Robin McKinley (4 page)

When she had been a woodskeeper, things like Chalice and Master—and Grand Seneschal, Prelate, and Overlord’s agent—were impossibly beyond her. Even when everyone in the demesne knew that their former Master was out of control and his Chalice pulled in his cataclysmic wake, the ordinary folk, herself included, felt only anxiety and fear. There was no task or duty a beekeeper or woodskeeper could take on that would change the situation. The isolation of the Chalice was certainly on account of all the Chalice needed to know that no one else knew, all the tasks the Chalice needed to perform that no one else could perform; but she had never minded hard work, and her father’s woodright and her mother’s beehives had always been attentively kept because she would rather be doing something than not. It wasn’t the work of the Chalice she minded. It was the vast unfathomable burden of its responsibility. She still felt the Chalice was incomprehensibly beyond her—even wished that it were incomprehensibly ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html beyond her, so she could give up. In despair, perhaps, but because she had no choice. She felt that something of this same despair was in the Master’s eyes now, and perhaps only she could read it there.

And perhaps it was her duty to report it to the Grand Seneschal, or the Overlord’s agent.

Because even above the Chalice’s duty to the Master was the Chalice’s duty to the demesne. But she would not report it, any more than she would report herself. She was not a good Chalice, but she was all they had. The Chalice had come to her, and it remained with her: and as Chalice, her judgement was for the new Master. She clung to this thought sometimes, when her mind blundered like a shying horse among all the shadowy, threatening-looking things she didn’t understand, or like a bee caught indoors, bumping into walls and windows, looking blindly for a way out of this bewildering and inexplicable new landscape. Despair was a private weakness she could not afford to indulge.

But when she remembered that day at Faine’s farm—or those many, many other days that she’d put out a fire or darned a sock or propped up a fallen fence—she didn’t remember that she had succeeded. She remembered that she had had no idea what she was doing, and no idea why it worked. It did not feel to her, remembering, like an indication that she was learning her job, evidence that she was, after all, fit to be Chalice. It felt like something she had got away with, that she might not get away with again.

But there was something more that troubled her, something that troubled her most of all about the accident on the day of the Master’s return—the accident that everyone believed was a sinister portent to begin the new Master’s reign. She wondered if anyone but herself knew, or would remember, that it was a capital offence to injure a Chalice, even for a Master. She especially wondered if the Overlord’s agent knew of this old law. In the early, barbaric days of the demesnes, at least one Master had been put to death for it.

She’d read about the execution in one of the oldest records available to her. Some of the Willowlands Chalice records were unique, she just didn’t know which ones; and this one was obviously a copy, although there was no telling if any other copies still existed. Perhaps no one else knew that the law had ever been enforced. Most of the cruellest laws were no longer put into practise, but there were unpleasant traces of those old ways still. And the presumption remained that a law that had once been used, however rarely or long ago, was stronger than even a recent law which had never been anything but words in someone’s mouth or written on a page. Much worse was the lingering belief that a law with blood on it was somehowlive . Forever.

She was reasonably sure that no one could move against a Master for harming a Chalice unless the Chalice agreed to bear witness. But that would only place her in the trouble she wished to keep him out of, because perjury about a capital crime was also a capital offence, and the Overlord’s agent had seen what happened.

There was so much she didn’t know.

And then the wound refused to heal. This didn’t surprise her; it was in a bad place, and she could not keep the hand still when she was in public, and so she forgot to keep it still when she ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html was alone. It was also difficult to do even the most ordinary tasks with only one hand, especially when your mind was elsewhere—and, Mirasol thought grimly, my mind is always elsewhere.

Since the new Master had come, she had spent additional hours nearly every day at the House or one of the points of the Circle, holding a cup for this or that meeting or conference or rite. Since no one had ever tried to reclaim an Elemental priest for Master, there were no records of how that should be done either, and it was not surprising there were many discussions about it, and attempts to adapt the traditional bonds between Master and demesne, and repeated official visits to various important bloodright sites to reinforce, or recover, those bonds—to recover the demesne itself. Some of this was also the natural result of a new Master and his Circle learning to work together; some of it, Mirasol hoped, was that the other Circle members were taking up their tasks again. But she began to suspect that there were more of these meetings and visits, and her presence was more often required for the most minor of them, than would have been the case if her hand had not been burnt offering the cup of welcome in the first moments of the Master’s coming.

And she became increasingly aware that the Circle, as it was now constituted, was not learning to work together. And that Willowlands remained still far from whole.

Every day her mind swam and struggled while her face and body demonstrated serenity and control. She went home exhausted every night, with the Master’s exhaustion haunting her. What a pair, she thought sadly. Poor Willowlands. Furthermore she had even less time to pursue her studies—and she urgently needed to continue her studies. She had grown accustomed to sleeping badly as a result of not being able to turn her thoughts off; now she slept worse on account of the pain in her hand. She lay awake in the dark, thinking about what she could be learning if she sat up and lit a candle, and too bone-weary to fumble for her tinder-box.

But since the Master came, she thought, am I not putting out fewer fires?

Perhaps that is only because I am spending too much time bearing Chalice to a Circle who will not let me bind them together?

Is that my failure or theirs?

She should be asleep now. But you could pick at a dingy bandage in the dark and put off making even the tiny additional decision of lighting a candle.

Why had the previous Chalice taken no apprentice? Had her Master stolen even this from her?

And had the rest of the Circle made no protest? Was there any protest they could have made, if he would not listen?

Eleven Circle members had apprentices (and the Master had his blood Heir). The Circle met to choose a new Circle member on the death of the previous one, but they were supposed to know which way the finding rods would fall before they cast them, because the rods had confirmed the choice of apprentice when it was made. There was a story that this Circle had had no idea if there were some other procedure involved in finding an unknown Chalice than a known one—and had ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html cast the rods over and over, refusing to believe what the rods persisted in telling them—wanting to believe poor Clearseer, who had taken over from his master when the previous Clearseer had died with the Master and Chalice, was somehow undoing the unity of the Circle by his inexperience. She believed this story. It was one more item in the litany of confusion and chaos the previous Master had created.

Her own lack of apprentice was another. One of the first tasks of a new Circle member was to choose an apprentice: but a new Circle member should have spent years as an apprentice, and been ready to pick up both insignia and duties…including the training of an apprentice. And the demesne should be stable enough to disregard the small muddles a beginning apprentice had to make, to learn what she needed to. An apprentice relied on the Circle member who trained her to protect both her and the demesne from the things she did wrong, till she learnt better. Mirasol could not do this for herself, let alone for another, even more ignorant, even more inexperienced person; and Willowlands was not stable.

She had spent her first weeks trying to learn the very simplest of the rites that had been neglected in the weeks since the last Chalice died, complicated by the unbelieving daze of finding herself in the position to need to do so. She had had her own struggle to believe what the Circle had come to tell her. What had finally convinced her that the Circle hadn’t somehow made a mistake was their own resistance—ranging from dismay to fury—to the idea that she was the chosen. That the terrifying things that had been happening to her in the wake of the old Chalice’s death were something more specific than merely the general shambles that death had left. She had spent some time too in those first weeks trying to discover if perhaps the Circle had made a mistake after all—and coming reluctantly to the conclusion that they hadn’t because they couldn’t. That was the purpose of the rods. The rods could not lie nor be suborned. A conclusion she assumed the Grand Seneschal had equally (and equally reluctantly) come to or she would not have remained Chalice.

That, and writing to the priests of Fire, were the only subjects upon which she and the Grand Seneschal had ever agreed. The letter to the priests had happened before she had been found as Chalice. She had often wondered about the meeting for the finding of the new Master. The rods were absolutely reliable within their own demesne—one of the tales of their origin was that they were fragments of earthlines made material, created in the days when the demesnes were first shaped and magic was wilder and more brutal than it was now—but far less so when the answer they sought lay outside it. She knew that many, perhaps most, of the rest of the Circle were not happy with the Grand Seneschal’s choice, and she wondered how he had carried his point. The rods at least must have supported him. Or perhaps the rest of the Circle was as afraid of him as she was.

Despite her weariness she usually woke before sunrise; lately it was her hand that woke her, for it was often worst when she wished to sleep. This morning there was a meeting in the East Hall during Dawnspan, which meant it had to end at a given time and could not drag on forever as last night’s, with no defined term, had. Yesterday evening’s sky had told her that the morning would be sunny, so there would be no excuse of not noticing when Dawnspan ended.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html She picked up the cup of tranquillity—she’d been using that one a lot lately—and mixed the Ladywell water, young spring wine, grey clay, willow and cherry ash, six herbs, and two kinds of honey to go in it. It was almost the standard recipe for Connection, and one of the first an apprentice Chalice would have been taught, except for the honey, which was Mirasol’s idea. She propped the book of common incantations up where she could glance at it while she dressed. She already knew the invocation for Connection by heart, but she felt painfully stuffed full, however erratically and inadequately, of new things, and preferred not to rely on her memory if she didn’t have to. Although the open book was more a gesture than an opportunity for study, since it was still too dark to read. But it was comforting to have the book out too, like having a friend in the room with her. She didn’t have many friends any more; her old ones were afraid of her, and the people around her as Chalice didn’t want her among them.

Her way to the House from her cottage lay across the expanse of parkland where the great party for the investiture of the new Master had been held. The traditional place for the Master’s investiture was a much larger piece of open parkland at the front of the House, instead of in the smaller stretch between the House and the beginning of the eastern woodland. Clearseer—who was the only member of the Circle willing to gossip with the Chalice—said that the rumour was that their new Master had said that his banquet could be held anywhere but where his brother’s had been.

“The reasons given vary from his hatred for his brother to wanting to signify a new beginning to a realisation that since his people are afraid of him they probably won’t turn out for his party and a smaller space will make this less embarrassing.” Clearseer frowned, then shrugged.

“Which reason do you favour?” asked Mirasol. She wished she felt more comfortable with the Clearseer. She had no reason to mistrust his motives but, as the newest member of the minor Circle in a time of great strain and disorder, he was second only to herself in unpopularity with the rest of the Circle. And as a minor member, he could do worse than to curry favour with the second most powerful member—however unpopular. On the other hand, as Clearseer he should be trying to keep—or restore—honesty and openness in the Circle. Good luck to him. Even a stronger Circle than the one in place could be expected to be wary and suspicious after the seven years they had had under the previous Master.

“The new clean beginning, of course,” said Clearseer promptly. “But I’m afraid there may be something to the reason for choosing a smaller space.”

Mirasol remembered the investiture feast for the previous Master. It had been wilder, the games and contests more reckless, and the wine unwatered and over-liberal, than felt either appropriate or safe. She had come with her parents, but they had not been happy or comfortable, and neither had she been; she remembered that many of the people she spoke to were wondering uneasily if this was a foreshadowing of what was to come. She remembered—she had thought of this often in the last months—how she had thought the Chalice looked regal but fragile, and several of the other Circle members as if they weren’t sure what their duties or responses should be. The Prelate had been fawning and the Grand Seneschal had been grim—and she had been very glad that she need have nothing to do with any of them.