The Pattern Scars (27 page)

“Good,” he said when he was in my room. “You’re dressed and you’ve eaten. We can go.”

“Where?” I did not want to speak to him, of course, but I needed to know this.

“To the history lesson room. It’s time you met the others.”

I followed him outside, my belly sour with nervousness. Borl rose and planted his legs wide and snarled, showing his pink-and-black mottled gums. I snapped my own teeth at him. “Enough,” Teldaru said brusquely, maybe to both of us. He walked, and I hurried to walk beside him. (Borl loped behind, still growling deep in his throat.) We stopped at a building that was nestled in the crook of the courtyard wall. This building had two floors and a much larger door. A great tree stooped in front of it, its branches touching the upper casements. There was a corridor inside, and a flight of smooth, uneven stairs, and a dimness that made me hesitate.

“Up,” Teldaru said, and wrapped his fingers around my arm, just above the elbow. He pushed me before him on the stairs, which were unnervingly slanted, worn down and inward by generations of student-seer feet. When we reached the top he put his hand against the small of my back, just as he had when we had crept out of the brothel. He kept his hand there as he rapped at a new door, this one painted green. It opened. Heads and eyes turned to us.

“Master Teldaru!” The teacher was a short, round woman with white hair that had been pulled into an unruly knot. Behind her were a high table, shelves of books, an open window filled with a tangle of bare tree branches. All four students were sitting around the table. There were books open in front of each of them: slender ones with large, colourful pictures for the two boys and thicker ones with only text for the older girls. Sheets of paper too, and quills and ink. My palms began to sweat; I pressed them against my dress.

“We were not expecting you today! But welcome, of course; we were just reciting the twelve laws of the Paleric Age. . . .” Her black eyes leapt from Teldaru to me and back again. I could tell that she did not want to stare, as all the students were, but that she also could not resist.

“Ah,” Teldaru said, “the Paleric Age. Excellent.” I could hear his smile. His warmest, most relaxed tone; everyone else smiled too, though all of them except Selera lowered their eyes to their books or hands. “You must forgive my interruption, but I have brought someone to meet you. You may have seen her in the courtyard.” I thought he had probably watched them there, as they watched me, and whispered.
And now I am one of them
, I thought, with another thrum of eagerness and dread.

“Her name is Nola. Her Otherseeing power is so strong that it made her sick, for a time, but now she is well again. She will be studying history with you.”

A pause. The younger boy wriggled on his chair. Selera twisted a long, blonde coil of hair around her forefinger.

“Only history?” the teacher said.

“Yes.” He was stroking my back. I wanted to whirl and cry, “What? Now that I’m finally here you won’t even let me take lessons with the others?” Instead I flushed slowly, as his fingers circled.

“As I have said already, she is powerful. In fact, she could probably teach several of your classes.” He chuckled low in his throat, and it sounded like one of Borl’s growls. “So I will be taking charge of her Otherseeing instruction.”

Selera stopped playing with her hair. Her emerald eyes widened. And I felt triumph, flooding over everything else. I smiled a tiny smile at her.

“I will leave her with you now. If you could just step outside with me for a moment, Mistress Ket?”

“Certainly. Children, write down laws eight and twelve without consulting the texts.”

She was gone. They both were.

I walked to the table. There was an extra stool pushed beneath it; I pulled it out, sat down between Selera and the littlest boy.

“What are your names?” I said as I reached for paper and quill. My voice was steady; my heartbeat was not. Perhaps my hand would be unsteady too, and I would blot the ink, smudge it so that no one would be able to read my words.

“I believe Mistress Ket told us to write.” Selera glared at each of the other students. The two boys avoided her eyes; the girl looked back at her with an expression of profound disinterest.

“She did,” I said, and dipped the quill in Selera’s ink pot.

I had imagined what I would write, when the opportunity arose. The words had been very clear, these past few days:

I am Teldaru’s captive. He uses Otherseeing for evil purposes and has cursed
me so that I cannot tell anyone. Please give this information to the king. Please help me.

I did not expect anyone to believe me, but I did think they might fetch King Haldrin. I would write much more for him, of course, but now I needed to set down only enough to bring him to me.

I placed the quill’s tip against the paper, aware of everyone’s eyes on me. My hand moved and letters scratched forth, dark and wet.

Teldaru Teldaru Teldaru Teldaru

Selera giggled.

Teldaru Tel

“Well. It seems that Master Teldaru’s special student wishes to learn more than visions from him.”

I set the quill down. Folded the paper in half, and in half again.
Of course
, I thought, flooded now with a numbness that was too familiar.
Of course he would think of this; he would make sure to take everything away from me . . .
There was a warm pulse, in the numbness: the memory of another Path I had not even known about until it was gone. I lowered my head for a moment, so that my freshly washed hair hid my face.

“
Any
how,” said the other girl, who was sitting beside Selera. This girl was covered in freckles (even her arms) and had greyish eyes and lank brown hair. She was shapeless, too—fourteen but somehow old as well, all rounded edges but no curves. “My name is Grasni.” She nodded at me as if we had just conducted a satisfying bit of business. I nodded back at her.

“Grasni is tedious and annoying,” Selera said. “You and she should be fast friends.”

“I believe Mistress Ket told us to write?” Grasni said in a high, querulous imitation of Selera. Selera herself scowled and the little boy to my left cringed back on his stool, but Mistress Ket came back in then, and we all bent over our papers.

The eighth law of the Paleric Age
, I wrote, as familiar numbness gave way to familiar pain.

I ran that night.

I put the largest glass bottle under my cloak. It was heavy and had a broad, thick bottom. It was also red, and this seemed important, even though I would not be able to see it.

“Help me . . . Sir Guard? Help . . .” I made my voice thin and weak and leaned on the doorframe, both hands beneath my cloak, as if I were clutching my belly.

It was very dark, beyond my door. The branches were black and there were stars among them, but no moon. My breath was white; the brightest thing I saw.

“What is it?” He was dark too, though as he neared I made out the silver glint of his eyes. He had a beard, contrary to the custom begun by Teldaru. This almost made me regret what I intended to do.

“I’m ill . . .” I retched—a wracked sound that produced no vomit but was nonetheless convincing. “I need . . .” I leaned over, heaved again.

“Very well,” he said hastily, “I’ll take you.”

I stumbled after him to where he had been sitting. He picked up his lantern (which glowed only weakly) and led me to the latrine. I thought, as I lurched inside and slammed the knot-holed door, that it did not stink as much at night.

I straightened up against the wall and waited. The bottle was in my hand, which was already raised. I counted my own heartbeats; twenty of them, before the guard rapped on the wood.

“Come on, then,” he called. “Come out.”

Fifteen more heartbeats.

“Girl . . . Nola. Come out now or I’ll come in.”

Five more, and the door creaked open. I was relieved that he did not pound it open, because I was behind it, and needed him to be tentative in order to carry out my plan. I was relieved, but sorry again, in a clear, sudden, silly way—and then he was in, head and neck, and I was bringing the bottle down on him with all my strength.

He fell onto his stomach with a grunt that sounded puzzled. He tried to twist onto his side when I stepped over him; I slammed my foot against his forehead and he fell back again. I ran out the door and into the shadows of the trees. I ran as if I had done it before, here: skimming over roots and crackly grass, toward the keep that flickered with red-orange light. I heard only my own footsteps—no one shouting; no one following.

At the double doors to the keep I halted. I leaned against the stone, panting in long, vanishing plumes.
Think
. Think
: this part will be harder. . . .

I pulled the doors open and saw a stretch of torchlit corridor. No guards; no one at all. I stepped inside and pulled the doors shut behind me. Walked quickly, but not too quickly. I remembered this place a little; I knew I would see a staircase, at the end of the hall, and yet another set of doors, and another guard. I did. I stood and watched him.
Think, Nola, think. . . .

I burst into the brighter light of the entrance hall. He saw me almost immediately and stiffened, though he did not draw his sword. “You must come!” I cried. “The guard in the seers’ courtyard—someone has attacked him!”

He stared at me for a moment, then rushed off the way I had come. I scrabbled at the double doors until they creaked open and flung myself down the long staircase outside. It seemed very dark here, after the keep, and I was moving swiftly; I slipped several times and flailed my arms gracelessly to keep my balance. There were knots of people at the bottom but I flew past them, and past the guards who were standing by a wagon at the main gate. My feet pounded the cobblestones that sloped away from the castle. I made for an alley that branched off the main street. It was narrow and dank and there was no light at all, so I slowed, dragging my shoulder along a rough wooden wall. The alley twisted downward.

Yes
, I thought as I followed it,
take me away from him; take me to a street I know—the one with the brothel, so that I can find Bardrem. We’ll leave the city together and he’ll write a poem about it someday, when we’re old. . . .

Light flickered ahead of me. I quickened my pace, blinking, clenching my hands to try to keep them warm. A pony clopped by where the alley met the street. I edged forward and peered out after it. The castle was there, very close, looming against the sky. I stared at the shapes of its gatehouse towers and walls, thinking,
No—that’s impossible—I ran down,
away
. . . .

This time I took the main road, and I walked. Down again—I was sure of it, because when I glanced over my shoulder I could see just the black shadows of the gatehouse banners. I breathed and wrapped my arms around myself and kept walking. A woman carrying a yoke and two buckets was coming up toward me, and I stepped to the side to let her pass. When she had, and I went back into the middle of the street, the castle was directly ahead of me.

I stopped. Everything swam in my vision, as if I were beginning to Othersee. I staggered where I stood, and turned around to look behind me. I saw the castle again: a mirror castle and a real one, or maybe neither? Men were approaching from both. Guards—four of them, led by the bearded one I had hit. As he drew closer I saw that his left eye was swollen shut. I spun and spun and there was no path away from them. Even if there had been I would have been too dizzy to follow it.

“Nola,” the bearded one said softly as the others fell in behind him. He closed his big hands around my upper arms so tightly that I cried out. His mouth was nearly touching my ear. “He warned us you’d be tricky.”

“No.” I whimpered and wrenched myself around in his grasp, but it did not matter—not only because he had me so firmly, but also because the castle was there, where it should not have been. It was everywhere.

“Back we go, mad girl,” he said. “Master Teldaru’s waiting.”

He did not come until dawn.

I heard him, after hours and hours of silence. It was almost a relief to hear him: his footsteps, his voice murmuring to whichever man was outside my door. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding one of the cloth horses in my lap. I thought of Chenn.