Never forget—you are my heart’s—

And then a sound like the end of the world broke in even on their silent speech, for Lrrianay was standing on his hind legs and trumpeting a great belling cry: This was little like his shout four years ago, nor yet that of his son a few months ago. This was a war-cry, the sound of someone who goes into battle knowing already that the battle is lost, but knowing it must be fought, even if he dies of it. Sylvi said, Oh, Lrrianay, you are also my father, and Aliaalia is my mother, and Niahi is my sister . . . but she doubted he heard her.

No one had ever heard such a noise indoors before; pegasus bodies, with their hollow bones and vast airways are more resonant sounding-boards than most musical instruments, and Lrrianay was angry. He spread his great wings, and footmen and ministers scrambled out of the way, and the draft of just that first sweep open blew Sylvi’s hair back. Again she smelt the Rhiandomeer smell of earth and flowers, and this time it smelled like good-bye.

Those who knew no word of the pegasi language could nonetheless hear what he was saying, with his ears flat back like an angry horse’s but his eyes much brighter and fiercer and more intelligent than any horse: Quiet! Quiet! There will be order in this place! I say so, Lrrianay, king of the pegasi!

Sylvi, even in her desolation, saw Fthoom, who had come so far forward that he was leaning over the edge of the dais with the lustre of triumph rising off him like a stench, step back and fall silent.

Quiet fell quickly, and Lrrianay dropped back to four legs and drew his wings together again, though they would not settle, and his feather-hands were spread like fans. He might have knocked half the people off the dais, had he been even a little careless, but he had reared immediately behind his bondmate, and so briefly Corone had been haloed as if he too had wings. There was a little fox-fire glint on many pegasus wings, but it was very strong now on Lrrianay, and tiny kinked rainbows ran dizzyingly from his shoulders.

Fleetingly he put his nose to Corone’s temple as if returning a mandate briefly borrowed—and Sylvi registered that Lrrianay actually touched him, as she felt Ebon’s velvet nose briefly touching her own cheek. Corone’s face was cold and angry, and Sylvi was so confused and unhappy that she wondered if perhaps he was angry at her and Ebon. If it were not for them, none of this would be happening . . . and perhaps . . . No, no, Fthoom was lying!

The room was now as unnaturally silent as it had been unnaturally noisy a moment before; the young bearer seemed to have stopped breathing. Corone spoke quietly, but everyone present heard every word. “This is a great matter that has been set before us, and the king must respond to it at once. The king’s daughter and Lrrianay’s son shall be kept apart from this moment, until those who may understand such affairs have looked into this one with the care and caution vital in a situation which may bear upon the future of the entire country. If what Fthoom has revealed to us today is as simple as it appears, he has done us a very great service.”

The king paused. Fthoom smiled, and again it seemed to Sylvi that his eyes glittered queerly. But to her now there was nothing human about him—he was a taralian, a norindour, a roc; how strange it was that he should stand upright and wear a human magician’s robe. She shivered as if her father had struck her, but if Glarfin’s hands had not still held her arms, she might have thrown herself at Fthoom and tried to draw his blood till his magic turned her into a pebble or a worm. Ebon stood with his feet slightly splayed, as if he too were holding himself back, and Sylvi half noticed that there was another, smaller pegasus standing half in front of him, her shoulder against his, although she was not big enough to hold him if he could not hold himself: Hirishy.

“However,” the king continued, and he spoke very slowly and clearly, “Fthoom brings himself no honour in the means by which he chose to announce this discovery. He has produced disarray and disrespect in the king’s Court, and this in itself is an offense against his monarch and his country. But I hold you responsible for a more grievous crime”—and there was a sharp general intake of breath at these words, for the king never spoke directly to a miscreant; this was very nearly declaring a personal vendetta—“that of causing unnecessary pain to my daughter, the king’s child, and to the pegasus she is bound to, who is the son of the pegasi king who is himself bound to me. This news would be terrible to our two beloved children under any circumstances, and they need not have suffered it on public display.”

Fthoom had stopped smiling.

“You will turn over your findings—all your findings—to such magicians as I shall appoint.

“And then I wish never to see your face again.

“This meeting is ended.”

The well-trained housefolk leaped to open the doors, their muscles taking over while their confounded minds stood still, and the equally confounded audience began to pull itself together and file out. Little jerky bits of conversation began and broke off, and no one looked up at the faces of those on the dais; at most a few glanced sideways, at knees and feet and hoofs. Fthoom left with the rest, but Sylvi did not notice, for as soon as her father had stopped speaking, she pulled herself free of Glarfin’s hands and ran to him, throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest, weeping and weeping and weeping as if she might die of it; and rather than setting her on her own feet kindly and firmly and reminding her that she was a princess, he wrapped his own arms around her and rocked her gently back and forth as if she had been a much younger child, saying,“Oh, my darling, I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

By the time Sylvi had cried herself out, she and her father were alone in the Little Hall, but for the footmen at the doors. Lrrianay and Ebon had gone.