This is easy, at first. I am still so powerful, and it feels effortless, drawing in the faint, sagging ribbons and making them breathe. Easy, easy, I think as I watch them harden and slide away from me. Easy, as canyons open and mold and the distance puckers with hills.
Only then it is not easy any more. I am holding a blue cord when I feel a tug from deep within me. I gasp at the shock of it, and at the pain, which is as sharp as the metal Teldaru uses to cut me.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “you’ll hardly feel it if you keep going”—but I do feel it. Every time I touch a strand or see an image my insides tear. I remember how the strength flowed from my veins into Borl’s dead paths, but this is nothing like that was. I cry out and claw at my own skin but the pain is too much.
“Nola! Stay with me!” He is touching me. I can hardly feel him. “Nola!” The red is flooding with black—is it mine or hers?—and all the colours are gone. His hands are on my arms. He pushes me, and I do feel this, and the rush of wind as I fall.
The stone gathered itself around and beneath me. Real stone. Ranior’s Tomb. I was on my back and all my bones were broken—but they were not, because I was writhing and bending.
He will be angry, I thought. I was too tired to care. When his hands crept up over me, from knees to breasts, I expected them to gouge or twist. They did not. They lingered, and each stroke returned me to my body. His hands. My naked, aching skin.
I opened my eyes. His head was bent over my breasts. He looked very far away. My dress? I wondered through the thickness in my head, and then I realized that it was bunched up under my arms. Its folds were moving like waves. I wanted to close my eyes again, but the black shapes that played over Teldaru’s head and arms were mesmerizing.
His tongue was cool. I saw it making wet circles on my nipples—and his teeth, after, closing hard but also gently. I moaned. Selera? I thought—or maybe I said it aloud, because he lifted his head, murmured, “It’s all right. You did very well. You’ll do better next time.”
I forced myself to look for Selera. She was not where she had been—she was halfway to the door, and I wondered whether she had moved there herself or whether Teldaru had driven her there. (Teldaru and I, I thought, and shrank away from it.) Selera was broken, just as Laedon had been. Head and legs contorted; one arm beneath her, turned the wrong way. Not even my warped vision made me believe she was alive.
Teldaru’s body was on mine. His weight was crushing; he was hardly supporting himself. He held my face between his hands and I was too weak to pull it away. His black eyes were spotted with red and flashes of silver that looked like lightning branches. They stayed open, even when he kissed me. Even when he nudged my knees open with his and leaned down more heavily yet. And then he was inside me and I was moaning again, twisting around his stillness. When he finally shifted it was just an easing away and a smooth, slow return—just this, over and over. I bit my lip to keep from making any more sounds. I squeezed my eyes shut and he forced them open with his thumbs and forefingers. He gazed at me until he gave one last, gentle thrust, and a shudder ran through us both. Then his eyes dipped shut and he sagged off me, onto the cool red stones.
I gasped for breath and it scalded my throat. I heard a noise that I discovered, moments later, was my own whimpering. There was something else, though—a low, regular grumble. I rolled over (wincing, throbbing) and he was there, his face level with my breasts. His breath was warm on my skin, and it was his breath that was so noisy. I craned so that I could see his face. His eyelids were fluttering but mostly closed. I lay back and listened to him snore once, twice, three times. Then I moved.
It seemed to take a very long time to sit, but once I succeeded the rest was easier. I was on my knees, rocking forward on my fists; I was in a crouch, my dress falling, arranging itself back over my body. I felt a warmth that I knew was blood but did not want to waste my strength finding the strips of cloth that used to be wadded between my legs. I lurched to my feet and stared down at him, through the wobbling of my after-vision.
Kill him. A torch will do, if you hit him hard enough.
Teldaru sucked in a different-sounding snore and went silent for a moment that seemed to last far too long. He’s dead now, I thought giddily, but then he breathed again and rolled from his side to his belly.
Kill him and the curse will never break.
I stood over him, gazing at his slack lips and his cheek, with its fuzz of hair that I knew was red-gold, but that looked greenish now. His limbs were like a child’s, sprawled and careless.
If you can’t kill him, run.
No point—you know this. You cannot leave him: you were a fool ever to think you could.
Run anyway. Do something.
I stumbled around him and over Selera’s body. I paused by the door just long enough to pick up my case; I pushed the door open and this time no one stopped me. I plunged down into the darkness and set a shaking hand to the walls.
Please, please lead me like you did before; be stronger than the curse; show me the Path that will take me away. . . . The Pattern hummed around me. I followed it even more swiftly than I had the last time, my fingers gliding along the spaces between the carvings. Each step gave me strength. I was nearly running by the time I reached the upper door. My blood pounded in my ears as I gripped the bolt and slammed it free. It’s working; I’m out, I’m away—this time somehow, truly away. . . .
I did not close the door behind me. I took a few steps that carried me beyond the hill, to where the path was. A few more lengthening paces, and then something hit me in the chest and I toppled backward. I yelled and flailed but the weight was still on me—and it was warm and hairy, and it smelled like rotten meat.
“Borl!” I gasped, and the pain ebbed a little more as I laughed. “Off, boy—off, Borl; let me up!”
He was gone, too abruptly, deposited in a whining heap beside me by a shadow that turned swiftly to me. Hands hauled me to my feet; a face loomed, so close and speckled with dark vision-blotches that I did not recognize it. Not until I heard the voice.
“What is going on?” said Bardrem. “Tell me, Nola, before I—”
“No,” I said, twisting in his grip, “not now—we must go, quickly—we must go.”
He held me still. He had to be seeing me—the blood on my face, and whatever was in my eyes. “Why?” he said in a low, even more urgent voice. “Tell me—I won’t go anywhere until you tell me why he hurt you. I followed you—I waited all that time and I was angry and then I saw you, and I saw him catch you and then kick the dog . . . the dog made me come—I don’t know if I would have, I was that angry. But he hurt you.” Bardrem touched my cheeks with his palms and I flinched. “Where is he?” Bardrem asked, very quietly. “Who is he?”
“Ah yes,” said Teldaru from behind us. “I was wearing my hood, wasn’t I? You didn’t see my face.”
There was no hood now. He walked over to us; stopped about five paces away. Borl growled and cowered. Bardrem drew himself up—I saw this and remembered Yigranzi’s thin, bare tree, and I wanted to touch him but could not.
“Orlo,” Bardrem said.
Teldaru smiled. “Kitchen boy. Will you try to kill me now?”
He was holding an unlit torch. Bardrem was holding nothing.
“It is a good scar,” Teldaru said, gesturing with the wood. “The one I gave you. Have you bedded many girls because of it? My own scars have been very useful that way—haven’t they, Nola?”
Teldaru’s teeth gleamed.
Bardrem launched himself forward—a blur, a wind that pushed me back a step. He sent Teldaru back too, and both of them fell. For a moment Bardrem was astride him, pummelling and grunting. But then Teldaru heaved Bardrem off in a single effortless thrust, and he was grinding his knees into Bardrem’s chest, and the torch was rising and descending and making a sound that was louder than Bardrem’s cries, or my own. I saw Bardrem’s skin, pale in the starlight but dark, too, with shadows and blood. The blood spread across his fac
e with every blow. It sprayed over my hands and arms when I wrapped them around Teldaru and pulled at him, as hard as I could. He threw me off with a grunt and stood, and now the torch’s arc was higher and it landed on Bardrem’s chest and his back when he tried to roll away from it. I knelt, my muscles bunched and ready for the spring that would carry me to Teldaru again. I would be stronger. I would claw at his eyes and sink my teeth into his flesh—but no. He was turning to me. Bardrem was motionless, bent wrong. His fair hair was black, where it met his neck. Teldaru’s face was also streaked with black. He lifted the back of his hand and wiped it across his cheek, and the blood smeared and thinned in the shape of his knuckles.
“Go on.” His breathing was ragged. His eyes looked silver, and they held me on my knees. “Try to run from me again. I won’t chase you. Go.”
I shook my head. I should have said, or even thought, No—I won’t leave Bardrem, even if you have killed him. What I did say was, “My feet will keep leading me back here, won’t they? No matter where I try to turn. You’ll laugh and laugh.”
He lifted the piece of wood slowly, with both his hands. “Something very much like that, yes. I’m sorry, Nola—truly.”
The first blow caught me on my right side. I sprawled, straightened, crawled away from him and onto the path, as if this would be a safe place; as if I would simply pull myself home now. The numbness in my side was spreading to my legs, which dragged behind me. I saw Borl on the path, his belly pressed against the stones. I heard his whining, even though my own whimpering was high and loud. The next blow took me in the back and I crumpled flat. My mouth was full of pebbles and dirt and blood. Teldaru’s footsteps crunched so close that, even with my eyes squeezed shut, I knew he was nearly touching me. I waited. The pain lapped at me, from fingers and toes inward, to my chest, and from my chest out again. I imagined the waves slipping off me, vanishing lines of darkness that left crab shells on the sand.
“Nola,” he said, low and tender, and then the pain bloomed white and I was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I woke to find Teldaru weeping against my chest. Later I wondered whether I had imagined it, since my eyes and head had still been swimming with fever, and since he was his calm, smiling self when I truly did wake. It’s strange, but I am more certain of it now than I was immediately after. He was there. His head was lying between my breasts and he was sobbing like a child.
My jaw was broken, and my nose, and several of my ribs. The healer kept me asleep with herb concoctions for many days. When I was no longer fully asleep I dreamed (but I know I did not dream him). I dreamed of my mother and the dirty pallet I had slept on with the babies, in her house. I dreamed of the Lady’s silver belt and worn blue velvet dress. I dreamed that I was awake and swinging my bare legs over the bed, ready to rise and walk out the door.
Then I did open my eyes and he was there, weeping, and the pain under my skin was too real, too sudden, and I was away again, falling into an Otherworld where I had never been before.
I tried to flee the pain but it was too big. I woke over and over, for longer and longer stretches, and lay listening to my own wordless droning. My eyes were horribly dry, and everything I saw seemed edged in blue flame. The window (not my old one) and the shutters. Someone’s hands—whose? Teldaru’s? Selera’s?—on a bowl. I waited to see her braid swinging and thought that it would probably look beautiful with the blue around it—but as I waited I realized that she would not be beside me, ever, though I did not know how I knew.
One day the blue shimmer was fainter. I rolled my head on the pillow. The pain in my jaw was a dull throb; I did not need to moan. One of the shutters was open, and there was a wedge of sunlight on my bed. I looked at the green coverlet and the knobby shapes of my knees. At Teldaru, who was sitting on a chair near my feet, his legs in sun, his lowered head in shadow.
I remembered, as I watched him sleep. The layers of dream fell away until all that remained were true images. I did moan, then. Borl laid his muzzle on my arm; he was beside me, stretched out long and straight. You were hurt too, I thought. You were hurt because I was. He whined; Teldaru’s head came up and his black eyes opened.
“Nola,” he said. He smiled his tender smile—the one that made me feel safe and treasured, even as I thought, I should have killed you.
“I feared that I would lose you,” he said. He leaned forward so that his knuckles touched the coverlet. I felt Borl stiffen and growl, so low in his throat that it was just vibration, not sound. “But the Pattern has led you back, and I thank it.”
I do not, I wanted to say, and Are you lying or are you mad? I’ll never know what words would actually have emerged, for I choked on my own voice. Teldaru clucked his tongue.
“Hush, love. You will not be able to speak yet.”
I lifted one of my hands. It felt heavy, and it shook, but I managed to move it to my head. There was a piece of cloth there, looped under my jaw and up over my cheeks and ears. I could not find the knot. When I touched the cloth, the skin beneath it, which had merely been throbbing, began to burn. I could have tried to growl at him anyway, through my clenched teeth and the flesh that felt torn between them. I was silent.
He rose and crossed the room, out of my sight. I heard water being wrung from cloth and was instantly, achingly thirsty. He came up beside me and thrust the whining Borl out of his way with his foot. He set a basin on the bed and a cloth on my forehead. It was so cold that I closed my eyes again. I heard him dip the cloth and raise it, and then there were droplets on my lips, slipping between them and also down the sides of my neck.
“I will have one of Dellena’s kitchen boys bring you soup later,” Teldaru said. “Perhaps tomorrow you’ll be able to manage something soft—some skinned fruit or bread soaked in milk. Or something a little more exotic, left over from the wedding feast.”
He was watching my eyes. When they widened, he smiled. “You’ve been asleep for a long time, dearest.”
He walked back to his chair. He pulled it closer to me and sat, leaning his forearms on the edge of the bed. His clasped hands rested on my right side, very lightly, but now I felt the bandage that was wrapped around my ribs, too. It was as if every place he or I touched woke my body to what had happened to it.
“They were married two days ago. Such loveliness—Selera would have revelled in it—shall I describe it to you?”
I hate you, I thought. Hate you hate you. The words sounded blurred even in my head; I was sleepy again, leaden and dizzy at the same time. I tried to keep my hot, dry eyes on him.
“The rites were held at Ranior’s Hill, as they always are. But imagine, Nola, how much more meaningful it was for me than it was for any of my predecessors! To be standing beneath the earth, in the tomb of the War Hound—at the heart of our land, where you and I had so recently channelled the Pattern’s might. . . .
It was clean,” he continued briskly. “Servants had spent days scrubbing the corridors and the tomb itself. All the stone gleamed. Torchlight filled every passage. Lord Derris was weeping with wonder before I even spoke.”
I was so tired, and I did not want to listen to him—but I did listen, and thought, How much of this story is a lie?
“I suppose you will want to know what Zemiya was wearing,” he said, and chuckled. If I could have, I would have curled into a ball and pulled the coverlet over my head. I felt a surge of nausea and wondered briefly what would happen if I needed to vomit.
“She wore Belakaoan gowns, both to the Hill and afterward, at the castle. I had thought she might wear a Sarsenayan one—I had hoped it, for she would have looked ridiculous, with her brown skin and thick, muscled limbs. But she wore a green and yellow island dress beneath Ranior’s Hill. The cloth was covered in tiny shells. They clacked every time she moved, and the ones in her hair did too. At least her sister wore no decoration.”
I tried to imagine Neluja standing tall and straight by the image of the War Hound—by the stone of his sarcophagus—and could not.
A small one—very old, made of bronze, not gold. It was used only for marriage and birth rites, and I had never seen it; only been told of it by Mistress Ket, who also told us some of the words. “The Path you walk together will run straight and smooth through the wilderness.” Teldaru had spoken these words in his deep, solemn voice. Haldrin and Zemiya had held the edge of the mirror and he had put his hands on theirs—dark and light—and said that they would walk a straight, smooth road together.
“Zemiya’s fingers were clenched tight, but they trembled a bit anyway. She was afraid. The proud, sea-born princess who lived among volcanoes was afraid of a chamber made of Sarsenayan stone, or afraid of me—of the Pattern she saw in my gaze—I do not know, but it pleased me. And then we came out into the sunlight, and the king and queen mounted the horses that had been brought for them. They rode, and Lord Derris and Neluja and I came behind in the carriage. There were people lining the road—more than had been there at dawn when we had first passed that way. People on the country road and people on the city one. Some of them threw petals and ribbons and bright strips of Belakaoan cloth. The poor ones cheered. The rich ones were silent.”
I am not sure why I thought of Bardrem, just then. Perhaps Teldaru’s mention of the city’s rich and poor reminded me. I saw the brothel, the girls who arrived there, bruised and dirty, and the silk-robed men who paid them. Bardrem sitting on the courtyard stone, the long ends of his hair brushing the paper on his lap. Bardrem lying on his belly, broken and blood-soaked. I turned my head away from Teldaru and closed my eyes, but I was still dizzy, and I still heard him.
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