The Pattern Scars (42 page)

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.

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.

“I spoke the words of binding, over the King’s Mirror.”

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.

“The Belakaoan merchants in the upper city drummed on their balconies and doors with their palms or pieces of wood—no wonder their Sarsenayan neighbours did nothing but stare at them, and at their dark new queen. Savages, all of them, and yet they live in mansions in the city, and one of them lives in the castle. Our own rich men are right to be dismayed.”

I heard his smile.

“There was feasting, of course. Queen Zemiya”—he said “Queen” as if it were profanity—“wore a red dress so heavily stitched with gems that it hardly moved. Gems in spiral shapes that reflected the lamps and torches so that she herself seemed to be aflame. Haldrin goggled at her like a besotted boy. I spoke the public words—the ones that are met with drunken cheers. And then there was drunken dancing, and I returned here. To you. And I watched you sleep.”

His voice sounded fainter. I reached carefully for the darkness that was seeping in around me.

“There was one thing about the feast,” he said. “A gift Neluja gave her sister, after I had spoken. A bracelet made of bones.”

Such muffled words. The shadows were easing up over my ears.

“Mambura’s bones, Nola. Do you hear me? The hero’s bones—and we shall use them.”

I did not understand, but it did not matter.
Bardrem
, I thought, and I followed his name down into the dark.

“Mambura’s bones.” The words circled and swam, in my sleep. They too were dreams. They were meaningless and fleeting and I would forget them when I woke.

Except that when I did wake, Zemiya was standing above me. Her dress was orange and her hair-shells were yellow, and the bracelet that coiled from her wrist to her elbow was white. It was made of polished pieces that looked like beads, but weren’t. A few of them were strange and knobbly.
Knuckles
, I thought, and remembered Yigranzi. A few were long and slender and gently curved, so that they fit against the slope of her forearm. Some were absolutely smooth, while others were crisscrossed with lines that looked like hard, yellowed veins.

“Mambura’s bones,” I heard in my head, one more time, and then I raised my eyes to look at the queen.

“Nola. We are sorry we woke you.” Not Zemiya’s voice; Haldrin’s. He stepped into my vision and stood beside his wife. He smiled at me. She did not.

“But we are also relieved to see you awake. And we must thank you.”

Now you will tell me all the lies Teldaru has told you
, I would have said, if there had been no curse, and if my jaw had not been strapped shut. I tried to raise my brows.
Go on. Tell me
.

“
Ispu
Teldaru says you saved him,” Zemiya said. She did not sound thankful.
Cold
, I thought;
suspicious
—but these words did not quite describe her tone or her narrowed gaze.

Haldrin said, “He says you may not remember it clearly, or even at all. Do you?”

I shook my head. My hair scratched against the pillow. My braid was curled like a snake on the green coverlet, which was pulled up to my shoulders.