The Pattern Scars

by Caitlin Sweet

  “I wish I had.” I did turn, then, and gazed up at him. His face was almost as still as if he were Otherseeing. “You should be more careful with crockery,” I said, and he smiled.

  “You’ll be relieved to hear that I won’t require a blade, this last time.”

  “Last time?” I said.

  “It seems,” he continued, as if he had not heard me, “that your monthly bleeding has begun.”

  I glanced down at myself. I was under a sheet, and it lay on skin that felt mostly bare—except for strips of cloth around my ribs and between my thighs. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve taken care of you. Arranged things so that you’ll be clean and comfortable.”

  I rolled away from him, pulling my knees up to my chest.

  “I know you feel weak and tired, Nola. But we must finish, now. We are so close.” I heard the mirror’s gold clink against the flagstones as he lifted it. “Look at me, dearest. I need your eyes.”

  For a long, long moment I stayed as I was. I imagined his hands on me, turning me over, and my naked flesh was hot again, beneath the sheet.

  “Nola.”

  I rolled over.

  “Good girl.” He laid his palm on my forehead, drew his fingers through my hair. “One more story, first. Just one more.” He sat back in his chair. The mirror glinted at me. I saw, only now, that there were shapes in its filigreed rim: leaves and branches and tiny, plump birds.

  “I am still eighteen, in this story. Still on Belakao. Does this please you? This time I am in a cavern—a grotto. Imagine: a place between land and sea. A deep, savage, dangerous place.”

  Neluja stood on the tallest of the black rock spurs that rose from the water. All the other people, Teldaru among them, stood or sat on lower outcroppings. Teldaru stared at the water below—the sea, easing in the daylit entrance of the grotto.

  A shaft of sunlight fell upon Neluja. There were openings above, and faces clustered around them. Belakaoans inside and out, waiting.

  “You must come to the choosing,” the girls’ father had told Teldaru. “It is our most sacred time, and it is isparra, which is something you know. The others cannot see it, however.” Teldaru had glanced at his king’s arched brows and at Haldrin’s crestfallen frown, and he had nodded at the moabe, firmly, trying not to smile.

  Now that he was here, though, and the sea was coming in (“the highest tide of the year,” the moabe had said), and the Belakaoans had fallen silent and were gazing at Neluja and her bird, he felt a quiver of dread in his belly. Zemiya was solemn and still, at her place between her father and brother, and this, too, worried Teldaru. She had refused to tell him what this “choosing” was, other than to say what her father had. Neluja had added, “It is the time of greatest blood-power. The only such time, for the power is hungry, and must be ruled on all other days.”

  “But what does that mean?” he had demanded. They had both blinked at him, silent. Even the bird had blinked at him as if it knew but would not say. He wanted to wring its neck.

  Some of the islanders in the grotto looked terrified. Some looked at him with their wide, white-rimmed eyes, and he looked back at them defiantly. I am Sarsenayan, he thought. Whatever this blood-power is, it cannot unman me. But the water was rising. It was nearly at his feet. It made sucking, seeking noises against the rock and he tried to edge backward, only there were people there, forcing him to stay where he was.

  He focused on Neluja because now all the others were. She cried out a long, harsh word and turned to the bird. Laid her hand on the creature’s glossy blue head and closed her eyes.

  Nothing happened. Nothing except the swelling of the water and someone’s rasping, ragged breathing behind him. Nothing—until the bird Uja gave a piercing cry and spread its wings.

  It flew. Up to the grotto’s roof, where faces gaped at it from safety; down, in a looping, graceful glide. The light from sun and water turned it into a falling spark. Even in the shadows, it glowed. It circled, and some people craned to watch, while others ducked. Teldaru watched—Uja, and Zemiya, who was smiling a little now, and shining in her own way, in cloth of yellow and blue.

  Uja passed so close to him that he could have reached up and touched its wing. It gazed at him—deep, steady amber that made him shiver. Then it angled away from him and hovered above a knot of people on the rock to his right. Four of them shrank back; the fifth, a girl no older than ten, lifted her arms and closed her eyes as if she waited, and accepted. Uja landed on the rock, wings beating more and more slowly, until they folded. The girl whispered something, and the men and women behind her huddled even father back, against the pitted rock wall.

  Uja walked past the girl. Three stately paces took it to the wall, and the people there. Their eyes widened even more. Someone behind Teldaru sobbed. The bird cocked its head and plucked at a woman’s dress. The woman—not old, not young—said three breathless, broken words, and Uja ran its beak along her arm, very gently. Woman and bird made their way over the rock to where Neluja stood. She spoke quietly to the woman, then raised her hands into the sunlight. Her voice rang from the stone. Other voices began to murmur, surging like the waves, and Teldaru wrapped his arms around himself as if this would steady him. The water was washing over his feet now.

  The bird touched the woman’s arm again, drawing its beak up and down, up and down. The woman turned to look over her shoulder at someone, though Teldaru imagined she would have trouble seeing through her tears. Up and down—and there was blood dripping onto the stone. Neluja said something else and the woman turned back to face her.

  The water was at Teldaru’s ankles. No one else seemed concerned; they all watched Neluja, their murmuring dread replaced with a silent, strained eagerness. Surely we won’t all die, he thought, his toes wriggling and gripping. He wished Haldrin were beside him, so that his fear would make Teldaru’s into scornful strength.

  Neluja lifted the woman’s arm and looped her fingers around her wrist. The bird moved to the edge of the rock and lowered its head to its puffed-up chest feathers. Blood fell, almost invisible against black skin. The two women stood gazing at each other as the waves pounded and sprayed. Teldaru shifted. Something must happen soon or he would throw himself at the wall and climb (a fruitless effort, given the angle of the wall, but it would not matter—he simply had to move).

  The woman’s head snapped back. Neluja’s black eyes flooded with whorls of pearl. Isparra, Teldaru thought, because he could not imagine calling it “Otherseeing.” The woman fell to her knees, choking, gripping her own throat. Neluja did not touch her. And yet she’s killing her, Teldaru thought. His heart hammered at his ribs.

  The woman was on her side, her body lashing. Her head hit the rock with a sound that was dull and sharp at the same time. She bumped down the rock slope, flailing. Foam flew from her lips. She came to a stop directly above the water and lay with her gaze fixed on the roof. Liquid too thick and dark for tears oozed from the corners of her eyes. She gurgled and frothed and was silent. The blood-tears kept seeping, over her cheekbones and into the fuzz of her hair.

  Neluja picked her way down to the body. She stood looking at it; raised her face and arms and called out a stream of words that sounded both triumphant and sorrowful. She crouched, touched the woman’s forehead, cheeks and chin. She held her palms over the eyes and said one more word. Then she pushed.

  The body rolled into the waves with a splash that was nearly inaudible. The water took it—tossed, pulled, thrust it against the rock and then away, to the mouth of the grotto. For a few moments the tide breathed it in and out, but soon it was out, only, lost to the open green sea.

  Teldaru found Neluja later, at the feast. She spoke first, raising her voice above the drumming and clapping. “You will ask me why, again,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “I don’t care about the why, any more. No—just tell me how.”

  “She didn’t,” I said. “She wouldn’t.”

  Teldaru tapped his fingernail against the mirror. “No,” he said
, “she didn’t. But it was enough. I’d witnessed the power of Bloodseeing, and when I returned here I pursued knowledge of it, in books and from other seers.”

  “Werwick?”

  Teldaru grinned. “He nearly fell over when I asked him. Sputtered and spat and turned purple. Which told me all I truly wanted to know—though I did need more. The rest I found out from brothel seers who were less concerned with the forbidden-ness of it all. And they gave me other ideas, too, without realizing it. Ideas I put to use once I understood Bloodseeing.”

  I pressed my hands against my belly. It had been cramping since he began his story, but now the pain had intensified. I remembered the brothel girls I had known; remembered how they had complained about their own cramps and headaches and other monthly troubles. “You started using the Bloodseeing on the girls there,” I said. “You killed them. Like Chenn . . .”

  He nodded. “I never told her about my nighttime trips into the lower city. And how fortunate that I did not—for that was where she ran, thinking she was escaping me.” He bent so that his face was close to mine. I wanted to shy away from his eyes and I wanted to be lost in them—again, as always. “All those girls, Nola. Their flesh, so solid, yet as thin as paper beneath my knife. Their blood, which I can almost smell. Sometimes I say, ‘Come,’ and hold out my hand. All of them are poor, and used to fat men, toothless men who scuttle off without paying. But I hold out my hand, with its black glove and bag of coins, and they look from the bag to my face and smile. It is the smiles that excite me most, next to their blood-strength. So full of power, and yet their lips and teeth and sometimes the wet tips of their tongues are all ignorance.”

  I felt sick. I could not look away from him.

  “But how much more profound it is with you,” he said. He stroked the curve of my hip, his hand light and warm on the sheet. “Because you know. Because you have already shared my power, and will someday understand it as I do. You are mine in a way none of those others ever were, and now there is only you.”

  This time he bound my hands in front of me, and not as tightly as before. He did not bind my ankles. Again he sat in the chair, not touching me at all with his body—but again I felt his Otherself inside me like a blade. When I woke up, he was lying on the floor by my bed, his eyes closed and his body limp. I wriggled free of the rope and sat up. This happened very slowly, and I watched him, feeling each breath of mine, each blink, as if it marked a year. I eased my feet to the floor. There were so many different kinds of pain—in my belly, my head, my bones; real pain and Other, which felt just as real—that I could not think. I asked myself no questions, like, “Where will you go, once you open the door?” or “You are naked and bleeding: how will you explain any of this?” The only words in my head were “King Haldrin,” and they forced me up, forced me to stand and take enough shaky, tiny steps to get me to the door.

  “Nola.”

  My hand was on the latch. I was trembling so violently that it rattled when I lifted it.

  “Nola.”

  He was up; I felt him behind me. His feet scraped along the flagstones. He was limping, weaker even than I was. I tugged the door open with what little strength I had, and sunlight beat against my eyes and skin. I gulped fresh air and stepped out beyond the doorframe, trying to see, trying to find the muscles that would help me run—but the sun was too bright, and he was right behind me now, his hands at my shoulder and hip, pulling. I was back in the room, and the door was smothering the sunlight, and he was pressing me against the wood, leaning so heavily into me that I could hardly breathe. He lowered his lips and my own lips opened (my shame, my horror—but I must tell all of it); my lips parted and let him in.

  “You will not tell,” he said. His mouth barely moved against mine. He tasted, smelled, of earth and wine. I bit his lower lip, hard, and he staggered backward. He lifted his hand to his face. I could not see if he was bleeding.

  “You will not tell,” he said again, his voice muffled by fingers, “because you cannot. The curse is cast.”

  “I do not care,” I said, defiant and bitter. Because I did not understand—not yet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When Teldaru finally returned to my room, he brought a girl.

  She was beautiful. I stared at her green eyes and full, pink lips, and at the dimples that appeared in her cheeks when she looked at him. Her hair hung down her back in a thick blonde braid. My own hair had not been washed since I arrived. The girl stood with her clasped hands resting on the light purple cloth of her dress. I wanted to pull the sheet up over myself, from dirty shift to dirty hair, but I did not.

  “Nola, this is Selera.”

  I said nothing. Selera smiled a false, sweet smile.

  “She helped me tend you, when you were so sick.”

  I remembered the braid, the cool hands; I said, “I know.” Then I, too, smiled. “So you know about him, do you?”

  Selera glanced at Teldaru. “Know what? That he is the greatest Otherseer who has ever lived? That he is the greatest teacher?”

  “Hmm,” I said, “yes, of course, all that.” I thought about adding, But are you also aware that he intends to raise Ranior from the dead using Bloodseeing? Ranior and Flamebird Mambura, too, who will fight and probably die again and somehow confirm that Teldaru is, as you’ve already said, the greatest man who’s ever existed? I said none of this, though; I would wait, speak the words when they would surprise the most.

  “And what has he told you of me?” I said, lightly.

  Selera’s blonde brows drew together and her smooth, white forehead wrinkled. “He has told me of your madness, and of his efforts to cure you.”

  I laughed. There was a strained giddiness to the sound, which was so appropriate that I laughed harder. “Well done, Master Seer,” I gasped at last, gesturing from Teldaru to Selera. “She’s perfect.”

  Teldaru nodded. “She is.” Selera’s dimples wriggled. “And she is going to help us again, now. She is going to show us whether you have truly been . . . healed.”

  “Healed,” I said. “Is that what you call it?”

  Teldaru glanced at Selera apologetically, as if my madness embarrassed him. “You will Othersee for her,” he went on, turning back to me. “You will look on her Pattern and tell us what you see.”

  Selera gasped. “But master . . .” she said. Her hands fluttered at her narrow, silver-belted waist. “This is . . . this would be . . .”

  “Forbidden?” He smiled at her. “Of course. You have always been taught that Otherseers should never ask to be seen themselves. You have been taught that this detracts from the Otherseer’s power and reputation.” He touched Selera’s arm with his fingertips and she flushed (prettily, not awkwardly). “But now I ask you to let go what you have learned and serve me in a different way. Will you do this for me, Selera?”

  She nodded, her green eyes round, her lips parted on a silent “o.”

  Then he turned to me. “You will look on Selera’s Pattern,” he said again, and I felt a rush of excitement I could not quell, despite the confusion and dread that lay beneath it. For what if this was the curse? What if he had stripped me of my Othersight, and we were all about to discover it?

  I let them see none of these things. I shrugged, said, “Very well. What will I use?”

  Teldaru set my metal water bowl down beside the bed. He drew a vial out from his pouch. “Ink on water,” he said.

  Enough, I told myself; don’t be so nervous; don’t be so eager—but my head hummed and my hands shook a bit, as I reached to reposition the bowl. The water sloshed and settled.

  Selera knelt on the other side of the bowl. Teldaru passed her the vial and she tugged the stopper out. “So, mad girl,” she said softly, “tell me where my Path will take me.” She poured.

  Dark spirals and circles, thick, thinning. The Otherworld rising around me in trembling clear waves shot through with crimson.

  A wolf, an eagle, a knife, a severed hand; all of these suspended, frozen, until they are
swept away in a flood of dark, boiling water. A flood, but soon the water vanishes into baked, cracked earth. Nothing left behind but bones: ribcages and hips and pointing fingers, and one clean, polished skull. A place with no paths, no roads: only the cracks that gape beneath the white sun.

  I was on my back. The ceiling wavered and solidified as I blinked. Its surface rippled with the black lines I always saw, after the light of the Otherworld passed. I held my breath for a moment; held the wild, aching, fearful joy of vision.

  “She is finished.” Selera’s voice, far away.

  “Yes.” Teldaru’s, much closer. I breathed out. “Yes—and she will tell us what she saw, now.”

  He held a cup to my mouth and I took a great, clumsy gulp—wine, bitter, hardly watered at all. I coughed, saw Selera snigger, behind one of her shapely hands.

  “Oh, I’ll tell you,” I said. I thought, Teldaru’s failed: there is no curse. I had this vision—and how I’ll enjoy making those awful, pretty dimples disappear when I describe it to her.

  “I saw flowers,” I said.

  The words echoed in my ears. I wanted to laugh in disbelief, but there was something in my throat—a hollow; a strange, hot lump—I hardly knew what I felt, but it was there.

  “I saw three children with golden hair. Two of them had green eyes. The third one’s eyes were black.”

  Selera was gazing at Teldaru, her lips still parted, her own green eyes glowing.

  No, I tried to say; that is not what I saw. “They were laughing,” I said. No, no, no: but these words, too, were silent. I heaved myself to my feet, ignoring a surge of dizziness. I stumbled to Teldaru and seized his tunic—two handfuls, right below his shoulders.

  “Yes, Nola?” he said mildly, covering my hands with his. “Is there something else?”

  What have you done to me? I whirled, faced Selera. Look at me—surely you see? I will scream; I will throw myself on the floor and scream until King Haldrin comes and I can tell him.