Robin McKinley - Pegasus

Niahi took a hasty step backward again, and made a little bob of a second bow—and Sylvi held her hands out, stretching the one farther than the other, so the bracelet of pegasus hair showed clearly beneath her topaz-studded sleeve. She just saw the wrinkle form across Niahi’s muzzle, and then she ducked her head and whisked after her mother.

Sylvi glanced at Ahathin, but if he had heard the exchange, he gave no sign.

None of the other pegasi spoke to her—but she had the answer to one of her questions with Niahi’s words: it was not only Ebon any more, even in Balsinland. Although she almost doubted again when Hibeehea was presented to her: his mind-silence seemed absolute, as if the mere idea of that communication was inconceivable, and he looked as forbidding as he had the night she had met him, her first night in Rhiandomeer, when she began her historic visit by offending the greatest of the pegasus shamans.

After he made his bow, he said aloud,“I am proud and honoured to be here,” very clearly and distinctly, and there was a murmur of astonishment from the humans. But to Sylvi’s ear he sounded strained, as if the effort to speak even a few formal words was almost too great to be made. And his limbs and wings and body were stiff; she could read nothing in gesture.

When the presentations were over, the human queen stepped forward and took the human king’s arm; Danacor stepped forward and took Sylvi’s—and squeezed it against his side. “Well done, princess,” he said, but Sylvi was too conscious of their two pegasi, standing behind them; as Danacor had come up to them, Ebon had dropped back, and Thowara’s forehead stayed near the nape of Danacor’s neck. “They’re always behind us,” murmured Sylvi. “They’re always behind us.”

They were slowly following the king and queen, who were flanked by Lrrianay and Hirishy. Sylvi wasn’t expecting an answer, but as they passed under the Great Arch and turned toward the Great Hall where the celebration for her birthday was being held, Danacor said, “If you want to give up building bridges in the mountains and go back to Rhiandomeer and negotiate a reciprocal visitation agreement, I’ll engage now to stand behind Thowara when our time comes. But you will have to build a road.”

Then the first of the senators came up to them to say something pleasant and flattering and meaningless, and they spoke no more about it. Shortly after, they parted, and then it was just herself and Ebon—and several hundred party-goers. And Ahathin. And Glarfin, neither of whom let themselves be elbowed more than an arm’s-length away, however bad the crush. Sylvi kept wanting to drop back and put an arm over Ebon’s back, or twine her fingers in his mane—as she had done so easily and so often for three weeks—and she had to keep stopping herself. But she spoke politely to everyone who spoke to her— including a few pegasi, meticulously translated by Ahathin, while she half listened to the human words and did not try to hear the pegasi themselves. Niahi came and stood with them for much of the time, and Senator Grant and Lord Broughton, both of whom Sylvi knew had eleven-year-old daughters, asked as if idly if this was the king’s daughter, and was it true that she was still unbound. And when Glarfin brought her food and a glass of wine—and two pages brought a great platter of grasses and fruit for her companions—they all ate and drank.

And while, with Ebon with her, she enjoyed her birthday party that evening far more than she had enjoyed anything about the previous week without him, there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week. I’m still missing him when he’s standing right next to me, Sylvi thought.

Her original plan that the party for her sixteenth birthday should have equal numbers of human and pegasus guests had been one of the casualties of her visit to Rhiandomeer. “Oh,” she had said sadly, “oh,” when one of her father’s secretaries had presented her with the guest list, drawn up in her absence. It wasn’t normal enough, she realised, to have as many pegasi as human guests at her party. She had flicked a look at Fazuur and back at the guest list.

“Is there anyone we’ve missed?” said her father. “That you’d like to include? The invitations have gone out of course, but it’s not too late.”

About a hundred more pegasi, she thought. I can give you some names....

In fact nearly a third of those present at her party were pegasi, which was an unusually high percentage. That’s also because of my visit to Rhiandomeer, she thought. It has to be more than the usual number of pegasi. But not too many. Half would be too many. She felt restless, trapped, outmanoeuvred by the human gift for complication, for creating obstacles of words—and piles of paper.

They’re watching us, said Ebon. I mean, they’ve always watched us, but...

Yes, said Sylvi. It’s different. One more thing that was different. She didn’t want to ask him what he had spent the last week doing. How could she miss Rhiandomeer? She didn’t only miss Ebon; she missed his country, where she couldn’t even cross a river dry-shod, because there were no bridges and no boats. She thought about what Danacor had said. Would it be worth it, to chop and slash a footway to the pegasus land, so that the human king could stand behind the pegasus king?

Not to the pegasi.

Well, it was still worth it, Ebon said. Their eyes met, lingered just a fraction too long and were hastily shifted away.

The birthday party went on and on, and it was very late by the time the princess and her parents—and their attendant pegasi—could leave. Ebon and Sylvi took a brief stroll around the gardens before they parted.

Here’s the bad news, said Ebon. I don’t dare take you flying till some of these hrreefaar shamans leave. Shamans don’t sleep like the rest of us. They also have some weird glaurau—uh—other-space sense of where we all are. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just knew I was flying, but I’m not sure they wouldn’t pick you up. I know being here messes them up, but I’m afraid it might not mess them up enough, you know?

It’s also a full moon and a lot of—movement. Scouts and things. Even at night. Danny leaves again tomorrow....

He’d come back for her party, as he said he would, but he’d had three messages over the course of the evening—three that she saw happening. The only private words she’d had with him, since she’d been back, had been in her office, when he’d told her she was the pegasus expert now.

She and Ebon stood silent for a few minutes longer; neither of them was ready to let the other out of sight—out of sound-of-breath, out of sense-of-other’s-body-bulk-and-warmth, out of touch of human hand or velvet pegasus nose—after the long week apart. At least, out here, they could touch each other again.

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.