That I am allying myself with the pegasi against my own people? Isn’t that exactly what Fthoom would want, so he could exile me?
She put her hand to her throat, as if she could not breathe, as if she could not speak. I wish I might have had one more flight with Ebon. I wish we might have had one more afternoon lying on the grass in the sunlight, even knowing the end is coming. I wish....
They had not gone flying since she had returned from Rhiandomeer. They had not been flying, therefore, just the two of them as they had once done whenever Ebon was at the palace, since before her journey to his homeland—a time that now seemed so long ago she could barely remember it.
Perhaps they had never been flying, just the two of them, with Ebon’s mane tangling her own hair, and the world framed by his wings. Perhaps she had imagined it. Perhaps she had imagined that she could talk to the pegasi.
She wished she had imagined it.
She had said to her mother, How can everything change in three weeks? Three little weeks. Her mother had smiled and answered, Sometimes they change in a moment.
Her father continued, “I have given Fthoom a conference for the day after tomorrow. You and Ebon will attend, of course.” He stood up. “I must talk to Lrrianay.” As he looked around for his bondmate, Lrrianay turned his head as if he had heard his name spoken, and Fazuur materialised at the king’s elbow. The king turned back to his daughter for a moment and put his hands on her shoulders and stared at her as if she held some answer to an important question.
“Dad—” she began, nerving herself to ask him for a moment of private speech, to tell him what she had to tell him, but as she said it her voice cracked, and he didn’t hear her.
The same look she had seen in Danacor’s eyes the last evening came into her father’s. “You’re growing!” he said.
She bit her lip. But she replied, “Yes. I know. I am.”
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.