The First Girl Child

by Harmon, Amy

  “You scared me,” Desdemona whispered, wiping at her cheeks. She was crying. He was crying too. He sat up gingerly, and his stomach roiled.

  “You fell to the ground like you were dead,” she wailed.

  He touched the knot forming on the back of his head beneath his braid. He had hair again.

  “I want to go home, Dagmar. I want to be a warrior, not a keeper,” Desdemona said, helping him stand. Her torch had gone out, but his had life enough to guide them from the chamber of runes back to his fire at the entrance of the cave. He felt disembodied—his feet moving, though he couldn’t feel them, his hand in Desdemona’s, though he felt nothing but stone. Stone, heavy and cold and dark. Stone all around him, stone beneath him, stone within him.

  “The rain has stopped,” Desdemona said as they exited the cave, but he would have kept walking even if the downpour continued. It was a while before he could speak, before his limbs warmed and his body felt like his own. Desdemona was silent beside him, as though she sensed his disorientation and grappled with her own. But when they finally staggered to the base of Shinway, he turned to her, his voice urgent yet hushed, afraid that even the trees would overhear.

  “Promise me you will never go to the cave again,” he begged his sister. “And promise me you will never tell anyone it is there.”

  “I promise,” she said, but he saw her impatience and her fatigue. The experience in the cave had already faded for her, a bad dream easily pushed aside. She tugged at him, eager for the cottage, for supper, for rest. But he would never forget.

  “Desdemona,” he moaned. “Listen to me.”

  “I’m listening, Dagmar,” she reassured him, and met his gaze.

  “That cave is full of things not meant to be found,” he whispered, and his voice quavered in fear.

  Desdemona nodded, her blue eyes wide, and for the first time, Dagmar noticed how much she resembled their mother.

  PART ONE

  THE TEMPLE BOY

  1

  Ten years later

  Dagmar preferred to pray outside. The walls of the temple were cool and quiet, but the stone was empty, lifeless, and he felt cut off from the wonder that made him want to pray. When he walked in the woods and touched the trees or picked his way up the grassy hills that rose up all around the land of Saylok, his soul was untethered, and the words in his heart loosened and rose to his mouth to spill from his lips. He prayed to Odin, the Allfather, though the word father always brought a pang of guilt to his breast. His father was a warrior—mighty and feared—and he’d been determined that Dagmar be a warrior as well. But Desdemona was the warrior, the best shield maiden in Dolphys, and she fought with a skill and a ferocity that drew admiration from the men of every clan. Dagmar did not want the admiration of men. He wanted the knowledge of the gods.

  The Keepers of Saylok were revered and protected, something Dagmar had longed for all his life—peace, quiet, and safety. His father had not been able to refuse when Dagmar had petitioned the Chieftain of Dolphys to go to Temple Hill. Each year, one man from each of the six clans of Saylok was selected to supplicate the Keepers of Saylok. Not all supplicants would remain to be trained and eventually ordained. Some years none remained. The keepers had their own selection methods. But Dagmar had been chosen. He’d committed himself fully, and the Highest Keeper had seen his promise. He’d also taken note of his considerable strength, his size, and his affinity for the runes.

  The Highest Keeper, a small, wizened man called Ivo, had asked him, his voice dripping with disdain and suspicion, “Why are you here, Dagmar of Dolphys? You are built like a warrior. You should be protecting your clan.”

  “I am built like a warrior, but I have the heart of a keeper,” Dagmar had answered.

  The Highest Keeper, his eyes rimmed in the black that also stained his wrinkled lips, had laughed at that. Spat.

  “You do not have a keeper’s heart. Yours is the heart of a defiant child.”

  “I refuse to be a warrior of Dolphys . . . or of any clan. That is the only defiance in my heart.”

  “And if I send you away?” the Highest Keeper had asked.

  “I will walk to the cliffs of Shinway and throw myself from them,” Dagmar answered. He’d been deadly serious.

  The Highest Keeper had not sent him away. No other candidates had been chosen that year or the next from any of the clans. Nor even the year after that. But Dagmar had stayed. He was in his fifth year, and he was no longer called Supplicant. He was a keeper now.

  Dagmar stepped across the creek, balancing on the slippery rocks, but his mind slid back to his sister. He had been her brother long before he was a Keeper of Saylok. He’d dreamed of her for three nights in a row. He’d woken at dawn sick with dread for her. If she’d been plain, her path might have been easier, but she was not plain, and Desdemona, for all her gifts, had terrible judgment. Mayhaps it was the absence of a mother and the example of a father who lived only to fight, who confused passion and hate, twisting them together so she couldn’t separate the two.

  He’d not seen her since he’d entered the temple. He’d written to her, but the letters he received back were few and far between. She was in love with a man. She’d never spoken his name, but Dagmar had seen the change in the way her words had leaned forward across the parchment, like she was falling into her future, eager and breathless. A match was being negotiated. The daughter of Dred, the most feared and powerful warrior in Dolphys, a woman of considerable skill in her own right, was of great value. Chieftain Dirth had wanted her for one of his own sons, but it made more sense to strengthen alliances with other clans. Desdemona would be promised to a man of another clan, it was almost certain.

  Being among the trees was like being watched. No . . . not watched. Watched over. Being acknowledged, being seen, but not being judged. “We welcome you,” the trees whispered. They welcomed him, yet they didn’t impose upon him or ask to know his secrets.

  Dagmar left the shadow of the towering pines and began to climb the hill that overlooked Berne to the east and Dolphys to the southeast. Between the two lands was a ridge of low hills—such hills existed throughout the country, separating one clan from another, as if the gods had intended the division. In the center, where the temple stood, the land was higher than at any other point, and from the temple mount one could look out over the lands of the clans. The rise north of the temple gave a glorious view of Adyar, the rise south, a view of Ebba. If Dagmar had wanted to see Joran or Leok he could have walked to the western side of Temple Hill and seen both—Joran to the southwest, Leok farther north. The view, no matter which direction he stood, took Dagmar’s breath and added it to the sky.

  Saylok was a beautiful country, shaped like a soft star with six rounded peninsulas, one for each of the clans. It floated in the middle of the North Sea, created when Odin himself had reached into the depths and clutched the seabed in his fist, pulling it up to the sunlight, leaving an island when he opened his hand.

  “Say lok,” Dagmar breathed, sighing each syllable, closing his eyes against the view so he could center his thoughts. Saylok meant “blessed,” and in that moment, Dagmar knew he was, but he feared his own blessing did not extend to his sister. She had not been able to escape Dolphys. She had not been able to thwart her father’s ambitions for her.

  Dagmar removed his dagger from the leather cinch at his waist, and keeping his eyes closed and his thoughts centered on Desdemona’s lovely face, he drew the blade across his palm. A thousand scars parted for the intrusion, and his blood welled warm and eager in the cup of his hand. Blood was the only thing the earth answered to. Blood represented sacrifice, and the earth would not trade her secrets for anything less.

  Dagmar made a fist and, sinking to his knees, let the scarlet drops spill into the dirt. He spilled his blood for wisdom. Not power. But he knew other men—even other keepers—who wanted power more than anything else. It was forbidden, but the forbidden apple was too sweet for some to resist. If a keeper was discovered
spilling blood—his or someone else’s—for power, he was slain on Odin’s altar. The Keepers of Saylok were charged with the protection of the forbidden runes and the succession of kings, not their own power, but it was easy to confuse responsibility with power. Dagmar struggled with it every day. Even now, as he traded his blood for insight into his sister’s predicament. For he knew she was in a predicament. His dreams were quite clear on that point.

  Taking his dagger, he dug into the earth, saying Desdemona’s name as he did. Odin gave up one of his eyes for wisdom, and Dagmar drew the rune for sight, to see what his physical eyes could not. As he carved, he whispered the words, “I am a Keeper of Saylok, seeking a vision that I might bless and care for the one who calls me brother of the flesh.”

  Immediately, Desdemona’s face filled his head, and it was not the memory of her face, pulled from the recesses of his own mind, but a new image. Desdemona’s face was pale, her dark hair tumbling about her wan cheeks. She cried out, and it was his name on her lips. She raised a hand in supplication, and her palm, just like his, was smeared with blood. The image widened, as though Dagmar had stepped back to broaden his view.

  Desdemona, clad in the colors of their clan, sat propped against a tree, her eyes closed, her chin tipped upward as though pleading for intercession. As he watched she began to scream, a small, agonizing wail that brought an answering cry to his own lips. The view widened again, until Desdemona was a mere blot of deep blue on a painting swathed in varying shades of green and brown.

  Dagmar knew where she was, and it wasn’t far. He could see the forest of his vision below the hilly rise. He rose and destroyed the rune with a swipe of his leathered sole, thanking the gods for their gifts as he did. His palm still oozed sluggishly, but he didn’t bind it or even give it a second thought.

  He shoved his dagger into its cinch and scrambled down the rise toward the wooded copse he’d seen in his vision. He moved swiftly, with purpose, but he didn’t call out her name. He didn’t want to take a chance that the other keepers would hear. He was still on temple grounds, and he wasn’t the only man who enjoyed his solitude to meditate and commune. If Dagmar found Desdemona in the woods, he didn’t know what he would do, where he would take her. The Keepers of Saylok were all men, and no women lived among them. But he wouldn’t think of that now.

  Dagmar searched quietly, his eyes scanning as he picked his way among the trees, knowing he should be close, wanting desperately to call out to her. He’d seen no one on his sojourn, seen no one all morning, but still he kept his silence. It was so quiet. No chirping or buzzing. No birds in the trees, no skittering of small creatures along the boughs above his head. He stopped and listened to the stillness. A low moan murmured through the trees to his left, and he rushed toward the sound.

  She was exactly as she’d appeared in the vision, sitting against the tree as though she’d been propped there by Loki, the god of jest and mayhem, to trick him.

  “Des?” he whispered, halting suddenly, not wanting to take another step. The skirt of her gown was soaked in blood, and her arms were crossed oddly over her chest. Her eyes fluttered open, closed, then opened again, weakly.

  “Dag,” she whimpered, and he approached as if he’d stepped into his own vision.

  “You’re wounded,” he worried.

  “No. Not wounded.”

  “You’re bleeding!” The conversation was inane. He hadn’t seen his sister in years, yet here she sat, in a pool of blood in the Temple Wood. He didn’t ask her how she’d come to be there, and she didn’t offer an explanation. Not yet. She simply watched him approach, her arms holding her chest, the way a woman does when she’s trying to hide her breasts. He wondered suddenly if she’d been beaten and defiled. But as he grew closer, it became apparent that she wasn’t covering her breasts. She was sheltering a child. An infant so small and bloodied, it hardly looked real. She’d loosened the ties on the front of her gown and pressed the child against her skin, drawing her clothing back over the small body.

  “This is my son, brother,” she said. “I’ve brought him to you.” Her voice was weak, but her pale blue eyes, eyes so like his own, were fierce in her pallid face.

  “To me? Desdemona, I am a keeper!”

  “And I am your sister, and the only one who loves you.” Her voice was harsh, cruel even, but it broke, and she shuddered, her head bobbing as though she fought for consciousness. “And you are the only one who loves me.”

  “Who is this child’s father?”

  A wail pierced the air, and Dagmar realized the wail he’d heard in his vision was the wail of this child, not his sister. The wail was lusty and loud and belied the size and condition of the infant who cried.

  “His father is Banruud of Berne,” Desdemona confessed.

  “Why did you not go to him?” Banruud was the young Chieftain of Berne, promoted at his father’s death, and already a powerful man. Dagmar and Desdemona had known Banruud since childhood. Their fathers had fought beside each other and against each other at times. Both were warriors. Both were widely respected. But Berend, Banruud’s father, had been chieftain of his clan, and Dred of Dolphys had not. Dred had very little in life but his temper and his sword. Berend had a great deal more than that, and he never let Dred forget it. Dagmar wondered briefly if Banruud hadn’t let Desdemona forget it either, if he’d made her believe he would make her a chieftain’s wife, only to discard her like a soldier’s whore.

  “I did go to him. And I was turned away,” Desdemona moaned, and Dagmar had his answer, if not the full story.

  “How did you get here?”

  “I rode. My horse is near. Somewhere. I couldn’t go any farther. The babe was coming.”

  “You came alone?”

  “Alone, but for the child inside me.”

  “Desdemona,” Dagmar groaned. “Why, sister? Why here?”

  “You must take him, Dagmar. And you must call him Bayr. Bayr for his father’s clan. Bayr . . . because he will be as powerful as the beast he is named for.”

  Dagmar fell to his knees beside her and withdrew his knife, preparing to draw runes of healing into the earth, into the blood she had spilled to give birth to her child. He had to heal her. She had to care for her son.

  “No, brother!” she hissed. “I have a rune of my own.” A grayish tinge was spreading from her lips and up her cheeks, but she drew her own dagger from the belt at her waist. Dagmar wondered how she remained conscious. There was so much blood the ground was wet with it, encircling the exposed roots like the tree itself was bleeding.

  “You must not, Desi. It is forbidden. Only the keepers can use the runes.”

  “I’m dying,” Desdemona spat. “Who will punish the act?”

  Dagmar winced, but she continued, and her blade moved in the earth as she spoke.

  “I loved him,” she confessed.

  “Banruud?”

  “I loved him, and it became inconvenient for him. He wants power more than anything else. He is just like his father. He wants to be king. He will marry the daughter of King Ansel. He thinks it will give him standing, and she will give him many sons. But my son will be the only child of Banruud.”

  With a trembling hand, she drew yet another rune, a rune Dagmar didn’t recognize, not at first. “Banruud will deny him again. And in his denial, he will deny all Saylok. Salvation will come through my son, and only through him.”

  The child began to wail again, and with his cries, Desdemona began to slump into herself, the loss of blood stripping her of her strength. Dagmar wrapped his arms around her, overcome. His cheeks were wet, his sight blurred, and he pressed his lips into her hair, willing her to cease speaking. Her words were a blood curse, the most powerful kind, because the blood that spilled into the ground was her lifeblood, and her death would seal her prophecy. Her voice was a mere whisper, but her blade continued to carve lines into the sodden earth as she spoke again.

  “We are abused. We are used. We are bartered and abandoned. But rarely are we love
d. So be it. From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok for any of you to love.”

  The ground rumbled as though pained by Desdemona’s knife, and for a moment, Dagmar feared the earth would open and swallow them. But the tremors ceased almost as suddenly as they’d begun.

  “I love you, Desdemona,” Dagmar choked, wiping his tears in her hair. “I have always loved you. Do not speak this way.”

  “You left me, brother. And now I will leave you,” she breathed, but the words caught and rattled in her chest, and the knife fell from her hand, her runes completed, her life finished. The babe cried again, a short, sad protest, and then he fell silent, his bow-shaped mouth rooting for his mother’s breast.

  But his mother was gone.

  Dagmar felt the life lift from his sister and her limbs loosen. Her head fell back, exposing her throat, young, lovely, and streaked with crimson from her own hands. Dagmar shook her, demanding she wake as her babe latched onto a still-warm breast, taking what was left of her into himself. Dagmar was repulsed, horrified even, and he wept as the child drank, his little cheeks hollowing out, his tiny hands fisting the white flesh as he suckled his dead mother.

  Dagmar wanted to pull the child away but knew the babe was innocent. Hungry. There was no evil in the act, and suckling was an innate response. Whatever sustenance her son received was the only gift Desdemona could give him. Dagmar looked away, ill and shaken, not wanting to release his sister because he would jostle the child. So he held her—held them—and studied the runes his sister had drawn into the bloody ground.

  She’d drawn the sign of the woman and child, but the tail of a snake encircled them, its head and forked tongue rising up through a crown with six spires. Six spires for six clans of Saylok. She’d also drawn the rune of strength and power, but the ring around the second rune was not closed, and Dagmar wondered if that was intentional or if Desdemona had simply died before she could finish. He could close it, but the blood was not his, and he feared his interference might make things worse.