“A daughter of the temple is missing. I need only to know if she is here.”
“I see,” the guard said. He turned and rapped on the door, calling out as he did. “Liis of Leok is g-gone, Majesty. The Highest Keeper has come to see you.”
A moment later, the king wrenched the door open. His tunic gaped and his pants hung low on his hips like he’d hiked them up to attend to the interruption.
“Where is she?” he asked, as though the Highest Keeper was just there to torture him.
“We do not know, Highness,” Ivo replied, his voice level, his hands folded beneath the long sleeves of his robes. “You did not summon her?”
“I did not,” Banruud grunted. His jaw hardened, and his eyes swung to the sentry, who stepped back in fear. He began to snap orders, sending his men running.
“Tell Balfor. Alert the watch. Rouse the chieftains. Ring the bells. Get my bloody horse. Find her.”
When they returned to the temple, Master Ivo expelled everyone but Dagmar from the sanctum and drew a seeker rune in his blood on the fleshy part of each of his palms.
“We should not use the runes to gain information we can achieve by using our own two feet, Dagmar. But now that we know she is not on the mount, we must do what we can to find her quickly and find her . . . first.”
“Yes, Master. I agree.”
Chanting Liis of Leok’s name, Ivo pressed the runes to his closed eyes, but after several slow breaths, he lowered his hands, frustrated.
“That is not her name,” he whispered. “She is not Liis of Leok. Not in her bones or in her blood. The fates will not honor my request.” Crimson streaked his hooded lids.
He washed his hands and face in the basin of water beside the altar. In fresh blood, he drew the runes again and pressed them to his eyes once more.
“Show me . . . the Songr of Temple Hill,” he muttered. “Show me the little Songr.”
Dagmar waited, barely breathing.
“Ahhh.” Ivo leered. “The Norns like specificity.” But within seconds, his grin became a grimace and then a hiss. “She is in the Temple Wood. In a clearing . . . and she is . . . lying beneath . . . Desdemona’s tree. The very same tree where your sister gave birth to Bayr.”
Dagmar inhaled sharply, but Ivo was frozen, observing what the rune chose to reveal. He was silent for too long.
“Is she hurt, Master?” Dagmar cried, impatient.
“No. She is with . . . a man,” Ivo whispered, his obvious horror raising the hair on Dagmar’s neck. “She is with a man. He is lying . . . beside her. He is holding her. And she is . . . holding him.”
The Highest Keeper lowered his hands and looked up at Dagmar, blinking like the blood burned his eyes, and his lips trembled with his next words.
“She is with . . . Hod . . . the blind supplicant.”
From the chatter of the birds in the treetops, Hod presumed the dawn had broken; the light never changed for him, but the air did. The sound did, and he knew they were out of time. They’d fallen asleep wrapped around each other, sated and exhausted, and even still, Ghisla slept deeply, her head tucked against his shoulder, her body boneless and warm at his side. She’d pulled her robe over them at some point, and his was rolled beneath his head.
He should wake her. They would need to make a plan. But he did not move. He did not even adjust his aching arm. The ache was too sweet. A moment more would make no difference, and he could not part with her yet.
He had endangered her. If a child grew from their union—the thought made his heart swell and his loins tighten. Their union.
If his child grew in her womb . . . he would . . . he would . . . he would . . .
His mind had ceased to function at all. He was caught up in the remembrance of flesh and feeling and euphoria, and he could think of nothing else. Not while Ghisla still lay beside him, smelling of woman and seed and warmth and hope. And the idea of a child made him more ebullient.
There is no joy but this, Hody. I have no joy but you.
He could not find it within himself to regret his actions. Not yet. She was a woman, protected by the temple and by the king. If a child swelled her stomach, the keepers would call it miraculous and praise the gods. It would be Saylok’s child. Mayhaps it would even be . . . a girl child. It would be Saylok’s child. Not his child. He and Ghisla could not be together.
With that thought, reality tried to intrude. He was a fool, and there would be a consequence for the joy they had taken. Every action begat a reaction.
Men who need kisses
Make babes who need kisses.
Babes who grow up
Become men who need kisses.
Men who need kisses
Chase women for kisses.
And . . .
Begetting begins again.
He grinned up at the boughs above him. He was not thinking straight.
He was flat on his back, Ghisla on his right, his staff on his left, and he stretched his hand, patting the ground beside him, trying to find it without disturbing Ghisla.
The pads of his fingers brushed a whorl in the dirt, a singed circle, like the fairies had gathered beneath the tree and danced around a tiny fire. The grass that bristled around the edge of the circle was sharp, and he cursed as a blade nicked his middle finger. It was the curse of the blind to be constantly bleeding. His hands were as scarred and calloused as the bark of the tree above him, but still he bled. He perused the area more carefully, using the palm of his hand instead of his fingers. There were two singed circles . . . but where was his damned staff?
His finger stung with all the ferocity of a tiny cut. He’d found dogs and wounds were alike; the little ones barked the loudest. He curled his finger toward his palm and searched the tip with his thumb, looking for a sliver or a thorn.
An image flashed behind his eyes—trees, earth, sky—and he froze.
He realized with a start that he was bleeding into his rune. But Ghisla was asleep beside him—she was not singing—and he’d never been able to see anything without her. Was it his rune? Or was it his rune . . . and his blood . . . dripping onto the strange circle burnt into the earth?
He turned his hand and patted the ground once more, careful. Careful.
The whorl of burnt earth sizzled against his bloodied rune. The image flashed again, and this time, it held.
He was in the clearing. This clearing? It felt the same. It sounded the same. The tree at his back murmured the same low tone.
But the woman who lay beside him was not Ghisla. Her hair was dark, her skin was pale, and her dress was . . . blue. Blue like Ghisla’s eyes. Blue like the sky. Like the mountains near Tonlis. Like the robes of Dolphys.
She held a babe to her chest.
The babe was covered with gore, like he’d just been born. His little arms flailed, and his cry was lusty, and the woman said his name.
“You must take him, Dagmar. And you must call him Bayr. Bayr for his father’s clan. Bayr . . . because he will be as powerful as the beast he is named for.”
Hod withdrew his bleeding hand with a gasp, and the image was instantly doused. He wiped his bloody hand on his breeches. He did not want to see more. He knew who the woman was. He knew her story. He knew her child.
The circles in the earth were Desdemona’s runes.
Ghisla stirred, and he heard her indrawn breath and the quickening of her heart as she woke. His movements had roused her.