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 there 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.