There were only a few other people about, once Teldaru and I left the castle road. We strolled—just a pair of lovers, hand-in-hand, seeking starlight instead of the smoky glow of our lamps. And there were stars; I tipped my head back to look at them, when the street beneath me was flat. It had been day when I had watched carriages shrinking on the eastern road. Day when I had touched a statue by the small, round table in King Haldrin’s room. Day when I had begged Bardrem to wait for me and he had said yes, all right, perhaps. Now I walked with Teldaru’s hand around mine and could not imagine sun.
We traced a winding path through the city. The houses and squares were smudges, to me. Think, I told myself with each footfall. There is still a way—only think, idiot woman.
We were at the city gate. The eastern one, I noted, and was not surprised; this was a path we had walked before, together, a pattern already set. Teldaru spoke to one of the guards, who called up to another, and the gate opened with a grinding of gears and chains, and I was not surprised. When we were well away from the walls Teldaru halted and turned to look back. He was frowning. I looked with him and saw nothing but the dark shape of the city and the empty road. We walked again, further and further into the countryside, with its hissing grass and tall, bending trees. When we had come this way before, in sunlight, I had felt weighed down by the sky; now it wanted to pluck me up and float me away. Only Teldaru’s fingers held me to the earth.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last—for now I thought I knew what to do.
He looked sidelong at me. His hood was back; his hair was silver in the starlight.
“I will not defy you again. I’m just frightened. By what might happen with the king and Zemiya. By what I might do with you. It’s so . . . so big. Probably not for you, but you understand everything so much better than I do.”
He pulled us both to a stop. Put his hands on my cheeks and tilted my head so that he could see my eyes. “Of course,” he said slowly. “This is to be expected.” His thumbs touched my lower lip and rested there. I did not move. “But,” he continued, smiling a little, “you have always been strong. You will soon be at ease with my plans, and your part in them.”
We walked another few steps. I hoped my hand was not sweating, giving me away.
“And Nola,” he said, so lightly he almost sounded cheerful, “if you are lying to me, I will hurt you. Badly, though not irreparably. But I’m sure you know this.”
I managed to smile and squeeze his hand and we walked on, toward Ranior’s Tomb.
Even from a distance the hill looked higher than it had the last time; a trick of the darkness, perhaps, or just my dread. When I glanced up at its peak, the stone seemed to be falling, and I flinched. “Now, now,” Teldaru said, “we’ve done this before.”
“Of course.” I laughed, as if I were embarrassed.
We had no light, but he did not falter as he led me into the hill and then beneath. What now? I thought. Show me—one image, one quick vision, one hint of Pattern and Path—but there was only the deep moist black, and his hand.
I followed him up the steps to the inner door. He turned to me at the top and stood for a moment, stroking my hair. I heard him draw in his breath and waited for him to speak, but he did not. He pulled the door open.
The same torchlight beat against my eyes, making the same blur of tears. I walked forward before I could truly see, so it was the sound that was clearest—the low, broken moaning that echoed from the painted stone. What . . .? I thought, and blinked the chamber into focus.
Selera’s dress was not so white any more, though the jewelled ivy glinted even more brightly here than it had in sunlight. She was lying on her side by the sarcophagus. Her wrists and ankles were bound with golden rope. She must have heard our footsteps; she lifted her head and looked out from behind the tangle of her hair. Her face was streaked with blood.
“Nola,” Selera whispered. “Nola . . .” She lowered her head to the floor and began to weep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Selera did not cry for long. As I stood staring at her, she raised her head again and wrenched herself around on the stone until she was nearly upright, with her back to the sarcophagus. “Nola,” she panted as she twisted, “Nola; I should have known—you were always jealous of me—and may your Path burn your flesh from your bones, you . . .” Her words were so quick and shrill that I hardly understood them. Her teeth and lips were smeared with blood.
Teldaru set my case down by the door. “Now, Selera,” he said, “you mustn’t blame Nola for this. And you won’t, once you understand what we’ll all be doing.”
“And what will that be, O Great Teldaru?” I said, looking at him. “And will I understand it too?”
“Don’t be insolent.” A frown. “Of course you will. I was intending to save this until much later, when Haldrin and the island whore had been married for a while. I thought that patience would serve us best until we saw how their Path together began. But when I saw Zemiya again”—he licked his lips; I wondered whether he knew he had—“I needed to hurry. Needed to know if we could do this.”
“Grasni.” I spoke quietly, even though the thought of her had exploded into my head. “Where is she?”
He went to Selera and knelt beside her. Put two fingertips against her cheek and drew them slowly down, leaving smudges in the blood. She gazed at him and did not move. Her eyes looked as black as his.
“On her way to Narlenel,” he said. “As I told you she would be. Though,” he continued, holding his fingers to his mouth for a moment, then setting them back on her face, “I did consider having her help us. The decision caused me some vexation. But I concluded that you, Nola, might enjoy it more if it was Selera.”
“And what is ‘it?’” I said.
Selera was leaning her head against him; he turned his hand around so that he was cupping her cheek. “Laedon and Borl,” he said. “Tell Selera what you did to them, Nola.”
I laughed. “I can’t tell—remember? No, wait—let me try, like this”—I used the Bloodseeing on Laedon and killed him; I used it on Borl and brought him back from death—“I was a friend to both of them.” I laughed again and did not care that I sounded mad.
Selera bent so that one of her ears was against her shoulder. Teldaru pressed her head until it lifted again. “She undid Laedon’s Paths,” he told her. “With the Bloodseeing. I taught her to do this.” Selera’s eyes widened even more. “Yes,” he said, as if she had asked him a question, “I know—this is a surprise to you; another forbidden thing. It was hard, my sweet, silly girl, to keep the secret from you. And then, when Borl died and Nola remade his Paths, it was even harder to be silent. But I have done it. I was waiting for this.”
He rose and held out his hand to me. I stepped forward, my eyes darting. The torches are too high, I thought, though I could probably reach that one, if I stood on the sarcophagus lid—if I could just reach it, and if he had his back turned . . . I would know exactly where to hit him because I hit that guard once, with Chenn’s red glass bottle.
His hand closed over mine. “Nola and I will kill you,” he said to Selera. His fingers were trembling and I squeezed them savagely; he did not even flinch. He crouched in front of Selera, dragging me partway down with him. “And then Nola and I will bring you back. We will destroy you and remake you, and someday all the world will know it.”
There was a moment of stillness. Teldaru and I both looked at Selera, who was looking down at her bound hands. She raised them very slowly and then she lunged at him. She struck him in the chest three times before he caught her wrists. “It should have been me,” she hissed, and suddenly she was screaming, spitting blood-pink: “Why didn’t you choose me . . . it should have been me . . . I hate you, I hate you—”
The noise of his fist meeting her jaw was louder than her screams. She crumpled and slid down the side of the sarcophagus. She made no more sounds.
“Nola,” he said softly. “Is it your bleeding time?”
“Yes.�
� No point denying it, and why would I? He would only make me bleed another way.
“Good. You will wound Selera—”
“But she’s already wounded.”
“I am aware of this. You will wound her and we will go together into the Otherworld.”
“Do I not get to wound you too?” I said archly, trying to hide the tremor I felt in my throat.
He smiled. “Now why would I trust you to do that? No—luckily, I am already prepared.”
He pulled his cloak back from his legs and I saw that his left calf and ankle were dark and wet. Borl, I thought with a rush of dismay—of course—Borl bit him and he was bleeding all the way along the road, for all those hours, and I should have known. I was bleeding and so was he, and I could have slipped into his Otherworld and struck. But there’s a knife. He must have one, for Selera.
I smiled back at him. “Where is the dagger?”
He cocked his head. “Dagger? There isn’t one.”
“But,” I said when he did not continue, “how will I hurt her, then?”
He shrugged. “I’m sure you will think of something.”
I took a step backward. “No.” Another step, another “no,” and I spun and leapt for the door.
He caught me before I’d even managed to reach it. He seized me and threw me and I heard a crack that must have been my head against the wall. I was blind, scrabbling at his hands, which held my shoulders while the rest of him pressed my breath away.
“Remember,” he said, and his own breath was sweet on my face, “we are both bleeding. I could be inside your Otherself in a moment, and I could do more damage than any dagger. Remember that, Nola, and do what I tell you to do. Now.”
He stepped back and I fell to my knees. My vision returned in patches that grew and shrank and grew. I thought I might be sick but I swallowed until the feeling passed.
When I looked up he was standing by Selera. Her head was up; they were both watching me. She was smiling now—that quirk of her pretty lips that taunted and gloated and stung. I am mad, I thought as I lurched to my feet. I really am; he’s right again.
I crossed the floor to them. Mad, mad, mad—the only word, so many times repeated, each time a stone in a wall. Something to keep me apart, even when I knelt by Selera and gazed into her eyes, which were so green again, this close.
“You won’t,” she whispered. “You can’t.”
I bit her neck. I moved quickly and my teeth closed hard and I was already pulling away when she cried out. I spat onto the flagstones.
Teldaru was laughing. “Good! Oh, very good, Nola! And now—now . . .” He held the back of my hand to his lips, which tickled me when they moved. “Now you will lead. Lead, dear heart, and I will follow.”
I can try not to, I thought, but it was a faint thought and his words were much louder, laden with the power of the curse, and I believe I even wanted to, in the clear, cold madness that was upon me. I sought out her eyes, and it was the dark grey around the green that caught me—the rings that were the marks of her Othersight. They seemed to spin their own paths and I spun with them, around and around and in.
These roads look the same as Laedon’s did and I pause, surprised, on the yielding silver. Those hills too, and the canyons—all crimson and breathing as his were. But as I dig my toes into the wide road upon which I stand I see that it is gold as well as silver, and that it ripples like water, while Laedon’s was still, at least at first.
“Nola.” Teldaru is behind me. I see his shadow and I feel his hands—real or Other, maybe both—stroking my hair and back. “Choose,” he says, as he did before, and I do, because I have no choice, but also because the Bloodsight is flooding me with scarlet hunger. I pick a large road that curves off to my right. It lashes in my hands as I draw it in, thinking, as I did with Laedon’s: Come to me. It is harder to hold onto than his were, and I fumble and strain to keep my hands wrapped around it. It wriggles and falls and I drop to my knees, which sink into the moist ground.
“She is strong,” Teldaru says as he puts his arms around me and sets his hands over mine. We both grip and pull and the path slackens. It twitches once and then it loses its shape, flows over our hands and up our arms and straight into our veins. I feel Teldaru moan. I turn my head and I find his lips with mine—I do; I seek this out—and the kiss, real and Other, makes me even hungrier.
We consume the silver roads together, one by one at first and then in bunches. We are one body when we eat and when we touch. I have no mind: I am all skin and space, lengthening muscles and need. There is no more gold and soon no more silver, either, and the bone lattice thrusts through the hills until they crumble. Bones and blowing, drifting sand, and soon there is just the sand. Teldaru is as vast as I am; I cannot see his features when I twist around to find him, but I feel them beneath my fingertips and tongue.
“Nola”—his voice inside me but also far away—“we must return now; there is more to do.”
“No,” I say, and my own voice is like thunder. “I’m still hungry. . . .”
He laughs with his lips against my throat. “I know—and that is how you must be, if we are to bring her back. Come, now—we must make sure this part is done.”
The tomb swam up around me, its walls hardening every time I blinked. The torchlight was livid green, the stones splotched black, like bruises. I was lying on my side facing the sarcophagus. Teldaru was at its foot, holding a shape that looked gold and silver, just for a moment. Then I pressed my shaking hands against my eyes, and when I looked again it was just Selera’s white and her jewels, covered in the squiggling black fish of my after-vision.
I sat up and crawled to Teldaru. I felt the power of my Otherself pushing at my flesh and muscles and this was what propelled me, not any desire to know what he was holding. I was coursing with strength and numb with horror, and I crawled and knelt and saw.
Selera’s eyes were open. She was staring up at his face—dead, I thought with relief and another surge of horror, but then she blinked. It was a slow movement, as was the rise of her chest and the fall that seemed to come much later. “Alive,” I said aloud, or almost.
Teldaru lifted an arm and put it around me. He pulled me and I could not resist; he tucked me in against his side and held us both, Selera and me. “Yes,” he said, “but watch . . .”
Her eyes rolled. They found me and focused. Slid back to him, where they remained. She took another breath and I heard this one; it was wet and very long. He took my hand and placed it on her cheek, which was scalding. I had expected cold; I started and tried to pull my hand away but he held it there. The desert, I thought, the bones and the sand and the white-hot sky.
He bent slowly forward and kissed her forehead, then her lips. Her breath rattled one more time. Her eyes fixed on his face. Her skin went cold so suddenly I thought it must never have been hot. I had imagined it; I was imagining all of it. Except that I still hummed with power and hunger, and her neck was ragged and oozing where the marks of my teeth were.
He kissed her once more, deeply, as if she would respond. He must have felt my shudder, for he straightened, said, “You are troubled; we must be quick. Look at her and find a way back in.”
No, I thought—but how could I think this? We had to bring her back now, and I was ready; my body and vision were urging me as he was. I blinked away the black spots and focused on her face—but it was her neck that drew my gaze. The stark, wet pattern my mouth had made there. I narrowed my eyes and I was in and away, so quickly, with him laughing and warm behind me.
Selera’s living Otherworld was like Laedon’s; her dead one is nothing like Borl’s. Of course not, I think, he’s an animal—but I reel anyway. I throw my arms out—or I am fairly sure I do—but the space around me is so black that it is all I see. And there is nothing below my feet, which churn and stretch, searching or evading or maybe both.
“Be still,” Teldaru says from somewhere that sounds close. I relax my limbs and he is there, pulling me against him. I thrust
at him but his arms are roots wrapped around me and I am a little relieved, because the darkness feels very deep.
“It’s too late,” I murmur. “She’s gone.”
“No.” He puts his hands on my face and tilts it and kisses me on my forehead, nose and chin. “Look for a colour,” he says against my lips. “There will be several; just find one.”
He turns me around so that he is behind me, as he was in the last vision. I close my eyes and open them and there is a difference: the Otherworld is eddying with shadows. Some look black and it is their motion I see: they bend and blow like smoke. Others, a little further away, seem lighter—grey or white—and as I concentrate on these a few begin to change. I see a glint of green and another that is bronze, and I throw myself forward. I do not expect to touch one of the flickers already, but the green one is in my hands. It is limp, and as hot as Selera’s cheek was, and I nearly drop it. Teldaru’s hands close over mine and we both hold tight.
“Now another,” he says, and suddenly I see all sorts of colours, where the green was: a tangle of ribbons, each of them a different shade, each of them motionless. Teldaru reaches past me; I see his arm, which is impossibly long. He grasps a handful of ribbons and brings his arm carefully back. He plaits them, or that is what it looks like, and as he touches one to the other they begin to twitch and glow. With every bright, crossed strand I see an image: a baby, the sun, a necklace, a mirror. There are so many, and they change with every one of my heartbeats.
“How do you know what to do with them?” I ask.
“I feel it,” he says. “They still remember. Add yours: you’ll see.”
I bend, holding the green strand toward the others. As soon as it touches them it jerks and snaps. My palms burn but I manage to wind it around a blue and an orange. Abruptly it slides from my grasp and finishes what I began, twining itself, weaving its own pattern. I laugh in disbelief and feel my strength again, and I reach for more, greedy and certain.
The darkness begins to brighten, or maybe it is just the dazzle of images. I can’t even name them now, because they come and go so quickly. The sky—I see sky, so it is not simply the pictures that are light. There is ground beneath me, rough and splintered. A red hill in front. Teldaru throws a braid of ribbons that melt into a road when they fall: a pulsing, silver road with a sheen of gold. I toss the knotted length that is in my hand and it, too, becomes a road. It slithers its way out over the earth, which is softening beneath my bare toes.
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