At the bottom of the hill, Hod stopped and listened, trying to find his brother in the miasma of life that was the wood.
He could not hear him.
But his scent lingered, the smell of incense and cedar, as if the trees in Dolphys and the temple sanctum had converged in him. Both scents bled from his skin with his despair. It created a tang not so different from that of a wounded animal careening through the brush.
Hod entered the wood and picked his way along, reassuring himself that Bayr would stop, and when he did, Hod would find him. It might take all night, but he would find him. And when he did, he would tell him everything.
It was a comfort to know he’d left the hill. Hod could only pray Ghisla and the keepers would soon do the same.
Princess Alba was missing.
No one was allowed in the temple, and no one was allowed out.
Minutes after Ghisla had returned, the king had ordered the doors barred.
King Banruud now paced from room to room, checking the progress of his men, demanding they look again when their efforts yielded nothing. When they came up empty handed after an hour, he returned to the sanctum, his men trailing behind him, their tension echoing his.
“Where is she, Ivo?” Banruud clipped, towering over the weary Highest Keeper.
Master Ivo stared at the king balefully. “Where is who, Majesty?”
“My daughter,” Banruud ground out.
“But Majesty . . . you have no daughter,” Ivo murmured. “Only a son. And he has been sent away.”
Banruud’s countenance darkened, and his gaze swung to the women gathered at the rear of the room. Over the last years, the temple had become a sanctuary for an assortment of females who had nowhere else to go. Twenty-eight had been added to their numbers.
The king walked toward them, pushing them apart as though Alba hid among them. He then searched the keepers the same way. Ghisla and her sisters were next. Banruud glowered at her last and sniffed the air around her like he could smell Hod on her skin.
Mayhaps he could.
His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared, but he turned away, and walked back toward the keepers.
“Remove your robes,” the king ordered. The keepers gaped and shrank from him. “All of you, remove your robes,” he insisted again, yanking their hoods from their heads, their gleaming pates vulnerable in the orange glow of the guards’ torches.
Banruud wanted to intimidate them, to demoralize them, and he was succeeding.
Ghisla watched the old men obey—everyone but the Highest Keeper. They opened their robes without argument and dropped them on the sanctum floor. They all stood in their simple white sheaths; Dagmar was not among them. Nor was Ghost. Ghisla took heart that they were gone. She had little doubt the king was searching for Ghost too, and she would be struck down if he found her.
“Separate the keepers!” the king instructed his men, and they immediately began spreading the disrobed keepers from one end of the sanctum to the other. Then he demanded the same to be done with the women.
As Banruud searched, his anger grew, and he turned back to the Highest Keeper once more, his boots echoing across the stone floor like a spike being nailed home.
“Where is she?” Banruud snapped, his face pressed up to Ivo’s, spittle flying in the Highest Keeper’s face.
“Who, King Banruud? Who is it you seek?” Ivo asked, his voice barely audible and perfectly mild.
“The white woman. The wraith. Where is she?” Banruud hissed.
“Ah. The white woman. You have sought her for some time. Mayhaps she has taken your daughter. Or . . . mayhaps . . . you . . . have taken . . . hers.”
Banruud’s nostrils flared and something flickered in his eyes, and Ghisla moaned. The Highest Keeper had confirmed the one thing the king feared most. Ivo knew what the king had done, and that could not stand.
The king’s hand shot out, plunging and retreating, and Ivo stilled even as Ghisla’s scream rent the air. The king stepped back and watched Ivo crumple, folding into himself without so much as a grunt.
“We’re done here,” the king called to his guard. “Keep men at the doors. No one goes in or out until the princess is found.”
The rattle of stone against stone indicated a reentry from the tunnels, and Keeper Amos, the senior-most member of all the keepers, rose from the throng surrounding Master Ivo’s body and walked toward the dais. Ghisla noticed numbly that his feet were coated in Ivo’s blood.
When Dagmar and Ghost stepped out of the opening and into the sanctum, they were met with a room crowded with kneeling keepers and quiet condemnation.
“The king has killed the Highest Keeper. His men stand at every door,” Keeper Amos cried, his voice ringing with accusation.
Dagmar and Ghost stared back, brows furrowed in disbelief, unable to make sense of the sight before them and process the keeper’s unfathomable claim.
“Master Ivo is dead,” Juliah said, rising. Her face was grim, but her voice was strong. In the orange glow of the flickering light, she was far fiercer than any keeper in the room. Ghisla rose beside her.
Ghost cried out and ran toward the circle of mourners, stepping over and between them until she halted, her hands clutching her robes, her eyes on the ground. Dagmar followed more slowly.
Master Ivo’s black robes were soaked in blood, making them shine in the candlelight. In death he was not powerful; he was not the Highest Keeper. He was an old man, an abandoned shell, his skin spotted with age, his features flaccid, the black stain from his lips smeared across his papery cheeks.
Dagmar crouched beside him and lifted him from the floor as if he were no more substantial than a child, and every bit as dear. Then he carried him to the altar. Ghisla, Ghost, the daughters, and the keepers followed in an impromptu processional.
Ghost rushed to help straighten his limbs and smooth his robes as Dagmar laid him down and presented him to the gods. His sleeve caught on Dagmar’s front clasp, and Ivo’s thin white forearm was revealed.
“There are runes on his arm,” Ghost gasped, pushing back the voluminous folds. “He has carved them here, above his wrist.”
Ghisla gaped at the bloody whorls and lines.
“I don’t know these runes,” Ghost murmured.
Ghisla knew them. One was the soul rune, used to connect one spirit to another. It was the same rune Hod had carved into her hand. Ivo had been reaching out to someone in the final minutes of his life. The other rune—man, woman, and child separated by a serpent—was Desdemona’s. She’d seen it too, in Dagmar’s thoughts, a lifetime ago.
“Someone tell me what happened here,” Dagmar demanded, and his voice shook. Amos, always the most outspoken among the keepers, proceeded to describe the events that had unfolded.
By the time Amos had finished his account, Dagmar had sunk to Ivo’s chair on the dais and the daughters and the keepers had gathered around him, as stricken and lost as he. But Ghost remained beside the altar, her white head bowed, holding Ivo’s gnarled hand. The hem of her purple robe was black with Ivo’s blood; a long crimson streak stretched from the altar where she now stood to the rear of the sanctum where he’d lain, marking her path.
“Who will come to our aid?” Dalys asked, her voice small.
“We must save ourselves,” Ghisla implored.
“But . . . even Bayr has forsaken us,” Keeper Bjorn complained, and Ghost raised her head, her eyes meeting Dagmar’s across the altar.