Robin McKinley (5 page)

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html She remembered the Master’s younger brother too. He seemed to stay as far away from his brother as he could, to take part in none of the games, and to drink no wine.

The new Master’s party had gone off without incident but it had not been an enormous success either—or perhaps she was only too tired to notice after the investiture, which had required three different cups of her, a complex invocation, and far too much contact with both the Grand Seneschal and the Prelate. What she remembered the most was the way the Master had sat isolated, in the middle of what should have been his own people. The inaugural party was the one time, sometimes in their entire lives, when all denizens of his demesne could approach the Master directly and for no reason but to congratulate him and ask for his blessing, and usually there was a crowd of people doing just that. There had been for his brother’s feast, although she had not been among them; he was kissing all the young women, and she hadn’t wished to be kissed.

There had been few enough brave souls who had asked for this Master’s blessing. She had stood by or near him some of the time—several times changing her mind whether her conspicuous presence would make things worse or better—and she knew a few of the people who did come: her woodright neighbours Selim and Kard, the herbswoman Catu and several farmers whose lands opened out south and west beyond the forest, although she didn’t see Faine. She also saw from her eastern quadrant the sunny-natured shepherd Lody, who was a favourite with everyone who knew him; she was glad to see him so conspicuously casting his vote for the new Master.

She recognised several Housefolk, including one or two of the House gardeners and Naz from the kitchens, who had been one of her best customers for honey for years and whose honey-glazed bread and biscuits, she had been told before she became Chalice, were locally famous.

The Master didn’t try to touch any of his supplicants, which was unusual but not unprecedented.

Instead he made the signs for joy and prosperity in the air between them. Mirasol noticed that he was wearing his gloves again. The gloves were daunting, but she thought of his ember-red fingertips and the blazing heat of his naked flesh and felt relieved. Once when she stood beside his chair she noticed that the gloves were no longer laced, but wrapped round and round and tied in place like bandages, as if, perhaps, he wished to do it himself, and had chosen an easier method to learn one-handed.

She guessed that when those present began to feel more certain that he would make no attempt to touch them with his dangerous hands, a few more of them began to come to him for his blessing. But he was undoubtedly an eerie figure. He sat on a tall chair carried out from the House for this purpose, and which looked almost as out of place sitting on the park grass as he did sitting on it among ordinary ambling humans: and Masters usually walk among their people on feast-days, rather than sitting broodingly still. The hem of his black cloak still moved to a breeze no one else felt. A single magnificent tree stood in this parkland, and the Master’s chair had been set at the edge of its canopy and so, thought Marisol, with the tree as background, the Master looked majestic as well as eerie; but this did not make him seem any more approachable.

He looked, she thought, like the model for one of the paintings in the long gallery at the back of the House, which were of scenes from the ancient days, when the demesnes were first being created. The Master might have been one of those early magicians: powerful, perhaps too ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html powerful for the mundane world, and for good or evil no one could say for certain.

Enough musicians had come to make a good energetic noise, although there was little dancing, and Mirasol felt that too much of the music was mournful. The mountains of food on the tables had disappeared by the end of the evening; how much of it went home under coats and cloaks for the people who hadn’t wanted or were too frightened to come, she didn’t know. A lot of it had seemed to go rather suddenly and rather late, although that could be merely that it had taken a while for most people to relax and realise they were hungry. But at least when midnight came and the Circle piled up the remains of the food in the ceremonial salver—which was more of a small travelling hearth, and had to be effortfully carried by four Housemen—and the Chalice poured the dregs of her last cup over them and the Talisman broke one of her wafers over them and the Prelate gave thanks as the Grand Seneschal set fire to the little mound, there were only the correct few handsful left. And—despite the Master’s presence—the bonfire burned sedately and, having burnt itself out, politely collapsed. There were barely even any sparks to stamp out, and the Housemen, noticeably wary as they took hold of the handshafts to carry the salver away again, visibly found them no hotter than they should be.

The inaugural ceremony was months ago now, and the parkland where it had been held showed no trace of it, although Mirasol always glanced at the old tree standing by itself where the Master’s chair had been. This morning it was a silhouette from another world: no earthly tree’s branches could reach so far, as if it were trying to protect the entire demesne. From what?

She was the first in the Hall for the morning’s meeting, where the great windows were still twilight-grey. The early fog was beginning to burn off, but at the moment it still lay so thick upon the grass that from the House the trees on the far side of the drive were barely visible, and her shoes and cloak were wet from the walk from her cottage. She set the cup of tranquillity on the window-ledge, sat down beside it, unlatched one of the panes and welcomed the breeze into the big room to do what it could to dispel the heaviness of the air, heavy here as it was everywhere in the House. She had never been inside the House when the old Master had been alive, so she had nothing to compare with, but she hoped that one of the things having a Master again would do was make the air in his House light and free. After only the few moments needed to slip through a side door and make her way to the Hall she already felt the need of the reviving fresh air.

Just the fact of sitting down was a treat. When she was bearing Chalice, she had to stand. She could lean—she wondered if the traditional Chalice habit of lurking in doorways had anything to do with the fact that it was usually possible to lean against a doorframe—but she couldn’t sit down. She had very nearly thought she wouldn’t survive the sheer physical strain of all the standing; but about three months after the Circle had found her, she discovered the handful of pages stuffed into the back of one of the chronicles describing exercises to strengthen the back and legs for long hours of standing. For muscles accustomed to exercise their strength in movement—a woodskeeper’s job was not physically easy—to bear motionlessness instead was a strange discipline.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html But that was only one of the aspects of the life of the Chalice she had thought she might not survive.

She didn’t know he could move silently. It wasn’t till he was standing in front of the fireplace that she noticed him out of the corner of her eye, and then, as she turned, startled, to look at him, she couldn’t remember whether he’d made any noise coming up the stairs to the front door on the first day or not. She was sure that his aides had made ordinary-footstep noises, as they had taken ordinary footsteps. What she remembered about him was his strange, awkward, rolling gait, but nothing about any sound he made.

In the meetings of the last weeks that he’d attended and she’d stood Chalice to, he’d either been seated before she arrived, and had not moved by the time she left, which often happened at the House; or when they met at one of the Circle points there were always enough people milling around and holding low-voiced arguments about order and hierarchy that any individual sound—

or silence—was defeated. Sometimes he did not speak during the entire meeting, letting the Circle member in charge of this or that ritual or this or that Circle position carry leadership, although if she looked at him, she could see his red eyes flickering back and forth among those who did speak; and when there were rites to be performed, he performed the Master’s part in them. And he performed them correctly, even when it was obviously very difficult for him to do so. There had been certain adaptations; he still appeared to have little physical strength. She wondered about this: Did the priests of Fire transmute their flesh into literal flame? There was no doubt that Elemental priests, were, eventually, no longer human, but beyond that there was little known outside the Elemental abbeys but rumour.

There had been attempts at discussions toward some general changes in the pattern of ritual to allow for the singular situation of the new Master, but his silence in those cases had drawn attention, and the brave, reckless, or disaffected persons who had tried to open the topic fell silent themselves.

All the Circle were nervous of him, but the Prelate was the worst. After the Prelate had dropped the staff of command during the sacrament of covenant at the ancient willow coppice that gave Willowlands its name, he sent a message via the Grand Seneschal that the Chalice should take his role in public ceremonies in future; that the Prelate’s more all-encompassing spiritual power was upset by the Master’s stronger power over his own land, confused as that was by seven years of Fire, and he, Prelate, was better off walking the Circle alone, at least for the time being.

She could have refused; the Chalice accepts orders from no one but the Master. But there was a precedent for what Prelate had done; sometimes the local Prelate and the Master—or, for that matter, the Prelate and the Chalice—could not work together, and the traditional alternative was that the Chalice pick up the Prelate’s public duties. The Prelate was fourth in the Circle hierarchy, after the Grand Seneschal, but the Grand Seneschal’s duties were practical, earthbound, corporeal, unlike the Prelate’s—and the Chalice’s. She didn’t like it—she was barely holding her own, and she didn’t need any extra obligations—but she did it, even if she didn’t believe it had anything to do with a clash of powers and everything to do with funk. At least she didn’t drop anything. Maybe Prelate needed some exercises to strengthen his shaking hands.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html What worried her more was her guess that fear made the Prelate less willing to support the Master. Perhaps more willing to…what? Was she imagining it that he spoke rather too much to the Overlord’s agent, Deager, when he came to Willowlands? She was sure neither of these men was the Master’s friend. Was there a direct cause and effect between fear of the Master and the amount of time any Circle member spent chatting with the agent? (Sardonically she thought, By that reckoning, I am not afraid of the Master at all. I wish that were true.) How many more of the Circle would she have to count as against the Master? And herself in his favour—and the Grand Seneschal? How would he vote? She had no idea. The only thing she knew about the Grand Seneschal was that he had written to the priests of Fire after the death of the old Master, and that could have been no more than a final desperate gesture before accepting the inevitability of—and the havoc of—an outblood Master. Was the Grand Seneschal weary of his gesture yet?

Who else might she count for? Clearseer, who spoke to her occasionally when he didn’t have to?

Talisman, who spoke to no one? Weatheraugur, whose only contribution to the oblique conversations about adaptations for a Master who was also a priest of Fire was to ask the Master what he wanted to do? She saw none of the others outside the Circle meetings, spoke to them rarely in anything but ritual words.

The little breeze coming through the window was sweeping away the morning fog and in the few moments she stared dumbly at the Master standing by the hearth his figure seemed to brighten, although more as if some fire in him was burning more strongly than that the daylight was increasing. He still wore his long hooded cloak, but after the first day he’d folded the edges of the hood back till it only framed his face. She still didn’t know if he had hair; the blackness of his skin and the blackness inside the hood made either hair or not-hair invisible. She knew that he’d sent his aides and his coach away three days after they’d arrived, so she assumed that he’d—what? Regained some little of his human strength, his human responses?—enough for him to move around on his own, to dress himself, to eat, to wash.

One of the rumours about the Fire-priests was that they neither ate nor washed: that they bathed in the Elemental Fire, which cleaned and nourished them. She doubted that plain, homely fire on an ordinary hearth would suffice. She hadn’t heard any rumours of other helpers being assigned to him—not even a body servant, to help with the dressing and the eating and the washing. And she would have heard, with the mark of his touch on her hand. And while the Master ate little in public, she had seen him put food in his mouth, chew and swallow: there had been a plate at his elbow during his inaugural banquet, for example, and she’d seen servants refilling it. Clearseer had told her that the Master never ate in his dining hall; he had food sent up to his rooms, and the trays returned empty to the kitchens.

“And the only ash in his fireplace is wood,” he added. “Although he gets through a lot of wood.

There’s a story that he chose the rooms he did—you know he didn’t go into his brother’s rooms?—because of all the private rooms in the House, they have the biggest fireplaces. Even the bedroom has one you could roast a bear in, and the sitting room’s is big enough for a party.”

The Master was alone now.

ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html She was so startled that it took her much too long to come to her feet and bow. “Master, I give you first day’s greeting.”