“I—oh,” she said. Her first impulse was to refuse, but then she thought, I’m tired, and—why not? Ponty was built as if from oak; he wouldn’t mind a second rider even if the Master did weigh as much as a human man. “Thank you.” Nonetheless she slid gingerly behind the Master, trying to keep a little distance from him, difficult without a saddle. Her exhaustion overcame her and when Ponty stopped outside her cottage door and she groggily dragged herself awake again she found herself snuggled comfortably against the Master’s back. The rain had stopped, but she was cold from weariness; the unusual warmth of her riding companion was very pleasant, although her cheek felt chafed from the peculiar fabric of the Master’s cloak, and possibly from the heat beneath it. It was a bit like being pillowed against a frying pan.
When she took a deep breath her throat and lungs felt as they always felt. Even her eyes were no longer sore. And there was a faint, lingering dream-sense like the memory of the ecstatic sweetness of the Master’s healing of her hand.
It took her a moment to get herself down—long enough for Ponty to turn his head to watch, which made her laugh. “Good night,” she said. “Good night and—thank you.”
“I am sorry for tonight,” he said. “I was clumsy. It should not have been necessary to frighten you.”
“I should not have been frightened,” she said. “You had said you would protect me.”
“It is to be an exchange of compliments between us again, I see,” he replied. “Therefore I will say that your courage astonished me.”
“Courage,” she said. “I was too frightened to run away. If there was any safety, it was to stay with you.”
“It was your presence as much as the water and honey from the Chalice cup that enabled me to do what I did.”
“You put out the fire.”
“You came. Alone with a pot of honey.”
“I am Chalice,” she said simply. “You came too. You are Master. What else could we do? Thank you for the ride home.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, after a pause, and she wondered if he was talking about the fire, or the ride, or the conversation. He added, “I will see you tomorrow at noon, for the clearing of the well.”
“Oh—the Journey Well. Yes. Yes….”
He nodded, once, his red eyes eerie gleams in the darkness above her head, and Ponty took a step away.
“Won’t they”—she hesitated, not sure how to ask what she wanted without saying bluntly “if they knew you were at the fire they might think you set it”—“won’t they miss you? Have missed you?”
“I go out often at night,” he said. “With Ponty. It is—it should be no worse that I was out the night of the fire than any other night.”
PART THREE
Two days after the fire the Overlord’s agent came to the House, and another man with him. She already knew she did not like the agent, Deager, and she disliked the new man immediately, although at first she could not be sure she disliked him for any reason other than the company he kept.
He gave her reason soon enough, however, in the proprietorial air with which he looked round. He was introduced to her with a tremendous flourish, although no reason was given for his presence; which, with the air and the flourish, was explanation enough, and her heart plummeted. By the time the Grand Seneschal informed her, stiffly, that this was the Overlord’s choice for the next Master’s Heir, she didn’t need to be told, and in her anger and frustration she said, “That is hasty,” before she remembered to whom she spoke, and she bit her lip, waiting for the rebuke. But none came. She was so surprised she looked into his face. He scowled at her at once, the familiar contemptuous, disapproving scowl, but when she ducked her head and then glanced back again a moment later, his face had relaxed into what looked a lot like sadness.
The new man’s name was Horuld. She paid little attention to his breeding, that several of his forebears’ lines ran directly from Willowlands, and several more had crossed in the ensuing generations, and which Deager was very eager to tell out, over and over and over, even to such unworthies as the demesne’s shabby and erratic new Chalice, who was herself one of the indications (Deager didn’t say this but he didn’t have to) that the demesne was still in trouble, over a year after she had taken her place in the Circle.
So far as she knew no Chalice had ever been deposed. But she had never seen any record of a Chalice chosen when there was no Master to hold the land steady while the Circle did its work either. It had very occasionally happened that an apprentice died with or before her Chalice; but then too there had always been an experienced Master. And there were stories of Chalices who had not been able to bear the work they were called on to do—even those who had had their proper apprenticeships—and broken under it. There were only a few of these stories, but one was too many, and there was more than one. She believed that one such Chalice was the Chalice she herself followed.
She was surprised—even more surprised than she had been at the Grand Seneschal missing a chance to reprimand her—when Horuld seemed disposed to talk to her. There were other, more prepossessing and conversationally skilful members of the Circle he could address himself to; demesne hierarchy declared that Chalice was Second of the Circle, but that had to be remembered only when there was work to be done. Her Circle recollected it only when they had to, as did the Overlord’s agent—or they always had done previously. She was, as Chalice, compelled to be present for the agent’s visit, and—as Chalice—she would serve whatever Master fate set over Willowlands. That was enough. Perhaps the training she hadn’t had would have included how to hold superfluous discourse with people she would rather avoid. When she was standing Chalice or performing a ritual she did not have to chat; but Horuld’s first visit was informal. In other circumstances this would have seemed friendly and considerate; as it was it seemed ominous and coercive.
Deager, having proved to his own satisfaction, if not all of his audience’s, that Horuld’s bloodlines were an excellent choice, wished to make it clear—he said—that the Overlord was merely anxious that an unambiguous Heir should be in place, after the recent disaster. If such an accident should happen again, the demesne might fall apart entirely. It had been without a Master for seven months; it could not survive this a second time.
She tried to tell herself that a declared Heir was a sensible precaution; their present Master was the end of his family. The previous Master should have declared an Heir when he sent his only brother to Fire. She wondered why the Overlord had not obliged him to do so; she had only been a small woodskeeper then, and small woodskeepers heard little about Overlords’ decisions. The demesne gossip said merely that the Master was a young man, and hale, and he would produce Heirs—had probably produced a few already, the uneasy joke went. But they would be bastards, and prohibited. By the time the ordinary folk of the demesne had begun to realise that their young Master seemed to have no intention of marrying and producing a proper Heir, especially in combination with his increasingly alarming general behaviour, the fear of what this meant also meant that no one wanted to talk about it.
And then the worst had happened.
Perhaps she should try to believe that the Overlord was merely doing the responsible thing—the responsible thing he had failed to do before—but again she wondered. It was too soon to tie an Heir to the present Circle; Willowlands was still too precarious. However necessary an Heir was, forcing him upon them now would unbalance it further. Would the next thing be that she was obliged to take an apprentice? She had no energy for the binding that would entail. Leaving aside that she had nothing to teach one.