The Pattern Scars (20 page)

He’s not here
, I thought as I set my feet on the floor.
She wouldn’t have come out of her cage if he were here.

I hobbled to the wardrobe (my muscles all hurt terribly) and opened it. If my old brothel dress had still been there I would have put it on, but of course it wasn’t. I chose the most opulent gown I could, instead: a thing of pink shell buttons and gathered silk and a train that dragged on the ground behind me. If I could not be invisible, I would be a lady. I fumbled with buttons and sash and slipped on a pair of white shoes embroidered in a pattern of purple vines. I turned away from the wardrobe and back again; I took a crumpled piece of paper out from where it had been lying, amongst the shoes. “Beautiful,” I read, and “Help!” I folded Bardrem’s note and bent to put it into one of my slippers. Then I turned and left the room.

Uja was perched on the top step. When she saw me she spread her wings and flapped them. I walked slowly to the staircase and down, expecting her to keep pace with me as she usually did (hip-hopping from stair to stair), but she did not. I looked behind me and saw her poised, her wings still outstretched—and then she was flying, gliding past me like a blossom caught in wind. She was so beautiful that I forgot where I was, for a moment. She sketched a wide circle that became a spiral and landed by the front door. She cocked her head up at me and whistled a question (“What are you
waiting
for?”) and I continued down the stairs to her.

Only when I was at the door did I begin to think clearly, or indeed at all. Uja stood up on her talon-tips and inserted her beak into the lock. She wiggled her head and I heard a click.

“Uja,” I said when she was looking at me once more. I was trembling with anger. “Why didn’t you do this for me months ago? You knew. You
knew
, but you didn’t help me.”

Blink, blink
.

“You could have . . .”

Blink
.

My anger was gone but I was still trembling—because there probably had been a reason that she hadn’t helped me before, and because the door was unlocked. I pulled it open and stepped onto the path.
I
blinked, now, in the early morning sunlight; it had been months since I had been outside in anything but darkness. The air was warm but tinged with autumn, and I took great gulps of it. I walked along the glass-pebbled path, and each step was firmer than the last. The black iron fence was before me, and Uja was beside me, and the gate, too, was unlocked and waiting.

“Come with me?”

She rolled her delicate bird shoulders and cooed and stepped back, gracefully, just as she had within the circle of grain.

“Uja,” I said, one more time. Not a question, any more; just a word. I reached out and laid my hand on her head. I had never touched her before. Her feathers were as smooth as the silk of my dress, though they prickled when I drew my hand back over them. I ran my finger along her beak—which was cool—and she nibbled it. “Thank you,” I whispered, and then I was thrusting my way clumsily out the gate and she was singing me a high, sweet, vanishing farewell.

I knew where I was going. Maybe I had actually managed to think, as I lay motionless in bed, or maybe it was just that there was only one place to go and my embroidered shoes realized this as soon as they touched the cobblestones. I had no idea how to get back to the brothel—and anyway, that was not where I needed to be. Later, perhaps, after I had done what must be done.

I tried not to be distracted; tried to look only at the castle and the way in front of me. But there were people in the streets—so many of them, shouting laughing, some singing from open windows. Most of them paused to look at me—a wild-eyed girl, lost on her way home from a royal ball?—and I avoided their eyes, kept my feet moving. It was almost too much: the noise, the smells of cooking and midden heaps, the smirking urchins who darted at my skirts, imagining coins. I kept walking. I strode through alleys and along broad avenues and narrow pathways, and if I needed to double back and find new ways I hardly noticed. I was breathing open air and I had words to speak and I was very, very close.

The road that led up to the castle gate was wide. Only here did I slow. I felt a first sickly lurch of fear, looking at the five guards and their spears and shields, which glinted like Otherseeing mirrors in the sun. I watched them speak to a man on a wagon covered in scarlet cloth (they turned him away), and to a group of women and girls holding armfuls of scrolls (who were gestured inside). I hesitated. I stared at my shoes. I picked up the slippery folds of my dress and walked over to them.

“Yes?” The man’s voice was rough but not unfriendly. He was not smiling, and his helmet hid his eyes.

“I must speak to King Haldrin,” I said, too loudly.

“Indeed,” another guard said. He sounded bored.

“Yes.” I breathed in deeply, silently. “One of his seers is a murderer.”

The other three guards had gathered around me. All five stared at me, then at each other.

“And who are you, to know this?” asked the first one.

“I was his captive. He taught me and promised to bring me here, but he was lying. He held me prisoner for months.”

“And how did you escape?” The second guard, no longer bored, grinning.

“A bird,” I said, and, quickly, over the swell of their laughter, “It doesn’t matter. I must tell the king. He must be warned.”

“Awfully pretty dress, for a prisoner,” one of the ones behind me remarked, and they laughed again.

“Look at me!” I cried, and they fell silent. “Look at my eyes! What do you see?” They did look, as I gazed at each of them in turn. They looked and were still silent. “I have the Othersight. My eyes are dark with it already and will only grow darker, until they are black like his.”

“Like whose?” the first guard asked. “What is this man’s name?”

“Orlo.”

I waited for them to gasp, but instead they shifted and chuckled. “There is no Orlo here,” the first guard said.

“There is. He teaches. He serves the king and Teldaru. He grew up with them.
Let me in.
”

“She’s mad,” someone beside me said, and someone else grumbled in agreement. A third spat over his shoulder.

“I’m not,” I said quietly.

The first took off his helmet. His hair was short and grizzled and the skin beside his pale green eyes was crinkly with lines.

“Jareth,” another said, “don’t go all soft now, like always. She’s a mad child or a criminal—doesn’t matter which.”

Jareth looked at me, and I at him. “Maybe,” he said slowly, and a chorus of groans rose. “But she has the Othersight. Someone inside might know how to help her, at least.”

“Another wounded birdling for Father Jareth,” a guard said in a high trill of a voice.

Jareth scowled. “Enough, Marlsin. You’ll do an extra two hours’ watch tonight.” He took hold of my arm, just above the elbow. “I’ll take the girl in and you’ll none of you give me more trouble. Back to your places, now.”

I heard them move away; heard Marlsin mutter something. Then Jareth drew me under the great arch of the gate.

We crossed a dusty courtyard. I smelled horses and baking bread but did not turn my head to seek out the stables or the kitchens. I looked where Jareth took me, up a flight of steps so long that my legs ached when we were only halfway. People spoke to him on the stairs, and when he led me inside the keep at the top, but I did not look at them, either.

The keep was dim. We paused for a moment. “King Haldrin?” he asked someone—another guard, for while I did not look up at his face, I saw his sword and shield. The other man said, “His reading room—where else?” and Jareth guided me on, down a hallway lit by lanterns. I expected a series of halls, more steps; a place that was enormous and grand. The door we came to was quite plain, as the others in the hall were: wood and bronze, without insignias or ornament. For a moment I thought he had brought me to a prison cell, and I pulled my arm back, trying to wrest it from his grip—but then he rapped, and a man’s voice called, “Enter.”

The room was bright. I blinked, and the wash of sun hardened into a series of arched windows that looked onto sky and green. Bookshelves lined the walls. The books upon them were not neatly arranged, but scattered, leaning against each other, or lying on their backs or fronts, or even open. Some of the shelves bristled with scrolls. I looked from them to the tapestries on the walls between the shelves, to the worn carpet on the floor and the large, scarred table upon it. To the man sitting at the table, twisting around on his chair to look at me.

Orlo was right; he
is
young
, I thought, as if Orlo might have lied about this too. King Haldrin’s hair was brown and curly enough that I could barely see the golden circlet that lay upon it. His eyes were blue. They narrowed as he gazed at me, but not really in a frown. He was clean-shaven, as Orlo was.

“Jareth,” the king said. His voice was warm, and I felt a surge of hope. “How did you find me?”

Jareth cleared his throat. “You are always here, my lord. When you are not in the Great Hall, that is. And Larno told me, too.”

The king sighed. He was smiling. “And I try so hard to be elusive.” He rose, stepped closer to us. “Who is this?”

“A girl, my lord, who claims . . . well, she claims something that sounds a little mad, really.”

The king stepped even closer. He was gazing into my face, into my eyes. “She has the Othersight,” he said.

“Yes.” Jareth sounded relieved. “She does. And she says—”

“Perhaps she should tell me herself.”

My throat was dry. As I was walking here I imagined a great hall that would echo with my words; a hall full of people, and the king on his throne above me. I had been ready for this—not for a room of books and one smiling, waiting man.

“There . . .” I bit my lip, wiped my palms on my dress. “There is a seer here at the castle who kills people. He uses the Othersight—Bloodseeing—it’s forbidden, and he uses it to murder them.”

“So you see,” Jareth said, “I thought to bring her to you, because you could decide whether to take her to Mistress Ket for help”—he gestured at the windows, and at what lay beyond them—“since she does healing. The girl may be mad, but—”

“Jareth.” The king’s voice was quiet. “Leave us, please.” After the door had closed, he leaned back against the table. “How do you know this?”

“He held me captive at a house in the city—he took me from a brothel and told me he’d teach me, told me he lived here at the castle and that he knew you well, ever since you were boys.”

“What is his name?”

“Orlo,” I said, with the last of my breath.

The king did frown, now. “Orlo?”

I nodded.

“I knew an Orlo once, when I was very young, but he died.”

“No,” I said, “no—he’s a seer, and he lives
here
; he told me so.” I swallowed tears. “He told me.”

There was a door set in the far wall, between two windows. A door leading out to the leafy courtyard, where the seers’ pool was, where the school was. It opened, as my words faded. I did not turn to it, at first, but clung to the king’s gaze as if I would convince him silently, since my speaking could not. But then I heard a growl, and knew it, and I did turn, slowly.

Borl was in the doorway. He was growling at me, his ears back against his skull.

“Borl!” King Haldrin said sharply. “Quiet, now!”

No
, I thought—because there was a man behind the dog, blocking out the sun.

“That’s him,” I said, too hoarsely. “
That’s him
”—lifting my hand, pointing at Orlo, who was looking at the king with his honey-coloured brows raised.

King Haldrin’s frown was puzzled, as was his voice. “Teldaru,” he said, “what is this?”

They put me in another prison. More walls and locks—and him. Even now, years later and surrounded only by branches and sky and doors I can open, I can hardly catch my breath, remembering.

I thought I would write and write, once I’d set down that first “Teldaru?” Because that was it—the one word I’d been writing
to
, all this time so far—and surely everything after it would be like the loosing of a deep, held breath. But it did not happen that way. I slept, or did not sleep, but lay looking at the midsummer sky, with its heavy grey storm clouds.

Yesterday morning, in a fit of restlessness, I put the princess on my hip and walked out my door. Sildio sprang from his stool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so surprised. I told him to close his mouth and added that I was going out. We went through the keep, the princess and I, and down into to the central courtyard, where a troop of players and artisans from the north had set up their tents. I watched the child’s sightless eyes roll as they followed all the sounds: the fire-weavers’ hissing patterns and the actors’ strange, swirling words. These things distracted me too, so that now and then I thought,
I have not worried about my writing in minutes!
with a start of surprise and relief. When we returned to the room I was exhausted and achy (my body hasn’t been the same, since I was ill last spring), but still restless.

This morning I woke to rain pouring in through my partly-open shutters.

Time is passing. I am making this Pattern by
not
making it, and it is knitting around me, and I do not want it to be this way. So I am ready, again, to write the Path behind and then to walk the one ahead.