His puzzlement increased. The idea that a foe of any sort should exist in the Nexus was untenable. His first thought was Samah. Had the head of the Sartan Council entered Death’s Gate, found his way here? It was possible, though not very likely. This would be the last place Samah would come! Yet Haplo could think of no other possibility. The stranger drew nearer and Haplo saw, to his astonishment, that his fears had been groundless. The man was a Patryn.
Haplo didn’t recognize him, but this was not unusual. Haplo had been gone a long while. His lord would have rescued many Patryns from the Labyrinth during the interim.
The stranger kept his gaze lowered, glancing at Haplo from beneath hooded eyelids. He nodded a stern, austere greeting— customary among Patryns, who are a solitary and undemonstrative people—and appeared likely to continue on his way without speaking. He was traveling the opposite direction from Haplo, heading away from the lord’s dwelling.
Ordinarily Haplo would have responded with a curt nod of his own and forgotten the stranger. But the sigla on his skin itched and crawled, nearly driving him frantic. The blue glow illuminated the shadows. The other Patryn’s tattoos had not altered in appearance, remained dark. Haplo stared at the stranger’s hands. There was something odd about those tattoos.
The stranger had drawn level with him. Haplo had hold of the dog, forced to drag the excited animal back or it would have gone for the man’s throat. Another oddity.
“Wait!” Haplo called out. “Wait, sir. I don’t know you, do I? How are you called? What is your Gate?” [4]
Haplo meant nothing by the question, was hardly aware of what he asked. He wanted only to get a closer look at the man’s hands and arms, the sigla tattooed on them.
“You are wrong. We have met,” said the stranger, in a hissing voice that was familiar.
Haplo couldn’t recall where he’d heard it and was now too preoccupied to think about it. The sigla on the man’s hands and arms were false; meaningless scrawls that not even a Patryn child would have drawn. Each individual sigil was correctly formed, but it did not match up properly to any other.
The tattoos on the man’s arms should have been runes of power, of defense, of healing. Instead, they were mindless, a jumble. Haplo was suddenly reminded of the rune-bone game played by the Sartan on Abarrach, of the runes tossed at random on a table. This stranger’s runes had been tossed at random on his skin.
Haplo jumped forward, hands reaching, planning to seize the false Patryn, find out who or what was attempting to spy on diem.
His hands closed over air.
Overbalanced, Haplo stumbled, fell onto his hands and knees. He was up instantly, looking in all directions.
The false Patryn was nowhere in sight. He had vanished without a trace. Haplo glanced at the dog. The animal whimpered, shivered all over.
Haplo felt like doing the same. He poked halfheartedly among the trees and brush lining the path, knowing he wouldn’t find anything, not certain he wanted to find anything.
4 Reference to the number of Gates in the Labyrinth through which a Patryn has passed. The number of Gates gives a fair indication of what type of life the person led. A Squatter, for example, would have passed through relatively few Gates compared to a Runner. The Lord of the Nexus standardized the classification process in terms of age, using the runes tattooed on a person’s body combined with cycles discovered in the Labyrinth to judge a Patryn’s true age.
The question Haplo has asked would be the equivalent of one mensch asking another about his occupation.
Whatever it was, it was gone. The sigla on his arms were starting to fade, the burning sensation of warning cooled.
Haplo continued on his way, not wasting further time. The mysterious encounter gave him all the more reason to hurry. Obviously, the stranger’s appearance and the opening of Death’s Gate were not coincidence. Haplo knew now where he’d heard that voice, wondered how he could have ever forgotten.
Perhaps he had wanted to forget.