Time trickled on, the moon lifted and lowered, and still he did not come. She was cold and the damp of the grass had seeped into her clothes and frozen the tips of her fingers and toes. Fall was coming, but she knew Bayr was not.
Panic swelled in her stomach once more. Where was he? Had he come and gone before she’d arrived, assuming she’d been unable to meet? Had he made his bid for her hand like they’d planned? Had he made his pledge and petitioned the king?
Memory flickered behind her eyes, her father pummeling Bayr with his fists and feet as Bayr refused to protect himself at all. She flinched and gritted her teeth against the recollection, but she did not seek to suppress it. She never had. Her memories were clear and stark, crystalline against the dark backdrop of long loneliness. She remembered everything.
She could still feel her mother, the comfort of her presence and the depth of her devotion, but her earliest memories were of Bayr. He permeated every one of her beginnings, every hope and every happiness. Bayr was the enduring contrast to her father’s shadow, always hovering at the edges of her childhood, the source of constant apprehension.
She longed to be free of her father, and Bayr had escaped him, only to fall subject once again.
Because of her.
Alba moaned aloud, her fear breaking free. What had she set in motion? Bayr was no longer a boy but her father was still the king, and to stand against him as chieftain, to defy him, was to pit his entire clan against the kingdom. Bayr was not weak—not by any measure—but neither was he loud or rash. He would not speak unless he absolutely had to, and he would sacrifice himself before he would commit his people to war, but Alba would not sacrifice him.
28
Hours later, Ivo could only hope the warriors from Dolphys had heeded his counsel and left the mount as the residents of the temple were dragged from their beds by the king’s guard and driven into the center of the sanctum at knifepoint. Keepers, daughters, and refugees huddled together as the temple was ransacked—the tables overturned, the beds toppled, and the cupboards emptied. The doors were barred against any outside intrusion, but the night was deep, the dawn hours away, and the rest of the mount slept on, unaware of the raid inside holy walls. Alba was missing, and the king was convinced that the keepers and the Temple Boy were to blame.
No one was allowed in or out. The king paced from room to room, checking the progress of his men, demanding they start again when their efforts yielded nothing. When they came up empty-handed, he returned to the sanctum, his men trailing behind him, their tension echoing his.
“You have no authority here, Banruud,” Ivo said, but they both knew no one would stop him. The chieftains of Berne and Ebba were under his thumb, Bayr was gone, and the others slept. If the princess was truly missing, they too would demand a search. The temple guard, once formed to protect the temple, were now just an extension of the king’s army. They would not interfere with his wishes.
“Where is she, Ivo?” Banruud snapped, towering over the weary Highest Keeper.
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 and girls gathered at the rear of the room. He walked among them, his lamp held high, looking from face to face, until he turned back to the keepers, searching them the same way.
“Remove your robes!” he demanded. 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 temple torches.
Ivo watched his brothers obey, opening their robes without argument and dropping them on the sanctum floor. They all stood in their simple bedshirts, the tails falling above knobby ankles and bare feet. They’d had no time to grab anything but their outer robes to be donned as they were herded through the corridors. Dagmar was not among them. Nor was Ghost. And Ivo took heart in their absence.
“Separate them!” the king demanded, instructing his men, and they immediately began spreading the disrobed keepers from one end of the sanctum to another. When he commanded the same be done among the daughters, pushing them apart, Ivo dragged his sharp nail across the papery skin of his arm, creating a thin bead of blood to form his rune. The end was near.
As Banruud searched, his anger grew, and he turned back to the Highest Keeper once more, his boots echoing across the stone floors 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. His folded arms were hidden beneath the long sleeves of his robe, and he began to carve shapes into his skin with his talon-like nails, even as his eyes remained steady.
“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 Ivo saw his mistake. He’d confirmed the one thing the king feared most. He knew what the king had done, and that would not stand. He’d never been able to hold his tongue, and his task was unfinished.
The king’s hand shot out, plunging and retreating, a slippery eel with sharp teeth. Ivo stilled, his runes wet on his arm, his blood pooling at his feet. His robes, black and voluminous, hid the life that seeped from his skin and the eel that silently slid away.
The king stepped back and watched him crumple, folding into himself without a word of protest.
“We’re done here,” the king called to his guard. “Keep men at the doors. No one goes in and no one goes out until the princess is found.”
Dagmar climbed the eastern slope from the Temple Wood, Ghost’s hand clutched in his. He was still shaken from the rune, still disoriented and despairing, but his mind was oddly quiet, his path clear. Desdemona’s bones had risen from the soil in the Temple Wood and were clattering up the hill behind him. Her spirit was all around him.
“I must tell Alba who she is,” Ghost said, her voice pitched like the breeze, soft and nearly soundless. “Before it is too late.”
Dagmar tightened his hand and said nothing. It was already too late.
They entered the tunnel that burrowed under the mount and opened into the sanctum, and hurried through the darkness, hand in hand. Ghost’s fingers were cold and her breaths were harsh, though he knew it was not from exertion but from fear.
Dagmar expected the silence of a sleeping temple on the other side of the shifting stone wall, but when they slipped into the sanctum, they were met with blazing sconces and a crowded room. Every keeper was present, every daughter, every refugee; and every eye lifted as he stepped out onto the dais behind the altar, Ghost beside him.
The entire room was kneeling in supplication, but they did not ring the altar or pray beside the stone benches. They faced the far corner, away from the dais, as though they waited for Odin to come through the doors. Keeper Amos arose amid the kneeling throng and walked toward the dais, and Dagmar noticed his feet were bare and dipped in blood. When Amos spoke, his voice echoed with blame.