She sat on the ground among the little unknown wildflowers, clinging to Ebon’s mane and the saving familiarity of their friendship, and the breeze in her nostrils smelled sweetly of green spring and of pegasi. The pegasi accepted what came. Ebon had been telling her that for four years. Here, in his country, talking to his father and his sister in the pegasi’s silent-speech, she finally believed him. I don’t know the wildflowers yet, she thought, but I know I’m sitting on llyri grass.
But it was—worth the thinking of, Lrrianay went on, tentatively, watching her, watching her closely, earnestly, kindly, gauging her reaction to what he wanted to tell her—reminding her, suddenly, powerfully, in that gentle but implacable watchfulness, of her own father. That your father and I can half talk to each other is much more than most bondmates have. True talking is so unimaginable that we barely tell stories about it—we pegasi do not, nor humans either, I believe. Your magicians translate, as our shamans may also; what real need have we to talk? It is the way things are. But we—your father and I—hoped that what we had might repeat itself. We have thought of it since before Danacor and Thowara were born. But it seemed less likely after each of your brothers was bound, and none of them can talk to their bondmates even so much as your father and I can. I was not thinking of it at all when Ebon said you should have Niahi, and not him. There are precedents for such discontinuous bindings.
Ebon put his nose in Sylvi’s hair and said, “Phoooooey. ”
We did think of it: the youngest child of the king and the only sister after several brothers. But the shamans advised against it, and so it was done the usual way.
But it was Niahi just now— began Sylvi.
Yes,said Lrrianay. It was. It may only have been that you were another day distant from your own land—a day distant from your father’s departure—a day farther into our land. Perhaps also that Niahi was very—er—eager to meet you. We did not allow her to come to your banquet, much to her dismay, hoping that these other things might help produce a new connection with the sister of your bondmate, the sister you might have been bound to, when you finally met her. It was nothing we did that put those words in your mind last night—but you are right that we took note that you used—could use—them.
I’m afraid, he went on, I’m afraid this has been in our minds since the beginning—since the extraordinary binding between you and Ebon. Since Niahi is a king’s daughter and your father has no more children, and because she is small for her age and until this year would have found the journey to your palace difficult, we have been able to avoid binding her. Because we have been wondering . . .
Sylvi said sadly, None of us has wondered anything. To us—to us humans—Ebon and I are just freaks. The magicians translate; that is the system. There is nothing to—to talk about. She looked at Lrrianay, and he looked back, from his dark, deep, inscrutable pegasus eyes. What are you still not telling me? she said. There was a pause. She took a deep breath, finished letting it out and said, It’s about our magicians, isn’t it?
There was another, longer pause. The other pegasi had now retreated a little farther—beyond eavesdropping distance, Sylvi assumed ; she’d heard Niahi being herded away by her mother, protesting every step.
You have held to the treaty, Lrrianay said at last, and that great promise has given us our lives, by your strength to hold. And your commitment to our bonding ritual tells us that we are a part of your lives and not merely ink marks on an old page.
Ebon interrupted. What Dad will take the next day and a half to say in king talk is yes, the problem is your magicians, or anyway the magic they do, or the way they do it—it’s all wands and smoke and—and—stuff. Have you ever wondered why none of our shamans seems to stay long when they visit your palace? And you don’t see the same one very often? Is there any shaman you knew by name but Hissiope? At first—eight hundred years ago—they thought it was just that we were so strange to one another. Later they decided that the magic