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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.

    “I was prepared for this or something like this; I thought I was prepared. But I believed that we would reconnect in the land—I would not have come otherwise—and that has not happened. I have begun to fear that perhaps I do hear the land any more either.”

    “Do you?” she said. She did not think that this speaking out of turn was much worse than her last, although to ask a Master if he could feel his own land was beyond any conceivable breach of etiquette, of law; if she had thought of it, she would have expected lightning—the Fire of the sky—to strike her dead before she finished sayingyou . But she did not think of it. She thought of her land—their land—which so badly needed its Master, and what she heard in Willowlands’
    Master’s voice was despair. She knew despair, and she would draw him away from it if she could, both for the land’s sake and for his own—and for hers. And perhaps if a Chalice could not speak openly to her Master, no one could. “Do you hear your land speak?”

    He was silent; silent long enough that she might have thought of what she had said, of the perfidy and faithlessness of the query she had dared put to her Master. But she did not think of it.
    She thought only of what he might answer her; and prayed for him to say that he was still Master.

    “I believed I did,” he said at last. “I felt—something—the moment the carriage bringing me here crossed the boundary from Talltrees. I have thought that part of my exhaustion was not merely that a priest of Fire can no longer live as human, but that the land—my land—drew me back toward it so quickly that I was torn in two, between it and my training in Fire; that it needed my strength, and drew it remorselessly from me, when I had little to give. I lay awake all the first night here, listening, when I was so weary I could not stand, and when what I heard seemed half dream….”

    His voice trailed away and she said quickly: “No, it is often like that for me too, still; I have ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ABC Amber LIT Converter http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html thought it is because I am so new to it and because I was not called to it and bred up in it the proper way, but snatched, almost stolen, out of my old life and thumped down in this one. I think perhaps it is like dreaming, but like dreaming as a breeze is like a storm wind. If all you know is breezes then your first storm wind is—” And then finally, belatedly, it occurred to her to whom she was speaking and what she was saying, and she stopped and caught her breath—half in terror, half in shame—but even as she did she thought,He speaks to meclearly enough .
    Tentatively, because this was neither the time nor the place, she felt for her own landsense, and it was right there, close, solid, steady—closer and steadier than she would have expected it to be, if it were not also responding to the presence of the Master.

    He said: “This morning, now, your words to me, have been the first human words I feel I have truly heard since I arrived five months ago. I thank you. You give me hope.”

    And then the Grand Seneschal appeared in the doorway, and glared at them both as if he couldn’t help himself, before coming to make his obeisance to the Master with a smooth, respectful face. His apprentice, Bringad, followed him, looking worried; Bringad always looked worried. Then several more people arrived, Circle members and attendants and a few more apprentices; then the factors for farmers and woodskeepers, for whom this meeting had been called; and more bows and greetings were given. The woodskeepers’ factor, Gota, to whom she had once reported, had never once looked her in the