Ghost was their constant companion and caretaker. She slept in their room and ate at their table and sat through all their lessons. Ghisla was surprised to learn that she did not know how to read either. Nor did she know how to make or use runes, and no one—save mayhaps Dagmar and Master Ivo—knew her story or how she’d ended up on Temple Hill living among the keepers. She was as quiet about her past as they all were and offered only the barest of histories.
“I was left in the woods as a babe,” she said. “An old woman found me. She was almost blind and didn’t realize I looked as I do. She was lonely, and her children were all grown. I stayed with her until I was five. When she died, her son made me a servant in his house. I’ve been in many houses since then . . . but I’ve never lived in a temple.”
They’d all been afraid of her at first, especially when she darkened the area around her eyes like the keepers did. Ghisla suspected she was trying to be one of them, to blend in, but it just made her all the more terrifying to behold.
But little by little, the daughters relaxed around her, and she around them. The little girls clung to her, especially at bedtime. They moved their beds closer to hers and followed her like little ducklings.
Ghisla kept her bed where it was. She slept on the end nearest the door. Each night she planned to use it, to creep out into the temple to a hiding place, where she could muster her courage and summon Hod. But each night she lay silently, listening to the others sleep, too afraid to try.
No one spoke of their lives before, and Ghisla was not the only one who seemed unaccustomed to answering to her name. Poor Dalys answered to everything. Elayne was of Ebba—a true daughter of Saylok. Juliah was too, though her father was a marauding Hound. Bashti was not a Bernian name, though it began with the sound of the clan. Sometimes in her sleep, she chanted in a language Ghisla didn’t understand. Mayhaps they were the songs of her people, the songs of the people who’d loved her once, a lifetime ago. Like Ghisla and the Songrs. But they did not speak of their lives before.
Two months after Ghisla and the other clan daughters were brought to the temple, the Temple Boy and Princess Alba came for a visit. Evening meditation had commenced, the bells had tolled, and everyone had retired to their private quarters for quiet contemplation. It was one of the hardest hours of the day for all of the girls, but especially for Juliah. She could not hold still unless she was readying to pounce and sat on her bed rattling like a pot prepared to boil over. Bashti wasn’t much better, though she considered it her mission to make the others laugh with her grimacing and get them in trouble. Dalys usually fell asleep, Elayne sat in obedient silence, and Ghisla used the time to compose songs in her head that no one would likely ever hear.
When the door to their room opened with a slow screech, the girls looked up from their assigned spaces to see the Temple Boy, with the princess perched on his shoulders, standing on the threshold. The door was tall, but Bayr still raised his hand to protect Alba’s head as they ducked through the frame.
“It is Alb-ba’s b-b-birthday,” he said, as if that was enough to explain their sudden presence. He closed the door behind them. “We w-wanted t-t-to m-m-meet you.”
The girls looked at him with varying expressions of fear and fascination. They’d not been officially introduced, but they’d all seen him pledge his protection in the courtyard the night they arrived, and they knew his story.
Elayne stood and took a step toward him and Alba, assuming the role of hostess. She curtsied deeply and Ghisla and the other girls followed her lead, rising and bobbing their own welcomes.
“Happy birthday, Princess Alba,” she murmured. “I am Elayne . . . of Ebba.” She pointed to Juliah, the next oldest. “This is Juliah from Joran and Liis from Leok.” Ghisla forgot who she was for a moment and failed to do anything but stare rudely, unaware that she had been introduced. Elayne rushed on, as if trying to cover her silence.
“Bashti is from Berne. Little Dalys is about your age, Princess. She’s from Dolphys . . . like you are, Temple Boy. Keeper Dagmar too.”
“He is Bayr,” Alba corrected kindly, patting his cheek from where she was perched. “Not Temple Boy. His name is Bayr.”
“Why have you brought her here?” Juliah asked, peevish. Ghisla suspected her bad humor was jealousy; Bayr had not yet been available for weapons training, though Dagmar kept promising.
“It i-i-is Alb-ba’s b-birth d-day,” Bayr stammered again.
“You said that,” Juliah snapped. Elayne flinched and Bayr stiffened. Slowly he brought Alba down from his shoulders. He touched Alba’s pale hair, as if trying to shield her from Juliah’s unwelcoming behavior.
Alba walked to Juliah and, without hesitation, took the girl’s hands and tipped her head back with a smile. Ghisla had thought her breathtaking by moonlight, but she was even more so in the light of day. Her hair was as pale as corn silk, but her eyes were so brown they appeared black. Sooty lashes brushed her honeyed skin, and her lips were the color of the berries that grew on the bushes near the eastern wall.
“YOU LEE UH!” Alba sang Juliah’s name. “I am here to see you.” And just like that, Juliah wilted.
They stayed an hour, Alba singing and hopping from bed to bed, making the girls smile in spite of themselves. Bayr hung back, watching, listening for prayers to end and the sun to set, and when the bells tolled again to signal meditation was over, he scooped Alba up and bowed to the girls.
“Th-thank y-you,” he stammered.
“Will you bring her back, Bayr?” Dalys asked.
He nodded swiftly, and little Dalys wasn’t the only one who smiled in response.
“I don’t want to go, Bayr. Not yet. I want to stay here, in the temple,” Alba begged.
Bayr patted Alba’s leg, dangling over his shoulder, but he still turned to go. With Alba’s protestations trailing behind them, he whisked her away.
Hod had to put Ghisla’s pictures away. That is how he thought of them; they were Ghisla’s, not his. Ghisla’s eyes, and Ghisla’s memories, all colored with Ghisla’s songs. If he didn’t put them away, tuck them behind a door in his mind, they became his world, and he wanted only to visit them.
They were not his world.
His world was one of sound and silence, one of sense and scents, one of hearing and heeding. And when he looked at Ghisla’s pictures—especially in the beginning—those things fell away. He had begged Arwin to let her stay—who gave a miracle, a gift from the gods, away? But in the part of him that was not heartbroken at the loss, he understood his teacher.
When Ghisla sang, he was useless. Useless to himself. Useless to her.
So he locked her pictures away until he was alone and Arwin thought he was sleeping. Only then did he study the color and the cast. But before long, they began to fade.
The rune on his hand was silent; it only seemed to work one way. He did not have her gift, and the thread between them was not one he could pull. He was afraid for her, the little songbird with the frail bones and bitter words. But beneath his fear for her was despair for himself. For one perfect week, he’d had a friend. A friend, and music and pictures. But she was gone, and she took her songs with her.
For months he waited and listened, hoping. He and Arwin traveled to Leok for supplies, and talk of Liis of Leok had still rippled through the streets. That’s what they called her now. Liis. It was not so different from Ghisla, and he was glad. There was talk of all the Daughters of Freya, the way there had been talk of Princess Alba years ago. In another five years, the Highest Keeper or the king would have to find something—or someone—new to keep the people from losing hope. For now, the daughters were the new gods—Liis of Leok, Juliah of Joran, Elayne of Ebba, Dalys of Dolphys, and Bashti of Berne—and the people raved and prayed as if the girls would save them. Mayhaps they could. Ghisla had saved him for a time.