The Pattern Scars (15 page)

I was in the library, the day my Bloodseeing-fever turned from shivering to heat. It was a rainy day in late summer. I was restless, listening to the rain on the windows, imagining how it would feel on my face and bare feet. I was not sure why I’d come to the library, since I had no desire to read. I sat in my favourite chair, which felt lumpy; I paced, whirling when I got to the room’s corners, to make my skirt billow.

I saw the book in a still moment, between paces. I craned up at the top shelf. I was certain I’d never seen this book before, for it was bound in bright red leather with golden claw-clasps, and I would have noticed it. I pulled the stepladder over to its shelf and climbed. The ladder was not quite tall enough and I had to clamber up onto one of the shelves, leaning back and up at the same time, scrabbling for the book. I nearly fell when I pulled it free, because it was very heavy, and I could only grip it with one hand. I did not fall, but it did; it landed on the floor with a dull thud, its covers splayed. Some of the gold-edged pages were creased, and I smoothed at them frantically, then closed the covers as if this pressure would do the rest. I carried it over to the chair that looked like a throne and opened the book again, over my knees.

The script was very old-fashioned, with curling lines and rows of dots that made it difficult to read. I squinted and concentrated, and after a few moments I began to understand.

. . .
a treatise on the use of blood for the Seeing of the Pattern; which use the King has forbidden, deeming it a peril and a threat to the goodness of his land and laws. We, the Otherseers of Sarsenay, do protest the King’s decree. Bloodseeing will give strength to our friends and weaken our enemies. Bloodseeing is Pattern and Path revealed, but also transformed. Who among us can deny the necessity of transformation? Who, though cleaving to writ and form and fear, can say with honesty that he does not desire transformation? . . .

I read more—much more, even though I did not understand a good deal of it. There were diagrams drawn in many colours that had faded; I saw blues and reds that must once have been vivid but were shadows now. The diagrams were of arms, torsos, ribbons that could have been veins.

Take care to make your enemies’ cuts in places that cannot be seen when he is clothed. Such care, along with a Bloodsight order of silence, will keep your actions hidden from those who might seek to stop you. When making cuts upon friends, however, such
care is not required. There are many, indeed, who in the days before the King’s writ bore their scars with pride, knowing themselves to be true instruments of Pattern and Path.

I stopped reading, here. There was a tingling, almost-sick feeling in my belly, because I was remembering Chenn, and the scars she had tried to hide beneath her sleeves. The scars she would not explain to me. But now that I had these words, these pictures, I was close to knowing. I sat with my hands folded on the book, and by the time I heard Orlo’s footsteps in the corridor, I was ready.

“I need to know something.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No ‘Good evening, Orlo’? No ‘I have a question; may I ask it’?” He looked and sounded tired. He was always either weary or restless; there was nothing in between.

“Good evening, Orlo,” I said, to make him smile. He did, a little. “I have a question; may I ask it?”

He sat down in the round chair, groaning as he did. “You may. But only if it has a simple answer, and only if you will bring me some wine after.”

I ran my fingertips along the edges of the book. “I found this book today.” I watched his eyes shift to my lap. They did not widen, which meant I had to try harder to surprise him. “I’m sure it wasn’t here before. Was it?”

He was smiling now, the lines around his eyes more amusement than weariness. “If you’re sure, why must you ask?”

“What can you do with Bloodseeing? What can you really
do
?”

I no longer wanted to surprise him, but his sudden stillness was gratifying. He stared at me and I stared back.

“I’ve shown you,” he said at last, slowly, “how blood may open a person to Otherseeing, even without his spoken consent.”

I shook my head. “But there’s more. This book says there is, but I don’t . . . it’s written in old language, and it’s hard to understand. It says you can transform things, if the blood is from two . . .” I cleared my throat. I felt a flush easing up along my cheekbones; I had had so much time to prepare what I would say, and now that he was here I could only stammer.

“There
is
more. It is better to show than to tell, however, and—”

“And you’re going to wait until sometime else to show me.” My indignation made my words smooth.

“Yes,” he said. “Precisely. I believe you know me, just a little.” He paused and frowned at me, as if he was trying to understand something. “What else did this book tell you?”

He was trying to distract me, and I wanted to resist—but I did think of another question. “Whatever this special transforming Bloodseeing is, it’s forbidden. It was whenever this book was written, and it must be now, for Yigranzi never taught me about it and you haven’t either.”

“Yet,” he said, and the tingling in my belly spread, outward and down. “But you’re right, Nola—this use of Seeing is not permitted, not taught. And now,” he continued, holding up a hand, “you will demand to know why, and I will make you even more frustrated than you already are when I say, ‘No, Mistress Headlong Seer, this too must wait.’”

He stood and walked over to me. Bent a little to cover my hands with his. His palms were warm and very slightly damp. His thumbs traced circles on my knuckles. Maybe I was not breathing. “Your curiosity does you credit. Your questions deserve answers, which I will give. Perhaps”—he slipped his hands away from mine, drawing the book out of my grasp as he did so—“it is time that I allowed you another glimpse of what is to come. Time I gave you more.”

I nodded. All I could see was the darkness of his eyes, lifting and falling like water.

“Come,” he said, and I rose and followed him.

Laedon was standing by the mirror. He was not usually waiting for us (Orlo would fetch him), and so I was surprised, and hesitated just inside the door. Orlo put his hand on my shoulder, turned me away from Laedon so that I was gazing at the cabinet.

“Choose one,” he said. I knew that he did not mean a stick of wax or a kind of grain. I stared at him as he drew a leather cord out from the neck of his shirt. There was a ring of keys on the cord: four of them, all small and slender. I had never noticed these before—and now I noticed the hollow of his throat too, and the smooth ridges of his collarbone, and the skin below it. I swallowed, or tried to.

“You will do no choosing while you are looking at me.” He smiled. The restlessness was about him again; waves I could sense, even without seeing them in the tensed muscles of his forearms and the tapping of his right foot. I smiled back at him—probably too pink already to flush any more deeply—and looked at the knives.

They were all beautiful, and at various times I had imagined each of them in my hand, without imagining what I would do with them once they were there.
But now that it was time—
For what?
a small, fading voice asked me—I pointed and said, “That one.”

Orlo opened the glass doors. He took the middle knife down and held it out to me. My fingers closed around its hilt, which was wrapped in leather—thicker, darker bands than the one around Orlo’s neck. It was cool, but I had only been holding it for a moment before it felt as warm as my skin. The blade was the simplest of the five: curved, but not as much as the large one. A sliver of moon.

“Tell me,” Orlo said, stepping back toward the mirror, “what you have learned about Bloodseeing so far.”

I twisted my hand, watching the candlelight play along the steel. “I’ve learned that the blood of the person to be seen is enough; that the seer requires no other tools.”

“What else?”

“That the words of invitation do not need to be spoken by the person to be seen, if that person is bleeding, or if they have just bled.”

“And who
has
spoken the words of invitation, when Laedon has cut himself?”

I glanced at Orlo. “You, of course.”

“Yes.” He was tracing circles on the mirror, just as he had on my knuckles. “But I do not have to. A seer does not need another speaker at all. Not if . . .?”

I looked from him to Laedon to the knife in my hand. “If . . . if I—the seer . . .”
My throat was dry, closing in on itself. It was late; I was probably hungry and definitely thirsty, but this did not matter. “If I cut him.”

Orlo did not nod or smile, and yet I took a step backward, as if a sudden wind had pushed at me. He said nothing, which meant I had to say more. I straightened my shoulders. “So this is what I will do. I will . . . cut him, and I will ask his Pattern to show itself to me.”

“And will you use tools?”

I knew immediately that I would. I felt taller, stronger, as if I had grown older just since coming up from the library; there was no need for restraint or reluctance.

“I will.” Not wax on water, though, nor bones, nor mirror. “Uja,” I said.

For a moment I thought he would refuse; he had refused until now, saying that Uja was another thing I was not quite ready for. But this time he nodded once, almost sharply, and said, “Know that it will be like nothing you have seen so far.” I nodded too, because he seemed to be waiting. “Very well. Go to Laedon, then, and choose where you will cut.”

I heard Orlo behind me as I walked to stand with the old man. The cabinet doors opened again; a glass lid came off a jar with a ringing sound; grain sifted. I heard these things and I heard my own breathing. Only Laedon was silent. He stood like a statue, gazing over my head, pretending I was not there. I looked at his face quickly, then only at the cloth bulk of his body. I would have to touch the cloth; I would have to touch his skin.

“You will not need to make a deep cut,” Orlo said, “and you should not, this first time.”

I swallowed. The fingers of my left hand closed around the material that lay against Laedon’s right arm. It was more ragged, and trailed more ends of thread, than the layers above it. It was a light, washed-out blue—like his eyes—with darker patches that must have been cooking stains. I eased the cloth up, gingerly at first—but I had to be faster and firmer, so I pressed my fingers into his skin and thrust until the material was up above his elbow. It stayed there, even when I took my hand away. It was easy because I was not looking at his face. I took his wrist and turned it and his whole arm turned, and it was just a thing; just something I was examining. Despite this detachment, I did think,
Please the Pattern, I will not have to look anywhere else for a place to cut. . . .
I did not. I saw the place, and looked back at Orlo. He was waiting, one hand in a glass jar that was resting on his hip. I nodded at him and he scooped, pulled his hand out. He crouched and drizzled the grain on the floor in front of him. “Uja likes rye best,” he said. He turned himself around until he had covered a large, circular space with grain.

Only now did I look at Uja. She was on her upper branch, her wings and beak tucked in against her body. I could not see whether her eyes were open.

“Come here.” Orlo was speaking to me but it was Laedon who obeyed him. He shuffled past me, to the edge of the rye circle. I followed. When I was beside him he shifted a bit, so that he was almost facing me.

Orlo used another of the keys at his neck to unlock Uja’s cage. (Is it strange that I never wanted to tell him she could get out on her own? Some premonition about my own Path that kept me quiet?) She hopped from branch to branch and sidled out the open door. Waddle-walked around the circle and stopped precisely where she had begun. Straightened her head, at last, and looked at me.

She does not know me
, I thought wildly—but after a moment she blinked and I realized that she did. She was readying herself, half in her own Otherworld.

They were all waiting for me.

Laedon’s arm was as heavy as a fallen tree branch. It was not that he resisted me; he simply did not help. I lifted it, angled it until I saw the hollow of his elbow, and the green vein that bulged there (so fat, while the rest of his arm was sinew and bone). I raised my right hand. The knife trembled until I set its blade against him. I gazed at it there. I was trembling too, somewhere very deep; maybe this should not be now, not yet. . . . My eyes flickered up and found his. He was staring at me as he had that once in the kitchen, as he had done through windows and probably from other places I had not even noticed—and suddenly I was angry. The anger was formless and cold, and I felt nothing else. I tilted the knife and pushed its tip into Laedon’s flesh. One push, and I drew the knife back and let it fall, for I did not need it any more.

The blood welled. It looked like one drop, blooming, blooming; then it burst into a thinning, snaking line. This one line became many, which branched around forearm and fingers and dripped, one by one by one and soon all together, onto the grain.