“Aye, Dolphys,” Dakin reassured. “I’ll find you a woman like my Magda.”
Bayr snorted and Dakin laughed, but it was not the first time his men or his grandfather had made such an offer or insinuation. His clan wanted him to take a bride.
“He is seeking an alliance,” Ghost murmured, keeping her pace steady, trying not to let her terror show. The king had been gone for a month, usually a welcome event, but he was in the Northlands and King Gudrun wanted a bride.
“He has been seeking alliances for a decade,” Alba said, tossing her hand like the matter was of no importance, but her brow furrowed in unease. “I am paraded in front of the chieftains, turned on the spit like a plucked chicken, dangled like a bundle of grapes over their gaping lips, yet Banruud never makes any promises.”
“You’re making me hungry,” Ghost quipped, her voice as mild and dry as a summer day. Alba laughed, just as Ghost had intended. Her daughter did not laugh enough.
They walked the long road from the wide north gate down to the village below, a dozen members of the palace guard trailing behind them. They’d learned to converse with their voices pitched low, their heads bowed, their shoulders together, though Alba had long passed Ghost in height. She was tall and well formed, with steady eyes and a stubborn chin that Ghost recognized as her own.
It was not an official royal visit—Ghost never accompanied Alba on those. The princess waved to the children who came running as they neared the base of the mount, but she and Ghost turned and headed back up the hill without entering the village, though two of the warriors distributed drops of honey candy to the children, per Alba’s instructions. It was one of Alba’s duties to be seen and to make her presence felt. Banruud believed it kept the people content. The king had taken her on visits to the clan lands—every clan save Dolphys—for the same reason.
Ghost had lived on the mount for ten years. In the beginning she’d cowered in the shadows, terrified that one of the king’s minions would see her pale face and tell the king of her presence. She wore the purple hooded robe of a keeper, the sleeves cut too long to better protect the skin of her hands. Her head was always covered, her face always shadowed, and little by little, year after year, she’d begun to believe the king had forgotten her. She’d grown bolder, become more visible, and now that there were other women on the mount—refugees and asylum seekers who had taken shelter among the keepers—it was assumed she was simply one of them, and since few people outside the temple saw her paleness, no one questioned it.
“I believe my father will use my presence as long as he is able,” Alba reasoned, resuming their conversation. “I am of far more use to him as Princess Alba than Queen of the Hinterlands or part of King Kembah’s court.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought.
Ghost tended to agree, but conditions were worsening. In the last year, no daughters had come to the temple walls seeking sanctuary. Dagmar feared it was because the journey was too fraught with dangers . . . or worse, there were no daughters left to make it.
“But if an arrangement is made . . . and I wed . . . will you come with me, Ghost?” Alba asked softly.
Ghost halted, stunned, and raised her eyes to her daughter’s troubled face.
“You want me to come with you?” she whispered.
“You have never left me,” Alba said, and Ghost could not hold her gaze.
“I will follow you . . . wherever you go,” Ghost reassured her, willing the tears not to rise and her lips not to tremble. For a moment, Alba clung to her arm as though she’d been afraid to ask, afraid to cause Ghost the discomfort of having to refuse her. Ghost would never refuse her.
“You would leave Dagmar?” Alba asked, awe tingeing her tone.
“He is not m-mine to abandon,” Ghost stammered, heat climbing her chest and collecting in her cheeks. The day was warm, but suddenly she was sweltering.
“You love him. He loves you,” Alba insisted.
“He doesn’t,” Ghost argued.
“Yes, Ghost. He does. It is as clear as the skies.”
Ghost tilted her head up to assess the cloud cover, and Alba crowed.
“What do you know about these things?” Ghost grumbled, embarrassed.
“Only what I see,” Alba replied. “You should make a rune to braid his fate to yours. Two souls together, throughout all eternity.”
“Do you know such a rune, Alba?” Ghost giggled.
“No.” Alba grinned, though it faded so quickly, Ghost wondered if she lied.
“Runes are chaos, Alba, not the cure,” she warned. Alba was not a keeper, and her knowledge was a constant source of concern to Ivo. “Dagmar says no rune can take away a man’s will or change his heart.”
“And what about a rune to make a man return?” Alba whispered.
“Bayr?” Ghost asked. Alba never spoke of him anymore and changed the subject when Dagmar mentioned his name.
“Bayr,” Alba murmured, wincing. “I don’t want to change him, I just want to see him again. And I’ve given up hope that it will ever happen.”
“The tournament is only weeks away.”
“He will not come. He never does.”
“Ivo says . . . he will.” Ghost had not wanted to tell the girl what Ivo had seen, but she couldn’t bear Alba’s sadness a moment longer.
Alba’s legs began to buckle and Ghost girded her up, sliding an arm around her waist. A guard called out to them, but Alba waved him off and resumed her climb, joy infusing her face.
“If Ivo has seen it . . . it must be,” Alba whispered.
Ghost could only nod.
Dagmar had rejoiced at the prediction, and Ivo had patted his cheek with a gnarled hand and demanded preparations be made. But when Dagmar left the sanctum, Ivo had wilted into his throne. He often claimed the decades and the demons had whittled his flesh.
“Death rides on his heels,” he had muttered, raising his black-rimmed gaze to Ghost. “The son returns, but night will follow.”
The winds did not cooperate, gusting up from the gulf and rushing toward the Northlands instead of blowing west toward home. Instead of two days back to Dolphys, it became an interminable week in a village where they were not wanted, waiting for the winds to change. The good news was, by the time they set sail for Dolphys, a few more women had mellowed on the men from Dolphys and Berne and changed their minds about coming with them. Twelve women and twenty children, half of them daughters, would be adopted into each clan.
They arrived home, victorious and relieved, only to find that a tiny village called Sheba, sitting at the border where wolf met bear, had been terrorized in the dead of night by a raiding party the previous week. Bayr, Dred, and six warriors climbed from the bellies of their boats to the long backs of their horses and headed for Sheba without rest or reprieve, a clean change of clothes and a few days’ rations in their saddlebags.
The people of Sheba had fought back, though two men had died and three were injured in its defense. Four women were dragged from their beds only to struggle free when the raiders had to fight off the whole village. Many of the marauders had escaped into the night, but more had died for their mistake. The dead were clothed in the garb of the clanless, simple tunics and hose with no colors to call attention—or blame—to a clan, but a few of Sheba’s farmers were unconvinced.