Bayr jerked as though he’d been lanced.
The king laughed and threw his feet up on the table, his teeth flashing and his hands folded over his flat stomach. His casual pose contradicted his black glower.
“Surely you knew. Surely your beloved keeper, Dagmar, told you who you are? I thought you slow but not entirely ignorant.”
Bayr stood in horrified disbelief.
“You are my son, Bayr. You are Alba’s brother.” He lifted his hands, palms up, as though bestowing a gift, and then he shrugged, letting them fall.
“I am not,” Bayr asserted, his tongue so heavy he could not stammer. The heaviness spread, numbing his lips and his neck, his shoulders and his chest, closing his veins and hardening his blood.
“Oh, but you are. You are of the Clan of the Bear. Named for me, your father. Desdemona was a passionate wench . . . and so dramatic. Even in death, I’m sure.”
Dred howled in fury, and Dakin threw himself in front of him, wrapping his arms around the incensed warrior, saving him from taking vengeance upon the man who could have him put to death. The king’s guard leaped forward, protecting the king and dragging Dakin and a thrashing Dred from the chamber.
“You will leave the mount, Temple Boy,” Banruud ordered. “And take the old man. If you want to live—if you want him to live—you won’t return.”
Bayr could not feel his legs. He could not feel his hands or his heartbeat. He felt nothing at all. No sensation. No sadness. No breath. No being.
The king’s guard circled around him, swords drawn but giving him wide berth. No one dared engage him. They’d all heard the tales. They’d all seen proof of his power. Yet he stood, arms at his sides, like he’d been carved from stone. Then, slowly, his hands steady, he drew a small blade from the belt at his waist. A member of the king’s guard yelled out in warning, but Bayr ignored him. He ignored them all.
Grasping his braid in his left hand, he drew his knife through the thick plait with a slash of his right. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed his severed braid at the king’s feet. Then he turned and walked from the room, his blade still in his fist, the king’s guard clinging to their swords, uncertain what had just occurred.
27
Bayr’s hair fell in his eyes and curled around his sweat-slicked face, and he swept it from his skin, impatient. He would take it all off, like the keepers, so nothing remained to remind him. Darkness had fallen as he’d cut through the Temple Wood, racing his horror and his hate. He’d been traveling for miles, unwilling to stop, for in stopping he would have to face himself.
He’d walked from the palace out into the courtyard, across the temple grounds and out the east gate of the mount. He’d kept on walking, his eyes forward, his soul stripped, his mind emptied. He’d never wanted to die before. Not in his loneliest hours or on his worst days. But in this moment he wanted nothing more. If his men had seen him—if anyone had noticed at all—they’d not tried to stop him. He’d been walking for hours, his sword slapping at his thighs.
He followed the stream that trickled down from the temple mount and sliced through the Temple Wood. It continued toward Dolphys, eventually feeding into the Mogda River that spilled into the sea. Eventually he knelt beside it, his thirst penetrating the fog in his head and the hole in his chest.
Dagmar had known. Dred had known. Bayr was certain of it. Had they all known? Had they all watched him with pitying eyes, keeping their secrets as he stuttered through his life, blind and trusting? Had they sent him from the mount to save him or to be rid of him?
He’d never understood Banruud’s hatred. He didn’t understand it now. Had he not wanted sons? Queen Alannah had died trying to give him one while Bayr grew beneath his nose. He had not wanted Bayr, that much was certain.
But Alba wanted him. Alba loved him. Alba needed him.
Her name, surfacing through the tangle of his thoughts, had him groaning aloud and collapsing into the grass beside the stream, covering his face in his hands and fisting his hands in his hair.
She would be sent to the Northlands. She would be sacrificed on the altar of Saylok, and no one would speak for her. No one could. The clans would celebrate her sacrifice, throwing flowers at her feet, but they would wave her off, bride of Gudrun and daughter of Saylok, soon to be queen of the North.
He would go with her. He would kill the North King and bring her back.
And death would follow them home.
Bayr bellowed in hopeless fury. It would start a war. His love for Alba would start a war, and Bayr would be an army of one. He would not have the support of the clans or the blessing of the king. If Dolphys stood with him, her citizens would fall beneath the sword, and their deaths would be on his head. If the keepers came to his defense they would be hewn down like the grain in the fields, the runes lost, the daughters scattered.
There would be no Saylok when the battle ended. There would be no temple and no clans. And Alba would still be his sister.
The warriors of Dolphys came to the temple not long after sundown, in search of their chieftain. Dagmar had slipped away to pray, and Ivo could only listen to the men with an ever-increasing sense of doom, the keepers gathered around him, Ghost and the Daughters of Freya wan and watchful as the warriors relayed their account of the king’s council.
“He knows, Master Ivo. The Dolphys knows the truth, and I fear it has broken him,” Dred confessed, his face streaked with worry and wear. The Dolphynians around him shifted in distress, and Ivo did not have to ask of what truth Dred spoke. Their faces held traces of their own shock and disbelief, as if they too had been seared by the knowledge and the mistreatment of their chieftain.
“The king has banished him,” Dakin said, grim. “But he is the Dolphys, and our allegiance is to him first. We will not let this stand.”
“We need to find him, Master Ivo,” Dred begged.
The keepers nodded in agreement, gazes solemn, and Ivo relented, withdrawing his dagger from his robe. He drew a seeker rune, mumbling Bayr’s name as he traced the lines of his palms in blood and cupped them over his eyes, waiting for the web of worlds to find the lost. Within seconds, he located Bayr in the darkness, his head bowed, his back bent as though he were being crushed by the universe around him. Ivo clutched his chest and clawed at his throat, afraid of being pulled too deep.
Dred cursed in trepidation and someone cried out, startled by Ivo’s violent reaction. The Highest Keeper straightened his hands and steadied himself before covering his eyes once more, this time watching from farther off until his blood dried and his vision cleared.
“There are trees all around him and water nearby. But it is dark, and I cannot see beyond that.” Ivo paused, gathering his thoughts. He’d felt Bayr’s confusion and anguish, and he did his best to interpret it. “He is not broken, Dred of Dolphys. But his suffering is great. He is . . . undecided . . . about how to go on.”
Dred nodded, despondent, and Dakin took his arm as if to gird him up. They would all need girding before the night was through. Ivo could feel the icy breath of the Norns kissing his neck and flowing in his veins.
“What should we do, Highest Keeper?” Dakin asked.
“Wait for him at the base of the mount near the Temple Wood,” Ivo answered. “He will not go far. His heart is here. His . . . fate . . . is here too.”