thee north and east. When they do come to visit us, and watch our toil upon thee lowlands to create thee great city-palace Balsin sees so clearly in his mind’s eye, we most of us pause in any work of our hands to watch their approach; and I will not comminate ourselves by declaring us lazy thereby. It is thee sheer sight of thee pegasi that we do not habituate to—cannot so do. I wait in expectation of what our children may make of thee pegasi, for they will have grown up accustomed to looking upon them; perhaps it may be different for them; or perhaps it is a human thing, to look upon such beauty and fail to encompass it, either when walking upon thee ground as they do, as lightly as a bird one might hold in thee hollow of one’s hand, or as great winged beings above our heads.
It was one evening at twilight, with thee last of thee lowering sunne’s rays upon them, brightening their great wings much as they had been illumined on thee first day we had ever seen them, ’tis years ago now, and yet we do still catch our breaths when we look upon them so. There were many of them this evening; thirty or more, for Balsin had called a great Feast for thee laying of thee cornerstones of thee central Palace which was now accomplished, and they did come to honour him and us and thee thing we did create.
Thee border mountains behind them were dark against a blue damask sky; and thee beating of their wings did glister and coruscate. My Sinsi, who was working beside me though her belly now did make it difficult for her to bend far, stared at them and said, “They do look like a cloud of stars.” This was taken up, till all have begun to call thee border mountains Starcloud.
Sylvi’s party would only be able to ride as far as the foothills of the Starclouds. It was all very well that Ebon had permission to take her to the Caves, but how far were the Caves? Was she going to be another pathetic human who only got a day or two inside the pegasus border—and then had to turn around and go home again, because they had already been gone too long?
And could you walk over something called the Starclouds?
She did, as her father predicted, and upon his request, attend a number of meetings on the subject of her journey. These seemed mostly to be a series of prosy old bores standing up in turn and being prosy and boring, and so it was difficult to pay attention and even more difficult to understand any details they might be trying to put forward, although some of them spoke with considerable vehemence. What she did learn was that about a third of the senators, a quarter of the blood and a delegation from the magicians’ guild thought she should not go—and that if there had been so much as one sighting of a taralian or a norindour or a ladon anywhere near the Starclouds, that would have been the end of the matter, and she would have gone nowhere. But there wasn’t, and there hadn’t been for decades. (This didn’t stop her from a small anxious startle every time she saw another travel-stained messenger coming to see one of her parents. It wouldn’t be . . . fate couldn’t be so cruel.) She heard her father once say to Lord Cral that he was tempted to suggest that he was sending his daughter away for her safety; at present there were far too many sightings of taralians and norindours and ladons in the human lowlands.
But she did go.
And only she went—she and her father. They would not have even one minder, one attendant, one courtier—one guard. And her father was staying only one night, while she was given three weeks.
The reason for the lack of a grand procession was that they flew.
They flew.
Not as Sylvi and Ebon flew; she and the king were to sit or lie in something like hammocks. The king’s had eight ropes and Sylvi’s had six, and the ropes ended in great loops that hung round pegasi necks, and a spider-work of straps to hold the loops in place—plus a little crucial shamanic magic to make the system work. The pegasi had spent some time inventing them before they’d extended the official offer of transport.