kin here, and Lrrianay wishes to take you. But I want you to know, little Sylvi, that I would have been happy and proud to bring you into our Caves myself. Go well, daughter, and may you see all you will see. She brushed her velvet cheek across Sylvi’s cheek, and walked back to the edge of the trees where Niahi waited for her.
See all I will see? thought Sylvi.
Lrrianay nodded and led the way. Hibeehea followed, and Ebon dropped half a step behind Sylvi and (she felt) chivvied her forward. She thought she was probably glad for a little chivvying. She let go of her bead as they passed the threshold, into the twilight of the Caves.
Her first impression of the Caves was merely the sound of her first footstep, when she crossed from turf to packed earth. Her second impression was of darkness, in spite of candlelight and her bead, as she stepped from daylight into the cave mouth.
There was a pegasus she had not seen before just inside, who bowed to them all; there was a little round space like an antechamber with a cluster of tall candles at its centre, and Lrrianay paused. Sylvi involuntarily looked back, toward the daylight and the trees and the open air. She was looking past Ebon, blacker than ever against the light, with the tiny dazzle of his bead against his chest. He seemed taller than a carriage-horse, bigger and broader than a war-horse, standing between her and the sun. She didn’t even know how long they would be in the Caves, how long before she would see daylight again: It depends, Ebon had said. It’s not—not a useful question, “how long?” We’ll stop when we get tired or hungry.
“Stop”? thought Sylvi. Don’t you mean come back outdoors? But she hadn’t asked.
Lrrianay glanced at her. Yes, I’m here, she thought—to herself, she hoped. With my two legs and my preposterous hands. I wish I could stop thinking, so I could stop worrying about anyone overhearing me. But . . . She thought of Niahi: spooky, she’d said. Full. Very cautiously Sylvi tried to feel her way into the little anteroom of the Cave she stood in—“felt” in the way she “listened” to Ebon.
Spooky. No. Yes. No. Full—?
It was nothing like a velvet nose against her face or a friendly feather mattress curling around her as she slept, or even the shockwave of the ting as her father dropped a magician’s spiral on the floor of his receiving room. But there was something there—here—something besides pegasi and rock and candles. Something not unlike what had made her fall down, only three nights ago, when she’d heard Niahi speak for the first time.
That was three days ago, she thought. That is a long time. And time doesn’t matter in the Caves.
There were dark tunnel openings all round them, and Lrrianay chose one and led them into it.
It was a gentle downslope, but there were also small fat candles in niches along the walls, so it was easy enough to see your way. At first Sylvi kept her eyes on her feet, and then on Hibeehea’s long smoke-coloured tail, with occasional sidelong glances at the candles, as if checking that there was enough wax left that they would keep burning and not plunge them suddenly into darkness.... Her hand crept up again to the bead on its string round her neck. She kept wanting to hold it like a talisman, blotting out its light; she touched it and let her hand drop again. It was not only the darkness, the awareness of it barely held off by a few small candles and smaller beads; it was the awareness of the inconceivable weight of all the rock and earth of the mountain above them, as they went farther and farther down and in.... There was no record in the thousands of years the pegasi had been using their Caves of any ceiling or tunnel collapse; Ebon had told her this. Occasionally someone gets lost, he’d added cheerfully. But never for very long. We’ve always found ’em before they got very hungry.
Sylvi wanted to ask Ebon if he knew where they were going, if he recognised the tunnel his father had chosen, but she didn’t want to be overheard. She tried to concentrate on Hibeehea’s tail and wingtips, on the consciousness of Ebon just behind her, on Lrrianay leading them calmly and surely . . . where?