by Harmon, Amy
Ghost stood in the middle of the sheep, drawing them around her, a woolly moat between her and the three men who circled the animals, their eyes on her, a woman alone, ripe for the taking.
“Come ’ere, lass,” one said, swinging his loop like she would simply come if he asked, as if she would wade through the bleating herd and let him lead her away at the end of his rope. One man held a long lash and the other a scythe, as though he’d seen her from the farmlands butted up to the foothills at the base of the temple mount and decided his harvest could wait.
“These are the sacrificial lambs of the Keepers of Saylok. You mustn’t touch them,” she warned, infusing her voice with as much courage as she could muster.
“She speaks!” the largest man crowed, snapping his lash in the air. The sheep moaned and trembled.
“Yeah. And her voice is all funny . . . like an Eastlander,” his companion with the rope added. “That’s good. Saylok’s women are cursed. We can sell her for more if she’s from somewhere else.”
“These sheep belong to the keepers. The keepers are protected by the king himself.”
“The king is gone. He and his warriors. We watched them ride out, woman. There’s war in Ebba. Everyone knows that. We’ve nothin’ to fear from him today.”
Stones filled her pockets and a leather sling was looped over the rope at her waist. She considered which weapon would do her the most good, the sling or her blade, and decided the sling. She needn’t get close for it to be effective. She was skilled with the leather strap. It worked on the wolves, but these were men, and they wanted her. Not the sheep.
The sheep hovered, pressing against her, feeling her need even as they trembled in distress. She should tell them to scatter, but she clung to them, to their simple warmth, to the mindless obedience they gave her, and though their bleating became an army of discordant trumpets, she did not release them from her compulsion.
The man with the scythe and the man with the whip began working their way toward her from opposite sides, shoving the sheep this way and that. The breach was met with trampling hooves, jostling bodies, and full-throated rebukes. The man with the scythe cursed and brought his weapon across the woolly back of the nearest sheep.
“Stop!” she shrieked, as the bleating became screams of pain. One sheep fell and the others reared, trampling the fallen animal, but the path was no clearer. If anything, the man had made things harder for himself. The sheep bellowed in terror, cowering and convulsing, and the man swung his scythe again. Blood sprayed in a wide arc and another sheep fell. Ghost scrambled atop the boulder where she’d been resting and, with a scream that tore through her belly and out her throat, commanded the sheep to flee.
Something caught at her left arm—the lash—sharp and stinging, but she pulled free, her attention on the sheep, urging them to scatter, scatter, scatter. The animals obeyed, bursting outward from the stones like ripples on a pond. But the rippling wasn’t silent or soft. It was heavy, thundering, and the man with the scythe was knocked to the ground, his scythe falling from his blood-soaked hand. The other two men fell back, tripping and cursing, and Ghost threw herself from the boulder, sprinting toward the two sheep that had been struck down. One’s throat had been cut, and he stared at her in gurgling despair. She soothed him once, a hand over his black head, and he was silent. The other sheep was struggling to rise, a deep slash turning his side into a crimson carpet. Ghost wrapped her arms around the beast, urging him to his feet, and succeeded only in bathing herself in his blood.
14
“Ghost!” Someone was calling her name.
The man who’d wielded the scythe had pulled himself to his knees. He’d taken a beating from the stampeding sheep, and he was wheezing for breath, clutching his chest. She scrambled for his scythe, and his eyes clung to hers, begging mercy.
“Ghost!”
Dagmar was calling her name.
She stood, scythe in her hand, and screamed out in warning, not certain where the other two men had gone, or if they’d gone at all.
Dagmar and Bayr were running toward her, Bayr picking up speed as he flew. Even at twelve, Bayr was more intimidating on his own two legs than an armed man on horseback. He held no weapons, but the fury on his face and the confidence with which he hurled himself down the hill was enough to send the two men running, their fallen companion abandoned. Bayr reached the scythe wielder first and, without questions or commentary, plucked the man from the ground, one hand at his nape, one hand clutching his belt, and hoisted him over his head as though to toss him down the hill behind his cohorts.
“Please,” the man gasped. “Have mercy, Temple Boy.”
“To sh-show you mercy now would be to sh-show no mercy to those you will p-prey upon next.” Bayr stammered, but his arms did not buckle or bend, and he waited for Dagmar to reach his side. But Dagmar ran to Ghost instead. He took the scythe from her hand.
“I beg your pardon, Keeper. I’ll not do it again,” the man begged, his eyes wild, his arms flailing as Dagmar approached.
“Tell me the names of your friends,” Dagmar demanded.
“Peck and Quinn of the King’s Village. We saw the woman. We didn’t know she was yours.”
“But you knew she was not yours. You knew the sheep were not yours,” Dagmar said. “Find your friends. Come to the temple and take your just punishment. If you do not, your sentence, when you are found, will be death.”
Bayr set the man on his feet and released him without a word. The man toddled down the hill like a drunken sailor on board a shifting deck. Ghost felt the grass shift beneath her feet as well, and closed her eyes, awash in sudden dizziness.
The next moment she was being swept up, and she cried out, certain she was falling. Then Dagmar’s arms tightened around her, and she realized she was being held.
“I w-will c-carry her, Uncle,” Bayr offered.
“See to the sheep, Bayr.” Dagmar sounded close to tears, and Ghost opened her eyes. Bayr had already turned back to obey his uncle.
“I will see to them,” she insisted, but her words whistled past her lips oddly. She was panting, her fear distorting her voice. She tried again. “It was only fear that made me lightheaded. I am not harmed,” she reassured him, concentrating on her speech. He had begun to move swiftly toward the temple walls at the top of the hill.
His arms tightened but he didn’t slow. “You just can’t feel it yet.”
“Feel what?”
He snorted, as if she’d simply proven his point.
“You are carrying me again,” she complained.
“I am. Thankfully we don’t have as far to go this time.”
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“You are a keeper, not a pack mule.”
“And you are a shepherdess, not a soldier. That didn’t stop you.”
“I will go back to my cottage,” she insisted.
“You will not. Not ever again.”
His vehemence shocked her into silence, but only for a few minutes.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“To the temple.”
“I don’t want to be seen, Keeper.”
“Your hair is bound, and your face and clothes are covered in blood,” he barked. “No one will see the color of your skin.”
She closed her eyes and covered her face with hands that had begun to shake. She heard the gate swinging open, heard the call from the wall, the questions and alarm being flung at the keeper, but Dagmar didn’t slow as he made his reassurances to the curious and concerned. The sound of his stride changed as dirt became cobbles and, beyond the cover of her hands, sunlight became gloom. Then the air cooled and the sounds slipped away, and Ghost peeked through her fingers in wary wonder. She had never been in such a place. The smell of incense clung to the beams and the floors, to the rock and the relics, and she begged again to be put down. Such a place required dignity.
Dagmar set her on her feet, but he did not release her. She could only st
are at the soaring columns and the endless stone, the light filtering down from colored glass over arches and angles that stole her breath and raised the flesh on her arms. With the prickling came pain, and she realized some of the blood that soaked her sleeve belonged to her.
She gasped, and Dagmar’s hand tightened at her waist.
“Come. Please,” Dagmar said, urging her forward. He led her through one door and then another, winding his way to a room that contained vials and tinctures in long rows. A low wooden table laden with hooks and blades made her hesitate, but Dagmar led her to a long bench and bade her sit.
Shallow cuts crisscrossed her arms. The man with the whip had found his mark, but she’d hardly felt the tearing of her flesh. She hardly felt it now.
“They are just sheep, woman,” Dagmar whispered, his eyes on her wounds. “You are not required to die for them.”
“I am nowhere near death, Keeper.”
“You were very near death today,” he murmured. “Those men who attacked the herd are well acquainted with it. What happened today will happen again. I am surprised it has not happened before.”
“It has.”
His eyes snapped from the water he was drawing from a nearby pail.
“I have always frightened them away. I can be quite terrifying to look upon.”
His pale gaze turned glacial.
“Are keepers healers?” she asked, eager to speak of something else.
“It is one of the ways we make ourselves useful.” He washed the blood from her arms and then covered the oozing welts and lacerations with his hands like he believed his palms could close them.
“What are you doing?”
“I am asking the gods to close your wounds.”
“Does that work?” Her doubt rang in her question, and he raised his eyes to hers, a slight smile on his lips.
“It doesn’t ever hurt to ask. But the runes work better than anything. In some regards, they too are like prayers. The gods—or the fates—decide whether or not they are answered.” He wetted his fingers in the blood that oozed from her deepest wound and began to paint shapes on her arm. It tickled, and she squirmed.
“Shh,” he murmured. “Hold still.” She did, her stomach fluttering oddly, her eyes on his bloody fingertip drawing pictures on her skin. He drew one at her wrist and another near her shoulder.
“Are those runes?” she asked, breathless.
He nodded once, whispered something in a language that she didn’t understand, and then, dipping his fingers in a bowl of water, he wiped the drawings away.
“What did you say?” she pressed.
“I asked that all the poisons be kept from your wounds. It is a rune that works well on rodents and all creeping things.”
“They weren’t runes of healing?”
“Your body is very adept at healing itself if all invaders are kept out.”
“Invaders?” she whispered.
“It is the invaders we cannot see that are the most deadly.” He stepped away. “I will draw the runes again tomorrow when we change your bandages.”
“Why did you not just leave the runes in place?”
“We draw the runes, ask the gods to acknowledge them, and then we erase them. They are sacred . . . and powerful. And we do not share them.”
“If you leave them, I might learn them,” she said, understanding dawning.
He nodded once. “It is the way we guard the power. Runes are forbidden to all but the Keepers of Saylok.” He paused and then said with great emphasis, “But the keepers are not the only ones with power.”
She met his eyes and frowned, not understanding.
“You do not speak to the sheep, but they listen to you,” he said, his voice soft and his eyes steady.
Ghost scoffed. “It is not listening . . . it is obeying. Or . . . trusting. I have always been good with animals.”
“You said they feel your emotion.”
She cocked her head. He was intent on something, but she could not fathom what.
“Remember the horse the day of the coronation? You said he reacted to your emotions,” he said.
“You remember that?”
“Yes. I’ve thought of it many times since while watching you with the sheep. That gift . . . or ability . . . is the same power that fuels the runes. It manifests itself in many ways and in many people. If you had been born in Saylok, you might have been a supplicant.”
“What is a supplicant?”
“Supplicants are those with rune blood. They come from every clan, but they must have the support of their chieftain, and the Highest Keeper must grant them entry. Supplicants—most of them—eventually become keepers after their training.”
“Does Bayr have rune blood? Is that why he is so strong?” she asked, the thought occurring like a flash of light.
“Yes. I believe he does.”
“Will he become a keeper—or a supplicant—someday?”
“Not all who have rune blood become keepers. There are other paths . . . other worthy pursuits.”
“All the runes must be drawn in blood?”
“Yes. It is the blood that gives the rune its power.”
“So if someone does not have . . . rune blood . . . the rune itself will have no power?”
Dagmar nodded.
It was not something they had ever discussed. She wasn’t sure why they were discussing it now, why he was being so forthcoming with things that were clearly so secret, so sacred. She wanted to know more.
“So why guard the runes if they are of no use to powerless people?”
“It is not the powerless people we must worry about. Because a man or woman has rune blood does not mean they have a pure heart. Power tends to corrupt.”
“Does it corrupt . . . keepers?”
“Of course. Keepers are just men. But that is why we live here, without family or female companionship, without riches or reward, without the temptations that would make us susceptible to such corruption. It is a delicate balance. We don’t use the runes for power or dominion. We do not use them for gain or glory. We seek wisdom, understanding, and patience.”
For a moment they were silent, and then she raised her eyes to his, defiant.
“I would not have been a supplicant,” she argued.
“No?”
“All the keepers are men. I am a woman.”
“My sister . . . Bayr’s mother, had rune blood. There are many women who do.”
“Yet there are no females among you,” she challenged him.
“Women are keepers of a different sort. Keepers of children. Keepers of the clans. Through the ages, women have been needed elsewhere. We men were more expendable. We are still more expendable. But there are Daughters in the temple now.”
She searched his eyes and waited for him to explain.
“Today’s visit was not happenstance. Master Ivo sent me to get you. It took me several days to do as he asked. I shudder to think what would have happened had I waited even one more day.”
“He sent you to get me?” she gasped.
“He did. And when you have rested—mayhaps tomorrow—he will want to see you in the sanctum.”
“I thought women were not allowed in the sanctum.”
“It is not that. ‘Allowed’ is the wrong word. It is a place for runes and keepers. For the coronation of kings . . . and queens. Alba was blessed above the altar.”
“She was?” Ghost breathed, trying to imagine it.
“Yes. We have had great hopes for the princess. We thought she was the dawn of a new day. We prayed other daughters would be born in her wake. But that has not happened.”
Ghost could only hold his gaze, her heart echoing like an executioner’s drum in her ears. “If it has not happened . . . how . . . why . . . are there Daughters in the temple?”
“They represent the clans.” He sighed. “There is much to explain. But I will let Ivo do that.”
“What will he ask of me?”
“He will ask you to
help us care for them.”
“You think because I am a w-woman, I know how to care for children? They are not lambs, Keeper,” she stammered, horrified. She began to pace, wanting to escape, yet also wanting nothing more than to find a quiet corner and rest her now-pounding head.
“I think because you are a woman, you can instruct us. We need you.”
“I do not know your ways. Your runes. Your customs. Your prayers,” she argued.
“They are young girls, Ghost. Five of them. Six, if we include the princess. And we are lost . . . they are lost. There are things you will understand and anticipate that we . . . as men . . . cannot.”
“You want me to live in the temple?” she wailed with disbelief.
“Yes.” His voice had grown so soft, clearly in an effort to calm her, that she lowered her own to a whisper. Confessions were easier that way. Mayhaps he wouldn’t hear.
“I cannot live here . . . I don’t wish to be seen.”
“You said that today. You said that when I first met you.”
Ghost raised her eyes to his. “And nothing has changed.” She felt the lie from the tips of her toes to the roots of her white hair. In truth, everything had changed. But that one thing had not. She did not wish to be seen, and she could never tell him why. To tell him would be to take the crown from her daughter’s head.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he murmured. She laughed and his brows lowered, a hint of a scowl teasing his mouth.
“You say that as if you know me,” she said.
“I do.”
“You don’t, Keeper. And yet . . . you want me to live here . . . among you.”
“I know you, Ghost. We can only hide our true selves for so long, and you’ve had nothing and no one to hide behind. You can become one of us. A supplicant, just like the daughters who will represent the clans. If you must hide . . . you can hide among us. We shave our heads and blacken our eyes. We wear robes of the same hue. If you do not wish to be seen, what better way to disguise yourself?”
“Why do you blacken your eyes?”