“You could have let Banruud die today,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “It was instinct more than . . . anything. And his death . . . today . . . was not part of the plan.”
“What plan? Do you have any allegiance to the North King?” she cried.
“No. I care naught for the North King or his ambitions. I care only that it all . . . ends.”
“Then why? Why have you done this?”
“Done what, Ghisla?” He had not done any of the things he had dreamed of, and suddenly his weariness was so deep he could barely stand. An angry horde of screeching giants could descend upon the clearing and he wouldn’t hear them coming.
“You have aligned yourself with him. Gudrun is not a good man. Banruud is . . . not a good man.” It was too tepid a criticism, but Hod agreed.
“No. They are not good men.”
“Are you still a good man, Hod?” she whispered, almost begging him to reassure her. But he couldn’t.
“I have tried to be, but I don’t always know what is right. Sometimes . . . there is only survival.”
“And there is truth. The truth is right. The truth is good. That is what Master Ivo told me once, and that is what you must give me now.”
“The only truth I know is you, Ghisla. I have spent these last years trying to get back to you.”
She wanted to believe him. He could hear it in her sob and smell it on her skin. But she was afraid too. She was afraid of him. She was afraid for the future. And she was afraid that, in the end, there was nothing anyone could do to save them.
“Rest now, Ghisla of Tonlis,” he said. “Go back to your tent. There is nothing that must be decided tonight. And I can’t think when you are near.”
“I blind you,” she said sadly, the echoes of Arwin and a long-ago clearing all around them.
“Yes. And yet . . . you are the only one who makes me see.”
She turned away then, but she paused after a few steps.
“You will not leave?” she asked.
“I will not leave. I’ve come too far to turn back now.”
23
ROOMS
They broke camp at daybreak, uneasy by their diminished numbers and obvious vulnerability to attack. The king kept Hod at the front of the caravan, insisting he ride in the wagon of provisions and listen for threats. Ghisla and Alba shared the saddle on a huge, battle-tested charger who’d lost his rider in the skirmish the day before, but more than their mode of transport had changed; they were guarded on all sides by men who now viewed Hod with wide eyes and spoke of him with hushed praise.
He did not get closer to the women than his assigned duties required and maintained a careful posture of cold reserve when he guarded their privacies. He did not speak to Ghisla or even incline his head in her direction throughout the arduous day of travel, and she resolved to do the same, if only to protect him. But his words of the night before ricocheted continually in her head, and tenderness and terror warred in her chest.
By the time the bugles sounded from the walls and the final ascent to the mount began, she was weak with strain and trembling with fatigue, and Alba was drooping in her arms. The caravan rumbled into the cobbled courtyard, the king’s guard shouting for porters and grooms, and she and Alba were assisted from the saddle, their legs buckling and their backs bent. She saw Hod then, near the castle steps, but he followed at the king’s heels, already consigned to duty.
She did not see him for several days, and she did not dare inquire after him, but word of the attack on the road from Berne had begun to spread among the king’s men and the residents of Temple Hill, and Hod’s notoriety seemed to grow with each retelling. He was the new Temple Boy, his feats rivaling those in the old stories of Bayr, who was still a legend on the mount. The only difference was one of note: King Banruud had hated Bayr, and he seemed quite attached to Hod.
Ghisla was summoned to the king’s chamber to ease his aching head three days after their return from Berne and was made to endure an hour in his arms with Hod standing watch outside his door. Banruud’s thoughts were tangled, and he buried his face in her neck like he was drowning, but from the flickering impressions she saw as she sang, he was reassured by Hod’s presence. He felt . . . safe.
She did not.
She was unmoored. She was back in the North Sea, bobbing between two lives, begging for heaven, and knowing there was none.
When she left Banruud’s chamber, Hod stood in the shadows a mere ten feet from the door, but she called for the sentry at the top of the stairs and turned away like she didn’t see him there. Banruud’s sticky breath clung to her throat, and she didn’t want Hod to smell him on her skin.
The following morning, Master Ivo requested her presence in the sanctum.
“The Blind Hod has returned,” he said without preamble, his hands wrapped around the arms of his chair. His papery skin and black eyes absorbed the shadows that the flickering candles did little to alleviate. She had oft wondered how he could endure the gloom and had come to realize he welcomed it. The darkness hid his uncertainties.
“Yes. He has. He is in the employ of the king.” Her voice was steady. She’d prepared herself for this interrogation.
“And how did that come to be?” Ivo pressed.
“You ask me, Master?” she responded, dumbfounded. “I am not privy to the inner workings of the castle or the king.”
“You did not expect him?”
“I did not expect him.”
He pondered this for a moment, seeming to forget she was even present. The skies rumbled, and rain began to spatter against the temple walls. The smell of wet stones and dry earth seeped into the space, and the gloom around them intensified.
“There is a storm coming,” he remarked.
“The storm is here,” she answered. It was not meant to be provocative, but he peered at her, stooped and suspicious, and the truth of her statement resonated in her chest. The storm had arrived, and she almost . . . welcomed it.
“I do not know what to make of it,” he confessed, and for the first time in her recollection, he seemed scared and unsure.
“The storm, Master?”
“The blind man,” he snapped.
“Mayhaps . . . there is nothing to make of it. Mayhaps it has nothing to do with you, or the gods, or the runes, or the king.” She spoke evenly, doing her best to remain circumspect.
“Do you know why Loki chose the blind god to do his bidding?” Master Ivo asked, scowling at her.
She waited, knowing he would remind her. Resentment bubbled in her chest. Hod was not the blind god. He was a man. And Master Ivo could be a fool.
“Loki realized that the fates could not see him,” Ivo muttered. “And what they could not see . . . they would not prevent.”
She remembered the story as Hod had told it so many years ago. He’d been frying fish, preparing dinner, sharing the simple tale of the blind god for whom he had been named. We can only see what can be seen.
“I cannot see him either,” Master Ivo confessed. The revelation startled her.
“You cannot see . . . Hod?”
“The runes reveal many things, but not all. Not nearly all.” He spread his hands, and uncurled his talon-like fingers, signaling he knew nothing. “He is a mystery to me. An unknown quantity. And I did not anticipate his return.”