Fiddler Fair (anthology)

“Then—” she swallowed, and her eyes misted briefly. Then the sparkle of mischief that he loved came back to them, and she grinned. “Will you bloody well stop calling yourself ‘this one’ if I say yes?”

He sighed, and nodded again.

“Then that is an offer I will definitely not refuse!”

The Cup and the Caldron

This story was written for the Grail anthology that was to be presented at the World Fantasy convention in Atlanta. Richard Gilliam, approached me and asked me if I would contribute. We discussed this idea, which I had almost immediately, and he loved it, so I wrote it. The book was later broken into two volumes and published as Grails of Light and Grails of Darkness.

Rain leaked through the thatch of the hen-house; the same dank, cold rain that had been falling for weeks, ever since the snow melted. It dripped on the back of her neck and down her back under her smock. Though it was nearly dusk, Elfrida checked the nests one more time, hoping that one of the scrawny, ill-tempered hens might have been persuaded, by a miracle or sheer perversity, to drop an egg. But as she had expected, the nests were empty, and the hens resisted her attempts at investigation with nasty jabs of their beaks. They’d gotten quite adept at fighting, competing with and chasing away the crows who came to steal their scant feed over the winter. She came away from the hen-house with an empty apron and scratched and bleeding hands.

Nor was there remedy waiting for her in the ­cottage, even for that. The little salve they had must be hoarded against greater need than hers.

Old Mag, the village healer and Elfrida’s teacher, looked up from the tiny fire burning in the pit in the center of the dirt-floored cottage’s single room. At least the thatch here was sound, though rain dripped in through the smoke-hole, and the fire didn’t seem to be warming the place any. Elfrida coughed on the smoke, which persisted in staying inside, rather than rising through the smoke-hole as it should.

Mag’s eyes had gotten worse over the winter, and the cottage was very dark with the shutters closed. “No eggs?” she asked, peering across the room, as Elfrida let the cowhide down across the cottage door.

“None,” Elfrida replied, sighing. “This spring—if it’s this bad now, what will summer be like?”

She squatted down beside Mag, and took the share of barley-bread the old woman offered, with a crude wooden cup of bitter-tasting herb tea dipped out of the kettle beside the fire.

“I don’t know,” Mag replied, rubbing her eyes—Mag, who had been tall and straight with health last summer, who was now bent and aching, with swollen joints and rheumy eyes. Neither willow-bark nor eyebright helped her much. “Lady bless, darling, I don’t know. First that killing frost, then nothing but rain—seems like what seedlings the frost didn’t get, must’ve rotted in the fields by now. Hens aren’t laying, lambs are born dead, pigs lay on their own young . . . what we’re going to do for food come winter, I’ve no notion.”

When Mag said “we,” she meant the whole village. She was not only their healer, but their priestess of the Old Way. Garth might be hetman, but she was the village’s heart and soul—as Elfrida expected to be one day. This was something she had chosen, knowing the work and self-sacrifice involved, knowing that the enmity of the priests of the White Christ might fall upon her. But not for a long time—Lady grant.

That was what she had always thought, but now the heart and soul of the village was sickening, as the village around her sickened. But why?

“We made the proper sacrifices,” Elfrida said, finally. “Didn’t we? What’ve we done or not done that the land turns against us?”

Mag didn’t answer, but there was a quality in her silence that made Elfrida think that the old woman knew something—something important. Something that she hadn’t yet told her pupil.

Finally, as darkness fell, and the fire burned down to coals, Mag spoke.

“We made the sacrifices,” she said. “But there was one—who didn’t.”

“Who?” Elfrida asked, surprised. The entire village followed the Old Way—never mind the High King and his religion of the White Christ. That was for knights and nobles and suchlike. Her people stuck by what they knew best, the turning of the seasons, the dance of the Maiden, Mother and Crone, the rule of the Horned Lord. And if anyone in the village had neglected their sacrifices, surely she or Mag would have known!

“It isn’t just our village that’s sickening,” Mag said, her voice a hoarse, harsh whisper out of the dark. “Nor the county alone. I’ve talked to the other Wise Ones, to the peddlers—I talked to the crows and the owls and ravens. It’s the whole land that’s sickening, failing—and there’s only one sacrifice can save the land.”

Elfrida felt her mouth go dry, and took a sip of her cold, bitter tea to wet it. “The blood of the High King,” she whispered.

“Which he will not shed, come as he is to the feet of the White Christ.” Mag shook her head. “My dear, my darling girl, I’d hoped the Lady wouldn’t lay this on us . . . I’d prayed she wouldn’t punish us for his neglect. But ’tisn’t punishment, not really, and I should’ve known better than to hope it wouldn’t come. Whether he believes it or not, the High King is tied to the land, and Arthur is old and failing. As he fails, the land fails—”

“But—surely there’s something we can do?” Elfrida said timidly into the darkness.

Mag stirred. “If there is, I haven’t been granted the answer,” she said, after another long pause. “But perhaps—you’ve had Lady-dreams before, ’twas what led you to me. . . .”

“You want me to try for a vision?” Elfrida’s mouth dried again, but this time no amount of tea would soothe it, for it was dry from fear. For all that she had true visions, when she sought them, the experience frightened her. And no amount of soothing on Mag’s part, or encouragement that the—things—she saw in the dark waiting for her soul’s protection to waver could not touch her, could ever ease that fear.

But weighed against her fear was the very real possibility that the village might not survive the next winter. If she was worthy to be Mag’s successor, she must dare her fear, and dare the dreams, and see if the Lady had an