For all his wide-eyed wonder and mellow adaption to temple life, within months, the boy was squirming to be let down, to scoot across the stone floors and the courtyard cobbles. Before long, he was pulling himself up, toppling into trouble, and crawling and grasping and tugging on everything he could get his fat little hands around. A keeper who was prone to complaining swore the child yanked a hunk of hair from his beard, and Master Ivo was astonished by the strength in the child’s legs and arms, making the entire enclave gather to observe Bayr climbing the gnarled tree that had graced the inner court of the temple yard for hundreds of years.
“This is not usual for a child so young, is it, Keeper Dagmar? He is not yet six months old! Is it the milk from the goats or a gift from the gods?” Ivo marveled, but Dagmar could only watch in helpless wonder, bundling the boy back into the pack he’d moved to his back and adding yet another plea to his prayers, begging that Bayr would survive his first year and withstand the strength that his mother had blessed—or cursed—him with.
Bayr walked at eight months, and he didn’t just walk. He ran and climbed and jumped and tumbled, a tiny child with the strength and coordination of one thrice his age, his stout legs and sturdy arms rarely still. By the time he was a year old, he could outrun the chickens, chasing them only to catch them and let them go. The angry rooster didn’t care for the game and escaped by fluttering up to the top of the coop beyond the child’s reach.
Bayr had watched him in frustration, wanting the colorful bird to come down, until one day, he grew tired of waiting. No sooner had Dagmar turned his head to the row of vegetables he was tending than the boy had scaled the enclosure to crawl along the ridgeline, his eyes on the irritated rooster. A year later, he rescued a terrified cat from atop the castle ramparts, scaling walls and running along rooftops with nary a misstep or an ounce of fear.
Dagmar trailed him in a constant state of terror and tied the boy to him in the night while he slept so the child wouldn’t wake and wander away to traverse stone stairs or open windows or scale the walls that separated the temple grounds from the castle of the king nearby.
Dagmar carved runes of warning and protection on his chamber door and below his window. He hid runes on the beams that ran over their heads and in the stones beneath their feet, and his hands grew scabbed and sore from his constant bloodletting.
“The boy is favored by the gods,” Ivo scolded when he noticed Dagmar’s palms. “The Norns have shown me the strands of his fate, woven together in a long, colorful rope extending like a river beyond sight. He will not perish. Cease your blood runes, brother. You only weaken yourself. The boy will survive us all.”
But Dagmar was not convinced.
“He hardly makes a sound. He doesn’t babble like most children. He is so physically advanced—yet he doesn’t speak at all. His strength far exceeds his understanding and maturity,” Dagmar worried. “And strength without wisdom is dangerous.”
“He is still very young,” Ivo argued. “He will learn. He understands a great deal. You can see his mind working behind his eyes.”
Dagmar could only nod helplessly, but he didn’t stop carving his runes and making deals with the gods.
3
It didn’t have a name, not in the traditional sense. It was simply called the King’s Village. It rounded the base of the temple mount and extended out three miles in every direction. Atop the huge, wide mount rose the spires of the temple, and beside it, just as grand, just as soaring, was the castle of the king. It was not an accident that the temple was taller, nor was it unintentional that the two occupied the same hill, though it was more a plateau, the top shorn off by Odin himself and pounded flat by Thor’s hammer. The Keepers of Saylok did not dictate to the king, nor did they involve themselves in the running of the kingdom. They were simply the overseers, the counterweight to royal power, charged with the selection of kings and the continuation of the crown. When one king died, the crown did not pass to his son or his daughter. It did not pass to his heirs or his clan at all. Instead, the crown moved from clan to clan—from Adyar to Berne, from Berne to Dolphys, from Dolphys to Ebba, Ebba to Joran, Joran to Leok, and from Leok back to Adyar again. The crown passed to the man of each clan who was chosen by the gods . . . and by the keepers.
The current ruler, King Ansel, was of Adyar, the Clan of the Eagle, and it was his daughter, Alannah, who had wed Banruud, the Chieftain of Berne. When King Ansel died, his family would leave Temple Hill and the castle of the king. They would go back to their clan, back to the lives they had led before occupying the castle, and a new king from a new clan would be chosen and crowned. It kept the power from being controlled by one family, one tribe, one man for too long. Saylok had been ruled thus for five hundred years. One king had reigned for seventy years, one for only seventy days. But the crown continued to move from one clan to the next without exception. The chieftains of the clans were most often chosen and crowned king. It was a natural choice, as the chieftains were powerful men, accustomed to running their lands and ruling their clans. Their people often supported the choice, and the Keepers of Saylok took these things into consideration.
Only five times in five hundred years had the keepers deviated from choosing a chieftain of a clan to be king. Once it had caused a near revolt, but the people of Saylok and the leaders of the clans—all but the chieftain who had been denied the crown—supported the keepers as the government was designed, and the choice of the keepers was upheld and supported. The Chieftain of Joran, who had been denied the crown, plotted to kill the man who had been chosen instead of him, and he succeeded in his murderous designs. The crown then passed immediately to the clan of Leok, the next land in the succession, to the aging Chieftain of Leok’s eldest son, and the angry chieftain from Joran was beheaded.
The crown never remained with one clan, no matter how nefarious or unfair the circumstances of the king’s death. There was a time when some clans plotted to kill the chieftains of other clans in order to hurry their own clans’ ascent to the throne, but the Keepers of Saylok thwarted the attempts at power by choosing warriors or farmers from the clans and bypassing the chieftains altogether. Bribery was also attempted, though illegal, and four higher keepers had been blinded, stripped of their positions, and cast out, forced to leave the temple and beg for sustenance among the people whose trust they had betrayed.
The people of Saylok were unforgiving. They were already taxed to support the king and the temple and weren’t interested in providing for corrupt keepers who had misused their power and failed in their sacred responsibilities.
Dagmar had little doubt that Banruud of Berne would be the next king. Ansel was growing old—he’d been a good king—and the Clan of the Bear was next in line. As chieftain, Banruud would appeal to the keepers, and his appeal would be soberly vetted before anyone else in Berne was considered. It was the right of any man in Berne to make an appeal to the keepers, but few did. The people were loyal to—and often afraid of—their chieftains. If their appeal was denied, and they had to return to their lands, ostracization or worse often occurred. If their chieftain became king, it was never wise to have been a challenger for his throne. Of course, the Keepers of Saylok had the power to select any man, even if he did not present himself as a contender for the throne, but that was so uncommon as to be almost unheard of. Dagmar knew of no instance when such a thing had happened.