“Sit with us,” she said to me. “This is the place.”
She was a Mistress, suddenly, and a woman, and a friend, and yet she was already moving away from all of these, and me. I sat down with my knees touching hers.
“Don’t,” I said. “Let’s go back to the castle. You can sleep—I’ll ask Dellena for a draught for you—one of the sweet ones that she only sells for gold pieces. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“I’d rather talk now,” she said.
And we did, a little. She asked me about Sildio and I blushed and she saw it, even though it was dark. “I knew you’d be happy,” she said.
“But remember: we agree with the Belakaoans now—the Pattern isn’t set. What you saw in that vision didn’t have to be true.”
She smiled at me. “I knew you’d be happy.”
“We could go away,” I said a bit later. “I know you’re not sure if it’s possible, yet—but we could try. We could go somewhere remote, if you wanted—to the eastern mountains, or maybe to a town in Lorselland—my brother could tell us where. . . .”
She just looked at me. Didn’t even need to shake her head.
“All right, then, how’s this: you remade the heroes and Layibe, and you say you can’t make them die—but what about me? Why can’t I try to unmake their Paths for good?”
“Grasni,” she said, as patiently as if I had been Dren, “remember how you felt when you looked on my Paths? No. It would be horrible. It would change you, and it probably wouldn’t even work.”
I could say nothing, to this.
We were both quiet, as the sky began to lighten. I slept a little, though I didn’t want to, and so did she. Both of our heads nodded and jerked up again, as they had in Mistress Ket’s history class. I must have slept more deeply than that, though, because the last time my eyes flew open it was dawn, and Nola was not sitting any more.
She was standing with one hand on the tree. Her other hand was running over its bark. As I watched, she moved all the way around the tree, sometimes kneeling and sometimes standing on the tips of her toes. And then she stopped. She dug about where two branches met and when she pulled her hand away she was holding something. A piece of paper, folded into a tiny, thick, lopsided shape. I watched her unfold it and look down at it. I watched her cry.
When she came back to me her eyes were dry and the paper was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s time,” she said.
“No.” A useless word, but I needed it.
She knelt in front of me. “I don’t know what they’ll all look like, after I’m gone. It could be quite horrible. You’ll have to be gentle with King Derris, when you take him to them.”
“I’ll try. But I might have to hit him once or twice, too.”
She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me. We held each other very tightly. A bird began to sing (not Uja, who was still sitting on the top branch with her head under her wing).
Nola stood up, after we had pulled apart. She walked around the tree and out along a wooden pathway that I hadn’t seen, in the dark. She walked along it to where the stones had fallen and crushed it, and then she came back. She picked Layibe up and set her in my lap.
“Hold her,” she said, and bit her lip. It was this motion, more than all her words, that made me believe her.
She whistled. Uja shook her head free of her wing and glided to the ground. Nola sat where she had during the night. She laid her fingers on Uja’s blue head and the bird made a thrumming sound deep in her throat.
Nola raised her arms so that the sleeves of her dress fell away from them. Borl whined and wagged his tail and she lowered one hand to scratch around his ears and under his jaw.
She smiled at me as she held her arms straight again. Then she closed her eyes.
Uja drew her beak along the inside of Nola’s right forearm, all the way down to her wrist. Her skin parted. Blood ran in rivulets that thickened into streams. Uja walked very gracefully to Nola’s left arm. She gasped this time, and her fingers twitched. Her eyes opened and looked up at the leaves, which were a bright, new green in the light. And that was how she stayed.
I didn’t notice that Layibe had stopped breathing until I bent down to her. Borl was quiet too, stretched out long with his muzzle on his paws. I touched his side when I went to kneel by Nola, just to make sure he wasn’t merely sleeping. And he wasn’t, of course.
Her eyes were wide and brown. I pressed my thumbs against their lids until they closed. I knelt there with her—with all of them—until the sun was high. Then I rose and walked back over the stones until I came to the street. The castle’s flags led me home again.
There is more I could write. About Mistress Nola’s belated fame, especially. The stories! She’d laugh at some of them, which are ridiculously grand. About bodies laid to rest in earth, and an island bird who flew away from a stone city. But I won’t.
I don’t even wish the last words on these pages to be mine. They should be Bardrem’s. He must have scrawled them when he was a boy, on a piece of paper that he folded into a lopsided shape and wedged deep into the branches of a tree. The paper is yellow now, stained with brown blotches—like the rings deep within the bark, Nola might say. The words are blurred but still readable. I’ve already spoken them aloud to Sildio, and to the baby who has just started to kick inside me. I know these words without looking, but I hold the paper in my hands anyway.
Nola, o Nola, so lovely, so bold
When will your eyes fall on me?
I am cook, I am poet
And you will yet know it
And then our tale, too, shall be told.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caitlin Sweet’s first fantasy novel, A Telling of Stars, was published by Penguin Canada in 2003. Her second, The Silences of Home, was published in 2005. Her one and only short story, “To Play the Game of Men,” was included in Daw’s Ages of Wonder anthology in 2009. She lives with her family in a magic bungalow in Toronto. On the Web, you’ll find her at: www.caitlinsweet.com.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Martin Springett has been an illustrator of fantasy book covers and children’s books since 1984 when he illustrated the covers for Guy Gavriel Kay’s classic fantasy trilogy The Fionavar Tapestry. Caitlin Sweet’s first novel, A Telling of Stars, featured Martin’s cover art. He has won the Aurora Award for fantasy illustration, and the Ruth Schwartz Award in the children’s picture book field. He is also a musician, and has recorded a CD of music inspired by Guy Kay’s works called Bright Weaving. Martin created his first authored and illustrated book, Jousting with Jesters in 2006, and in 2011, Fitzhenry and Whiteside released Breakfast on a Dragon’s Tail. You can find him at
www.martinspringett.com.
Table of Contents
Book One
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Book Two
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Book Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-
SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
The Pattern Scars Page 43