of human and pegasus guests had been one of the casualties of her visit to Rhiandomeer. “Oh,” she had said sadly, “oh,” when one of her father’s secretaries had presented her with the guest list, drawn up in her absence. It wasn’t normal enough, she realised, to have as many pegasi as human guests at her party. She had flicked a look at Fazuur and back at the guest list.
“Is there anyone we’ve missed?” said her father. “That you’d like to include? The invitations have gone out of course, but it’s not too late.”
About a hundred more pegasi, she thought. I can give you some names....
In fact nearly a third of those present at her party were pegasi, which was an unusually high percentage. That’s also because of my visit to Rhiandomeer, she thought. It has to be more than the usual number of pegasi. But not too many. Half would be too many. She felt restless, trapped, outmanoeuvred by the human gift for complication, for creating obstacles of words—and piles of paper.
They’re watching us, said Ebon. I mean, they’ve always watched us, but...
Yes, said Sylvi. It’s different. One more thing that was different. She didn’t want to ask him what he had spent the last week doing. How could she miss Rhiandomeer? She didn’t only miss Ebon; she missed his country, where she couldn’t even cross a river dry-shod, because there were no bridges and no boats. She thought about what Danacor had said. Would it be worth it, to chop and slash a footway to the pegasus land, so that the human king could stand behind the pegasus king?
Not to the pegasi.
Well, it was still worth it, Ebon said. Their eyes met, lingered just a fraction too long and were hastily shifted away.
The birthday party went on and on, and it was very late by the time the princess and her parents—and their attendant pegasi—could leave. Ebon and Sylvi took a brief stroll around the gardens before they parted.
Here’s the bad news, said Ebon. I don’t dare take you flying till some of these hrreefaar shamans leave. Shamans don’t sleep like the rest of us. They also have some weird glaurau—uh—other-space sense of where we all are. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just knew I was flying, but I’m not sure they wouldn’t pick you up. I know being here messes them up, but I’m afraid it might not mess them up enough, you know?
It’s also a full moon and a lot of—movement. Scouts and things. Even at night. Danny leaves again tomorrow....
He’d come back for her party, as he said he would, but he’d had three messages over the course of the evening—three that she saw happening. The only private words she’d had with him, since she’d been back, had been in her office, when he’d told her she was the pegasus expert now.
She and Ebon stood silent for a few minutes longer; neither of them was ready to let the other out of sight—out of sound-of-breath, out of sense-of-other’s-body-bulk-and-warmth, out of touch of human hand or velvet pegasus nose—after the long week apart. At least, out here, they could touch each other again.
CHAPTER 18
All sightings of taralians and norindours and their other old enemies were brought to the Balsinland king, even if the report was merely that the creature had already been dispatched by a baronial hunting party or a patrol of soldiers. Barring taralians, which were a more persistent problem, there were several reports every year, but—until recently—never more than several, not since Corone IV’s great-great-grandfather’s day. There were ballads about the Great Hunt that King Janek himself had led; the main fact about it was that it had been successful and had not been repeated.
Sylvi was with her father in his private office the morning the messenger from General Randarl came. It was three days after her birthday party. Ebon was with her, Lord Cral and his pegasus, Miaia, the two kings—and two Speakers.
They were again considering her travels in Rhiandomeer; she was tense and anxious, unsure what she could discuss and what she must not. She was afraid to say anything to Ebon that she wouldn’t want a Speaker to overhear; whenever she asked him anything about what she’d seen or where she’d gone, there was an implication of How much can I say? and his answers were stilted and constrained. She wondered if his father was saying anything to him; if so, she did not hear it.
Both she and Ebon