DONE
I did it! I’m through the second draft of PEGASUS by the end of May . . . with an hour and five minutes to spare, as I write this.*
Pardon me while I make a fresh cup of peppermint tea and play a little Mozart to celebrate.
I am also several stages past brain dead** so here’s the first 800 words of the second draft masquerading as a blog entry. I promise nothing about whether or not these will be in any way related to the first 800 words of what I long for to be the finished book*** I will be holding the bound galleys of about this time next year. . . .
* * *
Because she was a princess she had a pegasus.
This had been a part of the treaty between the pegasi and the human invaders nearly a thousand years ago when humans had first struggled through the mountain passes and discovered a beautiful green country they immediately wanted to live in. The beautiful green country was at that time badly overrun by manticores and taralians and norkindours which ate almost everything (including each other) but liked pegasi best. The pegasi were a peaceful people and no match, despite their greater intelligence, for the single-minded ferocity of their enemies, and over the years their numbers had declined. But they were tied to these mountains and valleys by particular qualities in the soil and the grasses that grew in the soil, which allowed their wings to grow strong enough to bear them in the air. They had ignored the situation as without remedy for some generations, but the current pegasus king knew he was looking at a very bleak future for his people when the first human soldiers straggled, gasping, through the Devaun Pass and collapsed on the greensward under the Singing Yew, which was old even then.
They sat up quickly when seven pegasi circled the meadow above the pass, and flew down to investigate. The journal of that company’s second commander still exists in the palace library: a small, worn, round-cornered book, slightly bowed, the shape of the breast-pocket it was carried in. He reported the historic meeting: “We had but just come through the final rocky gate, and had set ourselves down in the shade of a strange great tree, which had short soft spikes or needles all along its branches, and no leaves; when swift-moving shadows fled briefly between us and the sun, but against the wind. We looked up in haste, for rocs are not unheard of, and I had raised my hand to give the signal for the archers to string their bows. We saw that these were no rocs, but still I held up my hand, for they were nothing else we knew either; and they clearly had seen us, and did approach.
“But these creatures are nothing like rocs except they do also possess wings; they are like nothing I have ever seen, except perhaps by some great artist’s creative power. They are a little like horses, but yet far more fine than any horse, even the queen’s palfrey; they are a little like deer, except that deer are rough and clumsy beside them; and their wings are huge, huger than eagles’, and when the lowering sun struck through their primaries, for as they cantered toward us they left their wings unfurled, the light was broken as if by prisms, and they were haloed in all the colours of the rainbow. Several of my men came to their knees, as if we were in the presence of gods; and while I told them to stand and be men, I did tell them gently, for I understood their awe.”
The pegasi were happy to make a treaty with the humans, who were the first possibility of rescue the pegasi had had, and the humans, dazzled by the pegasi’s beauty and serenity, were happy to make a treaty with them, for the right to share their mountainous land; for the wide plateaus, which ran like lakes around the mountaintop islands, were lush and fertile, and many of the island crests were full of gems and ores.
The discussions as to the terms of the treaty had had to be held almost exclusively through the human magicians and the pegasi shamans, however, who were the only ones able to learn enough of the other’s language to understand and make themselves understood, and that was a check to enthusiasm on both sides, as were the strange fits of dizziness and the ringing in the ears that often attended human attempts to learn the pegasi language. “Is it not, then, a language, as we understand language?” wrote the second commander. “Does it encompass an invisible touch, as a meeting of our hands in greeting, or a kiss between dear friends? What can we not grasp of it, and why cannot our magicians explain this lack to us?”
Sylvi’s tutor, Ahathin, had brought Sylvi to the library while they were studying this portion of the annals. Ordinary people needed a sheaf of special permissions to look at anything so old and precious as the second commander’s journal; Ahathin, as the princess’ tutor, had merely made the request, and when the two of them appeared at the library door, the Head Librarian himself bowed, saying, “Princess, Ehn Magician,” and led them to the table where the journal already lay waiting for them–with an honour guard of two of the Queen’s Own standing on either side of it. The queen was the library’s governor. Sylvi looked at them thoughtfully. They were wearing their swords, but they were also wearing hai, to indicate that they could not hear anything she and Ahathin said to each other. How were they going to protect anything when they couldn’t hear anyone coming?
* * *
* And it hasn’t been easy. Okay, it’s never easy, but the traumas vary. Today I had a second service to ring this evening, it’s a beautiful day and I would rather have been in the garden for some of it, and hellhounds have been unusually determined to have their tennis ball thrown for them and their rubber rings wrestled with adequately.
** And I’m not looking forward to finding out that that last scene–which did in fact come with a rush, fortunately–is written in Martian. When my fingers are moving slightly faster than my brain the results are often somewhat inscrutable.
*** They have, for example, no relation whatsoever to the first 800 words of the tidied-up beginning of the first draft I sent to Merrilee and my editor several years ago when Merrilee was trying to put together a 1,000,000-book contract to scrounge enough advance money that I could buy Third House.
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