The people fell silent.
“Hold out your hand, daughter,” Banruud insisted.
“I will not.”
“Hold out your hand, or I will press this amulet into your brow,” he said, his voice low but his eyes burning. “They will have their justice one way or another.”
Ghisla held out her hands. The king grasped her right wrist and turned her palm up. The lines of her rune were puckered white stripes amid her pink flesh, but if he saw her scars, it did not deter him. Using the chain, he lowered his amulet onto her palm and pressed her fingers closed around it.
She tried to scream, but images flashed behind her eyes, shifting and shivering at the speed of light, as if she held the hand of the god Saylok himself. Five hundred years of kings, embedded in the gold, spoke to the rune on her palm. And then pain raised its white-hot head, obscuring every color, every line, and she saw nothing but fire.
The king released her fingers and yanked the chain away, his amulet bounding from her burnt flesh. He raised her wrist aloft, showing the star seared on her palm to his bloodthirsty citizens. Her vision swam and her knees buckled, and for a moment she dangled from his grasp, just like Arwin. Just like the amulet.
“There it is. There’s your mark. Now let the games . . . begin,” Banruud said, and he released her into Lothgar’s arms.
17
BLOWS
Master Ivo drew runes to ease Ghisla’s pain and promote healing, but it was not the burn on her hand that made her frantic. Her palm was a deep, weeping wound, but there were other wounds he could do nothing about.
He did not seek explanation for her absence; it was as if he already knew everything. When Ghisla asked if he would look after the keeper Arwin’s welfare, he had simply nodded and promised he would. But his hands trembled when he drew the runes, and though the lines to see the keepers grew outside the temple, he barred anyone from entry and set guards at every door.
“There will be no more blessings or favors today. The keepers and the daughters will remain in the temple until the tournament has ended and the mount has emptied.”
It was Ghost and the temple daughters who pled for explanations. Elayne had discovered her gone and alerted the entire temple. They held their questions as her wound was attended to, Ghost washing her feet and face and Bashti brushing her hair. But when she climbed the stairs, donned a clean nightdress, and climbed into her bed, they all followed.
“Who took you, Liis?” Dalys asked, running a small hand over her brow.
“Did you run away?” Juliah asked.
“I have run away before—but I always come back,” Bashti confessed.
“It is not running away if you never leave the mount, Bashti,” Juliah snapped.
“Was it the blind archer, Liis? I saw him in the square. You looked as though you would faint when you saw him the first day of the tournament,” Elayne said softly.
Elayne was far too perceptive, and her observation made Ghisla’s stomach churn and her pulse race. If she had noticed, others might have noticed too. Her fear for Hod grew, and it was all she could do to simply breathe.
“A blind archer?” Juliah gasped. “Is he any good? Why have I not heard of him?”
“He sought supplication in the temple. With his teacher,” Ghost said, studying Ghisla with her rain-soaked gaze. “He was sent away.”
“He is an archer . . . and he is blind?” Juliah stammered. “And he was sent away? Why? Could we not have at least seen him shoot?”
“Juliah,” Elayne sighed. “This is not about archery.”
“He was sent away because there are no male supplicants being taken into the temple. This must remain a sanctuary for daughters. Ivo says more will be coming,” Ghost murmured.
“Where did you go, Liis?” Elayne asked.
“I wanted to be alone,” Ghisla whispered. She rolled over in her bed and closed her eyes.
Her sisters grew quiet, but they did not leave, and when she woke in the night, her hand throbbing in agony, it was Ghost who drew the runes to soothe, and Bashti who sang them all Songr lullabies.
The king sent for her three nights later, but Master Ivo turned his sentry away. She could hear the uproar echoing through the corridors.
“She is unwell,” Ivo said.
The sentry came back, frantic, telling the Highest Keeper the king was threatening to send a hundred men to retrieve the girl if she was not immediately dispatched.
“He is in terrible pain, Highest Keeper. Since the tournament. His head is what ails him.”
“She is in terrible pain. Tell the king her hand is what ails her.”
Ghisla rose from her bed and dressed. It would serve no purpose to refuse him. He would only cause misery to those who could not help him.
“Do not go, Liis,” Juliah said from the darkness.
“He is a bad man,” Dalys whispered.
Ghisla said nothing. She simply pulled on her purple robe and left the room.
“Why does she do it?” she heard Bashti wail as she started down the corridor.
“Because she loves us,” Juliah answered.
Ghisla drew up short for a moment, surprised. Juliah always acted as though she didn’t understand Ghisla at all. She turned back to the room, back to her four sisters who deserved more than her silence.
They stared up at her, surprised by her return. Their eyes were bruised with worry and their hair—each hue and texture so different—hung around their shoulders like the new robes they’d been so excited to wear. They had so little to look forward to, and because of her, they’d missed out on the melee and the tournament feast, the one day of events they actually got to attend.
“I do . . . love you,” she said. Then she turned and descended the stairs to attend to a king she did not love at all.
Hod waited at the fork, where the roads to Leok and Adyar diverged, all day and late into the evening, listening to the rattle of carts and the clopping of hooves as the mount emptied and clansmen and villagers headed for home.
Some chattered and some stumbled, too drunk to do anything but put one foot in front of the other. He listened to their tired conversations and kept his ears attuned for Arwin. He feared he would have to return to the mount and find him, despite Dagmar’s threat.
The warriors from Adyar had won the melee—the young chieftain’s first victory—and the citizens of Adyar were the last to leave and the most inebriated. A group of seven—six men and a woman—talked loudly all the way down the hill and past the spot where he waited, tucked from view.
“It’s about time he won. He’s been chieftain since he was seventeen.”
“Seventeen cheers for Aidan of Adyar!”
“I had seventeen drinks for Adyar,” a farmer belched, and the stench caught the wind, making Hod wince in his spot beneath a tree. He guessed the man had also partaken in pickled pig and lamb chops at the feast.
“Feels like seventeen blows to my head,” another grumbled. “You should have tied me down and lashed me for drinking those last five pints.”
“I thought we’d see a lashing,” the woman mourned. “It’s not a tournament without a good lashing.”
“Or a public hanging. Last year we saw a dozen.”
“The king and the Highest Keeper almost came to blows.”