none.
When she left Banruud’s chamber, Hod stood in the shadows a mere ten feet from the door, but she called for the sentry at the top of the stairs and turned away like she didn’t see him there. Banruud’s sticky breath clung to her throat, and she didn’t want Hod to smell him on her skin.
The following morning, Master Ivo requested her presence in the sanctum.
“The Blind Hod has returned,” he said without preamble, his hands wrapped around the arms of his chair. His papery skin and black eyes absorbed the shadows that the flickering candles did little to alleviate. She had oft wondered how he could endure the gloom and had come to realize he welcomed it. The darkness hid his uncertainties.
“Yes. He has. He is in the employ of the king.” Her voice was steady. She’d prepared herself for this interrogation.
“And how did that come to be?” Ivo pressed.
“You ask me, Master?” she responded, dumbfounded. “I am not privy to the inner workings of the castle or the king.”
“You did not expect him?”
“I did not expect him.”
He pondered this for a moment, seeming to forget she was even present. The skies rumbled, and rain began to spatter against the temple walls. The smell of wet stones and dry earth seeped into the space, and the gloom around them intensified.
“There is a storm coming,” he remarked.
“The storm is here,” she answered. It was not meant to be provocative, but he peered at her, stooped and suspicious, and the truth of her statement resonated in her chest. The storm had arrived, and she almost . . . welcomed it.
“I do not know what to make of it,” he confessed, and for the first time in her recollection, he seemed scared and unsure.
“The storm, Master?”
“The blind man,” he snapped.
“Mayhaps . . . there is nothing to make of it. Mayhaps it has nothing to do with you, or the gods, or the runes, or the king.” She spoke evenly, doing her best to remain circumspect.
“Do you know why Loki chose the blind god to do his bidding?” Master Ivo asked, scowling at her.
She waited, knowing he would remind her. Resentment bubbled in her chest. Hod was not the blind god. He was a man. And Master Ivo could be a fool.
“Loki realized that the fates could not see him,” Ivo muttered. “And what they could not see . . . they would not prevent.”
She remembered the story as Hod had told it so many years ago. He’d been frying fish, preparing dinner, sharing the simple tale of the blind god for whom he had been named. We can only see what can be seen.
“I cannot see him either,” Master Ivo confessed. The revelation startled her.
“You cannot see . . . Hod?”
“The runes reveal many things, but not all. Not nearly all.” He spread his hands, and uncurled his talon-like fingers, signaling he knew nothing. “He is a mystery to me. An unknown quantity. And I did not anticipate his return.”
“What will you do?” Ghisla asked. She pictured him summoning Hod, demanding that he leave the mount, and her anger bubbled again. The intrigue had gone on too long, and nothing—nothing—had changed.
The Highest Keeper raised his eyes to hers. “The question is . . . what will you do, Daughter?”
“There is naught I can do,” she cried. “I have been on this mount for more than a decade, waiting for salvation. Day after day, night after night, singing my songs, sleeping beside my sisters, and sitting with a tortured king. Tell me, Highest Keeper, what should I do?”
He nodded. “I fear there is naught any of us . . . can do.”
The king gave Hod a small room on an upper floor in the castle equally distanced between his own chambers and the servants’ quarters. He was not an honored guest—that wing of the castle was empty—nor an acknowledged member of the family; the Queen’s Tower where Alba and the old queen slept was up a winding set of stairs off the main entrance. Still, a room of his own in the castle was far better than Hod had expected, and it was far better than sleeping in the barracks with the king’s guard. A narrow bed and an iron tub were all he needed, and the room was more than sufficient, but he was required to work for his prime lodgings.
The king seemed eager—anxious even—to have him near. He stood sentry while Banruud ate and hovered in the hall while Ghisla