Guest postless Wednesday
Since I haven’t got a guest post for today . . . let’s have another story snippet, because my brain is presently consumed by all things pegasus, and is not going to produce a blog entry, at least not without bloodshed and major whining. Which is also to say that I’m behind on my proof-reading and have spent the evening trying to catch up. Arrrgh.
So, this was the last one, and it’s got the list of the previous snippets as well:
http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/01/31/pegasus-sunday/
This bit takes you to the end of Chapter One. One down and eighteen to go. Plus PEG II of course. . . .
* * *
Balsin called for the treaty to be signed during a lull in the battle: “It will hearten us,” he said, which was another of those phrases the citizens of the country he founded were still saying almost a thousand years later. There was a seal that had been struck by Balsin’s great-grandson which the sovereign still used, which said It will hearten us around the edge, coiled around a heart with a sword through it, which Sylvi thought looked more disheartening, but it was used for things like trade agreements and mutual defence accords, so presumably it looked friendly to delegates and ambassadors.
And so a table was set up, and Balsin and Viktur and two more of the most senior company commanders, and Gamdan and Dorogin and another magician named Kond stood on one side, and the pegasus king, Fralialal, and several pegasi with him, stood on the other side, and the gleaming paper with the treaty written upon it lay between them. The pegasi had agreed to signing, once it had been explained to them; the treaty was also ratified by pegasus convention in an exchange of tokens.
Viktur wrote: “Balsin had chosen thee opal he had long worne as not merely thee most valuable thing any of us carried—save perhaps thee Sword—but as thee greatest heirloom of his own family. Thee chain it did hang upon however was of a length for a human throat not that of a pegasus, and because Balsin knew of thee pegasi’s aversion to leather, we had had some dismay in how to make up thee difference, for our army was much blessed with spare straps but little else of that nature. My Sinsi it was who first unbound her hair and offered thee ribbon that had held it, which was of red silk, and perhaps not too low a thing for such a purpose; and then several more of our folk did thee same, both man and woman, and Gandam did plait them together and perhaps he did say some words over them, to make them more fine and stalwart.
“Sinsi said ruefully, holding her long hair in both hands as thee wind tugged at it, I do not like leather strings in my hair, but it is that or that I shall cut it off; and as I did protest she laughed and said, then it must be thee leather, alas—and she then made a noise more suitable to a common soldier than a Blood and commission bearer.
“But at thee ceremonie thee pegasus queen did come to her, and to those others who had given up their hair-ribbons, and offered to them instead ribbons of shining filaments in plaits so daintily coloured that our dull human eyes saw them change hue as thee light upon them did change; and Sinsi and thee others did twist them through their hair, and were happy indeed. One of these would truly have been token enough, but thee pegasus king set something else round our Balsin’s neck—although when I say thee king did, in truth there were three, for while their wings are powerful beyond our imagining, thee hands of thee pegasi are but tiny claws at thee leading bend of thee wing where some birds do seem to have thumbe and first finger, and these hands have little strength nor flexibility; it is a wonder thee pegasi do with them as much as they do, for their weaving is a wonder and an astonishment.
“Thee thing thee king gave was little to look at at thee first; a plain brown cord strung with large wooden beads of a paler brown. We understood by then however that thee pegasi by choice lead simple lives and I think none of us feared that thee pegasi sought to insult us, or did not honour thee treaty; perhaps thee beads were made of a wood significant to them, as Gandam wears an ear-ring that looks like rusty iron.
“As Balsin had had some trouble making up thee length of chain for thee neck of a pegasus, thee pegasi had perhaps ill judged thee smallness of thee human throat, and thee necklace of beads lay more upon Balsin’s stomach than his breast. He looked down at thee beads as if mildly puzzled, and I, standing near, thought only that he wondered at thee plainness of thee gift; but then he held his hand in such a way as to forbear thee sunlight which did fall upon them, and I caught my breath for then I saw thee marvel of them: these beads do shine with their own light, as if they were scooped out of thee margin of thee sunne—or rather of thee moon, for it is a soft and kindly light.”
All of this was in Sylvi’s schoolbook copy of the annals—as the necklace, the treaty and the Sword hung upon the wall of the Great Hall of the palace—but she read on. She couldn’t remember ever not knowing the story of the treaty and the Alliance; by the time she could read about it for herself it was already familiar, as were the Sword and the tokens in her life outside the schoolroom. But books from a printing press were in anonymous black type and bound in plain fabric and board; this little leather-bound book, soft and slippery with use and age, and the extra effort needed to decipher the second commander’s handwriting—and his occasionally curious spelling—made her feel as if she were reading the story for the first time.
She remembered Ahathin standing, and the guards. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up. “It’s different, reading it here. I’ll stop now.”
“Good that it’s different. Don’t stop.”
She went on looking at him. “Then you have to sit down.”
He blinked at her, amused. “As the Lady Sylviianel wills. Er—if the Lady Sylviianel permits, I will leave her to consult with the librarian on another matter.”
Sylvi looked at the guards, who were staring expressionlessly over her head. She wasn’t going to get them to sit down. “You couldn’t take them with you?”
“Certainly not. They remain to attend you.”
Sylvi sighed. “Then the Lady Sylviianel grants the Worthy Magician’s request.” And she went back to the second commander’s journal.
“Then was thee signing.
“Thee pegasus king signed first: with thee inked tips of his first three primaries, which do make a graceful, precise arc across thee bottom of thee page, like thee brush-strokes of a master painter. Afterward he raised his wing, and thee black ink had bledde farther into thee pale feathers, for he is of a creamy golden colour, and he held this up as if thee stain were itself an emblem of our Alliance, while thee gold-bound opal that was Balsin’s token gleamed at his breast.”
There was a mural in the Great Hall, next to the treaty itself and opposite the wall where the Sword hung, of King Fralialal holding his black-edged wing up over the paper he has just signed. The human figures, the other pegasi, the landscape and all else all fade into the background: only the pale gold pegasus, the stain on his wing, and the shining whiteness of the treaty stand out—and of these it is the wing that draws the human onlooker’s eye, that makes the wingless human shoulder blades itch. At night, by candle- and lamplight, it was easy to imagine that his one raised foreleg was in preparation for stepping down off the wall. When Sylvi was younger, and more all-encompassingly awed of the Great Hall, she had got so far as to hear the sound his hoofs made as he took his first steps on the floor—and the rustle of his wings.
“Our leader had chosen to mark his witness second, as it is thee pegasi who welcome us to their land, and their king did offer ours—whom I must now learn to call king, for thee first king of our new land is he—one of his own feathers for this purpose, once he understood that we use quills to hold ink: and it was of great interest to all us humans who watched, thee elegant way thee pegasus king drew his bent wing through his teeth and plucked out a feather as gracefully as a dancer moves through a dance, or a warrior draws a sword from its sheath. We cannot refrain from looking stiff and clumsy beside thee pegasi, and I saw at last thee wisdom of our king in declaring that we should attend thee signing of thee treaty in our armour and with our swords at our sides, despite thee look of peril and chanciness this gives us, and all of us well aware of thee scouts posted all round us, for these appurtenances of war gave us dignity where we had no beauty.
“But as our king bent down to sign this first and needful manifestation of his kingship, a breeze arose, and ruffled thee hair of thee humans and thee manes of thee pegasi, and blew across thee slender cut tip of thee feather penne, and thee finest spray of ink fanned over thee bright, exquisite paper, crossing thee pegasus king’s signature with a maculate crescent as beautiful as we are not, as if thee local wind-gods were blessing our compact. Our king laughed, and said, quietly, that only those of us standing close enough to see what had happened could hear him, It is a pity to spoil it as we ourselves spoil thee panorama, and then bent again and signed, neatly, where thee keystone of thee arch would be, were it of stones and not ink-spots. His is not commonly a tidy signature, and thee story has gone round that he signed against his will; but it is not that and I have countered thee tale wherever I have heard it. And indeed, loyal friend as I have ever been to Balsin from thee days when we were keeping thee king’s peace in thee backmost of beyond with three soldiers and a lame dog, I never liked our king so well as I did at that moment, for I understood that he too understood that to save their lives, thee pegasi have invited uncouth ruffians to dine at their high table, off their finest damask, with golden goblets and plates of silver.”
Sylvi, at this point in the story, who often felt like an uncouth ruffian on those occasions when she was commanded to put on her princess manners and her princess dress and sit at court or table with her parents, always felt a pang for those first humans learning to live beside the pegasi. She sighed and stretched and pushed herself away from the table and its slight, precious burden. She didn’t want to read any more; after this there was too much war, and Gandam began to go mad. She very, very carefully closed the little book, and looked round for her worthy magician.
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