with a sword and a spear and a bow, though I will never be a warrior.”
“You will be a keeper. And someday you will come here, to the mount. Just like we planned.”
He was silent in her head, and she thought for a moment she had lost him.
“Arwin says there will be no more keepers from the clans as long as the daughters are in the temple.”
“What?”
“The king has decreed it. There will be no young male supplicants until the drought is over. I will not . . . be going to the temple any time soon, though I am seventeen now, and I am of age.”
She was too shocked to respond immediately. She did not know all the ways of the keepers or of Saylok. It had not occurred to her that there were no young keepers entering the brotherhood.
“It used to be that one supplicant was selected each year from the clanless and one from each clan. All were not young, but all were willing. Some years, no supplicants were sent because there were no men who wished to be keepers. But since the drought began, more men have become warriors, and the clans have lost their belief in the keepers and the runes. Now the king has forbidden it altogether.”
“But . . . what does Master Ivo think? Can he not override the king on matters of the keepers?” she cried. Hod had to come to the temple.
“You would know better than I.”
“The Highest Keeper does not tell me what he thinks, Hody.”
“Yes . . . but he is your teacher, is he not? Does he think Bayr is a god? The son of Thor? Does he think Bayr will break the curse upon the land?”
“He loves Bayr . . . All the keepers do. He was brought to Temple Hill when he was a babe and he has been raised among them ever since. He is their child, the only child, the only son any of them will ever have. He is beloved. Ghost says that is why he is loathed by the king. The king hates anyone who could challenge his authority or his throne. He wants to dispense with the keepers and continues to blame them for the lack of daughters. He claims they have not lifted the curse or healed the scourge. The people . . . the clans and the chieftains . . . have started to listen to him. Master Ivo fears at some point they will turn on the keepers and the temple will be destroyed.”
“If there are no more keepers, the chieftains and the king will have sole power over Saylok. There will be no balance or ballast. No checks on the authority of the king. And there will be no one to use or protect the runes.”
It was more than Ghisla could comprehend. She was only a girl from Tonlis, after all. The machinations of the king and the keepers made her head spin. But one thing was perfectly clear in that moment, and it filled her with hopelessness.
“If you cannot come to the temple . . . I will never see you again.”
It was not uncommon for the keepers to clasp hands during one particular song at the end of the day, though they did so only with each other and invited the daughters to do the same behind them. Ghisla always resisted the ritual and kept her own hands together so no one would reach for her. She and her family had often clasped hands as they sang; it was common among all Songrs, and she did not want to sing with anyone else. Deep down, she was also afraid Ghost or one of the daughters would feel the scar on her palm. It was a silly fear. The scar was well hidden among the lines of her hand, just as Hod said it would be, but it was a fear nonetheless.
Since the day she’d reduced everyone to tears at worship, the other girls had started jostling each other in order to stand beside her when she sang, even though she’d reverted back to barely singing at all.
“We want to hear you,” Elayne had explained when Ghisla protested the new attention. “If you would sing out, we wouldn’t have to stand so close.”
Ghisla just kept moving away from them until Ghost put an end to the constant repositioning and assigned spots to stand during worship, putting herself at the end of the row. That evening, Ghisla