Eyul sat a while in his tent, rotating the teacup in its saucer. Could it be true that Govnan was involved with the pattern-curse? Would Amalya ever believe such a thing?
There were things going on here that he did not understand, but he knew from working with Tuvaini that it wasn’t good to show too much thinking. He wouldn’t put Amalya’s freedom in jeopardy by lingering here. He placed the cup upside down on the saucer and fastened his belt around his waist. He found the bandage that had covered his eyes and wrapped it around his head just twice, blocking the worst of the light but leaving him able to see his path.
Outside, the vague forms of pilgrims rose from the bright sand and the sound of soft voices and different accents filled the air. On his previous visit there had been blond-haired folk from the north, Cerani, Islanders like Amalya, and even men from the west, their hair neither black nor blond, though he couldn’t see such detail today. He didn’t linger, but hurried up the stone path and entered the first narrow opening he found.
Darkness swallowed him. He unwrapped his bandages and listened to the cave. Far ahead, low voices murmurred in reverent tones. He took a tentative step and kicked something hard and light. It rolled a short distance before hitting the wall, and he stopped again. The objects in the cave, dark against black, gained shape. He turned in a slow circle, trying to get his bearings.
He had kicked an old jug, the kind made for oil or honey, but its round belly had long since broken open, losing its contents. Long ago someone had placed it beneath a painting on the rock wall, together with other now-mouldering objects. He leaned in towards the painting and made out a woman, outlined in red and brown, with both hands held up to the sky. She looked rather like Mirra, and he remembered the hermit’s words: what had become of these ancient worshippers? He picked up the old jug and replaced it beneath the goddess. Do not take from the gods what is theirs.
He heard a shuffling on his left and twisted towards the sound, one hand at the ready by his sheath.
Eyul smelled fire, and Island herbs. Amalya, clothed in white, from her robes to the bandages around her arm, cut out from the darkness like a star. He willed his feet to stillness. “How… how is your arm?” he asked, rooting his shoes into the rock.
“Better.” Amalya turned to the painting. “The hermit makes a great deal of these.”
“I respect the gods,” said Eyul, “but it doesn’t do to think overmuch about them.” Tuvaini’s words. “Why does he frighten you so?”
She swallowed. “Do you think he believes in them?” She looked sideways at him, more at his shoes than his face.
“If anything, this shows that Mirra has ruled these lands for more than an age.”
She touched the painting, drew her fingers across the figure’s bare breasts. “I thought this was Pomegra, mother of the wise.”
“As I said, it is not prudent to think too much about them.”
“It makes you uneasy.” She turned towards him, and he remembered holding her up on the camel, and the feel of her hair against his chin. “It makes me uneasy, too.”
“The gods should make anyone uneasy.” The cave came alive with orange light as the sunset spilled its color over the cliff face.
Amalya drew closer. “I didn’t mean the gods. I meant choosing. You’re a man who follows orders, but now that you’ve had a choice-” She grabbed his left hand, and for a moment he couldn’t move for the feel of her soft palm squeezing his knuckles.
“You’re wrong.” He stepped back, and she wrapped her hand around her bandaged arm instead. “Choosing was easy.”
“You bargain with death too readily,” she said. “We need to be careful.”
He could have told her then about Govnan, but instead he moved deeper into the cave, avoiding the sun’s light. Amalya stood where he’d left her. She was brave. She wouldn’t be frightened for long.
She took a breath and asked, “When do we leave?”
“They are readying our camels now.”
“And who-?”
“Later.”
Her fingers worried at her bandages. “Eyul… Thank you.” That was what he needed to hear. He turned his eyes towards the darkness.
Sarmin lay on his bed. Moon-glow from the Sayakarva window picked out a corner here, an edge there, enough to hint at the room. Sarmin filled in what he couldn’t see from memory. Hints and memory, mortared with faith, the raw materials from which a man might construct a palace, or a prison, or both.
When the pattern-magic had washed over Sarmin, dreams had swept him away: strange dreams, where he saw with eyes that were not his own. In their wake he felt burned-out, empty, and sleep would not come.
Sarmin closed his eyes and again the pattern hung before him, an afterimage in red and green. The longer he kept them shut, the tighter the focus became-and more: he felt the Many. He felt them crowd about him like old ghosts, and their silence pressed on him. They drew closer still, standing beside him, whispering in his ears, flickering at the edge of vision.
The Many murmured in the darkest recesses of his mind, a multitude of distant voices, one laid over the next, and overlaid again. He felt the Many as a burden on his shoulders, scores of them, hundreds, maybe even thousands. He carried them all.
Without warning the pattern flared, and once more a dream took him in its jaws. Sarmin moved through the hollow of a mountain. Light showed at the end of his path, the bright colours of sunset. He lowered himself from the cave-mouth, balancing his feet on a narrow, rocky ledge. Below him a big man and a dark-skinned woman stood by a pair of camels, their heads bent close together as they talked. The man wore cloth around his eyes. Sarmin watched them mount and move away from him. Their camels were sluggish and loud.
Sarmin realised that, like the Many, he too was an observer, watching from behind eyes he didn’t own. Carried.
Sarmin didn’t recognise the sleeve that covered his arm, but he recognised what emerged as the cuff slid back along his wrist: triangle, half-moon, diamond within square, square within diamond “The pattern!” Again the voice that was not his spoke his words, softly, and with the accent of the low-born. In answer, whispers rose around him, like sand lifting before the storm.
All see what one sees. All know what one knows. All want what one wants. All live what one lives. This the pattern. This the price.
And then through it all came a clear voice, cool as a river in a desert: “Is there a stranger here? One who is not the Many?” It was a man’s voice, redolent with age and wisdom and power. The Pattern Master had found him. “I have felt you, stranger. You opened a door that should have remained closed.”
Sarmin held silent.
“Show yourself!” The command brooked no refusal.
Sarmin shrank into himself, imagining himself a dot, a mere speck amid the bulk of a dune.
“Beyon? Is it you? Have you joined us at last?” the Pattern Master asked.
Sarmin heard amusement bubbling beneath the words. He fought back the outrage that rose in him, as hot as it was unexpected.
“Hide, then.” The slightest ripple of anger swirled in the current of the voice. “You serve me, no matter what you think you choose. The pattern will be complete: one pattern, one future. There will be one to whom all will bow.”
Sarmin kept his peace, silent and hidden among the multitude. More than anything, the lack of imagination in the Pattern Master’s ambitions irked him. If I were Master I’d want… Sarmin wondered what he would want. He needed more than bended knees, less than that, too… Many patterns. That’s what I’d want, many patterns.