She thought the thrumming in her ears was her own blood; she thought that she did not hear the voices clearly because she did not want to. There were bees around her, but there were always bees around her recently; she still had not looked behind her. She had no reason to look behind her; she only looked ahead.
What could she do about the cup she did not have? The people—her people—were looking to her.
The Overlord’s coach and a second, smaller one behind it, were drawn up opposite the front stair of the House, and at least twenty horses and riders in the Overlord’s livery lined the drive, and more on foot; but the Grand Seneschal stood at the top of the stairs alone. She looked around for the other members of the Circle; most of them were standing in an awkward and irresolute-looking group near the foot of the stairs: not quite treacherously close to the Overlord’s company but too far to be counted as loyal to the Master either. And yet what good was loyalty now? Let them save themselves. The Prelate seemed again to have disappeared. All the Circle must be present; even if he stood at the Overlord’s elbow it were better than that he was missing. Could he be so selfish as not to care that the survival of Willowlands might depend on an unbroken Circle, today of all days?
A Circle whose Chalice, today of all days, had no cup to bear.
Chalice, she heard again. Lady. These were her people now, as much as they were the Master’s. She saw into the crowd without meaning to, looked into their faces—realising how many of them she now knew as individuals—how many she could put names to, and say what they did, how many children they had, where they lived. And—especially today, the day of the faenorn—they were expecting her, relying on her, to hold the demesne together. Only the Chalice had the strength of connection to the Mastership to bridge the difference between a blood Master and an outblood one.
I’ve only been Chalice such a little while! she thought despairingly. You cannot ask this of me!
But they had to. There was no one else.
And she had brought no cup to bear for them.
She turned Ironfoot’s head toward the horseyard. The horseman who took the bridles from her had an unlit candle end tucked in the breast of his shirt. “Thank you,” she said, and briefly touched the candle, as if reminding herself of the presence of a friend. She did not think what it would look like to the man. Nor did she think of what she was doing when she unslung the one pannier that held what was left of her honey, water, herbs and mead, stones and the little travelling cup, and hung it over her shoulder. It was too late for her to do anything further with these; she did not dare mix a last-minute, haphazard, unplanned cup for such as the faenorn with the odds and ends left after her journey. But she had carried them a long way, and if there was any reason for her doing it, it was to have a friend with her. The pannier was made to hang from a saddle, against a horse’s side, but it settled easily against her back.
She went to join the Grand Seneschal at the front door. She was trembling now, trembling as she had not done for almost a year, when they were waiting for their new Master, their new Master who had been a priest of Fire. The people parted before her, holding up their little candle flames as she passed them. She paused at the bottom of the steps.
She saw neither the Overlord nor the Heir.
She climbed the steps slowly, heavily. The pannier thumped against her leg, and it occurred to her that there was even less sense than none that she had brought it with her. Not only did she have no goblet to carry for the faenorn, she had no goblet to welcome the Master with afterward. However this meeting ended—and she knew how everyone present believed it would end—she would have a Master to welcome. And nothing to welcome him with.
She half imagined she could feel the stairs she walked on crumbling, the broken earthlines sinking farther into the earth, leaving the House nothing to stand on. She could almost feel the first tiny lurch, as the House’s foundations began to slip into the abyss; could almost hear the stirring, the pattering of sand and soil and plaster dust into sudden crevices, a sound almost like humming.
The earthlines were silent; silent as no live thing should be silent.
The Seneschal put a hand out toward her, as if she looked so tired she might not be able to climb the last step. Perhaps she was that tired. Perhaps it was something the crowd should see, the Grand Seneschal putting a hand out to the Chalice, and her taking it. She took the offered hand, and leaned on it.
He glanced at the sky behind her, disinterestedly, and back to her again. “The faenorn will be swords,” he said without preamble.
She was not so tired that she didn’t jerk forward and grunt What? as if his words were blows. His voice had been low, and she struggled to make hers low too to answer him. “Swords. That is no faenorn; that is slaughter.”
The Grand Seneschal shrugged. “The Master did not protest. And, indeed, what weapon could he have suggested that would suit him any better?”
“Fire,” she said.
“He would not,” said the Seneschal. “You know he would not.”
She shook her head. She had not considered this aspect of the faenorn; she had tried not to consider it at all, but she had involuntarily remembered what she had read about it, before she had closed the book or gone to answer the door, these last few days, while she was scattering drops and murmuring Be thou one-hearted. It was as if the faenorn itself were a part of what she had been trying to do; as if it were a member of her Circle, and she could not bind round it without knowing its shape. She did not want to know and remember, but she did: that while this battle for the Mastership of the demesne was symbolic, and only the two rivals themselves were involved, it was still a meeting with real weapons. That it was not required that either die of it, but failure was such a disgrace that the loser generally preferred to die, and the victor was considered to have behaved with honour if he yielded to such a request. In the old, barbaric days, when faenorn was almost a commonplace, you wanted your enemy dead; it was the only way you could be sure he would not regroup and attack you again.
Their Master would not have to ask; Horuld would kill him with the first stroke.
By the fourth level an Elemental priest can again go into the world, if he so chooses, because his metamorphosis is complete, the Master had said to her. But they mostly choose not to come, she had replied. And they cannot stay, because they can no longer live among humans. Among us. A fourth-level priest would never have been sent home to be Master of his demesne. And I have never heard of one stopping a forest fire. A fourth-level priest could not be killed by a blow with a sword. But a third-level priest could be killed as easily as a human could.
Before the Master had been sent to Fire by his brother, he would have been trained to use a sword, an eligary and a bow; Mirasol had a faint memory of a rumour that he had been better than his brother at all three. But even if it was true, it was of no use to him now: not after seven years of Fire. While he was no longer as weak or as clumsy as he had been, he still found walking strange and laborious, and anyone watching him climb or descend stairs must look away in distress. There was still too much Fire in him—so much that he still had to remember not to burn what he touched with his hand, even if that meant letting the Overlord fall, and losing his demesne for it.
She saw the people looking up the stair toward herself and the Grand Seneschal; she did not notice that they were looking over their heads, to the sky above the House, where her bees hummed and hovered and where, with every moment that passed, more and more bees joined them. It was a heavy, cloud-oppressed day, and she did not notice the increasing shadow they cast. She thought of her Master, who had too much Fire in him, and wondered why the Seneschal did not ask her why she was not carrying a cup, a crucial, critical cup, to bring the demesne through the faenorn.