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.