Pegasus

by Robin McKinley

  She paused in the antechamber outside her father’s private receiving room. The inner door was closed, and in the absence of a footman to open the door and bow her through it, she had a momentary reprieve. Her feet took her to one of the low shelves that ran round the room. These shelves bore some of the king’s favourite sky holds. The one her feet paused in front of was a new model of the northwest gates of the palace Wall, with a long curve of Wall running away on either side. She and Ebon had flown over it the night before. It doesn’t look like that, she thought, with a queer little shock, as if finding out one of her parents or some other authoritative grown-up in a lie that was not quite trifling. The curve of the Wall is more gradual, she said to herself, and the trees inside are set farther back, and the grove is more of an S shape.

  She was still staring at the little landscape when the inner door opened silently; but she felt the change of air, and turned. One of the expressionless footmen—an especially tall expressionless footman—one of the footmen who had used to lift her onto her heap of seat-cushions so she could see over the edge of the dining table as recently as two years ago, stood there staring over her head. He was staring quite pointedly and directly over her head, however, so she knew he was waiting to bow her through the door. She went.

  Fthoom was already there. So was her father, of course, and Lrrianay. So was Ebon.

  Hey, are we in trouble? said Ebon. How did you sleep last night? This sorry ass’ great rolling eyes are making me queasy. I didn’t mean to get up so early.

  Sylvi swallowed the laugh that tried to jump out of her; she felt her face wrinkle up to contain it. Ebon was right; Fthoom’s eyes did rather roll around. It was all part of what she called to herself his magician act, but she was still afraid of him. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes, and her stomach lurched, and she no longer felt like laughing.

  “My lady Sylviianel,” said her father gravely.

  “My lord Corone,” she said, and bowed. As she straightened up again she looked at who else stood by her father: those closest were Danacor and his pegasus, Thowara, the king’s Speaker, Fazuur, and Lord Cral, who was probably her father’s closest friend as well as a member of both the blood and the high council, and Lord Cral’s pegasus, Miaia. As she looked, someone a little beyond them moved, as if deliberately to make her notice him, and it was Ahathin.

  Fthoom rustled forward. He was wearing some great stiff cape that stuck out round him as if on wires, and round his head was the magicians’ spiral, this one silver and set with pale stones over his forehead and rising nearly a double hand’s span in the air above him. His footsteps made a curious hollow thunder: his shoes had not only high heels but built-up soles. He looked as tall as Skagal the Giant, but he was not the king.

  Sylvi looked behind him. There were half a dozen other magicians in his train, and they all looked unhappy, although they looked unhappy in different ways. Kachakon, who was about the best of them in Sylvi’s opinion, looked worried and unhappy; Gornchern, who was almost as big a bully as Fthoom, looked angry and unhappy. Warily she looked again into Fthoom’s face; he only looked angry. She remembered something her nurse used to say to her when she was young and sulky: what if your face froze like that? Fthoom’s face looked like it had frozen yesterday morning, presumably at the moment when she had said Ebon’s name. But this anger looked like the deep, powerful, strategic anger of a general about to engage his enemy. His enemy?

  The moment stretched. She glanced at her father looking at Fthoom, and at Fthoom looking at her father. Fthoom began to turn rather purple. Majestically, her father indicated that she should sit beside him. At some other time she might have been exhilarated as well as unnerved by the honour; usually the heir sat on one side of the king and the queen on the other, but the queen’s chair was empty this morning. Lucky queen, she thought, although she understood the political game being played: to have both the queen and the heir present would grant Fthoom too much power.

  Very carefully, for her limbs felt strangely rigid, she settled herself in the great chair. She was accustomed to hoicking herself into chairs that were too tall for her, and had even learnt to do it (relatively) smoothly; but this one made her feel smaller than usual, for it was as wide and deep as it was tall, so she could not lean against the back of it without having her legs sticking straight out in front of her like a baby’s. Her feet still hung well clear of the floor. She grasped the clawed forelegs of some vast animal that were its arms, and straightened her spine. She had chosen this tunic because she knew it would sit well across her shoulders as long as she didn’t slump. Her father was the king and could stare down Fthoom; her mother was life colonel of the Lightbearers, and had twice killed a taralian single-handed, once in coming to the aid of a fallen comrade. Their daughter could sit up straight. But when one of the footmen knelt in front of her to slide a stool beneath her dangling feet, she wasn’t sure but what that made it worse, not better. Silently she took a deep breath. Her father was wearing his very grandest manner; she would not let him down by being too small, too young, and too frightened. Ebon moved with her, and stood at her right shoulder; Ahathin came to stand at her left.

  “My lord,” said Fthoom, and knelt, somehow making the gesture pointless, almost careless, as one might raise a hand to brush a fly away, even though one was addressing a king. The stiff cape flourished out around him as he knelt and then reformed itself as he stood. When he had regained his feet, he said, looking straight past Sylvi as if she were either a criminal or an inanimate object, “My lord, I believe our country is at a crisis point.”

  There was a sigh from the courtiers around her father’s chair. She hadn’t dared count how many people—and pegasi—were present; the room was made to hold about twenty, but there were councillors, senators, barons and magicians crowded along the walls—probably nearer twice that. She saw Lord Kanf lean to whisper something in Granddame Orel’s ear; Orel’s look of worry deepened.

  Fthoom drew himself up even taller—the tip of the spiral quivered—as the king said gently, “Because my daughter can speak to her pegasus, and he to her?”

  “It is not the way, that human should speak to pegasus,” said Fthoom heavily. As he said it, “the way” became “The Way,” although Sylvi had never heard of it. What way?

  “I know—much—much—much about the history of human and pegasus. I have read the original treaty; I have felt its aura with my own hands,” and here he held them up as if there were some axiom written across his palms for all to read.

  Sylvi stared at him. The treaty hung on the wall of the Great Hall next to the mural of the signing, but Sylvi could not read it. The fanciest calligraphy of eight-hundred-year-old scribes was much harder to decipher than the plain handwriting of Viktur. There was glass over it too, glass that was specially treated to prevent any interference, by magical or physical force, and this made it shimmer faintly. Sylvi had studied what it said in her schoolroom copy of the annals; when she looked at the treaty itself, she saw the pale twinkle of eight-hundred-year-old flower petals and long curling twists like vines which were the black lines of the script—and Fralialal, one foreleg raised, ready to step down from the wall, the eight-hundred-year-old ink still wet on the edge of his wing. She didn’t like the idea of Fthoom standing close enough to the treaty to read its aura—leaning nearer and nearer yet till his breath misted the glass, his big hands only just clear of its surface—so close that if Fralialal chose that moment to step free of the wall, his wing might brush Fthoom’s face.

  “I have felt the strength of the centuries like the Wall that wraps around the palace. I have read the chronicles of the magicians who served their rulers from that day to this; I have read the diary of Gandam, who as you know put himself under intolerable duress to learn the pegasus language, that he might write the treaty, and died of the strain.”

  Everyone knew about Gandam. It was one of the first history lessons all human children learn
t. Sylvi had always wondered who had taught Gandam, and if Gandam had tried to teach the human language as well; was there a pegasus shaman who died? She would ask Ebon.

  “From that very first meeting—from the first sighting, when the soldiers knelt, for they feared they were in the presence of gods or demons—from that first contact, it is clear: it is not for humans to speak plainly to the pegasi, nor the pegasi to humans: not without the safeguard of a magician’s strong magic between the two. The two races are too dissimilar: any attempt to draw them close together can only do injury—the incomprehension between our two peoples is a warning we ignore at our peril. The only other human besides Gandam who has ever become truly fluent in the pegasus language was the magician Boronax, and he too went mad. Since Boronax there have been rules laid down for us, the magicians and Speakers who serve you, lord, and who have served and will serve all the kings and queens before and after you—rules, so that we may learn enough of the pegasus language to make that service well and truly, and yet not so much as to harm ourselves or you; and even so we use magic to protect ourselves in ways we cannot use to protect you.”

  Maybe it’s only magicians it happens to, thought Sylvi, but she was beginning to feel a little frightened. She remembered saying to Ahathin, when he told her of how Speaking was taught, but the pegasi are so light. She thought of Fralialal, and the twinkle of eight-hundred-year-old flower petals.

  She looked away from Fthoom, toward Ebon. What’s going on? he said. I can tell you’re not happy, and my father doesn’t like what he’s hearing from your father and Fazuur, but I can’t pick up any of it.

  Ebon, do you know about Gandam? The magician who wrote the treaty and then went mad and died? Did a pegasus die too?

  What? Gandam died because he was old and sick. I never heard he was mad. D’you mean did a pegasus get knocked on the head to keep him company on the Long Road? Ugh. Is that what old Eyeballs there is telling you?

  No. It’s just—oh, I can’t listen and—I’ll tell you later.

  Ahathin only just brushed his Speaker sticks—the faint tock they made could only have been heard by Sylvi and Ebon, and possibly the nearest expressionless footman. Sylvi said, Oh—I’m being a featherbrain. Ahathin can tell you. And she made, for the first time, the gesture asking a Speaker to translate.

  Fthoom droned on: “ … the sovereign families of each race are bound to the sovereign families of the other; king to king, king’s child to king’s child: here is the true strength of the treaty, as stone and brick are set together to make a wall….”

  Although not always consort to consort, thought Sylvi. And the cousins are always a muddle. And … Dad’s dad had the same thing happen to him; everybody thought their queen was going to marry someone else. I wonder how often that happens. I’ll ask Ahathin. She could hear Ahathin murmuring to Ebon, and didn’t want to interrupt. And what about when the sovereignship goes to another family, like when the Sword left Grinbad and went to Rudolf? And what about someone like Erisika? She grabbed the Sword when the king died because she was nearest and then there wasn’t anyone to give it to so she kept it and she won the battle and when the king’s son grew up and became King Udorin he married her even though she was a cabinet-maker’s daughter because, he said, what did he want with a lady when he could have the woman who saved the realm? And she’d borne him three daughters and a son, as fast as she could, she said, because she was old for child-bearing. Sylvi told herself the story with Fthoom’s voice booming in her ears, to give herself courage. Erisika would not have been frightened of Fthoom, and she, Sylvi, had Erisika’s blood in her veins.

  Fthoom was still going on, sentence after ostentatious sentence, about the Alliance. I don’t believe any of it, thought Sylvi. It’s like he’s making it up and—and—

  Silently and motionlessly she made an effort, as if she were stepping from under a drift of rainbow fabric and out of a fog of incense. She thought, It’s as if he’s looking at a tree and calling it a window. And he’s trying to make us call it a window too.

  “I fear for your daughter,” Fthoom intoned. “I fear the damage she and her new friend may do to the body of the living Alliance between our two peoples, by the ephemerality of easy and careless speech, such as is likely between two young creatures, however well-intentioned and innocent—”

  The dais and chairs that the king and his court sat on raised them up only enough that, sitting, they were a handsbreadth or two taller than the people standing on the floor before them. But Fthoom was taller than most humans, and he was wearing high-heeled shoes. He had moved closer and closer to the dais as he spoke, where the royal chairs sat so near the edge that Sylvi’s footstool was precariously placed; he made as if to lay a hand on Sylvi’s shoulder, looming over her, with the arched and coiling tip of his magician’s headdress peering down at her like the head of a snake, and the engulfing cape flinging itself wide with the movement of his arm as if to engulf her…. She flinched and slid away from him, grateful after all for the intimidating size of her chair, ashamed of her own cowardice.

  “You may not touch the princess without her leave,” said her father softly.

  Fthoom stopped as if he’d come to the edge of a cliff. His hand dropped to his side and he moved away, but as he had bent his obeisance to the king into nothing of the kind, he made his moving away from the princess’ chair a planned stage of his performance, and not a response to reproof; and he seemed to swell even larger. “I, as Fifth Magician, felt the binding go awry yesterday. I felt the wound in the flesh of our treaty—the new bleeding wound in its side.” He managed to invest I feel with a magician’s power: no ordinary human could feel as he did. “I say this is a dangerous thing—as dangerous as any thing could be to our country, founded as it is on the concord between these two most dissimilar and distinct peoples, human and pegasus. And I must ask—indeed I must insist, demand—that the princess Sylviianel and”—he made the hrrring noise in his throat that was the human equivalent of the word that meant king or lord in the pegasus language—“Hrrr Ebon be kept apart, at least until a council of magicians has studied the matter and decided how, in the best interests of our countries and our peoples, to proceed.”

  The sigh again, running all round the room. Even the footman who had opened the door and brought her footstool, who still stood near her at the foot of the dais, was a little less expressionless: he looked dismayed. Sylvi risked turning her head and looking at her father: he was cool and regal. His gaze was bent mildly on Fthoom, as if the magician were no more than a small farmer declaring a boundary dispute with his neighbour. She looked at the magicians arrayed behind Fthoom. They looked unhappier than ever, but determined. She wanted to turn her head again, and look at Ahathin, but she did not want to be seen to do it. Ahathin was still murmuring to Ebon.

  “My lord,” said Fthoom, and again made his unmindful kneeling. He had never once looked at her, not even when he had tried to grasp her shoulder.

  “N-no,” she said. For a moment she didn’t recognise her own voice, nor that she had spoken aloud; her body seemed to be scrambling—not very gracefully—out of her chair without her having directed it to move. She was shaking all over, but she realised that the words she needed to say were already in her mouth, and all she needed to do was let them out. “My lord,” she said to her father, and bowed.

  “Lady,” he said, and inclined his head: permission to speak.

  “What if Gandam was … was only old and sick? What if Boronax was … was mad anyway? When—when they needed a pegasus for Erisika, there weren’t any; too many had died in the war, and the only unbound ones were children. Erisika said, What about Dlaiali? His human died trying to save the old king, and we fought side by side that long awful day. And they said no, it is wrong that a queen be bound to a pegasus who was bound before, and to a minor baron, it would weaken the Alliance, but she said, I am a cabinet-maker’s daughter, and I count Dlaiali a friend, and Ud
orin spoke for her and she and Dlaiali were bound, and Udorin’s reign was long and prosperous and—and happy. Ebon and I are bound. He is—he is my pegasus, and my friend.”

  Fthoom gave a roar like a taralian, and threw up his hands as if with a gesture he would turn her into a slime-mould or a newt; the expressionless footman, to her amazement, leaped up on the dais and thrust her behind him, knocking her footstool off the stage to crash to the floor. Gornchern and Kachakon grabbed Fthoom’s arms, and Gornchern spoke fiercely in his ear; only half a stride behind the footman came Ebon, his ears flat to his head and his nostrils flared and red as a racehorse’s. She found herself encircled by one powerful wing, and crushed into his ribs. She staggered—her knees were not at all steady—and a pinfeather got up her nose; she sneezed. Ebon folded the wing down far enough that she could see over it, but he did not loose her, and she could feel that he was trembling too. Ahathin, she saw, was now standing beside the footman.

  Several of the courtiers were shouting; one of the magicians was making a kind of keening chant, moving his hands in the air as if creating something, perhaps a better scene than this one which he could replace it with. Danacor was also standing, saying something urgent to another footman, who turned and ran for the door. Lrrianay gave a low rustling neigh. Sylvi felt Ebon twitch; there were several other pegasi present—and they murmured back. Their wings were half roused; in pegasi this was a sign of wariness, watchfulness, alarm. She was sure they were mind-speaking to each other, but she heard no whisper of it.