Two humans unrolled a large, long sheet of what, by its pliancy, must be pegasus-made paper. The humans, perhaps disconcerted by something so unlike stiff, crackly parchment, handled it uneasily and laid it—cautiously, warily, protectively, attentively—on the table. Everyone was staring at it. The two humans holding it touched it as if they weren’t sure what sort of beast it was: was it an ally, was it hostile?
A battlefield alliance . . .
The strange armour, the language whose words were familiar but whose rhythms were not . . .
One of the magicians looked tired and worried and grim, like all the other humans.
The other one turned and looked at her . . .
. . . and for a moment he was Fthoom.
And she was walking in the Caves again, except that she wasn’t walking. She was standing still, and her three companions were standing with her. Lrrianay and Hibeehea were gravely watching her, and Ebon had his nose on her shoulder.
You okay?
She nodded. And then, startled, looked around. They were no longer in the long corridor, but a huge room, the ceiling lost in shadows overhead. There were other pegasi here—three that she could immediately see—one of them was lighting a candle in a niche in the wall. There were candles all around the walls at irregular intervals, and as the niches were various sizes, so were the candles. In the centre of the room, a low table stood, a dozen tall lamps on it, blazing with light.
In the light she could see the walls.... Millennia of tiny, frail feather-hands, smoothing and scooping, carving and scoring the natural walls of the cave....
There were portraits of pegasi everywhere on the walls, walking and flying, standing, running, lying, bowing, pawing, dancing, rearing, and doing other things she had no names for, as when two stood face to face and clasped their feather-hands together; or when, again face to face, four stood in a four-pointed star, knelt and bowed their heads, and wrapped their wings over each other. The curves of one pegasus, the billow of one tail or the fall of one mane, became a curve or a billow or a fall of the next; and in the flicker of the light, the rounds and hollows of all seemed to move as if with life.
Among the stone pegasi there were other things: trees and flowers and climbing vines, leaves and branches and blooms, saplings and bushes and forests—rabbits, deer, foxes, fornols, badgers, bears, birds—many, many birds, from the tiniest wrens to great raptors with wingspans nearly as great as the pegasi’s own—spiders and beetles and butterflies and bees. There was a stone stream near where Sylvi stood with several pegasi prancing in it: every drop of water was clearly and lovingly detailed.
And humans. Sylvi had been turning slowly round as if looking for something—and yet she did not want to see humans—see them here, surrounded by pegasi, to be forced to look again at the coarseness and gracelessness of what she was herself. She wrapped her gawky arms around her clumsy body and hunched her shoulders.
Ebon saw where she was looking and said, Hey, don’t worry. They’re only stone.
We’re so ugly, said Sylvi miserably.
Ugly? There was a pause, as if Ebon were considering the matter; he was certainly looking first at the carved humans and then at Sylvi, and then back. I don’t think so. I like the way it’s all up and down with you, and no sideways. It’s very—direct. Like you humans are. Although you’re better-looking than that lot. He looked hard at Sylvi, seemed to make up his mind about something, and went on: When Dad first told me I was going to have to be your pegasus, I used to come here and stare at these guys. I’d only seen live humans a few times, when a crowd of us went to your palace for some big rite or festival or other, after I was big enough to fly that far. And then us kids were always kept well back and never went to the banquets.
I never saw you, said Sylvi. I’d remember, black is so unusual. I can hardly remember seeing any young pegasi, unless it was one of you being bound to one of us.
Yes—well—you do have to be nearly grown to fly that far. Ebon was silent a moment, and then went on: You—you humans—saved our lives—and you go on saving our lives. The taralians and their friends would be all over us in a few generations if you left. And we’d just sit here and let them, because we wouldn’t leave the Caves, and without the llyri grass we’d stop flying within a generation or two. We’d stop flying but our legs still wouldn’t be tough enough to run like deer and horses run. Our shamans say the grass grows out of the stone that the Caves are made of, that’s what makes our wings strong enough to carry us. Two thousand years ago the taralians found us—that’s what the stories say—we could have run away, but we couldn’t’ve either, right?
Taralians and norindours and ladons don’t like our mountains much and don’t like our Caves at all, but we couldn’t stay here all the time. Did you know that we used to raise llyri grass where your palace now sits? That field of it your gardeners keep for us has been growing there for probably four thousand years. Even the barn where you keep it after harvest is where our old winter pavilion used to be. A roc knocked it down a century or two before you came.... That’s pretty much when we pulled out of the lowlands.
Our shamans told us we’d get rescued at the last minute. And we did—you came. But something went wrong....
Sylvi turned and walked toward the wall where the carved stone humans stood. It took her a moment to realise why the scene looked familiar. It was where she had just been, what she had just seen, although she was seeing it now from a different angle, as if the army camp was behind her, and the way she had come with the hundreds of pegasi in front of her. The humans were now on her left and the pegasi on her right. Even now that she could not hear them speak, the strangeness of the humans’ armour drew her attention; even now that they were inanimate images on a wall she could see the tension of them, the set concentration of their faces.
And she could still pick out the two magicians although the baton was not visible. One of them looked as the other humans looked, fixed on the matter at hand but worried about its outcome. The other was the one who reminded her of Fthoom.
She knew he was not Fthoom; this man did not even look like him. But that sense of power, of power held for hidden purposes, held in a way meant to be intimidating so that the wielder of it can better judge the strength of any opposition—that was Fthoom. That inward look, the look of a miser always preoccupied with his private treasure, of the greatness of what was his and his alone, and of how to make it greater yet—that was Fthoom. She found herself thinking that this man even moved like Fthoom—except that she was looking at a sculptured wall. Perhaps the candlelight slid over him differently than it glinted over the others.
I don’t like this one, she said.
I don’t like him either. He’s ugly, if you like.
Ugly, she said. Why did you come here? When you knew you had to be my pegasus.
The skin over Ebon’s shoulders shivered and he nodded his head once quickly, a sign of embarrassment. Well. These are the only humans in the Caves. If I wanted to look at humans, these were it. That was a long time ago, okay? I was a lot younger, and I hadn’t met you.
These are the only humans in the Caves? I’m surprised there are any, she thought. Why these?
Ebon looked at her in surprise—tall neck drawn up even straighter (how regal he looks, she thought), ears stiffly pricked, just one wrinkle across his nose. That’s the signing of the treaty, he said. I thought you’d recognised it. That’s your king Balsin, and our Fralialal. And that’s Dorogin, the ugly one, and Gandam.