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.