The Pattern Scars (37 page)

It came quickly. By the time I reached the keep’s doors the rain had started (fat, heavy droplets), and as I stepped inside, lightning turned the darkness yellow. The thunder followed me—still distant, but it seemed to shudder all the way into the stones beneath my feet.

I ran from the keep down to the Great Hall, and I did not even think to look for Bardrem. I would not have seen him, in any case; I could barely see my own feet through all the mud and water. The rain came down in warm, billowing, blinding waves.

“You will do no such thing, Cousin!” I heard Lord Derris say as the double doors were opened for me.

“I should,” said the king. He was pacing in front of the dais. I had never seen him pace before; usually it was Teldaru who did this, and Haldrin who reprimanded him. Teldaru was motionless now, leaning back against the dais, his legs crossed at the ankles. But while his body showed only ease, his eyes leapt as if he were seeing everything, or nothing.

“I should,” Haldrin said again, then turned and saw me. “Nola! Good. Come in. We wanted you, since you also had visions of her—of Zemiya—we wanted you here.”

“Notice, Hal,” Teldaru said, “that Nola has just been outside.”

Haldrin scowled at him and looked back at me. I saw him take in the dripping, sodden mess of my clothing and hair. “I want to meet her,” he told me. “On the road outside the city.”

“Can you give him a single reason why he should?” Lord Derris had never addressed me directly before. I cleared my throat, just as Dren had done as he fidgeted in my doorway. I was far too aware of the way my dress had moulded to my body, and I thought, quite suddenly, how relieved I was that I had not chosen the one with the white bodice.

“Perhaps, my king,” I said, with pretend solemnity, “if you have not yet had time to bathe today . . .?”

Haldrin laughed; Lord Derris smiled; Teldaru nodded at me as if I had pleased him unexpectedly.

“I wanted to welcome her,” the king said. “I wanted the entire city to greet her. There were going to be flower petals.”

“And there still can be.” Teldaru straightened. “In here. Stop worrying; you’re making us all nervous.”

“Just think, though,” Lord Derris said, “the rain will wash away the smell of the latrines—at least for awhile.”

“And our grass may be green again, when it is over,” Teldaru added. I could almost see his energy—restlessness, excitement, even anger, pulsing from his skin and eyes.

“Very well,” the king said, and sighed. “Nothing to do but wait, then.”

I heard later what happened in the city below us, while we waited—for many Sarsenayans did lean out their windows and stand shivering in the streets, despite the storm. A carriage—sent by Haldrin to meet the Belakaoan boats—halted just outside the southern gate. A woman climbed out of it and stood very still in the downpour, gazing back the way she had come. Her skin and hair were so dark that they were difficult to see until lightning forked, and even then her image was swiftly gone again. Her dress might have been a colour—one of those glorious, bright island colours for which all Sarsenayan girls yearned—but now it was dark too, wind-whipped and clinging.

Another woman alit beside her. This one was taller and slimmer. She touched the first—on the shoulder, some said; others said the back—who turned slowly to face the gate. She gestured, leaned close to the taller woman to say something. The taller woman climbed back into the carriage. And so it was that Zemiya,
moabe
of Belakao, walked alone into Sarsenay City in the rain and the wind and the thunder, her eyes only on the road, and not on the people who lined it.

“Haldrin, King of Sarsenay, I present to you Zemiya, Princess of Belakao.” The Belakaoan herald’s words rang, but he looked terribly uncomfortable—as wet as the rest of his party was, his hands clutching his spear as if he was afraid they might shake.

“I welcome you,” King Haldrin said to Zemiya, “as
moabe
of your own land, and as future queen of this one.”

He was standing at the foot of the dais. Zemiya was just inside the doors.
She already looks like a queen
, I thought from my own place beside Lord Derris. She was beautiful, and stood as if she did not notice the water dripping from her dress and fingertips, onto the flower petals on the floor.

“I thank you, Lord King,” she said. Her voice was just as rich as Teldaru had said it was.

The king stepped forward and I smelled the flower petals, stirred and bruised. “Zemiya,” he said, and I felt a rush of surprise and something else that I did not want to name, hearing him say this word. “You should have dried yourselves, taken more time. . . .”

“No,” Zemiya said. When she shook her head the jewels in her hair sparkled. Crimson and clear, I saw. Blue and yellow and green. “I preferred to come immediately.”

The herald took two paces and brought his spear down on the floor with a crack. “And I also announce—”

“Neluja,” Zemiya said to Haldrin. “Yes—you remember her? My family’s representative at this blessed time, for my brother the
moabu
did not see fit to come himself.” I sucked in my breath at the bitterness that throbbed beneath the smoothness and the small, white smile.

Neluja walked to stand beside her sister. She was not quite as wet; I saw that her dress was orange, patterned with white circles. The cloth that hid her hair was a darker colour—green, perhaps, or brown. Her eyes were all black except for pinprick white centres. “King Haldrin,” she said in a higher, cooler voice than her sister’s.

“
Ispa
Neluja,” he replied. “I am glad that you have come.”

“I had to,” Neluja said. She stepped closer to the king, but her eyes seemed to be on Teldaru. “For I had to tell you myself: this marriage should not happen.”

Lord Derris gasped and the herald started and the king frowned, but it was Teldaru I looked at, my heartbeat heavy and uneven in my chest. I knew his smile; the hungry one that showed only the tips of his perfect teeth. “I was looking forward to greeting you both,” he said to Neluja, “but now instead I must ask you,
Ispa
, what you mean, and why you seek to mar the joy of this occasion.”

“Master Teldaru,” Haldrin said, holding up a hand, “
Ispa
Neluja—let us not talk of this yet. Go and rest, and—”

“No,” Zemiya said. “Haldrin, let us talk of this now.”

They all waited, for a moment. I noticed, as my heart continued to thud, that there was a lizard perched on Neluja’s upper arm. It was small and bright red, and its eyes looked like tiny faceted amber domes.

“The
isparra
has shown me,” Neluja said at last. “I have seen images of future time.”

“As have I.” Teldaru’s gaze slid to me. “Mistress Nola has, as well. She Othersaw for a Belakaoan merchant, months and months ago, and she saw precisely what I had before her: a shared path of abundance and joy.”

“Is that so?” Neluja said. The lizard’s eyes began to swivel, around and around, sickeningly fast. Its tail looped and tightened around her arm, just above the elbow. “For my own visions have been dark.”

Teldaru shrugged a little. “But if, in your country, no one Path is more likely than another, such visions should not trouble you.”

“In my country we speak of tides and currents, water that flows in ways we anticipate and ways we cannot. I have searched the water many times, and all I have seen is darkness.” She turned again to Haldrin. “I have not come to try to stop this marriage myself. We would not have come at all, either of us, if we sought to escape it. But I hoped . . .” She swallowed, and the lizard cocked its head toward hers. “I hope that you will think on what I have seen, King Haldrin. My brother refuses to do so, but perhaps you will.”

Haldrin looked from Neluja to Zemiya. The
moabe
was smiling very, very slightly; a challenge, a promise, a question—I could not tell.

“Teldaru.” The king turned and faced him. “Look again, now.” He turned once more, to me. “And you too, Nola. Both of you: look, and tell me what my Pattern will be.”

Thunder cracked directly above us—around us, it seemed, in a great, descending wave. When its reverberations had faded, Lord Derris cried, “My lord!” His already breathy voice was strained almost to nothing.

He is happy
, I realized.
Overjoyed.
I knew that the king usually asked for Otherseeing only when custom dictated; that he preferred his own ideas to sacred visions of the Otherworld—and I knew that this had always frustrated Lord Derris. So now he wheezed his delight into the Great Hall as I walked over to Teldaru, thinking,
No, no; not this . . .

“We will,” Teldaru said quietly.

“And you, Neluja—would you join them?”

She shook her head. “I know what I have seen. I have no need to look again. But he will help”—and the lizard skittered down her arm and dropped to the floor.

“An intriguing creature,” said Teldaru.

Neluja nodded. “Indeed. He found me after I lost my bird, Uja—perhaps you remember her?”

“Uja bit him,” Zemiya said. “Several times. I am certain he remembers her.”

It was all intolerable to me, suddenly: the weight of the air and the knowledge that Bardrem was beneath it too, so close; the smiles I did not understand; the rich, clear voices and the words they were speaking. The way I knelt, cursed and helpless, and watched the lizard’s legs and tail make paths in the petals while Haldrin said again, “Tell me what will come” and Teldaru touched my hand, lightly. The way the Otherworld rose to meet me. My desire and my dread.

Haldrin. Just him, kneeling on dry, cracked earth. His shoulders are trembling, and so is the long, curved line of his back. I whisper his name. He raises his head and I see that there are tears on his cheeks, and that he sees me. He smiles at me, and the ground beneath him sprouts grass and ivy and shoots that coil outward, trailing tiny flowers. He lifts his hands and takes off his circlet (which is a deep, dark red, not gold). Sets it on the ground, where the ivy loops around it until it disappears. His tears make deep green furrows in his cheeks.

I was leaning forward on my closed fists when the real world returned. I strained for breath, found it, made it slow and even. I raised my head and saw Teldaru staring up past the king. Teldaru’s eyes were still and clear with Otherseeing. Haldrin glanced from him to me and back again. Everyone else was distant, to me; smudged, featureless, obscured by black spots.

Teldaru bowed his head. When he looked up his gaze was focused and bright.

“Well, Daru?” Haldrin said.

“I . . .” Teldaru began. He smiled at the king, at me, at Zemiya and Neluja. He reached out and stroked the lizard, and he chuckled when it nipped his finger. “I saw the ocean at rest. I saw new land rising from it, so gently that the waters hardly moved. It was beautiful, Haldrin. My king.”

“And Nola?” Haldrin said. He spoke more lightly than he had before. “What did you see?”

You, and myself too; I don’t know how I would describe it, even if I could.
“Gems,” I said, “spilling like fire from the mouth of a volcano. Where they land, stones grow, more and more of them, until there is a monument—like Ranior’s, only taller and lovelier.” I could not look at Neluja, or indeed at anyone. I bowed my head as Teldaru had.

“Thank you,” Haldrin said. “
Ispa
Neluja, for telling me of your visions, and Teldaru and Nola, for telling me of yours. They will give me much to think on.” He walked over to Zemiya. “And now,” he said, “please, Zemiya: let me show you to your rooms.”

She did not smile at him, and there was a distance in her dark eyes, but she raised her hand and laid it lightly on his arm. “Yes,” she said. “It seems that it is time.”

Teldaru slipped his hand into mine and stroked my palm with his thumb, and I felt his trembling and my own and could not pull away.

I wonder sometimes at the certainty of words. At how real they make the past look, and how precise. “Selera wore a white dress with ivy patterns stitched in Belakaoan gems”—and even if I’m nearly sure she did, the words, once they’re written, make it true.

I’m usually fairly certain about images—both the ones from my visions and the others. Things like Selera’s dresses, and whether all the eagle’s talons were bloodied, or just a few. Other things are more difficult to remember. How soon after a particular event did another event happen? A week, a month? Is it true that he asked me a question and that I answered in such-and-such a way? And if I’m not sure, should I not leave that part out entirely, or write, “I cannot remember precisely, but perhaps this is how it happened”?

Except then it would not be a story. And I need to tell a story. Something whole and certain.

Sometimes it’s the images that help me call up the rest; the colours and light and textures that start the words again. Times like this. For Selera’s dress
was
long and white and stitched with gems. The dress she wore when she went away.