“Is it your song? Is that how you talk to him?” he asked, grave. She didn’t ask to whom he referred. She knew.
“I don’t know. He does not . . . talk to me anymore.”
“You do not know . . . or you do not want to tell me?”
“I do not know,” she insisted.
“I want to believe you, but you have fooled me before.”
She considered her secret for a moment; it seemed pointless to protect it now.
“Before I left Leok, he carved a rune on my hand. A soul rune. It matched the rune on his. When I sang he could hear me,” she said quietly.
She had shocked the Highest Keeper, and his mouth fell open, giving him the look of a baby bird awaiting a worm. “He used a soul rune?”
“Yes.”
“That is forbidden. It is . . . forbidden. How . . . how did he . . . That is forbidden!” Ivo stammered. He pounded his staff, but his pronouncement mattered little now.
“Show me,” he hissed.
She stepped toward his throne and uncurled her scarred fingers, letting him study her palm. The star-shaped imprint of the king’s amulet made him wince, but it didn’t hurt anymore. It just made her angry.
“I can’t show you. It is gone. I have only this ugly star, and my dearest friend is gone.”
“You cannot trust him.” He banged his staff against the stones once more.
“But I do,” she said. “And I miss him terribly.”
To admit it loosened something in her chest, and the pang of release was sharp . . . but sweet.
Ivo steepled his hands and closed his eyes, and for a moment she thought she was being dismissed.
“Do you know the story of Hod?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“He was a son of Odin. A brother of Baldr the Beloved. And he was blind.”
“Yes. What else?”
“Loki tricked him into slaying Baldr.”
“It is believed that he was tricked into killing his brother. But I’m not certain that is so. Hod knew what he was doing.”
Ghisla waited for him to expound. Master Ivo always spoke slowly, as if giving his pupils a chance to formulate their own theories in the space he provided. But she was too rattled to do anything but wait.
With a flick of his nail, Ivo drew a bead of blood on the pad of his finger. “Give me your hand, Daughter.”
She extended it, palm down, and Ivo began to paint on her skin.
“It is not enough to know the shape of a rune, Daughter. You must know how it is drawn, and you must not deviate from that order. The power comes not just from the hand that wields it, but from following the rules of each rune with exactness. The rune of the blind god is formed from top to bottom, left to right.”
Ivo drew two half circles, back to back, on the back of her hand. One circle opened to the left and one opened to the right. An arrow bisected the first crescent, and its shaft penetrated the second through the back, the tip extending like it had skewered them both.
“That is the rune of Hod.”
She raised her eyes to the Highest Keeper. She wanted to clutch his hand and sing so she could see his thoughts. He spoke in riddles and innuendo, and she didn’t dare respond, even to admit she knew it well.
“Tell me what you see when you look at it,” Ivo insisted, directing her eyes back to the figure he’d drawn in blood.
She stared, trying to gather her thoughts and tamp down her trepidation. She could not help but remember the conversation she’d had with Hod about this very rune.
“The partial circles look like two bodies,” she ventured. “Two bodies, bowed in pain . . . back to back . . . pierced through by the same arrow.”
“Yes,” he breathed. He drew another rune. Again two crescents, back to back, but this time one sat atop the other. One crescent was a mount, the other a valley, and the arrow that connected them was vertical, the rounded tip creating a head, the shaft, a body.
“What do you see now?” Ivo pressed.
“It looks like a spider with only four legs . . . or mayhaps a man, his arms raised, his stance wide.”
“Yes. That is Baldr’s rune. The god of war.”
“Baldr is the god of war?” she asked, frowning in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“But . . . he was beloved.”
“He was both.”
That made little sense to her.
“Tell me what you see now, Daughter.”
The Highest Keeper pushed her hand back toward her chest, bending her arm at the elbow, changing the angle with which she gazed down at the two runes he’d drawn on her skin. And she saw what he intended her to see.
“The runes are the same,” she said. “One is just turned on its side.”
“Yes. The same rune for both gods. For both brothers. One is upright, one is toppled. They appear different, and they tell different stories. But it is the very same rune.”
“Why are you telling me this, Master Ivo?”
“So you will understand my . . . fear. For you and for the temple. For Saylok. I cannot ignore the signs. Especially when there are many. Especially when the cave keeper is convinced Hod is the son of Banruud.”
It was the one thing she hadn’t been certain he knew. Ivo was not present in the square when Arwin had pled with the king in Hod’s behalf.
“You said yourself . . . he is addled,” she whispered. She could not believe it was true. Hod would have told her. Hod would have said. She would have seen it.
“I did not say it was true. I did not say I believed it.” He frowned and clacked his nails together, ten tiny blades engaged in battle.
Desdemona had proclaimed Bayr to be Banruud’s only son. But that was not something Ghisla was supposed to know, and it was not something Ivo seemed willing to divulge. She wondered if he and Dagmar had discussed Arwin’s ramblings. She thought not. Instead they stewed, interpreting signs and keeping their secrets. She was weary of it all.
“Hod is not a god. He is just a man,” she said. “And he is gone.”
“And you mourn him.”
“I mourn many things.”
He glowered at her, but his chin trembled, like he couldn’t decide whether to scold her or sympathize with her.
“I will draw a rune to help you forget him.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to forget him.”
He sighed and threw up his hands.
“I am afraid for him. I have not known how he fares since that day. And he will not understand why I have not called out to him.” She turned her hand again so he could see her awful scar.
“It is better this way, Daughter,” he warned.
“Better for whom, Master?”
“Better for Saylok!”
“I want only to know that he is well. And then . . . I will do my best to forget him.” For now. “Can you help me, Highest Keeper?”
He grumbled and sighed again.
“Sit down and close your eyes,” he ordered. “And hold out your hands.”
She obeyed, sensing he was going to help her.
She heard him rise from his throne, and a moment later felt the wet of his blood against the flesh of her palms. He was drawing runes and he did not want her to see.
“Press the runes to your eyes, Daughter,” he instructed. “Then ask the Norns to show you what—or who—you seek. Each rune drawn in blood will only work once—if it works at all. The fates decide.”