Robin McKinley (24 page)

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“I need a pony,” she said. “One that can cover fifty leagues in five days. And who won’t mind a few bees—only a few, I think.” I hope, she added silently.

The Seneschal again looked at the bees. “You can have Ironfoot,” he said. “He has never minded anything. He carried me through the floods four years ago, when the dam on the Wildwater broke, and the House was an island for a few days, and the Master’s tall horses refused to leave their stables. I’m sure bees will be nothing to him, nor fifty leagues in five days.” He looked at her again. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

She hesitated, thinking of the size of the heap on the floor of her cottage. “I need to both ride and carry,” she said. “Perhaps you could lend me a second pony.”

“Who must also not mind a few bees,” said the Seneschal, staring at his desk. Two of the bees had found something that interested them on the top of a pile of ledgers, and were investigating it with their antennae. “You may have Gallant too. He is Ponty’s full sister’s son. Anything else?”

Again she hesitated. “Flasks,” she said. “I need to carry honey and mead, and water from the Ladywell. Leather bottles that I can hang from a pony’s saddle would be very useful.”

“I will have them sent to the horseyards,” he said. One of the bees was slowly creeping across the record book open on the Seneschal’s desk; it had slid down the margin into the binding-valley and was now working its way toward the Seneschal. Another one had discovered his hand, which he had not removed quickly enough, and was ambling up his forearm. He looked at it, and away again.

“Make no sudden movements,” she said. “She will fly away in a moment.”

“It—she—they could sting me till I screamed with the burning of it, if it would save our demesne. I will not ask you what you are doing. I will say ‘may the gods of the land and the earthlines bless your journey.’”

“I thank you,” she said. She turned to go. She paused at the door to look back. The bees had left the Seneschal’s desk and followed her. She held her hand out, and two landed softly on her palm.

“Pray for me—for the demesne. Light a candle. Do you have one of my honey candles?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Light that one,” she said, and left his office.

She took the bottles she had brought with her, and went round the House, sprinkling honey, mead and water at every corner of its long rambling walls and murmuring,“Willowlands, be thou one and one-hearted; be thy House one and one-hearted; thy gardens and parks and fountains the same .Let nothing sunder the House from the lands, the lands from the waters, the beasts and people from all.” Sometimes she dipped her fingers in the sweet sticky water and drew signs on the stones; sometimes she scooped up a handful of pebbles and poured a little over them, and then dropped them, one or two at a time, in corners, in plant pots, in the shadows of thresholds, ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html in gaps in the walls. Several of the Housefolk saw her, but none said anything, and when she inadvertently caught the eye of one, he or she looked away at once—and sometimes bobbed a bow or a curtsey, like a sanction, or a benediction.

She spent some time searching through the gravel of the drive at the foot of the stairs to the front door. She found it at last: the grey scitheree crystal that had been in the cup she had dropped two days before. She picked it up gently and held it to the light: three days ago it had been as clear as a glass of water. There was a spidery, feathery gossamer of cracks which filled it now, like sheep’s wool mounded in a bowl, waiting for the hands of the spinner. The force of the fall would not have harmed it, but it had tried to contain the force of her binding, like a teacup trying to contain a flash flood. “Thank you,” she murmured, and slipped it into her pocket.

Finally she went back indoors, and found the long twisty way toward the outlying wing where lay the rooms the Master had chosen to be his—far from the rooms his brother had lived in. She touched her wet fingers to the four corners of the door, and to a fifth spot directly above the centre of the frame. The doors in this wing were tall, and she had to fetch a chair to stand on to reach the last spot. There was a faint tremor under her fingers there, like humming. Then she went back outside again and picked up more pebbles, because she wanted twelve for each of the three fountains that stood outside the House to enhance the view of the park from its windows.

Last of all she went round the gardens, sprinkling all the gates in and out, the in-between ways from one area to another, and the beginning and the centre of the maze.

As she was leaving, one of the gardeners came up to her shyly. After her experience with the Housefolk, Mirasol only glanced at her, trying to smile—being saluted was disconcerting—

assuming it was merely an accident that this woman’s path should seem to be crossing her own.

But when the woman caught her eye—and dipped a tiny curtsey—she said, hopefully, “Me too, missus?”

Mirasol might have stared at her bewildered, but the woman looked at the flask in Mirasol’s hands. Mirasol thought, I am carrying nothing for humans, and this woman is not brick nor stone nor yet tree or flower. And then she thought, But it is all about opening and binding, is it not?

And this one is for the gardens, and she is a gardener. She touched her fingers to the contents of her flask once again, and pressed them over the woman’s heart. She left a tiny damp tacky mark.

“Thank you, missus,” the woman said, and dipped another curtsey. One of Mirasol’s bees flew toward her, and landed briefly on the mark on the woman’s blouse. The woman looked down at her and smiled. “And thank you too, little missus,” said the woman.

When Mirasol arrived at the horseyards, one saddled pony was being led out. The stablemaster was standing by the courtyard gate with his hands knotted together as if he was stopping himself from wringing them. “Missus,” he said.

“Thank you for your help,” she said. “I’ve asked the Grand Seneschal if I might borrow two ponies who could go fifty leagues in five days, and he told me Ironfoot and Gallant.”

“This is Ironfoot,” said the stablemaster. “It is not every Grand Seneschal who would trouble to ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html know the horses in the horseyard, but ours does. You will do no better than Ironfoot and Gallant.

Ironfoot cannot be wearied, and Gallant will go till he drops. They will do fifty leagues in five days, if you do not expect them to gallop, and if you give them decent grazing at the halts, which you should be able to do if it does not snow again. There is not much nourishment in the grass left at this time of year, but they are strong and tough, and they will do on hard rations for five days—even if their girths are going up an extra hole by the time you bring them home. There will be corn in a saddlebag for them. Gallant will be along as soon as the best flasks are chosen and hung.” But his hands were still knotted together.

“What can the Chalice do for you?” she said gently.

“Save our demesne,” he said immediately. “I don’t care how you do it. But I know what thefaenorn means. And I never heard that an outblood Master was anything but loss and ruin to any demesne. Whatever else our Master is, he’s the right blood.”

Despairingly she thought, Are his people are turning to the Master at last, now that it is too late?

Or have I not noticed this happening because I have been too aware that his Circle still turns away from him? For a moment her mind went blank with grief and regret. But then she thought: It does not matter—even if all the people in a demesne stood together against him, an Overlord would still win out over them. There was never anything any of us could do to stop what this Overlord wills.

“I—I will do what I can,” she said. “Before and after thefaenorn .”

A second pony was led up, its saddle creaking and clattering with flasks and bottles.

“Is there aught else I can do for you, missus?” said the stablemaster.

“Pray for me,” she said. “Light a candle. Do you have a honey or a beeswax candle?”

“Yes, missus,” he said. “We all have one of yours, up here at the House.”

“Do you?” she said, surprised.

“For luck,” he said. “We know our Chalice is a honey Chalice—and that none has been such before. And we need all the luck we can find since the old Master, and the old Chalice, died. We, most of us, we can’t afford beeswax candles, but we all have one of your candles, missus. We don’t burn ’em. We keep ’em, for luck.”

“Burn them now,” she said. “Burn them over the next five days, between now and thefaenorn. ”

“I will, missus,” he said, and dropped his hands to his sides. “And I’ll tell the others to do the same.”

“Thank you,” she said.

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“May the gods of the land and the earthlines bless your journey,” he replied.

She took the ponies straight back to the cottage and spent some time—too much time—

arranging, rearranging and agonising. She needed rest so she might think more clearly; she did not have time for rest, and the ponies were fresh. But she would not come back here; what she took with her now would have to do.

They left at sunset, the ponies mildly puzzled at setting out again so late, but too polite to protest still wearing their harness when they wanted to graze and doze. They were lucky in the moon; she would be full in four days, and if they were lucky in the weather as well there would be light enough to see by for most of the dark hours. She pointed the ponies’ noses southwest; they would go to the Great Tor, and the ponies could rest while she did a more elaborate ritual there.

Then they would go to the Ladywell; she did not have much of her water left, and she must have enough for the next five days. They would stop long enough there for the ponies to rest again, but they would have to go on as soon as Mirasol was finished. They needed to begin the Circle points by tomorrow noon.

They did more than fifty leagues in the five days left to them. She had not looked at a map of the demesne since she had first been found as Chalice, though there were many maps at the House.

She knew she could find her way around the edges, along the boundaries, because the earthlines would tell her where they lay; what she had not expected was how ragged and whimsical some of those boundaries were, or had become, over the centuries, as Willowlands learned to fit comfortably against its neighbours. It was like bodies in a bed, she thought, each trying not to put an elbow in another’s eye. The old woodskeepers’ map had showed the boundaries as being regular and straight, except when one followed a stream; at least the stream boundaries, she found, still ran through the streams, where the map showed them. The rest curled and curved, bent and dented. That made the way longer. And many of the places she wanted specifically to secure were not on the boundary itself, but a little way inside.

Also she thought of several places that as Chalice she should open and speak to, which she had not thought of when she made her plans, that the binding over all should be stronger, like extra fence posts in a fence. And then there were those small, anonymous dells and hollows or meadows and mounds which slipped into her mind like bees through a window as she passed them, and when this happened she turned off to go to them. When she slid off her pony and put her hands on the earth or the tree or the stone or in the water it seemed to her that something came to her, the something that had called her.Be thou one-hearted , she said.Thou art Willowlands, each and all of you. She thought they listened. She hoped they listened.

There were many of these. And they made the way longer yet.

Gallant, she found, was better at obeying her legs and heels while she scattered the sweet drops from her flasks as they walked, and so she rode him more often than Ironfoot; but remembering that Gallant might not let her know he was tiring till he was half foundered, and knowing that she wasn’t paying enough attention to anything but what the earthlines were telling her, sometimes ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html she got off and walked too. She only stopped at the places that needed more than a few drops from the tips of her fingers: the places whose attention she had to catch first—or those who had caught hers—or where she needed the opening or the binding to be particularly strong—the fence posts for her fence, the cornerstones for her House.

Other than these she only stopped when the ponies needed rest, and while they rested she mixed more mead and honey and Ladywell water from her flasks, and added herbs or didn’t, and dropped in or took out stones; and topped the result up with whatever local water she could find.

Occasionally the ponies had quite a long rest—or no rest at all—because she could not find a water source that suited her. Some ponds had lain in their beds and dreamed for too long; some streams rushed in spate for the love of the violence of it. Sometimes she could balance a sleepy or a riotous water with a particular honey, but sometimes she knew she did not want to try.

There were bees with them always.

Once, on the third day of their journey, the only water she could find—and Willowlands was very rich in springs—was a reedy pool so languid she was half afraid of letting the ponies drink from it, that it might give them a dislike for the long and weary work they were in the middle of; she stared at it, forlornly, with her empty flask in her hand, near where she had unloaded the saddlebags. A few of the accompanying bees circled past her face and then went and clustered on a particular bulge of one saddlebag. It contained a pot of honey she’d added at the last moment.

Not all honey—she had concluded—had a specific use beyond what all honey is good for, sweetness and salves. But this honey, it was somehow so strong that it must be for something, though she had still not learnt what it was. The best she had come to was that this honey was for joy; it didn’t seem suitable for such desperate work as this sennight was, but the seeming vigour of it heartened her, and she’d brought it so as not to have left any potential resource behind. It was the honey she had given the Master the day he had come to her cottage.