opened to the right. An arrow bisected the first crescent, and its shaft penetrated the second through the back. The rune was an exact replica of the one directly above the boy’s head, if he remembered right.
Ivo frowned and then he gaped, dumbfounded. “He draws the rune of Hod.”
The woman’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“He draws the rune of Hod, the blind son of Odin,” Ivo whispered.
“He knows naught, Master. It is what he does. He touches and he . . . draws. It is how he learns,” his mother protested and rushed to erase the figure.
“Leave it!” Ivo hissed. The woman and the child froze.
The Highest Keeper did not believe in happenstance. A blind boy—a boy no more than four summers—had drawn the rune of a blind god.
“Bring him to me,” Ivo said, curling his fingers toward the boy.
The woman hesitated, suddenly fearful, but she prodded the boy forward until they both stood in front of the Highest Keeper’s enormous chair. The little boy reached out, tentative, and set his hands on Ivo’s knees, almost as if he understood what was to come.
Ivo gaped again. No one touched him. Ever. The woman seemed to understand this.
“Baldr,” she warned, drawing his hands back.
“His name is Baldr?” Ivo asked, stunned once more.
“Y-yes, Master,” the woman stammered. “I am of Berne. It is a c-common name . . . in Berne.”
“He is not Baldr . . . He is Hod,” Ivo murmured. But the two names were inextricably tied, and it was just further proof to Ivo of a destined course.
“Turn his hands so I can see his palms,” Ivo insisted. She did, gripping the boy’s wrists and extending his small arms so he stood in a posture of supplication, palms up.
Ivo bent over the boy’s hands.
“Runes hide on the palms of our hands, at each knuckle, in every line and whorl,” Ivo muttered, providing explanation to the nervous mother.
The marks were already there, engraved on the boy’s skin, though they were far more visible on him—particularly the rune of sound and of scent—than on most. The lines would continue to deepen as the boy relied upon them, but Ivo would make them deeper still. A gift to the child who would sorely need his other senses.
The Highest Keeper, with a flick of his sharp nail, took blood from the tip of his own finger and drew slumber on the boy’s brow. The child immediately began to nod in his mother’s arms. It would make the rest easier.
“He will sleep now. And I will bless him,” Ivo explained. The child would need to be still, and he would not understand the sting of the runes on his skin.
He traced the tiny runes on the boy’s right hand with the needled edge of his nail, and blood welled in the crevices.
His mother gasped, not comprehending the offering and uneasy at the sight of her son’s blood.
“He will hear, smell, and sense far more than others do,” Ivo said, completing the task. He curled the boy’s bleeding fingers over his tiny palm. “Now take him away.”
The mother lifted the sleeping child in her arms, her strength restored.
“Thank you, Highest Keeper. Thank you,” she whispered. She stooped and swung her satchel over her shoulder and repositioned the child in her arms before turning toward the sanctum doors.
The fates screamed in Ivo’s head, and he relented, throwing up his hands in surrender.
“Woman?”
She turned.
“You cannot stay here, on the temple mount . . . but I know a place where the child . . . can go,” he said.
PART ONE
1
AND ONLY
Ghisla could no longer hear the shouts of the men on the ship or the screams of the women and children who’d been huddled below deck, trying to outlast the storm. She could only hear the howling of the skies and the crash of the waves, battling the tempest as they tossed her up and down. She had climbed up the ladder, opened the hatch, and thrown herself overboard into the water. No one had tried to stop her. The chaos had served as a perfect diversion.
Ghisla wanted to die. She wanted to end her suffering and her loneliness, to end the fear. She wanted that more than anything, but when a small barrel bobbed along beside her, she clung to it, hoisting herself over it, arms and legs wrapped around it like a babe on its mother.
Death would have to wait a bit; she had lost her courage.
The storm raged and Ghisla raged back, singing the songs