Dagmar picked his way down the east slope, taking the path he’d taken a thousand times before, fording the stream on slippery stones, his blade in his belt, his eyes on the Temple Wood where once, a lifetime ago, he’d lost his sister and gained a son. The sun had set and the keepers had bidden it farewell with their evening prayers, chanting as one voice, their song spilling over the temple mount, causing the games to cease and the people to halt, their hands tracing the star of Saylok on their brows. It had always been his favorite part of the tournament, walking among the people, welcoming them into the sanctum, drawing runes of life and love upon their palms as he heard their troubles and calmed their fears.
Oddly, he was not afraid. He knew he should be. Saylok was crumbling around them. But Ivo was wrong. He had not failed. Dagmar had failed. He had failed to confess his darkest fears. He had kept a secret that may have condemned a people. And he would keep it again.
He stumbled in the gathering dusk and caught himself, abrading his hand on the stony ground. In a heartbeat he was back in Dolphys, climbing the peaks of Shinway, scampering after his sister and a fat gray rabbit. Desdemona’s palms had bled too. Dagmar made a fist around his weeping hand and continued walking. It was just as well. He would need blood for his rune.
It had been a while since he’d prayed beneath Desdemona’s tree. When Bayr had left the mount a decade before, he’d been unable to face it. It hurt to stand beneath the boughs and remember the child, the boy born to a mother who would mark him, a father who would forsake him, and a world that did not welcome him. For all his strength and humility, for all his goodness and grace, Bayr had never once asked for anything. In that too, Dagmar had failed. Dagmar had kept secrets to protect him, and in keeping secrets, he’d allowed a bitter rune, powered by bitter blood, to shape their lives.
If only he’d known. If only he’d understood. He felt a flash of anger and hurt, mouthing Ghost’s name as his thoughts churned around her beloved face.
“She should have told me,” he whispered aloud, and his own voice mocked him. Ghost had been protecting her child. Just like he had been protecting Bayr. Dagmar had never believed Banruud was Alba’s father, yet he’d never said a word to Ivo. To Ghost. To Bayr. Desdemona had cursed Saylok’s men, and Dagmar had cursed them all by keeping her secret.
Dagmar knelt beneath her tree and pressed his forehead to her stone, just like he’d taught Bayr to do so long ago. The night above the trees was void of color. Black branches, white stars, gray sky. With the tips of his fingers Dagmar found the whorls in the earth marking his sister’s rune.
“I need to understand,” he whispered. “I need to see.” His belly filled with dread, and he swallowed a moan. He did not want to draw the rune. He did not want to see what the Eye might show him. He’d drawn runes for wisdom and runes for sight, but he’d never drawn the Eye again. Not since the day he’d stood in the cave, a child of eleven, silently pleading with the gods for the power of the keepers. It was one thing to see the present, to sharpen the eye, to travel across a distance knowing what one sought. It was something else entirely to be flung into the future and the past, into time and space, to receive what the Eye would reveal without knowing where the journey would lead . . . or end.
He didn’t carve the rune into the earth but used his blood to trace it upon Desdemona’s stone, hoping her death would guide his query, hoping her life would mark the path. His trepidation grew as he formed each line, but he did not stop. He was desperate, and he did not know what else to do.
Just like before, he was plucked into the sky like a root pulled from the earth, from darkness and warmth to cold light. And sound ceased.
He was a bird. He was a moonbeam. He was air and space. He was nothing at all. He sped over the treetops, chasing yesterday . . . or tomorrow . . . he wasn’t certain. The landscape flashed and re-formed, and he knew where he was.
Dolphys. He was in Dolphys. He’d returned to where it all began.
Sound returned, growing like the chatter of an approaching flock of gulls. A child laughed and then another. Daughters. There were daughters. Everywhere there were daughters. Fair and dark, short and tall. Infants and mothers whirling in a May Day dance. His consciousness was swept up in their game, darting between their clasped hands as they whirled around and around.
“The Dolphys,” a little girl shrieked, clapping with glee. “It is the Dolphys. He’s coming.” The daughters ran, racing toward the setting sun. Dagmar tried to shade his eyes, to see within the silhouette of the warrior who walked toward him, but his hand had no shape or substance, and he could not block the light.
“Bayr?” he whispered, overjoyed. There were daughters, and Bayr was alive and well in Dolphys, still the chieftain of his people. Dagmar wished to be near him and suddenly he was.
But the man they called the Dolphys was not Bayr. His hair was full of fire, and he swooped the smallest girl into his arms, laughing up at her as he made her fly.
Dagmar flew with her, but when she fell back into her chieftain’s arms, Dagmar continued upward, tumbling back across the distance to the center of Saylok, but he did not flutter back to the earth. He stayed in the skies, hovering above the temple mount, watching as night became day and day became night.
The temple crumbled and rose again, stone by stone, season after season, and from his vantage, Dagmar could not discern whether he witnessed what was or what would be.
Suddenly, he sat on the hillside watching the sheep, Ghost at his side. The sun warmed her white cheeks and turned her hair to drifted snow, untouched and unadorned. Dagmar’s heart swelled and his eyes filled. He had spent seventeen years sitting beside her, in some way or another, and he’d never admitted he loved her.
Banruud would destroy her like he’d destroyed Desdemona.
Dagmar leaned forward, desperate to save her, and he kissed her mouth. It was sweet and pink, the only mouth he’d ever wanted to kiss, the only woman he’d ever longed to touch. Ghost caressed his face and opened her rain-colored eyes.
“I’ve been waiting so long,” she said, but the voice he heard was not hers, and the kiss was no longer theirs.
“I’ve been waiting so long,” Alba cried, and the sound of water rushed around him and through him, tumbling over falls that never ended. The falls became unbound tresses streaming past naked limbs and moonlit stone. Bayr and Alba lay intertwined, unaware of the world around them.
“There is no Alba without Bayr. There never has been. There never will be,” Alba said. Bayr moved over her, a supplicant and a savior, kissing her with fervent lips and careful hands.
“Alba,” Bayr sighed, and Dagmar wanted to look away, to close his eyes on the fated lovers, but he had no head to turn or lids to lower, and his spirit shuddered with the need to escape.
“There is no Alba without Bayr,” Ghost pled, the sound echoing like a song. No Alba without Bayr, no Alba without Bayr, no Alba without Bayr.
No Bayr without Alba.
Then Alba was weeping, bent over Bayr’s motionless form. Bayr was drenched in blood, Desdemona’s rune encircling him in endless ripples. Dagmar’s grief became a gong that split the sky and sent him back from whence he came, back to the woods where Desdemona found her final rest.
He saw himself, body stretched out just as Bayr’s had been, his eyes fixed on the branches above him. It was not Alba who knelt beside him, but Ghost, her hands on his cheeks, her breath on his mouth.