Pegasus Read online

  “That may merely have been the apprehension of approaching trouble for being where you oughtn’t,” said her father drily, and sighed. “I don’t know what it’s like to be an ordinary person bound by ordinary rules—you can perhaps ask your mother—I was born the ruling monarch’s eldest child. And as a person who may rule absolutely over other people you must absolutely obey the rules. I will ask Ahathin to set you new work: in a month’s time you will bring me a paper on village magic, on what the local wise woman or wise man can be expected to do, and how likely it is to be successful. You will, as I say, bring me a paper in a month, and another paper in another month, and thus, until I tell you you may stop.”

  There was a little silence, during which Sylvi considered that she would have less time to ride her pony, and go out with the huntsfolk and the falconers. But she also recognised that this wasn’t punishment like a slap with a riding-whip was, or nothing but plain porridge for a week. This was much worse. But it was also much better.

  “And yes … magic does … something: makes its mere presence felt somehow. I don’t think it’s a smell either. I don’t know what it is. I would like to know. You may consider that this is the purpose behind your research; I think you are more likely to discover the answer investigating straightforward, practical village magic than what the guilds send to the palace. And no one pays much attention to hedge wizards; I have thought before that I would like someone to pay attention and tell me what they see.”

  She had brought her father monthly papers for three years. He had let her off a year ago, but by then she was interested—and the network she had set up for people to bring her stories (people who were first carefully vetted by Ahathin or, lately, one of her guards) was working too well for her to be willing to close it down. She had brought her father three more papers in the last year, and they were all long ones.

  She continued to carry them to him herself, and with the third one this year she finally caught him smiling. “This was as much a set-up as Garren sending me to the Hall in the first place, wasn’t it?” Her father had guessed that one of her brothers had been responsible, and Garren had admitted it—and been assigned three months’ attendance on Nirakla as punishment. She used no magic herself, and was happy to have an extra pair of hands for the summer to bundle and hang, chop and grind herbs for her. “She wanted to know if I wanted to apprentice to her,” Garren had said at a private family supper at the end of his term with her, trying to sound outraged. “She said I chopped really well.”

  Sylvi said again to her father, smiling over her latest paper on hedge magic, “Wasn’t it?”

  “No. Yes,” said her father, and laughed. He didn’t laugh often enough. “One has various things in the back of one’s mind. Occasionally an opportunity presents itself to bring one forward. Most of these opportunities come to nothing. Once in a very great while one—or two—do come to something.”

  Garren had not apprenticed to Nirakla—his father could not spare him so far. But Nirakla had agreed to a half apprenticeship, and the king had allowed his youngest son a certain latitude in terms of creating unnecessary work for his new tutor by knocking people down who were inclined to tease him about his new assignment.

  The thing that had stuck in Sylvi’s mind during her long atonement was that the Hall of Magicians was used when someone wanted the truth about something—the truth when it concerned magic or magicians. The guilds sometimes used it; the king, with or without the presence of the council or the senate, sometimes used it. She wondered—she couldn’t help wondering—what effect the Hall itself had had on her experience and its outcome. She had found the possibility that its enigmatic half-sentience had been involved curiously cheering, as if it was an indication that magic was not quite as inimical as she’d thought. As if magic was more often like Ahathin than it was like Fthoom. Although writing her papers always took longer than she expected, because even the most trifling of village magic didn’t like being pinned into paragraphs.

  But a shadow had grown over this, as over so much in her life. After her twelfth birthday she had wondered if her little study was one reason Fthoom had been so ready to hate her—but surely a princess studying witch-charms for love philtres and fortune-telling and fly-strike in sheep was pitiable, not dangerous?

  Do you have to do something else instead? she asked Ebon. Since they didn’t ground you.

  Mmmh, said Ebon. Our dads are so alike, aren’t they? I have to teach a class of littles flying safety.

  Sylvi laughed.

  She and Ahathin were in the garden examining the botanical structures of loomberries when another king’s messenger trotted past, looking grim and intent; he did not seem to notice them standing in the shrubbery with their notebooks. Without knowing she was going to say anything, Sylvi said: “Ebon says our dads are very alike.”

  After a pause Ahathin said, “Yes. They are.”

  Sylvi turned to look at him. He looked mild and rumpled, as he always looked. “Is that good or bad?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh, good, of course. But …”

  “There are always ‘buts.’”

  “I heard Lord Kanf say that we should make an alliance with Swarl, which has a strong king and a large standing army who would know what to do with our taralians. And norindours. And whatever else keeps coming out of the wild lands.”

  “And your father said he didn’t want someone else’s large standing army underfoot.”

  “And Lord Kanf said, Better allies than taralians.”

  Ahathin said nothing.

  “And then my father said, This is the taralians’ country too,” said Sylvi, “and Lord Kanf said, My lord and king, you are human, not pegasus.”

  But Sylvi could still put everything out of her mind when she and Ebon flew. She never grew weary of flying: after four years the sky-wind in her face delighted her as much as it had on the night of her twelfth birthday.

  The baffling thing to Sylvi was the way the thought of the Caves grew on her—the Caves which, the first time she had asked Ebon about them, he had told her were not a human sort of thing. The Caves where Ebon would some day sculpt some sky view of the landscape around the palace, despite some of the pegasi protesting that the Caves were not for human things. The Caves where the pegasi ssshasssha was held. The Caves where no human had ever set foot.

  She could forget taralians and norindours and their night flights’ newly restricted scope; she could forget how often her mother wasn’t home, and the deepening shadow on her father’s face. She could—sometimes—even forget Fthoom. But lying along Ebon’s back with the great sweep of his wings framing her, peering through the lash of his mane, the one thought that could take her away from the present moment was the thought of the Caves. She longed to see them—she didn’t know why. She guessed perhaps it had begun with listening to him humming his lessons, listening to his stories about the histories on the Cave walls. She thought it might also have to do with his feather-hands on her temples saying the polishing-chant, and the vision that had bloomed behind her eyelids: a curiosity—no, a longing—to try and comprehend ssshasssha.

  Ebon had described his favourite bits of the Caves to her till she felt she could almost see them herself—but only almost. She wanted to stretch out her own hand and stroke the silky surfaces which generations of tiny alula-hands and their light tools had smoothed to a perfection that rougher, stronger human hands could not emulate. But the Caves were far more than half a night’s flight away; nor would it have been possible to enter the Caves without being discovered. There was always someone at the various entrances—

  Oh! said Sylvi. You have guards? Who would want to damage your Caves? They are far inside your country, are they not? Where no one goes but you? And you’ve said taralians and norindours don’t like the mountains—

  Ebon stared at her. Damage? There’s a rite-fire kept burning at the three main entrances, and anyone who is
n’t familiar with the Caves needs a guide, even near the entrances. And unless you’re a sculptor, you have to go with a shaman.

  No guards. Sylvi thought—briefly—of a life, of a location, without guards. It made her longing for the Caves even greater.

  At certain seasons, for certain ceremonies, most of the pegasi come there, over a few days or weeks at a time, mostly, the main entrance has a monster hall just inside but it’s still not big enough for all of us at once. But at any time of the day or year—there are always a few pegasi, sculptors and visitors. You can go for hours without seeing anybody, or sometimes there’s someone in every room, round every corner, shaping every bump in every wall, Ebon said.

  Sylvi dreamed about the Caves sometimes, and sometimes, on dark nights with no moon or stars, she imagined that they were flying through huge Caves. It was on those nights that the wind most seemed to whisper words in her ears, words she could almost understand.

  Ebon had been gone for nearly a fortnight; the days were almost endless without him, despite all the work she found herself doing, and the hours in the practise yards. Lucretia was an excellent sparring partner, and didn’t knock her down—or off her pony—nearly as often as she could: “Naah,” she replied, when Sylvi said as much. “What’s the point of that? Interrupts the flow of a good practise session.” Lucretia had also, however, complimented her on her falling off. “You wouldn’t like to try and teach me how you do that, would you?” she said.

  Sylvi blinked at her and after a moment said, “I’d have to figure out how I do it.”

  “It’ll be good practise for both of us,” said Lucretia.

  A group of pegasi had only just arrived at the palace that morning—including Lrrianay and Ebon. A messenger had come to her study to report this fact, and afterward she’d had trouble keeping her mind on her work. Finally she gave it up as a bad job and fled outdoors, knowing that Ebon would come looking for her as soon as he could, knowing where he’d look first. She was sitting under a tree, trying to pretend that she wasn’t facing the way she was facing because that was the direction Ebon was likeliest to be coming from. It was too cold to be sitting down outdoors doing nothing, so she stood up and paced, looking over her shoulder…. There he was: dazzling black, graceful as a bard’s song, her pegasus, her best friend.

  I’ve got a birthday present for you, Ebon said gleefully—it was months before the day. I have got a birthday present for you.

  Well, don’t tell me now, Sylvi said, surprised at his eagerness. It’s not till forever.

  The pegasi didn’t celebrate birthdays the way humans did, but they did attend human birthday parties with their usual aplomb—and brought gifts. Last year she and Ebon had gone to Orthumber for her birthday, with the queen and Hirishy, and Sylvi had had the pleasure of showing Ebon where her mother had grown up and the excuse to ask her all sorts of impertinent questions because she was asking for Ebon too, who didn’t know about human childhoods. The queen had been laughing and relaxed all week—but that was before the ladon in Riss, before Ebon had smelled the norindour in Stonyvale.

  She had just been thinking about her birthday, for no good reason—thinking about the party that she would give at the palace this year. Sixteen was an important birthday: you became legally a grown-up at sixteen. The first thing she was going to do as a grown-up was give a birthday party that would have as many pegasi as humans attending—exactly as many. So for every unbound human she wanted to come there would have to be an unbound pegasus. She was going to ask Ebon if it would be impertinent to invite a shaman, and if not which one, or (better) more than one. Maybe those who’d spoken to Nirakla? She didn’t quite have the nerve to ask him if she could invite his master.

  It’s not like that, Ebon said. My dad’s talking to your dad about it right now. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be all right…. Ebon was giving off waves of excitement so strong it was like trying to stand up in the middle of the Anuluin in spring flood. There, said Ebon, as a pegasus appeared on the steps of the palace. Ebon and Sylvi were loitering under the cherry tree near the little garden door that Sylvi usually used—it was the one closest to her rooms. This wasn’t anywhere you would expect to see a pegasus, unless it was Ebon looking for her, or someone looking for Ebon. Come on, said Ebon, and surged forward, trotting a few steps before he stopped and turned back to her, repeating, Come on— and reaching out his nearer wing to scoop her toward him. Usually in public they did try to remember the ban on physical contact—but this wasn’t really public, was it? she thought guiltily, and twined her fingers into the mane at the base of his neck, over his withers, and let his momentum pull her along.

  This is Drahmahna, said Ebon, nearly running the pegasus at the door down. Sylvi, with her fingers still caught in Ebon’s mane, managed to make the Honoured to meet you sign as they swept past. They were obviously going to the king’s private office—how did Ebon know? What was Lrrianay—

  The two footmen flung open the doors without waiting for them to make the formal request: they were expected. The footmen were also wearing hai. What—?

  Her father was smiling, but it was a strange smile, sad and elated and worried all at once. The only people present were the human king and the pegasus king: Fazuur was not there; nor were any of Corone’s privy council or Lrrianay’s court. Whatever conversation had been had, whatever decisions had been made, they had been made between the two kings alone.

  Lrrianay said something to Ebon. Ebon, she thought, asked something in return—she caught a sense of a rippling phrase, a pegasus question, although she could not hear what it said. Sylvi looked inquiringly at her father, but he said, “This is for Ebon to tell you.”

  Ebon shouted or neighed something, suddenly, briefly, an astonishing, startling sound, especially indoors, in the king’s small office, surrounded by human furniture. The sound her ears heard was accompanied by a sensation like a kick inside her head—cautiously she put her hands up as if checking that her head was still securely fastened—and Ebon did a prance and bounce where he stood. There was a behave-yourself snort from his father—parental disapproval was easily recognisable across the language barrier—and Ebon said, I can’t help it. This is the best, the best. Syl, you can come home with me—I mean, will you please come home with me? To where I live. I mean, I’m inviting you. This is my birthday present to you. That you come to Rhiandomeer—to my country. To the pegasus country. Like we went home with your mum last year. Will you come? Please. Please say yes. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through for this. Syl, I can even take you to the Caves! Please say you’ll come! Please!

  To—? said Sylvi. To—? She could feel the disbelief on her face, hard and stiff as a mask. She looked at her father. He was still smiling, but it was now a sympathetic smile, an encouraging smile. He nodded. She put her hands up again, touching her own face, pulling the mask away.

  Home with you! Of course I’ll come! Of course! Oh, Ebon, really? And the Caves? She threw her arms around his neck and was promptly blinded when he swept his wings forward, around her: she could feel his feather-hands dancing like butterflies in her hair.

  Now that the heroic deed was accomplished, Ebon poured out the tale of the doing of it: I started with Dad, of course. I’d figured if I got Dad on my side that was all I needed—I guessed there would be a lot of dust and shouting on the human side so I started—oh, months ago—but I thought our side would be pretty simple, other than, oh, you know, Gaaloo and a few like him. Dad was expecting it. He told me later he was sure I’d ask for your sixteenth birthday. I kind of knew it would have to be a public thing—like going to your fêtes here—but I wasn’t expecting it to be as big as it was. And I also thought, you know, Dad’ll take care of it. But he didn’t. He said he’d back me but I was the one who was going to have to do the talking. Gods and clouds, I didn’t know we had that many shamans! And they all wanted to know why I thought bringing a human home was a good idea. Never mind the Caves! />
  Humans rarely ventured into the pegasus lands—they didn’t even have a proper name in any human language: the original treaty with King Balsin only specified them as the Lands of the Pegasi, and drew some lines on a map. A few human wanderers had penetrated into the edges of the pegasi country, the sort of folk who travelled because travelling was in their blood and they couldn’t help themselves. But they never went farther than a day’s journey in from the boundary and never stayed longer than a few days—which was especially surprising in light of the fact that all foot ways into the pegasus country were long and difficult. All that effort and you turn around? Sylvi thought. But there had never been even one official expedition, and there’d apparently never been any discussion about making an easier way in—not so much as a track a laden pack animal could follow easily.

  It was curious, Sylvi thought, that all her fellow humans had been so uninterested—how could they be uninterested?—for so many years. She thought of the second commander’s journal: “… They are like nothing I have ever seen, except perhaps by some great artist’s creative power…. Several of my folk came to their knees, as if we were in the presence of gods; and while I did tell them to stand steadfast, I did tell them gently, for I understood their awe” … or maybe that was why. Nearly a thousand years of familiarity hadn’t really changed that sense of awe.

  She had nonetheless said something about it to Ahathin, years ago, when she was first studying the Alliance.

  “It is curious,” Ahathin had replied. “I agree.”

  “Curious!” she said. “Is that all you can say? It’s the pegasi.”

  “Yes,” said Ahathin, “which may be the answer.”

  She put her head in her hands. She knew that if she said “What do you mean?” he wouldn’t respond. She thought about the crowned pegasus on the royal standard; why did the relationship between pegasi and humans seem to have borders around it as absolute as the bound edges of a banner? “Because we don’t know why having the pegasi here means our crops grow and—and nobody is struck by lightning?” Nar II had several nicknames; one of them was the Lightning King. Old Glunch was another; he was also famously grumpy. He didn’t like the pegasi because he didn’t like anyone, and while there had been no wars—and no roc sightings—during his reign, it had been remarkably accident-prone, including an unusual number of lightning strikes.