by Harmon, Amy
The clan daughters, as they were loosely called, were more similar than they were different—all young, all afraid, all female, all forsaken, with needs and desires and a sense of loss that permeated the temple walls. The keepers who had come to the temple as supplicants had all come of their own accord, knowing the life they chose. Even Ghost had chosen the temple over the sheep, and over leaving Saylok altogether. The clan daughters had been brought against their will, and they were unified in that reality. But each girl brought her own footprint to the temple grounds, and as time passed and fear abated, their differences became more obvious.
Juliah from Joran had been raised to battle, and she was constantly drawing Bayr into combat. She would jump from behind doors or spring from the rafters overhead, light as a cat, and try to catch him off guard. He bore her aggression well, the way he bore everything else. Dagmar had rubbed off on the boy; they were both unflappable and focused, introspective and observant, and instead of rebuffing her need for confrontation, he absorbed it, teaching her as he took her abuse, giving back enough that she sharpened her skill without breaking her bones.
The girl from Joran was not the only one who bubbled over in aggression, though where Juliah was action, Liis of Leok was a simmering pot. Her silence was a weapon, and she used it with considerable effect. So it came as a great surprise when one day, as the sun surrendered the day to the moon and the keepers were gathered in praise, Liis suddenly broke out in song with them, her voice piercing the air the way her silence usually deflated the room. She sang the song of supplication, the one most commonly raised in evening worship.
Mother of the earth be mine, father of the skies, divine.
All that was and all that is, all I am and all I wish.
Open my eyes to see, make me at one with thee,
Gods of my father and god of my soul.
Give me a home in hope, give me a place to go,
give me a faith that will never grow cold.
Her voice was crystalline and cutting, sitting above the tenor tones of the complacent keepers. It grew and climbed and carved a hole into the hearts of all who listened. The voices raised in habit became voices hushed in awe. Liis sang as though she cursed each word for making her ache, and the tears she wouldn’t cry streamed from the eyes of the little girls who’d cried too much, from the eyes of the keepers who hadn’t cried enough, and from Ghost herself, who only cried when she was alone.
If Liis made them weep, Bashti made them laugh. She had an uncanny gift for mimicry—her impression of Ivo had the girls covering their mouths and ducking their heads into their robes, so they wouldn’t be caught howling with laughter inside the sanctum when they were supposed to be meditating. Bashti didn’t like to meditate. She liked to imitate. It only took her a few minutes in someone’s presence to lock in on their idiosyncrasies and speaking patterns. She mocked the king, the Highest Keeper, several of the brothers, and even Ghost, who took the ribbing with a delighted smile and a question: “I do that?”
Bashti could mimic the way Keeper Dieter teared up whenever he talked and the way Keeper Lowell spoke out of one side of his mouth. She even mocked the other girls and Princess Alba, though not mercilessly. The only person she was not allowed to impersonate was Bayr. She started to do so one afternoon, trying out an impression of the boy that was eerily apt and particularly brutal, stumbling with her words even as she puffed out her chest to indicate his strength.
Alba grew perfectly still, her eyes locked on Bashti’s humor-filled face, and seconds later she was hurtling across the room, hands curled, arms extended, murder in her eyes.
“Never do that again,” she said, clamping her hands over Bashti’s gaping mouth. “Ever. Ever. You will not laugh at Bayr.”
The room grew silent, and Bashti’s eyes filled with tears. Bayr straightened from his position at the door and hurried to subdue his charge. The teasing hadn’t bothered him—he’d been laughing along with the others. He wrapped his large hands around Alba’s small wrists and pulled her hands from Bashti’s mouth. He smiled at the girl and patted her head, as if to apologize for Alba. Then he took Alba by the hand and led her away. Alba had thrown a look of warning over her shoulder as she left the room.
“Never. Ever,” she said again.
The next time Bayr brought Alba back for lessons, Ghost noticed that Alba embraced Bashti longer than usual, patting her back in apology, and she never spoke of the incident again. She never had to. For someone so small, Alba had a great deal of influence.
Dalys, the youngest of the five, was a year older than Princess Alba, but unlike Alba she’d had no formal lessons at all. Where Alba was confident, she was meek; where Alba excelled, she struggled. She shrank from any attempts to learn until Alba began to teach the girl herself, the way the queen had once taught her. Paints were hard to procure, so one of the keepers taught them how to make their own, and Alba helped Dalys create an alphabet that came alive in pictures drawn around letters, and letters combined into words. The words became a story that Dalys began to tell, and before long, Alba’s gifts became Dalys’s.
And Alba was truly gifted. She remembered everything as though she held pictures in her head, and she could describe—and re-create—the smallest thing with great detail. The keepers had grown very careful with their lessons when the princess was present.
Dagmar taught the daughters their first rune, an elementary drawing of a sun with seven beams radiating from it, six for the clans and one more that extended straight down, much longer than the others. He explained it was a conduit for happiness and understanding. The sun, in her golden generosity, did not want her children living in darkness. The girls used spittle to draw the rune instead of blood. Dagmar claimed it was the closest thing to it, and each girl placed their fingers in their mouths, wetting them before copying the simple depiction that faded on the dark stone almost as soon as it was created.
The simplistic nature of the rune had Liis glowering at Dagmar with distrust and Juliah proclaiming the sun rune childish.
“I wish to draw runes that can defeat my enemies,” Juliah complained.
“Is not misery the greatest enemy of all?” Dagmar said softly. “This is the first rune because without light and belief, everything is darkness, and everything and everyone becomes the enemy.”
That placated the girls, but Ghost hungered for more and considered her ignorance a darkness all its own.
Master Ivo rarely taught the girls their lessons but spent considerable time observing them and asking questions, though he never seemed intent on a particular answer. When the girls would seek a reason for his queries, he would simply say, “I seek only to know the gifts with which you were born. Knowing your gifts helps me know you. The Allfather does not sprinkle gifts and abilities like a farmer plants grain, tossing the seed from side to side, not caring where it lands so long as it is in the dirt. Odin is very particular about where he plants his seed.”
The inference that the girls and their gifts were products of Odin’s seed was not lost on Ghost. Mayhaps it was not lost on the girls either, though Elayne was the only one who seemed to grasp the double meaning. She flushed and studied the freckles on her pale hands, though Ghost wasn’t certain her discomfort came from the sensual context or the fact that Elayne was not particularly gifted.
She worked hard, and she was capable and efficient in her duties, but she had none of Juliah’s warrior spirit or Liis’s icy strength. Her voice sounded like a horse’s whinny when she tried to sing, so she mostly mouthed the words. She wasn’t particularly good at memorization either, and the prayers and chants and affirmations did not find root in her thoughts. She didn’t read well, she had no aptitude for alchemy, and her drawings were infantile.
If she excelled in anything, it was kindness.
She nurtured the other girls, was endlessly patient, and was a leader among them simply because she was the oldest and looked out for the rest. But Ghost knew she fretted over her mediocrity.
They all fretted, though Ghost suspected their fears did not look the same.
When the temple was dark, and the lessons had ended, there was only worry over what would be and grief over what had been, and every night Ghost conjured Dagmar’s sun rune, trying to drive out the darkness and cling to the light, willing his gods to watch over them all.
16
One night, after the girls were abed, Ghost went looking for Dagmar. She’d spent so much time alone in recent years that the constant company of children could be a strain. She craved a place to air her thoughts and someone who would listen without waiting to speak.
Dagmar was not stooped over scrolls or tucked into any of his favorite corners. She climbed the stairs to the rooms overlooking the castle yard, the rooms no one else seemed to want, and found his door ajar, light spilling out into the corridor, illuminating a stain on the pale threshold.
She said his name and remained in the hallway, not wanting to disturb him and desperately hoping he wanted to be disturbed.
She heard him stand, his stool scraping against the bare planks of the floor. Then he was looming in the entry, concern lining his brow, an oil lamp in his hand.
“Is something amiss?” he asked, alarmed.
She shook her head, adamant and a little embarrassed. He’d never seemed to mind when she’d sought him out before. But it was late and these were his private quarters.
“I didn’t want to lie in the dark listening to children prattle.”
He laughed, his face creasing in an entirely different way. “You need your own space.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Just . . . different company for a bit.”
“I understand. Let’s walk, shall we?”
She nodded, grateful, and he stepped back into his room to set the lamp aside. The light jumped and her eyes were drawn downward, back to the stain a foot from her toes.
“Is that a rune?” she blurted.
Dagmar started. “Yes . . . I . . . no one usually comes up here but me. I should have . . . covered it.”
“Why did you draw a rune outside your door?” she asked, bemused. She studied it curiously, a memory niggling. “It is the same one you drew on my skin. The rune that discourages rodents and crawling things.”
“You remember?” An odd note colored his question.
“I could not have drawn it myself. But I remember. Are you afraid of mice, Dagmar?” She laughed, charmed. Dagmar was always so wise and self-contained. The thought of him warding off creeping things with his precious blood endeared him to her.
“I am not afraid of mice,” he said, color rising to his cheeks. “Warding off . . . rodents or infection . . . is not the only purpose of the rune.”
“Oh? What is it you are trying to ward off?”
It was in the way his back stiffened and his eyes angled away, the way his thumb worried the scars on his palms, but Ghost suddenly knew what—who—he was guarding against.
“You don’t want me to come in your room?” she squeaked, so surprised she had no room for hurt.
He didn’t answer.
“I have never entered your room, Keeper. I have never touched your things or taken something that belonged to you. Why would you need to do such a thing?”
He held his tongue but not her gaze.
“Do you worry I will touch your skin while you sleep and turn you into a ghost . . . like me? Or maybe you think you must guard against the wiles of a woman?” She hated the welling in her throat and chest, the rising waters that would make her weak before him.
“Yes,” he whispered. “That is what I guard against.”
She turned away so he wouldn’t know the pain he had caused.
“Goodnight then,” she said, feeling awkward and more alone than she’d felt when she lived in the shepherd’s cottage on the western slopes. Feeling more alone than she’d felt day after day among the herd.
“Ghost?” His voice was strained, and she knew he had not meant to wound. But she was wounded, and she bade him goodnight again, keeping her face averted.
She thought he sighed, but she was already moving, the moonlight winking through the window at the end of the long corridor. No one stuck his head out to see her flee. Dagmar slept alone in this wing, empty rooms on either side, each of them as barren and bleak as the next. She’d often wondered why Dagmar kept himself apart, until one day she’d asked him, and he’d told her he’d moved when Bayr was a babe, desperate to keep his cries from waking the other keepers. He’d never moved back, even when Bayr moved on.
Mayhaps she was not the only one he guarded himself from. But she was the only one who was crying over it.
She descended the winding stairs to the darkened halls that opened into the gallery outside the sanctum. The sconces were lit, and the art of ages past flickered in the dancing light, simulating movement, like the painted lived behind the pictures. She could feel Dagmar behind her, his regret and apology welling around him. She kept walking, circling the gallery with lengthening strides until he begged her to stop.
“Ghost. Cease. Please.”
She obeyed, but she did not turn to face him.
“Surely, you must know how I feel,” he murmured.
“You’ve made it abundantly clear.”
His groan was almost inaudible. “I don’t think I have.”
“I am a nuisance. A diseased one.”
“Not clear at all,” he grunted. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft she had to strain to hear, but she kept her back to him.
“Master Ivo warned me not to love you. But warning against love is like shining a light upon it. From that day forward, I have guarded myself against you.”
“Why would you need to be warned? Am I so dangerous?’” She swung on him, using outrage to cover her shame.
His shoulders slumped and his chin fell to his chest, weary. “Ghost. You are a woman. I am a man. Please, let us not pretend.”
“No. By all means. Let’s speak plainly. What do you mean?”
Dagmar’s sky-soaked eyes were fixed beyond her head, clinging to the darkness, and frustration flared in her chest and curled her fingers into fists. He’d been kind. For so long, he’d been so kind. He’d been steady and safe and straightforward. She did not want to make him bend. She did not want to make him bolt, but she could no longer bear his distance.
“Please look at me, Dagmar.”
His jaw tightened, and his eyes closed in denial.
“You make me want to be seen,” she said, and his gaze shot to hers, searing, searching.
“I have always seen you, Ghost.”
For a moment there was only silence between them, a weighty, question-filled silence that portended a deluge.
“Yes. You have. And I have . . . loved you . . . for it. No one warned me not to.”
“I am a Keeper of Saylok. I cannot—will not—love you back.”
“I am not asking you to . . . although . . . you are a fool if you think love can be forbidden.”
“But it can be guarded against,” he insisted sadly.
“The keepers leave home and family. They don’t have wives. They don’t have children. The temple exacts a very high price,” she said.
“Yes. And love exacts a very high price. Very seldom can both be paid. We cling to one and shun the other, or we neglect one to better serve the other. Our love makes us vulnerable to using the power of the runes for our own purposes. We must never do anything that gives the runes power over us instead of us having power over the runes.”
For the first time she understood why the Keepers of Saylok shut themselves away in the temple, away from the clans. To love was to be at the mercy of someone else. To love was to be controlled.
“I was certain when Bayr was born that they would make me leave the temple. I was compromised by my love for him. By my loyalty and devotion to him. I still am. I would abuse my power to save him. And yet . . . Ivo allowed us both to stay,” Dagmar marveled.
“And he allowed me to sta
y.”
“Yes.” Dagmar seemed struck, as though the similarity had only just occurred to him. “And now you are one of us.”
“A Keeper of Saylok,” she said. The title made her want to laugh. She’d been a servant, then a shepherd, now she was a keeper. A keeper of secrets and unfulfilled longing.
“Will you always be a keeper, Dagmar?”
“It is all I ever wanted to be.”
“Why? You are a man . . . you can go anywhere. Do anything.”
He scoffed. “We are all bound by something. I chose to be bound to the temple instead of being bound to a clan.”
“We are all bound by something,” Ghost repeated. “But I am not one of you, Dagmar. I do not believe in your gods, and I am not here because I am afraid to love. I am not bound to your temple, and I am not bound to a clan.”
“Then why are you here?” His voice was hesitant. He clearly feared her answer, feared she would tell him it was for him.
She was there because she was bound to a child. But she didn’t say the words. She told him another truth.
“When I was a little girl . . . not much older than Alba . . . I remember wanting so badly to blend with the clouds—I thought that was where I belonged. I imagined I could walk into the sky and become mist, weightless. Part of something bigger than myself. The clouds would gather around the cliffs near the cottage where I lived. One day I ran as fast as I could and threw myself from the edge, hoping all that thick whiteness would absorb me. After all, I am a ghost.” She smiled sadly. “I thought mayhaps I would become part of it. I would belong.”
Dagmar’s eyes clung to hers. “You threw yourself from the cliff?”
“Yes. And for a moment it was the most beautiful experience of my life. I was free. I didn’t fall . . . at least . . . it didn’t feel like falling. It felt like floating. There was only silence and softness. I was certain it had worked. And then I hit the water.”