The Pattern Scars (17 page)

“Walk with me,” he said.

It was hotter outside than in, despite the darkness. The glass pebbles of the garden path were warm; I could feel them, even through my slippers.

The lycus blossoms were finally done blooming. They lay thick on the grass, and when Orlo led me off the path I tried to step on as many as I could. They changed colour when you touched them—bruising from white to purple—and released a gentle, sweet scent that could almost make you think they were still alive.

“I do not enjoy keeping you here,” he said. We were standing under a tree with cascading, enclosing branches; alone together in the world, yet again. I said nothing. Watched the moonlight speckle his hair like moving jewels.

“If I did not fear for your safety I would have taken you to the castle weeks ago—for you are ready.”

I shook my head, partly because there was a dull, throbbing ache settling into the back of it, where it had hit the door. “But you’re not afraid for the other students who are already there. If they’re safe, why wouldn’t I be?” As I spoke, I thought,
I should have asked this before; maybe the bump has made me cleverer.

Orlo was silent for a long time. I imagined he was gazing at me, but there was not enough moonlight for me to be sure. “There is another thing,” he said at last. “Another reason why I need to keep you a secret, for now.”

This time the silence went on long enough for my cleverer mind to grasp at a possibility. “The Bloodseeing,” I said. “You aren’t allowed to teach it to your other students. You need me to be separate so that you can teach it to me.”

His teeth glinted as he smiled. “Yes—good, Nola. You’re far more special than the others; that is precisely why you must stay here.”

“But what does this mean?” The panic that was rising in me made my voice rise, too. “How long will it be before you teach me the rest? When will you take me back with you? Because you promised to—you promised! But it’s been months since you took me from the brothel and I haven’t been outside this house
once
, and if I have to stay here alone for much longer I’ll go mad.”

“You won’t,” Orlo said. “You have more strength than any other student I’ve ever had—and that is why I chose you. I will need someone strong, when the time comes to reveal my work.”

“If I’m so strong,” I said quickly, “let me prove it—let me use my power to help you. I could hunt Prandel with you. We could find him together, and now that my bleeding has started I could
really
help. We could hurt him even more than you could by yourself. But let me go out—let me leave here with you to do this. It will be enough. I won’t need the castle yet. Just a walk in the streets . . .” I had not realized how badly I wanted this, until now. I was breathless, stinging with tears.

Two steps brought Orlo even closer to me. He raised his hands and sank them into my hair and eased my face up so that I could not look away from him. “Soon,” he said. His thumbs were moving, stroking the arcs of my brows. “Patience, my sweet, stubborn girl. So much will come to both of us, in time.”

He bent down. His lips brushed my forehead, back and forth, back and forth, lightly, trailing goosebumps and fire. “But”—warm, damp words, muffled against my skin—“there is more I
can
teach you now. This is what I have been waiting for, and it’s why I was angry. My own kind of impatience, and I should not have let it hurt you.”

My body forgot its exhaustion. It leaned into his fingers and his lips with a weight I had never felt before. “Show me,” I whispered.

He drew back, and I cursed myself for having spoken. His hands slipped along my cheekbones and down to his sides. “Not now,” we both said together, and he threw his head back and laughed. “Mistress Saucy Seer,” he said, smiling still, “respect is one thing I have obviously
not
taught you. No doubt it’s too late.” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice was serious. “I am as eager to begin this next lesson as you are. But you are tired—no! Do not protest! You are tired. And you will need all of your strength for what I will be showing you.”

He took my shoulders and turned me around so that I was facing the way we had come. “Go on, now. To bed with you.”

We walked back together, over the blossoms and the pebbles. A cool wind had risen, and I lifted my face to it. I was free, for just a moment—unbound by walls of stone or iron, humming with a need that hurt only enough to remind me that I lived, and that I was glad of this. Then my gaze fell upon the house. There was a light burning in my room, and a shape in one of its windows. A shadow, but I knew him, saw his features as clearly as if he had been standing in sun.

I halted. Orlo took a few steps past me and stopped, looking over his shoulder at me. “Nola?”

“My window,” I said slowly. “There’s . . .” But even as I spoke and Orlo turned, Laedon’s shadow melted away. Orlo arched an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. “I am tired,” I said, and tried to smile. “It was nothing.”

“Transformation.”

I blinked at Orlo, and the candlelight seemed to swim around him. I had been in bed most of the day, resting but not really sleeping. And when he had arrived—not too late, tonight; just after sundown—he had had me drink a flagon of wine with him. So the light was swimming, now—everything was, gently, around the edges.

“What does it mean, Nola? Transformation.”

I swallowed. The wine—sweet, amber like Uja’s eyes—had made me thirsty. “Change,” I said.

“Yes. And where have you seen this word, recently?”

“In the book—the red one with gold pages.”

“Yes. You wanted to know what it meant; what it had to do with Bloodseeing.”

My turn for “Yes,” as the tingling began again in my belly.

He walked to the cabinet and set the key to the lock. “Choose,” he said, “and I will show you.”

I picked the smallest one, this time. Its tiny teeth would likely be useful only for sawing, but it had a beautiful tip, which would work nicely. (I could already see the vein, green when it was beneath skin, red when it opened above.)

“Your bleeding has begun,” Orlo said. He was smiling at me. “Your new power awaits you. When you cut Laedon now, you will do more than see his Pattern. You will control it.”

I was smiling too. He came to me, touched my lips with his fingers, held flat.

“I will tell you what to do, this first time. When you have had more practice you will be able to guide yourself—but for now you must listen to me. Now, and when the vision takes you.”

His fingers slid down my chin and away. “I will,” I said. “Tell me what I must do.”

His smile widened. “What is your favourite cake?”

I laughed. “Apple,” I said, remembering Bardrem peeling and slicing while Rudicol shouted about spilled batter and not enough rum in it.

“Very good. Apple it will be. Imagine it, when you are in the Otherworld. Imagine it as clearly as you can.”

“All right. But what—”

The door opened. Laedon shuffled in, his hand trailing along the wall. I started, but I was not afraid, as I had been last night when I saw him in my window. I felt no fear, no anger; just a deep, waiting quiet. The knife was cool in my hand. My skin was cool, though the wine had warmed me, within.

Orlo put an arm around Laedon. “He’ll feel this one, if you do it right. Not as pain, exactly, but he’ll feel it. You’re used to it, though, aren’t you, Lae?” A little shake of the old man’s shoulders. Laedon’s eyes did their rolling dance.

“Now, then. No tools, Nola: the vision would be too strong. Just his blood. And I will stay very close, to help you remember what we talked about.” He winked at me. I did not smile back. I was already walking toward them.

It was not so easy, this time. Maybe I had the angle wrong; it was a smaller knife, after all, and I had not had time to get used to it. I pushed its tip against Laedon’s skin—exactly the same place as before, because I knew it. The skin puckered inward but did not break. I pushed again, and again. Anger surged through me. I pulled the blade back, then jabbed down. His arm jumped. I had not found the same place, after all, but that did not matter: blood spattered and flowed.

“Show me,” I said, and gasped, because it felt as if there was a knife in me too, slicing from my thighs to my belly and up, up until it rested behind my eyes. I doubled over. At first all I heard was my own whimpering, but as I breathed I heard something else: Uja, whistling high, sweet notes that seemed to turn the agony into aching.

I straightened. I saw Laedon’s blood, dripping onto a piece of white cloth (Orlo must have put it there). I saw Laedon, staring at me from behind a crimson gauze that wrapped him. Everything I looked at was crimson, except for his eyes, which were diamond-clear, all colours. I stared at his blood again—a single spray and the rest droplets—until it spun and blurred and the world around me vanished in red.

A silver road cuts through the red. I move toward it as I have moved in other visions, expecting to feel myself a bird or a vole—but I am myself. My own feet are beneath me, bare, sunk into the soft, warm stuff of the path.
The Path
, I think, and see that it stretches on and on, over red hills and along the bottoms of red canyons, and that it ends in Laedon’s clear, bright eyes.

I walk slowly, because I feel heavy and strange. The Path ripples, and I dig my toes in, between steps. When I glance to either side I see other roads—so many, too many; which is the one I should follow? They are silver snakes, writhing, making me even dizzier. They all wind up to Laedon’s eyes. I stop, sway.

“Choose, Nola.”
Orlo’s voice is so close that it is nearly inside my own head, but he is nowhere I can see
.
“Choose one and make it the only one.”

I do. It looks like all the others, but when I hold it in my gaze it stops its wriggling. I think,
Walk, now
—but my feet (so solid and near) will not move. I whimper again.

“Nola. Stay still—it is all right.”
I take a great gulp of crimson air
.
“Concentrate. Imagine tomorrow. Imagine tomorrow, and the thing you described to me earlier.”

Tomorrow
, I think.
Imagine
. . . The sun rising into blue sky, not red. Sunlight on the dark green leaves that brush against the kitchen windows. The kitchen—the cake. Apple slices laid in a circle; batter poured. A round, brown cake on a windowsill. I see it, but only for a moment; it is too silly, a thing from my world steaming in the Other. I laugh and the cake vanishes, as do the leaves and the light and the window glass. I laugh at my bare toes, and at the road that squirms away from me like a snake. I look along the road and see the diamond-flash of Laedon’s eyes and my laughter turns to pain.

When I opened my eyes I was in bed, in my room; I guessed this from the wobbly shadows, then squeezed my eyes shut again. I was spinning. My insides throbbed, and I remembered red, pulsing hillsides, red sky. I hardly felt myself moving, but I was—I was across the room, retching into the bowl that was supposed to hold only fresh water. When I was done I sat on the floor. I could tell that there was wetness seeping between my legs, but the ache in me was so huge that I didn’t think I would ever move again.

I must have dozed; when Uja pecked at my fingers I started and flailed my arms. She sang the four notes of her “calm yourself, little chick” song, over and over, until I said, “Thank you, Uja—I’m fine now.” Though I was not. I could hardly see her; she was a shadow like the other things in the room, her glorious colours smudged to black.

She picked up the edge of my dress in one of her talons. She tugged. “Oh, Uja,” I said. My voice burned my throat, which was bitter with sickness. “I can’t go anywhere with you. I can’t get up.”

She tugged and tugged. She gave a piercing whistle, right into my ear. She scratched her beak along my palm. “Stop, you horrible creature! Stop! Leave me alone!” But I was up. I was standing, my arms out, balancing on the ground like a marketplace tumbler atop a tall, wavering pole.

Uja did not let go of my dress. She was holding it in her beak, now. “I should change,” I said. “There’s blood on this dress. . . .” She pulled. I shuffled after her. Pull, shuffle, pull, shuffle, all the way out the door and down the hallway.