Arwin was drawing a crowd, his passion and volume turning heads, even from the temple steps. Master Ivo had started to descend, a purple line behind him.
“For years we’ve turned them away,” Arwin mourned. “My Hod—my boy—what have you done to him, witch?” He pointed at Ghisla with his staff, and all eyes swung to her. “You’ve hypnotized him. You’ve entranced him with your songs . . . just like you do for the mad king.”
The gathering crowd gasped at Arwin’s words. To call the king mad to his face was a death sentence. The king’s guard was pushing through the crowd, but Banruud’s ire had been raised.
He slid from his horse, leaving Ghisla cowering in the saddle. He grabbed Arwin’s staff and swung it at him, knocking the man to his knees. The crowd gasped and the horse beneath Ghisla shimmied.
“The mad king?” Banruud said, and swung again, delivering a blow across Arwin’s back.
“Stop!” Ghisla shrieked, but Arwin had not stopped pleading his case. He gazed up at the king, warding off the next strike.
“It is her fault you are mad. She’ll make you lose all your senses like she did my Hod. She’ll sing you to sleep, and then she’ll cut your throat.”
The gathering crowd gasped at Arwin’s babbling accusations, but Banruud tossed the staff aside and lifted the man from the cobbles by the neck of his tunic.
“I am mad, Keeper?”
Chief Lothgar was suddenly beside her, pulling her down from the king’s horse. “Come, Daughter,” he urged, pulling her from the irate king and her desperate accuser.
“He is your son, Majesty. Can’t you do something for him?” Arwin pled, wrapping his hands around the king’s wrist. “He should be Highest Keeper. He’s never asked for favor or even for acknowledgment.”
“I have no sons,” Banruud said, twisting the cloth at Arwin’s throat so the man was hanging from his clothes. Yet Arwin persisted, speaking in choking, nonsensical pieces.
“Son . . . he is . . . Hod . . . blind god.”
“Hod, the blind god?”
“Yes . . . Yes . . . Hod.”
The king released Arwin abruptly, and he fell in a heap.
“The blind god is my son?” Banruud asked. He had begun to laugh. He threw up his hands to the crowd.
“Do you hear that, people? I am not a mad king. I am Odin himself! I am Odin, father to Hod, the blind god.”
The crowd began to laugh too—warriors and clansmen throwing back their heads. Lothgar laughed with the rest of them, his big hand on her shoulder. But Ghisla was quaking, and her legs were slowly turning to liquid.
“I am the father of daughters and gods!” Banruud brayed, his arms still raised in triumph, and the crowd cheered.
“Yes. Yes, Majesty. Hod is your son!” Arwin beamed and tried to rise. “Yet he is turned away from the temple.”
The guards had reached the king, and with a wave of dismissal, he turned from Arwin.
“Put him in the stocks. I will not kill him today. At least he has made me laugh.”
The guards dragged a sputtering Arwin away, and the crowd groaned like they’d wanted the fun to continue.
“And what about the daughter of Leok?” Benjie of Berne shouted. “What will her punishment be, Majesty? She has endangered herself and dishonored the temple. She too should be punished.”
A ripple of both interest and discomfort surged through the crowd. Lothgar stiffened beside her and pulled the gathered blue sash from around his waist, draping it over her shoulders like a shawl. It only served to draw the eye to her dishabille.
“She is a daughter of Leok,” he yelled, his hand raising to the hilt of his sword, which was slung across his back.
“She is sullied,” someone said, and the word was like a whip, snapping and breaking over the crowd, and the surge of condemnation swelled.
“She should be whipped,” Benjie cried, and others spoke up around him.
“Pilloried!”
“She should be made to carry a hot iron.”
“She should be made to wear the irons. She will not leave the mount if she is in irons.”
“The daughter will be returned to my care,” Master Ivo boomed, parting the crowd. He was alone but for two of the temple guard. Ghisla could not see the steps of the temple any longer. The crowd was too thick.
“She fled your care, Highest Keeper,” King Banruud sneered. “And I had to bring her back.” The king never missed an opportunity to turn the hearts of the people against the keepers.
The crowd rumbled and pushed, trying to get a better view of the confrontation.
“She is a Daughter of Freya,” Master Ivo insisted. “Everyone, stand aside.” He extended his hand toward Ghisla. “Allow the daughter to pass and return to the temple.”
But the crowd at the back could not hear and began to press forward, trying to get closer, and the circle around them became smaller. Lothgar cursed and lifted Ghisla up onto the low stone wall that circled the Hearth of Kings to get her out of the way. The hearth rose behind her, as wide as it was tall and crowned in continuous flame, and she steadied herself against it as she searched for a path through the excited crush.
“Stand back,” Ivo yelled, throwing his arms to the side. His palms were red with blood and he drew frantic shapes in the air. The flame above her whooshed and spit, sending sparks raining down in a wide arc into the crowd.
It was an impressive but meaningless bit of theater, and the crowd cheered the show, but did not move back.
Ivo tried again, calling a blast of wind that funneled down into the square and whipped the flags on the perimeter wall, but he could not maintain the gust with runes in the air, and the crowd wanted more.
The king bounded up onto the platform beside Ghisla, vying for the attention he had lost.
“This is the last day of the Tournament of the King. Today we will battle in the melee, and tonight we will feast,” he yelled. “Go. And prepare.”
The people shifted and some turned to go, but Benjie of Berne would not relent.
“The daughter has not been punished,” he yelled, insistent. “Bilge of Berne—my clansman—was skewered and hung from these gates for daring to touch her. Yet she does not suffer a single mark for her sins.”
Master Ivo shoved his way forward and took her hands in his, streaking them with his blood.
“She has been marked for the temple . . . with my blood. Now be done with this madness, Benjie of Berne.”
“It is her blood that should be spilt, Highest Keeper. Not yours,” Benjie shot back, and the dissent began again.
“She is a daughter of Saylok,” the king answered, raising his voice for dramatic effect. “And she will bear that mark . . . to remind her who she is . . . and who she represents.”
The king pulled the chain with the star of Saylok from around his neck and dangled it high, letting the flames of the Hearth of Kings lick at it. Slowly he lowered it, so the flame and the golden spires of the star seemed one. The sun had just risen above the temple, and the gold of the amulet caught its rays and reflected them back. The murmuring in the crowd turned to awe and marveling. The heavy gold amulet had been passed down from one king of Saylok to the next, and Ghisla had never seen Banruud without it. He kept the amulet dangling in the fire until the chain in his hand grew too hot to hold. He set the amulet on the ledge of stone and reached for Ghisla’s hand. She jerked it away.