I wanted you to see it, said Hibeehea, ignoring Ebon, because whether you have trained as a human magician or not, you are half a shaman with no training whatsoever—that you saw the signing of the treaty in the Caves, and that it was Redfora who brought you back when I called you proves this. Part of our shamanic training involves drinking the water of the Dreaming Sea—and we sleep beside it, but contrary to Ebon’s folklore, we choose a comfortable spot. I do not suggest you drink from it, Sylviianel, for the dreams it brings can be very powerful, and you have seen and done enough this three weeks. But I do suggest that you take a little of it away with you. I think the day may come when you have great need of a true dream.
Hibeehea was wearing another little pouch around his neck on a string, and he dropped his head and rubbed the string over his ears with a foreleg, then knelt by the water. He loosened the mouth of the pouch with his teeth, laid it down, nudged it over with his nose, and a small stoppered bottle rolled out.
After over a fortnight in their country Sylvi was still not accustomed to the way the pegasi did things—the way they had to do things—because their hands had no gripping strength. At the palace the pegasi were rarely seen doing anything but being splendidly elegant—and, she thought now, that was partly because they were rarely seen to do anything except stand at the shoulder of their bound human or a little behind the bound pegasus they attended, as Lrrianay’s courtiers did. It was some of why they seemed so enigmatic—and some of why the humans seemed so much in command. But she wondered now if some of that tradition came from some human, long ago, perhaps even Balsin himself, wishing to preserve his allies’ dignity against human foolishness. It would be easy, in human terms, to think less of a shaman seen kneeling, using his teeth and his nose…. She had to stop herself, as she had often had to stop herself these last three weeks, from trying to help, which she knew instinctively would be utterly and grotesquely rude. She had forgotten, that once with Ebon and Hili—but that was because it had been Ebon. To offer aid to a shaman, to the king’s shaman …
Hibeehea stood up, graceful as ever; she hadn’t noticed till now that his long forelock had been twisted back round his ear and plaited into the mane at his poll, and tied there with ribbons. He was standing quite close to her, and she could see that the plait was made up of many tiny plaits; had his son or daughter done it? His—what was the word—hrmmmhr? Did shamans wed or have children? Or perhaps an acolyte did such things for a master? She couldn’t imagine him doing it himself.
There is still so much I don’t know about just ordinary things, she thought. Who plaits you if you’re plaited?
The little bottle lay where he had left it. Take the bottle, said Hibeehea, and choose your water.
Choose your water? Sylvi thought—only to herself, she hoped—what an odd way to put it. But she bent and picked up the bottle (grasping it only with the tips of her fingers as if to minimize the length of her fingers, the strength of her hand), and knew at once what he meant; this was not where she should fill her bottle. She took a hesitant step along the shoreline, away from the rest of the pegasi.
Yes, said Hibeehea. Go where you are taken. Ebon, you may go with her. And Hibeehea turned and left them.
It was not so very far after all. They came to a place where the trees grew to the edge of the water and one bent old fellow bowed so low that his leaves trailed across the water.
He looks like a pegasus with a very long mane come to drink, said Sylvi.
Eh? said Ebon. He probably has a name. You could ask Hibeehea. This is where your water is, is it? as she knelt and flicked the stopper out of the bottle, wondering how a pegasus would do it, and not wanting to ask. It’s a little like something that happens when you’re accepted as an apprentice to a sculptor, Ebon said. Idly he pawed at the pebbles at the waterline. The sculptor who has said he’ll sponsor you—or she—takes you to one of the big chambers with several other sculptors who’ve agreed to be part of your choosing. There are a lot of small stones lying around—that have been scattered around. You have to choose one. Which one you choose decides what happens next. There’s an old mwhumhum, a, er, scare-story that everyone who is trying to be accepted hears, that if you choose the wrong stone you don’t get apprenticed after all, but I’ve never heard of it happening. What does happen sometimes is that you aren’t apprenticed to your sponsor after all.
Were you?
No. Silence.
What went wrong? she asked bluntly, standing up.
Ebon raised his head, but he looked away from her.
Ebon?
I don’t know why I’m telling you this, he said, except that mostly I tell you everything, and the Dreaming Sea does this kind of thing to you, like makes you tell stuff you weren’t planning on telling. He stopped.
My dad said that about just being here—I mean in your country.
Ebon cocked an ear and moved one foreleg back: thoughtfulness. Did he? Maybe we can bring him here some day…. Maybe, now, they’ll let us bring—He stopped again.
Mum, thought Sylvi. Not just Dad. Danny. Ahathin. I’d like to bring Ahathin here. Maybe he could figure out what went wrong. Maybe he could bend our magicians’ magic so that … Redfora … I don’t suppose I can ask her to help us.
Sylvi rubbed his mane, and said, Tell me.
Ebon sighed. There was some question about me being apprenticed at all, because of our binding. The sovereign’s family doesn’t usually get apprenticeships to shamans or sculptors because we have to spend too much time at your palace. Apprentices to shamans or sculptors may disappear for years while they learn their trade. I’m two years older than you, you know, and Niahi is a half year younger. I never even thought about it, when I was little, as soon as I found out about binding: Niahi was going to be your pegasus, and I was going to be a sculptor. They could find a third cousin who never came to the palace to bind me to. Then I found out I was going to have to be your pegasus after all—but I was still going to be a sculptor! He gave one of the musical half-humming, half-snorting huffhuffhuffing noises that was his out-loud laughter. I was going to be a sculptor like later on I was going to bring you here for your birthday. It was just going to happen.
I did one or two things pretty well—that you have to demonstrate to be considered for apprenticeship—unexpectedly well for a king’s to-be-bound son. Gedhee agreed to be my sponsor, saying that it still depended on the choosing. If I chose one of his stones, he’d accept me—he has a cousin who’s bound to one of your cousins, and she’s still a sculptor.
Deerian. I can’t remember her pegasus’ name.
Fwanfwah. Yes. But Deerian doesn’t require her pegasus’ presence much.
She almost never comes to the palace.
Eah. And I’d be bound to the princess. So there was this question about whether I could be apprenticed to a sculptor. I wondered if the story about choosing the wrong stone and not being apprenticed after all was about a bound pegasus, but nobody knew, and Dad told me I’d chosen my path so walk it and shut up. Well, you know what I mean. Then there were almost no sculptors willing to come to my choosing. Gedhee said, Never mind, I’ll take you, we’ll work it out. What if I choose the wrong stone? I said. Well, you’d better not, Gedhee said.
On the day there were three…. Usually there are at least five sculptors, sometimes more. You’re allowed to bring one person with you, who, uh, stands for you. Like declaring you’re serious—as if there were any possibility you weren’t, but you know how rituals are. So there was Dad and me and only three sculptors. Gedhee and Brax. And Shoorininuin. Ebon paused again. Shoor doesn’t take apprentices…. So there’s only three of ’em and one of ’em is Shoorininuin and I … it doesn’t really work like this with the stones, it’s not one stone for one sculptor, or at least I don’t think it is—there’s magic to it, of course. But I was completely blown by seeing Shoor there and I looked at all the stones, because the
re were lots of them—nobody had told me there were going to be so many that I was going to break either my feet or my knees just trying to walk across them. And I thought, if I pick up the wrong stone it’ll be Shoor and he’ll say forget it. What was Shoorininuin doing there, for rain and hail’s sake?
And I blundered across the floor, stumbling over the wretched stones. I don’t feel magic much, but I could feel it that day. Most of it seemed to be saying, No, no, no, not me, mate, don’t pick me up. It was like walking into a cloud of ssillwha with all of them buzzing at you, Go away! Go away! And I thought, Oh, great, it’s not that I’m going to pick up the wrong stone, it’s that the right stone isn’t going to let me pick it up. Maybe there is no right stone. And then there was one that at least wasn’t telling me no, so I staggered over to it and picked it up before it changed its mind.
And then the other two sculptors sighed and Shoorininuin—Shoor—said, Well, Ebon, you’re mine. I accept you. Welcome.
Ebon fell silent, still looking out over the Dreaming Sea. Sylvi was thinking of Ebon walking into one of the huge chambers of the Caves, he and his father, hundreds—thousands—of pebbles and small stones strewn over the floor—and three sculptors watching. She couldn’t imagine Ebon stumbling.
She thought of a conversation they’d had long ago. So that’s why they listened when your master spoke up for your idea about sculpting a bit of the palace grounds somewhere in the Caves.
He stirred, bowing his head as if his neck were stiff, rousing his feathers and laying them flat again. Yes. Yes.
I— She stopped, and tried again. I can’t even imagine what you’re going to do.
He extended one wing, stretching the tiny alula-hand as if he were grasping a brush or a knife and about to start work on a wall standing in front of him. Can’t you? I can.
He looked at her at last. Syl … what are we?
She could think of nothing to say.
Ebon put his nose in her hair and tugged gently. Life is funny, isn’t it?
I’m—sorry, said Sylvi helplessly.
Sorry? said Ebon. Oh, don’t be so—human.
Well, I am human. I—this is probably human too—I wish I’d met him. Shoorininuin.
You did, said Ebon. The sculptor who spoke to you. That was Shoor. He wanted to meet you.
Sylvi caught her breath. She had envied Ebon his certainty, his focus on becoming a sculptor, while she muddled along being her father’s fourth child, having projects assigned to her, village witchcraft, bridge-building, because she had no ideas of her own. She was still muddling, she felt; it was nothing she had done, nothing she had chosen, that had enabled her to talk to Ebon, and hear him when he spoke to her. She had not chosen to hear Niahi the other night; she had not chosen to walk eight hundred years back in time to watch the signing of the treaty that allied her people to the pegasi. It was perhaps not surprising that Ebon’s master had wished to speak to her; she was what she was, however helpless she felt within that which had chosen her. We are all bound by what fate chooses for us, the sculptor had said. But he had also said, I am proud of him. I am proud of you too.
There was another little pause. We’d better go back, Ebon said finally, before someone comes after us ’cause they think we’ve decided to try and swim across the Sea. We could start our own country there, where pegasi and humans just talk to each other.
How big is your Sea, do you know? said Sylvi, grateful for a change of subject. Has anyone ever crossed it?
If they have, they haven’t told us about it, said Ebon. The legend is that it’s another world wide. That if you managed to cross it, you’d be somewhere else than this world. That the only way from our world to get to the far shore of the Sea is to cross the Sea—and you can’t do that either. Although there’s another legend that says the Caves extend under the Sea and come out on the other side. And that you could walk it—if you lived long enough. He paused. There’s another legend still that says that before your King Thingummy showed up with his troops—
Balsin.
And started killing taralians, our King Fralialal was thinking of taking who remained of us and trying to cross the Sea—underneath, by the Caves.
CHAPTER 16
On her last night there was another enormous feast, in the same meadow as the feast held for her father, near the border between Rhiandomeer and Balsinland. She stood on the edge of that meadow as the pegasi set up the tables, chewing on a stem of llyri grass, naming the wildflowers to herself, because she knew them now; knew the names of the birds she could hear singing in the trees—recognised the fornol moving not quite silently through the undergrowth. The llyri grass was sweet and succulent, the first shoots of the new season, but she doubted it would give her wings.
This time the tall chair was for her. When the pegasi brought it out from the shelter, rocking on its poles, she said, But that’s my father’s chair. For a wild moment she thought, Perhaps he’s come back for the last night, and felt a rush of emotion so confused it made her dizzy. Those first nights in the pegasus country seemed a century ago; she was almost used—almost—to being a queer upright wingless biped—with hands—among the graceful pegasi. She stood quietly, watching the pegasi setting the chair down and releasing it from its transport poles. Two of them carried it, but another four released the cords and slid the poles free. Aloud she repeated, “That’s my father’s chair.”
“Tonight it’s for you,” said Hibeehea.
Sylvi turned toward him; she had not heard him approach. You speak human as well as a human. Why—why—
Why don’t I? said Hibeehea. Why don’t I come to your country and become a translator and make everything right between your people and mine? Because I feel ill and faint in your country, so ill and so faint that I can no longer speak your language, and after a day or two I cannot understand it either. This is true of all our shamans—the healers may remain a little longer than the rest of us—Hissiope is unusual in that he can bear up to a fortnight at the palace, but, he says, he pays for this strength by being less strong at home. It seems to us that this is true generally: the stronger our magic here, the weaker we are as soon as we cross the human border…. The last time I came to the palace I could barely fly home again; we had to keep stopping for me to rest.
Then it is true, Sylvi said. It is not just a way of—of speaking. It’s like—it’s like flying or not flying—having wings or not having wings. Our magic and yours is—somehow—antipathetic.
The traditional pegasi nod of agreement was a quick shaking of the head, more like the human gesture of no. Hibeehea first gave a quick pegasi shake and then a slower, human nod. Yes. It is—to us—as clear as—as clear as wings or no wings. Your magic is, perhaps, more like rock, while ours is more like water. And your magicians are very strong. We … we seep. Hibeehea smiled, but Sylvi, who had been immersed in pegasi for the last three weeks, could see the strain in him.
A few of us shamans go with Lrrianay when there is some important occasion upon us; I was there for his binding to your father, and for your father’s marriage to your mother, and for Danacor’s name-day, his binding to Thowara and his acceptance as heir. There is always at least one healer present at the palace, but that may be all. We do not stay long, and we do not—talk.
You’ve never—
Admitted it? There is little to admit, in the palace of the human king. I am considered slightly mad for having pursued the learning of your language as diligently as I have done when there is no use for it. In every generation of shamans since the signing of the treaty there are a few who learn to speak aloud as you speak; I found I had a talent for it, and so I went on with it—on and on—hoping that I would find at last some border to cross, some gate to pass through, that, once I had done so, I would have your language as I have my own. This has not happened. I come often to your country—
Sylvi involuntarily shook her head, in human nega
tion and disbelief. Oh, she said, srrrwa, fwif, forgive me, it is only that I have never seen you and I—I have thought I am—am aware of the pegasi who visit us.
You offer no discourtesy, Hibeehea replied. Another of my talents is that of being overlooked when I choose.
With great self-restraint Sylvi managed not to shake her head again, but a faint smile briefly appeared on Hibeehea’s face, and faded at once. I often travel alone, he continued, and I rarely remain at the palace—and I will myself to be disregarded. Mostly I wander through your towns and your countryside, listening to humans talk. It is easier for me outside the Wall.
There are fewer magicians outside the Wall, said Sylvi. The guilds’ offices are by the southeast gate; the Hall of Magicians is at the centre of the palace.
Yes, said Hibeehea.
The Hall of Magicians is at the very centre of the palace, Sylvi thought slowly, and ordinary humans aren’t allowed in it unless there’s some great ritual thing going on.
Every shaman as a part of training and acceptance must go once to your palace, Hibeehea continued. We are still hoping that one day there will be a shaman who can speak to you in your own country.
Then … that is why humans don’t come here. It’s the other way around too, somehow. To herself again she thought, I wonder if any magician has ever tried to cross the border? If they are rock while the shamans are water … I guess they cannot.
We believe so. It is nothing there is any record of. It is certainly why I was extremely reluctant to agree to your visit. For both your sake and ours. We did not know if you as king’s daughter might bring some unknown, protective human magic with you that would disrupt ours; and we were—I was—very afraid of having to send you home early, weak and ill and confused, and the reaction such an outcome would provoke among your people. I am not unaware of the difficulty your father had in persuading his council and his senate to permit you to go.