Chalice Read online

Chapter 3

 

  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.

  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.

  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. "

  "First day's greeting I return to the Chalice," he responded, correctly. He was always correct - had always been correct as far as she knew what the Master's actions and responses were supposed to be. She wondered what the Fire-priests said to each other, and whether he remembered the old demesne usages, or whether he had to study for his new role as she did for hers. Did he stay up nights cramming as she did? Did he read the old chronicles not only because he had to, but because he could not sleep? At least she did not have to fear scorching the pages when she turned them. But she burnt more firewood now herself, from sitting up late.

  "Sit," he said. "I am sure you grow tired of standing. "

  She couldn't quite bring herself to sit, even at his suggestion; no one sat in the presence of a standing Master. As if reading her mind he said, "While I grow weary of sitting. At least this morning we are declared for Dawnspan, so we know it will be over in two hours. "

  This was so like what she had been thinking she laughed, and turned it into a cough. As Chalice she probably did have rank enough to laugh at something the Master said, but she would not have had the privilege in her old life, and she was still caught between her two worlds.

  As he was caught between his.

  The dawn breeze, still blowing through the open window behind her, now felt cold, and she shivered. She didn't know if he saw her shiver - would he remember what a shiver was, or was a Fire-priest always cold away from his Fire? - but he turned to the fireplace. S
he was watching him intently without realising she was doing so, and so she saw his chin drop, and a faint smile turn up the corners of his mouth, as if he were addressing a friend. And the ready-laid logs burst into flame.

  She went to the fire and stood beside him without considering if this were permitted or not; she couldn't help herself. The fire looked and smelled and gave off heat like any ordinary fire; it did not burn too fiercely nor were the flames the wrong shape or colour. The rumour about Elemental Fire was that because it was the living fire of the living earth and air it both protected and aroused, it was nothing at all like the fire produced by flint and dry wood - except that it was hot, and it burned.

  The day would grow warm later, but it was early enough in the morning now that the heat of the fire was pleasant. She held only her left hand out to it, and turned the back of her right hand away from it.

  "Your hand does not heal," he said.

  "It is in an awkward place," she said quickly, ashamed, snatching her left hand back as if she had done something discourteous.

  There was a pause only long enough to register as a pause, and then he said, "I guess. . . it does not heal because it does not heal, and not because it is in a place where the skin is too thin and too flexible. "

  He held out one of his own hands toward the fire, and she saw that he wore no glove. She tried to remember - as she had tried to remember if he walked silently - if she had seen his hands since the day he had burned her, and she could not remember that she had. All she remembered was that he kept his hands hidden in his cloak when he could. At the banquet following his investiture, he had been wearing gloves - that was when she had first noticed they were tied instead of laced - and when he had to handle anything during the Circle rites, he wore gloves, and yet he still touched even stone and steel cautiously. When in the course of any meeting she held a cup to his lips, he let her do it, but he did not raise his hand to direct her. That was not unusual; many people believed that the binding work of the Chalice was more effective if only the Chalice's own hands touched the cup; and whatever the cause it was a compliment to her as Chalice. The other members of the Circle, before the Master's coming, had always firmly grasped the cup with her. She made it easy for them by always choosing among the long-stemmed Chalice cups, because it was forbidden to touch the Chalice herself if you were so fortunate as to be receiving a cup at her hands. To her surprise a few of the Circle, since the Master's coming, no longer held the cup with her. The Grand Seneschal was one of these, which was the greatest surprise of all.

  He turned his hand over, palm up, fingers lightly curled. Then those fingers gave a little flick and recurl, a come-here gesture, as to a friendly animal; one of the ordinary-seeming flames of the ordinary-seeming fire streamed toward him, and the tip broke off, and jumped into his hand, like a tame bird coming for birdseed. It heaped itself up and swirled there for a moment - a nestling, making-itself-comfortable sort of motion - and then, almost as if rejecting some pleasure for a known duty, elongated itself and crept up his arm. He raised his other hand then - also gloveless - and began to sweep it together again, as if it were straw. No: as if it were feathers, light and fragile. He bent his arm as if its own weight would make the fire settle into the crook of his elbow, and easier to collect; and so it seemed to be. He cradled it there for a moment, gathering the last shreds together with his other hand, and then held it gently. It made a bundle about the size of a small skein of yarn. She could see it gleaming through his fingers.

  "I might be able to heal your hand," he said.

  She fumbled, getting the bandage off. She had to do it quickly, before she lost her courage. She'd been able to stand without flinching when he'd burnt her, but then she'd only half known it was going to happen, and she wasn't already hurt. To allow him, by sheer will, now, to do it again. . . because he might be able to heal her hand. . . because she believed he should be allowed to be Master if he could. . . .

  She held her burnt hand up toward him. It began to throb at once, in the heat of him, or of the fire he held, or to the sudden hard beating of her blood in her veins.

  She heard him inhale sharply, and in his strange voice she heard surprise as he said, "Honey!"

  "It is good for burns," she said simply, trying to hold both her hand and her voice steady. She did not add: and this is the first wound, since I first learnt beekeeping from my mother, that it has failed to soothe, even when it could not cure.

  His fingers closed on the skein of fire, and it sank, or subsided, or melted, and its colour grew less red and more golden. He picked the much-reduced nub out of the crook of his elbow and squeezed. When he opened his hand again, something thick and amber-coloured lay there. It looked rather like honey: perhaps a little too viscous, a little too ruddy. But it looked far more like honey than it did like fire.

  He moved his hand till it was over hers, and turned the palm, so that the honey-fire ran off the edge and onto the back of her wounded hand. It had a hot sweet smell. . . .

  Her hand stopped hurting the moment the honey-fire touched it. But that wasn't. . . that didn't begin to describe what happened. It was exhilaration, exaltation; it was the finest, purest, best moment of her life expanded into something unrecognisable and almost unbearably joyous. No rumour of any power of Fire had suggested anything like this.

  She felt as if she came back to herself with infinite slowness, but some fraction of her mind had remained behind in ordinary time and was sure that it was all over in a matter of seconds. Still when she came back she discovered that she was being supported by a hand caught hard up under her left arm, so that her shoulder was nearly at her ear as she raised her head from her breast and gasped for breath.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't taught the proper forms for healing, and I was so afraid of hurting you further. "

  She looked up at him. She recovered her sense of up and down, and where her feet were, and stood on them. He let go of her arm. He had been holding her through both her cloak and the heavy Chalice robes, but there was no smell of singed cloth. She looked at his hand, and then glanced involuntarily at her sleeve.

  "I can control it, a little, now," he said, understanding her look. "And I guessed you might. . . . It is one of the things I am trying to learn if I can control enough. Or not. I was. . . very tired, the day I arrived. But. . . once you learn to live in Fire, you do not return. I had not, quite, when the summons came. But I had entered Fire farther than I realised. I began to find this out on the trip here. I think I would not have dared, if I had realised. "

  "I am glad you did not know," she said. "That you came. You are - you are adapting. You are coming back to us. To your demesne. You have just said you can - you can control it. " She could not bring herself to describe what "it" was. "You - you could not have borne so much of my weight, as you did just now, when you first arrived. "

  He said, "Fire helped me, just now. I could not lift the stone bowl at the Lower Water last week. Fire had no place there - as it rarely has any place in the functions of the Circle - and I could not call on it. "

  The memory of joy was draining away, leaving her in the too-familiar place of worry and frustration and ignorance and helplessness. She shook her head, to clear it, to shake loose something she could say to him, something that would convince him - something that would draw him further into the human world - where Willowlands needed him. "You are remembering the ordinary things. " As she could not bring herself to describe what "it" was a moment ago, she could not now bring herself to say "the ordinary human things. "

  He bowed his head and spread his black fingers, and looked at them. She looked at them too; the tips were not ember-red today. "It is a capital offence to harm a Chalice, even for a Master," he said thoughtfully.

  She said sharply, "I think no one else knows. Do not tell them. "

  "You are the only one I have hurt," he said. "I knew I was tired, but I did not know. . . remember. . . how delicate human skin is
. I should have; I knew that the two young apprentices they sent with me could not touch me, and that the coachman avoided me. But I was. . . overwhelmed by the world. I had not seen it in seven years. I did not know how much I had changed.

  "And the first thing I did upon arriving at my demesne, where I had come to hold as Master, is burn my Chalice when she gave me the cup of welcome. "

  "It was an accident," she said fiercely. "Anyone can have an accident, from a king to a scullery maid. "

  There was a pause. "Chalices are usually great believers in fate and omens," he said at last. "As are Elemental priests. "

  She didn't notice that she had reached out both her hands and seized his cloaked arm. She did not notice the oddness of the texture of the fabric beneath her palms - the fabric that could contain a Fire-priest's heat. "I am probably a bad Chalice," she said. "Certainly the three men who greeted you first on your arrival believe I am. It is true that I have only been Chalice eleven months, and that I was plucked out of my woodright without warning and without training. But the Circle's finding rods chose me and I have not seen nor heard of any record anywhere of a Circle finding the wrong Chalice. I'm sure the Grand Seneschal at least has tried to find such a record, for he would be rid of me if he could. Chalices feel the pull of the land strongly, you know - more strongly than any of the rest of the Circle save the Master himself. With nothing to shape itself to, that pull was tearing me apart when the Circle came for me, eleven months ago. I wonder sometimes if I feel it the more strongly because I had no training - because I went from woodskeeper to Chalice with nothing between. So I ask you to listen to me now. I know it is better for you to be Master of this land, blood Master, than to have the Overlord's this year's favourite set in your place, to unshape the land in grief and pain and chaos, and reshape it to a frame that is not its nature. " She paused to catch her breath, saw her own hands on his arm, as if they belonged to someone else - and jerked them away.

  "Master, forgive me," she said. "I speak out of turn. "

  "I thank the Fire you have spoken so, whether it is out of turn or not," he replied. "I - I am here to learn to be Master and I am failing even to relearn to be human. " He glanced at the fire again, and it gave a little leap and flicker, like a smile and a wave. "It is not surprising no one can treat me as human, for I am no longer human. But what the people of Willowlands and I still have in common - should have in common - is Willowlands itself; and yet I hear nothing anyone says to me, about the great work of Willowlands, consultation after discussion after ritual after debate - I hear nothing, except as if clumsily translated from a foreign language. I see my Circle's mouths moving and I hear the clatter their tongues make: and I understand nothing. Till I have begun to believe that I have indeed forgotten the language - the language of the land. I cannot be Master here if I cannot hear my people; when I can barely remember to say 'yes thank you' when a table servant offers me food. " He murmured something she could not quite hear, full of hissing syllables, which she guessed was the language of Fire, and then he continued, "Any Elemental priest would say we are all one beneath the three humours of the world; but the priests of each humour relinquish the other two. . . as if, perhaps, if we went out into the world again, we would hear only one word in three of what any ordinary human said. Perhaps I have heard only one word in three of what anyone here has said to me.