“You are Dred of Dolphys. We met years ago,” Hod greeted, amiable.
“I remember,” Dred answered, cautious. “Your skill was impressive then. I suspect it is more impressive now. I did not expect to see you here.”
Hod extended his hand toward the man, and Dred took it. It was like clutching the branch of a tree—rough and ridged and unforgiving.
“Dystel,” Hod said, greeting the man to Dred’s left. He’d been at Dred’s side through the competition. He was a good archer and had been among the final contestants.
“Archer,” Dystel grunted. “How did you know it was I? I’ve not said a word.”
“I never forget a heart.”
The youngest man scoffed, and Hod turned his face toward him.
“You didn’t like me then either . . . Daniel, was it?” Hod said. “And you weren’t much of a shot. You got out in the first round.”
Daniel gasped, affronted, but the other men laughed.
“I remember now that I liked you, blind archer,” Dred said, a smile in his voice.
“We have not met, Dakin,” Hod said, addressing the silent man at the edge of the group. “But you were there too. You have a heart like a gong.”
“That is uncanny,” Dred marveled.
“It is theater,” Daniel grumbled.
“Your stomach is growling, young Daniel,” Hod said. “Perhaps some supper would make you less hostile?” The men laughed again, as he’d intended, but it didn’t make his assertion any less true. They were all hungry, and he was delaying their dinner.
“Please . . . eat with us. We have enough,” Dred invited.
“I cannot stay. But please . . . eat. I wished only to greet you.”
“And make sure we leave?” Dred added. He was not a fool.
“Aye,” Hod said.
Dred exhaled, as if relieved by Hod’s honesty. Most men were.
“You look like a keeper. Except, mayhaps, for your braid,” Dystel remarked. “I thought years ago that is what you were.”
“I was raised by a keeper. A cave keeper in Leok. I thought one day I would go to the temple and become a supplicant.” Hod shrugged. “But that was not to be.”
“The Dolphys was raised by a keeper too,” Dred said. “By a whole temple.”
“They called him the Temple Boy, archer. Surely you’ve heard the stories,” Dakin said.
“Yes. I’ve heard the stories,” Hod answered. And he had loved the stories.
“You wanted to be a keeper . . . but now you work for the king,” Dred said. “I find that surprising.” His voice was neutral, but he did not like Banruud. Understandable, considering their history. His daughter, Desdemona, had been rejected by the king. Her death was on Banruud’s hands. The death of Saylok was on his hands.
“There aren’t many options for a blind henchman,” Hod replied. The men laughed again.
“No,” Dred answered. “Though I daresay . . . there aren’t many options for any of us. A warrior or a keeper, a farmer or a fisherman. It is a hard life, whether a man is born blind or with a stuttering tongue. We all have our battles.”
“Yes. We do.” Hod hesitated, wanting to warn them, and not certain how to do so. “The mount is not a safe place, Dred of Dolphys.”
The men stiffened.
“Saylok is not a safe place,” Dred shot back.
“No. It isn’t. Not for a warrior or a keeper, a farmer or a fisherman. Not for a blind man or a man with a stuttering tongue,” he repeated, using Dred’s own words. He lifted his face to the breeze, listening. It was time to go. Dagmar was coming, and Hod had no wish to be in his presence or draw attention to himself.
“Your son approaches, Dred of Dolphys. Eat. Rest. But when you are done . . . it would be best to gather your tent and leave the mount. Sleep in the Temple Wood, if you must. But don’t return. Not even for the tournament.”
“Do you threaten us, archer?” Dystel asked, baffled.
“No.” Hod shook his head. He had to tread carefully, to ward off but not warn. To pressure but not pique. “I seek only to impart the king’s warning. I seek only to . . . protect you.”
The men were hushed as he departed, and he felt their wary eyes as he picked his way across the meadow in the opposite direction from whence he’d come. When Dagmar reached them, he was well out of sight.
24
MOONS
Ghisla was able to creep away to the hillside three times in the following weeks, and each time, Hod heard her waiting and arrived shortly after. Her fear was a constant flogging, her hope a stinging salve, but she could not stay away from him.
He tasted the same, and his very existence filled her mouth, swelled in her chest, and burned in her veins. When he was beside her, that moment was the only thing that mattered, and they volleyed between frantic kisses and desperate words, trying to catch up on all their years apart.
He told her of his adventures in the Northlands, the journey that got him there, and the luck that brought him back.
“I will never be a sailor; I’m useless on the open sea. I have not learned to hear my way across it. I cannot see the sky, the stars do not speak or breathe or live, and beneath them I am truly blind.”
“You can’t sense them.”
“No. I can feel the sun on my face, and when it is bright, I can plot its course across the sky. But when the clouds are thick, and the sun is hidden, time is harder for me to gauge. The tools of a sailor are lost on me.”
“Can you feel the moon?” she asked.
“If I am very still—I can feel its pull.”
“It is full tonight. Fat and slow, and so bright it hurts my eyes to gaze on it too long.” She sang about what she saw, the size, shape, and glow of the orb that rolled across the heavens, a sated circle in a sky of lesser beings . . . until the sun rose and shooed him away.
I am the moon and the moon is me.
I am young and I am old.
I am weak and I am bold.
I am distant. I am cold.
I am the moon and the moon is me.
“I have not heard that one before,” Hod said. “But you are not the moon.”
She laughed, but the sound contained no mirth. “I am just like the moon. Young and old. Weak and bold. Distant and cold. I am a constant contradiction, even to myself.”
“Mayhaps. But you are not distant or cold.”
“I am. It is how I’ve survived. Just like the moon. The less I feel, the easier it is to go on. I have been this way for so long . . . I hardly remember if I was ever someway else.”
“You are not cold, Ghisla. Not to me. You are color. You are sound. You are the song on the wind and the hope in my heart.”
“Oh, Hody,” she whispered, moved. “How can you still hope? Life has given us no reason for such belief.”
“How can you not?” he said. “When we are together . . . how can you not?”
She clasped his hand and pressed it to her lips, moved by his sweetness and reminded of the boy who’d pled with her to never give up. He had changed, her Hod, but in so many ways, he was exactly the same.
“When Odin gave his eye to the well in exchange for the meaning of the runes, he took a chunk of the twenty-fourth moon to make himself another,” Hod murmured. His eyes too could have been carved from the orb. They reflected the white light and gleamed at her softly.