by M. A. Ray
“I—” Vandis began, but Hjaldi cut him off for the second time that night.
“I mean, Reed could never say what he’s saying without what you’ve done. It wouldn’t even be an issue. It wasn’t when we were Squires.”
“I know.”
“It’s stupid. You shout a lot, but you’d never…” Hjaldi trailed off when they reached the lit rows of booths, still bustling with Knights even at this hour: walking or sitting between the torches in one of the clusters of tables and benches set here and there, eating, drinking, laughing or serious—but talking, always talking: trading stories, trading gossip. The gossip challenged Vandis as nothing else did; no way to keep rumors from spreading through Knightsvalley every year. People always gossiped, and when storytellers came together this way, nothing like it, especially since most Knights knew each other at least to look at.
People always gossiped about Vandis. They called him strange and speculated on his habits. There was usually some form of story circulating about a secret lover, sometimes a woman, sometimes a man. The most popular held that he maintained a secret family, a wife and kids socked away in the wilds of Rodansk. Vandis laughed at these. He didn’t have time for a lover, let alone a secret family.
This year, though, he caught more stares and glares coming his way than any other year before, and he found them much harder to shake off. Even now, when he walked with Hjaldi, Knights who didn’t know him well directed looks at him, curious or baleful. The nonexistent secret family was one thing; now the rumors were flying thick about his real family. The ones about Kessa were ridiculous, and they’d died on the vine. It probably helped that Kessa herself had the admirable habit of meeting that kind of silliness head-on, but no one who encountered her could fail to notice her astoundingly well-adjusted attitude; she was young and pliant, but only to a point. If Vandis had managed to instill anything, it was a sense of her own worth, but he suspected she’d had that all along.
He was grateful for her, especially since the whispers about Dingus gave him more issues than he knew how to begin on. Most Knights were open and friendly, and someone like Kessa would always find a welcome, but they eyed Dingus’s reticence and intense desire for solitude with mistrust. Sneaky, sly, up to something, they said—especially after the bitter disappointment of Dingus’s presence and the instant proof that he wasn’t, in fact, a lost Prince of the People, nor as beautiful as a summer’s day. If you were expecting a hitul-pretty boy with nicely-formed limbs and a perfect face, the reality of Dingus might come as something of a shock. Vandis had hoped people would get over it—as unlovely as he might, objectively, be, there was no face Vandis would rather see across the campfire—but Dingus-with-Vandis and Dingus-in-public were two very different animals, and the things Vandis most valued about him were not immediately apparent when he was feeling, well, cornered.
“He reminds me of me,” Hjaldi said suddenly, as if sensing the direction of Vandis’s thoughts. “A little bit, anyway. I feel bad, seeing how Reed’s trying to get after him. He just wants to be left alone. All these people can really damage a lad’s calm. But I was glad to see him do well. Everyone’s doing so well this year, don’t you think?”
“Nobody disqualified yet,” Vandis agreed. Usually at least a couple were knocked out at each round of Trials, but the Quiz this year had gone off wonderfully.
“I’ll bet we have the same thing tomorrow.” Hjaldi smiled as they made the opposite edge of the fair and saw the hedball game going on between fairground and campground. “Oh, look at my Skerne, he’s just scored!”
“Mm-hmm,” Vandis said, but it was Kessa he saw, Kessa seeing him and making a T with her arms.
“Hjaldi’s here!” she yelled aside to Skerne, who separated from the game, too, and ran over. She greeted Hjaldi politely first, and then: “Hi, Vandis, how’d it go?”
“Really well.” He grinned. “You know why it’s called hedball, don’t you?”
Kessa frowned. “Why?”
“The ball used to be a guy’s head.”
“No fooling?”
“Still is, when the barbarians play it out on the Wastes.”
“Whoa,” she breathed, and her eyes were wondering saucers.
Pleasant warmth filled his chest. “Rough being a rival chieftain, when the other guy wins,” he said. “Did you eat?”
“Yes, Vandis.”
“Well, then I won’t keep you. Come straight back to camp when the game’s over, hear?”
“Yes, Vandis, I will,” she said, so earnestly that all of a sudden he couldn’t wait for the Moot to be over and to get on the road with her and Dingus—back to what his life was supposed to be, and wasn’t that a terrifyingly wonderful thought?
He said only, “Have fun.”
“I will!” she cried, dashing back to the game. She twisted to wave; he waved, too, but he didn’t know if she’d seen. Hjaldi and Skerne had already finished up.
“Wish I had the energy to stay and watch,” Hjaldi said, as they walked into the quiet dark of the campground. “Well, I’ll say good-bye here, I think. I’ll see you tomorrow, Vandis.”
“Good night.”
Hjaldi crossed behind Vandis to the right and raised a hand, barely visible now, in farewell. Vandis went to the left, skirting the Masters’ hollow, where through the trees he saw a few silhouetted figures. The idea of that much company left him distinctly cold tonight. He turned off to the left again, instead, and soon reached the pine copse. He’d assumed he’d find it empty, but Dingus was there, pacing and muttering with a cup in his hand. Coffee scent hung thick; Vandis’s stomach gave an empty rumble.
As soon as he ducked in, Dingus wheeled on him, demanding, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was gonna be so easy? All this time you made me think it was gonna be so hard—I thought they’d be hard questions! I studied like a motherfucker for nothing.”
Vandis suppressed a shout of laughter. “Maybe if you hadn’t studied, you wouldn’t have found them so easy.” When he lowered himself, with a grunt, onto one of the stools, Dingus brought him a cup of coffee. “Anyway,” he went on, “when did I ever say it was going to be hard? I seem to recall telling you not to worry.”
“I didn’t even puke.”
“Thank the Lady.”
Dingus shuffled anxiously in front of Vandis.
“What is it?”
“Did I pass?”
“You’ll have to wait until Longday to find out with everybody else.”
“Aw, c’mon. You can tell me.”
“Nope.” Vandis stretched his legs out in front of him. “You ate everything you cooked for supper, didn’t you?”
“I got a haggis. I’ll fix you something.” The boy went to lift the cover off the storage pit. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you decide to cook.”
Dingus leaned into the pit and took out food and tools: a hard sausage, a fat yellow onion, a few summertime fingerling potatoes, bowl and skillet, and chopping board. Last of all he brought up a bowl of brown eggs.
“Where’d you get those?”
“On my way back. Somebody’s got chickens. Smelly damn things.” He grimaced. “Eggs and sausage though. Hard to beat it.”
“You spent your fair money on those, didn’t you?”
“Three bits the dozen!” Dingus shook his head. Vandis’s point had flown right over. “What a price. Six times what it should’ve been, but they’re fresh at least.” He closed the storage pit and laid the skillet on its tripod to heat while he chopped onions, potatoes, and sausage.
Vandis drank his coffee and watched. When they were on the road, it was the best part of the day: almost suppertime. His boy would bring him a cup of coffee, and the delicious scents and sizzles of Dingus’s cooking would waft around their heads while Kessa laid out the bedrolls. They’d talk; Vandis liked each of the Squires to tell him one new thing they’d learned that day, and he’d come up
with something, too.
The sausage and onions hit the pan. He sighed with gratitude, and Dingus cracked three eggs into the mixing bowl—and one right over his mouth. He swallowed it down and Vandis shuddered. “That is disgusting.”
“Told you they’re fresh.” Dingus licked a dribble of egg from the corner of his lip and grinned.
“You do that just to fuck with me, I swear.”
“It tastes good, too. Better when it’s still warm from the chicken though.”
“There’s nothing you won’t eat.”
“There’s probably something. I just haven’t met it yet.”
“Remind me to take you to Rodansk one of these days. Maybe you’ll be able to swallow hákarl. I couldn’t.”
“What’s hákarl?”
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth,” he said. “It’s rotten shark.”
Dingus’s lip curled. “Why?”
“There’s a story. Do you want to hear it?”
“Please,” he said, turning eager eyes on Vandis.
Vandis took a long swig of rapidly-cooling coffee. While he gave Dingus a five-year-old memory of the time he’d tried to eat the filthiest food ever to exist, peace stole over him, a blanket laid by a friend. His duties as Head made way for the greater work, so easily he didn’t take the least note. It felt right.
Why the Moon Bleeds
the next night
Cedar filled Dingus’s nose, making his head swim. He stood in the Assembly Hall, in that center spot, with the benches all around and the Masters gathered together to hear him preach. He’d hoped he’d feel a little less nervous after the Quiz yesterday, after giving his secular narrative early this afternoon, but here he stood, sweating steadily inside his jerkin, even though it wasn’t that hot.
His mouth felt dry, his throat thick, under Vandis’s calm gaze. It wasn’t just Vandis looking his way; it was every Master-level Knight. He felt every eye, but Vandis’s was the eye he met. His teacher didn’t give a thing away, at least until the moment stretched too long. Vandis raised his brows: get on with it.
Dingus cleared his throat and said: “Now hear this. Long, long ago, before the world knew any queen but Naheel Queen of Heaven, when people didn’t know how to build cities, and lived in huts and caves, when everyone in his heart feared the dark most of all, this was the beginning of the hate between the Bright Lady and Oda King of Hell. Everyone praised Naheel’s name and gave Her offerings of their best, but they loathed and feared Oda, and only appeased Him with shiny trinkets when they had to be out at night. Oda grew jealous, more and more, every time He rose above the world and made the shadows creep. At first He only turned His face away, but even that didn’t help His envy and anger, because He still didn’t hear the prayers He longed for.
“One bright day, Oda grew so angry He couldn’t stand it any longer.” Dingus moved quietly to stand behind the candelabrum and lifted his hands. “He rose in the daytime, the way He does sometimes, but invisibly, so nobody could see what He did.” One by one, Dingus started to pinch out the candles; the first one singed his fingertips, and he stifled a gasp. “Slowly, so slowly, He sneaked between the world and Naheel’s face, and by the time She realized what was happening, the whole world was black as night.” There was only one candle left out of five, the one in the middle, and Dingus shifted so it lit his face from below. “The screams of the people came to Her ears. They cried out to her, with words and beyond words, desperate and terrified, to deliver them from darkness. And Oda smiled at Her, white teeth shining in His silver face, and slipped away again before She seized on Him.” He let the evil grin slide off his face and paused for breath, for effect, then covered his heart with one hand.
“The Queen of Heaven’s wrath burned in Her heart like a furnace, but She stoked the fire and bided Her time, thinking on the justice She would serve to the King of Hell. On a night when Oda had turned His face full toward the world, the better to watch what happened in the deep shadows He cast, She came upon Him and struck Him down, and His blood covered His face so that the moon showed red in the sky. Death has no power over Oda, and the next night He returned full, brighter than ever, but to this day it’s the same: every so often He gets one over on Naheel and hides Her light from the world; but more often, as a punishment, the King of Hell dies a mortal death—and so the moon bleeds.”
Dingus gave it a few heartbeats, and then pulled the last lit candle out of its socket to light the others again. He cast a quick glance across the Masters’ faces, hoping to read something of how he’d done, but just like during the Quiz, just like after he’d told his first story, he couldn’t read a thing. He bobbed his head, said, “Thank you,” and left. As he passed through the door he heard someone sniff loudly.
“Cheap,” another of them said, and he let the door swing shut behind him before he sighed.
Outside, the crickets were in full swing, and the air smelled of night. He enjoyed the story, but he felt for Oda, too, floating in the dark, and never hearing a prayer besides “don’t hurt me.” To him, it sounded pretty lonely, and he couldn’t help feeling for that.
The god’s face drifted high. He was on the wax, still a bare sliver, but growing. Dingus gave Him a nod. It was a night for thieves, a night for stealth and sneakery, at least in another place; here in Knightsvalley the torches and fires burned brightly enough to blot out the stars if you spent too much time on the fairground. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, twisting his little pocket folder end over end in his fingers, and went down to get something to fill his growling belly. He paused at the edge of the fair, staring at all the people milling about and enjoying the Moot, and decided to head back to camp and eat a few strips of jerked venison out of his pack. He should’ve gone in and tried to find Kessa, like last night, but his heart wasn’t in it. He skirted the bright, noisy patch, making for the lower light and softer sounds of the forest.
“Hey, Dingus!” somebody called. The light glanced off Tony’s shiny scalp, and he almost pretended he didn’t hear or see. Almost, but Tony pushed across people four or five deep to get to the edge, and when he finally made it, he actually looked happy to see Dingus. “You done?”
“Yeah, I’m through.”
“Finally! C’mon, Wallace and me been waiting on you ages.”
Dingus blinked. “What for?”
“Santo, he gave me a present. He said I did real good and I should get to celebrate.” Tony leaned close, farther into Dingus’s space than he would’ve preferred, but it was just Tony. “It’s rum! A whole bottle. Let’s go down the lake and drink some, you and me and Wallace. We can go for a swim.”
“What about Franny?” Wallace and Francine had been glued together as much as possible since the night of the party. He didn’t want to strip down and swim in front of a girl.
Tony waved it off. “She’s doing some girl thing, who knows what they do?”
“Probably about the same as us,” Dingus said, grinning for the first time that day. “Let me get a haggis, I didn’t eat.”
“How can you eat that?”
“It’s good, that’s how.”
Tony shuddered and started to talk about Brightwater food, all the stuff they got from the ocean: fried squid, roast flounder, smoked oysters, none of which Dingus had tasted, but all of which he’d try at least once. While Tony waxed poetic on spicy rice and octopus stew, Dingus hardly noticed the crowds until he noticed that he wasn’t noticing—and by then, they’d gotten out of the fairground and he had a fat haggis on his plate. He followed Tony out onto the dark shore, away from the bonfire and the Juniors’ party, which was already in full swing. “A couple days, maybe we’ll be over there, huh?”
“Maybe,” Dingus said. He couldn’t help thinking he didn’t belong there. Bright, quick-time music floated out over the water, mixed with the noise of excited talk, and the shadows of the Juniors danced, some together, some alone, around the bonfire. The smoke of the fire bubbled up into the night sky.
&n
bsp; Dingus and Tony wove around the bigger rocks, gravel crunching under their boots. Wallace was waiting with his back to one of them, with a bottle the same as the ones the Masters had had stuck into the stones next to him. “You found him,” Wallace said. “Here I thought I’d need to start drinking without you!”
“You wouldn’t.” Tony’s voice sounded sure and airy.
“Nay, I wouldn’t, but I thought of it!”
Dingus felt a little pang of jealousy, and a hard stab of guilt. They’d known each other a long time, six years, and been friends that long: long enough to be certain, each one, of who the other was, and to count on it. They couldn’t know him that well, but they didn’t seem to care. Thing was, it felt so good, them wanting him around, that he hadn’t said a word about the berserkergang—which was what Vandis called it, though Dingus still thought of it as the red, the bloody red place his mind tried to go every time he got mad. He probably should’ve said something, but they’d either think he was crazy or be afraid of him, and he couldn’t take either. He let out a sigh and sat down on the rocks to eat his haggis and taters.
“Didn’t it go well, then, Dingus?” Wallace asked.
“I think so. Pretty sure I got all the questions right on the Quiz, but with the Storytelling you can’t tell if you got ’em or if they’re thinking about the holes in their stockings.”
“I’m thinking mine were all right, too. Wish Evan would’ve said.”
“I know mine went good,” Tony put in. “I got Old Stoneface Vandis to crack a smile, and a couple of ’em was even laughing.”
Dingus’s mouth twitched. “Were they supposed to be?”
“Tony’s always after telling the funny ones,” Wallace explained. “I’ll wager he told ‘Akeere and Vard Try Love.’”
“And you told ‘The Lady’s Oak Staff’ again,” Tony said.
“It’s meant to have happened right near MacNair Hill. Which did you tell, then, Dingus?”
Dingus swallowed a big bite of taters and said, “‘Why the Moon Bleeds.’”
