herbs in a dish, and he stretched out his arm so that the fumes rose up in the faces of Sylvi and her pegasus, and the fourth magician threw a billow of light fabric over them, so light, or so enchanted, that it remained drifting a little above them, like a cloud, and the pale bars of colour woven into it striped the floor of the dais. But it touched her pegasus’ glossy blackness not at all.
To her right she heard the fifth magician droning the words of binding. She had always taken the idea of binding literally, and had assumed that she would feel something happening, some tautness, some imprisoning, building between her and her pegasus. She stiffened herself for it, but nothing of the kind occurred. The magician’s voice filled her ears—she wanted to shake her head to rattle the words back out again—and the smoke filled her mouth and lungs, like trying to breathe through a blanket, and eddying, drifting smoke dappled with the colours of the drifting fabric also dimmed and confused her eyes till her pegasus was nothing but a shadow behind it.
It felt all wrong. It felt as if they were being separated, not bound together. A thought came to her from somewhere: we are already bound. That was why it had to be him, and not his little sister.
Maybe that is why we can talk to each other. I don’t understand—
But as she thought this, the fifth magician’s voice rose to a climax, and the third magician flourished the herb-bowl, so that the unburnt herbs and the ashes and embers leaped out of the bowl and fell to the floor of the dais. The embers twinkled against the border of the rainbow fabric but left no scorch marks. Sylvi sneezed, violently, and heard her pegasus sneeze as well. It was good luck to sneeze during your binding.
The fabric was pulled away and the smoke dispersed as if it had never been. Sylvi blinked in the sunlight and watched it sparkle on the flowers laced through her pegasus’ wings and mane. The magicians gathered round them—too close, Sylvi thought—and blew the spell-dust over them, and when it touched her face Sylvi involuntarily put her hand up to brush it off.
Then there was a moment’s grace; housefolk discreetly gave goblets to Sylvi’s father and Danacor, who in turn offered them to Sylvi and her pegasus. Sylvi found that she didn’t want to swallow any of the dust and ashes that had got into her mouth; she wanted to rinse her mouth and spit it out. But she knew she couldn’t. She looked up at her father; she wondered if it had been anyone but the king who held the goblet for her if she might have refused. But no. She was still a princess, and she had learnt her part of the ritual very carefully. She sipped the faintly honey-flavoured water and swallowed—with difficulty; it was like swallowing a rock. It stuck in her throat, and then lay heavily in her stomach. Her pegasus swallowed too, but she thought he drank as gingerly as she did.
Now...
Better get on with it, said her pegasus. You do remember your words, don’t you?
Of course I remember, Sylvi said, nettled, and began at once. “Welcome, Excellent Friend, on this glorious day ...”
The end of her dry little speech went “And so I name myself to thee, Sylviianel, princess of the line of Gohasson, daughter of the sixth of that line, Corone IV, and his queen Eliona, fourth child of them I call my parents,” and as she said these words out loud she added silently, I don’t even know your name yet.
They really don’t tell you anything, do they? I’ve known you were Sylvi forever. My name is Ebon.
It was not surprising that Sylvi missed her last cue. Trying to give a speech and hold a conversation at the same time would be hard work for anybody under any circumstances—and under these particular circumstances it was also not surprising she could not resist having the conversation. Nor was it surprising that she forgot what the cue was. It just seemed to her—very reasonably—that it was ridiculous that she should be bound to this pegasus before she so much as knew his name.
But her father, the king, was supposed to say Ebon’s name aloud, which was when she was supposed to hear it for the first time—and while she had learnt every moment of the ritual with painful precision, the