The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon

5

YEARS

“Where did you find her, Ludlow?” Lothgar whispered.

“She walked right up to the door, Lord. She asked for you. She said she wants to go to the temple.” The man laughed as though he couldn’t believe it himself.

“How old are you, girl?” the chieftain asked. It was always the first question they asked. Hod’s voice rose in her thoughts.

There have been no other daughters of Saylok born in twelve years. The men bring daughters from other lands . . . but it is not enough . . . and there seems to be no remedy or rune to cure the drought.

“I don’t know how old I am,” Ghisla lied. Her shoulders tightened and she stared down at her bare feet. They were black with filth.

“Where did you come from?” he pressed.

“I am of Leok.”

“If you were born in Leok, we would have known,” the man beside Lothgar said.

Lothgar held out his hand, as if to silence the man beside him. “Lykan . . . let me, brother.”

“I am of Leok,” she insisted, lifting her chin, doing what Arwin had counseled her to do.

“Why have you come?” Lothgar asked.

“I want to be sent to the temple.”

A murmur rumbled throughout the room.

“Go. All of you. Leave,” Lothgar ordered, and his command was immediately obeyed by all but his brother. Lykan stayed frozen beside him and Lothgar did not insist he go.

“Who cares for you, girl?” Lothgar asked when the room had cleared.

“I care for myself.”

“Where is your family?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is your name?”

“I do not know.”

“What do you know?”

“I am of Leok,” she insisted, her voice rising. “And I am a girl.”

Lothgar barked in laughter and his brother cursed in disbelief.

“The girl is small, but her tongue is sharp. She seems to have a firm grasp on the situation, young as she is,” Lothgar said to him. “You look like a daughter of Leok,” the chief conceded. “Your hair is fair and your eyes are blue.”

“She looks like your daughters, Lord. Like our mother too,” Lykan mused. Chief Lothgar studied her, his hand stroking the length of his beard.

“But she wasn’t born in Leok,” he said. “She is young, and we would have heard. Her parents would have brought her to me for the blessing.”

“Mayhaps her parents were travelers between lands,” Lykan suggested. “Mayhaps she belongs to the rovers.”

“I belong to no one,” Ghisla said. The two men gaped at her once more. It was as though they could hardly believe their eyes.

After a moment, Lothgar spoke again. “And . . . why . . . do you want to go to the temple?”

“Because I belong to no one,” she repeated. “In the temple I’ll eat.”

Lothgar nodded slowly and his brother spoke again.

“We have no one else to send, Lothgar.”

“No.” Lothgar shook his head. “We don’t. Not without raiding the homes of our people.”

“You would have slain any man who tried to separate you from your daughters,” his brother murmured.

Lothgar’s eyes darkened, but he nodded his head. “That I would.”

“Yet here is this child. A girl child. We don’t know where she came from . . . but I find I don’t much care,” Lykan admitted.

Lothgar sat back in his chair with an air of relief. “Praise Odin,” he whispered. “Nor do I.” He tugged on his beard and studied her a moment more, but she held his gaze. It had gone just as Arwin said it would. They had no one else.

“You will have to have a name, daughter of Leok,” Lothgar murmured. “What shall we call you?”

She had no idea what a daughter of Leok would be called, and she held her tongue.

Lykan spoke up again. “We should call her Liis. For our mother. Surely she sent her to us,” he said.

“Liis of Leok,” Lothgar grunted. “It is fitting.”

“Come here, girl,” Lykan demanded. She did as she was told, halting directly in front of the chieftain’s chair.

Lothgar removed a blade from his boot and nicked the side of his thumb.

“The gods have spoken, and I will not refuse a gift so obvious.” He smeared his blood across her forehead and rested his big palm over her head.

“Liis of Leok it is.”

Chief Lothgar turned her over to his wife, a handsome woman about the age Ghisla’s mother had been. The wife took one look at Ghisla and called for “Lagatha and Lisbet,” two old women who came quickly, skirts swishing. They drew up short, tripping over one another in their surprise.

“Oh, Lady Lothgar! It is true, then? We were certain Ludlow was telling stories,” they babbled, almost as one.

“We will draw a bath and find the child something to wear,” Lothgar’s wife instructed, and the women bobbed and nodded, accompanying Ghisla and the lady up a flight of stairs to a bedchamber with a small iron tub. A winch lowered a platform near the bath to the floor below. Buckets of hot water from the laundry were set on the platform and it was sent up again, and the old women had the tub filled in no time.

“Get in, child,” Lady Lothgar instructed.

Ghisla tried to do so without removing her clothes, and the women clucked and scolded, descending on her like thieves, and Hod’s tunic and hose were whisked away. She scampered to the tub and threw herself into the water, embarrassed by her nakedness. Her shoulders, ribs, and hips jutted out sharply, and her knees were the widest part of her spindly legs. She’d changed into Hod’s tunic and hose in a rush. She had not looked at herself without clothes since . . . since . . . She could not remember when. It was before death had come to Tonlis.

“She’s no meat on her bones!” Lagatha—or maybe she was Lisbet—exclaimed.

“Yes . . . and these clothes will not do,” Lady Lothgar fretted. “Nothing I have will fit—there’s not a gown in the village that will fit—but surely we can do better than these. We can’t send her to the temple dressed as a boy.”

The rune Hod had carved into her hand smarted as she sank into the water, but she didn’t dare inspect it. Hod had said to keep it hidden, so she would. Just knowing it was there was a comfort.

“Surely not, Lady Lothgar. Surely not. She should be dressed in the colors of the clan,” Lagatha said.

“But that will take time. When will the lord present her to the king?” Lisbet argued.

“Word is already spreading. Lothgar will take her to the temple in the morn. He says we will have no peace until she is gone, and I suspect he is right,” Lady Lothgar worried, wringing her hands. “Where in the world did you come from, child?” she asked, her voice ringing in disbelief.

“I am from Leok,” Ghisla said. Lady Lothgar waited, blue eyes searching, but when Ghisla refused to offer more, even after persistent questioning, the lady of the keep left her in the care of the old women and promised to return with suitable clothes.

“Do your best to untangle her hair. She must remain in here. Lothgar has put a guard outside to keep the curious away,” she said, closing the door behind her.

The old women spoke excitedly as they soaped and scrubbed at her hair. They conversed as though she couldn’t hear—the way grownups tended to do with children—about what it meant to have a girl child of Leok.

“She just appeared out of nowhere!” Lagatha marveled.

“She is a gift from the gods, surely,” Lisbet added. “She looks like the daughters of Leok—she is not from one of the other clans.”

“Yes, yes. Though she’s a mite bit sickly looking.”

“Nothing a bed and a few meals can’t fix. And look at those eyes! She’s a little beauty. Who are you, child?” Lisbet pressed.

“I am Liis of Leok,” Ghisla said numbly, and the women grew quiet for all of ten seconds.

“Mayhaps she is touched in the head,” Lagatha murmured.

“In these times, we are all touched in the head,” Lisbet answered.

When she was sufficiently clean, Lagatha urged her from the tub and wrapped her in a blanket, directing her to a stool in front of a fire Lisbet had built. They rubbed oil into her hair and let it sit before picking their way up the length with combs and careful fingers. It lay shining against her back when they were finished.

They even cleaned between her fingers and her toes and buffed her nails with a small stone. She’d accidentally hissed when Lagatha grabbed her hand, but the women didn’t seem to recognize the rune. They thought she’d defended herself against a whip. They clucked and murmured all over again, their sympathy stoked once more. They put a salve on it and bandaged it up when they finished with her hair.

Lady Lothgar returned with stew and bread and a nightshirt borrowed from someone’s young son. It was clean and white, and it’d been worn into softness. They pulled it over her head and told her to eat.

By the time Ghisla was done she was so weary she could not keep her eyes open, and they tucked her into the bed in the corner of the room.

“Sleep, Liis of Leok,” Lady Lothgar urged, and the awe was back in her voice. “No one will harm you here.”

They left her for a time, and she was grateful for the solitude, though she knew they lingered outside the door.

She tried to sing a song for Hod, to reach out and test their connection, but she was asleep before humming a single note.

The women had found her a frock in what they called “Leok green” and dressed her like she was to be married to the king. Her hair was braided and coiled and her cheeks pinched for color, though they had days of riding ahead of them. The people of the village gathered to see them off and cheered and waved like she was a princess. Mayhaps they were simply grateful their own daughters had been spared.

Lothgar asked her if she could ride alone, and when she nodded, he placed her on an old horse so docile that the only thing that differentiated wakefulness from sleep were its plodding legs. Chief Lothgar rode in the lead. His long braid matched his horse’s tail, one long rope running into another. It was even the same color.

All of Lothgar’s men had long braids. Lykan explained that when the king of Saylok died, it was tradition for the men of the clans, in recognition of his passing, to cut their hair. The long, tight braid they wore down their backs was removed—a braid that had been allowed to grow for the entire reign of the king—to signify the end of one era and the beginning of another. In Saylok, one could ascertain the longevity of a king by the length of his warriors’ hair.

“King Banruud has been the king for five years, but he is young; he will be king for decades more,” Lykan said, and Lothgar grunted in displeasure.

“Easy brother,” Lykan warned. Ghisla got the impression that Lothgar did not care for the king.

“The Keepers of Saylok never grow their hair at all,” Lothgar said, throwing the words over his shoulder so she knew they were intended for her. “They keep their heads smooth. To grow a braid would be to show fealty to the king. Their duty is to remain separate. The daughters will be kept separate as well. In the temple.”

They traveled three days, sleeping beneath stars, and each night the men formed a perimeter around her while she slept, not so different from Hody’s stones.

“No one will hurt you while you are among my men. Not a hair on your head,” Lothgar promised. It was a comfort, and she believed him. He was kind and boisterous, and his men seemed to like him. She liked him; he made sure she was fed and watched over, and he didn’t insist that she speak.

Her appetite was returning, and she ate whatever she was given, but she’d stopped talking, ignoring the questions that everyone wanted answered. She was now Liis of Leok, and it had become her standard response when peppered with questions. She was certain that, just like the old women, Lothgar and his men thought her simple or suffering from something terrible. She supposed she was, but silence was her best response. If she did not speak, she need not lie, and she could not tell the truth. They all wanted a girl of Leok. They would not want a girl who had left plague in her wake.

Lykan seemed intent on instructing her, as though he knew she was not who they wanted her to be. He spoke of the chieftains at length—their clans, their colors, the beasts from which they all took their names. Leok the lion, Adyar the eagle, Berne the bear, Dolphys the wolf, Ebba the boar, and Joran the horse. Ghisla pictured the star Hod had sculpted in the sand as he spoke.

“Do you know the story of Hod?” she asked Lykan when he had finished. Lothgar looked back at her in surprise.

“She speaks,” he grunted.

She immediately regretted it.

“Hod the blind god?” Lykan asked.

Ghisla nodded, just a jerk of her head, but it was enough to set Lykan off again. “Aye. I know of Hod. I know of all the gods.”

“Some believe the Temple Boy is a god,” one of Lothgar’s men said, inserting himself into the discussion. “Some say he is the son of Thor. Many thought the keepers would make him king instead of Banruud.”

“I’ve seen him battle several men at once,” another man said.

“It is not battle if it happens in the yard,” Lothgar grumbled.

“But, Chief Lothgar, he killed a man—several men—when he was still a child,” another warrior argued.

“He is yet a child. Still a boy, though he is the size of a man,” Lykan said. He looked at Ghisla, explaining as he was wont to do. “His name is Bayr. He has no clan. He’s been raised by the keepers; everyone calls him the Temple Boy.”

“His strength is not that of a regular man. His strength is beyond that of the natural world,” Lothgar admitted.

“He can hardly speak, brother. He stutters like a mindless idiot,” Lykan said.

“The gods are not perfect, Lykan. Odin’s sons are as flawed as they are gifted.”

“Hod was blind,” she reminded softly, and for a moment the men were silent, thoughtful.

“Bayr is not a god. He is a boy,” Lykan insisted after a while.

“Aye. A boy the king fears,” Lothgar said, and he laughed as though it pleased him greatly.

Temple Hill rose up out of the ground, so tall and green that the top was ringed in clouds, making it look as though the mount skewered the twilight sky. But Ghisla was the only one who gaped. The men of Leok had seen it before, though they seemed glad to see it again.

“That is the temple mount,” Lothgar said. “On the left, you can see the spires and the dome above the wall. On the right, the king’s keep, Castle Saylok. From the mount you can see in every direction, every clan. ’Tis not a bad place to live, Liis of Leok.”

He said her new name like he was trying to make it real when they both knew it was not. It is just a name, she thought to herself. It is only a name. And it was not so different from Ghisla. It hissed off the tongue in a similar way, though she heard Ghisla in her mother’s voice, and Liis was more like a curse, a whisper cut short. A life cut short. She did not hate the name. It was simply like wearing Hod’s old clothes. It didn’t quite fit. Mayhaps she would grow into it. Or grow out of herself.

“You will ride with me from here on out, Liis of Leok,” Lothgar said. “I’ll be better able to guard you, and I want King Banruud to see that you have my protection. Now . . . and when I am gone.” Lykan dismounted and lifted her from her docile horse and placed her in front of his brother before climbing back onto his own horse. Lothgar’s mount tossed his golden mane and chuffed his welcome. Lothgar wrapped his enormous arm around her waist, securing her against him, and they began the steep climb to the temple entrance and the edifices behind the walls.

As they climbed, the mountain grew. It was much bigger than it had looked from the King’s Village below. The temple spires rising above the clouds had made the top appear elongated, but the mists had entirely disguised the top of the hill and the flat plateau behind the walls. It reminded her of a song where Odin took his sword and cut off a giant’s head: The giant fell to his hands and knees, his back as flat as it could be, and Odin made a table where all the world could come to eat.

Temple Hill was a table where all of Saylok came to eat. Or where all of Saylok came to meet—at least all of Saylok’s men. She had not yet seen any women. Everywhere she looked were men and horses, braided and bulging with leather and shields and weapons of war.

“Make way for Chief Lothgar of Leok,” a voice bellowed from above, and bugles rang out as they rode beneath the portcullis.

The torches that lined the square shot light into the sky and shadows onto every face.

Tents were erected in the space beyond the castle—Adyar gold, Berne red, Dolphys blue, Ebba orange, Joran brown, and Leok green—but the light was being leached from the sky, robbing the flags and the tents and the outskirts of their color. There was only fire and stone, the temple and castle facing off across a cobbled square.

Half of Lothgar’s men proceeded on toward the tents, talking of supper and swords and sore flanks. Lothgar and his brother, the only other face she had a name for, remained seated on their horses in the main square, and she remained with them.

“Are we the last to arrive?” Lykan asked, but his words were immediately interrupted by a trumpeter on the wall.

“Make way for Chief Aidan of Adyar and Queen Esa of Saylok,” the watchman boomed.

A young man on a white horse draped in gold entered the courtyard, an aging woman riding at his side. The woman had a haughty lift to her chin and a yellow cloak that glimmered in the torchlight.

“Adyar has brought Alannah’s mother, the old queen,” Lothgar said, his voice rumbling above Ghisla’s head. “The princess will need her, now that Alannah is gone.”

A warrior helped the woman dismount, and she swept into the castle as though she belonged there. Her son watched her go before turning to his men and instructing most of them to set up camp. Like Chief Lothgar, he remained seated on his horse. His braid was as long and pale as Lothgar’s, but that is where the similarity between the two chieftains ended. He was young enough to be Lothgar’s son, and where Lothgar was square, Aidan of Adyar was sharp. His hair came to a deep V on his brow that echoed the tip of his nose and the point of his chin. He was handsome the way an eagle is handsome, and Saylok’s animal sons took on new significance.

“He’s brought the queen . . . but it does not appear he’s brought a daughter,” Lykan mused, searching the yellow-draped warriors that surrounded their chief.

“Banruud will not be pleased,” Lothgar crowed.

“About the queen or the daughter?” Lykan asked.

“Both, brother. Both.”

“Adyar is no threat to Banruud. He will never be king. He is a mouthy boy, intent on poking at the king simply because he thinks he can.”

Ghisla was suspended between the desire to stare, unblinking, so that she wouldn’t miss what was to come, and the need to close her eyes so she could hide from it.

“I do not care enough to be afraid,” she whispered to herself, and kept her eyes opened.

Before long, Ghisla counted four other girls sitting on horseback in front of warriors, exactly like she was. Four girls with bowed heads and thin backs, and all looked to Ghisla to be younger than she.

Stone steps ringed the temple, and robed men with heads shorn like Hod’s and their eyes rimmed in black stood in lines, their hands clasped and their gazes forward.

Those are the keepers,she thought.

“Aye,” Lothgar answered, and she realized she’d spoken aloud. He patted her head. “Don’t be afraid,” he urged, but she heard guilt in his gruff words.

The faces in the square blended into one another. They were of a type—braided or bald, robed or riding—and when a trumpet sounded and the bells clanged, they seemed to turn as one toward the castle of the king, expectant and . . . resigned. The resignation, the sense of doom and quiet despair, rippled through the throng, and though Ghisla recognized it, she did not grasp the cause. It simply frightened her, and Lothgar’s horse tossed his head, sensing her unease.

“I want to go now. I want to get down,” she insisted.

“Soon, girl. Soon. The king is coming.”