The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon

28

DAUGHTERS

Bayr was moving quickly, almost running. He’d hurtled through the east gate and bounded down the mountainside like a sheepdog, and Hod, for all his skill and ability, was a man of distinct limitations. He could go great distances . . . but he could not go quickly. Within minutes, Bayr was out of range, and Hod could not hear him anymore.

At the bottom of the hill, Hod stopped and listened, trying to find his brother in the miasma of life that was the wood.

He could not hear him.

But his scent lingered, the smell of incense and cedar, as if the trees in Dolphys and the temple sanctum had converged in him. Both scents bled from his skin with his despair. It created a tang not so different from that of a wounded animal careening through the brush.

Hod entered the wood and picked his way along, reassuring himself that Bayr would stop, and when he did, Hod would find him. It might take all night, but he would find him. And when he did, he would tell him everything.

It was a comfort to know he’d left the hill. Hod could only pray Ghisla and the keepers would soon do the same.

Princess Alba was missing.

No one was allowed in the temple, and no one was allowed out.

Minutes after Ghisla had returned, the king had ordered the doors barred.

King Banruud now paced from room to room, checking the progress of his men, demanding they look again when their efforts yielded nothing. When they came up empty handed after an hour, he returned to the sanctum, his men trailing behind him, their tension echoing his.

“Where is she, Ivo?” Banruud clipped, towering over the weary Highest Keeper.

Master Ivo stared at the king balefully. “Where is who, Majesty?”

“My daughter,” Banruud ground out.

“But Majesty . . . you have no daughter,” Ivo murmured. “Only a son. And he has been sent away.”

Banruud’s countenance darkened, and his gaze swung to the women gathered at the rear of the room. Over the last years, the temple had become a sanctuary for an assortment of females who had nowhere else to go. Twenty-eight had been added to their numbers.

The king walked toward them, pushing them apart as though Alba hid among them. He then searched the keepers the same way. Ghisla and her sisters were next. Banruud glowered at her last and sniffed the air around her like he could smell Hod on her skin.

Mayhaps he could.

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared, but he turned away, and walked back toward the keepers.

“Remove your robes,” the king ordered. The keepers gaped and shrank from him. “All of you, remove your robes,” he insisted again, yanking their hoods from their heads, their gleaming pates vulnerable in the orange glow of the guards’ torches.

Banruud wanted to intimidate them, to demoralize them, and he was succeeding.

Ghisla watched the old men obey—everyone but the Highest Keeper. They opened their robes without argument and dropped them on the sanctum floor. They all stood in their simple white sheaths; Dagmar was not among them. Nor was Ghost. Ghisla took heart that they were gone. She had little doubt the king was searching for Ghost too, and she would be struck down if he found her.

“Separate the keepers!” the king instructed his men, and they immediately began spreading the disrobed keepers from one end of the sanctum to the other. Then he demanded the same to be done with the women.

As Banruud searched, his anger grew, and he turned back to the Highest Keeper once more, his boots echoing across the stone floor like a spike being nailed home.

“Where is she?” Banruud snapped, his face pressed up to Ivo’s, spittle flying in the Highest Keeper’s face.

“Who, King Banruud? Who is it you seek?” Ivo asked, his voice barely audible and perfectly mild.

“The white woman. The wraith. Where is she?” Banruud hissed.

“Ah. The white woman. You have sought her for some time. Mayhaps she has taken your daughter. Or . . . mayhaps . . . you . . . have taken . . . hers.”

Banruud’s nostrils flared and something flickered in his eyes, and Ghisla moaned. The Highest Keeper had confirmed the one thing the king feared most. Ivo knew what the king had done, and that could not stand.

The king’s hand shot out, plunging and retreating, and Ivo stilled even as Ghisla’s scream rent the air. The king stepped back and watched Ivo crumple, folding into himself without so much as a grunt.

“We’re done here,” the king called to his guard. “Keep men at the doors. No one goes in or out until the princess is found.”

The rattle of stone against stone indicated a reentry from the tunnels, and Keeper Amos, the senior-most member of all the keepers, rose from the throng surrounding Master Ivo’s body and walked toward the dais. Ghisla noticed numbly that his feet were coated in Ivo’s blood.

When Dagmar and Ghost stepped out of the opening and into the sanctum, they were met with a room crowded with kneeling keepers and quiet condemnation.

“The king has killed the Highest Keeper. His men stand at every door,” Keeper Amos cried, his voice ringing with accusation.

Dagmar and Ghost stared back, brows furrowed in disbelief, unable to make sense of the sight before them and process the keeper’s unfathomable claim.

“Master Ivo is dead,” Juliah said, rising. Her face was grim, but her voice was strong. In the orange glow of the flickering light, she was far fiercer than any keeper in the room. Ghisla rose beside her.

Ghost cried out and ran toward the circle of mourners, stepping over and between them until she halted, her hands clutching her robes, her eyes on the ground. Dagmar followed more slowly.

Master Ivo’s black robes were soaked in blood, making them shine in the candlelight. In death he was not powerful; he was not the Highest Keeper. He was an old man, an abandoned shell, his skin spotted with age, his features flaccid, the black stain from his lips smeared across his papery cheeks.

Dagmar crouched beside him and lifted him from the floor as if he were no more substantial than a child, and every bit as dear. Then he carried him to the altar. Ghisla, Ghost, the daughters, and the keepers followed in an impromptu processional.

Ghost rushed to help straighten his limbs and smooth his robes as Dagmar laid him down and presented him to the gods. His sleeve caught on Dagmar’s front clasp, and Ivo’s thin white forearm was revealed.

“There are runes on his arm,” Ghost gasped, pushing back the voluminous folds. “He has carved them here, above his wrist.”

Ghisla gaped at the bloody whorls and lines.

“I don’t know these runes,” Ghost murmured.

Ghisla knew them. One was the soul rune, used to connect one spirit to another. It was the same rune Hod had carved into her hand. Ivo had been reaching out to someone in the final minutes of his life. The other rune—man, woman, and child separated by a serpent—was Desdemona’s. She’d seen it too, in Dagmar’s thoughts, a lifetime ago.

“Someone tell me what happened here,” Dagmar demanded, and his voice shook. Amos, always the most outspoken among the keepers, proceeded to describe the events that had unfolded.

By the time Amos had finished his account, Dagmar had sunk to Ivo’s chair on the dais and the daughters and the keepers had gathered around him, as stricken and lost as he. But Ghost remained beside the altar, her white head bowed, holding Ivo’s gnarled hand. The hem of her purple robe was black with Ivo’s blood; a long crimson streak stretched from the altar where she now stood to the rear of the sanctum where he’d lain, marking her path.

“Who will come to our aid?” Dalys asked, her voice small.

“We must save ourselves,” Ghisla implored.

“But . . . even Bayr has forsaken us,” Keeper Bjorn complained, and Ghost raised her head, her eyes meeting Dagmar’s across the altar.

“The gods have forsaken us,” Amos intoned. “We have failed to lift the scourge.”

“The king must die,” Juliah growled.

“We must get a message to the chieftains. We must tell the people what he has done,” Elayne pressed.

“None of them will care,” Keeper Dieter argued.

“Aidan of Adyar will care,” Elayne shot back. “Lothgar and Josef will care.”

“No one will stand against Banruud,” Ghisla said. The time had come. She could wait no longer. “There are Northmen on our mount. The clans are afraid, and the king has offered a solution.”

“What solution is that?” Dagmar asked, harsh.

“He has announced the marriage of Princess Alba to the North King. Gudrun has promised to leave the mount and to withdraw from Berne,” Amos supplied, a hint of admiration tingeing his words. “It is really the only solution.”

“Why would the North King agree to such a thing?” Dagmar hissed.

The keepers gaped, not understanding, and Amos was the first to recover. “The princess is beautiful. She is a great prize, a valuable treasure. She is the hope of Saylok,” he stammered, outraged.

“The hope of Saylok,” Dagmar repeated softly. “And what assurances does the king have that Gudrun will leave?” Dagmar asked.

The keepers had no answer, and their aging faces grew grim. Ghost turned from the altar, her gaze clinging to Dagmar’s.

“He wants the temple,” Juliah muttered.

“And the mount,” Bashti added.

“He wants Saylok,” Ghisla said. “He won’t leave.”

“And if no one will stop Banruud . . . who will stop Gudrun?” Dalys asked, and her cry echoed in Ghisla’s chest.

“We will stop him,” Dagmar whispered, but there was no victory in his voice. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Master Ivo has already begun.”

“We have to leave the mount,” Ghisla insisted. “All of us. If Gudrun will not leave, there will be a battle. The keepers cannot stand against the Northmen. We can’t hide in the temple any longer. We have to go.”

Her sisters stared at her, stunned. It was so rare that she voiced her opinions or took the lead.

“Where will we go?” Dalys whispered.

“We must go to Dolphys . . . with Bayr.” With Bayr and Hod. Oh, gods. She prayed Bayr would keep on going, and Hod would follow.

But they could not leave without Alba, and Alba was missing.

Dagmar solved that problem the same way Master Ivo had to find Bayr—with a seeker rune—and he raised weary, blood-streaked eyes to Ghost mere seconds later.

“She was waiting on the hillside . . . probably for Bayr, but he was not with her. She is coming back now.”

“I will go to her. I will tell her what has happened. And we will go. We will all go,” Ghost said.

But when Ghost came back an hour later, her face streaked with tears and her white hair escaping her braided crown, she shook her head.

“She will not leave.”

“She has to!” Ghisla shot back.

“She won’t,” Ghost whispered. “She is convinced if she leaves, war will follow, and she will not bring death to Dolphys. She is the princess, and a princess has a duty to her people.”

“She is right,” Dagmar whispered. “Banruud will not let her go. He will declare war on Dolphys, the clans will take sides, and Saylok will . . . collapse.”

He looked at Ghisla, using her word from the night they’d celebrated Bayr’s return.

Ghisla’s legs could no longer hold her. It was all spiraling out of control. If Alba would not leave, Ghost would not leave. If Ghost would not leave, Dagmar would not leave. The keepers were already murmuring among themselves that their duty was to the temple.

“We do not know that the North King will break his word,” Keeper Amos argued, hopeful. “Mayhaps he will marry the princess as the king has announced, and he will take his filthy soldiers and leave.”

“Mayhaps we are anticipating an attack that will never come,” another keeper protested.

Ghisla did not know the plan or the precise way events would unfold. She doubted even Hod knew the specifics. Mayhaps the attack would come after the nuptials, and mayhaps it would happen during. Images of the Northmen wreaking havoc in the temple, striking down keepers and congregants swelled in her thoughts. Whenever it happened, she had no doubt an attack would come.

“He does not have enough men to take the mount. There are three hundred clan warriors on the hill right now, not counting the king’s forces and the clanspeople. It makes no sense to attack this way,” Dagmar agreed.

“He has seen inside the walls now. He knows the position of the king’s men. He knows the strength of his forces and the numbers in the clans,” Ghost murmured.

“Mayhaps . . . he is simply gathering information for a . . . future . . . attack?” Amos sounded so wistful at the thought of pending—and not immediate—doom.

“We need to go,” Ghisla urged. “All of us. Together. Now!”

“I’m not leaving,” Juliah argued. “If there is to be a battle, I want to fight.”

“You will be hewn down or worse!” Ghisla cried. “I will drag you from this hill if I have to, but we are leaving.”

“No. We will stay in the temple,” Keeper Amos said, assuming the mantle of leader. “We are as safe here as anywhere.”

“We have never been safe here!” Ghisla shouted, desperate. Why would they not listen?

The others stared at her as if she’d sprouted wings and a forked tongue. She closed her eyes and prayed for deliverance. Mayhaps her tongue was forked. She was complicit, and her guilt was almost as great as her fear.

“The women must go,” Dagmar agreed. “Gather whatever you can easily carry.”

“The king will notice immediately if Liis is gone,” Elayne said quietly. “If there is a wedding . . . we . . . all . . . must be in attendance.”

Ghisla hung her head in defeat.

“Very well.” Dagmar nodded. “Go and prepare. Rest if you can. As soon as the ceremony ends and the temple empties, you will go through the tunnels and into the wood. If the North King leaves . . . you can return. If he does not, you will keep walking until you reach Dolphys.”

When Hod heard Bayr again, he’d stopped moving altogether. The hour was late, and the forest was both sleeping and waking. Hod had followed the stream which would keep widening and strengthening until it reached the river Mogda in Dolphys and, beyond that, the East Sea that lay between Saylok and Eastlandia.

Bayr’s breaths were slow, like he’d stopped to rest and fallen into exhausted slumber. From the position of his heartbeat and the angle of his breath, he’d fallen asleep propped against a tree.

Hod did not want to approach; it would startle him. Hod was many things, but he was not especially stealthy when he navigated unfamiliar surroundings.

His own weariness burned in his back and dulled his senses. He could not remember the last time he’d slept. It was only yesterday he’d climbed aboard the provisions wagon and rolled the final miles to the mount, surrounded by Northmen and two repugnant kings that thought they each held the better hand. They’d circled each other warily for the better part of two weeks, each of them pulling Hod aside to divulge the other’s secrets. Gudrun had threatened and Banruud had implied, and Hod had kept his mouth closed.

Hod needed rest and food, even if it was just an hour, propped against a tree like Bayr. He found a thicket not far from the water and crawled behind it. In minutes he was asleep, dozing in the embrace of his shield and his bow.

When he surfaced again, he did not move or stretch but found his brother’s heart.

It had quickened and Bayr breathed through his nose, as though he tried to hide his presence.

The woods were crawling with drumming human hearts.

A thick wall of them moved toward the mount. Big men, from the echoes in their chests. They did not speak, but they rustled and rattled distinctly as they walked. Bones. Leather. Blades. They were Northmen. Gudrun had brought an army after all.

Hod didn’t move, not even when one man stopped and urinated into the bush he was stretched out behind. The foul stream kicked up the dirt and shook the brambles; a few drops pinged against his shield. He prayed the man would not investigate the inconsistent sound. He didn’t. He shook himself and proceeded on.

When Bayr began to follow them, staying a safe distance back, Hod picked up his staff and trailed after them as well.

The Northmen stopped before they reached the forest’s edge, and they waited as morning grew into day. For what they waited, Hod didn’t know. A signal? A sign? They created a sort of sound barrier between Hod and the mount.

He could hear Bayr, hovering at the rear of the small army. Within the group were recognizable rhythms—he knew some of the Northmen—but his range was interrupted by the sheer number of them.

There were Bernians among the Northmen too. It seemed some of Benjie’s men had seen the shift in the winds and thrown in with the conquerors. They’d been the ones to guide them in.

Mayhaps Benjie knew. Mayhaps he didn’t. It mattered little now. It was yet one more example of how fragmented the clans had become.

Hod put his palms to his ears for a moment, trying to focus his senses. He breathed in and out, his back to a tree, his feet planted. Then he focused, narrowing in on the hearts he needed to hear.

There was Bayr. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

He let his awareness rise over the drone of the Northmen.

Ghisla . . . Where was Ghisla? He suspended his breath.

Ah.The sound was faint, like tinkling glass in a storm, but he found her.

She was still in the temple.

He wanted to shout in fear and frustration. Instead he breathed, in and out, in and out, and found her sisters and Ghost. Alba too. They all remained on the mount.

Mayhaps it was better, he realized suddenly. Had they entered the Temple Wood, they would have come face-to-face with the Northmen.

Panic bubbled but he bit down on it and beat it back.

He had to get around them. He had to get back onto the mount. He was useless this way. He couldn’t stop an army, and he couldn’t guard his brother if Bayr ran headlong into the battle.

And that was exactly what Bayr would do.

Hod scanned the mount with his ears, trying to feel his way into a strategy. It was an anthill, crawling with clansmen and chaotic sound.

He had to warn them.

That realization brought a wash of helplessness more debilitating than all his years in the dark. He didn’t know what to do.

The bells began to clang and horns sang from the ramparts. The Northmen in front of him began to shift, moving north toward the village at the entrance to the mount, hugging the tree line all the way. They didn’t hurry, but they were clearly moving into position, and Bayr trailed behind them.

Suddenly, from just above the base of the hill, he detected a familiar cadence, and then another, and another, and another. He listened, and hope sparked in his chest. Dred, Dakin, Dystel, and the insufferable Daniel hunkered—the smell of a small campfire tickled Hod’s nose—on a shelf about fifty feet from the bottom of the east slope. He’d missed them behind the wall of Northmen.

He began to pick his way toward them. He couldn’t run; he would fall flat on his face. They would see him coming, and they would think the king had sent him. Again. But there was no help for that.

He heard the moment they saw him, and he felt their eyes throughout the rest of his climb. They did not cry out or warn him off as he approached, but they shuffled and stood, wary, withdrawing their swords with a whispering snick.

“There are Northmen in the woods,” Hod said as he neared. There was no time for greetings or reassurances.

Dystel swore.

“I have followed Bayr all night and kept watch all day,” Hod continued. “He has seen them. He knows. And he’s circled around to the entrance to the mount. I cannot protect him, and I cannot protect you.”

“Son of Frigg,” Dystel swore again.

“There are Bernians with them. They led the Northmen in. I don’t know who to trust, and I don’t know what to do,” Hod confessed. He was not interested in excuses.

“You knew,” Dred said. His voice was not an accusation but a grim statement.

“I have known this was coming, and I did not seek to prevent it. I wanted only for Banruud to be overthrown.”

“Bloody hell,” Dakin said, but his voice trembled with excitement, not fear.

“You plot against the king?” Dystel gasped, but Dred followed his question up with another.

“And who will take Banruud’s place if he falls, Hod? The North King?” Dred asked, quiet.

“My hope was that Gudrun and Banruud would destroy each other,” Hod answered.

“And who will sit on the throne?” Dred pressed. “You?”

“No. I am a blind man. Not a king. But I see some things clearly. Bayr must sit on the throne.”

“Bloody hell,” Dakin said again, and he was practically vibrating with anticipation.

“Praise Odin,” Dred growled. “Long live the Dolphys, future king of Saylok. Now tell us where to go, blind man.”

No matter what, they had to protect Bayr. And if Hod was going to save anyone, he had to get on the wall. With his bow, he could thin the numbers of the Northmen as they climbed.

“I am going up on the wall where I can be of use,” Hod explained. “I need you to protect your chieftain. Bayr cannot fall.”