The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon

15

PROMISES

Ghisla did not hear Hod until he was almost upon her, and she was too despondent to cry out when she saw his shadowy form. She sat in a clearing with her back to a tree, her legs sprawled out in front of her, her head down. She’d not gone far; the stars she’d counted the night before still littered the sky above her, framed by the circle of trees that ringed her resting place. She’d grown tired an hour ago, and once she stopped, she could not find the will to keep going. Her sobbing had ceased, but somehow her anger had not ebbed. It burned, hot and sour, in the pit of her stomach.

Hod knelt beside her and gathered her up in his arms, pulling her into his lap as he stole her position against the tree. He made her drink from his water flask until her stomach sloshed and her skin cooled. Then he washed the salty streaks from her cheeks and smoothed her tumbled hair. Finally, he asked where she was going.

“I am going home,” she said.

He did not argue that the Songrs were gone, that Tonlis had been reduced to ash.

“Where is home?” he asked gently.

“Home is wherever you are,” she whispered. “And Master Ivo has denied you. He cannot decide whether you are good or evil.”

He sighed, his breath stirring the tendrils of hair that clung to her forehead. He didn’t ask how she knew, and he didn’t deny it.

“You must go back to the temple,” he said, but his voice broke on the words.

“I want to go with you.”

“The women are protected by their clans . . . And I have no clan to protect you.”

“You have no clan, and I am the property of the temple. The property of the king,” she said, her voice as shattered as his.

“We all live under the oppression of these circumstances,” he whispered. “All of us.”

“I am not comforted by our collective suffering,” she shot back.

“The population is frantic, and the chieftains are frenzied. It is not just a famine or a drought. People fear it is permanent, the end of Saylok.” She could not tell if he was trying to convince her or himself.

“I do not care about Saylok.”

“If the scourge does not end, there is no hope for us, Ghisla,” he said, and for the first time in her memory, his voice was sharp. Bitterly so.

“There is no hope for us anyway,” she mourned.

He pressed his forehead to hers, gripping her face like he could make her believe through the force of his will.

“Promise me you will not give up,” he ground out. “Promise me.”

“Oh, Hody.” It was what he always said, and he always said it with such conviction, like it was enough to just say the words.

“Promise me you will not give up, Ghisla.”

“Give up on what, Hod?”

“Give up on life. Give up on . . . me. Give up on us.”

“Will there ever be an us?”

“There is an us now. There has been an us for four years.”

His voice echoed the anguish in her breast. “But you are leaving,” she groaned. “And I cannot bear it.”

“I will come back.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. But I will return. I promise.”

She did not believe him, and the agony in her chest screamed louder.

He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, and the tip of her chin before he settled his mouth on hers, trying to extract the meaningless pledge from her lips. She kissed him back, hungry. Frantic. Hopeless.

She broke away, panting, and twisted her hands in his tunic. He could give her fifteen promises and countless kisses, and it would change nothing.

“You have destroyed me,” she whispered, the realization so sharp and sudden she gnashed her teeth to keep from crying out.

Hod flinched.

“You have destroyed me. You have made me long for a life I cannot have. You have made me love you. What a fool I’ve been. What a fool!” she said, shuddering. “Tomorrow you will leave, and I will be here, wanting you. Wanting what you cannot give me and what I cannot give myself.”

He did not even defend himself, and his willingness to shoulder her condemnation, to bear her irrational wrath broke her all over again. She clawed at him, crazed, and sank her teeth into his shoulder. He moaned and buried his face in her hair, and she bit him again, so angry she did not even know herself.

“You are right. I have nothing to give you but my heart, Ghisla,” he ground out. “But it is yours. Every beat. Every bloody inch. You have ripped it from my chest. If I have destroyed you, you . . . have . . . obliterated . . . me.”

He rolled so she was pinned beneath him, trapping her flailing fists and bruising hands. Then his mouth captured hers, and he held her face in his hands as she raged and railed against him. She snapped at the softness of his lips, but he did not retreat. Instead, he bathed her mouth in gentleness, in worship, and slowly . . . softly . . . her terrible rage became crippling remorse.

He must have tasted her contrition, for when she pulled away to beg his forgiveness, he simply drew her back, taking her penitence and turning it into redemption.

They did not speak for a long while, their mouths communing, their bodies shuddering with need and desperate devotion. Beneath his hands, her pain became unbearable pleasure, and agony gave way to awe.

Suddenly, there was no tomorrow. No parting. No pending farewell.

She dare not speak for fear he would stop; she dare not open her eyes, afraid it would end. But when Hod hesitated, his mouth hovering over hers, his body cradled in the well of her hips, she looked up at him, at his shuttered eyes and his beloved face, and she begged him for the only thing he could give her.

“There is no joy but this, Hody,” she whispered. “I have no joy but you.”

His mouth returned, and he sank into her, giving her what she asked of him, and she did not close her eyes again.

A humming grew beneath her skin, and the stars above her winked and grew as Hod moved. Their brilliance pulsed and pressed in concert with the swell inside her, and with each breath, she pulled their shining tails into her chest and down into her belly.

“I can see you. I can see you, Ghisla,” Hod moaned into her mouth, and his moan became part of her symphony.

“Those are stars, my love. Those are stars,” she thought, but she was past speech. She was shooting across the sky, part of the firmament, leaving a trail of light behind her.

Finished.

Spent.

“Master Ivo, Liis is gone.”

Elayne of Ebba stood on the threshold of the sanctum, her red hair streaming around her shoulders, her feet bare. The higher keepers assembled for early blessing and confession gaped at her, bleary-eyed. The Tournament of the King wreaked havoc on the enclave, and the day ahead would be as long as the day before. The lines had already formed outside.

Master Ivo rose from his chair and motioned Elayne forward.

“Come, Daughter.”

“I saw her leave not long after we retired and thought the king must have summoned her. I went back to sleep. But when the cock crowed, I woke, and saw that her bed had not been slept in at all.”

“I will go to the castle,” Dagmar offered, his lips hard and his countenance dark. “I have feared this.”

“I will go with you,” Ivo whispered. “The rest of you, search the temple. Liis of Leok has been known to seek out her solitude.”

“We have looked, Master. All of us. We did not want to tell you until we were sure,” Elayne said, pointing toward the door of the sanctum. Bashti, Juliah, and Dalys stood watching, their toes as bare, their eyes as wide. Juliah had not stopped for her shoes, but she’d strapped on a sword.

“Your weapon will not be necessary, daughter of Joran,” Ivo said, but it was evident from her frown that she did not believe him.

“I will keep it until Liis is found,” Juliah said.

Five of the higher keepers, including Dagmar, accompanied Ivo to the castle to find the king. The crowd in the square cried out and clamored, thinking the keepers had come to attend them, but the temple guard closed in around the purple-robed men, keeping the congregants at bay, and they moved as one, up the steps and into the palace without mishap.

“Say nothing to anyone until we know. It will do no good to alarm the mount if she is . . . here,” Ivo instructed the keepers around him. No one stopped them as the procession climbed the stairs to the king’s chambers. A guard stood beside the door.

“I need to see the king, sentry,” Ivo demanded. “Is he inside?”

“What has happened?” the guard asked, fearful. The death of Bilge of Berne was a result of the Highest Keeper’s last early morning visit to the king, and none of Banruud’s men had forgotten it.

“Did you escort Liis of Leok to the throne room last night?” Ivo asked.

“No, Highest Keeper. She was not here last night. The chieftains were assembled . . . some are still assembled . . . in the hall, though most are not . . . awake. The king retired to his bed not an hour ago . . . and he is not . . . alone.” The guard was doing his utmost to be discreet.

“A daughter of the temple is missing. I need only to know if she is here.”

“I see,” the guard said. He turned and rapped on the door, calling out as he did. “Liis of Leok is g-gone, Majesty. The Highest Keeper has come to see you.”

A moment later, the king wrenched the door open. His tunic gaped and his pants hung low on his hips like he’d hiked them up to attend to the interruption.

“Where is she?” he asked, as though the Highest Keeper was just there to torture him.

“We do not know, Highness,” Ivo replied, his voice level, his hands folded beneath the long sleeves of his robes. “You did not summon her?”

“I did not,” Banruud grunted. His jaw hardened, and his eyes swung to the sentry, who stepped back in fear. He began to snap orders, sending his men running.

“Tell Balfor. Alert the watch. Rouse the chieftains. Ring the bells. Get my bloody horse. Find her.”

When they returned to the temple, Master Ivo expelled everyone but Dagmar from the sanctum and drew a seeker rune in his blood on the fleshy part of each of his palms.

“We should not use the runes to gain information we can achieve by using our own two feet, Dagmar. But now that we know she is not on the mount, we must do what we can to find her quickly and find her . . . first.”

“Yes, Master. I agree.”

Chanting Liis of Leok’s name, Ivo pressed the runes to his closed eyes, but after several slow breaths, he lowered his hands, frustrated.

“That is not her name,” he whispered. “She is not Liis of Leok. Not in her bones or in her blood. The fates will not honor my request.” Crimson streaked his hooded lids.

He washed his hands and face in the basin of water beside the altar. In fresh blood, he drew the runes again and pressed them to his eyes once more.

“Show me . . . the Songr of Temple Hill,” he muttered. “Show me the little Songr.”

Dagmar waited, barely breathing.

“Ahhh.” Ivo leered. “The Norns like specificity.” But within seconds, his grin became a grimace and then a hiss. “She is in the Temple Wood. In a clearing . . . and she is . . . lying beneath . . . Desdemona’s tree. The very same tree where your sister gave birth to Bayr.”

Dagmar inhaled sharply, but Ivo was frozen, observing what the rune chose to reveal. He was silent for too long.

“Is she hurt, Master?” Dagmar cried, impatient.

“No. She is with . . . a man,” Ivo whispered, his obvious horror raising the hair on Dagmar’s neck. “She is with a man. He is lying . . . beside her. He is holding her. And she is . . . holding him.”

The Highest Keeper lowered his hands and looked up at Dagmar, blinking like the blood burned his eyes, and his lips trembled with his next words.

“She is with . . . Hod . . . the blind supplicant.”

From the chatter of the birds in the treetops, Hod presumed the dawn had broken; the light never changed for him, but the air did. The sound did, and he knew they were out of time. They’d fallen asleep wrapped around each other, sated and exhausted, and even still, Ghisla slept deeply, her head tucked against his shoulder, her body boneless and warm at his side. She’d pulled her robe over them at some point, and his was rolled beneath his head.

He should wake her. They would need to make a plan. But he did not move. He did not even adjust his aching arm. The ache was too sweet. A moment more would make no difference, and he could not part with her yet.

He had endangered her. If a child grew from their union—the thought made his heart swell and his loins tighten. Their union.

If his child grew in her womb . . . he would . . . he would . . . he would . . .

His mind had ceased to function at all. He was caught up in the remembrance of flesh and feeling and euphoria, and he could think of nothing else. Not while Ghisla still lay beside him, smelling of woman and seed and warmth and hope. And the idea of a child made him more ebullient.

There is no joy but this, Hody. I have no joy but you.

He could not find it within himself to regret his actions. Not yet. She was a woman, protected by the temple and by the king. If a child swelled her stomach, the keepers would call it miraculous and praise the gods. It would be Saylok’s child. Mayhaps it would even be . . . a girl child. It would be Saylok’s child. Not his child. He and Ghisla could not be together.

With that thought, reality tried to intrude. He was a fool, and there would be a consequence for the joy they had taken. Every action begat a reaction.

Men who need kisses

Make babes who need kisses.

Babes who grow up

Become men who need kisses.

Men who need kisses

Chase women for kisses.

And . . .

Begetting begins again.

He grinned up at the boughs above him. He was not thinking straight.

He was flat on his back, Ghisla on his right, his staff on his left, and he stretched his hand, patting the ground beside him, trying to find it without disturbing Ghisla.

The pads of his fingers brushed a whorl in the dirt, a singed circle, like the fairies had gathered beneath the tree and danced around a tiny fire. The grass that bristled around the edge of the circle was sharp, and he cursed as a blade nicked his middle finger. It was the curse of the blind to be constantly bleeding. His hands were as scarred and calloused as the bark of the tree above him, but still he bled. He perused the area more carefully, using the palm of his hand instead of his fingers. There were two singed circles . . . but where was his damned staff?

His finger stung with all the ferocity of a tiny cut. He’d found dogs and wounds were alike; the little ones barked the loudest. He curled his finger toward his palm and searched the tip with his thumb, looking for a sliver or a thorn.

An image flashed behind his eyes—trees, earth, sky—and he froze.

He realized with a start that he was bleeding into his rune. But Ghisla was asleep beside him—she was not singing—and he’d never been able to see anything without her. Was it his rune? Or was it his rune . . . and his blood . . . dripping onto the strange circle burnt into the earth?

He turned his hand and patted the ground once more, careful. Careful.

The whorl of burnt earth sizzled against his bloodied rune. The image flashed again, and this time, it held.

He was in the clearing. This clearing? It felt the same. It sounded the same. The tree at his back murmured the same low tone.

But the woman who lay beside him was not Ghisla. Her hair was dark, her skin was pale, and her dress was . . . blue. Blue like Ghisla’s eyes. Blue like the sky. Like the mountains near Tonlis. Like the robes of Dolphys.

She held a babe to her chest.

The babe was covered with gore, like he’d just been born. His little arms flailed, and his cry was lusty, and the woman said his name.

“You must take him, Dagmar. And you must call him Bayr. Bayr for his father’s clan. Bayr . . . because he will be as powerful as the beast he is named for.”

Hod withdrew his bleeding hand with a gasp, and the image was instantly doused. He wiped his bloody hand on his breeches. He did not want to see more. He knew who the woman was. He knew her story. He knew her child.

The circles in the earth were Desdemona’s runes.

Ghisla stirred, and he heard her indrawn breath and the quickening of her heart as she woke. His movements had roused her.

She said his name, the word full of love, like she was remembering what had transpired between them. He instantly abandoned the woman in his thoughts for the woman in his arms. He turned to her, rolling onto his side, and gathered her close.

Ghisla’s hand curled against his chest and he pressed his lips against her brow, greeting her. She moaned and burrowed her face into his neck, wrapping her arms around him. She opened her mouth against his throat, as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his veins and draw him—blood, body, and soul—into her lungs.

His love for her was an inferno, scalding his throat and burning his chest, and he ran his hand over her rumpled hair and down her back, memorizing the way she felt against him, the swell of her hips, the length of her legs entwined with his. He would relive their union on an endless loop, the stars exploding behind her eyes, the silk of her skin, the depth of his devotion, and the moment nothing else in the world had mattered.

Awareness skittered down his back like a spider inside his clothes.

He stiffened, the inferno becoming a glacier.

Ghisla felt his frisson of alarm, and her lips stilled on his throat.

The chatter of the birds continued. The buzz of bees, the flow of water over stones from the river nearby. But something—someone—was watching. It was a sensation he easily recognized—especially in a setting like this.

He knew better than to react with fear or flight. It was what separated man from beast. A deer would bolt. A wolf too. But running away from the unknown was always a mistake. Better to face it—to name it—than to run headlong in circles that could only bring one back into its clutches.

The sensation continued; the spider had grown. It skittered up his back and over his face leaving ice in its wake. Yet the birds gossiped and the trees hummed, and the earth beneath him was still. Not a single footfall or even the shifting of a man’s weight rippled over the ground.

Then the sensation was gone. The ice of the unknown gaze disintegrated against his warm skin and the spider legs up his spine became nothing more than the press of Ghisla’s hand. For a moment they didn’t speak, even though they knew their time was up. To speak would be to come back to earth, to step into the future that lurked just beyond the silence.

“I have to go,” she whispered. “Don’t I?”

He nodded, his emotion making speech almost impossible.

“Then I will go back. And I will wait for you. However long it takes.”

She had become the brave one, the believer, and he found her lips, kissing her with all the gratitude and grief he could not express. It was a kiss of solemn swearing, an oath of teeth and tongues.

With a final press of his hands and his lips, he ripped himself away from Ghisla and rolled to his feet. Ghisla rose silently beside him.

The chatter in the trees suddenly ceased and the leaves shivered. Then the bells began to ring, the clanging easily discernible even with the distance of the temple walls.

Ghisla moaned in dread. “They know I am gone.”

From beyond the treetops Hod heard the pommeling of hooves and the blaring of horns. It was too far away to know how many or how fast they were moving, but not all the seekers would be on horseback. Even now he could feel the creep of company, the hush of the forest, and the expectant silence of the trees.

“You must go, Hod,” Ghisla begged, pushing at him. “Go deep into the wood. Go now. If you are found with me . . .” Her heart thundered with her fear for him, and for a moment he could hear nothing else.

“If they find me, they will not keep searching,” she said. “And you will be safe.”

“I love you, Ghisla,” he whispered.

She was in his arms for a moment, and then she was gone, running toward the mount, her skirts whooshing and causing her to stumble. She cursed and gathered them, impatient, and she was gone again, her small feet dancing over the soft ground, the crack of branches marking her flight.

She was singing softly as she fled.

“Hody, Hody, Hody, Hody.”

He did not leave the clearing to plow deeper into the forest as she had demanded, but stood, listening, sensing, her taste on his tongue, her musk rising from his skin.

It was better this way, an easier goodbye. To prolong it would have been unbearable, but he could not go until he knew she was found. Until he knew she was safe.

She was one hundred yards away. Two hundred, weaving and winding through the trees at an angle to the mount. She would not come out at the bottom of the east face of the hill, but farther north, nearer the entrance to the mount. A search party on horseback would descend that way, and she was purposely running right for them. It was not more than half a mile to the edge of the wood from the clearing. He’d marked it as he’d entered the night before.

He heard a muted bellow of triumph. She’d been spotted.