“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.