The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon

PROLOGUE

In Saylok, the Tournament of the King happened every year when the harvest was over and the cold had not yet come. The clan chieftains and their warriors would gather on Temple Hill to compete in a slew of contests designed to measure strength and skill and determine the fiercest clan. The tournament winners became the fodder of legends, and for two weeks, the castle grounds and the temple mount became a carnival. Great swaths of color billowed in the breeze—green, gold, red, orange, blue, and brown for the six clans, and purple for the keepers of the temple.

The flags welcomed every citizen making the yearly pilgrimage to partake in the festivities, but the woman who struggled up the hill, her young son in her arms, had not come to watch the tournament or to sell her wares at the bazaar. She had come for a blessing from the Highest Keeper. She had come for a miracle.

During the tournament, the temple doors were opened and all were welcomed inside. The keepers were on hand to bless and advise, to pray and pardon. In Saylok, the king made the laws and the chieftains enforced them, but the keepers could mete out mercy. Those who received a hearing with the keepers were granted “new life” and absolution from their sins and sentences. Others were healed or comforted.

The absolution granted was usually spiritual and rarely criminal. Justice was swift and severe in the clans, and very few of the condemned actually lasted long enough to claim sanctuary or beg an audience with the keepers. Still, during the Tournament of the King, when the temple was opened, there was always at least one infamous fugitive who was granted pardon.

She was not a fugitive, and she would not seek forgiveness for her sins, though she knew they were many. She would not even ask to be healed, though she knew she was going to die. Her sickness had made her desperate. Brave. And she climbed with a single-minded purpose, heaving for breath.

The crowds were thick and the lines leading into the temple were long. She waited all afternoon for her turn, sipping from her water flask and trying to entertain the boy. He was good-natured and played at her feet, drawing pictures in the dust and eating bits of bread from her satchel. But the journey of days had taken its toll, and her vision swam and her spirits sank. She could not wait forever. She could not even wait for hours.

At dusk, the bells began to toll and the guards at the wide doors started to turn people away so they could close the temple.

“Return tomorrow,” they insisted, shoving a persistent woman to the side. There were many desperate mothers in the crowd.

She hoisted her satchel and took her son’s hand, searching for a bit of refuge, a place to shelter for the night. Stairs and columns ringed the front of the temple, and every step was filled with those as indigent as she. They would be first in line when the doors opened again in the morning. She staggered around the perimeter, hardly knowing where she stepped, clinging to the small hand tucked in hers. A door in the stone wall around the temple yard was unguarded, but when she pulled on the handle, she found it barred. Animals were housed beyond the wall; she could hear them. Smell them. She only needed a bit of straw, a little shelter, and a well where she could refill her waterskins. She rattled the door, hoping someone would hear, but no one came.

She sank down against the wall, trying to gather her strength. The sun had dropped behind the temple, and the stones were cool against her cheek. She pulled her son into her lap and closed her eyes. She would wait for someone to come through and beg them to let her bed down among the beasts. She’d done it before. Many times.

She must have slept, though it couldn’t have been long.

A hand touched her head. She thought it only her son and reassured him wearily. “I am only tired, Baldr. Only resting. Stay beside me.”

“Do you need help, woman?” The voice was gentle and deep, and she jerked, peering up at the man who stood over her. His hair was shorn close to his skull, and his robes were the deep purple that set the keepers apart from the clans. But it was the babe he carried across his chest that convinced her she was only dreaming.

The sling was dyed the same deep purple as the robe, so that it almost looked as if the child’s tiny head floated at the keeper’s heart.

She’d never seen such a thing. A man carrying a child thus was strange enough. Men did not care for infants. But a keeper with a child was beyond comprehension.

She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the keeper remained, his hand extended, the sleeping babe lolling in his purple pouch.

“I have come to see the Highest Keeper,” she blurted, rubbing her eyes. “And I cannot wait until the morrow.”

“I am not Master Ivo. I am only Keeper Dagmar, but I will do what I can.”

He gripped her arm to help her stand. Baldr felt her efforts to rise, and stood as well, patting her leg, searching for her hand.

“Is this your son?” Keeper Dagmar asked.

The child was sturdy and handsome, with dark, curling hair and dimpled limbs, but his eyes were twin pools of empty green, clouded and cold, and people often stared at him in horror and hurried away.

“Yes. He cannot see,” she explained. “Some say he is marked. His eyes frighten people. But he is not evil, Keeper. He is sweet, and he is smart. His mind is not slow.”

“What do you call him?”

“Baldr.”

“Baldr the Beloved. Son of Odin,” Keeper Dagmar said.

“Baldr the Beloved. Baldr the Brave. Baldr the Good. Baldr the Wise. He is all those things,” she said proudly.

The keeper gazed down at the boy without fear and patted him on the head. His kindness made her eyes smart; it also gave her hope.

“I am of Berne, Keeper. And I need a hearing with the Highest Keeper,” she pled.

“You are sick?” he asked.

“Yes.” She knew her eyes were bright and her cheeks were red with fever, and though she tried to suppress it, a deep cough rattled and escaped from her chest. “Yes. I have been sick for a while, and I am not getting better. I am in need of a blessing. But not for myself. For my son.”

Master Ivo, the Highest Keeper of Saylok, was irritated.

The doors of the temple are open to all the citizens of Saylok during the Tournament of the King, but the doors had closed and the day was done, and he was an old man who needed his rest.

Yet this woman and her child had found their way into the sanctum, where no one but keepers and kings—and the chieftains on occasion—were allowed. Someone must have let her in.

“You must leave at once,” Ivo hissed.

“I need only a moment, Master,” she said, undeterred, and continued toward him. His perch was more throne than chair, with spikes that radiated out on the high back like rays of the sun or spokes of a wheel. It did not look comfortable, he knew, so it pleased him greatly that it was. It sat on the dais near the altar, and it was where he did all his best thinking . . . and sleeping.

The woman stopped a mere ten feet away, beside the altar, and folded her hands like a beggar.

“I would ask a blessing of you, Highest Keeper . . . and then I will go.”

She had the courage of the desperate, and it radiated from her feverish gaze and pleading lips. Though the dust of long travel and the rags of destitution cloaked her thin frame, the child who walked beside her was healthy and relatively clean.

But there was something wrong with the boy’s eyes.

The woman’s mission was suddenly clear, and Ivo cursed whomever it was who had taken compassion on her. The Highest Keeper was not the only one who could bestow a token or pardon. Every keeper spent his days during the tournament healing and calling on the runes. Yet this woman had been brought to him, slipped into his sanctum without introduction, so that he would have to tell her that some ailments could not be righted with a rune. Cowards. He would punish the lot of them.

“Did he ever see?” Ivo asked, impatient, waving toward the boy.

“No, Master. His eyes were thus when he was born.”

“He was not ill?”

“No.”

“Then I cannot heal him. I cannot restore what never was.”

The woman’s shoulders sagged, and he thought for a moment she would collapse.

He cursed the Norns who delighted in tormenting him.

“I will give you both a blessing of strength. Then you will go,” he relented.

He drew a half-hearted rune in the air, mumbling a blessing on the marrow and blood and sinews. He could not be expected to bestow more under the circumstances. The little boy let go of his mother’s hand and cocked his dark head. Then he repeated the blessing, word for word, his voice high and sweet. Ivo’s irritation disintegrated into the dust on the sanctum floor, but the woman was not comforted. Tears had begun to streak her cheeks.

“I fear strength will not be enough, Master,” the woman whispered.

“Why not?” Ivo grumbled. She did not need to know his heart had changed.

“He is a fine boy, Master. But his blindness is a burden no one will shoulder. And I cannot take care of him anymore.”

“Where is his father? What of your clan?”

“I am of Berne, my father is dead, and I have known many men, Master.” Her voice was unapologetic, and he had little doubt she spoke truth, but she withheld something. Most women did when speaking of such matters. Especially to an ancient keeper who they assumed would not understand.

“Take him to Chief Banruud. It is the responsibility of the chieftain to provide for the children—all children—in his clan.”

She was silent, resistant, and for a moment she hung her head, defeated.

He sighed, throwing his hands in the air.

“I cannot heal his eyes . . . but I can heal you so that you might take care of him,” Ivo offered.

Relieved, the woman nodded, and he motioned her to approach him. Her hands shook with fatigue and her skin burned with fever. He would have to draw runes to ward off illness in every corner of the temple, but it was always thus during the tournament.

In his own blood, he drew three runes across her brow: a rune of breath, a rune of strength, and a rune to expel the sickness from her chest. The fates would decide whether or not to grant his request—life and death were not his to control—but already her eyes were clearing and the rattling in her exhalations was gone.

He waited, letting the runes sink beneath her skin before he wiped the residue away. He would not leave a mark for others to see.

“Go now. And take the boy.”

She backed away, bowing gratefully as she did, but his rune had healed more than her body. It had restored her hope, and she made another request.

“There is word that there is a child, a babe, living among the keepers. Living in the temple. That is what I want for my son,” she said in a rush.

“Word, eh?” He snorted.

Word all the way in Berne?He doubted that. But now he knew which keeper had allowed the woman entrance into the sanctum. Keeper Dagmar was a constant thorn in his side. A burr in his shoe. A canker in his mouth. And he had been from the moment Dagmar had come to the mount, a lanky, insistent boy, threatening to throw himself from the cliffs of Shinway if the Highest Keeper did not allow him to become a supplicant in the temple.

The worst part was, somehow Dagmar always got his way. Months ago, he’d brought a newborn babe, his dead sister’s son, Bayr, into the enclave, and Ivo had relented again. Even though it had never been done. Even though it should never be done. Now this woman was here, demanding the same. Ivo had warned Dagmar of this very thing. The moment an exception was made, the rule ceased to exist.

“Can you not train him to be a keeper?” she pled. “He is so smart.”

“A keeper,” the little boy parroted. He stood beneath the altar, his arms extended as high as he could raise them, so the tips of his fingers could trace the carvings in the wood. The runes were all entangled, each figure indistinguishable from the others, except to the trained eye. It was the way they were protected, even in the sanctum. Even on the underside of the altar.

“Runes,” the little boy said, marveling.

Ivo gasped. “He recognizes the runes.”

“He knows naught of runes,” the woman argued, shaking her head. “I know naught of runes. I swear it, Highest Keeper.”

The runes were forbidden to all but the keepers. Her fear was justified, but Ivo did not scold her. He watched the child instead. The boy was entranced by the texture of the carvings beneath his hands. After a moment, the little fellow crouched, and in the dust of the floor, he drew a rune—two half circles, back to back, one that opened to the left and one that opened to the right. An arrow bisected the first crescent, and its shaft penetrated the second through the back. The rune was an exact replica of the one directly above the boy’s head, if he remembered right.

Ivo frowned and then he gaped, dumbfounded. “He draws the rune of Hod.”

The woman’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“He draws the rune of Hod, the blind son of Odin,” Ivo whispered.

“He knows naught, Master. It is what he does. He touches and he . . . draws. It is how he learns,” his mother protested and rushed to erase the figure.

“Leave it!” Ivo hissed. The woman and the child froze.

The Highest Keeper did not believe in happenstance. A blind boy—a boy no more than four summers—had drawn the rune of a blind god.

“Bring him to me,” Ivo said, curling his fingers toward the boy.

The woman hesitated, suddenly fearful, but she prodded the boy forward until they both stood in front of the Highest Keeper’s enormous chair. The little boy reached out, tentative, and set his hands on Ivo’s knees, almost as if he understood what was to come.

Ivo gaped again. No one touched him. Ever. The woman seemed to understand this.

“Baldr,” she warned, drawing his hands back.

“His name is Baldr?” Ivo asked, stunned once more.

“Y-yes, Master,” the woman stammered. “I am of Berne. It is a c-common name . . . in Berne.”

“He is not Baldr . . . He is Hod,” Ivo murmured. But the two names were inextricably tied, and it was just further proof to Ivo of a destined course.

“Turn his hands so I can see his palms,” Ivo insisted. She did, gripping the boy’s wrists and extending his small arms so he stood in a posture of supplication, palms up.

Ivo bent over the boy’s hands.

“Runes hide on the palms of our hands, at each knuckle, in every line and whorl,” Ivo muttered, providing explanation to the nervous mother.

The marks were already there, engraved on the boy’s skin, though they were far more visible on him—particularly the rune of sound and of scent—than on most. The lines would continue to deepen as the boy relied upon them, but Ivo would make them deeper still. A gift to the child who would sorely need his other senses.

The Highest Keeper, with a flick of his sharp nail, took blood from the tip of his own finger and drew slumber on the boy’s brow. The child immediately began to nod in his mother’s arms. It would make the rest easier.

“He will sleep now. And I will bless him,” Ivo explained. The child would need to be still, and he would not understand the sting of the runes on his skin.

He traced the tiny runes on the boy’s right hand with the needled edge of his nail, and blood welled in the crevices.

His mother gasped, not comprehending the offering and uneasy at the sight of her son’s blood.

“He will hear, smell, and sense far more than others do,” Ivo said, completing the task. He curled the boy’s bleeding fingers over his tiny palm. “Now take him away.”

The mother lifted the sleeping child in her arms, her strength restored.

“Thank you, Highest Keeper. Thank you,” she whispered. She stooped and swung her satchel over her shoulder and repositioned the child in her arms before turning toward the sanctum doors.

The fates screamed in Ivo’s head, and he relented, throwing up his hands in surrender.

“Woman?”

She turned.

“You cannot stay here, on the temple mount . . . but I know a place where the child . . . can go,” he said.