The Second Blind Son by Amy Harmon
6
CLANS
“I did not bring a daughter of Adyar,” Aidan of Adyar said, spurring his mount forward to greet the king. “You already have one, Majesty.”
The king raised a brow and folded his arms. He was tall, with wide shoulders and powerful legs. He wore his dark hair swept back from his face and flowing around his shoulders, setting him apart from every other man on the mount, though Lothgar scoffed that it made him look like a woman.
He did not look like a woman. He’d been Chieftain of Berne, the Clan of the Bear, before he was king, Ghisla recalled, and he was as big as one. He wore a spiked crown on his head and unrelieved black.
“My sister, Queen Alannah of Adyar, gave birth to a daughter,” the chieftain from Adyar continued. “That daughter lives here, on the temple mount. Princess Alba is of Adyar and can represent Adyar in the temple. She can represent our clan. Adyar has given enough, and we have no more daughters to spare.”
“Yet you’ve come anyway, Adyar,” Banruud said, scorn dripping from his words. “Why, brother?”
“I was curious. It seems the chieftains have obeyed their king.”
“All but one,” Banruud answered.
“I’ve brought you a woman,” Aidan said, mocking yet mild. “Just not . . . a young woman. My mother, Queen Esa, has come to see to the upbringing of her granddaughter. Now that Alannah is gone, she feels you will need a woman to look after the princess. Unless . . . you intend to take another wife, Majesty? Mayhaps one of the clan daughters you’ve summoned?”
The king waved his hand, signifying his dismissal, as if Aidan of Adyar made no difference to him. The king moved on to the Chieftain of Ebba, who had already dismounted and stood next to a girl clad in a drab brown dress edged in orange ribbon.
“Erskin looks weary,” Lykan remarked to Lothgar.
“The trouble in Ebba is worsening. He’ll leave at first light. He has no time for this spectacle.”
“This is Elayne of Ebba,” the chieftain from Ebba said, introducing the girl and bowing slightly for the king. Elayne of Ebba curtsied deeply but didn’t look at the king. Her hair was a deep red against her pale skin, and she looked as though she’d been crying. She was lean and long, though she’d begun to curve inward at the waist. She was much taller than Ghisla, though Ghisla guessed they were close in age.
“She was born before the drought,” Lothgar murmured. Lykan grunted in agreement.
“She’s the only one. Which means the others aren’t from Saylok at all.”
“We have no room to criticize, brother,” Lothgar said.
Banruud moved on to the next chieftain, the chieftain from Berne. A girl dressed from head to toe in deep red watched the king approach.
“Her hair is coiled and her skin is brown,” Lothgar said, chuckling softly. “She is no more Bernian than I.”
“Who is this, Benjie?” Banruud asked. The girl did not seem intimidated by him at all. She stared up at him, expressionless.
“This is Bashti of Berne.” The Chieftain of Berne put his hand on the girl’s back and urged her forward. She planted her feet and pressed back.
“Bashti of . . . Berne?” Banruud questioned.
“Bashti of Berne . . . and daughter of Kembah, most likely,” the chieftain replied.
“If she is a daughter of Kembah, she is not a daughter of Berne, Benjie. Plus, Kembah is a king,” Banruud countered. “I doubt this girl is Kembah’s. But if it suits you to pretend, cousin, I will not argue.”
“Mayhaps when she is grown, we can make an alliance,” Benjie offered.
“Mayhaps. If she has a womb she will grow into, it is enough.” Banruud raised his voice. “Have you all brought me foreign wombs to beget other wombs?”
No one answered.
“You’ve brought me the cast off and the captured,” he mocked. “All except Erskin, who has a better excuse than all of you. His warriors fight the Hounds even now, and yet he brought a daughter of Ebba as he was directed.”
The chieftains regarded him silently, their resentment obvious.
“You said to find daughters. We found daughters, Majesty,” Dirth of Dolphys grumbled.
“So you did,” King Banruud said. He shrugged, granting them exasperated pardon.
The chieftain from Dolphys introduced the daughter he’d brought to the temple, Dalys. The little girl beside him was sloe-eyed and sooty-locked. She clung to the chieftain’s hand and stared up at the king with tragic resignation. Outrage burned in Ghisla’s throat and stiffened her spine. She did not like the king.
Banruud moved on to the Chieftain of Joran, his hands behind his back like he was inspecting horseflesh.
Chieftain Josef had brought a girl named Juliah, her long, dark hair braided tightly like that of the warriors around her, and the king asked if she’d been “raised by men.”
“Yes, Majesty,” the Chieftain of Joran said, eyes hard. “She was. Her grandfather is Jerom, the fisherman. He and his sons were casting their nets when the Hounds came ashore ten years ago. Jerom’s wife and daughter were not spared. His wife was killed, and his daughter became . . . pregnant from the attack. She died in childbirth. Jerom and his two sons have raised the girl.”
The king approached Lothgar last. Lothgar laid his arm around Ghisla’s shoulders, but she shrugged him off. She did not belong to him. The king smirked at her rejection of the Chieftain of Leok, and she regretted her impulsive display. It was better not to let them—any of them—see her react at all. Her feelings were the only thing that were hers, and she vowed that she would not share them with strangers. And everyone present was a stranger.
She’d removed her braid before they’d made the climb to the mount, and her hair waved long and loose around her shoulders. She had wanted to look her best in the green dress Lady Lothgar had acquired for her. It was the nicest dress she’d ever worn, and preparing herself had calmed the nervous dread in the pit of her stomach. Now she wished that she’d worn Hody’s tunic and his old hose. She wished she’d let her hair return to the tangled rat’s nest it had been before the women in Leok had unraveled it. That girl would have still been Ghisla, even without her name. With her smooth hair and her borrowed dress, she was Liis of Leok, and nothing of Ghisla remained.
“King Banruud, may I present Liis of Leok,” Lothgar said. The king studied her, his gaze flat, but when he spoke, there was begrudging admiration in his voice.
“How old is she, Lothgar? She looks like the clan—golden haired, blue eyed, ill tempered. Aren’t all the women of Leok thus?”
“She has ten summers, Majesty,” Lothgar claimed, though he knew nothing of the sort.
The king raised his brows, disbelieving.
“Where did you find her, Lothgar?”
“Odin gave her to me, Majesty.” The men around him laughed, but the king grimaced, irritated by Lothgar’s meaningless explanation.
“Where are you from, girl?” the king asked Ghisla.
“I am Liis of Leok,” she said. She held his gaze—his eyes were black and unblinking. Looking at him felt like tumbling into a hole.
“Good. And now you are Liis of Saylok. Liis of Temple Hill. You will be a beauty one day. I look forward to watching you bloom.”
“She is Liis of Leok even still, Majesty,” Lothgar argued, but it was a meaningless distinction, and they all knew it. He would be leaving her on the mount.
“They will stay in the castle, under my watch,” Banruud said, raising his voice to be heard throughout the assembly. Then he turned back toward his palace, as if he was through with them all.
“You said they would be raised by the keepers,” Lothgar protested. “In the temple.”
“They will be raised with my daughter, in my house,” Banruud shot back. “Princesses of Saylok all.”
A stunned hush fell over the clan representatives, and the king waved his guards forward.
“You will take the daughters to the castle,” he directed them. “A feast awaits.”
“They are supplicants to the temple,” a voice boomed, and the guards hesitated.
An ancient man stood in the center of the courtyard, the light from the fat moon glancing off his face and hollowing out his black eyes and black lips like caves in pale sand. He and his brethren had descended from the steps while the king had made his inspection, and the crowd had been too distracted to notice.
“It is what was agreed upon. They will live in the temple and be guarded by the keepers,” the man continued. His rasping voice raised the hair on Ghisla’s neck, but she was not certain if it was from fear . . . or awe. Unlike the other keepers, he was dressed all in black, and he clutched a short, bejeweled staff in a clawlike hand. He had no hair, and his pale skin dripped from his face like he’d begun to melt in the moonlight. But his voice was strong and his influence stronger. The chieftains seemed to take courage from his presence.
“The Highest Keeper is right. It was what we all agreed upon, Banruud,” Aidan repeated, still astride his horse. The king had dismissed him, but he’d remained in place.
The Highest Keeper. The ancient man was Master Ivo.
“You have no say in the matter, Adyar,” the king shot back. “You have come to the temple mount with your hands empty.”
“I have promised this girl’s mother she will live in the temple and be raised in the safety—and holiness—of the sanctum,” Erskin of Ebba sputtered.
“I have made the same promise to Juliah’s grandfather,” Josef said, his eyes touching on the girl with the warrior braid.
“These clan daughters will be raised like princesses,” Banruud pronounced, pointing at the trembling children. “They will be raised beside my own daughter.”
As if he’d choreographed his argument, a little girl in a tiny crown chose that moment to dash from the arched, raised entry of the palace. She came to a teetering halt in front of the assembled chieftains and their retinues and looked down on them like a performer on a stage.
A gasp rippled through the gathering; even Ghisla shuddered.
The little girl hardly looked real with her pale hair, dark eyes, and honeyed skin. Such coloring should not have existed in the natural world, but it did so in perfect harmony.
A young man with a long, black warrior’s braid dashed out behind her, as if the girl had escaped his watch, but he drew up short when he saw her gaping audience. He was wide shouldered and lean hipped, with arms and legs that were thick with muscle, but his blue eyes were guileless and his skin was as smooth as the child’s. He had the form of a man but the face of a boy.
He is the Temple Boy,Ghisla thought. And the little girl was Princess Alba.
The chieftains fell to their knees, Aidan of Adyar sliding from his charger without a word. Their foreheads touched the earth, and their braids, long again with the five years of his reign, coiled in the dirt beside their heads. The king walked up the steps and swept the princess up in his arms. Her small body stiffened in surprise.
Lothgar tugged on Ghisla’s hand, urging her to her knees. The other girls slowly sank to their knees as well. They were in the presence of the princess, the hope of Saylok, and the king held Alba even higher, reminding his audience what he—not the keepers—had given them.
“The daughters will live in the castle with Princess Alba,” he said again.
“No, Highness. They will be raised by keepers,” Master Ivo insisted. The Highest Keeper had not fallen to his knees. None of the keepers had. They stood before the king, unbending, and the king glowered and raised his daughter even higher into the sky. She cried out and the Temple Boy grimaced, his eyes never wavering from her small form.
“Daughters of Freya, goddess of fertility, goddess of childbirth, wife of Odin the Allfather, we welcome you,” Ivo cried, turning away from the king and toward the massive stone pyre that loomed cold and dark in the center of the square. The keepers moved behind him, as though they’d devised an entire ceremony beforehand.
“These daughters of the clans, these Daughters of Freya, will be guarded, their lives revered, their virtue defended. They will be a symbol to Saylok just like the runes,” the Highest Keeper thundered. He cut his palm and painted upon the stone hearth with his blood. The rune became flame, whooshing up in a soaring column. The chieftains and their warriors gasped and Ghisla swallowed a scream.
“Saylok needs daughters,” Master Ivo cried. “From this day forward, Chieftains of Saylok, these Daughters of Freya—your daughters—will keep the flame lit. As long as it burns, you will know that your daughters are tending it, that the Keepers of Saylok are tending them, and Saylok will live on.
“We will guard them well, just as we honor the princess,” Master Ivo added, his tone placating but his gaze a challenge. The child in King Banruud’s arms was lit by the glow, and the jeweled crown upon his head cast a glittering rainbow across the faces of the keepers. The kneeling chiefs began to nod, looking from King Banruud and his daughter to the Highest Keeper.
“Bayr of Saylok, a child raised here on the temple mount and blessed with exceeding strength, will be their protector as well, just as he has protected the princess,” the Highest Keeper promised, extending his arms toward the boy as though he presented the chieftains with yet another miracle.
The Temple Boy simply dropped to one knee and bowed his head as though being knighted to the cause. But it was answer enough, and the chieftains rose to their feet, nodding and clutching their braids as though they grasped the hilts of swords slung across their backs. Bayr met the gaze of each one and stood, clasping his own braid in a posture of promise.
“The Temple Boy will guard them,” Aidan shouted, releasing his braid and raising his fist. The chieftains of Ebba, Dolphys, Leok, and Joran did the same, though Benjie of Berne hesitated, his eyes shifting from the king’s face to the men around him. Then he raised his arm slowly, almost fearfully, indicating his support.
“From this day forward, we will call them the Daughters of Freya, and they will be a light to the clans,” Lothgar boomed beside Ghisla, repeating the words of the Highest Keeper like he’d composed them himself.
The princess was squirming to be released, and the king set her down with a look of disdain. She ran up the steps and into the arms of the Temple Boy, choosing him, completing the appearance of an anointing. Bayr rose and, holding the little girl’s hand, bowed to the chieftains again. Then he bowed to the Highest Keeper and finally to the king himself. And still he did not utter a word.
“So be it, Master Ivo. I entrust the Daughters of Freya to your care and to the care of the Keepers of Saylok,” King Banruud said, relenting, though his voice dripped with scorn. “Do not fail me. Do not fail them.” He pointed at the five girls. “If something happens to one of the daughters, the chieftains and the people of Saylok will know who to blame.”
Ghisla did not bid goodbye to Chief Lothgar or his men. She did not even spare them a second glance. She was too angry. Arwin said Lothgar had his own daughters, but Lothgar had not brought his daughters here to be raised by the hairless keepers in their purple robes and bottomless gazes. He had not brought his daughters to be used as pawns by a ruthless king.
Ghisla and the four other girls—Elayne, Juliah, Bashti, and Dalys—were herded up the stone steps and into the temple. The same resignation that had billowed through the clansmen and the keepers followed the girls into the stone edifice and settled on their small frames like little black birds with sharp claws and cawing beaks. Then the doors were closed behind them.
None of them cried, not even the littlest girl, Dalys of Dolphys. She seemed accustomed to being passed from one caregiver to another and was more at ease than any of them. None of them asked questions. They all seemed resigned to their fate, whatever that was, though each girl handled her strain differently.
The keepers, so regal and silent in the square, scurried off like terrified mice when the temple doors were secured. None of them seemed to know what to do with five small females. The Highest Keeper barked orders at a man named Dagmar, who remained behind, and the girls were brought to a dining hall and served a simple supper in the cavernous and deserted room.
As before, everyone assumed Ghisla was far younger than she was. They thought she was younger that Elayne, mayhaps the same as Juliah, but older than Bashti and Dalys. Elayne said she was twelve. That made Ghisla the oldest girl there by two years.
Ghisla didn’t bother correcting the assumptions. She had no intention of ever telling the truth again, at least not where it concerned her life and her past, and Elayne would be better in the role as oldest. She looked oldest. She also seemed genuinely kind and eager to make the best of things, though from her pale cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, it was easy to see that she’d succumbed at some point to fear and sadness too.
Juliah of Joran bristled with hostility when anyone looked at her, and Bashti of Berne was just the opposite. She wanted everyone to look at her.
She attempted to be the court jester, juggling the apples someone had placed on the table where the girls were instructed to sit for their supper. Bashti wasn’t without skill, and Dalys clapped for her performance, but Juliah swiped one while it was in the air, throwing Bashti off her rhythm. Juliah took a huge bite out of it, the juice and bits of apple falling from her mouth as she chewed, insolent.
Bashti’s temper flared at the rude interruption, and Elayne moved between the girls from Berne and Joran in an effort to diffuse the tension. They all ended up eating in weary silence, their eyes on their food, shivering in the candlelit hall while listening to Master Ivo and Dagmar discuss their predicament.
The two men had waited until the keepers on supper duty were gone, but like many men not accustomed to females, they assumed their conversation was being ignored or unheard. It wasn’t. Though she bowed her head over her dinner, spooning in the broth of a weak soup and shoveling bread into her hungry belly, Ghisla was listening intently. She assumed the other girls were too.
“I had hoped the chieftains would not obey the king,” Keeper Dagmar said. He was handsome, with pale-blue eyes and skin that did not have the pallor of so many of the other keepers. He seemed younger than most of the other keepers too, though the Highest Keeper looked so ancient, everyone was young in comparison.
“I knew they would. So did you, Dagmar,” the Highest Keeper scoffed. “The chieftains are afraid. Saylok is afraid. A girl child from each clan—adopted by each clan—is their way of fighting back against a faceless foe, of preserving life, of bartering with the gods. Bringing a daughter to the temple is like storing gold in the ground, sewing jewels into a cloak, or hoarding food against a weak harvest.”
“What do we do, Master?” Dagmar worried, his eyes on the huddled daughters eating in the flickering candlelight.
“They are supplicants, Dagmar. We will treat them as such,” Ivo replied.
“They are not supplicants! They are children who have been ripped from their homes.”
Ivo sighed. “We ask nothing of them, Dagmar. Nothing. We will simply keep them safe.”
Dagmar shook his head and his tone was one of anguish. “I cannot protect Bayr. I cannot protect these girls. You saw the king this night. Bayr is at his mercy. These girls are at his mercy. He will use them to increase his power. It is a sham, Master.”
“Only to the king, Dagmar. Not to me. Not to Saylok.”
“They are just little girls,” Dagmar said. “Can we do this, Master?”
“We can. We will. And when the king leaves for Ebba, you must retrieve the ghost woman from the fields and bring her here. She will help us.”
After supper, Keeper Dagmar laid five pallets by the fire in the kitchen. The keepers had not yet prepared a permanent space for them, and every other room felt dark and cold.
The littlest girls tossed and turned in their sleep. Elayne moaned as though she wrestled with bad dreams, and Juliah lashed out at invisible foes. But Ghisla lay perfectly still, contemplating nothing and everything.
The girl with hair like flames—Elayne of Ebba—slept next to her. Hody would be entranced by the color.
Why was she thinking of him? Why was she calling him Hody like he was one of her brothers and not just a boy she’d known for a handful of days?
She answered her own question: Hod was alive and her brothers were dead. Hod still existed, and her family was gone.
She traced the rune on her hand with the tip of her finger, wondering if she should try to reach him. But she dared not leave her bed, and she did not want to make herself bleed. Her heart bled; that should be enough. It wasn’t enough, though, and she promised herself she would try in earnest soon.
Deep down, she was afraid it would not work, and Hod too would be gone forever. She could not bear that now. Not yet. So she held on to the hope of him and lay in the darkness, pulling the void into her chest and down into her belly until she felt nothing at all. Eventually, sleep followed.