The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon
13
MAIDENS
Ghisla did not tell the Highest Keeper about Desdemona’s runes. Not the next day, or the next, and not in the weeks after that. Her indecision eased, though not entirely. In the eighteen months that followed, her knowledge plagued her. She dreamed about it, her mind conjuring the odd symbols and characters from Dagmar’s tortured thoughts. But she did not tell Master Ivo, and though she told Hod about everything else, they did not speak of Desdemona’s runes again.
It was too troubling, and they avoided discussing their worries and their woes, though they had many. It was not that they kept them from each other; they simply chose to speak of better things: musings and meanderings that were not pressing but felt essential, because in them lived beauty and hope. What they spoke of seemed to grow, and so they spoke of their dreams and not their doubts, their joys and not their pain. They were even careful not to let the discussion of others intrude upon the time they had, though sharing their lives sometimes meant sharing the people in them.
Hod knew Ghisla sang for the king. He knew she dreaded the encounters but had managed to survive them unscathed since Bilge was skewered and hung from the north gate. He also knew she’d grown closer to Elayne and her sisters but was still leery of everyone else—even Master Ivo, Dagmar, and Ghost—because she knew too much, and everyone was sheltering enormous secrets.
“I don’t trust anyone. And they don’t trust me. I can’t blame them. They don’t understand me . . . and I can’t explain myself. To do so would only make things worse. They would trust me even less. It is better that they dislike me than they reject me altogether.”
She didn’t have to explain herself to Hod. She told him everything, and in return, he bared himself to her, giving her everything he could in the snippets of time and space they spent together.
Ghisla knew all of Arwin’s foibles and faults. She knew of his tests and his tricks and the way he tutored and trained Hod, convinced that someday the blind god would complete his penance and rise again.
“I fear his disappointment will be great if I simply end up being a man with sharp ears, a good nose, and a steady hand,”Hod said one evening.
“What does he want you to be?”
“He wants me to be a hero.”
“What kind of hero?”
“He is convinced someday I will be the Highest Keeper.”
“Is that what you wish?”
“I thought it was, once. I had no ambitions of my own. I was happy to let Arwin dream for both of us.”
“And now?”
“Now . . . I have my own aspirations.”
“Tell me.”
“I dream of breaking the curse. And I dream of being near you.”
“Will that ever happen? Will I ever see you again? I know nothing about runes. But I speak to you through a rune on my hand. Sometimes I think I am crazy. Am I crazy, Hod? I hear voices. I hear your voice. But are you even real? Or are you just a figment of my imagination?”
He laughed, though she was half-serious. “It will happen soon.”
“How soon?” she asked, too cautious to give in to the excitement she sensed bubbling beneath his words.
“I am coming to the Tournament of the King. I am coming to Temple Hill.”
Ghisla watched for him all day. He’d said he would be here, in the square, when the temple doors were opened to the people of Saylok on the third day of the tournament, but when Ghisla, Elayne, Bashti, Dalys, and Juliah were escorted onto the dais in front of the temple, she could see nothing but the same endless crush of people trying to position themselves to obtain an audience with the keepers and see the daughters.
A platform had been erected between the columns to the left of the heavy temple doors. Their hair was twisted with ribbons and wrapped around their heads, and each daughter wore a new robe in the color of her clan. Princess Alba had even joined them for a while, wearing a yellow gown to represent Adyar.
Elayne of Ebba wore orange; she looked like a tall, thin flame with her red hair and fiery robes. Juliah complained about the brown of Joran, though it was the same chocolate as her eyes and echoed the richness of her hair. The color contrasted with the cream of her skin and complemented the ruby of her lips.
“Brown is like soil—deep and warm and rich. You look like the goddess of the harvest,” Elayne soothed, always knowing what to say. But she was right. Juliah was now fifteen, and she’d become a beauty overnight, though she seemed confused and even resentful of it.
They were all a little resentful and more than a little apprehensive. They were looked on differently, and there was new tension in the temple. Ghisla was eighteen, Elayne sixteen, and Bashti thirteen; Dalys and Alba were the only daughters who still looked like children, though Alba at almost ten was already tall and towered over tiny Dalys, who was a year older.
Master Ivo had grown exceedingly pensive as the tournament had approached. The chieftains would be assembling, the people gathering, and the changes in the daughters would be well noted.
The new robes were his idea.
“We cannot hope to hide you in purple any longer, not at the tournament. You are not keepers of the runes . . . You are kept by the runes. You are becoming women, but we must remind the people that you are their ambassadors. That you are symbolic, like the goddess Freya herself, separate and unattainable. You are women . . . but you will not be wives. That must be made abundantly clear.”
Bashti wore the red of Berne and had stained her lips to match, much to Ghost’s horror. She looked too fierce and too . . . female, but the Highest Keeper said to let her be.
“She looks like she’s sipped the blood of her enemies . . . and enjoyed every drop,” Ghost argued.
“I know. That is good. Better that people fear her, in my opinion. They will keep their distance.”
Dalys wore the blue of Dolphys and looked as delicate as Bashti looked immortal. Ghost put tiny white flowers in her hair and demanded she stand nearest the guard, afraid that someone would swoop her up like in years past and try to escape with her. As always, Ghost remained inside the temple throughout the tournament, watching from shuttered windows, hiding her pale face from public view.
The green of Ghisla’s robe was not the silvery green of pines or the yellow-green of the autumn grass. It was the green of fields after days of rain, the green beneath the mists of Hody’s eyes, and she loved it. She couldn’t wait to tell Hod all about it—to show him—while he sat beside her. Soon they would be together, and she could hardly contain the horrible joy and dread that swelled in her breast.
It was hot beneath her new green robe; the platform was shaded by the temple, but the heat from the continually burning Hearth of Kings made the square too warm in the waning summer sun. They stood in the square for hours. Master Ivo and the king were agreed on that.
“You give the people hope that there will be daughters again . . . that daughters can still thrive in Saylok,” Dagmar said, though standing in the heat being observed for hours on end did not feel like thriving.
During the tournament, people came from every clan and swarmed the mount for days. Beggars, peddlers, musicians, and thieves were all welcomed. The crippled and the sick were brought to the temple as well, hoping to be healed. Criminals seemed more prevalent than ever; to be pardoned by a keeper meant a clean slate in the new year, and the keepers collected coins and confessions from the condemned in body and spirit. The crowd was filled with both the piteous and the dangerous, and Ghisla feared for Hod, moving among them.
And then she saw him.
Her gaze should have bounced over him, but it caught and stayed. He too wore a robe, but the hood was pushed back from his face, and it hung open over his tunic and hose. He held a staff like he’d done years before, but he did not prop his weight against it or let it fall loosely at his side. It was as straight and upright as he was, his touch upon it light, like he was prepared at any moment to jab it or swing it round.
He lifted his head like he was tasting the air, and her heart leaped and her thoughts sang in a jubilant chorus.
Hody, Hody, Hody, Hody.
His hair was still shorn. He looked like the keepers—no braid swung between his shoulders like the warriors from the clans. He didn’t wear their colors either. All around him was a sea of bouncing colors, and he should have been drab, standing among them, but the absence of color, the gray of his clothes, the rough brown stubble of his hair, and the stillness of his form served as a beacon for her eyes.
He was tall, but not terribly so, and he was still thin, though his shoulders had widened and his neck was corded with strength.
Hody, Hody, Hody, Hody.
She dare not sing his name out loud; her sisters would hear. And she could not prick her finger to trace the rune on her hand. Her palms were wet with perspiration, which might be enough, and she pressed her right hand to her heart, willing him to hear her summons, as close as they were.
Hesitantly his right hand rose, though he did not turn toward her, and he copied the motion, pressing his palm to his chest. Almost immediately, she heard a muted drumbeat in her head, steady and strong, like his heart said her name: ghis LUH, ghis LUH, ghis LUH.
There was no way he could approach her. No way they could speak. Not now. The keepers encircled the daughters, and temple guards were posted to keep the clansmen and villagers from being too familiar. He would not be able to get any nearer.
And she could not approach him.
A surge of despair welled with the heat. She could see him. He was so close. And yet . . . there was nothing to be done but wait. Wait. Until when? Her despondency grew.
“I am ill,” she insisted, drawing the startled gaze of her sisters. “I feel faint.”
“It is very hot,” Elayne agreed.
“Dagmar,” Ghisla raised her voice, adamant. “I am ill. I must go inside.”
“We will all go inside,” Dagmar said, his voice revealing a note of relief. “You have been on display long enough.”
The day was interminable and made even longer by the reluctance of her sisters to retire when the evening deepened. Alba had spent the afternoon in their company, not yet old enough to preside over the festivities or observe the events, and not nearly as well protected as she had once been. The king put a cadre on her every time she moved about the grounds, but his guard was spread thin across the hill. Many of them were competing in the events as well, which meant the daughters and the princess stayed behind locked doors when they were not on display.
“I am not tired. I wish we could wander the mount,” Alba mourned. “There is so much to see, and we are stuck inside. If Bayr were here, he could accompany us. No one would dare approach if he were watching.”
“But he is not here . . . and I am weary,” Ghisla said, her tone cross, though her stomach knotted with guilt at her lie. She had no intention of sleeping.
“The queen says I can stay here with all of you tonight,” Alba said, cheering up slightly. She only referred to Queen Esa as Grandmother when she addressed her directly, which was not very often. The woman held herself apart and rarely left her quarters in the king’s castle.
Ghisla almost groaned. Alba’s presence would make it that much harder to slip away.
“You can sleep with me, Princess,” Ghisla offered. “Then Ghost will not feel compelled to let you have her bed.” And when she retired, all the beds would be full, giving Ghisla a little more cover.
“I don’t want to sleep yet,” Alba complained.
“I will sing to you.”
She would sing until they were all drunk with sleep. Her stomach twisted again. She did not like to manipulate her sisters, even with slumber, but she was growing desperate. The rune on her palm pulsed with Hod’s nearness, and she feared he would give up on her and retreat to his tent or whatever lodging Arwin had secured.
“Sing the one about the little bat,” Dalys begged. “That one always makes me smile.”
“I have not heard that one!” Alba squealed, wriggling down beside Ghisla. Elayne, Juliah, and Bashti were slower to convince, but there was nothing else to do and the day had been wearying.
They stretched out over their beds and let Ghisla sing them into dreamland, climbing and soaring above the mount with the little bat whose only mission was to be himself, a bat, free to fly and flit about, without a care in the world.
He cannot see, but he’s not scared.
He swoops and glides up in the air.
The sky is dark but he is light,
And though his eyes aren’t blessed with sight,
His joy is full, his wings are strong.
He dances to a distant song.
He flies, and he is free to play,
And at the end of every day,
He folds his wings and draws in close,
To all the bats who love him most.
Before long, the room was a symphony of deep breaths and soft snores. Her own eyes were heavy, but the rune on her hand was hot, and she knew if she rose from her bed and tiptoed out of the temple to the hillside, she would find Hod, waiting.
She’d been serious when she asked him if he was real. In her four years on the mount, she had almost convinced herself that Hod was like the blind god—like all the gods: invisible and nonexistent but for folklore and legend. Invisible and nonexistent but in her own mind. And it hadn’t mattered at all. Sanity—reality—was too painful not to have someone to talk to, even if that someone was a voice in her head. But he wasn’t an illusion. He was here. She’d seen him. And she was going to find him.
She rose from her bed, splashed her face with water, and traded her nightdress for a frock. With a prick of her finger and a quick tracing of her rune, she glided from the room, down the stairs, and out of the temple through the tunnel in the sanctum, singing his name in her mind, calling him to her.
It didn’t take long. She watched him pick his way across the hill, using his staff to inform his steps, and when he was a mere ten feet away he stopped and cocked his head, reminding her of the boy she’d first met on the beach. He was not a boy anymore. His eyes reflected the moon like water, making them more gold than green, and she rose from her crouch, wanting to greet him, but unsure of what to say. How did one greet their own soul?
“You’ve stopped breathing . . . and your heart is shouting,” he murmured. “It is even louder than your song. Are you afraid?”
“I am . . . overjoyed,” she confessed.
His smile bloomed, parting his lips and creasing his lean cheeks, and her happiness spilled out of her eyes. He sheathed his staff the way other men sheathed their swords, securing it across his back. Then he opened his arms.
She ran to him, and he swept her up, laughing as she wrapped her legs around him. It was not dignified or ladylike, but she didn’t care. He was solid in her arms. Hard and whole, his heart singing with hers, his legs planted to keep them from rolling down the hill. She rained kisses over his cheeks, his brow, and the lids of his eyes. She even kissed his laughing mouth, panting like a pup too long from its master, and he bracketed her face in his hands, his thumbs tracing her features like he was seeing her too.
“Stop wriggling,” he laughed. “You’re going to knock me over.” He unsheathed his staff again and laid it down as he sank to the grass, keeping her in his arms and making a nest for her with his legs.
When she remarked on his tendency to shelter her with nests and runes, he laughed but did not release her, and for a moment they sat, their arms wrapped around each other, trying to catch their breath, but she could not stop looking at him.
“Where is Arwin?” she whispered suddenly, fearful that he would have to leave soon.
“He is snoring like your sisters. He honks like a goose when he sleeps. It makes my head ache. I do not ever sleep at his side. I can’t if I want to sleep at all. Mostly, I do not sleep at night. I will sleep tomorrow when he is awake. It is customary for us.”
She gaped, though he couldn’t see her surprise. “You can hear my sisters snoring?”
“Not now. But I heard you. Singing to them. I have been outside the temple all day. All evening. Waiting for you to come out again.”
“You heard me?”
“Yes. And I didn’t even need our rune. I liked the song about the bat.”
“I wrote it for you . . . Have I never sung it to you before?” She couldn’t believe it.
“Sing it again, but hold my hand, like old times.”
His strong cheeks and deep-set eyes were shrouded by dark brows and bristly black lashes that made shadows like tiger stripes on the whites of his sightless eyes. She tipped his face toward her so she could look at him while she sang and then slid her hand into his.
“The sky is dark but he is light, and though his eyes aren’t blessed with sight, his joy is full, his wings are strong. He dances to a distant song,” she sang, but she could not focus with his face so near. When her voice trailed off, he cocked his head, waiting.
“I hardly recognize you,” she whispered.
“I am the same. Only bigger.”
“No. The shape of your face has changed,” she murmured.
“Tell me.”
“There is no softness round your cheeks.”
“I no longer resemble a toad?”
“No . . . you still resemble a toad . . . just an older toad.”
He grinned, the shape of his face changing again, sharp bones and unseeing eyes softened by the smile.
“You are quite handsome, truthfully,” she offered, surprising herself.
His smile slipped, like she’d surprised him too.
“Has the shrew left with the little waif?” he asked, touching the point of her chin.
“No. They are both here. I am still a shrew . . . and still a bit of a waif.”
He tested her weight in his arms, bouncing her like a child.
“You have grown.”
“Yes. I am eighteen now, and I look my age, though I will never be tall.”
“Your mother was right. Your people grow slowly.”
She’d forgotten, but as soon as he said the words, she remembered the moment her mother had said them to her, mending the hole in a dress she’d worn out long before she ever grew out of it.
“You remember everything.”
“Yes . . . but I remember you the way you were. Not the way you are. I suspect your face has also changed.” His fingertips ran over her face again before skimming the coil of her hair, feeling each woven section that made a circle around her head.
“It is a crown,” he marveled.
“Yes. It is how all the daughters of the temple wear their hair.”
“Will you take it down?”
With shaking hands, she unwound her braid and ran her fingers through the strands. His fingers followed.
“It is soft . . . and it waves like the wind on the water.” The palm of his hand followed the length down her back, and something warm curled in her belly. His hand immediately fell away, as if he’d heard the hitch in her breath, but his attention was elsewhere.
“They are looking for you, Ghisla. The king has sent a guard for you, and no one knows where you are. A woman is calling your name.”
Ghisla scrambled up, but Hod was frozen, listening. “She has sent Dagmar to look in the cellar.”
She turned toward the hatch, terrified that a member of the king’s guard would suddenly emerge from the door in the hillside, calling her name.
“You cannot be seen with me,” she warned, suddenly far more afraid for Hod than she was for herself. She’d been so foolish. “The king will kill you.”
“Don’t worry, Ghisla. I am just a blind man. Everyone looks past me.”
“I didn’t.”
“No . . . I felt the moment you saw me.”
“You put your hand on your heart,” she whispered.
He nodded, and a new emotion flitted over his features.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” she whispered, aching. Scared.
“Tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. We will stay all week. I have entered the archery contest, and I plan to win.”
“How will you see the target?”
“I won’t. I will hear it.”
“How will you hear the target?”
He grinned. “Arwin will stand beside it, and I will shoot to the left.”
He could hear Ghisla singing—not in his head but with his ears. And yet . . . it brought him no joy. He was afraid for her. She’d gone back through the tunnel and into the temple, and before he’d gotten back around the wall and through the entrance gates, which were kept open for tournament traffic, she had already been escorted to the castle. She’d lied easily, saying she’d fallen asleep on a bench in the sanctum where the air was cool and quiet. The woman—Ghost—was too relieved to question her.
It was so late, and she was kept too long, her voice soaring through melodies that had no words—or if they did, she did not sing them. Hod knew she sang for an audience of one and the rest of the occupants of the mount could not hear her like he could. He would have been able to hear her from the hillside—her skittering heart and her soaring voice—but he hugged the walls of the castle until he was as close as he could get and listened until she stopped. She did not move after she ceased singing but waited as though she needed to make sure the king was truly asleep. Her heart settled and the whisper of her small feet on wood floors moved through the room, out into a corridor, and down a flight of stairs, the sound changing as she descended into an entrance hall that echoed like a cavern.
Two guards escorted her across the empty cobbles, the clap of their longer strides bracketing hers. The temple doors creaked opened and swished closed behind her, and the two guards retraced their steps, clop, clop, clop, clop, talking quietly to each other.
“During the full moon, the king cannot sleep without her,” one muttered. “It is a pattern I have noticed.”
“He cannot sleep without her . . . and he cannot sleep with her,” the other quipped. “Lothgar and the other chieftains would not stand for it.”
“He is the king. He will do what he wants.”
“Aye. It’s just a matter of time, though he’d better tread carefully. The whole country is about to blow.”
“He cannot take one of the daughters to wife. The moment he does—”
“The moment he does, the whole kingdom will fall.”
“The dam will burst. They are either off limits to all—even the king—or none.”
“The other daughters won’t be safe for a single day. Not just the daughters of the temple . . . but the women in the clans. It is a fine line he’s walking.”
“’Tis a fine line we’re all walking.”
“There are thirteen maidens in the village, all of marrying age—”
“An uglier lot I’ve never before beheld.”
“And you’ve beheld so many!”
The critical guard had the grace to laugh.
“Ugly or not, they have their pick of men.”
“And they aren’t picking us, though we are members of the king’s guard.”
“No . . . they want to marry into the clans. My two sisters chose warriors from the clans, though they had no feeling for them.”
“Protection?”
“Aye. One went to Joran, and one to Dolphys. My father was glad to see them go. It was an endless duty keeping the wolves at bay. He received a fine bride-price for both.”
The two guards did not seem to notice Hod as they walked back to their posts inside the palace; he could usually hear a hitch in the breath or a surge in the blood that signaled awareness, but the guards thought the square abandoned in the wee hours of the morning.
A handful of inebriated warriors approached. He suspected they were from Adyar from the tilt of their tongues over their words, but their voices were slurred and their footfalls stuttered, and they did not react to him either.
He listened for Ghisla, hoping she would call out to him again, but she must have been too afraid . . . or too weary . . . and she was silent. He circled the mount several times, walking the perimeter and winding in and out of the camps of the visiting clans and tournament goers while the world was quiet. He measured distances and determined the dangers, learning the lay of the land and making note of the sounds and scents that marked each footstep. It was what he did in every new place. People presented different challenges than animals. Mountains were harder than valleys. Wind distorted smells, and rain could quickly change the terrain. He was adept—more than adept—at taking it all in stride while listening and learning and altering his course based on experience and instinct, but he always familiarized himself with his surroundings, and he never took his abilities for granted.
He did not allow himself to doubt them either. To doubt was to falter, to falter was to fail, and in almost every situation, he knew what to do. But he did not know what to do about Ghisla.
He whispered her name, just to release it from his thoughts, and a portion of his earlier happiness swelled in his breast. She’d been so thrilled to see him. Overjoyed.
He’d held her in his arms while she’d talked to him—not in his head, but mere inches away from her. He could hardly believe it had happened. That it was real. They’d had so little time, but every second had exceeded his expectations.
He had not worried that they would have nothing to say; they had never struggled with that in the four years they’d conversed. His love for her was not the fondness of a new friend or the novelty of a forbidden relationship. It was deep and abiding. For four years, he had beseeched the fates for her welfare and begged the gods to watch over her, but he had wondered if his love for her would manifest itself differently now that they were older. Now that they knew each other so much better.
If anything, his feelings had grown. She had grown.
The little bird she’d been was gone; he’d been almost afraid to touch her when he’d found her on the beach that first day. She was still slender, still dainty, but her hips were rounded, her breasts well formed, and her legs long. A man noticed such things when a woman wrapped herself around him.
He berated himself and halted, needing to put her out of his thoughts. She was too distracting, and he could not afford to have his attention elsewhere while he crept among the camps. He breathed deeply, attempting to clear his mind, but her words rose up, unbidden.
The sky is dark but he is light,
And though his eyes aren’t blessed with sight,
His joy is full, his wings are strong.
He dances to a distant song.
For four years, she had been his distant song. Now he was here, and he didn’t know how he would part with her again.