“At least we are not bald,” Elayne said, though she’d cried as her hair fell around her feet.
“At least we do not look like keepers,” Juliah agreed. She picked up her warrior’s braid from the floor and refused to relinquish it. “I want it. It’s mine. I will keep it in my chest,” she demanded.
“We don’t look like them . . . but we do not look like us either,” Ghisla responded, grim. Ghost and the four other girls all looked at her, surprised she’d spoken up at all. She’d answered questions when they were directed to her, but never with more than a word or two.
They were measured for the purple robes as well as white dresses that gathered at their necks and at their wrists, to be worn beneath them any time they left the temple itself, even if it was just to walk in the square or on the temple grounds. The king’s guard and the castle staff lived on the mount as well, and a distinction was clearly made: they were never to walk by themselves, even if they were all together.
“It is for your safety. All who see you must be able to immediately identify that you are a daughter of the temple,” Keeper Dagmar explained. More often than not, he was in charge of their instruction. Apparently, he was the only keeper who had any experience with children; he had raised his nephew until King Banruud had assigned the Temple Boy to guard the princess.
Each girl was fitted for two sets of underthings, a shift for sleeping, and two smocks for daily wear fashioned from the drabbest gray Ghisla had ever seen. A woman from the village was brought in to sew for the daughters, though she wasn’t allowed into the temple itself; she had to set up shop in the courtyard with her cart, pulled by a little burro as fat as he was tall.
The temple and the king’s castle faced off across a large, cobbled square on the north end of the mount, but walls separated the king’s grounds from those of the keepers. The king’s grounds were vast, and they included stables and fields and barracks for his guard and a yard for training and sport. Beyond the king’s grounds, the mount extended for a misshapen mile. During the Tournament of the King, which the keepers said happened after every harvest, that mile would be filled with tents of every color, and competition would abound for days.
On the east side of the mount, behind the temple, were corrals and gardens and outbuildings used exclusively by the keepers and walled off from the rest of the grounds. The keepers’ grounds weren’t nearly as vast as the king’s, but the keepers made good use of what was theirs. They had a variety of skills and trades among them, and they did not spend all their time studying runes, reading scrolls, and pleading with the gods. Everyone had a duty—or several—and everyone contributed, though some more than others. It was a village of sorts, made up of bald men and strict rules, but Ghisla found she did not mind their severity. After long months of chaos and uncertainty, the order of the temple was a reprieve, even if it wasn’t a relief.
The keepers weren’t unkind, but they were awkward and aloof and often irritated by the new disruption. None of them had been fathers. None of them were comfortable with women—of any age—and they avoided the girls whenever possible, with bowed heads and skittering eyes. They avoided Ghost too. All except Dagmar and Master Ivo.
It was the Highest Keeper who insisted the girls be treated like little keepers—supplicants, he called them. They were instructed in reading and writing, and they were learning the songs and the incantations.
He reminded Ghisla of Arwin, Hod’s teacher. Maybe it was their age or their stooped backs. Maybe it was the hook of the Highest Keeper’s nose or the bright knowing in his eyes. Or maybe it was simply the way they both made her feel. Caught. Exposed. Unable to hide anything. Not her feelings, not her voice, not her loneliness or her aloneness.
“He is very ugly,” Bashti said, mocking his bent carriage and his birdlike mannerisms.
“That is why I trust him,” Ghost said. “I learned long ago the physical form is simply a shell for all manner of evil. Master Ivo looks evil. But he isn’t.”