“You must tell Master Ivo.”
“I can’t.”
“You must. Tell him what you heard. Tell him about Desdemona’s curse, about her rune. Exactly what Dagmar said. He will know what to do.”
“But what about Bayr? What if Dagmar is right?” she moaned.
“Bayr is in Dolphys. Bayr is safe . . . for now. But Saylok is not. The temple is not, and you are not.”
“But . . . would you do it, Hod? If it would break the curse, would you kill Bayr?” She needed to know.
Hod sighed, the sound vibrating in her thoughts like wind in the eaves.
“I don’t know.”
“If it would break the curse . . . would you kill me?” she asked.
“What are you talking about, Ghisla?”
Mayhaps it was her fatigue. Mayhaps it was her fear, but after this day, honesty was all she had left, and so she gave it to him. “I love you, Hod. You are my dearest friend. My only friend. And I would do anything to keep you. Do you know that? I would trade all of Saylok for you.”
He was silent for a moment, as though she’d shocked him, but when he finally spoke, he sounded almost reverent.
“I would trade all of Saylok for you too, my little Songr.”
“That is how Dagmar feels about Bayr.”
“Yes . . . I imagine it is.”
“I want to go home, Hod.”
“You sound so tired.”
“I want to go home,” she said again, urgent, and he understood, the way he always seemed to.
“You want to go to Tonlis.”
“Yes. But there is no Tonlis.”
“Of course there is.”
“It was burned to the ground. Every cottage, every field. Every man, woman, and child. Everyone but me.”
Hod gasped. “Everyone?”
“I saw no one else. I saw only death. Families dead in their homes. In their fields. The bodies were piled, and everything was set on fire. The dead, the animals, the homes, the fields.”
“Oh, Ghisla.”
“They were trying to stop the disease. I don’t know why they let me live. Mayhaps because they thought I would die. But I didn’t die. I didn’t die. I just wanted to. Now I am here. And it is happening again. Must I sit by and watch everyone die in Saylok too?”
“It is not the same.”
“No. This scourge is slower.” She was close to tears, but even tears felt like too much work.
“You must rest now. Nothing must be done tonight.”
She was so weary, she didn’t trust her legs to take her back through the tunnel and up the stairs to her bed, but she rose and made her way to the hatch hidden behind the rock.
“Promise me—”
“I will not give up,” she sighed, finishing his sentence. It was how they always parted.
“And Ghisla?”
“Yes?”
“I love you too.”
12
HOURS
Days later, just after the night watchman wailed, Ghisla crept down to the cellar to call out to Hod. She had just pricked her finger and begun her song, her back to the door, when strong arms wrapped around her, and a hand covered her mouth.
For a moment she was too stunned to do anything but blink into the darkness. She could not see who assailed her. She could not see anything, and she flailed, throwing her head back, but he was tall, much taller than she, and her head thudded off his chest. She tried to bite at the fingers covering her face but bit her lip instead, and blood pooled in her mouth.
With his hand over her mouth, he could not control both of her hands, though his weight against her back made her flailing useless. She started to choke on the blood that dripped down her throat. She couldn’t breathe, and she clawed at his hands.
When her legs buckled, her assailant stepped back, creating space to push her down to the floor. His hand moved from her mouth to her clothes, and she coughed and choked, spitting up blood and gasping for air.
“No one can hear you, Daughter,” he whispered.
She screamed in response, sending her voice pinging off every surface.
“No one can hear you,” he insisted, but she screamed louder, finding a note so high and sharp it stabbed at the backs of her eyes and tore at her throat. She pressed her hands over her ears and screamed louder, the song of terror and outrage one she’d never sung before. And the man who clawed at her legs and pinned her to the floor was suddenly singing with her.
Screaming with her.
Then he was gone. His weight was gone. His hands and his heavy limbs were gone. A draft brushed against her bare legs, signaling the cellar door had been opened, but she did not stop. She simply curled her knees into her chest and screamed harder.
Light bloomed moments later.
“Liis. Liis. Daughter, stop. Stop!” It was Dagmar. Dagmar and Ghost. And she was saved.
“Who was it, Liis?” Dagmar asked. His pale eyes were bleak, and he kept a distance, letting Ghost tend to her. Her lip was battered and her throat was raw, but she was otherwise unharmed.
“I don’t know,” she rasped. “I was singing . . . and I didn’t hear him come down the stairs. I hung the torch on the sconce in the corridor. He shut the door behind him, and it was so dark.” She traced the scar on her hand with her thumb. She’d been singing to Hod. That was why she hadn’t heard the man.
“Was he a keeper?”
“I—I don’t think so. He was big in the way a warrior is big, not a keeper. And I think he had . . . hair. It was pulled back, but I fought and kicked, and a few strands came loose and brushed my face.”
“Thank the gods,” Dagmar exhaled. Ghisla wasn’t certain if he thanked the gods for her safety or for the reassurance it had not been one of their own who’d attacked her.
“Why did he run? Did he hear you coming?” Ghisla asked.
“He was gone before we came,” Ghost answered. “Otherwise we would have passed him on the stairs. Your scream was not just a scream, Liis. It was a blast. I thought my ears were going to burst. Dagmar’s did.”
A thin trickle of blood stained the shoulder of Dagmar’s purple robe.
“I’m sorry,” Ghisla said, but she wasn’t. Her screaming had saved her life.
They alerted Master Ivo and the other keepers, as well as the king and his guard, but nothing was ever done to find her attacker. It was an attack of opportunity, more than anything, but he had been in the temple—or mayhaps he had been in the cellar all along—and Ghisla and the others felt even more vulnerable than they’d been before. Ivo did not think it a coincidence that the attack had come after Bayr had gone.
“Word has spread that the Temple Boy has left the mount. We will have to be more vigilant than ever before, and I will petition Banruud for better protection.”
Ghisla felt as though she teetered on a ledge, unable to breathe deeply, to step left or right. To simply balance over the abyss was her only goal. To exist without falling. She sensed the same in the faces around her. Strain. Tension. Unease. It permeated the air and the keeper song. It billowed in the wind. She wondered if Hod could hear it in his cave, hissing with the insects and humming beneath the soil. Mayhaps they had cursed the land with their fear, created a truth from their belief.
For weeks she considered what she’d learned the night Bayr left and the advice Hod had given her. She vowed to tell Master Ivo about Desdemona’s blood rune only to second-guess the wisdom of her decision moments later.